_THE AUTHOR'S FOREWORD_
_Many changes have swept over the mountain West since twenty years ago,
but romance still clings to the high country. The Grub-Staker, hammer in
hand, still pecking at the float, wanders the hills with hopeful
patience, walking the perilous ledges of the cliffs in endless search of
gold._
_The Cow-Boss, reckless rear-guard of his kind, still urges his
watch-eyed bronco across the roaring streams, or holds his milling herd
in the high parks, but the Remittance Man, wayward son from across the
seas, is gone. Roused to manhood by his country's call, he has joined
the ranks of those who fight to save the shores of his ancestral isle._
_The Prospector still pushes his small pack-mule through the snow of
glacial passes, seeking the unexplored, and therefore more alluring,
mountain ranges._
_The Lonesome Man still seeks forgetfulness of crime in the solitude,
building his cabin in the shadow of great peaks._
_The Trail-Tramp, mounted wanderer, horseman of the restless heart,
still rides from place to place, contemptuous of gold, carrying in his
folded blanket all the vanishing traditions of the wild._
_The Fugitive still seeks sanctuary in the green timber--finding the
storms of the granite peaks less to be feared than the fury of the
law._
_The Leaser--the tenderfoot hay-roller from the prairies--still tries
his luck in some abandoned tunnel, sternly toiling for his faithful
sweetheart in the low country; and_
_The Forest Ranger, hardy son of the pioneers, representing the finer
social order of the future, rides his lonely woodland trail, guarding
with single-hearted devotion our splendid communal heritage of mine and
stream._
_On the High Trail_, SPRING, 1916.