Evening Star Newspaper, March 13, 1932, Page 88

PUZZLES —_—] ERE'S a puzzle in honor of St. Patrick’s day. It will not take much thought to get the first name, but the others aren't so easy. "GUESS THESE 3 TRISH NAMES g How many words can you make from the letters in “Emerald,” the name often applied to the Irish Isle? The puzzle editor got 52. Can you do as well? gl We use the same word for our word dia~ mond. The second line is a printer’s measure (plural), the third means smooths or levels ©if, the fifth is serpentine, and the sixth is deceitful. Form the diamond. E M E EMERALD A L D o Below are four words beginning with that good Irish name, Pat. Fill the blank spaces and form the words. 1. PAT—E—I— 2. PAT—I—-TI—M 3. PAT—-F—N—E— 4. PAT-O——2Z— — CROSS WORD PUZZLE The definitions are: HORIZONTAL. . Kind of fish . Measure of land . We . Often . Within . Expire . Carry . Method . Steal . Chop . Insect . Moisture . Cobbler’s tool . Cent (Abbr.) . Vegetable . Upon . Sharpening stone. . Clean VERTICAL. . Belect, pick out 2. 8o . Shell of a pea . Devoured . The smallest State (Abbr.) . To look upon longingly . Lie . Burial vase . Obtained. . Marry . Reverential fear . Roguish . To be in debt . Recede, diminish . Large monkey . Portion of a race . Toward . Word used with “either” Within His Rights “There's a bug in my prunes,” complained the boarder. “Well, you're the first to eomplain,” icily turned the landlady. “I hope you'll excyse me. But—you see— I'm a vegetarian.” THE SUNDAY STAR, WASHINGTON, D. C, MARCH 13, e e B ) LS PA 1932, Fire and Storm The Story of a Lookout in the State Forest Service Suddenly he stiffened to a tense attitude. BY W. BOYCE MORGAN. INSTALLMENT L ILL LEEDS glanced at the clock on the mantel of the ranch-house living room. It was time to go for the mail. Open- ing the door of a closet, he took out his broad-brimmed hat, for the Midsummer sun was beating down intensely on the hard, dry earth outside. Stepping out on the porch, he cast an ap- praising eye at the unbroken blue of the sky. Certainly there was no rain in the prospect for today. He cuffed the curling, parched grass with his foot. It was like tinder. If rain didn’'t come soon the fire hazard in the sur- rounding forests would be terrific. Half-way to the mail box, which stood at the junction of the main road and the lane that led to the ranch house, Bill paused and gazed off to the north, one hand shielding his eyes. He always stopped at that partic- ular spot on his way to the mail box, for it was from this point that he could get the best view of the Goat's Head, a peculiarly shaped mountain which reared its massive shape above the other peaks of the range. There was a slight haze in the air today, and the outlines of the Goat's Head were not very clear. Nevertheless, in his mind's eye, Bill could see the tiny cabin of wood and glass that clung precariously to the bare rocks near the summit. And within that cabin he could visualize his older brother, Don, keeping his ceaseless vigil over the forests below him, ever watchful for the first wisps of smoke that meant another attack by the fire demon of the mountains. VERY Summer for the past three years, Don had spent solitary days in that lookout as an employe of the State Forest Service. Dur- ing the fire season, the regular force of State rangers was increased, and Don had been lucky enough to land one of these jobs. With the money he had saved, he hoped to enter the State university in the Fall, to study forestry. “Don ought to be getting a letter from the university one of these days,” said Bill to himself. “Golly, I hope he lands one of those scholarships! It will mean that, with the money he has saved and what he can earn during vacations, he can go straight through the whole four years without stopping to try to earn more money. And perhaps I can fol- low him!” Bill turned, lifted his hat to wipe the per- spiration from his forehead, and continued on to the mail box. Its contents seemed much the same as usual—two magazipes, a couple of business letters for his father, and a let- ter for his mother from Aunt Esther. But wait! Here was something else—a long en- velope that had been hidden in the fold of one of the magazines. Bill drew it forth, and his eye lit first of all on the return address. “It’s for Don!” he cried aloud. “From the State university.” With excited fingers, Bill tore open the let- ter. Before leaving for his lookout station several weeks before, Don had instructed him to open any mail that came from the uni- versity, and let him know of any important news immediately. Bill's eyes ran over the evenly typed lines like lightning, and sud- denly he uttered a wild whoop of joy. “Hooray!” he shouted. “Don gets a scholar- ship!” N spite of the heat and dust, Bill made a dash back to the ranchhouse. Arriving there breathless, a few minutes later, he burst into the kitchen, and shouted the good news to his mother. Then he tore outside to find his father somewhere about the ranch, so that he, too, might join in the rejoicing. When he returned a few minutes later, Bill hurried to the telephone. “I"m going to call the ranger station at Pagin,” he announced to his mother. “They can get Don on the Forest Service private wire, and tell him the news.” Bill got his call through to Fagin and talked to the ranger in charge, who promised to communicate with Don at once. A half-hour later the phone in the Leeds ranchhouse rang, and Mrs. Leeds, after an- swering it, called Bill. “Hello,” sald Bill into the mouthpiece, won- dering who could be on the other end of the wire. It proved to be the ranger in Fagin. “I just talked to your brother,” announced the ranger, “and he told me to tell you that he'd like to have that letter. I said we'd send it up in a few days by one of the patrols, but he sugested that maybe you'd like to come up and spend a couple of days with him at the lookout. Then you could take the letter.” “Gee, that's great!” cried Bill. “Wait until I talk to my mother.” “All right,” said the ranger. “Tell her that I think a visitor would do Don a lot of good. He gets pretty lonesome up there, you know.” Bill turned from the phone and held a hurried consultation with his mother. A mo- ment later he was back at the instrument. “It's O. K.,” he announced happily. “Dad will drive me as far as the road goes the first thing in the morning, and I'll hike up the trail the rest of the way. Tell Don I ought to get there sometime tomorrow afternoon.” “Ill call him right away,” promised the ranger. “And I'll tell him to have some bacon and beans all ready for you when you get there.” L ILL was up almost with the sun on the fol- lowing morning. He put on his corduroy breeches, high leather boots, and a light flan- nel shirt. That certainly would be more than enough clothes during the hot climb, he told himself, and while it would be chilly after sundown up on the Goat's Head, he didn't expect to be outside after dark, and Don would have a fire and plenty of blankets. Breakfast over, Bill had to wait until his father came in from the ranch. Then they got the car out, and Bill rounded up his final equipment. He bhad a canteen of water, authough he knew that there were springs along the trail he would follow, and a haver- sack that had attained astonishing propor- tions under his mother's care. There was not only a lunch for Bill, but a huge con- signment of Don's favorite cookies, baked by Mrs. Leeds after her other work had been finished the night before. She knew, as only a mother can, how tired Don must get of his limited diet at the lookout station—and of his own cooking. With Mr. Leeds at the wheel, they started, while Blll waved a farewell to his mother standing in the doorway. The little car lurched down the lane to the road, and turned toward the Goat’s Head, some thirty miles away. Five miles from the ranch they struck an improved highway, but they followed this for only a few miles, turning off upon the road that circled another mountain to the base of the Goat's Head. This road carried them to the end of their journey by car and left Bill with about six miles to traverse over a nar- row mountain trail. O slow had been the going that it was al- most noon when they reached the end of the road. Mr. Leeds declined to share Bill's lunch, saying that he would stop for a bite to eat at a village several miles back. And 80, with a hearty farewell, Bill watched his father turn the car and start back to the ranch. Then he shifted his haversack so that it rested comfortably on his shoulder, and be- gan his long, arduous climb up the Goat's Head. Meanwhile, high up in the lonely lookout station on the top of the Goat’s Head, Don Leeds was keeping a constant watch over the miles of forest land below him. Seated at his table before the windows of the little cabin, he glued his eyes to his binoculars, 'slowly JCRAFTS JOKES PUZZLES] swinging them from one point of the com- pass to another. This was “forest fire weather,” and almost ever day for the past two weeks, he had phoned the report of at least one small fire to the ranger station, but so far none had assumed serious proportions. If it would only rain! He glanced at the sky. It really looked as though there might be a storm today. His glass back to his eyes, he turned it until he was looking down the slope of the Goat's Head. Suddenly he stiffened to a tense at- titude. Yes, there was smoke! And it was somewhere along the trail up which Bill was even now making his hazardous way. To Be Continued Next Sunday. RIDDLES Are you feeling bright enough today to make & try at these riddles? Donald Plott has sent them to us. They're tricky, but I think you oan guess them if you just try hard enough. . Why are clouds like coachmen? . What notes compose the favorite tunes, how many tunes do they compose? 3. What is it that looks like a cat, walks 1 a cat, eats like a cat, but is not a cat? . Why is the letter S like thunder? . Why is grass like a mouse? ANSWERS. 1. Because they hold the rains (reins). 2. Bank notes; they make fortunes (four tunes). 3. A kitten. 4. Because it makes our cream sour cream. 5. Because the cat'll eat it (cattle eat it). How T'rees Became Coal LL living things—both plant and animal— lived at first, millions and millions of years ago, in the ocean. Gradually, when by chance one or another plant got its head above the salt water and found the sunshine quite pleasant, the plants dared to grow taller, until millions of years later they came to be trees—not like those we know now, but ferns and mosses, a hundred feet tall and wide as both your arms, growing thickly together in the marsh. All of this took millions of years —millions. Then something else happened. The trunks of the oldest fern trees became weak and were crowded until they fell over to make room for the younger and stronger. They fell into the water, but they did not rot in these salty marshes. Gradually more fell until there was a layer of huge trunks of dead trees. After a layer more than a hundred feet thick lay there, the sand was washed in by the sea, and mud was carried to them by the rivers, and this great layer of dead trees was slowly buried deep below the surface of the earth. Hundreds and thousands and millions of years passed, and deeper and deeper the ancient trees were buried by the sand and mud. All the while deepening layers of mud and sand grew heavier and heavier on the trees below, pushing harder and harder. The sand and mud above were pressed into layers of stone, shale, sandstone and slate. Slowly the heat and the heavy pressure changed the trees into carbon, or coal. Then one year there was a great crumbling of the earth's crust and the layers of stone and the carbon which had once been trees were lifted high above the level of the sea. And now, ages after the time when the frees first thrust themselves from the swamp, men living all over tbe face of the earth dig about in its crust to mine the coal under the rocks. This very winter, scarcely giving it a thought, we burn in our furnaces what's left of a giant forest changed by millions of years. I'rue Con fession “Yes,” said the self-made man, “I was left without & mother and father at nine months, and ever since I've had to battle along for myself.” “How did you manage to support yourself at nine months?” “I crawled to a baby show and won first prize.” ANSWERS. 1. O’Toole, Healy, and Kapne. 2. Em, eel, ere, era, ear, earl, elm, elder, me, meed, mere, meal, mead, meld, medal, ma, mar, mare, marl, male, mad, made, remade, reel, reed, ream, real, read, ram, am, are, armed, ale, alms, lee, leer, lea, lead, leader, led, deem, deer, dear, deal, dealer, dream, dram, dam, dame, dare, dale. 3. E, ems, evens, emerald snaky, sly, D. 4. Pathetic, patriotism, pathfinder, pat- ronige. 5. Cross Word Puzzle Solution. clalR[P I AICIR]E]