“Bolo he shook his head. ‘That bird is no bird,’ he says, ‘it’s a familiar.’
“‘Whose familiar?’ says I.
“‘It belongs to that dog of a Fingo,’ naming a rival medicine man, ‘or else ’tis a slave of the black tiger sent to lead us into a trap.’
“‘Well,’ says I, ‘honey is sweet, though it gives a man a bad pense, as the Royal motter says, and I’m for follering him.’ So up I got, and that bird he jes’ flew off, lighting here an’ lighting there, so as I could keep up, and after a mile he sot still as death on a thorn bush.
“‘Is this the place?’ says I.
“The honey-bird kep’ quiet, but he jes’ turn his eye on me all of a sparkle.
“Well, I jes’ sniffed aroun’ and squinted aroun’, and in a brace of shakes I spotted the honey nest in a hollow ant-hill. Well, I scooted back to the house for a bucket, and after smokin’ the bees, got out fifty pound weight of the finest sealed honey, not forgetting to set a piece of comb with young bees in it for the bird.
“Well, Bolo was pretty sick when he saw me come in with that bucket full, and he was standing there saying he knew all along that bird was a good bird, but he didn’t want to find the honey seeing as it was on my farm, and he’d be sure to find it first, whereby he could claim half, which was against hospitality. Right there, sonny, that there bird come and perched on the roof. ‘Chet-chet-chee!’ says he, as excited as if he hadn’t had a meal for a month. I see it was the same bird, for there was a stickiness about his head.
“‘Oh, aie;’ says Bolo, then he shouted from his chest. ‘My little friend in the grey suit, lead on!’