“You don’t suppose they’ve put it back in the place where we located it before?” said Bob.
It seemed hardly likely. However, after a careful but fruitless search all over the deserted camp, they paddled back through the swampy, stagnant channel, back to the main bayou, and proceeded further upwards. They were sharply on the lookout all the way, and when at last they came to the screen of dense branches and vines that almost curtained the water, they parted the greenery cautiously and peered through.
But that well-hidden nook held no houseboat this time. Pushing ahead, they landed on the shore where they had found the outfit for melting down the rosin. Nothing was left of it now but a stray scrap of rosin-soaked burlap, and a spot of ash where the kettle had stood.
“Looks as if nobody had been here since,” Joe commented, looking about.
There was a heavily-worn place on a tree where the hawser of the houseboat must have been tied up many times, but there were no fresh foot-marks about the place, and no sign of anybody having visited it recently. They beat about through the dense thickets, however, in all directions back from the water. They found nothing except an old shovel that might have been lying there for weeks; Joe and Bob were already turning back to the boat, feeling more secure than they had felt for many days, when Sam stopped them with a cry.
He had pushed further back among the titi-thicket, and was now standing still, his head thrown back, sniffing the air like a hound.
“Mr. Joe!” he exclaimed, “I shore does smell rosin!”
CHAPTER XV
THE TREASURE OF ROSIN
This was exactly what Sam had said when they had arrived here before. He had been right then, but now Joe laughed.
“I reckon not, Sam,” he said. “That rosin’s far away from here.”