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'Pears to me you'd better make tracks from Penetier." I told him why, at which he laughed. "Wal, I reckon you can stay with me fer a spell. My camp's in the head of this canyon." "Oh, thank you, that'll be fine!" I exclaimed. My great good luck filled me with joy. "Do you stay on the mountain?" "Be'n here goin' on eighteen years, youngster. Mebbe you've heerd my name. Hiram Bent."
Ward, you've had special opportunities; you have an eye in your head, and you are interested in forestry. Perhaps you can help us. Personally I shall be most pleased to hear what you think might be done in Penetier." I gasped and stared, and could scarcely believe my ears. But he was not joking; he was as serious as if he had addressed himself to one of his officers.
He called it plain woodcraft. He had never heard of forestry. All the same I hungered for his knowledge. How lucky for me to fall in with him! The things that had puzzled me about the pines he answered easily. Then he volunteered information. From talking of the forest, he drifted to the lumbermen. "Wal, the lumber-sharks are rippin' holes in Penetier.
The mountains appeared to be close, but I knew that even the foot-bills were miles away. Penetier, I remembered from one of Dick's letters, was on the extreme northern slope, and it must be anywhere from forty to sixty miles off. The sharp, white peaks glistened in the morning sun; the air had a cool touch of snow and a tang of pine. I drew in a full breath, with a sense on being among the pines.
But as hour after hour went by, with our trail leading through miles and miles of the same old forest that had bewitched me, I began to feel a little less grief at the thought of what the fire had destroyed. It was a loss, yet only a small part of vast Penetier. If only my friends had gotten out alive! Herky was as relentless in his travelling as I had found him in some other ways.
I was glad, however, that he did not have the little twinge of remorse which I experienced, for I had not told him or father all that Dick had written about the wilderness of Penetier. I am afraid my mind was as much occupied with rifles and mustangs as with the study of forestry.
"I'm going to meet a friend out in Penetier, a ranger Dick Leslie." Buell started violently, and his eyes flashed. "Dick Dick Leslie!" he said, and coughed loudly. "I know Dick.... So you're a friend of his'n? ... Now, let me help you with the outfit." Anything strange in Buell's manner was forgotten, in the absorbing interest of my outfit.
Before that wind the fire would leap the canyon in flaming bounds, and on the opposite level was the thick pitch-pine forest of Penetier proper. So far we had been among the foot-hills. We dared not enter the real forest with that wild-fire back of us. Momentarily we stood irresolute. It was a pause full of hopelessness, such as might have come to tired deer, close harried by hounds.
Still I had no concern about this, for the old hunter was at my heels, and I knew he would keep a sharp lookout. Before I was aware of it we had gotten out of the narrow canyon into a valley with well-timbered bottom, and open, slow rising slopes. We were getting down into Penetier. Cubby swerved from the trail and started up the left slope.
The wind, sweeping up the slope of Penetier, carried a strong, pungent odor of burning pitch. It brought also a low roar, not like the wind in the trees or rapid-rushing water. It might have been my imagination, but I fancied it was like the sound of flames blowing through the wood of a campfire. "Fire! Fire!" exclaimed Hiram, with another ominous shake of his head. "We must be up an' doin'."
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