“Whoop-ee, Mr. Joe! Told you I smelt it!” shrieked Sam. “Knew we’d fin’ dat ole rosin one of dese days!”
“Found it, sure enough!” Bob exclaimed, scarcely less excited. “But, gracious, what a lot!”
The interior of the thicket must have been thirty feet square, and it was heaped up with the masking layer of chopped shrubs and creepers. The boys poked into it at different points, and found rosin everywhere. There was no delusion this time. Here were the whole contents of the river orchard “mine,” the rosin from the old Marshall distillery, come back to the descendants of the family at last.
“I knowed we’d find it!” Sam exulted. “I ain’t said nothin’, but I knowed we’d find dat rosin. You done said you’d give me a thousand dollars if we got ten thousand dollars’ worf. Don’t you reckon dey’re a thousand barrels dere, Mr. Joe?”
“You deserve it, for we’d never have found it but for you,” said Joe. “But there isn’t a thousand barrels there—nothing like it. There sure is an enormous lot, though. Now this sets us safe,” he added, turning to Bob. “Burnam said he’d go halves with me on it. He never thought then that I’d locate it, and neither did I. But he’ll let me handle his half too—I know he will—as an advance on what he owes me. This saves the bee speculation. Hurrah!”
“Look here, Joe, we can’t let you risk all this—” Bob began.
“Nonsense! I want to buy into this bee game,” Joe laughed. “It’s the best investment I know. Besides, this stuff really belongs to you, I reckon, as much as it does to me. It was your grandfather, too, that made it. But how are we going to get away with it? Suppose Blue Bob’s boat came up the bayou this minute!”
“Oh, lordy!” Sam muttered.
“Let’s cover it up again and get away,” Bob suggested. “We’ll talk it over. But you bet we’ll get it out somehow.”
They carefully replaced the covering of brush and leaves upon the pile of rosin, and retreated, taking pains to efface their traces as far as possible. Once in the boat again, they made all speed back to the apiary; they dreaded at every turning to encounter the returning rivermen, and they were intensely relieved when they reached the old cabin without seeing any one or being seen.