iment of servants
or hostiles, and a mansion of grandeur demanding such care, it seems to
me the city man is carrying the woes that he flees "back to the farm."

[Illustration: Pueblo boys at play in the streets of Zuni, New Mexico.
The dome-like tops on the houses are bake ovens]

What sort of men are these young fellows living halfway between heaven
and earth on the lonely forested ridges whose nearest neighbors are the
snow peaks? Each, as stated previously, patrols 100,000 acres. That is,
over an area of 100,000 acres he is a road warden, game warden, timber
cruiser, sales agent, United States marshal, forester, gardener,
naturalist, trail builder, fire fighter, cattle boss, sheep protector,
arrester of thugs, thieves and poachers, surveyor, mine inspector, field
man on homestead jobs inside the limits, tree doctor, nurseryman. When
you consider that each man's patrol stretched out in a straight line
would reach from New York past Albany, or from St. Paul to Duluth,
without any of the inaccuracy with which a specialist loves to charge
the layman, you may say the ranger is a pretty busy man.

What sort of man is he? Very much the same type as the Canadian
Northwest Mounted Policeman, with these differences: He is very much
younger. I think there is a regulation somewhere in the Department that
a new man older than forty-five will not be taken. This insures
enthusiasm, weeding out the misfits, the formation of a body of men
trained to the work; but I am not sure that it is not a mistake. There
is a saying among the men of the North that "it takes a wise old dog to
catch a wary old wolf;" and "there are more things in the woods than
ever taught in l'pe'tee cat--ee--cheesm." I am not sure that the
weathered old dogs, whose catechism has been the woods and the world,
with lots of hard knocks, are not better fitted to cope with some of the
difficulties of the ranger's life than a double-barreled post-graduate
from Yale or Biltmore. So much depends on fist, and the brain behind the
fist. I am quite sure that many of the blackguard tricks assailing the
Forest Service would slink back to unlighted lairs if the tricksters had
to deal not with the boys of Eastern colleges, gentlemen always, but
with some wise and weathered old dog of frontier life who wouldn't
consult Departmental regulations before showing his fangs. He would
consult them, you know; but it would be afterwards. Just now, while the
rangers are consulting the