“Of course I have,” declared Pep. “The horse this farmer describes is the very horse we’ve been trying to run down; isn’t it?”
“Yes, that is sure,” assented Vic.
“Those movies fellows wouldn’t rummage all over the country to steal a bee hive,” continued the confident Pep. “They would naturally select the nearest point where they could find one. They weren’t after honey, or they would have brought a tub and robbed the whole line of hives. Why, it’s clear as crystal to me. They wanted the material for a bee film.”
“Say, Pep, you’re just smart, the way you figure things out so quick and right,” commended Vic, who had come to like his new comrade so greatly that he considered him the cleverest fellow in the world. “That movies crowd must have a regular hideout, though, to be able to come and go with no one able to find out where they have their camp.”
“Yes, they seem to have fixed themselves right in getting out of the way when they want to,” admitted Pep. “You see, though, this district isn’t very well filled up and it would take a long time to go all over it. I think we are ‘getting warm,’ though, as I told you. There’s something in the back of my head tells me we are closer to them than we have been before. We’ll take a fresh start in the morning and see what we can make out.”
“Say, there’s where I can help!” exclaimed Vic, suddenly, and he darted away to where two boys were driving some cows from pasture into a shed.
“I’ve got my twelve quarts fair and square,” announced Vic triumphantly, at the end of fifteen minutes, and he lifted his pail foaming nearly to the brim. “Why, you’re ages behind me,” he rallied his competitors.
The incident made the quartette quite chummy. They went in to an excellent supper. Vic was in high spirits over the exercise and excitement of his exploit. He jollied his rivals in true farm boy fashion. Finally Pep brought up the bee hive incident, and the farm boys learned of his interest in the despoilers who had visited them.
“I say, Pep,” observed one of them, “you ought to try my plan of trailing that stolen hive. I read about it in a farm paper and maybe there’s something to it.”
“What was that?” asked Vic, curiously.