down
and look abroad over the wonderful Sierra.

Never did he tire of this. At one eye-glance he could comprehend a
summer's toilsome travel. To reach yonder snowy peak would consume the
greater part of a week. Unlike the Swiss alps, which he had once
visited, these mountains were not only high, but wide as well. They had
the whole of blue space in which to lie. They were like the stars, for
when Bob had convinced himself that his eye had settled on the farthest
peak, then still farther, taking half-guessed iridescent form out of the
blue, another shone.

But his business was not with these distances. Almost below him, so
precipitous is the easterly slope of Baldy, lay canons, pine forests,
lesser ridges, streams, the green of meadows. Patiently, piece by piece,
he must go over all this, watching for that faint blue haze, that
deepening of the atmosphere, that almost imagined pearliness against the
distant hills which meant new fire.

"Don't look for _smoke_," California John had told him. "When a fire
gets big enough for smoke, you can't help but see it. It's the new fire
you want to spot before it gets started. Then it's easy handled. And new
fire's almighty easy to overlook. Sometimes it's as hard for a greenhorn
to see as a deer. Look close!"

So Bob, concentrating his attention, looked close. When he had satisfied
himself, he turned square around.

From this point of view he saw only pine forests. They covered the ridge
below him like a soft green mantle thrown down in folds. They softened
the more distant ranges. They billowed and eddied, and dropped into
unguessed depths, and came bravely up to eyesight again far away. At
last they seemed to change colour abruptly, and a brown haze overcast
them through which glimmered a hint of yellow. This Bob knew was the
plain, hot and brown under the July sun. It rose dimly through the mist
to the height of his eye. Thus, even at eight thousand feet, Bob seemed
to stand in the cup of the earth, beneath the cup of the sky.

The other two lookouts were on the edge of the lower ridge. They gave an
opportunity of examining various coves and valleys concealed by the
shoulder of the ridge from the observer on Baldy. To reach them Bob rode
across the plateau of the ridge, through the pine forests, past the
mill.

Here, if the afternoon was not too far advanced, he used to allow
himself the luxury of a moment's chat with some of his old friends.
Welton, coat off, his burly