GUESTS OF THE FORESTS 53 



"Nice, settin' aroun' a fire, ain't it?" He grinned at me and rubbed his 

 hands near the blaze. "I like havin' women aroun', too. Gives ya nice feelin'. 

 Lonely settin' aroun' alone." He looked through the branches up at the 

 stars. They fascinated him. He talked awhile about the universes of stars 

 beyond those we could see, about how there must be some plan for them all 

 and how it gave him a religion. I asked him about Barney. 



"Naw, he ain't no sheepherder. Never teched a sheep in his life, don' 

 think. He's in business, made a pile of money. He's got what it takes to make 

 the women look at him, too. Some guy. He's been married twice." 



I felt sleepy and got up to go. He said to be sure and come over and use his 

 fire again in the morning. I thanked him and left, feeling my way around the 

 puddles in the road in the dark. The bed was warm and the night lay heavy 

 and still. 



Most national-forest campgrounds are off the beaten track, deep in the 

 mountains, but some lie close to the highways where the stream curves away 

 or the road dips in a glade. These are unlike the other campgrounds. Here 

 life is transient. This is but a brief stop on the way and one does not often 

 get acquainted with one's neighbors. People slam in at 5 in the evening, 

 pitch camp, eat and turn in, and are off pounding the roads at the crack of 

 dawn. 



There are a few like this on the road from Cody into Yellowstone 

 National Park. I stopped at Pahaska campground, which lies in a bend of 

 the north fork of the Shoshone. Cotton clouds towed their lumbering 

 shadows over the mountains and all day the long yellow sightseeing buses 

 from Cody churned the dust in their roaring climb. 



The long strip of camp sites was deserted when I got there at 10:30 in 

 the morning, except for a couple of temporarily abandoned trailers that 

 looked like chickens standing on one leg with their eyes shut. The tall 

 cottonwoods were silver in the sunlight. 



Lunch time came and cars started dropping out of the stream on the 

 road, dropping down to the quiet eddy of the campground — cars from 

 Wyoming, cars from South Dakota, cars from Ohio, Nebraska, California. 

 Another trailer came in. The people sat in tight little groups. If there were 



