On the wagon were ladders and long slender poles, and four men were riding on it.

The wagon stopped, and the men got off. One of the men took a halter out of the wagon and tied the horse to a tree, while the others took off the ladders.

Then each man took one of the long, slender poles, and a big can and a little can. And they took the ladders on their shoulders and held them with one hand, and the poles in the other hand, and the handles of the cans in that other hand, too, and they began to walk right to where David was.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE TREE-MEN]

And all the squirrels heard them coming, and they stopped eating chestnuts, and each squirrel scurried to a tree, with his chestnut in his mouth, and he scrambled up the tree, on the opposite side of the trunk from the men, so that the men couldn't see him.

They scrambled up the trunks very fast, until they came to a branch; and each squirrel sat on his branch, next to the trunk, and made a sort of a scolding, barking noise, and every time he made the noise his tail gave a queer little jerk.

David was watching them, and he heard their noises, and he couldn't help laughing to see their tails jerk.

And then the men were there, and they saw David laughing.

"h.e.l.lo," said one of the men. "What's so funny?"

"I was laughing at the squirrels," David said; "they make their tails go."

"Yes," said the man, "I hear them, and I see some of them. How they do scold! But we wouldn't hurt them."

He put his cans down, and he leaned his pole against a tree, and he stood the ladder against the tree.

David looked in the cans. There wasn't anything in the little can, but the big can was full of something that was about as thick as mola.s.ses and almost as black as ink, only it was brownish black.

"What is it?" he asked. "Is it mola.s.ses? It smells horrid."

The man laughed.

"No," he answered, "it isn't mola.s.ses or anything good to eat. It's creosote. That's a poisonous kind of stuff. We put it on these things."

He pointed to a place on a tree. It looked as if somebody had daubed dirt on the trunk, and the place was about the size of David's thumb, and it was rounded out a little at the middle.

"I guess you never noticed those places," the man said. "Inside of that are the eggs of a moth that eats things up and does a great deal of harm. Those eggs would hatch when it gets warm enough, and little worms would come out, and they would begin to eat, and the worms would change into moths later on, and the moths would lay more eggs. We are trying to get rid of them, so we paint some creosote on every bunch of eggs we can find, and that kills them.

"If you look carefully you can see a good many places just like this, all over the trunks of the trees and on the under sides of branches.

Some trees have a good many on them, and some don't have any. There's a lot on this tree."

David looked and saw the little mud spots farther up the trunk, and then he looked higher and he saw some of the spots on the under sides of the branches, as the man had said.

He nodded.

"You paint some now," he said, going nearer, "with that stuff."

The man laughed.

"You want to see me do it right off, do you?" he asked.

So he took a stubby paint brush from his belt, and he dipped it into the big can, and he wiped it over as many of the spots as he could reach. The spots looked as if they had been painted with tar.

"Now," he said, "I am going to walk right up that tree."

He pointed to his legs, and David saw that a long iron thing was strapped to each leg, and the iron thing had a sharp point which stuck down about as far as the soles of his shoes.

"Those are climbers, or spurs. We can walk right up any tree that isn't too large around, and you see that those points are bent in a little so that they will stick into the trunk of the tree on each side. You watch."

So the man poured some of the stuff from the big can into the little can, and he hung the little can from his belt, and he stuck the stubby paint brush in his belt.

Then he went to the tree, and he put his hands half-around the trunk, and he lifted up one foot and jabbed it down, so that he jabbed the spur into the tree. Then he lifted the other foot and jabbed that spur in; and he walked right up the tree.

And when he had got to other spots that had been too high for him to reach, he stopped and held on with one hand, while he took the paint brush and painted those egg bunches with stuff from the little can.

But there were some egg bunches left on branches that were too little for the man to go on.

So the man put one leg over a branch, and he took his pole, which was leaning against a twig just beside him, and he fixed the paint brush in the end of the pole, in a place that was meant for it, and he reached out with the pole and painted all those egg bunches on the small branches.

Then he put the pole back, leaning against the twig, and he came slowly down to the ground.

"There!" he said. "Did you see how I did it? Do you think that you could paint some?"

David's eyes glistened.

"Oh, could I? But I couldn't walk up the tree."

The man smiled.

"I'm afraid you couldn't, but you can paint as far as you can reach with the pole."

The other men were busy on trees near, and they watched while David painted the mud spots on another tree which the man found for him.

He wasn't very tall and there were only two spots which he could reach while he stood on the ground.

But the man held him up in his arms as high as he could, and when he had painted all those spots, the man fixed the paint brush in the end of the pole.

It was pretty heavy for such a little boy to manage, and the end would wave around so that he couldn't make the brush paint where he wanted it to.

So the man helped David to hold the pole steady and paint as far as it could reach.

Just then David heard his mother calling him.

"I've got to go now," he said to the man. "I think my mother wants me."

"Well, good-bye," the man said. "We're much obliged."

"You're welcome," David said. "Good-bye."

And he turned around and went galloping through the woods to his house.