Jack stared back, his eyes widening and sobering a little as he discovered that this man was not so easily put off with laughing evasion.  He wondered if Ross had read the papers that morning, and if he, like the tall man at the postoffice, was mentally fitting him into the description of the auto bandit that was being trailed.  Instinctively he rose to the new emergency.

“On the level, I want work and I want it right away,” he said.  “Being alone won’t bother me—­I always get along pretty well with myself.  I want to get ahead of the game about five hundred dollars, and this looks to me like a good chance to pile up a few iron men.  I’m game for the lonesomeness.  It’s a cold dollars-and-cents proposition with me.”  He stopped and eyed the other a minute.  “Does that answer what’s in your mind?” he asked bluntly.

Forest Supervisor Ross turned away his glance and reached for his pen.  “That’s all right,” he half apologized.  “I want you to understand what you’re going up against, that is all.  What’s your name?”

Having the question launched at him suddenly like that, Jack nearly blurted out his own name from sheer force of habit.  But his tongue was his friend for once and pronounced the last word so that Ross wrote “John Carew” without hesitation.  And Jack Corey, glancing down as the supervisor wrote, stifled a smile of satisfaction.

“It happens to be the day when we usually send up supplies,” said Ross when he had finished recording the fact of Jack’s employment as fireman.  “Our man hasn’t started yet, and you can go up with him.  Come back here in an hour, can you?  There’ll be a saddle horse for you.  Don’t try to take too much baggage.  Suitcase, maybe.  You can phone down for anything you need that you haven’t got with you, you know.  It will go up next trip.  Clothes and grub and tobacco and such as that—­use your own judgment, and common sense.”

“All right.  Er—­thank you, sir.”  Jack blushed a bit over the unaccustomed courtesy of his tone, and turned into the outer office.

“Oh—­Carew!  Don’t fall into the fool habit of throwing rocks down into the lake just to see them bounce!  One fellow did that, and came near getting a tourist.  You’ll have to be careful.”

“I certainly will, Mr. Ross.”

The other two men gave him a friendly nod, and Jack went out of the office feeling almost as cheerful as he had tried to appear.

CHAPTER FIVE

“IT’S A LONG WAY TO TIPPERARY,” SANG JACK

Riding at a steady, climbing walk up a winding road cut into the wooded mountainside; with a pack-horse loaded with food and new, cheap bedding which Jack had bought; with chipmunks scurrying over the tree trunks that had gone crashing down in some storm and were gathering moss on their rotting bark; with the clear, yellow sunlight of a mountain day in spring lying soft on the upper branches, Jack had a queer