against the travelers. The party paddled through a panorama of sights and sounds new to the Northerners, and at night camped safely on high, dry places on the banks. On the morning of the third day the whole party started down the river before daylight and watched the dawn of a tropical day, a miracle even more beautiful than the sunrises of the North. One moment there was perfect blackness; then a faint light showed in the east; and suddenly, without the slow changes of northern skies, the whole east turned a lovely azure blue, against which showed a film and fretwork of white clouds, like wisps of snowy lace.

Just as the sun came up they passed a tall and towering conical rock which shot up three hundred feet among the trees and terminated in what looked like a hollowed summit. Pinto told them that this was "Treasure Rock," and that nearly half a thousand years ago the Spaniards, in the days when they were the cruel conquerors of the New World, had explored this river. From the ancestors of Pinto's nation and from many another lesser Indian tribe they had carried off a great treasure of gold and emeralds and diamonds. Not satisfied with these, they had tried to enslave the Indians and make them hunt for more. Finally, in desperation, the tribes united, stormed their persecutors' camp, killed some, and forced the rest to flee down the river in canoes. When the Spaniards reached the rock, they

landed, and, driving iron spikes at intervals up its steep side, managed to clamber up to the very crest and haul their treasure and stores of water and provisions after them by ropes made of lianas. There, safe from the arrows of their pursuers in the hollow top, they stood siege until the winter rains began. Then, despairing of taking the fortress, the Indians returned to their villages; whereupon the Spaniards clambered down, the last man breaking off the iron spikes as he came, and escaped to the Spanish settlements. Behind them, in the inaccessible bowl on the tip-top of the rock, they left their treasure-chest, expecting to return with reinforcements and rescue it. The years went by and the Spaniards came not again to Black River, but generation after generation of Indians handed down the legend of Treasure Rock, with the iron-bound chest on its top, awaiting him who can scale its height.

Jud, a treasure-hunter by nature, was much impressed by Pinto's story.

"What do you think of takin' a week off and lookin' into this treasure business?" he suggested. "I'll undertake to get a rope over the top of this rock by a kite, or somethin' of that sort, an' then I know a young chap by the name of Adams that could climb up there an' bring down a trunk full of gold an' gems. What do you say?"

"Pooh!" is what Professor Amandus Ditson said, and the expedition proceeded in spite of Jud's protests.

"Ting-a-ling-a-ling!"

Cautiously, with thin gray fingers, dawn was rolling back the heavy portières of night. Tall sleeping tamaracks loomed indistinctly in the lifting haze. Eastward across the tree-tops was flung the lilac banner of approaching day. The sun was yet many minutes below the horizon. In the midst of a small forest clearing stood a roughly hewn log-cabin, the only sign of civilization in that endless monotony of woodland.

Had you peeped within the cabin window, you would have seen two men, rolled up in blankets, sleeping. One had undoubtedly long been a companion of the forest. The winds of many winters had whipped deep furrows into his unshaven face, while his hands, which lay across his chest, were gnarled and rough. But his sleeping companion was many years younger eighteen or twenty perhaps, with the vigorous flush of youth in his cheeks.

"Ting-a-ling-a-ling!”

The sound which had first awakened the long stillness of the night was repeated. There was no doubt that a telephone-bell was buzzing away, impatient at the delay on the part of the slumbering woodsmen in answering.

Yet what was this modern means of communication doing there in the heart of the forest, miles and miles away from all other human beings? The clanging of a trolley-bell or a newsboy shouting could not have been more startling.

Then the older man stirred As the meaning of the incessant ringing flashed through his sleepy brain he threw the blanket hastily aside, and an instant later was at the front of the cabin holding the receiver of a telephone tightly against his ear.

This is Turner

"Hello there - hello. Ranger Station," he drawled.

Faintly the answer came back: "Turner Ranger Station? This is headquarters. There's a fire somewhere over by Seventeen Mile Creek. Here's the lay of the land. Now get this. Mount Tom reports 300 degrees, Sheldon reports 320. Got it? Call me back if you need more men. So long."

Two receivers clicked on their hooks, simultaneously. By this time the second sleeper had aroused himself sufficiently to join his companion. It took the men less than two

minutes to hop into their trousers and pull on their heavy spiked boots. There was no fuming over perverse collar-buttons or vain admiration of neckties before the mirrornot for them! For somewhere beyond the first hump of mountain-range, a fire was threatening the great Kootenai National Forest which surrounded them! There, through the underbrush and along uncharted paths, their duty called them. Five minutes later, armed with a two-days supply of food, grub-hoe, shovel, and double-edged ax, they were swallowed up in the forest.

But let us turn back a few pages in the book of time, so that we may learn more of the younger man, whose bearing seems to suggest that he has not always lived this lonely life of a U. S. Government "smoke-chaser" in the Kootenai National Forest, Montana. We see him just completing his schooling in the East. Then comes a lengthy illness, and later, when strength has been regained, a desire to drink the tonic of the Western hills and live for a time within the bounds of a great wilderness, where only a boy with a man's heart and a man's courage can endure the loneliness and hardships and come out of the ordeal in love with nature. So we follow him to the West, and then from a rancher's cabin to the ranger station, thirty miles from Libby, the nearest settlement.

To all of us at one time or another has come that primeval call. We dream of being lulled to sleep beneath the stars and roused from slumber at daybreak by the whistling of the little gophers. Some of us have realized these desires in a measure; but few have had such experiences as had this young smokechaser in the Montana mountains. For there a man is placed upon his own resources. He must keep fit, for he knows that the nearest physician lives miles away. He must learn to know the forest like a book, else he will lose himself within its trackless depths. And he must learn to do many other things for himself, for he is to be his own cook, his own seamstress, his own wood-chopper, and his own housemaid.

So the boy who loves to do these things, and is willing to endure the few hard knocks which come with them, will find keen delight in serving, for a time at least, with the United States Forest Service as a smoke-chaser.

But smoke-chasers form only one unit of this great organization which guards our vast American forests.

The Kootenai Forest, by way of example, is 1,336,061 acres in area. The welfare of this huge tract is under the direct supervision of a superintendent at Libby, Montana. Under him, like links in a great unbroken chain, are the smoke-chasers, lookouts, and

single wire, strung for miles through the forest on the tamarack-trees which act as insulators? There is no clanging of fire-bells, no dashing horses or clattering motor-engines. Neither are there yards and yards of lengthy hose, nor the towering extension-ladders with which we of the great cities are familiar. In fact, it would be practically impossible even to carry a fire-extinguisher through those dense Montana forests to the scene of operations. Should you watch these strange firemen start out in answer to a call, you might at first think they were setting forth to dig a garden or lay the foundation of a house, for so their tools seem to indicate. It seems almost impossible that an ax, a shovel, and a tiny grub-hoe would make good implements for combating flames. Yet it is true.

rangers. Of these three groups, the lookouts probably lead the most lonesome lives. Imagine a little hut built upon the topmost pinnacle of a shaggy, towering mountain. As far as the eye can see stretches the unbroken green of the forest. That is the look

out's isolated palace. Yet like the legend of the captive princess, he may not leave his mountain castle, for from sun-up till dusk he must sweep the horizon with powerful fieldglasses in search of forest fires.

But it is in the smoke-chasers that I am particularly interested, and so to return to them. They are usually banded in twos, so that, should the fire be too serious for them to combat, one may make haste to the ranger station and telephone for reinforcements. Often days go by without the report of fire interrupting the orderly routine of the passing days. But during these lax periods the men put in their time to good advantage, for there is nothing more conducive to loneliness in the forest than complete idleness. There is wood to be chopped, and this forms one of the chief occupations of the smoke-chasersat least at Turner Station, where the two men found the task a splendid appetizer for the dinners of canned meat and beans, which they prepared for themselves.

Just how do these forest firemen extinguish a blaze when word is flashed to them over the

To prove it, let us follow the old guide and his youthful companion. The path for the first few miles is well blazed, for they have been that way before on other expeditions. Very shortly, however, the compass indicated that a break must be made into the uncharted underbrush.

Then follow several more miles with only the compass as guide. A pungent smell begins to blend with the clear mountain air. It is smoke. A few steps more, and a dense cloud rolls out from between the stalwart trees, and the fire-fighters have reached their destination! While from the mountain-top, to the lookout who had discovered it, the smoke appeared to indicate a large blaze, it was in reality nothing to cause concern to the fire-fighters. A big stump, crumbling away with age, was ablaze, but the flames had not yet crept along the underbrush and reached verdant foliage.

And now for the fire-fighting process. Just as if the men were doughboys and were attempting to entrench themselves with great haste because they feared the approach of the enemy, they started to work digging a trench several feet wide about the blazing stump. That was to prevent the fire from spreading over the dry peat, which constitutes the forest carpet. When this is completed, there is little left for the foresters to do, for the sim

plest treatment for a burning stump is to let it burn itself out. Oddly enough, there is no sign of a camp-fire in the vicinity and you might wonder, if you were uninitiated, how the fire had its origin.

For a woodsman, the explanation would be simple. Several days before there had been a thunder-storm, and lightning had struck several trees in the vicinity of the Turner

LOOKOUT STATION ATOP THE MOUNTAIN

Ranger Station and had undoubtedly found other marks in the Kootenai Forest. This crumbling stump had been one of them. The shaft of fire had penetrated the dampened outer bark and reached the dry, pitchy pulp of the stump and there smoldered as a tiny spark. A day or so had passed, and the little spark of fire glowed and grew larger. You know how a piece of punk will burn long after you have thought it extinguished? So it was with the pulp of the tree-stump.

The burning sun beat down upon the moist outer bark, and soon it was as dry and inflammable as the dusty pulp within. This gave the smoldering spark the opportunity for which it had been waiting, and out from its hiding-place it crept, until the stump suddenly burst into flames. A lookout ten miles away saw the warning signal, as the first waving ribbons of smoke drifted above the tree-tops, and ten minutes later the firefighters from Turner Station were off to the

Had the fire been more dangerous, one of the men would have returned over the trail which he had blazed as he went. At the station he would have called headquarters for reinforcements, and a band of rangers, armed with fire-fighting tools, would have set out for the ranger station. There they would have met the solitary smoke-chaser and with him would have set out again into the heart of the forest.

The time when it takes all the courage that you can muster to "hang on" in the forest is when your partner knocks off for a day to journey to the nearest settlement for supplies, and you are left alone-monarch of all you survey. The nearest that most of us have ever got to such a sensation is to be left alone in the house when the family goes out to the movies. Even then we become suspicious of every creaking board and the dreary rattling of the shutters in the wind. But to be alone in the forest, where the only answer to your calling would be a mocking echo-that is a bit different. The "young fellow" at Turners had such an experience, however, and except for the dismal howling of the coyotes, which came to the forest clearing and sang mournful solos to the moon, he found the experience not so bad as might have been expected. If you have ever heard a coyote's song, long drawn out, like some unearthly being come to life, you can appreciate why this young smoke-chaser had cold shivers run up and down his back. And he is not ashamed to acknowledge it either.

One of the annoying smaller animals in the Montana forests is the pack-rat, known also as the mountain-rat and trade-rat. Often after the smoke-chasers had rolled up in their blankets, primed for eight hours of sleep, the rats would come out and gambol about on the roof, scampering back and forth with as much noise as a small dog. These little animals, somewhat larger than an ordinary rat, have most peculiar characteristics, which have earned for them the name of trade-rat. They have a great habit of carrying away articles from cabins and barns; but having a most peculiar sort of conscience, they always leave something in place of the thing they have taken. Thus, if they make off with a wad of cotton to line their nest, they will leave in its place a stone or bit of stick. The exchange, however, is usually in favor of the rat, the hunter getting the worst of the bargain.

There is an old Montana legend which may