“I sure will,” said Joe. “But there was an Old Dick once, all right. His bees may have melted away, though. Maybe he never had so many as folks said. Lots of things might have happened to them. Bears may have eaten ’em up—they may have got burned, or stolen. Or they just naturally died. Bees do die sometimes, don’t they?”
“I expect some niggers stole the honey, and the bees starved to death,” Bob suggested shrewdly. “Anyhow, I don’t think it would be worth while to look much more, even if we weren’t out of grub.”
There was grub enough for that night and for breakfast, with a little for a bite on the way home. They sat about the camp for some time next morning, reluctant to start. It had not been a very pleasurable or successful trip, but it was rather hard to call it over, and start on the fifteen mile row upstream to Magnolia Landing.
Carl picked up Joe’s rifle and started up the bank, trying rather half-heartedly to get a shot at a gray squirrel in a gum-tree. He disappeared through the thicket, and a few minutes afterwards they heard him calling. He was standing at the foot of a dead black-gum, looking upward.
“Bees!” he exclaimed, as they approached.
“Only a bee-tree!” said Alice in disappointment, at the first glance.
Twenty feet up, there was a dense cloud of flying insects about a small hole in the trunk. They were coming and going in much excitement, and the loud roar of their wings sounded plainly on the ground.
“But what’s stirring them up so?” said Bob, puzzled. “Can’t be swarming at this time of year.”
“No, they’re robbing—they’re fighting!” cried Alice. “This bee-tree is being robbed out by some other wild bees—or—”
Carl uttered a yell.