The two chums made themselves familiar with their own valley from the border line of the state lands above the beaver dam, to a point many miles below their own camp.  They found that they were in the heart of the stand of virgin timber, and that the location of their camp was by far the best that could have been chosen for the purpose of guarding the stand.

Charley thought it wonderful that the forester could offhand select such a strategic point.  He felt more certain than ever that Mr. Marlin must have an intimate knowledge of the territory over which he had jurisdiction.  Could Charley have known how intimate that knowledge was, he would have been amazed.  And what he did not even guess was the fact that the forester had planned just such a secret watch on the big timber as Charley was now keeping, and that he had selected the camp site only after days of investigation.

Nor did Charley so much as dream that for some time Mr. Marlin had been looking about for some one he could trust to do the work.  The native mountaineers did not command Mr. Marlin’s entire confidence, nor did many of them possess the intelligence or education he desired in the man he selected.

Yet his sudden choice of Charley was characteristic of the forester.  He always acted quickly when he thought the time for action had come.  Charley’s grit and pluck in voluntarily fighting the fire, coupled with his membership in the Wireless Patrol, were the factors that led Mr. Marlin to engage him at once.  Had Charley known these facts, he might have felt a bit conceited or at least elated over the situation.  But his belief was, as Mr. Marlin wished it to be, that the forester had taken him only as a last resort.  And Charley was working hard to make good.  He could hardly have taken a better way than the road he had chosen—­to make himself familiar with all the territory he was to guard, and so to prepare himself for the emergencies that lay ahead of him.

Every day, and every hour of each day, the two boys found much that excited their wonder, for now they were studying nature at first-hand.  Taking their dog, they one day climbed the mountain beyond the one on which their watch-tower stood, and came down into a lovely valley.  But what instantly arrested their attention was the face of the mountain on the far side of this valley.

Instead of being a timbered slope, this mountain was a sheer precipice of rock that rose abruptly a thousand feet in air.  Its rugged sides were seamed and scarred.  Here and there a projecting ledge offered a scant foothold, but mostly the face of the cliff was one vast, frowning rock that rose almost perpendicularly.  On tiny ledges and in crevices of the rock little ferns grew in masses, hanging down the face of the cliff like green fringes.  Wild flowers had taken possession of the crannies.  In precarious footholds, where it seemed impossible for them to exist, a few trees had sprung up, their roots crawling fantastically over the rocks in search of bits of earth to grow in, while the tops of the trees stood up slantingly against the face of the cliff.  Mostly they were evergreens, and their scraggly branches made irregular dark masses on the face of the precipice.