"How?" Wilbur queried interestedly. "Rain?"
"Rain would only make it worse. Have you ever noticed, son, that when somethin' pretty bad comes along, there's always somethin' else comes to sort o' take off the smart? Nothin's bad all the time. Well, this time, there came a fly."
"A fly?"
"Yes, son, a fly, lookin' somethin' like a wasp, only not as long as your thumb-nail. They come in swarms, an' started disposin' o' them caterpillars as though they had been trained to the business. They stung 'em an' then dropped an egg where they'd stung. Sometimes the caterpillar lived long enough to spin a web, as they usually do, but it never come out as a moth. An' since it's the moth that lays the eggs, this fly put an end to the caterpillar output with pleasin' swiftness."
"What did they call the fly?"
"I did hear," said Rifle-Eye, thinking. "Oh, yes, now I remember; it was the ik, ik—"
"Oh, I know now," said Wilbur; "I remember hearing about it at the Ranger School. The ichneumon fly."
"That's it. But, as I was sayin'—" he stopped short. Then the old hunter took a quick step to one side, pointed at a pine tree, and said:
"There's one o' them."
Wilbur could only see a few little holes in the bark, but the old woodsman, slicing off a section, showed the tree girdled with the galleries that the beetle had made. He raised a whoop, and Wilbur in the distance could hear the Supervisor saying, "Three," implying it was the third piece found infected.