Loyle, you go with
Rifle-Eye."
Wilbur was delighted at finding himself with his old friend again, and
he seized the opportunity gladly of asking him how he happened to find
out that the pest had got a start.
"I was campin' last night," said the old Ranger, "an' I saw an old dead
tree that looked as if it might have some tinder that would start a
fire easy. So I picked up my ax an' went up to it. But the minute I got
there I felt somethin' was wrong, so I sliced along the bark, an' there
were hundreds of the beetles. Then I looked at some of the near by
trees, an' there was a few, here and there. But the funny part of it was
that although I looked, an' looked carefully, for a hundred yards on
either side, I couldn't find any more."
"So much the better," said Wilbur, "you didn't want to find any more,
did you?"
The old hunter stepped over to a spruce and examined it closely.
"I didn't think there were any there," he said, "but you can't be too
sure."
They walked all the rest of the morning, without having seen a sign of
any beetles, though once the most distant party whooped as a sign that
some had been found.
"I remember," said the Ranger, "one year when we had a plague o'
caterpillars. They was eatin' the needles of the trees an' killin' 'em
by wholesale. There was nothin' we could do to stop it. But it got
stopped all right."
"How?" Wilbur queried interestedly.
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