say 'reputable.' Of course not. All big concerns are not
necessarily reputable in the sense you mean, but there is many a man
to-day who holds his head high in the world, though the foundation of
his business was stolen timber."

Hippy uttered a low whistle of amazement.

"Look there!" exclaimed Tom Gray late in the afternoon as they rode into
a "cutting" from which the timber had been removed. Several acres had
been cut off, and skidways built up for more extensive operations,
probably for that very season.

Upon consulting his map, the forester found, as he had expected, that
the timber was not charted as belonging to private individuals. Tom
pointed to a man-made dam in the river. It had been constructed of
spiles--small logs, driven in like posts, set so that they leaned
upstream. The water gates were open, and, upon examination, showed that
logs had been floated there, for the marks of the logs were visible on
the sides of the gates and on the tops of the spiles. Added to this, the
floor of the dam was covered with last season's logs, hundreds of them.

"Will you please tell me why a dam is necessary to lumbering?"
questioned Lieutenant Wingate.

"To provide a good head of water on which to float logs down to the
mills when the river is low. The logs are dumped into the dam until it
is full; the gates are then opened and the logs go booming down towards
the mills. To be fully equipped there should be a second dam above this
one to wash down such timber as fails to clear. We will go on further
and see what we find."

They found the second dam, constructed across the river at a narrow
spot. It had been quite recently built, as Tom Gray found upon examining
the spiles and comparing their age with those of the lower dam.

"This looks to me like a fine piece of timber," he announced with a
sweeping gesture that took in the great trees that surrounded them. "We
will cruise as far as we can before dark and go over the rest of the
section to-morrow."

"And you believe 'pirates' are trying to hog all they can of it, do
you?" questioned Hippy.

"There can be no doubt of it. We have evidence of that."

"Suppose some one should step in and buy the section--what then?"

"It would serve the robbers right," declared Tom Gray with emphasis.

"What is the section worth?"

"Too much money for us. Say fifty to seventy-five thousand dollars, or
even more if it is owned by private persons. If the state owns it, the
latt