Produced by Steven desJardins and Distributed Proofreaders
[Illustration: THE GIANTS OF THE FOREST AND THE MEN WHO SAFEGUARD THEM.
_Photography by U. S. Forest Service._]
U. S. SERVICE SERIES.
THE BOY WITH THE U. S. FORESTERS
BY FRANCIS ROLT-WHEELER
With Thirty-eight Illustrations from Photographs taken by the U. S.
Forest Service
BOSTON
LOTHROP, LEE & SHEPARD CO.
1910
To My Son Roger's Friend
WILBUR UFFORD
PREFACE
Much of the wilderness is yet but little trod. Great stretches of virgin
forest still remain within whose dim recesses nothing is changed since
the days the Indians dwelt in them. The mystery and the adventure are
not sped, the grandeur and the companionship still pulse among the
glades, the "call of the wild" is an unceasing cry, and to that call the
boy responds.
But if this impulse to return to the shelter of the wilds be still so
strong, how greatly more intense does it become when we awaken to the
fact that the forest needs our help even more than we need its sense of
freedom. When we perceive that the fate of these great belts of untamed
wilderness lies in the hands of a small group of men whose mastery is
absolute, when first we realize that national benefits--great almost
beyond the believing--are intrusted to these men, surely Desire and
Duty leap to grip hands and pledge themselves to the service of the
forests of our land. To breathe the magnificent spaces of the West, to
reveal the wealth and beauty of our great primeval woods, to acclaim the
worth of the men who administer them, and to show splendid possibilities
to a lad of grit and initiative is the aim and purpose of
THE AUTHOR.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER I
ENTERING THE SERVICE
CHAPTER II
PUTTING A STOP TO GUN-PLAY
CHAPTER III
THE FIGHT IN THE COULEE
CHAPTER IV
PICKING A LIVELY BRONCHO
CHAPTER V
A TUSSLE WITH A WILD-CAT
CHAPTER VI
IN THE HEART OF THE FOREST
CHAPTER VII
WILBUR IN HIS OWN CAMP
CHAPTER VIII
DOWNING A GIANT LUMBERJACK
CHAPTER IX
A HARD FOE TO CONQUER
CHAPTER X
A FOURTH OF JULY PERIL
CHAPTER XI
AMIDST A CATTLE STAMPEDE
CHAPTER XII
ALMOST TRAMPLED TO DEATH
CHAPTER XIII
HOW THE FOREST WON A GREAT DOCTOR
CHAPTER XIV
A ROLLING CLOUD OF SMOKE
CHAPTER XV
THE FOREST ABLAZE
CHAPTER XVI
IN THE MIDST OF A SEA OF FIRE
ILLUSTRATIONS
The Giants of the Forest and the Men Who Safeguard Them
A Forest Fire out of Control
Good Forestry Management
Bad Forestry Management
The Tie-cutters' Boys
Deforested and Washed Away
As Bad as Anything in China
How Young Forests are Destroyed
Where Sheep are Allowed
Cowboys at the Round-up
Patrolling a Coyote Fence
Reducing the Wolf Supply
Where Ben and Mickey Burned the Brush
The Cabin of the Old Ranger
Stamping It Government Property
Wilbur's Own Camp
Just about Ready to Shoot
Train-load from One Tree
Wilbur's Own Bridge
Where the Supervisor Stayed
Measuring a Fair-sized Tree
Running a Telephone Line
Nursery for Young Trees
Plantation of Young Trees
Sowing Pine Seed
Planting Young Trees
What Tree-planting Will Do
The First Conservation Expert
Sand Burying a Pear Orchard
No Water, No Forests. No Forests, No Water
With Water!
"That's One Painter Less, Anyhow!"
"Smoke! And How am I Going to Get There?"
"Keep It from Spreading, Boys!"
"Get Busy Now, When It Breaks into the Open!"
THE BOY WITH THE U. S. FORESTERS
CHAPTER I
ENTERING THE SERVICE
"Hey, Wilbur, where are you headed for?"
The boy addressed, who had just come through the swing-doors of an
office building in Washington, did not slacken his pace on hearing the
question, but called back over his shoulder:
"To the forest, of course. Come along, Fred."
"But--" The second speaker stopped short, and, breaking into a run,
caught up with his friend in a few steps.
"You certainly seem to be in a mighty big hurry to get there," he said.
"We don't loaf on our service," answered the boy with an air of pride.
His friend broke into a broad grin. He had known Wilbur Loyle for some
time, and was well aware of his enthusiastic nature.
"How long has it been 'our' service?" he queried, emphasizing the
pronoun.
"Ever since I was appointed," rejoined Wilbur exultantly.
"I'm glad the appointment has had time to soak in; it didn't take long,
did it?" Wilbur flushed a little, and his chum, seeing this, went on
laughingly: "Don't mind my roasting, old man, only you were 'way up in
the clouds."
The boy's expression cleared instantaneously, and he laughed in reply.
"I suppose I was," he said, "but it's great to feel you've got the thing
you've been working for. As you know, Fred, I've been thinking of this
for years; in fact, I've always wanted it, and I've worked hard to get
it. And then the Chief Forester's fine; he's just fine; I liked him ever
so much."
"Did you have much chance to talk with him?"
"Yes, quite a lot. I thought I was likely enough to meet him, and p'raps
he would formally tell me I was appointed and then bow me out of the
office. Not a bit of it. He told me all about the Service, showed me
just what there was in it for the country, and I tell you what--he made
me feel that I wanted to go right straight out on the street and get
all the other boys to join."
"Why?"
"Well, he showed me that the Forest Service gave a fellow a chance to
make good even better than in the army or the navy. There you have to
follow orders mainly; there's that deadly routine besides, and you don't
get much of a chance to think for yourself; but in the Forest Service a
chap is holding down a place of trust where he has a show to make good
by working it out for himself."
"Sounds all right," said the older boy. "Anyway, I'm glad if you're
glad."
"What I like about it," went on Wilbur, "is the bigness of the whole
thing and the chance a chap has to show what he's made of. Glad? You bet
I'm glad!"
"You weren't so sure whether you were going to like it or not when you
went in to see about it," said Fred.
"Oh, yes, I was. I knew I was going to like it all right. But I didn't
know anything about where I might be sent or how I would be received."
"I think it's just ripping," said his friend, "that it looks so good to
you, starting out. It makes a heap of difference, sometimes, how a thing
begins."
"It surely does. Right now, the whole thing seems too good to be true."
"Well," said the other, "as long as it strikes you that way I suppose
you're satisfied now for all the grind you did preparing for it. But I
don't believe it would suit me. It might be all right to be a Forest
Ranger, but you told me one time that you had to start in as a Fire
Guard, a sort of Fire Policeman, didn't you?"
"Sure!"
"Well, that doesn't sound particularly exciting."
"Why not? What more excitement do you want than a forest fire! Isn't
that big enough for you?"
"The fire would be all right," answered the older boy, "but it's the
watching and waiting for it that would get me."
"You can't expect to have adventures every minute anywhere," said
Wilbur, "but even so, you're not standing on one spot like a sailor in a
crow's nest, waiting for something to happen; you're in the saddle,
riding from point to point all day long, sometimes when there is a
trail and sometimes when there isn't, out in the real woods, not in
poky, stuffy city streets. You know, Fred, I can't stand the city; I
always feel as if I couldn't breathe."
"All right, Wilbur," said the other, "it's your own lookout, I suppose.
Me for the city, though."
Just then, and before Fred could make any further reply, a hand was laid
on Wilbur's shoulder, and the lad, looking around, found the Chief
Forester walking beside them.
"Trying to make converts already, Loyle?" he asked with a smile, nodding
pleasantly to the lad's companion.
"I was trying to, sir," answered the boy, "but I don't believe Fred
would ever make one of us."
The Chief Forester restrained all outward trace of amusement at the
lad's unconscious coupling of the head of the service and the newest and
youngest assistant, and, turning to the older boy, said questioningly:
"Why not, Fred?"
"I was just saying to Wilbur, sir," he replied in a stolid manner, "that
a Forest Guard's life didn't sound particularly exciting. It might be
all right when a fire came along, but I should think that it would be
pretty dull waiting for it, week after week."
"Not exciting enough?" The boys were nearly taken off their feet by the
energy of the speaker. "Not when every corner you turn may show you
smoke on the horizon? Not when every morning finds you at a different
part of the forest and you can't get there quick enough to convince
yourself that everything is all right? Not when you plunge down ravines,
thread your way through and over fallen timber, and make up time by a
sharp gallop wherever there's a clearing, knowing that every cabin you
pass is depending for its safety on your care? And then that is only a
small part of the work. If you can't find excitement enough in that, you
can't find it in anything."
"Yes--" began Fred dubiously, but the Chief Forester continued:
"And as for the responsibility! I tell you, the forest is the place for
that. We need men there, not machines. On the men in the forest millions
of dollars' worth of property depends. More than that, on the care of
the Forest Guards hangs perhaps the stopping of a forest fire that
otherwise would ravage the countryside, kill the young forest, denude
the hills of soil, choke with mud the rivers that drain the denuded
territory, spoil the navigable harbors, and wreck the prosperity of all
the towns and villages throughout that entire river's length."
"I hadn't realized there was so much in it," replied Fred, evidently
struck with the Forester's earnestness.
"You haven't any idea of how much there is in it. Not only for the work
itself, but for you. Wild horses can't drag a man out of the Service
once he's got in. It has a fascination peculiarly its own. The eager
expectancy of vast spaces, the thrill of adventure in riding off to
parts where man seldom treads, and the magnificent independence of the
frontiersman, all these become the threads of which your daily life is
made."
"It sounds fine when you put it that way, sir," said Fred, his eyes
kindling at the picture. "But it's hardly like that at first, is it?"
"Certainly it is! Does the life of a fireman in a big city fire
department strike you as being interesting or exciting?"
"Oh, yes, sir!"
"It isn't to be compared with that of the Forest Guard. A city fireman
is only one of a company huddled together in a little house, not
greatly busy until the fire telegraph signal rings. But suppose there
were only one fireman for the whole city, that he alone were responsible
for the safety of every house, that instead of telegraphic signaling he
must depend on his trusty horse to carry him to suitable vantage points,
and on his eyesight when there; suppose that he knew there was a
likelihood of fire every hour out of the twenty-four, and that during
the season he could be sure of two or three a week, don't you think that
fireman would have a lively enough time of it?"
"He surely would," said Wilbur.
"Aside from the fact that there are not as many people involved, that's
not unlike a Forest Guard's position. I tell you, he's not sitting
around his shack trying to kill time." Then, turning sharply to the
older boy, the Chief Forester continued:
"What do you want to be?"
"I had wanted to be a locomotive engineer, sir," was the boy's reply,
"but now I think I'll stay in the city."
"It was the excitement of the life that appealed to you, was it?"
"Yes, sir. I guess so."
"True, there's a good deal of responsibility there, when you stand with
your hand on the throttle of a fast express, knowing that the lives of
the passengers are in your hand. There's a good deal of pride, too, in
steering a vessel through a dangerous channel or in a stormy sea;
there's a thrill of power when you sight a big gun and know that if you
were in warfare the defense of your country might lie in your skill and
aim. But none of these is greater than the sense of power and trust
reposing in the men of the Forest Service, to whom Uncle Sam gives the
guardianship and safe-keeping of millions of acres of his property and
the lives of thousands of his citizens."
The Chief Forester watched the younger of his companions, who was
striding along the Washington street, and casting rapid glances from
building to building as he went along, as though he expected to see
flame and smoke pouring from every window, and that the city's safety
lay in his hands. Smiling slightly, very slightly, and addressing
himself to the older boy, although it was for the benefit of his new
assistant that he was speaking, the Forester continued:
"It's really more like the work of a trusted army scout than anything
else. In the old days of Indian warfare,"--both boys gave a quick start
of increased attention--"the very finest men and the most to be trusted
were the scouts. They were men of great bravery, of undaunted loyalty,
of great wariness, and filled with the spirit of dashing adventure. They
were men who took their lives in their own hands. Going before the main
body of the army, single-handed, if need be, they would stave off the
attacks of Indian foes and would do battle with outposts and pickets. If
the force were too great, they would map out the lay of the land and
devise a strategical plan of attack, then, without rest or food often,
would steal back to the main body, and, laying their information in the
hands of the general, would act as guides if he ordered a forward
movement."
"But how--" interrupted Fred.
"I was just coming to that," replied the Forester in response to his
half-uttered query. "A Forest Guard is really a Forest Scout. There have
been greater massacres at the hands of the Fire Tribe than from any
Indian tribe that ever roamed the prairies. Hundreds, yes, thousands of
lives were lost in the days before the Forest Service was in existence
by fires which Forest 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 is ready to pay men a fair wage for the time
consumed in putting out a fire, and even the Ranger has the right to
employ men to a limited extent. Sometimes the blaze can be stopped
without great difficulty, at other times it will require all the
resources available under the direction of the Forest Supervisor, but in
the first resort it depends largely upon the Guard. A young fellow who
is careless in such a post as that is as great a traitor to his country
as a soldier would be who sold to the enemy the plans of the fort he was
defending, or a sailor who left the wheel while a battle-ship was
threading a narrow and rocky channel."
"What starts these forest fires, sir?" asked Fred.
"All sorts of things, but most of them arise from one common
cause--carelessness. There are quite a number of instances in which
fires have been started by lightning, but they are few in number as
compared with those due to human agency. The old tale of fires being
caused by two branches of a dead tree rubbing against each other is, of
course, a fable."
"But I should think any one would know enough not to start a forest
fire," exclaimed the older boy. "I'm not much on the woods, but I think
I know enough for that."
"It isn't deliberate, it's careless," repeated the Forester. "Sometimes
a camper leaves a little fire smoldering when he thinks the last spark
is out; sometimes settlers who have to burn over their clearings allow
the blaze to get away from them; when Indians are in the neighborhood
they receive a large share of the blame, and the hated tramp is always
quoted as a factor of mischief. In earlier days, sparks from locomotives
were a constant danger, and although the railroad companies use a great
many precautions now to which formerly they paid no heed, these sparks
and cinders are still a prolific cause of trouble. And beside this
carelessness, there is a good deal of inattention and neglect. The
settlers will let a little fire burn for days unheeded, waiting for a
rain to come along and put it out, whereas if a drought ensues and a
high wind comes up, a fire may arise that will leap through the forest
and leave them homeless, and possibly even their own lives may have to
pay the penalty of their recklessness."
"But what I don't understand," said Fred, "is how people get caught.
It's easy enough to see how a forest could be destroyed, but I should
think that every one could get out of the way easily enough. It must
take a tree a long while to burn, even after it gets alight, especially
if it's a big one."
"A big forest fire, fanned by a high wind, and in the dry season,"
answered the Chief Forester, "could catch the fastest runner in a few
minutes. The flames repeatedly have been known to overtake horses on the
gallop, and where there are no other means of escape the peril is
extreme."
"But will green trees burn so fast?" the older boy queried in surprise.
"I should have thought they were so full of sap that they wouldn't burn
at all."
"The wood and foliage of coniferous trees like spruce, fir, and pine are
so full of turpentine and resin that they burn like tinder. The heat is
almost beyond the power of words to express. The fire does not seem to
burn in a steady manner, the flames just breathe upon an immense tree
and it becomes a blackened skeleton which will burn for hours.
"The actual temperature in advance of the fire is so terrific that the
woods begin to dry and to release inflammable vapors before the flames
reach them, when they flash up and add their force to the fiery
hurricane. It is almost unbelievable, too, the way a crown-fire will
jump. Huge masses of burning gas will be hurled forth on the wind and
ignite the trees two and three hundred yards distant. Fortunately, fires
of this type are not common, most of the blazes one is likely to
encounter being ground fires, which are principally harmful in that they
destroy the forest floor."
"But I should have thought," said Wilbur, "that such fires could only
get a strong hold in isolated parts where nobody lives."
"Not at all. Sometimes they begin quite close to the settlements, like
the destructive fire at Hinckley, Minnesota, in 1894, which burned
quietly for a week, and could have been put out by a couple of men
without any trouble; but sometimes they start in the far recesses of the
forest and reach their full fury very quickly. Of course, every fire,
even the famous Peshtigo fire, started as a little bit of a blaze which
either of you two boys could have put out."
"How big a fire was that, sir?" asked Fred.
"It covered an area of over two thousand square miles."
"Great Cæsar!" ejaculated Wilbur after a rapid calculation, "that would
be a strip twenty miles wide and a hundred miles long."
The Chief Forester nodded.
"It wiped the town of Peshtigo entirely off the map," he said. "The
people were hemmed in, ringed by fire on every side, and out of a
population of two thousand, scarcely five hundred escaped. Flight was
hopeless and rescue impossible."
"And could this have been stopped after it got a hold at all?" asked
Wilbur seriously, realizing the gravity of the conditions that some day
he might have to face. "Could not something have been done?"
"It could have been prevented," said the Chief Forester fiercely, "and
as I said, in the first few hours either one of you boys could have put
it out. But there have been many others like it since, and probably
there will be many others yet to come. Even now, there are hundreds of
towns and villages near forest lands utterly unprovided with adequate
fire protection. Some of them are near our national forests, and it is
our business to see that no danger comes to them.[1] Think of a fire
like that of Peshtigo, think that if it had been stopped at the very
beginning a thousand and a half lives would have been saved, and then
ask yourself whether the work of a Forest Guard is not just about as
fine a thing as any young fellow can do."
[Footnote 1: While this volume was in the press, forest fires of the
utmost violence broke out in Idaho, Washington, and Montana. Over two
hundred lives were lost, many of them of members of the Forest Service,
and hundreds of thousands of acres of timber were destroyed.]
Wilbur turned impulsively to his chum.
"You'll just have to join us, Fred," he said. "I don't see how any one
that knows anything about it can keep out. You could go to a forestry
school this summer and start right in to get ready for it."
"I'll think about it," said the older boy.
The Chief Forester was greatly pleased with the lad's eagerness to
enroll his friend, and, turning to him, continued:
"I don't want you to think it's all fire-fighting in the forest, though,
Loyle; so I'll give you an idea of some of the other opportunities which
will come your way in forest work. I suppose both of you boys hate a
bully? I know I used to when I was at school."
"I think," said Wilbur impetuously, "that a bully's just about the worst
ever."
"I do, too," joined in Fred.
"Well, you'll have a chance to put down a lot of bullying. You look
surprised, eh? You don't see what bullying has to do with forestry? It
has, a great deal, and I'll show you how. I suppose you know that a
forest is a good deal like a school?"
"Well, no," admitted Wilbur frankly, "I don't quite see how."
"A forest is made up of a lot of different kind of trees, isn't it, just
as a school is made up of a lot of boys? And each of these trees has an
individuality, just in the same way that each boy has an individuality.
That, of course, is easy to see. But what is more important, and much
less known, is that just as the school as a whole gets to have a certain
standard, so does the forest as a whole."
"That seems queer," remarked Fred.
"Perhaps it does, but it's true none the less. In many schools there are
some boys bigger than others, but who are not good for as much, and
they're always picking at the others and crowding them down. In the
same way in a forest there are always some worthless trees, trying to
crowd out the ones which are of more value. As the trees of better value
are always sought for their timber, that gives the worthless stuff a
good chance to get ahead. One of the duties of a Forester, looking after
his section of the forest, is to see that every possible chance is given
to the good over the bad."
"It's really like having people to deal with!" cried Fred in surprise.
"It sounds as if a tree were some kind of a human being."
"There are lots of people," said the Chief Forester, "who think of trees
and speak of trees just exactly as if they were people like themselves.
And it isn't even only the growing of the right kind of trees, but there
are lots of ways of handling them under different conditions and at
different ages. Thus, a Forester must be able to make his trees grow in
height up to a certain stage, then stop their further growth upwards and
make them put on diameter."
"But how can you get a tree to grow in a certain way?" asked Fred in
utter amazement.
"Get Loyle here to tell you all about it. I suppose you learned that at
the Ranger School, didn't you?" he added, turning to the younger boy.
"Yes, sir. We had a very interesting course in silviculture."
"But just to give you a rough idea, Fred," continued the Forester, "you
know that some trees need a lot of light. Consequently, if a number of
young trees are left fairly close together, they will all grow up
straight as fast as they can, without putting out any branches near the
bottom, and all their growth will be of height."
"See, Fred," interjected Wilbur, "that's why saplings haven't got any
twigs except just at the top."
"Just so," said the Forester. "Presently," he continued, "as these young
trees grow up together, one will overtop the rest. If the adjacent small
trees be cut down when this tallest tree has reached a good height, it
will spread at the top in order to get as much sunlight as possible. In
order to carry a large top the diameter of the trunk must increase. So,
by starting the trees close together and allowing one of them to develop
alone after a certain height has been reached, the Forester has
persuaded that tree first to grow straight and high, and then to
develop girth, affording the finest and most valuable kind of lumber.
That's just one small example of the scores of possibilities that lie in
the hands of the expert Forester. By proper handling a forest can be
made to respond to training, as I said, just as a school might do."
"I can tell you a lot more things, Fred, just as wonderful as that,"
commented Wilbur.
The Chief Forester nodded.
"I'd like to hear you myself," he said; "I'd rather listen to something
about trees than eat. But I've got to go now. I'll see you again soon,
Loyle," and with a parting good wish to both boys, he crossed the street
and went on his way.
[Illustration: A FOREST FIRE OUT OF CONTROL.
Conditions which tax man's resources to the uttermost, and where peril
is the price of victory.
_Courtesy of U. S. Forest Service._]
[Illustration: GOOD FORESTRY MANAGEMENT.
All the smaller wood is used for cord-wood, the brush is in piles ready
for burning, and the young trees are left to grow up into a new forest.
_Photograph by U. S. Forest Service._]
[Illustration: BAD FORESTRY MANAGEMENT.
Forest cut clear and burned over, all the young growth destroyed, and
nothing left except costly replanting.
_Photograph by U. S. Forest Service._]