Boy With the U. S. Foresters

by William Henry Giles Kingston

  CHAPTER XIV

  A ROLLING CLOUD OF SMOKE

  The days became hotter and hotter, and each morning when Wilbur rose hesearched eagerly for some sign of cloud that should presage rain, butthe sky remained cloudless. Several times he had heard of fires in thevicinity, but they had kept away from that portion of the forest overwhich he had control, and he had not been summoned from his post. Theboy had given up his former schedule of covering his whole forest twicea week, and now was riding on Sundays, thus reaching every lookout pointevery other day. It was telling upon the horses, and he himself wasconscious of the strain, but he was more content in feeling that he hadgone the limit in doing the thing that was given him to do.

  One day, while in a distant part of the forest, he came upon the signsof a party of campers. Since his experience with the tourists the boyhad become panic-stricken by the very idea of careless visitors to theforest, and the chance of their setting a fire, and so, recklessly, heput his horse at a sharp gallop and started down the trail that they hadleft. The signs were new, so that he overtook them in a couple of hours.But in the meantime he had passed the place where the party had madetheir noonday halt, and he could see that full precautions had beentaken to insure the quenching of the fire.

  When he overtook them, moreover, he was wonderfully relieved and freedfrom his fears. There were six in all, the father, who was quite an oldman, the mother, two grown-up sons, and two younger girls. They hadheard his horse come galloping down the trail, and the two younger menhad hung back to be the first to meet him.

  "Which way?" one of them asked, as Wilbur pulled his horse down to awalk.

  "Your way," said Wilbur, "I guess. I just rode down to see who it was onthe trail. There was a bunch of tourists hanging around here a few weeksago, and the forest floor is too dry to take any chances with theircampfires."

  "Oh, that's it," said the former speaker. Then, with a laugh, hecontinued: "I guess we aren't in that class."

  "I can see you're not," the boy replied, "but I'm one of the ForestService men, and it's a whole lot better to be safe than sorry."

  "Right," the other replied. "I think you might ride on with us a bit,"he continued, "and talk to the rest of them. It may ease their minds.You were headed our way down that trail as though you were riding forour scalps."

  Wilbur laughed at the idea of his inspiring fear in the two stalwart menriding beside him.

  "I guess I'd have had some job," he said, "if I had tried it on."

  "Well," the first speaker answered, "we wouldn't be the first of thefamily to decorate a wigwam that way. My grandfather an' his twobrothers got ambushed by some Apaches in the early seventies."

  "Your grandfather?" the boy repeated.

  "Sure, son. Most of the fellows that got the worst of it with theIndians was some one's granddad, I reckon. One of my uncles, father'sbrother, was with them at the time, and he got scalped, too. It isn't solong ago since the days of the Indians, son, an' it's wonderful to thinkof the families livin' peacefully where the war-parties used to ride.That's goin' to be a great country down there. But," he broke offsuddenly, "here's dad."

  The bent figure in the saddle, riding an immense iron gray mare,straightened up as the three rode close, and the old man turned a keenglance on the boy. Instantly, Wilbur was reminded of the old hunter,although the two men were as unlike as they could be, and in that sameinstant the boy realized that the likeness lay in the eyes. Thespringiness might have gone out of his step, and to a certain extent theseat in the saddle was unfirm, and the strength and poise of the bodyshowed signs of abatement, but the fire in the eyes was undimmed andevery line of the features was instinct to a wonderful degree with lifeand vitality. After a question or two to his sons he turned to the boy,and in response to a query as to his destination, replied, in asing-song voice that was reminiscent of frontier camp-meetings:

  "I'm goin' to the Promised Land. It's been a long an' a weary road, butthe time of rejoicin' has come. It is writ that the desert shall blossomas a rose, an' I'm goin' to grow rose-trees where the cactus used to be;the solitary place shall be alone no more, an' I and mine are flockin'into it; the lion an' wolf shall be no more therein, an' the varmintsall are gone away; an' a little child shall lead them, an' before I dieI reckon to see my children an' my children's children under the shadowof my vine an' fig tree."

  Wilbur looked a little bewilderedly at the two younger men and one ofthem said hastily:

  "We're goin' down to the Salt River Valley, down in Arizona, where thegovernment has irrigated land."

  "Oh, I know," said Wilbur, "that's one of the big projects of theReclamation Service."

  "Have you been down there at all?"

  "No," the boy answered, "but I understand that to a very great extentmuch of the Forest Service work is being done with irrigation in view."

  "They used to call it," broke out the old prophet again, "the 'land thatGod forgot,' but now they're callin' it the 'land that God remembered.'"

  Wilbur waited a moment to see if the old man would speak again, but ashe was silent, he turned to the man beside him:

  "How did you get interested in this land?" he asked.

  "I was born," the other answered, "in one of the villages of thecliff-dwellers, who lived so many years ago. Dad, he always used tothink that the sudden droppin' out of those old races an' the endurin'silence about them was some kind of a visitation. An' he always believedthat the curse, whatever it was, would be taken off."

  "That's a queer idea," said the boy; "I never heard it before."

  "Well," said the other, "it does seem queer. An' when the governmentfirst started this reclamation work, dad he thought it was a sign, andhe went into every project, I reckon, the government ever had. An' theyused to say that unless 'the Apache Prophet,' as they called him, hadbeen once on a project, it was no use goin' on till he came."

  "But what did he do?"

  "They always gave him charge of a gang of men for as long as he wantedit, and Jim an' I, we used to boss a gang, too. We've been on theHuntley and Sun River in Montana, we've laid the foundation of thehighest masonry dam in the world--the Shoshone dam in Wyoming,--helpedbuild a canal ninety-five miles long in Nebraska, I've driven team onthe Belle Fourche in South Dakota; in Kansas, where there's no surfacewater, I've dug wells that with pumps will irrigate eight thousandacres, and away down in New Mexico on the Pecos and in Colorado on theRio Grande I've helped begin a new life for those States."

  "An' a river shall flow out of it," the old man burst forth again, "an'I reckon thar ain't a river flowin' nowhere that's forgot. I don't knowwhere Jordan rolls, but any stream that brings smilin' plenty where thedesert was before looks enough like Jordan to suit me. I've seen it, Itell you," he added fiercely, turning to the boy, "I've seen the desertan' I've seen Eden, an' I'm goin' there to live. An' where the flamin'sword of thirst once whirled, there's little brooks a-ripplin' an' theflowers is springin' fair."

  "You must have seen great changes?" suggested the boy, interested in theold man's speech.

  "Five years ago," he answered, "we were campin' on the Snake River, insouthern Idaho. There was sage-brush, an' sand, an' stars, an' nothin'else. An engineerin' fellow, who he was I dunno, rides up to the fire.Where he comes from I dunno; I reckon his body came along the road ofthe sage-brush and the sand, but his mind came by the stars. An' hetakes the handle of an ax, and draws out on the sand an irrigatin'plan. There wasn't a house for thirty miles. An' he just asks if heshall go ahead. An' I knows he's right, an' I says I knows he's right,an' he goes straight off to Washington, an' now there's three thousandpeople where the sage-brush was, and right on the very spot where mycampfire smoked just five years ago, a school has been opened with overa hundred children there."

  He stopped as suddenly as he began.

  "There was some great work in the Gunnison canyon, was there not?"queried Wilbur.

  The old man made no reply, and the son answered the question.

  "When they had to lower
a man from the top into the canyon, sevenhundred feet below," he said, "Dad was the first to volunteer. I reckon,son, there's no greater story worth the tellin' than the Uncompahgretunnel. And then, I ain't told nothin' about the big Washington andOregon valleys, where tens of thousands now have homes an' are rearin'the finest kind of men an' women. But, as dad says, we're comin' home.There's four centuries of our history and there's seven centuries ofMoki traditions, an' still there's nothing to tell me who the people arewho built the cliff-town where I was born. Dad, he thinks that when thewater comes, perhaps the stones will speak. I don't know, but if theyever do, I want to be there to hear. It's the strangest, wildest placein all the world, I think, and while it is harsh and unkindly, stillit's home. Dad's right there. These forests are all right," he added,remembering that the boy was attached to the Forest Service, "but forme, I want a world whose end you can't see an' where every glance leadsup."

  "Do you suppose," said Wilbur, "that in the days of the cliff-dwellers,and earlier, the 'inland empire' was densely populated?"

  "Some time," the other replied slowly, "it must have been. Not far frommy cliff home is the famous Cheltro Palace, which contains over thirtymillion blocks of stone."

  "How big is it?" asked Wilbur.

  "Well, it is four stories high, nearly five hundred feet long, an' justhalf that width."

  Wilbur whistled.

  "My stars," he ejaculated, "that is big! And is there nothing left totell about them?" he asked.

  The other shook his head.

  "Nothing," he answered.

  "They were, an' they were not," interjected the old patriarch. "I lookedfor the place where I should find him, an' lo, he was gone. They wereeatin' an' drinkin' when the end came, an' they knew it not. Like enoughthey had some warnin' which they heeded not, an' their house is leftunto them desolate. An' we go in and possess their land. Young man, comewith us."

  Wilbur started.

  "Oh, I can't," he said. "I should like to see some of those projects,but my work is here. But I'm one of you," he added eagerly; "the riversthat flow down to enrich your desert rise from springs in our mountains,and all those springs would dry up if the forests were destroyed. Andall the headwaters of the streams are in our care."

  "You kind of look after them when they're young," Wilbur's companionsuggested, "that we can use them when the time is ripe."

  "That is just it," said Wilbur. Then, turning to the old man, he added:

  "I must go back to my patrol," he said, "but when you're down in thatGarden of Eden, where the river is making the world all over again,you'll remember us once in a while, and the little bit of a streamthat flows out of my corral will always have good wishes for you downthere."

  The old man turned in his saddle with great dignity.

  "There be vessels to honor," he said gravely, "an' to every one hisgifts. Go back to your forest home an' work, an' take an old man'swishes that while water runs you may never want for work worth doin',for friends worth havin', an' at the last a tally you ain't ashamed toshow."

  Wilbur raised his hat in salute for reply and reined Kit in until theparty was lost to view. The afternoon was drawing on and the lad hadlost nearly two hours in following the party, and in his chat with theold patriarch, but he could not but feel that even the momentary glimpsehe had been given of the practical workings of the reclamation work ofthe government had gone far to emphasize and render of keener personalinterest all that he had learned at school or heard from the ForestService men about the making of a newer world within the New Worlditself. And when he remembered that over a quarter of a millionfamilies, within a space of about six years, have made their homes onwhat was an absolute desert ten years ago, and that these men and womenwere stirred with the same spirit as the old patriarch, he felt, as hehad said, that the conserving of the mountain streams was work worthwhile.

  As it chanced, he passed over the little stream whose channel he hadcleared on one of his patrol rides, and he stopped a moment to look atit.

  "Well," he said aloud, "I suppose some youngster some day will bepicking oranges off a tree that would have died if I hadn't done thatday's work," and he rode on to his camp greatly pleased with himself.

  For a day or two the boy found himself quite unable to shake the spellof the old patriarch's presence off his mind, and the more he thoughtover it, the more he realized that scarcely any one thing in the wholeof the United States loomed larger on its future than the main idea ofConservation. It had been merely a word before, but now it was areality, and he determined to take the first opportunity he would have,during his vacation, of going down to the Salt River Valley to see theold patriarch once again.

  And still the weather grew hotter and the sky remained cloudless. Andnow, every evening, Rifle-Eye would telephone over to make sure thatWilbur was back at camp and that there was as yet no danger. They hadhad one quite sharp tussle at a distant point of the forest, and one dayWilbur had received orders to make a long ride to a lookout point inanother part of the forest, the work of a Guard who had been called awayto fight fire, but so far, Wilbur had been free. Two or three times hefound himself waking suddenly in the night, possessed with an intensedesire to saddle Kit and ride off to a part of the forest where he hadeither dreamed or thought a fire was burning, but Rifle-Eye had beencareful to warn him against this very thing, and although the morningfound him simply wild to ride to this point of supposed danger, he hadfollowed orders and ridden his regular round.

  Although Wilbur's camp was high, the heat grew hard to bear, and whenthe boy passed from the shade of the pine along the naked rock to somelookout point the ground seemed to blaze under him. The grass wasrapidly turning brown in the exposed places, and the pine needles wereas slippery as the smoothest ice.

  Just at noon, one morning, Wilbur turned his horse--he was not ridingKit that day--into one of these open trails, and taking out his glasses,commenced to sweep the horizon. A heat haze was abroad, and hisover-excited eyes seemed to see smoke everywhere. But, as he swept roundthe horizon, suddenly his whole figure stiffened. He looked long, then,with a sigh of relief, turned away, and completed his circuit of thehorizon. This done, he directed the glasses anew where he had lookedbefore. He looked long, unsatisfied, then lay down on the rock where hecould rest the glasses and scanned the scene for several minutes.

  "Be sure," Merritt had once warned him, "better spend a half an hour atthe start than lose two hours later."

  But Wilbur felt sure and rushed for his horse. Half-way he paused. Then,going deliberately into the shade of a heavy spruce, he half-closed hiseyes for a minute or two to let the muscles relax. Then quietly he cameto the edge of the cliff, and directing his glasses point-blank at theplace he had been examining so closely, scanned it in every detail. Heslipped the glasses back into their case, snapped the clasp firmly,walked deliberately back to his horse, who had been taking a fewmouthfuls of grass, tightened the cinches, looked to it that the saddlewas resting true and that the blanket had not rucked up, vaulted intothe saddle, and rode to the edge of the cliff. There was no doubt of it.Hanging low in the heavy air over and through the dark foliage of pineand spruce was a dull dark silver gleam, which changed enough as thesunlight fell upon it to show that it was eddying vapor rather than theheavier waves of fog.

  "Smoke!" he said. "We've got to ride for it."

  NO WATER, NO FORESTS. NO FORESTS, NO WATER.

  Example of country which irrigation will cause to become wonderfullyfertile.

  _Photograph by U. S. Forest Service._]

  WITH WATER!

  In the foreground, a field and orchard; in the background, thesand-dunes of the arid desert. Transformation effected by a tiny streamand a poplar wind-break.

  _Photograph by U. S. Forest Service._]