“If Blue Bob has destroyed them,” returned his cousin, “we’ll get a sheriff’s posse and spend the rest of the summer hunting those thieves through the swamps till we get them.”
Another shallow, rotting backwater proved blank. They zigzagged across the river again and were skirting up close to the shore when Joe suddenly stopped rowing, with a startled exclamation. Leaning over, he picked up something from the water, and held it up for Bob to see. It was a piece of broken honeycomb, about as large as his hand.
The eyes of the two boys met with the same look of comprehension. They had struck the trail, and Sam voiced the thought in both their minds:
“Golly! Blue Bob is shore gittin’ after dat honey. Jes’ what I done said.”
Plainly, indeed, something was breaking up the beehives. Trying to combine speed and silence, they rowed up the shore, on the lookout for some opening. Again they saw a fragment of comb, lodged against a projecting root; but it was fully a quarter of a mile before they came to a break in the shore, heavily screened by vines and shrubs and drooping live-oak branches. They had passed right by it on the way down. Masses of rattan and wild honeysuckle trailed almost to the water, but Joe at once saw signs that something had lately crushed through that green curtain.
They shoved the boat noiselessly up to the entrance, and Joe thrust his head through the green tangle. Almost instantly he drew it back, and his eyes gleamed with excitement.
“The raft—” he whispered; but he was interrupted by a sound of subdued voices and a burst of laughter, apparently not a hundred feet through the trees.
“It’s there, all right!” he muttered excitedly. “Just inside. I could almost touch it. The gang’s further on. We can’t go in here. We’ve got to land and go around.”
“I smells beeswax. I smells smoke, Mr. Joe!” whispered Sam, sniffing the air. “What you reckon dem fellows doin’?”
“Don’t know. I couldn’t see them,” returned Joe. “Back out of here. Let her float down a little.”