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 
U 
