The stark heroism of these forest guards, their loyalty to a far-off chieftain (whom they knew only by name) appealed to me with increasing power. Their problem became my problem. More than this they kindled my admiration, for many of them possessed the cowboy's masterful skill with bronchos, his deft handling of rope and gun and the grace which had made him the most admired figure in our literature,--but in addition to all this, they had something finer, something which the cowboy often lacked. At their best they manifested the loyalty of soldiers. Heedful of the Federal Government, they strove to dispense justice over the lands which had been allotted to their care, and their flags--the Stars and Stripes--as I came upon them fluttering from the peaks of their cabins were to me the guidons of a new and valiant skirmish line. They were of the Border in a new and noble sense. In short the Federal Ranger was a hero made to my hand. Not all the soldiers in the service were of this large mold, I admit, but many of those I had met did possess precisely the qualities I have outlined. Ready, cheerful, undaunted in the face of danger, some of them had the capacity for lonely action which rendered them as admirable in their way as any of the long line of frontiersmen who had made the winning of the West an epic of singular hardihood. To fight cold and snow and loneliness during long months, with no one looking on, calls for stern resolution. Such work is directly antithetic to that of the city fireman who goes to his duties with a crowd looking on. The ranger has only his own conscience as spectator. For many weeks he does not even see his supervisor. To the writing of _Cavanagh_ I came, therefore, in the spirit of one who had discovered not only a new hero but the reverse side of the squatter's shield. Just as in my studies for _The Captain of the Gray Horse Troop_, I had come upon the seamy side of the cattleman's activity, so now I perceived that many of the men who had settled on the national forests were merely adventurers trying to get something for nothing. To filch Uncle Sam's gold, to pasture on his grass, to dig his coal and seize his water-power--these were the real designs of the claim-holders, while the ranger was in effect a federal policeman, the guardian of a domain whose wealth was the heritage of us all. He was the prophet of a new order, the evangel of a new faith. The actual composition of _Cavanagh_ began as I was riding the glorious trails around Cloud Peak in the Big Horn Mountains of northern Wyoming in the summer of 1908, one of the most beautiful of all my outings, for while the Big Horns are low and tame compared to the Wind River Range, yet the play of their lights and shadows, their clouds, and their mist was as romantic as anything I had ever encountered.