An hour from the time Eleanor had left him, the Ranger was on his horse.  He did not go down the Ridge Trail.  He followed the National Forest Trail along the edge of the Ridge away from the Holy Cross Peak, down the forested back of a long foot-hill sloping and flanking the Valley almost to Smelter City.  Locally, the sloping hill was known as “a hog’s back”; and it was where the hog’s back poked its nose into the Valley far below, that the tangle had occurred between the Forest Service and the Smelter Ring.  Mining was permitted in the National Forests, of course; but the mining areas must be obtained according to law, and paid for, and operated individually, not homesteaded by the “dummies,” then turned into a consolidated ring of coal owners.  What made this violation of law more flagrant than usual was the fact that these homesteaded coal lands lay at an angle of almost ninety degrees in a sheer wall; and it was an impossibility for any homesteader ever to have put in residence on them.  Homestead entry, term of residence, proof and title, all exhibited fraud on the face of the records; and there wasn’t a man in the Government Service who did not know that.  What unseen hand had juggled entries, title and proof through?  The homesteaders had sold out long ago for a song, some for as little as ten dollars a hundred and sixty acres.  The Ring had possession; and as every man in the Land Service knew, the Government had pigeon-holed all recommendations for legal action to compel restitution.  Would the wheels of justice rest inert?  Would the presiding deity of justice be so blind, if some poor man, a poor man, who was also Uncle Sam, stole a ton of coal from the Ring operating these mines?  Why was it possible to steal ninety-million dollars’ worth of coal from the people, and not permissible for one of the people to steal one ton of coal from the Ring?  These were the questions Wayland asked himself as he rode down the hog’s back for Smelter City.

The trail down the hog’s back sloped gradually and cut fifteen miles off the distance to Smelter City by the Valley Road.  It was “the show” trail of all the National Forests.  When supervisors came to inspect, or visitors from the East who wanted to give accounts of having roughed it without losing an hour of sleep or carrying any scars of stump beds, or when Congressional committees came from Washington for a champagne junket to report on all they hadn’t seen—­Wayland always conducted them down the hog’s back trail that ran along the backbone of the Holy Cross lower slope.  He had built the trail, himself; much of it, with his own hands; cut in the side of the forest mould and rock with an outer log as guard rail; wide enough for two horses abreast and zig-zagging enough to break the descent into a gradual drop and afford new vistas at each turn, of the Valley below, of the Mesas above the Rim Rocks across, and of the River looping and sweeping down to Smelter City.