“Old Dick’s bees! Where are they coming from?”
From the bee-tree they could see the insects coming and going in a direct line over the woods toward the north.
“Follow them! Track them down!” Bob exclaimed.
They all started at a run along the line of the bees’ flight. Once they had the direction, they had only to keep on, for bees fly in a proverbially straight line. They went down a slope, crossed a little creek in a belt of titi thickets, up another slope, and then Bob in the lead uttered a whoop of triumph.
There before them, between two great magnolias, stood the wreck of a small board cabin. Windowless and doorless, it looked a long-deserted ruin. A tumbling log outhouse stood near, and there were surviving indications of a fence.
“Old Dick’s cabin, for sure!” exclaimed Carl. “And there’s the bees!”
At one end of the cabin stood three “gums,” made of sections of a hollow log, about three feet long and standing on end. The top was covered with a piece of plank, and through the rotted entrance-hole at the bottom excited streams of bees were flying and entering. Two more gums showed no activity and were evidently dead; and several more lay overturned and empty.
“But where’s the enormous gum-apiary?” cried Alice.
The bees in the gums, wild and jet-black, were cross and inclined to attack. The party kept well away from them and searched all through the blackberry-thickets and undergrowth, at first with full expectation, then with failing hopes, and at last with disgust. There were no more bees than the three colonies they had first seen.
“So much for Old Dick’s hundreds of gums!” said Bob. “Another legend busted!”