He opened another letter, but did not read it. He was too profoundly shaken by the first. He felt the pure friendship, the fine faith, and the guardianship of the writer, and he acknowledged the good sense of all she said, and yet--and yet-- When he looked up Swenson was staring down at him with a face of such bitterness that it broke through even the absorbed and selfish meditation into which he had been thrown. "What's the matter, Swenson? You look as if you had lost a friend." "I have," answered the guard, shortly, "and so have you. The chief is out." "What?" "They've got him!" he exclaimed. "He's out." Cavanagh sprang up. "I don't believe it! For what reason? Why?" "Don't that letter tell you? The whole town is chuckling. Every criminal and plug-ugly in the country is spitting in our faces this morning. Yes, sir, the President has fired the chief--the man that built up this Forestry Service. The whole works is goin' to hell, that's what it is. We'll have all the coal thieves, water-power thieves, poachers, and free-grass pirates piling in on us in mobs. They'll eat up the forest. I see the finish of the whole business. They'll put some Western man in, somebody they can work. Then where will we be?" Cavanagh's young heart burned with indignation, but he tried to check the other man's torrent of protest. "I can't believe it. There's some mistake. Maybe they've made him the secretary of the department or something." "No, they haven't. They've thrown him out. They've downed him because he tried to head off some thievery of coal-mines in Alaska." The man was ready to weep with chagrin and indignant sorrow. His voice choked, and he turned away to conceal his emotion. Cavanagh put the letter back into his pocket and mounted his horse. "Well, go on back to your work, Swenson. I'm going to town to get the Supervisor on the wire, and find out what it all means." He was almost as badly stunned by the significance of Swenson's news as Swenson himself. Could it be possible that the man who had built up the field service of the bureau--the man whose clean-handed patriotism had held the boys together, making them every year more clearly a unit, a little army of enthusiasts--could it be possible that the originator, the organizer of this great plan, had been stricken down just when his influence was of most account? He refused to believe it of an administration pledged to the cause of conservation. As he entered the town he was struck instantly by the change in the faces turned toward him, in the jocular greetings hurled at him. "Hello, Mr. Cossack! What do you think of your chief now?" "This will put an end to your infernal nonsense," said another. "We'll have a man in there now who knows the Western ways, and who's willing to boom things along. The cork is out of your forest bottle." Gregg was most offensive of all. "This means throwing open the forest to anybody that wants to use it. Means an entire reversal of this fool policy."