“He’s a prince,” said Charley, after the ranger had left the thicket.  “He knows just how to treat a fellow.  Why, I’ve simply got to make good now.  I’d get my ranger in bad if I didn’t.”

Quickly they put their camp to rights, then slipped their pistols into their pockets and got their fishing-rods.

“What is the first thing on the programme?” asked Lew.

“We’ll go up to the top of the hill and have a good look over the country,” replied Charley.  “It’s just about time for campers to be cooking their breakfasts.  If there are any of them near us, we might see the smoke from their fires and locate them.  You know the ranger wants us to keep tab on everything that’s going on in our district.”

They ascended the mountain and climbed the tree from which they had viewed the country on the preceding day.  The sun was just coming over the eastern summits, sending long, level rays of light flashing among the dark pines, making beautiful patterns of sun and shade.  In the bottoms the night mist had gathered in little pools, in places completely blotting out the landscape.  The tree tops, upthrusting through these banks of fog, looked like wooded islets in tiny gray lakes.  In every direction the two boys scanned the country, looking sharply for slender spirals of smoke.  But they saw only mist curling upward.

“It looks to me,” said Lew, “as though mighty few people ever get into this valley.  It’s such a hard journey to get here that I suppose the fishermen will stop at the streams in the valleys nearer the highway, and nobody else would want to come here at this time of year.  Unless this timber is set afire purposely, I believe there is not much danger of its being burned.”

“There’s just the rub,” replied Charley.  “It would naturally be safe, being so hard to get to, and for that reason it wouldn’t be watched as well as more accessible regions, particularly when it is difficult to get fire patrols.  But because some one is evidently trying to burn this particular stand of timber, it is especially necessary to guard it.  Mr. Marlin wants it watched continually, but so secretly that no one will realize that it is being guarded.  That might make the incendiary careless—­providing he comes again—­and so lead to his detection.  We must do nothing to betray ourselves.  We’ll have to be careful not to mark this tree in any way, so that a passer-by would guess it was used as a watch-tower.  And we shall have to be sure that we don’t wear a path leading from it to our camp.”

For many minutes the boys sat in the tree, well screened from observation by the spreading limbs, yet themselves able to see perfectly.  In every direction they searched again and again for telltale columns of smoke, but saw nothing.