“Float her down into the river,” said Joe. “Of course we don’t want to steal their boat, and we’ll tie her up and leave her at the first landing we come to. They’ll be sure to come looking for her down the river, and they’ll find her all right. I’m going to confiscate these four barrels of rosin, though. They’re worth thirty or forty dollars. We’ll either get the boat up to Magnolia or get somebody to drive us over to the railroad. I suppose I’ll go back to the plantation with you. I’ve got nowhere else to go now.”
The consciousness of his unfortunate position came upon the woods-rider with extreme gloom. He had made up his mind that nothing was to be expected from Burnam, and he had counted on this rosin to recoup his loss. This had turned out an utter failure, and he no longer had his job.
“I suppose I might get another place as woods-rider somewhere,” he said. “To tell you the truth, I’d thought quite seriously of going into the bee business with you, if this rosin mine had only panned out.”
“I wish you could, Joe,” said his cousin earnestly. “We’d like to have you, and you’d find it’d pay better than turpentining.”
Sam, who had been listening, burst into a peal of laughter at this.
“Bees pays better’n turpentinin’!” he shouted. “Hi-yi! Dat shorely is a joke!”
“You don’t know anything about bees, Sam,” said Bob severely. “Up North we owned close to ten million bees and two hundred queen bees. Every queen would lay ten thousand eggs a week, and every egg would hatch into a new bee. We’ve had pretty near a car-load of honey at once. One hive will make more honey than you could carry. I’ve seen nearly one of those rosin-barrels full of honey taken off of one hive—worth fifteen cents a pound. These gums down here aren’t big enough to hold a crop, and the bees swarm and go away. Our hives are made so that they can be enlarged as the bees fill them up. They grow higher and higher, till they’re higher than your head, all full of bees and honey and wax from top to bottom. There are men who made ten thousand dollars out of their honey in one summer. I’ll bet Burnam never made as much as that.”
Sam’s face had grown sober under this lesson in apiculture. He looked very doubtfully at the Canadian, uncertain whether it was a joke.
“Is all dat so, Mr. Joe?” he enquired dubiously.
“I reckon it is,” Joe returned.