CHAPTER XII
THE BEE TREE
Matt's presence in the tree beneath which Glen walked with J. Jervice was neither accident nor coincidence. He had business there—business which he considered important, which he did not wish, to share either with J. Jervice or Glen Mason or any other person. At least he did not wish to share it right at that moment; later on would be another story.
Matt was making a bee tree. Perhaps you did not know that bee trees could be made, nor how to make them. Matt himself was not very clear on either of these heads. He was experimenting, and back of his experiment was a desire to get even with Chick-chick.
Henry Henry, commonly called Chick-chick, did not desire to shine as a great athlete, sport leader, a water witch, or in any of the other specialties in which Matt reveled, but he did pretend to know a little something about beetles, bugs, butterflies and bees. He had long cherished an ambition to find a "bee tree." At last night's camp fire he had announced his positive belief, based on observations of the day, that such a tree was somewhere in the vicinity of the blazed oak. He had watched the bees until dark without definitely locating his tree but he had not given up.
Matt decided that it would be a great pity to let all Chick-chick's efforts go for nothing. He proposed to help find such a tree, or to put Chick-chick in the way of it so that he would be bound to find it. He wanted the find to be public, and the interest in it to be so popular that all thought of buried treasure—especially treasure buried in a bread-box—would be obliterated forever from the minds of those in camp.
Matt had gone to some little trouble in his fixing. He had neatly lettered a sign: "Wild honey. Prepared by the Honey Bees for Chick-chick." This he stuck into the bottom of the hollow limb, only an end protruding. Then he put in a good chunk of honeycomb, begged from Bob. From a small jar he then released some half dozen bees which he had allowed himself to borrow from Mr. Ryder's hives. His supposition was that these bees would fill up and fly back to the hives. Soon they would return bringing their mates with them. In a short time a steady stream of bees would be passing in and out of that hollow limb, which would be just the time for Chick-chick to make his proud discovery and announce it.
After Matt had fixed the tree to his satisfaction his chief trouble was to lead Chick-chick to make the discovery in a perfectly natural manner. The best opportunity came as they went back to camp after the morning swim. Chick-chick was always a wanderer, likely at any moment to dart off in sudden pursuit of something. This morning it was a butterfly, and to Matt's delight he ran in the direction of the loaded tree. The crowd joined in the pursuit. They were within a short distance of Matt's tree before they gave it up.
"How about that bee tree you were going to get, Chick-chick?" suggested Matt. "Round here somewhere, isn't it?"