"But he's got eddication, Jack," replied his listener, "an' that's what counts in these days. We got into the service in them good old days when it was a case of ability to ride a pitchin' bronc, rope a maverick, chase sheep herders off the earth, shoot the eyes out of a wildcat at forty yards an' all them things. Nowadays they picks 'em out by their brand of learnin' an' not by their high-heeled boots." "Howsomever," he continued, "there's some of them that makes good in spite of their eddicational handicap. Over on the Sierra last fall we was all a-settin' in camp one Sunday afternoon when the phone rings like they was trying to wake the dead with it. The old man gits up to answer it. When he says, sort of startled-like, 'Fire, where?' we all pricks up our ears. 'Twas a mighty dry time an' every one was a-prayin' for rain, for we'd been fightin' fire for the last month and was all in. "We had a fire lookout station up on top of a high peak an' a man, with the best glasses money could buy, a-sittin' there who could see all over the range for fifty miles. [Illustration: "_We had a fire lookout station on top of a high peak_"] "Say, people got so they was afraid to make a campfire anywheres in them hills, an' the rangers swore they had to go behind a tree to light their pipes, lest he'd see the smoke an' send in a fire call. "'Shut-eye,' said the old man, meaning the lookout, 'Shut-eye says there's a big smoke a-comin' out of the cañon below Gold Gulch to the left of Greyback Peak, an' I reckon we'd better be a-movin' that way.' "It didn't take us long to saddle up, slap a pack onto a couple of mules, an' hit the trail. 'Twas a good ten-mile over a rough country, an' it was mighty nigh dark afore we gets to where we could see smoke a-boiling out of the cañon over a ridge ahead of us. "We was all old-timers at the work, 'ceptin' a young feller fresh from the Yale Forestry School, what had come out for a sort of post-graduate course in forestry, an' some of them boys was seein' to it he got it all right. "He had all the fixin's them fellers bring along with them, fancy ridin' panties, a muley saddle, a wind bed an' a automatic six-pistol, one of them things what, after she once gits to shootin', you jist got to throw her into the creek to stop her goin'. "'Bout two miles from the ridge where we reckoned we'd git our first view of the fire we meets up with Hank Strong an' his wife. You know, Hank's woman is just about as crazy to go to a fire as a boy to the circus, an' she always comes in mighty handy to start a camp, take care of the boys' horses an' the packs while we're a-workin'. "Generally she'd make up a big pot of coffee and fetch it out to the line. Once she comes a-ridin' along carryin' a pot full an' a bear skeered her hoss--but that's nothin' to do with this yarn.