"What's going to be done?" asked Wilbur.
McGinnis pointed to the house whence the Supervisor was just coming out.
"I have notified the District Forester," he said, standing on the steps, "and if I find things in bad shape he will send for Wilcox, who knows more about the beetle than any man in the Service. I don't know how much damage has been done nor how widespread it is. There are eight of us here, and we will divide, as I said before, each two keeping about fifty yards apart and girdling infected and useless trees. 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."