CHAPTER IX
A HARD FOE TO CONQUER
With the defeat of Peavey Jo, and the evidence that he was not tooseriously hurt by the licking he had received, the Supervisor'sattention promptly returned to the question for which he had come to themill. Ben had struggled up to a sitting posture, and Merritt repeatedhis question as to the whereabouts of the logs, the answering of whichhad brought the big millman's anger upon the half-witted lad.Accordingly, Ben looked frightened, and refused to answer, but when hesaw his foe still lying stretched out on the ground he said:
"Logs, near, near. Under pile of slabs."
"Oh, that was the way he hid them," said the Forest Chief; "cleverenough trick, too."
McGinnis and Merritt followed Ben, and a couple of the men aroundsauntered along also. Wilbur stayed with the horses, watching themill-hands trying to bring Peavey Jo to consciousness. They had justroused him and got him to his feet when the government party returned.
"I've seen your logs," said the Supervisor with just a slight note oftriumph in his voice, "and I've plenty of witnesses. I also know whoyou're working for, so it will do no good to skip out. I'll nail both ofyou. Four and a half million feet, remember."
Suddenly McGinnis startled every one by a sudden shout:
"Drop that ax!" he cried.
The lumberman, who was just about to get into the saddle, suddenlydropped from the stirrup and made a quick grab for Ben, who had beenstanding near by. The half-witted lad had picked up an ax, and wasquietly sidling up in the direction of the lumberman, who was still toodazed from the blow he had received from McGinnis to be on the watch.
"What would ye do with the ax, ye little villain?" asked McGinnis.
"I kill him, once, twice," said the lad.
"Ye would, eh? Sure, I've always labored under the impression thatkillin' a man once is enough. 'Tis myself that can see the satisfactionit would be to whack him one with the ax, Ben, but ye'd be robbing thehangman."
"I kill him," repeated the half-witted lad.
"Not with that ax, anyway," said McGinnis wrenching it from his graspand tossing it to one of the men who stood by. "I'm thinkin', Merritt,that we'd better take the boy away. When he's sot, there's no changin'him."
"You fellers had best take one o' my ponies," spoke up one of thesawyers; "I've got a string here, an' you can send him back any time.An' I guess it wouldn't be healthy here for Ben right now."
"All right, Phil," said McGinnis; "I'll go along with you and get him."
As soon as McGinnis was out of the way, Peavey Jo stepped up to wherethe Supervisor was sitting in the saddle. Ben had been standing besidehim since McGinnis took the ax, but now he shrank back to Wilbur's side.
"You t'ink me beaten, hey?" he said, showing his teeth in an angrysnarl; "you wait and see."
"I don't know whether you're beaten or no," said Merritt contemptuously,"but any one can see that you've been licked."
"You t'ink this forest good place. By Gar, I make him so bad youashamed to live here."
"A threat's no more use than a lie, Peavey Jo," replied the Supervisorsharply. "I don't bluff worth a cent, and the government's behind me."
The half-breed spat on the ground.
"That for your American government," he said. "I, me, make your Americangovernment look sick. I warn you fairly now. You win this time, yes, butalways, no. Bon! My turn come by and by."
"All right," replied the head of the forest indifferently, turning awayas McGinnis and Ben came up, "turn on your viciousness whenever youlike." Saying which, he rode away without paying further heed to themuttered response of the millman.
The ride home was singularly silent. Neither McGinnis nor thehalf-witted lad were in any mood for speaking, Ben nursing a badlyswollen jaw, and McGinnis weak from the body blows and the lame shoulderhe had received in the fight. The Supervisor was angry that the troublehad come to blows, but in justice could not blame McGinnis for the parthe had taken. It annoyed him, especially, to feel that he had beencompelled to take the part of a mere spectator, although this feelingwas partly soothed by the knowledge that he had discovered and provedthe very thing he had set out to find.
On arriving at headquarters, the four horses were turned into thecorral, and the men went in to get supper. Merritt immediately commenceda full report to Washington on the case, and McGinnis and Ben were gladto lie down. At supper Wilbur took occasion to congratulate McGinnis onthe result of the encounter. The Irishman nodded.
"He's a better man than me," he admitted readily, "and that uppercut wasthe only thing I had left. But 'tis a darlin' of a punch, is that same,when ye get it in right. But I don't think we're through with him. Helooks like the breed that harbors a grudge."
"He threatened Merritt while you were away," said Wilbur, dropping hisvoice so as not to disturb the rest.
"The mischief he did! The nerve of him! Tell me what he said."
Wilbur repeated the conversation word for word, and the Irishmanwhistled.
"There, now," he said. "What did I tell ye? Not that I can see there'smuch that he can do."
"Do you suppose he'd set a fire?" asked Wilbur.
"He's mean enough to," said McGinnis, "but I don't believe he would. Noman that knows anything at all about timber would. Sure, he knows thatwe could put it out in no time if there wasn't a wind, and if there was,why the blaze might veer at any minute and burn up his mill and all hislumber."
"But for revenge?"
"A Frenchy pea-jammer isn't goin' to lose any dollars unless he has to,"said McGinnis. "I don't think you need to be afraid of that." Then,following along the train of thought that had been suggested, he toldthe boy some lurid stories of life in the lumber camps of Michigan andWisconsin in the early days.
Early next morning Wilbur returned to his camp to resume his round offire rides, which he found to be of growing interest. On his return tohis camp, although tired, the lad would work till dark over his littlegarden, knowing that everything he succeeded in growing would add to theenrichment of his food supply. Then the fence around the garden was invery bad repair, and he set to work to make one which should effectivelykeep out the rabbits.
Another week he found that if he could build a little bridge across aplace where the canyon was very narrow he could save an hour's ride onone of his trails. Already the lad had put up a small log span on hisown account. He went over and over this line of travel, blazing his wayuntil he felt entirely sure that he had picked out the best line oftrail, and then one evening he called up Rifle-Eye and asked him if hewould come over some time and show him how to build this little bridge.
There followed three most exciting days in which the Ranger and a Guardfrom the other side of the forest joined him in bridge-building. Theynot only spanned the canyon, but strengthened the little log bridge theboy had made all by himself. Wilbur's reward was not only the shorteningof his route, but commendation from Rifle-Eye that he had taken thetrouble to find out the route and that he had picked it so well. Thatnight he wrote home as though he had been appointed in charge of all theforests of the world, so proud was he.
Then there was one day in which Wilbur found the value of his lookout,for from the very place that the old hunter had pointed out as being oneof "the windows of his house," the boy saw curling up to the westward asmall, dull cloud of smoke. Remembering the warnings of the Ranger, hedid not leap to the saddle at once, but remained for several minutes,studying the nearest landmarks to the apparent location of the fire andthe surest method of getting there. That ride was somewhat of a novelexperience for Kit as well as the boy. The little mare had grownaccustomed to a quiet, even pace on the forest trails, and the use ofthe spur was a thing not to be borne. Wilbur felt as if he were fairlyflying through the pine woods. Still he remembered to keep the mare wellin hand going down the steeper slopes, and within a couple of hours hefound himself at the fire. Then Wilbur found how true it was that ablaze could easily be put out if caught early. There was little wind,and the line of fire was not
more than a mile long. By clearing theground, brushing the needles aside for a foot or so on the lee side ofthe fire, most of it burned itself out and the rest he could stamp toextinction. Here and there he used his fire shovel and threw a littleearth where the blaze was highest.
That evening he telephoned to headquarters, reporting that he had putthe fire out, but only received a kindly worded rebuke for not havingendeavored to find out what caused the fire, and a suggestion that heshould ride back the next day and investigate. But before he couldtelephone himself the next evening, and while he was at supper, the'phone rang, and he found the Supervisor was on the wire.
"Come to headquarters at once," he was told; "all hands are wanted."
"To-night, Mr. Merritt?" the boy queried.
There was a moment's pause.
"What did you do to-day?" he asked in answer.
"I went to find out what started that fire," the boy replied. "It was acouple of fishermen from the city. They had been here before, and so hadno guide. I followed them up and showed them how to make a fireproperly."
"That's a pretty long ride," said Merritt; "I guess you can come overfirst thing to-morrow morning."
"Very well, sir," said Wilbur, and hung up the receiver.
"I certainly do wonder," he said aloud, "what it can be? It can't be abig fire, or he would tell me to come anyway, no matter what I'd doneto-day, especially as fire is best fought at night. And I don't see howit can be any trouble over Peavey Jo, because that's in the hands of theWashington people now. Unless," he added as an afterthought, "they havecome to arrest him."
Having settled in his mind that this was probably the trouble, Wilburreturned to his supper. Just as he was finishing it, he said aloud: "Idon't see how it can be that, either. For if it's due to any trouble ofthat kind they want big, husky fellows, and Merritt can swear in any onehe needs." So giving up the problem as temporarily insoluble, Wilburwent to bed early so as to make a quick start in the dawn of themorning.
It turned out to be a glorious day, with but very little wind, andWilbur's mind was quite set at rest about the question of fire. But whenhe reached headquarters he was surprised to see the number of men thatwere gathered there. Not laughing and joking, as customarily, they stoodgravely around, only eying him curiously as he came in. The boy turnedto McGinnis.
"What's wrong?" he said.
For answer the lumberman held out a piece of wood from which the barkhad been stripped. Underneath the bark on the soft wood were numberlesslittle channels which looked as though they had been chiseled out with afine, rounded chisel.
"Oh," he said, "I see." Then he continued: "But I didn't know there wasany 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 onthe same day and brought the news into camp. Merritt only saw signs inone spot, but the old Ranger dropped on several colonies at differentparts of the forest, so that it must be widespread."
The boy whistled under his breath. He had heard enough of the ravages ofthe bark beetle to know what it might mean if it once secured a strongfooting on the Sierras.
"I remember hearing once," he said, "that over twenty-two thousandacres of spruce in Bohemia were wiped out in a month by the Tomicusbeetle."
"This is the work of a Tomicus," said McGinnis. "And what such acritter as that was ever made for gets me."
"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 knowsmore about the beetle than any man in the Service. I don't know how muchdamage has been done nor how widespread it is. There are eight of ushere, and we will divide, as I said before, each two keeping about fiftyyards apart and girdling infected and useless trees. Loyle, you go withRifle-Eye."
Wilbur was delighted at finding himself with his old friend again, andhe seized the opportunity gladly of asking him how he happened to findout that the pest had got a start.
"I was campin' last night," said the old Ranger, "an' I saw an old deadtree that looked as if it might have some tinder that would start afire easy. So I picked up my ax an' went up to it. But the minute I gotthere I felt somethin' was wrong, so I sliced along the bark, an' therewere hundreds of the beetles. Then I looked at some of the near bytrees, an' there was a few, here and there. But the funny part of it wasthat although I looked, an' looked carefully, for a hundred yards oneither 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 toosure."
They walked all the rest of the morning, without having seen a sign ofany beetles, though once the most distant party whooped as a sign thatsome 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' 'emby wholesale. There was nothin' we could do to stop it. But it gotstopped all right."
"How?" Wilbur queried interestedly. "Rain?"
"Rain would only make it worse. Have you ever noticed, son, that whensomethin' pretty bad comes along, there's always somethin' else comes tosort 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 asyour thumb-nail. They come in swarms, an' started disposin' o' themcaterpillars as though they had been trained to the business. They stung'em an' then dropped an egg where they'd stung. Sometimes thecaterpillar lived long enough to spin a web, as they usually do, but itnever 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 wasthe ik, ik--"
"Oh, I know now," said Wilbur; "I remember hearing about it at theRanger School. The ichneumon fly."
"That's it. But, as I was sayin'--" he stopped short. Then the oldhunter 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 oldwoodsman, slicing off a section, showed the tree girdled with thegalleries that the beetle had made. He raised a whoop, and Wilbur in thedistance could hear the Supervisor saying, "Three," implying it was thethird piece found infected.
"But I don't quite see," said Wilbur, "how they make these galleriesrunning in all sorts of ways."
"I ain't no expert on this here," said Rifle-Eye. "But as far as I know,in the spring a beetle finds an old decayed tree. She begins at once tobore a sort of passageway, half in the bark an' half in the wood, an'lays eggs all along the sides. When the eggs come out, each grub digs atunnel out from the big gallery, an' in about three weeks the grub hasmade a long tunnel, livin' on the bark an' wood for its food, an' hasgrown to be a beetle. Then it bores its way out an' flies away toanother tree to repeat the same interestin' performance."
"And if there are a lot of them," said Wilbur, "I suppose it stops thesap from going up."
"Exactly," said the hunter. "But they generally begin on sickly trees."
"Wilbur," he called a moment later, "come here."
The boy hurried over to the old hunter, who was standing by a deadtree--a small one, lying on the ground.
"Try that one," he said.
The boy struck it with the ax and it showed up alive with beetles andgrubs and honeycombed with galleries.
"Gee," said the boy, "that's a bad one."
"That's very like the way I found the other," sa
id the old hunter; "onevery bad one lyin' on the ground an' just a few around it bad, whilejust a short distance away there was no signs."
He stood and thought for a minute or two, but aside from thecoincidence, Wilbur could not see that there was anything strange inthat. They worked busily for a few moments, girdling the infected trees,and also girdling some small useless trees near by, because, as thehunter explained, when the beetles flew out seeking a new tree todestroy, they would prefer one that was dying, as a tree from whichall the bark has been cut away all round always does, and then thesetrees could be burned.
"Have you noticed wheel tracks around here?" asked the hunterthoughtfully.
"I did think so," said Wilbur, "near that dead tree, but I s'posed, ofcourse, I was wrong. What would a wagon be doing up here?"
Suddenly the Ranger dropped his ax as though he had been stung. Heturned to the boy, his eyes flashing.
"Boy!" he said, "did you see the stump of that dead tree!"
"I didn't notice," said Wilbur wonderingly.
The old woodsman picked up his ax, and led the way back to the deadtree.
Wilbur looked at the base of the tree.
"It isn't a windfall," he said; "it's been cut."
"Where's the stump?" asked Rifle-Eye.
The boy looked within a radius of a few feet, then looked up at thehunter.
"Where's the stump?" repeated the old man.
Wilbur turned back and searched for five minutes. Not a stump could hefind that fitted the tree. None had been cut for some time, and none atall of so small a girth.
"I can't find any," he admitted shamefacedly, afraid that the Rangerwould prove him wrong in some way.
"Nor can I," said Rifle-Eye. "Well?"
"Then I guess there isn't one there," said the boy.
"How did the tree get there?"
Wilbur looked at him, reflecting the question that he saw in the other'seyes.
"It couldn't get there of itself," he said, "and it was cut, too."
"An' wheel-tracks?"
"There were tracks," said the boy, "I'm sure of that."
"When a cut tree is found lyin' all by itself," said the Ranger, "withwagon tracks leadin' up to it an' away from it, it don't need a citydetective to find out that some one dropped it there. An' when that deadtree is full of bark-beetle, an' there ain't none in the forest, thatsure looks suspicious. An' when you find two of 'em jest the same way,with beetle in both, an' wheel-tracks near both, ye don't have to have adog's nose to scent somethin's doin' that ain't over nice."
"But who," said Wilbur indignantly, "would do a trick like that?"
"The man that drove that wagon," said the old hunter. "I reckon, son,you an' me'll do a little trailin' an' see where those wheels lead us."
They left the place where the tree was lying and followed the faint markof the wheels. In a few minutes they crossed the line of theSupervisor's inspection and he called to them.
"Hi, Rifle-Eye," he said, "you're away off the line."
"I know," said the old Ranger, "but I've got a plan of my own."
Merritt shrugged his shoulders, but he knew that Rifle-Eye never wastedhis time, and he said no more. The old hunter and the boy walked onnearly a quarter of a mile, and there they found the tracks runningbeside a tiny gully, and a little distance down this, just as it hadbeen thrown, was another of these small trees, equally filled withbeetle.
"I don't think we'll find any stump to this one, either," said Wilburgleefully, for he saw that they were on the right track.
"You will not," replied the other sternly. After they had girdled theinfected trees again the Ranger shouldered his ax and, abandoning thetracks of the wheels, started straight for headquarters.
At supper all sorts of conjectures were expressed as to the cause of thepest, its extent, and similar matters, but Rifle-Eye said nothing.Wilbur was so full of the news that he was hardly able to eat anythingfor the information he was just bursting to give. But he kept it in.Finally, when the men had all finished and pipes were lighted, the oldRanger spoke, in his slow, drawling way, and every one stopped tolisten.
"There's five of ye," he said, "that's found beetle, isn't there?"
"Yes," answered the Supervisor, "five."
"And I venture to bet," he continued, "that you found a dead tree lyin'in the middle of the infected patch!"
"Yes," said several voices, "we did."
"An' you didn't find much beetle except just round that one tree?"
"Not a bit," said one or two. "What about it?"
"There's a kind o' disease called Cholera," began Rifle-Eye in aconversational tone, "that drifts around a city in a queer sort o' way.It never hits two places at the same time, but if it goes up a street,it sort o' picks one side, an' stops at one place for a while then goestravelin' on. It acts jest as if a man was walkin' around, an' he wasthe cholera spirit himself."
"Well?" queried the Supervisor sharply.
The old Ranger smiled tolerantly at his impatience.
"Wa'al," he said, "I ain't believin' or disbelievin' the yarn. But Iain't believin' any such perambulatin' spirit for a bark-beetle.Especially when I finds wagon tracks leading to each place where thetrouble is."
"What do you mean, Rifle-Eye?" asked Merritt. "Give it to us straight."
"I mean," he said, "that I ain't never heard of spirits needin' wagonsto get around in. An' when I find dead trees containin' bark-beetlesplanted promiscuous where they'll do most good, I'm aimin' to draw abead on the owner o' that wagon. An' I'll ask another thing. Did any o'you find the stumps of them infected trees?"
There was a long pause, and then McGinnis, always the first to see,laughed out loud ruefully.
"'Tis a black sorrow to me," he said, "that I didn't let Ben welt himwid the ax the other day. Somebody else will have to do it now."
"You mean," said the Supervisor, flaming, "that those trees weredeliberately brought here to infect the forest, trees full of beetles?"
"Sure, 'tis as plain as the nose on your face," said McGinnis. "An' it'sdubs we were not to see it ourselves."
"And it was--?"
"The bucko pea-jammer that I gave a lickin' to in the spring, for sure,"said McGinnis. "Peavey Jo, of course, who else?"
WILBUR'S OWN BRIDGE.
Light structure made by the boy over stream just below his camp.
_Photograph by U. S. Forest Service._]
WHERE THE SUPERVISOR STAYED.
The Ranger's cabin where the men gathered to fight the invasion of thebark beetle.
_Photograph by U. S. Forest Service._]