In the Great
Apache Forest

Introducing the Hero

THIS is to be George Crosby’s – the Lone Boy Scout’s – own story. But before I set it down, as he told it evening after evening before the big fireplace in my shooting lodge, some explanations are necessary.

George Crosby was born and has lived all of his seventeen years, in Greer, a settlement of a half dozen pioneer families located on the Little Colorado River, in the White Mountains, Arizona, and 108 miles south of the nearest railway, the Santa Fé, at Holbrook. Here is a high country; the altitude of Greer is 8500 feet, and south of it there is a steady rise for eleven miles to the summit of the range, Mount Thomas, 11,460 feet. And here, covering both slopes of the White Mountains, is the largest virgin forest that we have outside of Alaska, the Apache National Forest. It is about a hundred miles wide, and more than that in length, and contains millions of feet of centuries-old Douglas fir, white pine, and spruce. But it is an open forest – one can ride at will through most of it, and it is interspersed with many parks of open grassland of varying extent. On Its southern slope it adjoins the reservation of the White Mountain Apaches, who are still carefully watched by several companies of United States Cavalry, stationed at Fort Apache. Because it is so remote from the railroads, the great forest still harbors an abundance of game animals and birds, and its cold, pure streams are full of trout. Here the sportsman can still find grizzly bears, some of them of great size. There are black bears, also, and mule deer and Mexican whitetail deer, and of wild turkeys and blue grouse great numbers. Cougars, wolves, coyotes, and lesser prowlers of the night are quite numerous, and in most of the streams the beavers are ever at work upon their dams and lodges.

The settlers of Greer are a hardy people. Born and reared at this great altitude, they are men women and children of more than average height, and of tremendous lung expansion. Theirs is one continuous struggle with Nature for the necessities of life, for here, in the heart of Arizona, they are actually in a sub-Arctic climate. Summer frosts – even in August – sometimes kill their fields of oats, and in the deep snows of the winters some of their cattle frequently perish. But they do their best, these mountain people. Through their crops fail and their live-stock die, they “carry on” with hopeful hearts. And remote from civilization though they are – some of them have never seen a railroad – they are surprisingly well informed of world activities. For they have a tri-weekly mail service and subscribe for all the best magazines and several daily papers, and thoroughly read them. They are all patriotic: when the war broke out their sons did not wait to be drafted; they at once enlisted, and in due time faced the Huns in France. How the women and girls then worked for the Red Cross, and the men for Liberty Bonds! From Greer Post-Office went hundreds of sweaters and pairs of well-knit stockings, and every bond allotment of the settlement was largely over-subscribed!

It was then, at the opening of the war, that George Crosby considered what he could do for the good cause. At first he used all his spare time doing chores for those whose sons had enlisted. But that was not exactly what he wanted to do; it wasn’t big enough. If he only had some authority, there was much that he could do. He had long wanted to be a member of the Boy Scouts; nothing about them in the magazines and newspapers that came to his home ever escaped his eye. And now he read of the great work they were doing toward the winning of the war, and determined that he must join the organization. But how could he do it? There could be no company of Scouts formed in Greer; he was the only boy there save two or three little toddlers. For days he brooded over the question, and then, without a word about it to his mother and stepfather, he one evening wrote the following touching appeal to me – the one man of the great outside world whom he knew, in far-away Los Angeles:

Dear Friend:

I call you friend because I know you are my friend. Your shooting lodge looks very lonesome these days, the windows are shuttered and no smoke coming out of the big chimney. We all wish that you may soon come back to it. You should come right away, for only day before yesterday, when I was hunting for some of our horses a couple miles up the river, I saw the fresh tracks of a big grizzly bear, and I know that you want another one. Some big gobblers are using the spring just up the slope from your place.

Uncle Cleve Wiltbank has gone to the war, and so have Mark Hawes, Henry Butler, and Forest Ranger Billingslea, and we sure miss them. I am not old enough to go, too. But if I can only join the Boy Scouts I may be able to help, some. Anyhow, I could then trail about after some strange men who have lately come into these mountains, and seem not to want to meet any of us. We don’t even know where they are camped. I wish that you would get me into the Boy Scouts. I am sure that you can do it.

Your mountain friend

George Crosby

Upon receiving this note, I at once sent it to a Phoenix, Arizona, friend who I knew was interested in the Boy Scouts organization, and the result was that, after the exchange of several letters, George Crosby became a member of a troop of the Phoenix Boy Scouts of America.

Time passed. Came the summer of 1918, and the Supervisor of the Apache National Forest found himself woefully short of men, and the dreaded fire season coming on. The most of his rangers, fire lookouts, and patrols had gone to the war, and he could not find enough men of the right sort to take their places. When word of this shortage of men reached Greer, the settlers were seriously troubled about it. Said John Butler, George Crosby’s step-father: “This is sure bad for us. Fires will be started by the lightning and by careless travelers, and if there are no lookouts to report them, they will gain such headway that they will burn our whole cattle range. Then we will go broke!”

“Well, I’ll be one of the Lookouts if the Supervisor will take me on,” said George.

“Sure! That is the very thing for you to do–” John began, but the good mother broke in: No! No! George is too young – too inexperienced to undertake that dangerous, lonely work. Away up on one of those peaks by himself, right where the electric storms center – right among those terrible grizzly bears – strange men prowling about in the forest, bad men, of course, or they would make themselves known to us – no, I do not want my boy to be a fireguard.”

But those mysterious men have gone!” George exclaimed. “Roy Hall found their deserted camp. If I let the grizzlies alone, they’ll let me alone! And as to the thunderstorms, I know the rules: when they gather, the fireguards must leave the lookout stations and go down to their cabins. Don’t you fear for me, mother, I’ll be save enough!”

“Sure he will!” John told her. “And just think, wife, of the service he will be to the country in its time of need! And now that he has become a Boy Scout, something big is expected of him. Well, here is his chance to do the big thing!”

The mother sighed. “I take back my objections,” she said. “I should not have said one word against this. If my own young brother can face the Huns in France, then it is but fair that my young son shall face the lesser dangers in this Apache Forest!”

When Forest Supervisor Frederic Winn, in Springerville, received George’s letter of application for a position as fireguard during the season, he, too, heaved a big sigh, but it was a sigh of relief. He hurried home from the office to tell Mrs. Winn that George Crosby was to be a fireguard, and then he called for his big, black horse, and rode the eighteen miles up across the desert and into the forest to Greer, to give George his necessary instructions, and tell him that his salary would be ninety dollars per month.

But there! I have talked enough. With this introduction, I let George tell his story, a story that I found exciting enough.