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Updated: June 2, 2025
"No," said Wilbur, looking around him, "I guess there isn't." The road ran along a little gully with a small stream shaded by scrub oak, but arising from this and similar gullies, in great rounded bosses, heaved the barren slopes, the grass already turning yellow and too sparse to cloak the red earth below. "Yet," said Rifle-Eye, pointing with his finger as he spoke, "there's a desert fox."
"I've put in several days with you gettin' you started," he said, "an' I reckon I'd better be goin' about some other business. There's a heap o' things doin' all the time, an' as it is I'm pressed to keep up. But I'll drop in every now an' again, an' you're allers welcome at headquarters." "I hate to have you go, Rifle-Eye," the boy replied, "and you certainly have been mighty good to me.
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.
Once again the reputed educator expressed himself as to the Ranger's interference and declared that he had been more annoyed since coming into the forest than if he had stayed out of it. He worked himself up into a towering rage. Presently Rifle-Eye replied quietly: "You refuse to tell?" "I do," snapped the professor.
But as soon as he had finished speaking, after a purely perfunctory assent, Wilbur burst out again: "But, Rifle-Eye, I really want that sorrel most." "You really think you want him?" "Yes!" "You wouldn't if you knew a little more about horses, son," said the Ranger. "It's all right to be sure what you want, but what you want is to be sure that what you want is right."
"It makes quite a house," said Wilbur, following the old mountaineer's line of thought. "I've never lived in any smaller house than that," responded Rifle-Eye, "an' I reckon now I never will. There's some I know that boasts of ownin' a few feet o' space shut in by a brick wall. Not for me. My house is as far as my eyes c'n see, an' from the ground to the sky."
Except for my hands," he added ruefully, as returning wakefulness brought back with it the consciousness of smart and hurt, "and my feet are mighty sore, too. We're right near the fire, too, aren't we," he continued. "Gee, that was nifty sleeping nearly all the way. I guess I must have felt you were around, Rifle-Eye, and so I slept easily, knowing it would come out all right with you here."
"I like McGinnis, too." "I reckon he wasn't over-pleased with your bein' late?" queried Rifle-Eye. "He wasn't," admitted the boy candidly, "but I don't blame him for that. I liked him just the same. But I don't think it's safe to monkey with him. Now, McGinnis is easygoing and good-natured." "So is a mountain river runnin' down a smooth bed.
"Wa'al, up there, you see, is home." "You certainly can't complain about the looks of your home, then," said the boy, "for that's just about the finest I've ever seen." "'There's no place like home," quoted Rifle-Eye quietly, "but I ain't ever feelin' that my home's so humble. It ain't a question of its bein' good enough fer me, it's a question o' whether I'm good enough fer it."
Merritt shrugged his shoulders, but he knew that Rifle-Eye never wasted his time, and he said no more. The old hunter and the boy walked on nearly a quarter of a mile, and there they found the tracks running beside a tiny gully, and a little distance down this, just as it had been thrown, was another of these small trees, equally filled with beetle.
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