south, across a hundred miles of greener forest, the snaky outline of the Graham Mountains hid the hot country from me, else I could have looked down upon the deserts of Old Mexico, more than three hundred miles away. More to the west, the Sierra Anches Mountains prevented a view of the great Roosevelt Lake. But I had seen pictures of it, and its huge dam, and pictures, too, of the vast fields of grain, alfalfa, cotton, and groves of fruit trees dependent upon its waters. Some of our soldiers, I knew, were night and day guarding the dam from destruction by German spies. And we fireguards were here, perched upon the peaks of the range, to prevent fires devastating the great forest and drying up the stream feeders of that wonderful irrigation system. Right under me, on the east, headed a fork of Black River, and on the south and west two forks of White River, main feeders of the high-dammed lake. I said to myself that by no fault of mine should fires kill the forest that mothered their hundreds of springs.
Fireguards before my time had told of finding some small turquoise, and black stone beads upon the sharp uplift that was capped by the lookout station. I went outside, and with the point of my knife began to scratch out the fine earth and gravel that the winds and rains had deposited in crevices in the rock, and in less than two minutes’ time found two black stone beads, one of them so small that I could take it up only with the point of my knife, and then feared to place it on a rock, lest I should be unable to find it again. I carried it into the lookout, and, measuring it on the chart stand, found that it was one sixteenth of an inch in diameter, and less than a thirty-second of an inch thick; the hole through it so small that it would not admit an ordinary pin. I became interested. I wondered why the beads had been left here by the Indians, and by what Indians? How long ago? And how could they possibly have fashioned them of such small size? I placed my finds in a Forest Service envelope, and went out to search for more of them. It was then about five o’clock, and I scratched and dug about among the rocks as long as I had sufficient light. When, at last, I was forced to quit, I had collected two arrow-points, one of a glasslike substance, and one of red flint, and fifty-three beads of black, gray, red, and yellow stone, none of them a quarter of an inch in diameter, the average running about an eighth of an inch. I was quite excited over my success. Here was something to keep me occupied day after day while I watched the great forest. By diligent search I thought that I might make some wonderful finds of old Indian handicraft. I hurried down the steep trail in the gathering night, and at the edge of the cabin clearing came to a sudden stop: I had glimpsed something quickly slipping into the shadow of the spruces beyond the cabin, something that, dim though it was, had the shape of a man!
Chapter II.
The Mountain Cave
Was I frightened at what I had glimpsed?
I was so badly scared that the beating of my heart seemed to be up in my throat and choking me! The shadowy thing I had seen was a man! And no friend, else he would not have been sneaking away from my approach. And swiftly though he had gone, I had not heard the slightest sound of his footsteps. He must, then, be an Apache, I thought. One of those renegades who, despite the vigilance of the soldiers, now and then somehow get possession of a gun and cartridges and sneak off upon a war trail of their own.
I did not know what to do. But after standing for a long time listening and staring about in the deepening night, I at last made a run for the cabin, got safely inside, and slammed shut the door and barred it. Then it suddenly dawned upon me that I must not light the lamp. I could curtain the windows with dishcloths, but there were all those yawning spaces between the logs that I could not cover, through which an enemy could see me and shoot me the instant that I struck a light. I sat upon the bunk and took off my shoes, and then, rifle in hand, stole from wall to wall of the cabin and stared out through the unchinked spaces; and for all the good that did, might as well have stuck my head into a sack. The night was intensely dark; I could not even see the pile of split white-spruce stovewood less than ten feet from the south wall!
But, presently, I heard something; like the cautious steps of some one to the east of the cabin. Just such sounds as I imagined moccasined feet would make upon the stony ground. They had been faint at first; they became fainter and soon ceased. I stood against the wall a long time. My legs began to tremble. I felt my way back to the bunk and sat upon it, again listening, open-mouthed, for those shuffling, soft, padding steps. I must have sat there for hours. I was hungry, but did not dare risk the noise I should make in opening the iron food chest for a handful of crackers and some cheese. And how I wished that I was down home, safe in my bed! This was my first night away from my people; and here I was, eleven miles from them, and in danger. How sorry I was for myself! Several times I went sound asleep sitting straight up upon the bunk, and awoke with a start, and scolded myself, and said that I just would keep awake! Then the next I knew dawn had come, and I was lying flat upon my back, my rifle tightly gripped with both hands. I sprang up and looked out of the windows, and through the wall spaces, and saw nothing to alarm me. The daylight itself was heartening. I slowly unbarred the door and stepped out upon the little porch. About twenty feet away a porcupine was descending a small spruce that he had partly denuded of its bark. When he left the trunk and waddled off down the slope, he made just the shuffling noise that I had heard in the night: ‘‘You are the Apache that was prowling around here, you scalper of trees!” I yelled to him, and the sound of my voice was good in my ears. And seizing a stick I took after him and knocked him in the head. All Forest Service men are required to kill porcupines, for in the course of a year they do a great deal of damage to the forest.
I went back to the cabin, built a fire in the little stove, and washed face and hands. Then, as I sliced some bacon, opened a can of corn, and made some biscuits, it suddenly came to me that, though the porcupine had probably made the noise I had heard in the night, he certainly was not the shadowy figure I had seen skurrying into the shelter of the spruces! All my fears of the night were back in me with a rush. The temptation to seize my rifle and strike out on the run down the mountain for home was almost irresistible. Then I said to myself: “I've just got to stay here! I've got to stick to this job no matter what happens to me! My Uncle Cleve is n’t running from those terrible Huns in France, and I shall not run from a sneaking Apache!”
I rushed my cooking and bolted my breakfast, for I had until nine o’clock to report from the lookout, up on top, and I was going to make those cabin walls proof against the eyes of any prowlers of the night. I collected a number of lengths of small, dead spruces, quartered them, and drove them into the wall spaces from the inside. But fast though I worked, at eight-thirty I had chinked but three of the walls. I dropped the axe, seized my rifle, locked the cabin door, and hurried up the trail to the summit.
As soon as I arrived at the lookout I swept the whole forest as far as I could see with the field-glasses that had been furnished me, and at nine o’clock reported in that no fire was to be seen from Mount Thomas. Then, for a time, I listened to other lookouts making similar reports, some of them away down in the Blue Range, at the south end of the forest. Happening, then, to look into the canyon of Black River, a half-mile or more almost straight down from me, I thought that I saw a faint haze of smoke. But even with the glasses I could not be sure that my eyes had not deceived me. The sun had not yet reached that part of the canyon and it was in deep shadow, made all the darker by the heavy growth of spruce that shrouded its steep sides and bottom. I marked the particular spot in it, where I thought that I had seen the smoke, by a narrow strip of grassland that bordered the stream. Again and again in the course of the morning I looked down at the place, failed to see the least sign of smoke, and almost convinced myself that I had been mistaken in the first instance. I had heard our mountain men say that this canyon of Black River was the worst one in the whole range; that in their roundups it was the one place they passed, for it was so rough that neither cattle nor horses could ascend it. Since it was so inaccessible, and as there had been no electric storm to start a fire in it, I argued that if I had seen anything, it had been mist rising from the stream in the cool of the morning.
In
