or his interests.  One cared most for building trails; another for chasing sheep trespassers; a third for construction of bridges, cabins and fences.  All had occasionally to fight fires.  Each was given the inestimable privilege of doing what he could.  Everything he did had to be reported on enormous and complicated forms.  If he made a mistake in any of these, he heard from it, and perhaps his pay was held up.  This pay ran somewhere about sixty or seventy-five dollars a month, and he was required to supply his own horses and to feed them.  Most rangers who were really interested in their profession spent some of this in buying tools with which to work.[A] The Government supplied next to nothing.  In 1902 between the King’s River and the Kaweah, an area of somewhere near a million acres, the complete inventory of fire-fighting tools consisted of two rakes made from fifty cents’ worth of twenty-penny nails.

But these negative discouragements were as nothing compared to the petty rebuffs and rulings that emanated from the Land Office itself.

One spring Ross Fletcher, following specific orders, was sent out after twenty thousand trespassing sheep.  It was early in the season.  His instructions took him up into the frozen meadows, so he had to carry barley for his horses.  He used three sacks and sent in a bill for one.  Item refused.  Feed was twenty dollars a thousand.  Salary seventy-five dollars.

One of Simeon Wright’s foremen broke down government fences and fed out all the ranger horse feed.  Tom Carroll wrote to Superintendent Smith; later to Washington.  The authorities, however, refused to revoke the cattleman’s licence.  At Christmas time, when Carroll was in White Oaks the foreman and his two sons jeered at and insulted the ranger in regard to this matter until the latter lost his temper and thrashed all three, one after the other.  For this he was severely reprimanded by Washington.

Charley Morton was ordered to Yosemite to consult with the military officers there.  He was instructed to do so in a certain number of days.  To keep inside his time limit he had to hire a team.  Item refused.

California John fought fire alone for two days and a night, then had to go outside for help.  Docked a day for going off the reserve.

Why did these men prefer to endure neglect and open hostility to the favour of their neighbours and easier work?  Bob, with a growing wonder and respect, tried to find out.

He did not succeed.  There certainly was no overwhelming love for the administration of Henry Plant; nor loyalty to the Land Office.  Indeed for the latter, one and all entertained the deep contempt of the out-of-door man for the red-tape clerk.

“What do you think is the latest,” asked California John one day, “from them little squirts?  I just got instructions that during of the fire season I must patrol the whole of my district every day!” The old man grinned.  “I only got from here to Pumice Mountain!  I wonder if those fellows ever saw a mountain?  I suppose they laid off an inch on the map and let it go at that.  Patrol every day!”