“Do they look at you as though they’d like to kill you, too?” demanded Charley.  “Is that a habit of these mountaineers?”

Instantly the ranger’s face was sober.  “See here,” he said seriously.  “What have you been doing?  What did you do or say to the men that made them curse you?  A little authority hasn’t made you toplofty, has it?  You know you are not supposed to let anybody know that you’re a fire patrol.”

“I didn’t,” replied Charley, stung by the implied criticism.  “We caught a few fish in our own valley, then cut through to the valley just below us, on our way to this trail.  Just as we reached the run, two men came out of the bushes.  They asked what we had caught, and when I showed them, one of them swore at us terribly and said we had fished the stream out so that they would have to go on to the next valley.”

“Is that all?” laughed the ranger, looking much relieved.

“No, sir, it isn’t,” continued Charley.  “They looked as though they wanted to kill us.”

The ranger was inclined to smile, but he forbore, seeing that Charley was sensitive.  “You’ll soon get used to meeting tough-looking customers in the forest,” he said.

“I hope that I don’t meet many like that fellow,” sighed Charley.  “When he scowled at me, he looked as fierce as a chimpanzee.  And he had an ugly scar over his eye that actually seemed to turn red.”

Instantly the ranger’s face became sober.  “A scar over his eye,” he repeated.  “Which eye?”

“His right one.”

“Did you notice his mouth?”

“Sure.  I couldn’t help noticing it.  It was full of gold teeth.”

The ranger gave a low whistle.  His face became still more serious.  “Tell me exactly what was said and done,” he continued.  “Repeat your conversation just as accurately as you can.”

When Charley had rehearsed the entire affair in detail, the ranger asked, “And you are sure you gave him no hint that you had come from the next valley?”

“Absolutely none.  I thought right away that I mustn’t do that.”

“You’re a lad of discretion,” smiled the ranger.  “You have done well.  But be awful careful of that old scoundrel.  That’s Bill Collins.  He’s a bad egg if there ever was one.  He never came into these mountains to catch fish.  That’s merely a blind.  And he was headed for your valley, too.  That’s absolutely certain.  Otherwise he wouldn’t have gone there.”

The ranger paused in thought. “Did he go there?” he continued.  “That’s the problem.  If he said he was going there, it’s more than likely he was headed for some other place and wanted to throw you off the track.”