st Scouts largely could have prevented. Why, I myself
can recall seeing a fire in which nearly a thousand and a half persons
perished."

"In one fire?"

"Just in one fire. What would you think if you were told that in a
forest in front of you were several thousand savages, all with their
war-paint on, waiting a chance to break forth on the villages of the
plain, that you had been chosen for the post of honor in guarding that
strip of plain, and that the lives of those near by depended on your
alertness? If they had picked you out for that difficult and important
post, do you think that you would go and stand your rifle up against a
tree and look for some soft nice mossy bank on which to lie down and go
to sleep?"

"I'd stay on the job till I dropped," answered Wilbur quickly and
aggressively.

"There's really very little difference between the two positions," said
the Chief Forester. "No band of painted savages can break forth from a
forest with more appalling fury than can a fire, none is more difficult
to resist, none can carry the possibility of torture to its hapless
victims more cruelly, none be so deaf to cries of mercy as a fire.
Instead of keeping your ears open for a distant war-whoop, you have to
keep your eyes open for the thin up-wreathing curl of smoke by day, or
the red glow and flickering flame at night, which tells that the time
has come for you to show what stuff you are made of. On the instant must
you start for the fire, though it may be miles away, crossing, it may
be, a part of the forest through which no trail has been made, plunging
through streams which under less urgency would make you hesitate to try
them, single-handed and 'all on your own,' to fight Uncle Sam's battles
against his most dangerous and most insistent foe."

"But if you can't put it out?" suggested Fred.

"It has got to be put out," came the sharp reply, with an insistence of
manner that told even more than the words. "There isn't anything else to
it. If you have to get back to headquarters or send word there, if all
the Rangers in the forest have to be summoned, if you have to ride to
every settlement, ranch, and shack on the range, yes, if you have to
rouse up half the State, this one thing is sure--the fire has got to be
put out."

"But can you get help?"

"Nearly always. In the first place, the danger is mutual and everybody
near the forest or in it will suffer if the fire spreads. In the
second place, the Service