THE RECONNAISSANCE PARTY 3 



work with practically no expenses, looked good, if 

 I could hold down the job. As for that, I felt 

 sure that Frazer, whom I knew well, was respon- 

 sible for this opportunity to join his party and I 

 reflected that certainly he would not have suggested 

 it unless he considered me capable of doing the work. 

 The upshot was that a prompt acceptance, instead 

 of the refusal at first contemplated, went to the Su- 

 pervisor. Two weeks later, on the last day of April, 

 I reached Silver City and reported for duty. 



The others of the party, with a single exception, 

 were already assembled, gathered together from the 

 four quarters of the Forest Service world. 



There was first of all Frazer, the Chief of Party. 

 He was a deceptively delicate looking youth with 

 a slender frame that held the strength and tough- 

 ness of steel wire, and an ingenuous, boyish face 

 which belied his lifelong experience in the open 

 West, among men of all sorts and conditions, in 

 circumstances of ever-varying colour. Five years' 

 work in the Forest Service had won for him the 

 reputation of being one of the best field men in the 

 Southwest. 



There was Wallace, a Forest Assistant fresh from 

 Yale, with a plethora of theories and no experience 

 to speak of. Fortunately, however unlike some of 

 his fellow technical men, just graduated he realised 

 that his education was not entirely complete, that 

 there are some facts in the science of forestry which 

 can be learned better by actual timber work than 



