"I didn't tell you this to get you mad, Bobby," he drawled with his indescribable air of good humour; "only to show you the situation. What difference does it make? As for reporting to Washington! Look here, I don't know what Plant's political backing is, but it must be 99.84 per cent. pure. Otherwise, how would a man as fat as that get a job of Forest Supervisor? Why, he can't ride a horse, and it's absurd to suppose he ever saw any of the Reserve he's in charge of." Welton bestirred himself to good purpose. Inside of two hours a half-dozen men, well-mounted and provisioned, bearing the usual tools of the fire-fighter, had ridden off into the growing brightness of the moon. "There," said the lumberman with satisfaction. "That isn't going to cost much, and we'll feel safe. Now let's turn in." III The next morning Bob was awakened to a cold dawn that became still more shivery when he had dressed and stepped outside. Even a hot breakfast helped little; and when the buckboard was brought around, he mounted to his seat without any great enthusiasm. The mountain rose dark and forbidding, high against the eastern sky, and a cold wind breathed down its defiles. When the wiry little ponies slowed to the first stretches of the tiresome climb, Bob was glad to walk alongside. Almost immediately the pines began. They were short and scrubby as yet, but beautiful in the velvet of their dark green needles. Bob glanced at them critically. They were perhaps eighty to a hundred feet high and from a foot to thirty inches in diameter. "Fair timber," he commented to his companion. Welton snorted. "Timber!" he cried. "That isn't timber; it's weeds. There's no _timber_ on this slope of the mountain." Slowly the ponies toiled up the steep grade, pausing often for breath. Among the pines grew many oaks, buckthorns, tall manzañitas and the like. As the valley dropped beneath, they came upon an occasional budding dogwood. Over the slopes of some of the hills spread a mantle of velvety vivid green, fair as the grass of a lawn, but indescribably soft and mobile. It lent those declivities on which it grew a spacious, well-kept, park appearance, on which Bob exclaimed with delight. But Welton would have none of it. "Bear clover," said he, "full of pitch as an old jack-pine. Burns like coal oil, and you can't hardly cut it with a hoe. Worst stuff to carry fire and to fight fire in you ever saw. Pick a piece and smell it." Bob broke off one of the tough, woody stems. A pungent odour exactly like that of extract of hamamelis met his nostrils. Then he realized that all the time he had been aware of this perfume faintly disengaging itself from the hills. In spite of Mr. Welton's disgust, Bob liked its clean, pungent suggestion.