"What's wrong?" he said.
For answer the lumberman held out a piece of wood from which the bark had been stripped. Underneath the bark on the soft wood were numberless little channels which looked as though they had been chiseled out with a fine, rounded chisel.
"Oh," he said, "I see." Then he continued: "But I didn't know there was any bark-beetle here."
McGinnis waved his hand around.
"Does this look as if we had known very long?" he said.
"Who found it out?" asked Wilbur.
"Rifle-Eye," was the reply, "or at least Merritt and he found traces on the same day and brought the news into camp. Merritt only saw signs in one spot, but the old Ranger dropped on several colonies at different parts of the forest, so that it must be widespread."
The boy whistled under his breath. He had heard enough of the ravages of the bark beetle to know what it might mean if it once secured a strong footing on the Sierras.
"I remember hearing once," he said, "that over twenty-two thousand acres of spruce in Bohemia were wiped out in a month by the Tomicus beetle."
"This is the work of a Tomicus," said McGinnis. "And what such a critter as that was ever made for gets me."