ilderness. This had been a favorite game for Hal and me; only
tonight there seemed some reality about it. From the way Hal whispered,
and listened, and looked, he might very well have been expecting a visit
from lions or, for that matter, even from Indians. Finally we went to
bed. But our slumbers were broken. Hal often had nightmares even on
ordinary nights, and on this one he moaned so much and thrashed about
the tent so desperately that I knew the lions were after him.

I dreamed of forest lands with snow-capped peaks rising in the
background; I dreamed of elk standing on the open ridges, of
white-tailed deer trooping out of the hollows, of antelope browsing
on the sage at the edge of the forests. Here was the broad track of a
grizzly in the snow; there on a sunny crag lay a tawny mountain-lion
asleep. The bronzed cowboy came in for his share, and the lone bandit
played his part in a way to make me shiver. The great pines, the shady,
brown trails, the sunlit glades, were as real to me as if I had been
among them. Most vivid of all was the lonely forest at night and the
campfire. I heard the sputter of the red embers and smelled the wood
smoke; I peered into the dark shadows watching and listening for I knew
not what.

On the next day early in the afternoon father appeared on the river
road.

"There he is," cried Hal. "He's driving Billy. How he's coming."

Billy was father's fastest horse. It pleased me immensely to see the
pace, for father would not have been driving fast unless he were in a
particularly good humor. And when he stopped on the bank above camp
I could have shouted. He wore his corduroys as if he were ready for
outdoor life. There was a smile on his face as he tied Billy, and,
coming down, he poked into everything in camp and asked innumerable
questions. Hal talked about the bass until I was afraid he would want to
go fishing and postpone our forestry tramp in the woods. But presently
he spoke directly to me.

"Well, Kenneth, are you going to come out with the truth about that
Wild-West scheme of yours? Now that you've graduated you want a fling.
You want to ride mustangs, to see cowboys, to hunt and shoot--all that
sort of thing."

When father spoke in such a way it usually meant the defeat of my
schemes. I grew cold all over.

"Yes, father, I'd like all that--But I mean business. I want to be
a forest ranger. Let me go to Arizona this summer. And in the fall
I'd--I'd like to go to a school o