She looked at him humorously despairing.

“That’s just like an outsider.  There are plenty who feel as I do, but they don’t say so.  Look at old California John, at Ross Fletcher, at a half-dozen others under your very nose.  Have you ever stopped to think why they have so long been loyal?  I don’t suppose you have, for I doubt if they have.  But you mark my words!”

“All right, Field Marshal—­or is it ’General’?” said Bob.

She laughed.

“Just camp cook,” she replied good-humouredly.

The sun was slanting low through the tall, straight trunks of the trees.  Amy Thorne arose, gathered a handful of kindling, and began to rattle the stove.

“I am contemplating a real pudding,” she said over her shoulder.

Bob arose reluctantly.

“I must be getting on,” said he.

They said farewell.  At the hitching rail Thorne joined him.

“I’m afraid I’m not very hospitable,” said the Supervisor, “but that mustn’t discourage you from coming often.  We’ll be better organized in time.”

“It’s mighty pleasant over here; I’ve enjoyed myself,” said Bob, mounting.

Thorne laid his hand on the young man’s knee.

“I wish we could induce you old-timers to come to our way of thinking,” said he pleasantly.

“How’s that?” asked Bob.

“Your slash is in horrible shape.”

“Our slash!” repeated Bob in a surprised tone.  “How?”

“It’s a regular fire-trap, the way you leave it tangled up.  It wouldn’t cost you much to pile the tops and leave the ground in good shape.”

“Why, it’s just like any other slash!” protested Bob.  “We’re logging just as everybody always logs!”

“That’s just what I object to.  And when you fell a tree or pull a log to the skids, I do wish we could induce you to pay a little attention to the young growth.  It’s a little more trouble, sometimes, to go around instead of through, but it’s worth it to the forest.”

Bob’s brows were bent on the Supervisor in puzzled surprise.  Thorne laughed, and slapped the young man’s horse on the flanks to start him.

“You think it over!” he called.

A half-hour’s ride took Bob to the clearing where the logging crews had worked the year before.  Here, although the hour was now late, he reined in his horse and looked.  It was the first time he had ever really done so.  Heretofore a slashing had been as much a part of the ordinary woodland landscape as the forest itself.

He saw then the abattis of splintered old trunks, of lopped limbs, and entangled branches, piled up like jackstraws to the height of even six or eight feet from the ground; the unsightly mat of sodden old masses of pine needles and cedar fans; the hundreds of young saplings bent double by the weight of debris, broken square off, or twisted out of all chance of becoming straight trees in their age; the long, deep,