The Tree-Men

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Title:     The Tree-Men
Author: William John Hopkins [More Titles by Hopkins]

Once upon a time there was a little boy, and he was almost five years old, and his name was David. And there weren't any other children near for him to play with, so he used to play happily all by himself.

He had his cat and his cart and his shovel and his hoe, and he always wore his overalls when he was playing.

Behind David's house were some thin woods. And in those woods were oak trees, several kinds, but he didn't know the difference between the kinds.

And there were cedar trees and chestnut trees and birch trees of three kinds; and there were white pine trees and pitch pine trees, and the pitch pine trees were sticky all over.

David knew the pitch pine trees, because he had got his clothes all covered with their stickiness.

And there were a few great sycamore trees, and some ash trees, and some beech trees, and a lot of other kinds that I can't remember the names of.

All summer there were lots of birds in these woods and about the edge of them; and in the winter, when all those summer birds had gone away, other birds came.

And four blue jays stayed there all the year, and the crows stayed, of course, but they didn't live in those woods especially.

And there were chickadees and juncos, which are one kind of snowbird; and there were a lot of little birds which looked like sparrows, and there were red-polled linnets, and occasionally a flock of cedar-birds would cover the cedars like gray snowflakes, and once David's mother called him to come quick and see the pine grosbeaks.

And when David came, he saw a great flock of birds which looked gray, but three of them had the most beautiful rose-colored feathers on their breasts and shoulders and heads, making them look as if they had tied rose-colored aprons about their necks. David watched them until they flew away.

All these birds were very busy feeding on the seeds of weeds or the berries of the trees, and some of them dug insects out of the bark.

And there were gray squirrels which raced along the branches of the trees, and jumped from one branch to another, and poked about on the ground and opened the chestnut-burs which had just fallen from the trees, and ate the chestnuts, or scampered over the roof just above David's head, and made a great racket.

They were great fat fellows with warm, thick fur, not much like the squirrels on Boston Common, but they got almost as tame with David, although he never could get quite near enough to one to pat it. That was better, for the squirrel might have bitten David.

David used to try to get near them, but he always told his cat to stay at home when he was going after them, for the squirrels were afraid of his cat.

One morning in the fall David had gone after the squirrels. There were a great many squirrels about, for the chestnuts had begun to fall, and the squirrels were very busy.

And David had got farther and farther from his house, but he was where he could see the road.

And he heard the rattle of a wagon, and he looked and saw a very spick-and-span new wagon, painted red, with yellow and black stripes on it, and the wheels were flashing in the sun as they turned.

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.

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.

"Hello," 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 molasses and almost as black as ink, only it was brownish black.

"What is it?" he asked. "Is it molasses? It smells horrid."

The man laughed.

"No," he answered, "it isn't molasses 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.

And his cat met him, and then his mother met him.

"Where were you, dear?" his mother asked.

"I was helping the tree-men paint egg-spots. How big are moth-eggs, mother?"

But his mother didn't know.

And that's all.

[The end]
William John Hopkins's short story: The Tree-Men

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