came forward and took the
horses.

"You've heard about Ben?" queried the hunter as the horses were being
led away.

"Yes," answered Wilbur, "Bob-Cat Bob told me all about the death of his
father during the sheep and cattle war. He told me when we were riding
up to the ranch, from the station at Sumber."

"I have thought," said Rifle-Eye, "that perhaps it ain't quite the right
thing to keep Ben here, up in the woods. But I tried sendin' him to
school. It wasn't no manner of use. It only troubled the teacher an'
bothered him, an' I reckon his life will stack up at the end jest as
well, even if he can't read."

"What does he do while you are away?" asked Wilbur.

"Oh, a lot of things. He ain't idle a minute, really, an' there's times
that he's as good as them that thinks themselves so wise."

"What sort of things?"

"Well, he's done a lot o' work stampin' out the prairie dogs. Of course,
there's very few o' them in these parts, so few that the government has
made no appropriation for this forest. It's in Eastern Montana an' the
Dakotas that you get them, an' there's been a lot o' trouble in the
Custer an' Sioux forests. He's gone there several times, an' there's
been villages o' them here among the foothills that Ben's cleared up
entirely."

"They poison the prairie dogs, don't they?"

"Yes, with strychnine, mainly. Grain is soaked in the poison an' a few
grains put outside each hole in a dog town. If this is done early in the
year, before the green grass is up for food, it will pretty nearly clean
up the town."

"It seems rather a shame," said Wilbur, "they are such fat, jolly little
fellows, and the way they sit up on their hind legs and look at you is
a wonder."

"It's all right for them to look 'fat and jolly,'" replied Rifle-Eye,
"but when the stock raiser finds hundreds of acres of grass nibbled down
to the roots, an' when the farmer's young wheat is ruined, they don't
see so much jollity in it."

"But I didn't know that the Forest Service took a hand in that sort of
thing."

"Only indirectly. But they provide the poison an' the settlers usually
git some one to put it round. As I say, Ben's been doin' a lot of it
this spring."

"But that sort of work doesn't last long."

"No, only in the spring. But Ben's busy other ways. Sometimes he goes
down to the valleys an' helps the ranchers with their hayin'. He don't
know anythin' about money, though, an' so they never pay him cash."

"That's tough on