In the center of the little square room, mounted on a high table, was a detail map of all the country within sight of the station—­and that meant a good many miles of up and down scenery.  Over it a slender pointer was fitted to a pin, in the center of the map, that let it move like a compass.  And so cunningly was the chart drawn and placed upon the table that wherever one sighted along the pointer—­as when pointing at a distant smudge of smoke in the valley or on the mountainside—­there on the chart was the number by which that particular spot was designated.

“Now, you see, suppose there’s a fire starts at Massack—­or along in there,” Ed, the lookout fireman, explained, pointing to a distant wrinkle in the bluish green distance, “you swing this pointer till it’s drawing a bead on the smoke, and then you phone in the number of the section it picks up on the chart.  The lookout on Claremont, he’ll draw a bead on it too, and phone in his number—­see?  And where them two numbers intersect on the chart, there’s your fire, boy.”

Jack studied the chart like a boy investigating a new mechanical toy.  He was so interested that he forgot himself and pushed his hair straight back off his forehead with the gesture that had become an unconscious mannerism, spoiling utterly the plastered effect which he had with so much pains given to his hair.  But Hank and the fireman were neither suspicious nor observing, and only laughed at his exuberance, which they believed was going to die a violent death when Jack had spent a night or two there alone.

“Is that all I have to do?” he demanded, when he had located a half dozen imaginary fires.

“That’s all you get paid for doing, but that ain’t all you have to do, by a long shot!” the fireman retorted significantly.  But he would not explain until he had packed his bed on the horse that had brought up Jack’s bedding and the fresh supplies, and was ready to go down the mountain with Hank.  Then he looked at Jack pityingly.

“Well—­you sure have got my sympathy, kid.  I wouldn’t stay here another month for a thousand dollars.  You’ve got your work cut out for you, just to keep from going crazy.  So long.”

Jack stood on a little jutting pinnacle of rock and watched them out of sight.  He thought the great crater behind the station looked like a crude, unfinished cup of clay and rocks; and that Crystal Lake, reflecting the craggy slope from the deeps below, was like blueing in the bottom of the cup.  He picked up a rock the size of his fist and drew back his arm for the throw, remembered what the supervisor had told him about throwing stones into the lake, and dropped the rock guiltily.  It was queer how a fellow wanted to roll a rock down and shatter that unearthly blue mirror into a million ripples.