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Updated: September 2, 2025
As he did so, he swung out of his saddle, was on one of the three and off. The riderless horse, freed from the burden, followed up the trail. Merritt and Wilbur reached almost at the same time. "I reckon," drawled Rifle-Eye, "that's a pretty close call." "He's done," said the Supervisor, ignoring the remark. "Toss him up."
He's got a decent enough shack where the boy is, but as soon as it gits dark, old Rifle-Eye he jest makes a pile o' cedar boughs, builds up a fire, an' goes to sleep. For fifty years he ain't slept under a roof summer or winter, an' when once he was in a town over-night, which was about the boy, as I was tellin' ye, he had to get up an' go on the roof to sleep.
But I ain't believin' any such perambulatin' spirit for a bark-beetle. Especially when I finds wagon tracks leading to each place where the trouble is." "What do you mean, Rifle-Eye?" asked Merritt. "Give it to us straight." "I mean," he said, "that I ain't never heard of spirits needin' wagons to get around in.
Two or three times he found himself waking suddenly in the night, possessed with an intense desire to saddle Kit and ride off to a part of the forest where he had either dreamed or thought a fire was burning, but Rifle-Eye had been careful to warn him against this very thing, and although the morning found him simply wild to ride to this point of supposed danger, he had followed orders and ridden his regular round.
Sport that is worth while, freeing the National Forests from beasts of prey. Towards noon the next day, Wilbur and the Ranger rode up to the shack in the woods which Rifle-Eye considered as one of his headquarters.
"By the time I can get back there the two fires probably will have joined, and the blaze will be several miles long." "Surest thing you know," said the Ranger. "Where do you locate these fires?" Wilbur described with some detail the precise point where the fires were raging. "You'd better get back on the job," said Rifle-Eye promptly, "and try an' hold it down the best you can.
I'll try not to forget all the things you've told me, and I'll look forward to seeing you again before long." "I'll come first chance I can," replied the hunter. "Take care of yourself." "Good-by, Rifle-Eye," called the boy, "and I'll look for your coming back." He watched the old man until he was lost to sight and then waited until the sound of the horse's hoofs on the hillside had ceased.
"Know him," he concluded, "I should just guess I did." "It was he," said the woman, "who persuaded us to come out here." "Won't you tell me?" pleaded the boy. "I'd love to hear anything about Rifle-Eye. And the doctor, too," he added as an afterthought. "It was long ago," she began, "seventeen years ago. Yes," she continued with a smile at the lad's surprise, "I have lived here seventeen years."
For a moment this nearly broke him all up, until he remembered that he had seen another fire, and that Rifle-Eye had told him of a third one yet.
"All right," said Wilbur promptly, "I'll take that as an official welcome from the Sierras, and I will. But," he added, "you were going to tell me about your hunting. I should think it would be great sport." "Son," said Rifle-Eye somewhat sharply, "I never killed a harmless critter 'for sport, as you call it, in my life."
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