tting rid of slashings which otherwise might feed a forest fire.

_Photograph by U. S. Forest Service._]

[Illustration: THE CABIN OF THE OLD RANGER.

Where Wilbur stayed a couple of days recovering from the wild-cat's
scratches.

_Photograph by U. S. Forest Service._]

[Illustration: STAMPING IT GOVERNMENT PROPERTY.

McGinnis marking "U. S." on timber that has been scaled and measured up.

_Photograph by U. S. Forest Service._]

CHAPTER VII

WILBUR IN HIS OWN CAMP

"I should think," said Wilbur at headquarters that night, when the
timber theft of Peavey Jo was being discussed, "that it would be mighty
hard to prove that the timber had been taken."

"Why?" asked the Supervisor.

"Well, we can see how the logs were drawn, and so forth, but you can't
bring those driveways into court very well, and put them before the
judge as Exhibit A, or anything?"

"You could bring affidavits, couldn't you? But there are few who want to
go to law about it. A man knows he can't buck the government on a fake
case. We have very little trouble now, but there used to be a lot of
it."

"Did you ever have to use weapons, Mr. Merritt?" asked the boy,
remembering the story he had heard in Washington about the tie-cutters.

"No," was the instant reply. "You don't handle people with a gun any
more in California than you do in New York. These aren't the days of
Forty-nine."

"But I thought the 'old-timers' still carried guns," persisted the boy.

"Very few do now. But I got into trouble once, or thought I was going
to, when I was a Ranger in the Gunnison Forest. It involved some Douglas
fir telephone poles. This trespass was done while I was in town for a
while in the Supervisor's office. When I came back I happened to pass by
this man's camp, and seeing a lot of telephone poles, I asked if they
had been cut in the forest. The man was a good deal of a bully, and he
ordered me off the place. He said he didn't have to answer any
questions, and wasn't going to."

"Did you go?" asked Wilbur.

"Certainly I went. What would be the use of staying around there? But
before I left I got a kind of an answer. He said he had shipped in these
telephone poles from another part of the State."

"Sure, that was a fairy tale," said McGinnis.

"Of course it was. I went into the forest and searched around, although
there had been a recent fall of snow, until I found the place where most
of the poles had been cut. Then I went back