“Come over about ten o’clock then. We can’t go too early as we have to wait until most of the bees are out of the hive.”
“I’ll be there, Willie.”
“Be sure to wear your moccasins—” Willie looked doubtfully at Jim’s thin, worn clothes, “and you’d better get some buckskin clothes to wear. Bees can’t sting through buckskin.”
“All right. See you tomorrow.”
Colonel Clark said Jim might go after the honey, but added he couldn’t go unless they found some buckskin clothes for him to wear. He hunted through some of the supplies at headquarters and found a buckskin outfit.
When Jim arrived at Willie’s house, Willie was ready and waiting for him. He handed Jim one large wooden bucket and carried another himself. “We’ll put the honey and wax in these buckets,” Willie explained. Then he picked up a gaily colored cloth bundle.
The two boys put out in one of Father Gibault’s boats and soon crossed the Kaskaskia River, landing near the house which Clark had surrounded the night he made his march on Kaskaskia.
Willie moored the boat to a tree along the bank. Then they started out to find the tree Willie had marked with Father Gibault’s initials. They wandered quite a way before Willie suddenly cried, “See, Jim, there it is!” He pointed to a tree with a large fork high above the ground.
Jim also saw the initials F. G. on the trunk; these Willie had carved the day the Long-Knives had found him in the boat. “Why did you put Father Gibault’s initials there, Willie?”
“Why, to show the honey belonged to Father Gibault. No one will steal honey from a marked tree,” Willie explained as he untied his cloth bundle. Out tumbled two blue capots or cloaks with hoods, two small scarfs and two pairs of mittens. Then he took out a long, sharp knife from the pocket of one of the capots. “Now we’ll get dressed to tackle the bees.”