STORIES TOLD IN RANGER CAMPS 



By CHARLES HOWARD SHINN, Supervisor of Sierra National Forest 



No. 1 



SIX or seven years ago I rode into a ranger, one could see that his uncle's 



ranger camp on Bubbs Creek, and career had become a proud family tra- 



fonnd three men there, intently dition. 



listening to a young ranger from Inyq. "My uncle was mighty strong an' quiet 



Those were the days in which not only by then, an' people was generally care- 



the total inadequacy of the force to any- ful what they said to him. He was fif- 



thing except the most perfunctory pa- teen years older than my father, but 



trolling of the back-country, but also when they growed up they acted an' 



our definite orders, compelled the rang- looked a good deal alike." 



ers to be camped many miles apart. The ranger, stretching himself out 



If I should map this ranger's district on the rocks, added : "An' those that 



topographically, all of you who read knew them say I am cut off the same 



this would be sorry for him and for stick, only I am bigger- an' lazier." 



the forest (in those days the "reserve"). Looking at the careless young giant 



But the ranger, a fine and fearless but of twenty-two, one could have given 



somewhat young mountaineer, was not anything to have seen him truly and 



at all sorry for himself. Plenty of completely aroused in some great cause, 



pleasant people went past, along the He looked like a yellow-haired Viking 



great Kearsarge trail, or fished in the up among the high places of Norway, 



magnificent rivers, and he gave them looking for pines to build a sea dragon 



easily and well of his really superb under orders, for some one else to 



knowledge of that whole region. Ac- sail into the West, 



cording to his lights, he was an honest "Well," he continued, "my uncle 



ranger and resisted every temptation to came to California, and looked around 



leave his beat and go hunting, or to a little and noticed that every feller 



climb the peaks. Then, coming back, had to take care of himself pretty lively 



some of the tourists took dinner with at times. Then he went south of San 



him, and left him little mementos or Francisco on the road to San Jose, and 



surplus grub. built a roadhouse and eating station, 



So I let my horse wander and crop fenced in a patch of land (squatter 



grass, and told the ranger to "go ahead title) and got him some hogs and a 



with his old yarn," which I write down few cattle. Of course, he run a little 



here partly to show the stock from saloon every roadhouse needed that, 



which this type of ranger springs, partly "In a year everybody who traveled 



to illustrate "the times that were," but that road stopped at the place, an' he 



chiefly, I think, because I liked the dealt square. Then he picked up a boy 



straightforwardness of the story itself, of sixteen out of some deepwater ship 



"Now, my uncle," he was saying, in the bay a boy who had run oft" 



"was just that kind of an up-and-down from his home in Vermont and had 



man, and after that trouble he came to learned to ride and shoot. He was 



California, in 1850, when he was twenty- kinder reddish and freckled and went 



five years old." Evidently I had lost by the name of Brick. He didn't talk 



the boyhood of the hero of the epic, much, and he had gray eyes that shut 



but from the solemn tone of the young out everything behind them but he got 



763 



