“Try here. No, give me the spade!” exclaimed Joe, wild with anxiety.
At the end of half an hour the glade looked as if it had been blown up. They had dug it over from end to end, and the bitter truth was plain to them. Somebody had already worked the mine. Only one end of the big deposit was left, which happened to be the spot where Joe dug into the ground on the day he made the discovery. All the rest of the rosin-pit had been emptied, and carefully refilled. From the size of the cavity it was apparent that hundreds of barrels had been taken out. Two dozen barrels at most would hold what was left.
“Oh, my lan’!” Sam mourned. “Ain’t dat wickedness? Shore is! All de same, Mr. Joe,” he added, brightening a little, “dere’s some left. Mebbe a hundred dollars worth.”
A hundred and a thousand dollars were both fabulous sums to Sam, but Joe saw it differently. In despair he cast about to think who could possibly have perpetrated the theft so quietly. It had been done very recently. Several persons must have been at work to carry off that enormous quantity, and they must have had some means of transport handy, a boat or—
The memory of the black houseboat flashed into his mind.
“I know where it’s gone, Sam!” he cried. “What a fool I was not to think of it before. It wasn’t gum they were after. It was this rosin. Pick up that iron bar and come along with me.”
Joe snatched up his rifle, assured himself that the magazine was full, and started toward the river, with Sam at his heels. He suddenly felt an absolute certainty that the houseboat men had done the stealing; they had been responsible for all the late disturbances in the woods; they had been covering up their operations in this way. No doubt there were more than two men in that black boat, and the story of the sick brother was undoubtedly false.
In his wrath Joe scarcely stopped to reflect that he had only one weapon, against possibly three or four in the hands of lawless men. He had an idea of taking the enemy totally by surprise. They ran across the pine woods, went more cautiously through the swamp belt, and came at last in sight of the bayou where the houseboat had been moored. But the boat was gone. The bayou was empty.
Joe stopped with an exclamation of rage and despair. But Sam, after poking about the remains of the camp-fire left ashore, spoke with an air of determination.
“Dey ain’t been gone long, Mr. Joe. Dese ashes was made last night, anyway. We kin cotch ’em yet. Dey’s shore gone down de ribber. Dey can’t go up noways, an’ dem houseboats travels powerful slow. Dere’s a canoe down at dis landin’. We kin run ’em down, ef you say so.”