Early Days in the Forest Service Volume 3

THE FIRST TEN YEARS WERE THE TOUGHEST
By Ralph L. Hand
(Retired 1955)

If in order to qualify as an oldtimer in the Northern Rocky Mountain Region, it is necessary to have toughed it out through the critical fire seasons of 1910 and 1919, I'm afraid I can't make the grade.

I believe it was during the former year that, as a schoolboy in southwestern New York State, I first got smoke in my eyes and ashes in my hair from hardwood slash fires. I remember too that for a time we were pretty badly smoked up from the big Michigan and Minnesota fires and I expect it was just about then that I first began to think of the Forest Service as a possible career.

This was before the Weeks Law had been passed and there wasn't an acre of national forest land within many miles of my home, so the idea was still rather vague when, in 1915, I attended a summer forestry camp in the Adirondacks. This camp was in conjunction with the regular summer camp that was attended by all second-year students of the New York State College of Forestry at Syracuse University, but it was open to practically anyone who was interested in forestry.

Henry H. (Hal) Tryon, whom the students often referred to as "The Harvard-educated lumberjack," was in charge of our group. Others whom I remember well include Dean Hugh Potter Baker; his brother, J. Fred Baker, who taught Silviculture; Dr. Chas. C. Adams, who later directed the Roosevelt Wildlife Experiment Station for many years; Wm. L. Bray, the ecologist; and a professor of botany named Harry Brown.

That summer at Cranberry Lake convinced me that I was on the right track, but after many talks with students and instructors. I was equally convinced that there was little chance in that part of the country for the kind of employment I was looking for.

For the next couple of years I worked at various jobs including tree surgery on Long Island, cutting saw logs and chemical wood at a Pennsylvania lumber camp, ice harvesting on Chautauqua Lake and all sorts of furniture factory work from the lumber yard to the finishing floor. Then came World War One and a hitch in the Army with a little more than a year overseas, and so just about the time that the 1919 fire season was well under way, I was a footloose "G.I." with an Army discharge and what was left of a $60 bonus in my pocket - looking for a job. It was not until the fall of 1920, having in the meantime wangled a $150 scholarship at the University of Idaho and a one-cent-per-mile landlooker's ticket on the Canadian Pacific Railroad, that I headed for the Northwest.

At the time I entered, in late October, the Forest School staff at Moscow consisted of Dean Francis G. Miller, Henry H. (Heinie) Schmitz, and C. Edward (Eddie) Behre. In addition to the regular instructors we had special lecturers from the Forest Service. One of the first and best-remembered was Howard Flint, at that time an inspector in the District (Regional) Office at Missoula. Then there was a quartet of Supervisors, Joe Fitzwater from the Kaniksu, C.K. (Mac) McHarg from the Coeur d'Alene, Jonn B. Taylor from the Deerlodge and Guy B. Mains from one of the south Idaho forests - I think it was the Boise. I remember Supervisor Mains as a somewhat stocky individual with bristly, black whiskers; he reminded me of pictures I had seen of General U.S. Grant. When one of the local students asked him if he had ever worked on a north Idaho forest, he said, "Yes," and then added, "If the reproduction on my face had been as heavy as it is now, I'd still be hanging out there in the brush." Evidently he preferred the open range and yellow pine of the Intermountain Region to the brushy jungles of the Idaho Panhandle.

Among my fellow students who later followed Forest Service careers were Ray Ferguson, Albert Cochrell, Fred Shaner, Howard Higgins and Frank Folsom. I believe Albert was a Ranger at the time, but had taken a furlough to attend school for a year.

In the spring of 1921, I was offered a seasonal job on the St. Joe, and since I wasn't to report at Avery until June 16, I had a few weeks in which to replenish my now badly depleted funds. Among other jobs, I buried a dead horse, whitewashed the interior of a cow barn, packed trees at the University arboretum, addressed envelopes and hoed a huge field of cantaloupes and watermelons. The latter job was at Lewiston Orchards where the University maintained an experimental farm, and while there I managed to take a couple of days off to visit an Army buddy who had recently started practicing dentistry at Grangeville.

That long train ride over the prairie and across the high wooden trestles, is one that I won't soon forget - especially the return trip. I was accompanied by a Grangeville attorney whom I had met through my friend the dentist. I have long since forgotten his name, but I can still remember some of the things he told me about Idaho County; he was literally loaded with information and not a bit backward about passing it on to a comparative stranger.

On arriving at Lewiston, we ran smack into some sort of convention and the Bollinger Hotel was full (the Lewis and Clark hadn't yet been built). My companion must have used his influence with the management for they set up two cots behind a screen on the second floor corridor and that's where we slept - at least it's where we spent the night. When some barbershop quartet wasn't howling in doleful tones through the wide-open transom, or a staggering drunk trying to find his room by pounding on each door successively, my roommate was regaling me with statistics about the vastness and eminence of Idaho County which I learned was larger than the state of Connecticut. I learned, too, that it contained enough merchantable timber to build a five-room house for each family in New York City, and cattle enough to keep them supplied with meat through a hard winter. Furthermore, its fabulous Camas Prairie produced sufficient wheat to sustain all the flour mills of Kansas, while the gold that had been taken out of Florence, Elk City, and the Buffalo Hump would have paid off the national debt in 1917.

If some of these statements are a little bit debatable, blame me, not the lawyer. After all, this was almost forty years ago and my memory isn't perfect.

1921

I reported to Joe Mahoney at the Avery Ranger Station on the morning of June 16. Joe was the Ranger who handled the dispatching, bossed the packers and functioned generally as manager of the Avery Supply Base.

The St. Joe and Coeur d'Alene had recently been combined into a single administrative unit under Supervisor McHarg, whose headquarters were in the town of Coeur d'Alene. Ashley Roche, his deputy, remained at Avery where he was nominally in charge of the Main division with its four Ranger Districts. Clyde Blake was in charge of the Avery District, Franklin Girard had Roundtop, Allen Space, Quarles Peak, and Charles Bradner was the new Ranger at Pole Mountain. The Palouse District, separated from the others by a wide area under jurisdiction of the Coeur d'Alene Timber Protective Association, was handled by Billy Daugs, who functioned pretty much as a "little supervisor" on that isolated unit.

The main Division at that time was really a backwoods forest; there wasn't a foot of road within the entire three-quarter-million acres except within the town of Avery, a division point of the Milwaukee Railroad. As I recall, there was just one powered vehicle in town a light truck that was used to haul groceries and other merchandise from the freight depot to the general store. It had been shipped in on a flat car.

I had been assigned as lookout at Pole Mountain, but the first job that I did for the Forest Service was to help old "Dad" Propst clean out the Avery sewer system. It always became plugged after the spring rains and it had become sort of a tradition that all newcomers take a whirl at the disagreeable task. The college student, the seasoned lumberjack and the drifter who had just dropped off from a boxcar - each took his turn and was judged according to whether he rolled up his sleeves or turned up his nose. Over a year later I was told that I had been recommended for a Ranger appointment, at least partly because I had been one of those who placed personal squeamishmess subordinate to the importance of getting a dirty but necessary job done. As a matter of fact, I wasn't conscious of trying to "butter up" anybody; it was the way I had been raised, or perhaps the credit should go to my New England ancestors.

Following the Avery episode, the next thing I remember with any degree of clarity is of shoveling through snowdrifts east of Bearskull, to get the pack trains around Hoodoo Ridge. There was quite a gang of us seasonal employees, headed for our stations on the Roundtop and Pole Mountain Districts.

As backwoods cabins go, the Bearskull bunkhouse was larger than most, as befitted an important pack station, and it contained three or four double-deck bunks made of lodgepole saplings and split cedar puncheon. These had all been pre-empted by the time our gang arrived and even floor space was at a premium. The weather was nasty, and several inches of wet snow covered the ground. I had dumped my packsack and blankets in a vacant spot, only to come back later and find that they had been kicked into a corner and a big coil of telephone wire now occupied the spot where I had intended to bed down. I was down on the floor struggling with that heavy coil and wondering what to do with it when a hard-looking individual who had spoken little up to then, came to my rescue. "If you'll kick that wire over here," he said, giving me a somewhat supercilious look, "I'll roll it outside for you, unless you want to use it for bed springs." That was my introduction to Ashley Roche.

Among the four or five packers who were awaiting the snow removal was one named Joe, who, despite the bad weather, elected to sleep outside. I learned later that he never slept indoors; rain or shine, he spread his blankets where he could hear the musical tinkle of the horse bells. Joe claimed he was so used to listening to them that he always awoke when he couldn't hear them any more. Then he would shoulder his bedroll and follow the mule tracks until he was sure the stock was on good grass. By morning Joe might be miles from camp, but at least he had the biggest half of the wrangling job behind him.

It was about the Fourth of July when we finally completed our share of the main-line maintenance work and arrived at our summer headquarters the Pole Mountain Ranger Station. My partner was a Texan named Frank Moore who had worked seasonally on the St. Joe since 1914. With us were two brothers, Slim and Tige Frantz, who were to occupy the Mallard Lake camp some ten or twelve miles beyond our station.

For the first week or so, we were all busy constructing camp, for, though this was the Ranger Station, there were no buildings except a small, practically windowless log structure supposed to be a tool cache. Frank was a genius when it came to making a comfortable, even luxurious camp, with nothing but a few handtools and what the Lord had provided in the way of native material. We had two tents and a fly, and of course there was no cedar at that 6500 foot elevation, but we split shakes and puncheon from lodgepole pine with a froe (shake-splitter) that Frank had made out of a broken brush-hook. We walled up the sides of the kitchen fly, made shelves, cupboards and racks for utensils, floored the tents, and even made lockers for our personal gear.

The smaller of the tents was to be the Ranger's office, and though Frank was rather scornful, he spared no effort in making a neat shelf for the manual and files and a stand for the old Oliver typewriter. But he just couldn't help comparing it with the office of one of Brad's predecessors. It had consisted of one wooden box to sit on, another to serve as a desk, and two large spikes driven into a post that formed part of the tent frame. Incoming mail was pegged to spike number one until action had been taken or the Ranger had decided to ignore it. Then it was transferred to spike number two which never became filled because its contents - always dealt from the bottom - as used to kindle the fire each morning.

We had just about completed our camp when Brad arrived with a wooden mapboard and alidade, an iron telephone that weighed ninety pounds, and a set of lookout instructions that had been prepared in the office at Coeur d'Alene the preceding winter. Brad carried the telephone and alidade in a packsack, while I struggled along with a quarter-mile coil of wire over my shoulder and the mapboard under my arm, up the steep trail to the lookout.

We fastened the phone to a broken-topped snag, made the proper connections, and strung out the wire to establish a ground at a small lake below the lookout. Then we nailed the mapboard to a stump with a twenty-penny spike; Brad handed me the alidade and the instructions, shook hands and was gone. I saw him only once afterward until the Pole Mountain District had been blanketed under a foot of snow in early September.

The instructions which Brad had handed me in a somewhat offhand manner, consisted of two or three mimeographed pages and a couple of blueprints. One was of a standard garbage pit, the other a simple but adequate toilet. Since Frank and I had completed the latter to a considerably higher standard than required, we ignored the directions and eventually the chipmunks chewed up part of the pamphlet. It ended up, finally, alongside an outdated saddle catalogue on the wall of that ornate structure that we had built. Ours had four walls, a roof, a door and a ventilator, while the plan had called for nothing but a shallow trench and two forked stakes, spanned by a stout pole.

The summer of 1921 turned out to be an easy fire season, but I didn't get bored for lack of things to do. As soon as the main camp was completed, I began making daily trips to the lookout, leaving after an early breakfast and returning in the evening. There was a lot of snagging to be done to increase visibility, and there was no shelter of any kind on the mountain top. I set up a pole frame and roofed it with fir boughs as a shelter from the blistering sun, but a few days after its completion it served another purpose.

There was an invasion of flying ants - one of the worst I have ever seen - and since these insects always congregate on the highest point, I ducked under my new shelter. The ruse appeared to work at first, then the ants began to filter through the loosely woven boughs; at first a few at a time, then by the quart and finally by the bucketful. They crawled down my neck and up my sleeves and pant legs until, in desperation, I dashed into a fir thicket, ripped off my clothes and shook then out. One good thing about flying ants - they don't last long. A breeze came up and in a few minutes they were gone from the mountain top.

Brad arrived on the heels of the first fall snowstorm and we closed up and packed out a few days later. After a short but highly successful fishing trip on the upper St. Joe, I went to Pendleton to take in the famous roundup, then back to school again. Later in the fall I took and passed the Ranger examination at Orofino. As I recall, it was practically an all-day session, presided over by Lloyd Hornby, Supervisor of the Clearwater Forest. Before the following spring I had accepted an appointment to the assistant Ranger position at Roundtop.

1922

At the close of this, my second and final year at Moscow, I packed my belongings, took the train to Avery and reported to Frank Girard whom I had met briefly the previous summer. Most of the townspeople and everyone in the Forest Service who knew him, always referred to him as "The Judge."

The St. Joe and Coeur d'Alene were still combined as a single unit under Supervisor McHarg, but when the fire situation became serious, Mac went up to Avery and remained there until the break came in late August. Roche was still deputy and the Ranger force remained unchanged except for the Pole Mountain District. Bradner had been transferred to the Coeur d'Alene as a scaler and a new Ranger, Tony Yack, had been assigned in his place.

According to the record, 1922 was not listed among the historic fire seasons, but on the St. Joe it was really tough. More than one-third of the 44,000 acres of burn chalked up to the Region that year occurred on the Joe, and that doesn't tell the whole story. Most of our 16,000 acres was divided between two fires, Marble Creek and Foehl Creek, the latter just a rough little 6,000-acre smudge - the kind we used to "herd around" with a few small crews until the snow finally put it out; in other words, a back-country fire.

Marble Creek was an entirely different proposition. We had inherited the hot end of a 30,000 acre blaze that started on Association land, crossed the main drainage, swept up the east side and threatened what was then the largest remaining stand of virgin white pine in the United States. Both of the big fires and about forty others of various sizes were credited to the Roundtop District.

The town of St. Maries - referred to by all oldtime loggers as "The Maries," was the center of a region that had sent millions of feet of white pine to the mills and was still going strong. There was no national forest installation there, but it contained the headquarters of the association with which we had a telephone connection by way of Fishhook Peak and Marble Mountain. Although I never saw Warden Billy Ross until some years later, I figure that we developed a speaking - or rather, a shouting - acquaintance that summer. That line wasn't in very good shape to begin with, and since a lot of it was inside the firelines, it frequently went dead; then we had to talk through a series of relays by way of Avery, Wallace, and Coeur d'Alene.

While the Foehl Creek fire didn't make headlines for burned area, it held the spotlight in the local news for another reason. That country was pretty rugged, which may account for the fact that it produced at least one fatality and more injuries than all the other St. Joe fires put together. I recall that at one time there were ten firefighting casualties, mostly from Foehl Creek, in the St. Maries Hospital, not to mention the many "camp cripples" including one with a severed toe. It became known as a hoodoo fire and we had trouble recruiting anybody but seasoned lumberjacks, once the word leaked out that Foehl Creek was the destination.

I remember one time when I helped packer "Summy" Stonebraker change a load to a fresh mule so he could complete the trip to Avery that day. The load was the cargoed body of a firefighter who had been killed by a falling snag the day before, and while we hadn't planned it that way, we did have quite a crew of spectators. There were about twenty-five of them, resting at the station before starting out on the second lap which would take them to the fire camp. The victim was a rather tall man and one of his feet stuck out through a rip in the pack mante. I noticed some of the men talking to one another in low tones, and agitated looks on a few faces, but thought little of it until time for them to start up the trail. When the foreman counted noses, nearly half of his crew was missing; they had headed back toward town and so far as I know, didn't even stop at Avery to ask for travel pay which they wouldn't have gotten anyway.

Roundtop was at least ten airline miles from the front of the Marble Creek fire, but when it made its biggest run, the ground at the station was white with ashes and I picked up charred twigs as big around as a lead pencil and over a foot long. Some of them were just scorched a little, indicating that they had been blown ahead of the fire by the terrific wind that it had generated.

When I started out on the Roundtop assignment, I wasn't fully aware of just what my job was to be, but I soon found out. Although my title was assistant Ranger, I discovered that the actual work consisted of cooking, housekeeping, assisting two lumberjacks who were building a log cabin (spare time, of course), and dispatching. It was well along in August, the cabin work was at a standstill and I was preparing meals for firefighting crews almost daily when relief finally came. A cook who could also handle routine dispatching, arrived on the scene and Girard and I took off for the Marble Creek fire which had made another run in the head of Homestead Creek.

It was sure a relief to get away from that grind. Frank and I camped that night on the shore of a little lake below Breezy Point and spent the following day scouting the unmanned portion of the fire. After that, I was in and out of the Ranger Station until about the first of September, when Frank sent me to Jug Camp with a pack load of supplies for the smokechaser and instructions to visit the Foehl Creek fire and bring back a report on its condition. It started to rain before I arrived at the camp and turned to snow during the night; next morning my horses were standing knee deep in snow on the lee side of the cabin. The fire season was over.

During those weeks that I spent running back and forth between the telephone switchboard and the cook stove, a lot of visitors had passed through the station. One or two packers came by almost daily and there were few nights that I didn't share my bed with one of them or with some forest officer detailed to one of the fires or on an inspection trip. Among those I remember best were Herb Stone, who later became head man at the Winter Range at Perma; George Decker, one of the Decker brothers of packsaddle fame; Tom Crossley from the Nezperce; Jack Thompson, then a Ranger on the Custer; D.L. Beatty from the District (Regional) Office; Jim Girard, Frank's older brother; and Mel Bradner, who was later Director of the Northern Rocky Mountain Experiment Station.

Among the packers who came pretty regularly, was one known as Rocky Mountain Pete, a name he had acquired while serving as a packer and guide in one of the western National Parks. Pete was a big, goodnatured, happy-go-lucky Dutchman with an ironic sense of humor and a vocabulary that was a curious mixture of cowboy lingo and drawing-room English. Earlier that year, before the fire season was well under way, Pete had packed upriver to where a trail crew was blasting through some heavy rock. The powderman, though an expert in his line, was one of the most peculiar-looking physical specimens it is possible to imagine, and Pete's reaction upon first seeing him was characteristic.

Dynamite Smith was a string bean of a man, about six-feet-one and 125 pounds, with a long, skinny neck and an Adam's apple that stuck out like the drawbar on a freight car. He walked with a stumbling stride, his long arms hanging loosely at his sides and his big, bony hands flapping alongside his knees like shirttails on a windswept clothesline. When Pete saw this apparition shambling up the trail toward the cook tent, he stared in openmouthed wonder for what seemed like a full minute, then in a stage whisper, he remarked, "What a magnificent physique!"

Another week at Roundtop, then I said goodby to Girard and headed for the Coeur d'Alene where I had been assigned to a timber-cruising and mapping crew. The next time I saw "The Judge" - years later - he had left the Service and was running for Secretary of State on a ticket headed by Ben Ross, Democratic candidate for Governor of Idaho.

After a combined train, stage, boat and calked-boot trip that took up the better part of two days, I reported at Big Creek to Red Stewart who was in charge of the mapping crew. Frank Tobey headed up the cruising end of the job and other members of the combined crews were Tom Watkins, Roger Billings, two Michigan State boys named Putnam and Mitchell, an Irishman whom we called "Jiggs," and Dave Robertson, a character whose exploits are still legendary on the Coeur d'Alene. A latecomer to the outfit was a young fellow named A.A. Brown; we called him "Brownie." I'm sure none of us surmised that at some future date he would hold the top fire control position in the U.S. Forest Service.

Red Stewart took me out for a few days to teach me the use of the compass and Abney level and the intricacies of mapmaking. He knew the location of every chute, flume and skidroad in the country and he knew how to utilize them in making it back to camp in record time. His favorite stunt was to find the head of one of those V-shaped wooden flumes, climb aboard and run all the way to the bottom. It might be a mile long but he never slackened his pace. The technique was to maintain your equilibrium by alternately hopping back and forth from one side to the other. It required a good sense of balance as well as sharp calks and there was always enough water running through the flume to make a misstep interesting if not disastrous. Red claimed that it was just a matter of practice but I think Dave Robertson had a better answer. He said that in Red's case it was simply centrifugal force combined with a low center of gravity. Anyway, all I got out of it was a wornout pair of loggers and a Charley horse which Dave diagnosed as "Coeur d'Alene knee."

We wound up the job in early November, spent a week compiling data, followed by a shindig at the Prichard Ranger Station, then reported to the Supervisor's office at Coeur d'Alene. I parted company with Red in Spokane a few days later, then headed east for the holidays.

1923

A day or two before Christmas, I received a wire from Missoula, offering me an appointment as Forest Ranger on the Selway Forest. I was to report to Supervisor Frank Jefferson at Kooskia, Idaho, on January 1. The wire was signed by G.I. Porter.

I reported as directed and took the oath of office next day in Major Frank A. Fenn's little printing office where he published the once-a-week "Kooskia Mountaineer." The Major had retired from the Forest Service a few years before, and besides running the newspaper, was engaged in the practice of law with his son, Lloyd.

Besides Jeff, the Selway field force consisted of Deputy Supervisor Francis Carrol, Fire Assistant Charlie MacGregor, another staffman, Fred McKibbin, and five District Rangers. They were Jack Parsell (Middlefork), C.S. (Red) Crocker (Selway), Al Kolmorgan (Lochsa), Bert Kauffman (Moose Creek), and Albert Campbell (Meadow Creek). The sixth district, Bear Creek was to be handled for the summer by Floyd Cossitt, who was then attending the University. Kolmorgan resigned a short time after I arrived and I was assigned the Lochsa District. Two more appointments were made early in the spring Ray Ferguson took over the Smith Creek cedar sales and John Rice who had formerly been Ranger at Meadow Creek, was reappointed and placed in charge of the Pete King warehouse and supply base.

My first assignment was to join Parsell and Campbell at Pete King, where a series of winter jobs had been lined up. The first one was to move a two-story log building from one end of the flat to the other, to make room for the construction of a new warehouse and commissary building. This we did with a homemade stump-puller and a team of pack mules.

Our first big mistake was to attempt to do the whole job from a single setup. That building was heavy and we were moving it on skids with one set of blocks; the stress on that long length of cable must have been terrific. The mules, though gentle, weren't exactly draft animals and Campbell, who took on the job of mule skinner, had plenty of trouble.

It would take two or three complete revolutions of that long sweep before the tension was taken up and even then, at the start, we had to use jackscrews at the back of the building. After the cable was tight as a fiddlestring we would apply the jacks, and when the pressure was strong enough the building would surge forward several feet in one sudden jerk.

It so happened that a big gray tomcat was lying asleep on a window ledge at the back of the cabin when it made its first forward surge. Old Tom had been a fixture at the station for some time, having been brought there with the idea that he would keep the woodmice out of the building, but it didn't work out that way. Tom preferred to do his hunting outdoors, so the mice moved inside where they could enjoy greater security as well as better rations. The nearest Tom ever came to sharing a human habitation was when he took those daily snoozes on the window ledge and there he was, a picture of peace and tranquility, when the jolt came.

Did you ever have a house pulled out from under you unexpectedly? That's what happened to Tom. He rose in the air as though sprung from a trap; his tail grew three sizes bigger around and he let out a yowl that must have been heard at the Lowell Post Office, a mile away. Then he lit out in a beeline in the general direction of the Pacific coast. He didn't show up again for several days and I don't believe he ever resumed those window ledge naps on the sunny side of the cabin.

As the distance lessened, the cable became correspondingly shorter and the movement less jerky, until finally it had gotten down to a slow, steady motion; but then we developed other troubles. That stump-puller was old and the cogs were badly worn. Occasionally they wouldn't hold and when it came time to rest the mules, Jack and I would have to brace ourselves against the end of the sweep while Al unhitched the team and got out of the way. Then we would let it unwind and start from scratch again.

We were almost finished, with only a short distance to go, when a storm came up and we had several inches of wet, slushy snow. We could hold that sweep against a pretty severe strain on bare ground and with a good foothold, but now it was different. Once again it became necessary to unhitch, and when our feet commenced to slip we yelled at Al to hurry because we couldn't hold much longer. Just as he got the team in the clear, we had to duck and that long sweep unwound like a suddenly released watch spring, but while the mules were out of range, Al had miscalculated his own position, The butt end of the sweep caught him square in the seat of his pants and with arms and legs spread wide, he went round and round like the button on a woodshed door. Finally, losing his balance, he was dumped off in the snow, minus part of his overalls which had become attached to a sliver in the sweep. Jack and I lay flat in that wet snow and laughed until we were weak; it was one of the funniest sights I ever saw. I think even Al appreciated it when he looked up and saw the seat of his pants waving like a flag at the end of that pole.

Our next job was a short one, but it provided enough thrills to more than make up for its brevity. A new steel bridge had just been completed and the old ferry that had served for crossing the Lochsa during the past years was now of no further use. It was beached on the opposite side of the river and our job was to bring it across so we could salvage the blocks and cable before cutting it loose.

It didn't take long to cut some stout poles and pry the big raft loose from the rocks on which it was grounded. Then it was just a matter of winding up the windlass until the ferry was canted at the proper angle into the current; there were a few creaks and groans from the rusty sheaves and we were off.

I suppose we should have anticipated what might happen, since the river was at en extremely high stage for so early in the year; trees, logs and debris were coming down with the floodwaters at frequent intervals. We were a little past the center of the stream when suddenly we saw a big cedar - roots, top and all - coming right for us. There was nothing anyone could do, and when the tree hit us its weight, combined with the force of the current, snapped the heavy rope just above the drum. This caused the ferry to swing straight with the current and at the same time it nosed under; we had to grab the guard rails and hang on for dear life to keep from being swept overboard. Our old dog Ben didn't have a chance and in less time that it takes to tell it, he had disappeared around a bend in the river, struggling for all he was worth.

As we hung there with the water well above our knees, debating whether to try and swim for it or climb up the lead cable and "coon" our way to shore, the matter was taken completely out of our hands. Another tree bore down on us from dead ahead; if we were helpless before, we were doubly helpless now - however, it proved to be the best thing that could have happened. Somehow, the roots of the oncoming tree tangled and locked with the one that was fast to our bow in such a way as to swing the whole mass, including the ferry, at an angle with the current. We were moving again, without guidance, but in the right direction.

That should have been the end of the story, but fate had evidently decided that we had another thrill coming. Just as we touched shore and were about to congratulate ourselves, there was a muffled explosion, followed by a shower of dirt, rocks and chunks of rotten wood. One rock the size of a football slammed onto the deck and a piece of stump about as big as a fence rail splashed in the water alongside. The river bank at this point is high, and it was impossible for the two ranchers who were blasting stumps to see either the ferry landing or the river channel. Of course they didn't know that the ferry was in use or that anyone was near, but barring a few minor bruises, nobody was injured and even old Ben showed up later, tired and wet, but apparently unhurt.

Early in March it was decided that someone should check on the trappers that were operating under special-use permit from three Forest Service cabins in the back country. Since two of the cabins were on my district - one, the Ranger Station - I, naturally was elected. Andy Hjort, the local game warden was to accompany me, but shortly before the planned takeoff, Andy came down with the flu, so Bert Kauffman went instead. Bert was familiar with upper Pete King and Canyon Creeks, which were on our route, otherwise, neither of us had ever been in that country before.

We strapped on our snowshoes at the Pete King loading platform and for about two weeks they became as much a part of our daily apparel as anything we wore. The Canyon Creek Station, about twenty miles out, was supposed to be well stocked with grub, so we took only a good one-day ration; it could be stretched a little, we thought, if necessary.

Twenty miles is an easy day when snow conditions are just right, but we found it two of the toughest days either of us had ever put in. The snow was so wet and slushy that it oozed over the tops of our webs and we had to lift pounds of it each time we raised our feet. It was after dark when we reached the Cedars Cabin - a little past the halfway point and we wouldn't have found it at all but for Bert; he was still in familiar territory. It was just a little trapper's shack, unfurnished and seldom used, but we had hopes of finding a smokechaser ration or two, for our grub was nearly gone.

Yes, we found the cabin, but it was a sorry mess; sometime before, a huge cedar tree had fallen across it, smashed in the roof and now occupied most of the interior. We had to crawl in on our hands and knees, but at least it provided some shelter. Our luck wasn't all bad, for we did find a couple of chocolate bars with the corners gnawed off by woodmice, a little sack of rice, similarly violated by hungry rodents, and a quarter-pound package of tea.

We toughed it out that night and it really wasn't too bad. By morning it had tightened up some and the shoeing was better; we had only seven or eight miles to go and were thinking about that nice warm cabin at Canyon Creek, a good bed and lots of grub. It's a good thing we felt that way, for we needed that shot of optimism later in the day when the snow softened up again.

We arrived at what was to have been our first day's destination only to find that something was terribly wrong. The cabin was supposed to be occupied by one of the trappers, but he was not there. He was supposed to have packed in his own supplies and to have left intact a sizeable, well-balanced ration of Government grub that had been stored the previous fall. It was gone too. A window was broken, the stove was rusty, there was no firewood, and the half-dozen blankets were damp, musty and full of mouse holes.

There was nearly a full can of baking powder, but after scraping the bottom of the flour bin and separating its meager contents from you know what, we managed to make one small batch of biscuits, without salt or shortening; there wasn't even a bacon rind. The remainder of the supplies consisted of about twenty pounds of rice and a whole shelf full of tea. And that night a real blizzard hit us.

For two whole days, the wind howled, the snow came down, and all we could do was just sit there and wish we were somewhere else.

Two days we sat and chewed the fat
     While outside the snow piled deep.
Two nights we lay on the musty hay -
     'Till we'd shivered ourselves to sleep.
First we'd rustle some wood and stoke up the fire
     Then we'd thaw out a bucket of ice
And cook up a ration of rice and tea;
     Next time it was tea and rice.

By the morning of the third day the blizzard had subsided, but now there was three or four feet of new, fluffy snow on the ground. We didn't mind it at first; it was light and feathery and though we sank almost to our hips, we could kick our snowshoes through it without much effort. But after hours of that endless wallowing, our leg muscles began to protest and we were glad to make camp on the lee side of Middle Butte, which meant another supper and breakfast of rice and tea without benefit of salt or anything else.

When we arrived at the Boulder Creek Ranger Station, which was to be my summer headquarters, it was like heaven after what we had been through. The trapper who had that cabin under permit was energetic and intelligent, and everything there was in good order. He had an excellent catch - his estimate of the value was over two thousand dollars, a lot of money in those days. He had even spent some of the long winter evenings whittling out furniture from split cedar, using a draw-knife and a hand plane. A desk and chair that he made adorned my office for several years afterward; but it was his fried ham, potatoes and sourdough bread that really hit the spot; that and coffee. If he'd given us tea we would have thrown it and him out the window.

The remainder of the trip was uneventful, and on the whole, it really wasn't bad except for that restricted diet. But for a long time after ward, whenever I saw the sign of a Chinese restaurant, I had an almost uncontrollable urge to cross the street and pass by on the other side.

The fire season of 1923 was mild and without incident and late in October we packed out for the winter.

1924

This was the year of the early spring; a dry March and April and no rainfall of consequence until early June. We had packed in over miles of hard-packed snow along the Lochsa-Fish Creek Divide, but when we reached the river our horses were kicking dust out of the trail. We started the season with a build-up that the oldtimers said resembled 1910 and 1919; then, just when we needed it most, the heavens opened up and we experienced drenching rains.

I remember first, the Willow Creek fire. A two-man crew had started cutting out the trail and hanging the telephone line from Fish Butte and I was about to start another small crew up Sherman Creek when the call came. A fire had been sighted in the heavy cedar bottoms of Willow Creek and one of the maintenance men had headed for it, while his companion had hurriedly spliced the line together so he could call us. After getting in touch with Pete King and ordering all the men they could spare, we headed for the fire, but it was too late.

We gained a little headway at first, but there were just too many snags afire - big cedar shells, some of them six feet or more in diameter. About noon one of the biggest of them crashed down and the whole hillside exploded. Up the ridge it went, fanning out along the dry southwest slope, snapping and popping like a bunch of giant firecrackers, as only cedar fires can. It couldn't go far, hemmed in as it was by a snowline, but by nightfall it had covered a couple of hundred acres. Within this area were hundreds of big cedars afire in the roots, many of them in the butts and some in the tops from which they showered firebrands far up the slope.

That night we had a regular cloudburst. Ed Pell, the foreman, who had been dispatched from Pete King with a six or seven-man crew, got caught in the downpour a few miles below the fire. They avoided the worst of it by taking refuge in the hollows of some of the biggest cedars, but still they were drenched when they arrived early next morning.

After that, the fire was pretty quiet and we went to work with the conviction that with continued wet weather - always predicted for that time of year - we could control it without further reinforcements, and we did. But a controlled fire in early June is a lot different from one controlled in the normal midsummer fire season. Anyhow, I turned the fire over to Ed and his crew and sent the others back to their maintenance jobs; those trails had to be opened and the lines hung before we got into some real trouble.

We soon found that we had an unusual problem. The rains continued at frequent intervals and were just heavy enough to deaden the fire and make it impossible to find the snags that were still burning. After a day or two of sunshine, with an afternoon breeze, we could count those smoking chimneys by the hundreds; and this situation occurred time after time. Meanwhile, the snowline was receding and fire danger increasing with the advancing season.

There was one man in the crew - he happened to be the cook - who had logged on the coast and knew something about springboards, so I ordered the longest saws in stock and got him to show us how to get above the swell on those bug "churn-butts." That helped some; we did make better progress, but it was still far too slow, so we tried another scheme.

I had heard about using dynamite to blow down timber in advance of a running fire, but never as a mop-up tool on one that was just smouldering and that tied up only a few men. Yet, it seemed that this might be the answer, so I ordered a ton of it. The next thing was to get it to the fire.

The best route was up a fairly open ridge to a point above the fire, then down a spur ridge to a low saddle about two hundred yards above our campsite in the creek bottom. The problem was all in that last two hundred yards. The route had been blazed out to the saddle and a sign had been put up for the benefit of the packers. Marked with lumberman's keel, it read, "Unload here and back-pack to creek bottom;" but "Pop" Flynn, the first packer in, failed to see the sign or, more likely, just ignored it. A firefighter who went in with him said those mules sat down on their hind quarters like tired jackrabbits and slid to the creek bottom.

It was much too steep for them to come out the same way, so we had to build a shotgun trail down the creek; but a precedent had been established and all the loaded strings continued to come in over the "otter slide," as we called it. Furthermore, there wasn't a single mishap on that route, while the empty strings going down the creek chalked up plenty of minor accidents.

It was still a long, difficult job and we used up that ton of powder and two or three more stringloads before I felt it was safe to pull out the crew. I wouldn't have done it even then, but for the fact that the Fish Butte lookout could see every foot of the burn, and I sent him down at least twice to knock over another of those big cedars that had belatedly smoked up too close to the fireline for safety. And of course the fire wasn't out even then. The game warden made a snowshoe trip through that country the following winter and swore that he saw at least a dozen smokes coming out of Willow Creek, and I never doubted his word. In fact, I firmly believe that a fire which occurred there early the next summer - pegged as a lightning strike because nobody would believe otherwise - was in reality started when one of those big cedars that had caught fire a year earlier, finally gave up the ghost and toppled to the ground.

After those June rains we had a short, hot summer and a few narrow squeaks, but no real trouble. Then came an early break with more heavy rains shortly after the middle of August, followed by a dry fall and another workout. Again, we packed out in late October, and for the remainder of the year I was assigned to the Agricultural Census, one of the most unusual and interesting, but at times exasperating jobs that I ever tackled.

There were three or four of us, all Rangers, assigned to a large area of agricultural land that lay to the west of the forest boundary. It was our job to visit each ranch owner or tenant and help him fill out a questionnaire. As I remember, the form contained about a hundred questions and, in view of travel conditions at that time of year, we considered ourselves lucky if we averaged three or four contacts a day. Roads were all but impassable - even the rural mail carriers resorted to pack horses in some areas, so we traveled by saddle horse and spent the nights wherever we could find someone who would take us in.

I drew the block that extended between the South and Middle Forks of the Clearwater - a sort of wedge-shaped area between the two rivers with the forest boundary forming the third side of the triangle. It contained the little settlements of Clearwater, Battle Ridge, Clear Creek, Tahoe, Red Fir, and Big Cedar; also the area between Kooskia and Harpster. Within this unit there were a good many homesteaders, quite a few Nezperce Indians who were living on their original allotments, most of the local moonshiners, including a few who were believed to be fugitives from justice, and an assortment of ranchers and would-be ranchers, ranging from the moderately successful to some who barely existed on a few acres of partially cleared stump land.

As might be expected, I put up with some unusual, not to say unconventional, situations. I believe it was about the second night on the job that I stayed with an old man who lived alone on a small, rather rundown place. The old fellow was nearly stone deaf and partially blind, but he appeared to be happy on his little "ranch" with an old, bony horse, a collie dog, a few cows and some chickens. He had convinced me that the next place was an hour's ride away, difficult to find even in the daytime, and it was already dusk. So I shared his one-room cabin and we slept together in the biggest bed that I have ever seen. He had evidently made it himself and it contained a corn-husk mattress that was equally oversize. When old Joe blew out the kerosene lamp and I rolled over on my side, it felt as though someone had jabbed me with the small end of a baseball bat. Evidently most of the stalks and at least a few cobs had been included with the husks; I'm not even certain that some corn hadn't been left on the cobs.

Five minutes after Joe had doused the light, he was snoring like a steam locomotive and aside from a few brief lapses, I believe he kept it up all night. Meanwhile, I rolled and squirmed and tried to find a spot where some solid object wasn't gouging me in the side or back. When I finally did find a position that was relatively comfortable, I was partly outside the covers and when the cold night air began to penetrate, I had to crawl back in and resume my battle with the cornstalks.

Then there was one night when I shared a two-room cabin with a family of twelve, consisting of a man and wife, their nine children and an aged grandfather. The kids ranged in age from a fourteen-year-old chip off-the-old-block, down to a tiny sliver of something less than a year. The baby spent a good part of the evening asleep in the double bed that Grampa and I occupied later, and I suppose I should have anticipated the situation. The mattress was one of those dished-in affairs where all drainage is toward the center and I practically splashed when I hit that hollow. Grampa didn't seem to mind it at all.

The first of the Indian ranches that I tackled was not far from the town of Stites, and the place looked fairly prosperous. The house was neat appearing and had been recently painted, but when I knocked on the door, a young Indian woman directed me to a tepee that had been set up in the back yard; so I opened the flap and entered. There, squatted on the ground, was an old Indian whetting away on the biggest, longest bladed knife I have ever seen. He grunted and motioned for me to sit down on a wooden bunk - the only piece of furniture in sight - and I did so, but I couldn't keep my eyes off of that big knife, which he continued to whet. I wasn't really worried; there was something about his looks - something beyond the inscrutability of the typical "blanket Indian" - that put me at ease. I thought, "Probably he can't understand a word of English, but that doesn't mean that he's going to start carving up on me." He just didn't look like he felt that way. If I had only known then what I learned later: That long hair, buckskin moccasins and a poker face might conceal a Carlyle graduate or a delegate to the National Indian Congress. He could easily have been either one, or both. "Well," I thought, "It's worth a try anyhow;" so I stated as simply and plainly as possible, just why I was there and what I wanted. He looked at me intently for a long time, then in a guttural monotone with pauses between syllables, proceeded to give me all the information I asked for, but he never stopped whetting that knife.

I think maybe the other Rangers were a little bit sorry for me when I drew that particular area with its peculiar problems, and I know that I had a few qualms myself. However, when we compared notes after the detail was completed, I found that I had missed some of the problems that the others had encountered. I had not once been threatened with violence nor ordered off the place and I didn't have to make a single deadhead ride to town because nobody would put me up for the night. I don't believe this was due to any particular technique on my part, but rather to a condition that exists in those regions that are not far removed from a frontier status. The struggling homesteader on a "forty" of partly cleared pine land is likely to have more consideration for the traveling stranger than is the prosperous wheat grower on a thousand-acre ranch. Out of something over a hundred interviews, I found only two individuals who really posed a problem, and two or three more who might be classed as uncooperative. My experience with one of the former illustrates the attitude that was characteristic of both groups.

I had been warned that Mr. D. would be a tough customer. He had immigrated to Idaho from one of the Southeastern States and was regarded by his neighbors as a lone wolf, unfriendly, suspicious and independent. When I explained my mission he clamped his jaw like a bulldog and informed me that no Gov'ment man was going to get any information out of him. He, along with a surprising number of others - most of whom were otherwise reasonable and cooperative - believed that a declaration of their acreage, livestock ownership and crop production figures might result in an increase in their taxes. For this and other reasons, I explained that his taxes were a State and local problem, while this was a Federal project and that the information was used for cornpiling statistics. Furthermore, I told him that we were sworn not to show it to anyone and that the forms were mailed directly to Washington, D.C.

The one sour note was my mention of Washington. If we hadn't been outdoors he would have hit the ceiling (this was one of the few places where I wasn't invited in the house). "Hell and damnation," he roared, "If it ever gets in the hands of them blankety blank Republicans my taxes will go up. I don't trust that blankety-blank Coolidge any more than I trust old so-and-so (he named one of his neighbors on an adjoining ranch), and he's feeding up some of my hay right now."

I still had one ace left. In case of a direct refusal, we had been instructed to report the matter to the county sheriff who would take legal action. While Mr. D. apparently had little respect for Gov'ment men in general, the word sheriff seemed to have a quieting effect; no doubt he had clashed with the law before. Reluctantly, he gave me the information, but I have a suspicion that his figures were kept purposely low - the tax bugaboo was still uppermost in his mind.

And so the job was finally completed, though a little behind schedule. I think I learned quite a bit about human nature on that assignment. The people who lived in those communities were, for the most part, a rough, rugged, independent lot; but they were openhearted and hospitable. If ever I missed a meal, it was entirely my own fault, and I never left a place after a meal or an overnight stop with the feeling that I had been unwelcome.

1925

I have seen drier summers, but the fire season of 1925 was an unforgettable one on the Selway. Our burned area was remarkably low; in fact, the record was so good that nobody believed we had done anything out of the ordinary. The final score was, in round figures, 250 fires with a total burn of 250 acres and not a single man-caused fire. Most of these fires were handled by our regular organization which couldn't have exceeded 150 men. "Red" Crocker of the Selway District had the biggest one - a little over a hundred acres - and one of mine was the runner-up at something less than 50. To the north of us some forests were in real trouble; the Kaniksu chalked up a terrific burn and I believe the Pend Orielle, Kootenai, and Flathead were pretty hard hit too.

I know that a real search of the records for that year would reveal a considerable number of smokechaser epics, but I'm going to cite only one or two. There was Billy Keeley (I don't think I've spelled his name correctly, but that's the way he pronounced it), who put in nearly a solid month chasing one fire after another without an opportunity to sleep in a civilized bed, take a real bath or even change his shirt. After twenty-some-odd days, Billy had been released and was headed downriver for a rest when the supervisor came along in his car. Not knowing of Billy's activities during the previous weeks, he hauled the weary smokechaser to a trail intersection and started him out afoot for a fire that had just been discovered and was still unmanned. That night after another tough day, Billy fell asleep on the fireline from pure exhaustion, and didn't wake up until the ground fire had crept up and burned both of his shoes.

The Clearwater Forest was having just about as tough a time as we, and my neighbor to the north, Ranger Buckingham, needed help on a nasty cedar-bottom fire in the Weitas drainage. We were busy, but still on top of the situation at the moment, so I took a six-man trail crew and went over to help him. Buck agreed to release my men as soon as he felt reasonably safe, and I headed back for the Lochsa just in time to see the smoke boil up from a new fire on my own district.

It was on the river slope below Castle Butte and when I got there it had covered about thirty acres, but was being hit hard by a handful of smokechasers, reinforced by a small survey crew. The main front of the fire had run out of heavy fuel and it looked like, with a little luck, we could handle it with the present force, but I remained that night and planned to stay through the next day; it wasn't licked yet by any means.

Early the next morning I saw "Pop" Flynn coming down the ridge, horseback, from the direction of Castle Butte, threading his way among the windfalls. He had been intercepted at the lookout by a telephone message from Fire Assistant Crete (Jim) Urquhart and asked to deliver the message to me. I learned that shortly after I had left for the Weitas, a local dry-lightning storm had added to the load, and as of the previous evening there were only three men left on deck in my entire district. Then, to cap the climax, one of the three - the Fish Butte lookout - reported a new fire, evidently a "sleeper," low down in No-See-Um Creek. There was nothing else to do, so Crete sent all three to the fire; the lookout man, my assistant who was acting as dispatcher at the station, and a packer who had just returned from supplying a fire camp on an adjoining district. There was no help to be had from outside because everyone else was in as bad or worse shape than we; so Crete made a thirty-mile night ride to hold down the Lochsa Station until I could return.

I knew what a mess of fuel No-See-Um Creek was, so I hit for there first. On the way I fell into a piece of luck; my six-man crew had been released from the Weitas and I overtook them on the trail. With these reinforcements I hit the new fire shortly after noon. We found about two-and-a-half acres of fire and three very tired men. They had fought the fire most of the night and throughout the forenoon and were worn out - and they hadn't quit yet. They had had no sleep, nothing to eat except what they could grab from their smokechaser rations on the run, and they were half sick from drinking water that was foul with silt and ashes; but the fire was still holding.

It was right down in the bottom of a narrow draw, where it forked in two directions, and the mass of charred, smoldering logs and crowned out brush bore evidence of the fight they had put up. Fortunately, there was a tiny trickle of water and this had been dammed in a couple of places for use in cooling down hot spots, which kept it so roily that it was scarcely fit to drink.

In terms of present day standards, that fire would have been hit with at least ten smokejumpers and probably some special equipment, but nobody had told those boys that the job was impossible, so they didn't give up. I sized up the situation and decided that with our present force we should have no further trouble. Except for one corner, it was pretty well corralled, so I released the three and they immediately flopped to the ground. After a brief rest and a bite to eat, they headed for the station and I followed them an hour or two later after making sure that the fire was safe and that the six-man crew could finish the job.

That night the lookout, a high school boy and a star on the basketball team, fought fire in his sleep. Just as I was about to drop off, he would yell, "Grab that water bucket," or, "She's started up the ridge again!" The other two were dead to the world and I think all three of them slept around the clock.

Well, that incident was just one example of what must have occurred dozens of times on the Selway alone. Multiply that by the number of forests that had similar problems, and it may convey some idea of what really happened in a moderately bad year on those forests that managed to keep out of the newspaper headlines.

1926

On the whole, this was a bad fire year - one of the worst among those that didn't quite get into the headliner column. Again the Kaniksu took a severe beating and I believe the region chalked up the biggest burned area since 1919, but again, the Selway was lucky. We had a drier summer and a more extensive burn than in the previous year, but lightning storms were fewer and showers well spaced and in the right places at the right time.

This was especially true with regard to the Lochsa District, and since I can recall nothing of special interest on the fire front, it might be a good time to relate a few other incidents that were spread over an indefinite period of years.

When I accepted my first Ranger appointment, one of the requirements of the job was to furnish a saddle horse, riding outfit and bedroll. My first saddle horse was a big, bald-faced sorrel, a little on the clumsy side but a good walker. He had only one real defect - he could not swim. I discovered that fact the hard way while driving a bunch of loose stock across the river.

We used a ferry during the real high water; however, there was an intermediate stage when it was too deep to ford but too shallow for the ferry, which would hang up on the rocks. During this period, which might last several weeks, we swam the mules and took the saddles and cargoes across on a light raft which was attached to the ferry cable by a "snatch block."

At the first crossing, I noticed that Baldy was reluctant to enter the water, but when he saw that all the other mules and horses were going to leave him behind, and encouraged by a kick from my spurs, he plunged in. All was well until the water was up to his middle, then things happened so fast that I had only a vague idea of details at the time. Suddenly he reared up on his hind legs as though attempting to clear the river in a single leap; then, just as suddenly, horse and rider were completely submerged. We came up sputtering and spouting water like surfacing whales only to repeat the performance again; then we were struggling up among the boulders on the opposite bank. Why I stayed with him, I'll never know and it's even more remarkable that Baldy never lost his footing. Not long afterwards I watched him cross without a rider and got a better idea of his technique. He was all right as long as he could keep his feet on the bottom, but when it appeared that he might get his nose wet, he reverted to a series of kangaroo hops; what might have happened in real deep water is anybody's guess.

Baldy finally did learn to swim, after a fashion, but he must have had a deep-seated dread of the water, for he always fought it. A year or two later I sold him to an acquaintance who wanted a horse for light ranch work, and purchased a little cayuse mare that had belonged to a Nezperce Indian.

Blackie was a good little mare, most of the time, but once a month the old biological urge would get the upper hand and then she seemed to lose all sense of responsibility. One day she might be grazing contentedly with the rest of the stock and the next day she was gone. Then someone would call from the Kooskia office to let me know that Blackie was at the Yates ranch up on Winona Prairie where she had wintered previously, and some sixty-odd miles from where she should have been.

When Blackie took off on one of her periodic pilgrimages, neither high water, snowbanks, drift fences nor hobbles could stop her. In her attitude toward the water she was just the opposite of Baldy and I swam her across the Lochsa at many a difficult crossing with perfect confidence. But one spring we got a bunch of young mules as district replacements, and when a few of them started following Blackie instead of the regular bell mare, something had to be done. So I let her go for the price of her last winter's pasture bill which wasn't much less than the amount I had paid for her in the first place.

My third attempt at getting a saddle horse that would meet the requirements of a back country district was somewhat different. On the advice of one of my co-workers, I decided to put some real money into a young horse of good breeding, so I spent nearly a month's salary on a four year-old, and that was one of the smartest things I ever did.

Mike was a combination of what was supposed to be good and bad in a mountain saddle horse. He had a beautiful head, strong, clean limbs and a deep chest, but he was long bodied and rangy - just the opposite, so I was told, of the short-coupled animal that is essential for sustained mountain travel. He was sired by "Whiskey King," a well known track thoroughbred in his day, out of a cayuse mare. One of the local ranchers, a horseman of reputation, had acquired the stallion which he bred to a succession of mares, producing some outstanding colts. Many of them were mean but tough, and once in awhile he got one with a good disposition; then he had a real saddle horse and Mike was one of them. The only trouble I ever had with him was due to a common equine characteristic - one that closely parallels an equally common human trait just pure lonesomeness. Mike wasn't especially gregarious, only social minded. He could be satisfied for a week with one mean mule for a companion, but with only humans to fraternize with, he was as lonely as a professional gambler at a Methodist picnic.

Mike was gaited but, what is rare in a gaited horse, he had a flatfooted walk that ate up the miles on those up and down trails. He was hot-blooded but gentle; quick to shy at an unknown object but easy to control once he knew the score, and I never knew him to kick, strike or buck. No, I'll have to retract the last part of that statement; according to the record, he did buck just once. It happened this way:

George was a young, unmarried assistant Ranger and he liked the back country, but, like Mike, he too was social-minded. Those long summers in the wilderness without benefit of feminine companionship - not even a long-range view of one of the fair sex - were about all that he could take with equanimity. Come fall and the first letup from the shackles of a North Idaho fire season, and George was ready to invent almost any kind of excuse to get out of the woods even for a day.

On this particular occasion George had been forced to leave his saddle horse up Boulder Creek, having encountered a heavy blowdown from a recent windstorm. I had an assignment for him in upper Fish Creek - a long trip, impractical as a hiking chance - so I loaned him the use of Mike. I heard the story later, partly from George and partly from another employee whom he met at the Fish Creek Camp.

The camp was in a large, treeless meadow and as George rode up to the tent, a band of sheep entered the opposite end of the clearing. Perhaps it was the sudden appearance of the blatting woolies, or it might have been the herder's dog that startled Mike. Anyhow, he unlimbered that long body of his and George went up in the air and came down head first on the only obstacle in the entire meadow - a large log that had been dragged in for firewood. Furthermore, George swears that there was only one knot in the log and his head came in contact with that knot.

Now, the rest of the story comes from the second source, but George never denied nor did he confirm it. According to the witness, George slowly raised up on one elbow, wiped the blood from his face, felt the lump on his head and soliloquized thus; "Let's see," he said, groggily, "This is Friday. I can make it to Pete King by nightfall; catch the morning stage downriver, get Doc to patch up my head and take in the Saturday night dance at Kamiah!" Then he slumped over and lay in a half stupefied condition while his companion administered first aid, assisted by the sheepherder.

I don't suppose I'll ever know how much of this story is valid and how much fiction, but I do know that George's activities during the next few days were closely in line with the schedule that he supposedly planned in that brief period of semi-consciousness. Furthermore, he was back at the Ranger Station Monday morning, his head swathed in bandages, but ready and "rarin' to go."

Mike didn't seem to be any the worse for his part in the escapade, but I sure would liked to have heard his version. I wish I knew whether George put him up to it or not. I got Mike when he was four years old, kept him until he was fourteen, and in all that time never once did he buck with me nor with anyone else, so far as I know, except on that one occasion.

1927

Before I start talking about the 1927 field season, I want to mention a few things that are a little out of line with the rest of the narrative, but inseparable in my memories from the other events of the year. Major Fenn died that year - I don't recall the date, but I do remember him as a friend and advisor during those early years on the Selway. One of my first winter details to the Supervisor's Office was to write a series of short articles on fire prevention for the local newspaper of which Major Fenn was publisher and editor. It was my first attempt at that kind of job and I wasn't too sure of myself, but later my confidence got a real boost when one of my contributions showed up on the editorial page, with some favorable comments by the Major himself.

I remember two events during those early winters in Kooskia which are closely connected with Major Fenn. I mention them here because they involve a couple of the real oldtimers of Region One. First, was a party in honor of S.I. (Rene) MacPherson, a ranger who retired about the time that I came to the Selway. The other was a reunion between Major Fenn and Bob Snyder, an oldtime Clearwater Ranger who had served with him in the Philippines. Bob came up to Kooskia from Orofino, with some of the other Clearwater Rangers and as I remember the occasion, it was sort of an impromptu affair, organized on the spur of the moment.

Major Fenn's wife, whom everybody called "Grandma Fenn," was equally active in the social affairs of the community during those years. As a sixteen-year-old girl, she had come to Mount Idaho from Portland to visit an uncle, just in time to get caught in the Nezperce Indian War. It was said that at the battle for Mount Idaho she moulded bullets for the defenders - a detachment of the Idaho Militia in which Major Fenn was then a first lieutenant. They were married about a year later. Grandma Fenn outlived her husband by nearly thirty years and died at the home of a daughter at Walla Walla, a few years ago, at the age of ninety-five.

The 1927 fire season was just the reverse of the previous year. Regionally, it was one of the easiest seasons on record and it wasn't really bad on the Selway. However, instead of getting the breaks, our luck seemed to have run out. Ray Ferguson who had taken over the Middlefork District when Parsell resigned to take up ranching, joined me in the doubtful honor of producing the region's biggest fire that year. I don't remember whether it started on his district or mine, but we both took action and it was eventually stopped at less than a thousand acres.

That was the year too, that we started and completed the trail through the Black Canyon of the Lochsa. Hitherto, we had packed in over the high trail via Deadman Hill and Middle Butte - a two-day trip; now the distance was reduced to 16 miles and virtually a water grade.

Now, a word about some of those winter details. One of the commonest and one that I rarely escaped, was to travel around giving talks and showing slide pictures at the various schools of the community. The only vehicle the Selway owned was an old Reo truck and we used it occasionally; but more often we traveled by saddle horse, sending the projector and slides ahead by a local stage.

I remember one time when Fergy, George Case and I used the truck for a winter trip to the town of Nezperce. After getting stuck a couple of times, we borrowed some planks at a ranch house, bridged the ditch, and took off across country. Eventually we got back to the road but then we got stuck again. Finally, we hired a rancher and his team to go along with us and pull us out whenever we got stuck; I think he charged us $5.00.

Another time Supervisor K. Wolfe went along with Fergy and me on a trip to one of the ridge schools. We were carrying a portable generator to provide lights (rural electrification was still quite a few years in the future). It had worked fine up to then, but on the first pull of the string something happened. There were springs, cogs, pieces of wire, and I don't remember what else scattered all over the floor. There were plenty of suggestions but nobody was able to do anything and neither did anybody appear much concerned. Supervisor Wolfe made a short speech and a few of the local people contributed to the impromptu program, but I don't believe that anyone felt cheated, and I am sure that the prestige of the Forest Service remained as secure as it had been before.

Sometimes when I think of those early years on the Lochsa, it's hard to realize how isolated we were from outside contacts. I had now rounded out five years on that district, with an average of six to seven months in the field, plus an occasional winter trip, and in all that time I had had just two visits from the supervisor. As for District (Regional) Office men, they were scarcer than grizzly bears or wolverines. Howard Flint did make one short trip with the supervisor and they spent a couple of nights at my station, but so far as I can remember there were only two other Forest Service men, not attached to the Selway, who partook of Lochsa Station overnight hospitality during that five-year period. One was Bob Marshall who stopped over while on an unofficial hiking trip from Priest River to Missoula, and the other was Earl Sandvig. I believe Sandy had been looking over scene sheep range in the general vicinity and dropped in to spend the night. I met Harry Gisborne for the first time during that period too; he was installing some weather instruments at Pete King.

There were a few others who managed to get as far from civilization as the Supervisors Office at Kooskia. R. B. Adams put on a three - or four day telephone school which we all attended, and C. E. (Skip) Knouf was there for a short time. Shelley Schoonover spent at least a week in connection with some kind of an audit, but I remember him best as a saxophone player. And that just about finishes the list. But there is an incident connected with Schoonover's visit that I want to relate.

It was on a Sunday and the weather was fine, so Supervisor Frank Jefferson decided to take Shelley for a ride up to Number One Ranger Station on the Middlefork. Jeff invited me to go along and another guest was a young schoolteacher who was staying at the Jefferson's home at the time. He was a Russian with a long, almost unpronounceable name which we had shortened to "Sary." Now Jeff had just purchased a new car - I don't remember the make; Sary had a new suit and I was wearing a new hat. While it was a beautiful day, the road, as always except in midsummer, was full of ruts, pitch holes and mud puddles. Jeff's method of driving was to hit those puddles so hard that most of the muddy water went over the top of the car instead of against the windshield. Shelley was in front with Jeff, while Sary and I shared the back seat. When Jeff slammed into one of those pitch holes he bit his cigarette in two and the live end flew over the back of the seat. We couldn't find it right away, but in about a minute we began to smell something burning. Between Jeff's concern for the cushions of his new car and Sary's for his new suit, I had forgotten all about my hat until I began to feel a peculiar, warm sensation near the top of mar head. Sure enough, the cigarette had lodged in the crease of my hat and by the time we had discovered it, the hat was well ventilated and my hair had started to singe.

One of the last events of the 1927 field season was the driving of the "golden spike" at the completion of the new trail through the Black Canyon. Just a few days earlier some of the boys from my crew had pulled off a midnight raid on Fergy's crew that was working at the lower end of the project. Since our crew had been supplied via the long trail over the top, we were still subsisting on canned goods while the lower crew had fresh meat, vegetables and fruit in season. Our boys got away with a watermelon and a whole case of cantaloupes. The Lochsa had at last become a civilized district.

>1928

I started out the new year with a winter detail at O'Hara Ranger Station to help "Red" Crocker build a two-story log commissary building. The third member of the crew was Fred Shaner, and later Roy Lewis joined us for a time.

It began as a training project; Clyde Blake came up from the Nezperce to spend a few days showing us the mysteries of the Swede cabin scribe. Afterward we served as instructors to the rest of the Selway and most of the Clearwater Rangers. They came in groups of two or more and usually remained just long enough to make at least one blunder. I'll bet Crocker could look at that building today - if it's still standing - and point out each ill-fitting corner or other evidence of poor workmanship, including the dovetail that I put in backwards. Furthermore, I believe he could name the person responsible for each bungle.

That summer was much drier than the previous year but this time old Lady Luck had the Lochsa under her wing. Not having my usual quota of smokechaser trips, I didn't get on a fire until early September and that was to help Stanley McKenzie, Fergy's alternate, put the finishing touches on a hundred-acre fire on the Middlefork District. There were about 75 men on that little smudge, at least half of them smokechasers who had been pulled off from their back-country stations following an early snowstorm. With a crew like that, firefighting can be almost a pleasure.

An incident that happened later that fall calls to mind the Boulder Creek Canyon, a little mouse-colored mule named Useless, and one of the worst scares I ever got in my life.

There I was, hanging out over an almost perpendicular granite cliff, my left hand frozen in the half-inch swing rope while I groped with the other in an attempt to find something that I could grasp; even a fingerhold would have been encouraging. The other end of the rope was wrapped once around a cargoed pack and fastened securely to the saddle fork. The saddle was cinched to that little mule that we called Useless because she was both mean and unpredictable.

She was prancing around at the outer edge of the trail, kicking dust into my eyes and threatening at any moment to join me in a plunge over that precipice. I took a fresh hold on the rope with my right hand, partly to relieve the aching left which was skinned and bleeding, and glanced over my shoulder and down. About forty feet below, the cliff ended in an expanse of rock slide - big, jagged rocks that continued on down to the canyon bottom.

I had spent most of that day and the previous one rounding up some twenty-odd head of pack stock that were scattered from the Boulder Creek meadows to Eagle Mountain and Two Lakes. I had driven them to the Horse Camp, dismantled and loaded the camp equipment on three mules and leading them, with the rest of the stock loose ahead, I was headed for the Ranger Station. It had been a long day and though I had started at daybreak and eaten a cold lunch in the saddle, it was approaching dusk when I hit the roughest part of the canyon, about three miles from the river. That's when I noticed that Useless' pack was beginning to slip.

I could easily visualize what might happen if that little renegade got the pack under her belly, so at the first wide place in the trail I dismounted and started to straighten the load. I had loosened the nearside pack and was about to adjust it when something startled Useless. She swung around just enough to throw me off the trail and if I hadn't held tight to that swing rope I would have landed in a mass of boulders 40 feet below.

As I hung there, trying to blink the dust out of my smarting eyes, all I could think of was why hadn't it been one of the other mules like old Dan or Kangaroo. I wouldn't have hesitated to crawl right up under their bellies if necessary, to get back on the trail. But with Useless, it appeared to be a choice of getting kicked in the head or ending up in that rock pile with a bunch of broken bones at best. Anyhow, something had to be done soon, for my hands were tiring rapidly and the dust-laden sweat was running into my eyes until I was nearly blinded.

I began to talk to that little mule. Trying to make my voice sound convincing, I employed every word of mule language in my limited vocabulary. It did seem as though that little outlaw sensed the urgency in my tone; at least she quieted down a little and sidestepped back a foot or two from the edge of the trail. Cautiously, a few inches at a time, I hitched my way up the rope, hand over hand, talking all the while. After what seemed an age I was able to brace my elbows on the edge of the tread and relieve some of the strain; then I let loose of the rope, hoping that the little mule would step forward out of my way so I could climb back up on the trail. I hoped too that the sidepack which had remained in place due to my weight on the rope, wouldn't drop the minute she moved. I was lucky in both respects.

A few yards ahead, the cliff ended and just beyond was a little coulee with enough level ground so that some of the loose mules were bunched up and grazing. That gave me the opportunity to catch Useless and I soon had her reloaded and we were on our way. By that time it was pitch dark, but an hour later the trip was done.

If that was my worst scare, the runner-up was brought about by an incident that occurred several years earlier, and since I can't peg it to the exact date, I'll throw it in here.

Those directly involved besides myself, were a trail worker who had epileptic fits, a little strawberry-roan mare and a clown of a mule named Charlie Chaplin. For the stage setting, take a small section of the Lochsa Canyon during a stormy night; throw in a box of blasting caps for dramatic effect, and you have all the ingredients necessary for a near tragedy. Here's how it happened.

In the 1920's seasonal employees were frequently allowed and sometimes encouraged to pasture their personally owned saddle horses free, on Government range, in exchange for a verbal agreement covering occasional use. One case of that kind concerned a little roan mare who had become somewhat of a pet about the Ranger Station. She wasn't much bigger than a Mexican burro and even appeared to have some of the characteristics of one. Instead of feeding up on the good bunchgrass ridges, she preferred picking away at little clumps of grass along the river bank, and she was seldom out of sight of the station.

During the period that the little mare was with us, a trail construction crew was working up Fish Creek some five or six miles away. In this crew was a young man - I'll call him Joe, though that wasn't his real name - who we discovered was subject to epilepsy in a rather violent form. Joe was a likeable kid and a good worker, but one day he had one of his "spells" and pitched off the trail in a steep place. By a near miracle he wasn't badly hurt, but when George, the foreman, told me about it, I agreed that Joe would have to go. Of course we couldn't send him out alone, so I decided to make a quick trip to the trail camp and bring Joe and his personal belongings to the station. Next day he could accompany a packer who was due for a trip to Pete King to get his string shod.

My saddle horse was with the other stock, several miles up the ridge, so to save time, I caught up and saddled the little roan who, as usual, was close to the station. There was a mule at the corral and I was soon on my way. When I arrived at the camp, the men were just about to have supper and it was well past sunset when we started out; furthermore, a storm was coming up. Just as we were leaving, George handed me a box of blasting caps; they had finished the rock work and those caps were surplus - it would be better to store them at the station where we had a good powder house. I put the box in my canvas carrying case and strapped it to the mule which was loaded with Joe's duffel bag and some surplus equipment that George no longer needed.

Just as we crossed Fish Creek, less than two miles from our destination, the storm hit us. Joe was afoot and just ahead of me - George and I had decided that he would be safer that way - and I cautioned him about not getting too far ahead, as he was a good hiker. When we started up the switchback trail toward Zion Point, the wind advanced to a gale and snags began to fall above and below the trail.

Suddenly the little mare made a wild plunge. I managed to stick on, but in the urge to make time I had been literally dragging Charlie along, with the lead rope under my thigh and doubled back so I could retain a firm hold. The rope slipped through my hand just as Charlie went over backwards off from one of those switchbacks. I heard him crashing through the brush and down logs, expecting each second to hear the explosion when those number eight caps came up against a snag or some other hard object. It was almost pitch dark by now and I began to cuss myself for having left my flashlight in the carrying case, along with those caps. Anyhow, there was no explosion and now I realized what had happened. We were on the other side of a big windfall that had gone down across the trail, probably only minutes before, and I remembered that the owner of the little mare had told me once that she would jump over anything she could get her chin over. He might have added that she wasn't in the habit of consulting her rider in advance.

I shouted to Joe, to find out if he was all right, but he must have been beyond range, or couldn't hear me above the noise of the storm; so I turned my attention to Charlie Chaplin. The wind had begun to subside but I couldn't see a thing in that inky darkness. Finally, after groping around in the brush for awhile, my eyes became somewhat accustomed to it and there about twenty feet away and looking a bit dejected, stood Charlie. His packs were askew but the carrying case was still intact and it didn't take me long to get that flashlight. After straightening the packs I managed to work Charlie up around the windfall and back down to the trail and shortly afterward I arrived at the station. Joe was there, thoroughly rested and relaxed.

Joe was a good kid; I wish we could have kept him. The little mare was all right too. There had been an obstacle in her way and she had taken it in her customary manner. I never lost confidence in Charlie either; several years later he packed a live cub bear in a wooden crate for thirty miles without mishap. Only I was the dumb one, first for not switching that flashlight to my pants pocket before we started out and second for forgetting what the little mare's owner had told me about her ability as a high jumper.

1929

My final year on the Selway was one that I will not soon forget; particularly that night. I think it was the last of July when K. Wolfe, George Case and I watched the big lightning storm. It had started early in the evening and grew more violent as it plastered the north side of the Lochsa.

By eleven o'clock we had been in touch with all the lookouts and everything was under control; everything that is, except for one strike down in Bald Mountain Creek. Harry Chenoweth, the Castle Butte smokechaser took off shortly before midnight to a fire that he had just reported; but on the way, he ran into another one that nobody had seen. It was lying low, no smoke, but in another hour or two it might be the one that would blow the lid. So Harry stopped to knock it down, just as I would have done, and when the other one blew up, that was it:

We had already started reinforcements; a three-man maintenance crew from the Lolo trail and Jim Adcock's seven or eight-man crew from Gold Meadows. Both crews were hours away.

That was the start of the Bald Mountain Fire - one of the "monsters," as Major Kelley called them - that helped to place 1929 among the historic fire seasons. I believe it was the Major's first field season at the helm of Region One and he sure got a warm reception. Elsewhere throughout the region the story was much the same. I believe the Half Moon Fire on the Flathead was the largest, then came Bald Mountain and after that, I don't know how many others, any one of which would equal or exceed the entire regional burn in a normal year.

When I arrived just before daylight, I found between eight and ten acres of fire that was just too active for that time of day when any self-respecting fire should be quiet. This wasn't a self respecting fire at least it wasn't quiet. Both crews were on the line, having traveled most of the night, and considering the circumstances, they had accomplished quite a lot. Even in that dry year I think we could have held it, but for an unpredictable shift in the wind direction.

After that it was just a matter of too little and too late. With dozens of big fires threatening huge bodies of commercial timber from the Clearwater to the Canadian border, what could the Selway back country expect? So we sweated it out and took what we could get, and as I think back on those days I'm surprised that we got as much as we did.

The new Black Canyon trail helped us a lot but, even so, the transportation problem was one of our biggest headaches. One man was given the job of rounding up pack stock and hiring packers. He combed the country from the Salmon River to the Clearwater, picking up a few head here and a few there, until he had a full string; then he would hire a stump ranch kid and turn him loose. It seems incredible, but within a couple of weeks we had more than twenty strings on the main haul out of Pete King.

That Black Canyon run was a special problem; there were only a couple of places in the entire twelve-mile stretch from the end of the road to Beaver Flat, where two strings could pass one another. George Case, who was handling the transportation, had organized it on the order of a railroad schedule. Downriver packers with empty strings were instructed to go to a certain point and remain until a certain number of upriver strings had passed, then proceed to the next meeting place and repeat the performance. One miscount or an upset schedule might tie up a dozen strings for hours and delay the supplies to half that many fire camps.

After a couple of days I hiked to the Ranger Station for a supply of clothing and other essentials that would be needed for an all-summer campaign; then back to the fire which I didn't leave again until the end of September, two months later.

The first run had taken out most of Bald Mountain Creek, and a day or two later the fire jumped the river and ran to the top of the ridge on the other side. Then it made its wildest run astride the river and about eighteen miles in one afternoon. By now, both the Clearwater and Lolo Forests had joined the Selway in what Ed Mackay called "The retreat of the Lochsa."

During the first week I lost one fire camp - everything in it was burned to a crisp - had another camp surrounded, and we saved it only by packing it into the burn after cooling down the fire edge with pumps. On at least two occasions we thought we had lost men, but they showed up later a little bit singed in some cases but otherwise unharmed. I'll never forget the time one of our cooks turned up after he and several others had fled from the camp that was burned. He had lost all his personal belongings, and some of his hair, but he still hung onto a pot of stew that he had been preparing for the next meal.

Within the next several weeks I had put in eight camps and had a sector estimated at thirty-five miles long; and that was scarcely a third of the total fire perimeter. The only forest officer in that 35-mile stretch besides myself was A.G. Nord, a Supervisor who had been detailed from Region 4. He fell and sprained his ankle the first day, but refused to stay in camp. I helped him bandage it and he whittled out a cane with which he hobbled over the fireline. When the grade got too steep he would get down and crawl on his hands and knees. Each night he would soak his ankle and after a few days he was able to get around pretty well.

I think perhaps the best way to describe that sixty-day struggle is to relate a few incidents in the order in which they occurred; first, the initial blow-up when we lost the camp. We knew it was gone, but the subsequent arrival of a 25-man crew expecting a hot supper and beds, added to the problem. I am certain that those men were skeptical when we told them the camp had burned, but when I offered to take one of them in and show him, as soon as it had cooled down enough, there were no takers.

I had sent a messenger downriver with orders to rush the supplies, but there was just a chance that we could salvage something from the camp, so Jim Adcock and I started out in the cool of the evening. It was ticklish going because the ashes were still hot and snags were falling continually. Without the slightest warning one of those tall spike-tops would suddenly crash to the ground. I remember watching one that broke about half way up, turned completely upside down and seemed to quiver for a second or two as it bored into the ground.

Yes, we found what had been the camp. There was an indentation in the foot-deep ashes at each spot where somebody's bed had been and a pile of charred remains and exploded tin cans was all that was left of the kitchen. Two string loads of grub - hardly off the mules when the blowup came - was our main concern because of those hungry firefighters that we had left a couple of miles away.

The first thing we noticed was what looked like a pile of charcoal where three or four sacks of potatoes had been. By digging down into the center of the pile we found a few of the larger ones that had baked cores about the size of walnuts, but most of them were charred clear through. We ate a few of those unburned centers but decided against bringing any of them out; there wouldn't have been enough in the whole pile to satisfy one hungry man. There had been two cases of eggs and the eggs were still there but the cases were gone.

I remember reading one of those "Liars' Club" stories about a sack of flour that had been nailed to the wall of a cabin. When the wind came up, it blew the sack away and left the flour fastened to the wall. I never believed that, but I can vouch for something almost as curious. When that camp of ours burned, the fire went through it so fast and hot that it burned the crates, separators and excelsior packing, leaving the eggs intact and standing there, all glued together in their original rectangular form. Many of them weren't even cracked, yet they were baked so hard that we couldn't find anything edible in the whole mess.

The following day we had reorganized and were camped at the mouth of Buck Creek (it's called Holly Creek now), but that night we had another upset. Now, a down-canyon draft at night is a normal thing and we were prepared for that, but not for what happened. The fire south of the river had run to the ridgetop the afternoon before, and with the evening shift in wind direction, the whole wall of flame came alive and started moving downriver. Meanwhile, the north side became active and we were hemmed in and outflanked on both sides.

We got a pump set up, and were able to hold the campsite while we packed everything into the burned area, but it was a "close one." I don't think I ever saw a bunch of men work harder, but the fire had closed in behind us just as we grabbed the last few loads. I can still see big Bill MacPherson, a veteran of the 1910 fire, with the pump on his back and a coil of hose under each arm, galloping across that little flat and jumping logs like a mule deer.

We had barely gotten safely into the burn when the wind increased to gale proportions. The ash laden ground was churned up by a series of whirlwinds and we had to crouch down behind rocks, logs or whatever shelter we could find with our backs to the wind and our hats over our faces. The wall of fire was now directly across the river and we could feel the scorching heat, but when a sudden swirl of wind would lower the temperature for an instant, I would sneak a look at that moving wall of flame - it sure was impressive.

Snags were falling constantly, some of the heavily leaning ones crashing across to our side of the river, but most of them toppled downstream with the terrific wind, and sleep that night was practically impossible. As for breakfast next morning, it was a gritty mess, but we were all alive and the camp was intact, though covered with ashes.

Shortly after daylight, with one of the foremen, I started down the river. After a few miles of dodging the hot spots and the snags that were still falling, we came to the edge of the fire which, in the cool of the morning, was now quietly burning back into itself. Just before we emerged into the clear air, we met a messenger who had been sent to find out what had happened to us. The smoke had completely enveloped the Lochsa Station and Pete King and had rolled into Kooskia, sixty miles away.

I sent the messenger back with instructions to have a new camp placed on the river at Bald Mountain Creek; then we returned to the men. We would have to cargo our camp outfit for the packers to bring out of the burn, then we would start all over again. Anyhow, we would now be a few miles closer to our base of supplies.

We were more successful from the new camp, and in a day or two had several miles of held line on both sides of the river, but now, others were having trouble. We had just had supper a few nights later when Elers Koch and a crew of firefighters straggled into our camp. Just one good look and it wasn't necessary to ask them what had happened. Another of those unpredictable runs had forced them into the burn through which they had made it to the river. Their line had been to the northeast of us and roughly parallel to the Lolo Trail. We heard a few days later that the entire sector had been lost.

It was years later - the last time I talked with Elers and only a few days before his death - that he told me what had actually happened. Some misguided individual with too much authority for his limited experience - Koch didn't mention his name and I wouldn't repeat it anyway - had accused the crew foreman of cowardice when he decided to take his men out of a blind draw that appeared to him to be a death trap. Koch agreed with the foreman and they led the men to safety through the burn. The character who had tried to get them to stay, escaped himself, but decided to part company with the others before they reached our camp. As it turned out, even if their line had held, it would have been useless as well as foolhardy to remain. The whole sector was lost and their position would have been similar to ours at Buck Creek, but they would have had no river to protect them.

The first of the ridge camps on the south side of the Lochsa was on Dutch Ridge; it was known as the "Hot-shot camp" - I don't remember why. What I do remember about that camp is a cook whom I called "Old Apricots" because he reminded me of one with a similar nickname whom I had met on the St. Joe some years earlier. Perhaps a better reason is because it sounded less disrespectful than the one given him by some members of the crew; it was "Old Sour-puss."

Old Apricots was an oldtimer but he was also a combination of a chronic grouch and a confirmed pessimist. He not only believed the world owed him a living; he was convinced that he wasn't going to enjoy it anyway. I admit that I had the old fellow pegged as a troublemaker and would have jumped at almost any excuse to fire him if cooks hadn't been so hard to replace, especially in that back country with a two or three-day hike involved. I make this statement with utmost humility, for when the chips were down, Old Apricots delivered the goods far beyond the expectations of the wildest optimist among us.

We were just putting in the Dutch Ridge camp and Old Apricots had arrived along with a new crew and well ahead of the packers. When I explained to him that the supplies and camp equipment were coming via the Boulder Creek trail and should arrive soon, he gave me a look that would have curdled milk fresh out of the cow, and proceeded to put me wise. He knew that "dispatchers always delayed the calls; clerks always messed up the orders, and even if this didn't happen, the packer would probably get lost or deliver his load to the wrong camp." How nearly right he was!

When the packers finally arrived and I had counted the mule loads, I began to share some of Old Apricots' misgivings. I recalled the time that we got a whole stringload of oats and hay when there wasn't a bed in camp; and another time it was gas and oil for the pumps that didn't arrive until the following day. Well, this time it was different; we had plenty of beds and tools and one stringload of grub, but no camp equipment.

Now, this situation wouldn't have been serious under present conditions, with bakers' bread, lunchmeat, individual-sized cans and ready-prepared food that can be heated over an open fire. We had flour in fifty-pound sacks, baking powder in one-pound packages, whole hams and slabs of bacon, sacks of potatoes, vegetables and fruit in family-size cans, and everything else in proportion. To wrestle with this half-ton of food, Old Apricots had one can opener that he carried in his pocket, and some of us had jackknives.

At times like this, it is often easier to take some sort of action, even if its value is questionable, than to just sit still and let the events unravel by themselves. I decided to climb to the top of the ridge which wasn't much over a mile away; if the missing packer was on his way, he would probably be traveling with a "palouser" and I should be able to see the light in the gathering darkness. If not, there was nothing to lose. I was gone about an hour - results negative. When I got back I found that a transformation had taken place; there wasn't an idle man in camp.

The first thing Old Apricots had done after setting a bunch of youngsters to work whittling out forks from willow switches, was to start opening gallon cans of fruit and tomatoes. He invited everybody to help himself, and when the fruit was gone, he poured the remaining juice into smaller cans that he had opened and dumped into the big ones as their contents were lowered. While the men drank the juice from the small cans, Old Apricots rinsed out the large containers, filled them with spring water and a generous helping of coffee and put them on the fire. Using a pair of pliers that he had borrowed from one of the packers, he flattened other cans and shaped them into makeshift frying pans by pounding them with a rock. He had set others to work peeling spuds and slicing ham, and soon these were frying over the open fire. Meanwhile he had constructed a sort of haywire reflector from a couple of gallon containers in which he baked biscuits that he had mixed up in the top of the flour sack. This is an old trick and I had seen it done many times, but never before nor since, for so large and hungry a crew or with such professional skill and ultimate success.

It was after midnight when I finally rolled into my blankets; everything was quiet in camp except for the usual snores. Once in awhile a snag inside the fireline would crash to the ground and now and then a thicket of spruce would crown out with a roar and a shower of sparks. When that happened, some of the kids would raise up on their elbows and look sort of scared, while the lumberjacks and the Trent Avenue firefighters snored on. Tomorrow might bring new problems, but that night I slept in peace.

The lost pack string arrived next morning; everything was again in order and Old Apricots was as grouchy as before, but he was in the clear with me. He could gripe to his heart's content.

My next camp was at Gold Meadows and it brings to mind "Old Granny," the mule-chasing bear. Old Granny was a rather small, scrubby looking brown she-bear with twin cubs, one a dark cinnamon, the other a pale buckskin color. They were regular patrons of the Gold Meadows garbage pit. Since this camp served as a supply base for a couple of other camps, it was a common occurrence for one or more pack strings to spend the night there. The garbage pit, which Old Granny regarded as her personal property, was at the edge of a big meadow and it was not at all unusual for a mule to wander over in that direction. Old Granny regarded the mules as interlopers, and right from the start she had the situation under control. If a mule failed to leave when she entered the clearing, she would run toward him, making low snuffy sounds and wrinkling her nose. To the mules she was just another dog and their reactions were the same as when our old Ben heeled them down across the station flat if they got too close to the buildings. Some of them might kick at her once or twice, but there was only one mule who ever disputed her authority.

Old Milt was a big gray mule with a mean eye and a mind of his own. The first time Old Granny tried to put the Indian sign on him he kicked at her; then instead of galloping down the meadow he just took two or three jumps, turned, stretched out his neck, bared his teeth and came at her. The old lady almost fell over backwards in her attempt to stop; then she wheeled and tore out of there with the big mule right on her tail.

This happened several times until finally Old Granny apparently decided she had taken enough. When the mule turned, she hesitated and continued to sniffle and wrinkle her nose, and she didn't run. The mule on the other hand, wasn't quite so sure of himself and instead of charging, he sidled off, but continued to face his adversary, giving no ground. Old Granny decided to call his bluff and charged with all of her old force and authority. Down the meadow went Milt as though in fear of his life until the bear, deciding perhaps that she was getting too far from her cubs and the protection of the woods, hesitated and turned to look back. That was the gray mule's cue and he reversed and took after Granny with all of the old dash and vigor; but when the bear reached the garbage pit she refused to run farther. After that it was an armed truce. Milt wouldn't leave the premises but continued to graze, keeping an eye on Old Granny, while she in turn, settled down among the tin cans and potato peelings, but with an unobstructed view of the big gray mule.

I can think of nothing especially interesting about the next camp except that it was composed entirely of Nezperce Indians who had been hired through the Lapwai Agency. Their foreman was a Swiss sheepherder who had been signed up in Spokane as a strawboss, having had one previous season on the firelines. Appropriately enough, this camp was located at a place called Indian Meadows.

The last two camps, Flytrap Ridge and Sponge Creek, were thrown in to connect with the Lolo crews working down from near Jerry Johnson Bar. The final incident that seems worth recounting had no particular connection with either camp, but it illustrates what can happen to a "controlled" fire, late in the season, in one of those years when the rains fail to come.

I think it was near the twentieth of September and we had had no rain except a tiny drizzle early in the month; it lasted less than half an hour. However, cold, frosty nights and shorter days had helped a lot and we had miles of apparently dead line behind us. On this particular day I had been over a long stretch, making certain that everything was secure. Even this late in the fall, manpower was at a premium, and in some cases a single patrolman might be responsible for several miles of line that was dormant but not dead.

I saw the smoke long before I had arrived at the point of break-away, and guessed what had happened. At this point the fireline had been tied into a chain of wet meadows that were dotted with clumps of alpine fir. The grass had been green when the line was built, but now it was frostkilled and dry. It might have been a wind-blown ember that started it anyhow, those meadows were now the scene of a regular prairie fire. The humidity must have been low for that time of year because those fir thickets were crowning out continuously and starting more grass fires ahead of the main run.

I had found a lone patrolman doing what little he could and we fought fire together the remainder of the day; there wasn't another man within a two-hour hike in either direction. We couldn't accomplish much and that evening I hiked to the nearest fire camp and arranged to have a crew of men and a pump hit the fire the next morning.

I left the Bald Mountain fire on the last day of September and we pulled the last of our camps a few days later.

And that's my story of the 1929 fire season and the Bald Mountain fire as seen from the Selway side. It's only a small part of the entire story; on the Selway alone, there must have been a dozen other fires that ranged from a few hundred to several thousand acres each. As for Bald Mountain, I'm sure Jim Diehl and Paul Gerrard could tell a lot about the Clearwater line which extended from No-See-Um Meadows to somewhere east of Indian Post Office and Ed Mackay should have the best story of all. He faced the head of it during some of its fiercest runs. And I know there were a lot of others who took a major part in the campaign; but somehow we didn't seem to find the time to visit around much that summer.

After Lewis and Clark Highway is completed - and it shouldn't be long now - I'm going down through that Lochsa Canyon once again and see how many of the old landmarks I can recognize. No doubt it'll seem strange to drive in a couple of hours, the distance that we used to think of in terms of days or even weeks. It was slow going in that roadless and practically trail-less river bottom, but there was one time when we really made speed. I'll bet that sprint of ours at the mouth of Buck Creek when the fire closed in behind us, established a record that will never be beaten until the first car rolls through on the finished highway.

1930

During the winter of 1929-30 I was offered and accepted a transfer to the Roundtop District of the St. Joe - the same District where I had served as assistant Ranger seven years earlier. The Joe and Coeur d'Alene were now separate units and a forest headquarters had been established in St. Maries several years before. The Coeur d'Alene Association under Warden Billy Ross was still functioning, and Avery was still the dispatching center for the Main Division which now had five instead of four Districts. Eldon Myrick was Supervisor and his assistants were Bill Hillman and Frank Foltz.

In the seven years that had elapsed since I had left Roundtop in 1922, many changes had taken place. The two-room cabin that we had constructed that year was now just a guard station, the District headquarters having been moved to Twin Creek, formerly called Spokane Meadows. Except for Billy Daugs who still ran the Palouse District, there had been a complete turnover in the St. Joe Ranger force. Furthermore, I could find only one familiar face among the Roundtop seasonal employees; that was old Gust Miller. I can't think of old Gust without recalling the story of his experience with a porcupine and since it was during that summer that he told me about it, I'll include it here.

It happened late in the season and following a summer that had produced a poor huckleberry crop. This fact is significant because it can make inveterate camp robbers out of otherwise law abiding bears, and that year was no exception. Gust had an old forty-some-odd Colt six-shooter and he slept with it close at hand and with an ear cocked for the first sound of Bruin on a ham and bacon raid.

Before retiring, he had set three or four candles at the corner of a small table near the head of his bunk, and just before blowing out the light, he had removed his false teeth and placed them beside the candles as was his usual custom. Sometime during the night, Gust was aroused by a noise outside the cabin. It sounded like a bear at the screened meat cooler which was located under the eaves of the cabin porch, so he grabbed his gun and dashed for the door. He threw it open and took one step - one too many, it proved, for his bare toes came in contact with a large porcupine that had already turned in retreat.

Now, Gust had a strong Dutch accent which made him difficult to understand, but his ability at pantomime more than made up for his lack of coherence. In relating his encounter with the porcupine, Gust limped across the room, wooling his wavy gray hair with both hands and all but spilling tears down the front of his bib overalls, until I could almost feel the pain in my own toes.

I have never had occasion to remove porcupine quills from any part of my anatomy, but I have helped extract them from a few impetuous dogs, and I know that it is a slow and painful job. With the aid of a pair of pliers, Gust went to work, and for the next half hour he was busy. As the last dwindling candle began to flicker, Gust jerked out the last quill, swabbed his aching toes with iodine and rolled into bed. On awakening next morning, from force of habit he reached for his false teeth. All he could find was a solid mass of congealed candle wax that had hardened on the table top, and somewhere within that mass was all that remained of his dentures.

Gust's experience reminds me of another incident with a similar buildup, but with entirely different results. It happened to old man Smith, one of my trail foremen who also happened to be a veteran of the Nezperce Indian uprising and an ex-member of the Idaho Legislature. He too had bear troubles, owned a six-gun and slept with one ear cocked for the sound of Bruin on the rampage. Only this time it was a bear.

It was a dark night in one of the Selway trail camps and Smith was sleeping in a small tent that adjoined the kitchen and dining fly. When he heard the rattle of pans and the grunts, growls and miscellaneous noises that usually accompany one of those raids, the old man grabbed his gun and rushed outside. In the dim light he could just make out the form of a bear, at which he cut loose with a couple of quick shots; then, when he heard the sound of an animal shuffling off into the brush, he ran out farther in the hope of getting another shot.

But there was one thing that Smith didn't know. Actually, there were two bears and one of his shots had dropped one of them squarely in front of the tent. One more step and Smith's bare foot came down on the warm and still quivering carcass of the hapless victim.

The little boy who sat down on the hornet was slow compared to old man Smith when it came to a vertical evacuation of the immediate premises. According to the way I heard it, he tore down the tent fly, upset the stove and broke a table leg in his hasty retreat.

There was nothing spectacular in the way of fire action on the St. Joe in 1930, so far as I can recall though it was definitely not an easy season. I remember one incident, however, that was at least a little out of the ordinary.

The old pack bridge at Avery had outlived its usefulness and a new bridge was constructed to take its place, and also to tie in with a road project across the river. When it came time to remove the cables from the old structure, there were some complications because they were suspended directly over the Milwaukee Railroad transmission line. All necessary precautions were believed to have been taken but something went amiss; a clamp pulled loose and the cable came down across the power line and likewise across the telephone line that served the Roundtop and Pole Mountain districts.

Of course the power was shut off immediately, but not until after the damage had been done. At the time it happened, Frank Foltz and a Regional Office man - I'm not sure, but I think it was Frank Cool were riding along the trail over in the Fishhook Basin country. When the jolt came, Foltz had just raised the telephone wire so his companion could ride under a low span. Suddenly his horse went down as though it had been clubbed between the eyes. Frank said he didn't get too bad a shock himself, but the horse must have taken all there was.

I was at one of the lookout stations when the line went dead, and being unable to raise anybody by telephone or find out what the matter was, I headed for Twin Creek Ranger Station. When I got there, I found the dispatcher down on the floor with a telephone kit and some wire, making emergency repairs to the switchboard, which had been completely wrecked. He did it too, and we had service over the entire system by nightfall, but if an electrician had seen that installation he would have died of heart failure.

1931

This was the last of the real tough years that I weathered as a Ranger. 1929 had given me a longer siege on the fireline and it was plenty dry, but I believe 1931 was worse. This appraisal of course is based on my personal experience, which was purely local and may not have held true for the region as a whole.

The St. Joe was pretty lucky and we kept our noses clean until near mid-August then the Midget and Fishhook fires blew up. Neither was on my district. We were in pretty good shape at the time, so the supervisor asked me to go down and help Ranger Wolfard Renshaw (now a supervisor in Region 8) who had his hands full.

I was assigned to the Fishhook fire - the smaller of the two - but with all the earmarks of a bad one. Long afterward, in the Regional Office, I ran across a batch of longhand notes that had evidently been written at the fire desk during that period. One of them was worded something like this: "When I heard about the Fishhook fire the short hair on the back of my neck began to curl."

I got a late start and it was about midnight when I arrived at the fire. Sometime earlier a packstring loaded with bedding had rolled into the creek and what had been salvaged was still too wet to sleep in so Renshaw and I found a warm spot in the ashes and toughed out the rest of the night.

We didn't accomplish much the next day except to secure one of the flanks. Luckily there was no wind and although we had a lot of loose line, it was just a normal uphill run with the topography in our favor; most of the spread was to the south and west. Howard Flint arrived during the day and we met that evening near the head of the fire. It was past suppertime but we decided to climb to a nearby open ridge where we could get a birds-eye view of the situation.

Before we got to the ridge-top we were aware that a lightning storm was in progress to the south of us, and I began to wonder what was happening back on the Roundtop district. From the point of the ridge we could count more than a dozen smokes ranging over a wide area between Marble Mountain and the Little North Fork of the Clearwater. Even as we watched, another strike came down just under Fishhook Peak and it was one of those instantaneous flareups. At seven o'clock in the evening and with no wind to speak of, fires should be relatively quiet, but this one took off with a running start. It was in dense mature timber, but that fire was crowning out in huge puffs within a matter of minutes, and before we left the ridge it had covered an estimated five or six acres. I know that I was worried and probably showed it; my inclination was to get back to my own district, but Howard convinced me that it would not be wise to ask for a release that night.

Next morning things looked brighter. It just wasn't one of those bad burning days - you could feel the difference in humidity. Furthermore, we got some new reinforcements, including one of the Coeur d'Alene's crack fire crews and some additional overhead. I had no trouble getting released that afternoon.

Back at Twin Creek I got a detailed report of the entire district situation and was really surprised to learn that we were still on top. That fire that Flint and I had watched from the ridgetop was the largest of a considerable number, and it had been reported as controlled that morning at about ten acres. There were at least a half-dozen more in the Class B category, but all appeared to be holding, though there were several from which there had been no direct reports. It seemed almost too good to be true.

But here again, as on the Selway in 1925, there was a story of pluck and tenacity combined with good judgment that seldom makes the headlines. This was several years before the hard-hitting, so-called ten o'clock control policy was adopted and, while there had been some stepup in the decisiveness of fire action, the tendency was still to pour the man-power to the big ones and let the little ones take care of themselves. Furthermore, there were no CCC crews nor other alphabetical agencies to call on; it was just a case of scraping the barrel.

Charley Scribner was acting as dispatcher at Avery that summer and when he got word that Roundtop was in trouble, he called the local deputy sheriff and together they went down to the railroad yards. They combed the jungles and shook down the empty box cars until they had rounded up some 30 or 40 transients who reluctantly accepted an invitation to fight fire in preference to a one-way ticket out on the first side-door Pullman.

The next, and possibly a tougher problem was transportation. One of the district pack strings was tied up on the Fishhook fire and the other at Midget Creek. The remaining district stock consisted of one big plow horse that we had been using to skid telephone poles, a crippled mule that was just getting over a bad wire cut, and four small burros that had provided transportation for a "gypsy" trail survey crew. The packer was a young fellow who had served as combination cook and packer with the survey crew; he was the only person on the district with patience enough to get along with those funny little animals - I mean the burros, not the surveyors.

Well, there's no use going into details - it would take too long - but I want to say right here that two Ranger alternates named Lloyd Donally and Howard Coon, four small-crew foremen who had cut their eye teeth on fire assignments, a dozen lookouts and smokechasers, maybe 20 crewmen, a draft horse, a crippled mule and four burros, kept one Ranger District from disaster at a critical time during one of the worst fire seasons on record. Yes, and I mustn't forget the transients either; they got plenty of action and they produced better than we had a right to expect.

I wouldn't attempt to guess how much revenue the Forest Service has taken in from timber that might have gone up in smoke if someone had slipped that night; nor the value of the timber products that have since then been marketed from upper Fishhook and the Little North Fork. I do know that the story might have been far different if just one of those fires hadn't been stopped.

As soon as I had gotten settled, I started out to make the rounds and see what needed to be done on those fires that had not yet been reported as definitely under control. I had covered a couple of them by saddle horse and was on my way afoot to a group of the less accessible ones when I ran into something that made a forest fire seem cool in comparison.

I was climbing a steep, snag-infested slope, and as I stooped to duck under a windfall I shoved my arm right into a large yellowjackets' nest. I had to get out of there in a hurry, so I rolled off from the comb of that ridge and dove downhill, followed by a swarm of those whining little devils. I slid, stumbled, rolled and crawled until I hit a little alder patch and a big mud puddle.

I had lost my hat, torn my shirt and broken my glasses on my way down, and a dozen or more of those yellowjackets were still stabbing away inside my shirt collar or buzzing around my head, but when I landed in that mud hole I forgot everything else; it turned out to be a bear wallow, and there was a bear in it! I have always been nearsighted, and without my glasses close objects appear magnified; when that bear rose up on his hind-quarters he looked ten feet tall!

The bear was as startled as I and it didn't take him long to get out of there, so now I began to take stock of my predicament. I had succeeded in getting rid of my striped enemies and fortunately, stings and bites don't swell up on me as badly as on some people, but now I began to feel sick. Nineteen separate stings - the number was verified after I got back to the station - can contain more poison, I have been told, than a good-sized rattlesnake bite, though I didn't know it at the time.

I had heard that mud was good for bee stings and since there was plenty of it, I smeared it liberally over my face, neck, shoulder and upper arm, where most of the stings were located; I must have looked like a Zulu warrior.

For an hour or more I lay at that bear wallow and was about as sick as I have ever been in my life; then I managed to crawl another two or three hundred yards to the creek bottom. I took a big drink of creek water and then lay still for another hour or two, after which I managed to make it the rest of the way to the trail. It was after dark when I finally stumbled and staggered up to the Ranger Station, and it was several days before I began to feel like myself again.

The fellow who said, "It's the little things that hurt the most," might have been thinking about yellowjackets, but anyhow, in my case it could have been worse. What if the situation had been reversed and I had made that plunge down the mountainside to get away from a bear, only to wind up in a yellowjackets' nest?

1932

The year 1932 marks the end of an era for the St. Joe. Until then it had been a backwoods forest where the mule was king, packers were privileged characters and roads were something we heard about but seldom saw, at least between May and October. That year the road out of Avery and up Kelly Creek finally broke through to Roundtop, while another branch was slowly but surely boring eastward toward Bearskull and the Pole Mountain country.

Another event of 1932 was the dissolution of the Coeur d'Alene Timber Protective Association and the creation of two new Ranger Districts Clarkia and Calder. Dean Harrington was transferred from the Coeur d'Alene Forest to take over Clarkia, and as I recall the fire season that year, his district got the brunt of it. Actually, we were all fairly busy; it wasn't an easy season, just seemed so in contrast to the previous year.

This too was my last field season as a District Ranger. I retained the title for another year, but 1933 ushered in the CCC and I was detached from district work to serve as superintendent of one of the St. Joe's several camps.

In this record of my early years in the Service, I have tried to bridge a gap that seems to exist between the real pioneer days and a later period that, through force of circumstances, brought about its own publicity.

We have read many sagas about those pioneer Rangers; stories that date from the old "Land Office days" through the period that followed the exodus from Washington, and ending with the 1919 fire season. Those oldtimers traveled for the most part alone or in pairs. They got involved with outlaws, wild animals, range wars, claim-jumpers, and a lot of other things. I knew a few of them well and I do not belittle their accomplishments, nor would I detract from the glamor of their stories.

Then, there seems to have been a rather long period during which the Forest Service just plodded along without fear, favor or notoriety, until the dramatic changes of the "air age" brought a deluge of publicity. For a time, you couldn't pick up a newspaper or magazine without reading something about the smokejumpers or some other phase of aerial activity.

Again I want to say that I do not begrudge the notoriety, nor do I think the credit was undeserved. If anyone wants to challenge my statement that the smokejumper squads of 1941 and 1942 were the toughest, smartest and best firefighters the Region had ever seen up to that date, I'll listen to him, but he'll have to prove his point.

All I am concerned about is to give credit to those forgotten men of the Service; the ones we called the Regulars - the seasonal force that backed up the Rangers during that in-between period when the skidroad firefighter was on his way out, and modern techniques hadn't yet been developed. For a very modest wage and a short, unpredictable season, they did their jobs and were the backbone of the fire-control forces. When they succeeded - and they did at least ninety percent of the time it was taken for granted, and when the odds against them were just too great, it was the size of the disaster, not their efforts to prevent it, that made the headlines.

No, things weren't always easy in the 1920's and early thirties. We put up with a lot of inconveniences and not a few hardships - but we had a lot of fun, too, and I wouldn't trade the experiences of those years for anything in the world. Yes, those first ten years were the toughest, but in some respects they were the best in my entire Forest Service career.

Old Gold Peak Tower on day it was condemned — August 22, 1920. This tower originally was built by one man without assistance. Missoula (now Lolo) N. F.

Iris Lookout, Bonita District, Lolo N. F., before new lookout was built about 1930.