CHAPTER XV
THE TREASURE OF ROSIN
This was exactly what Sam had said when they had arrived here before. He had been right then, but now Joe laughed.
“I reckon not, Sam,” he said. “That rosin’s far away from here.”
“I dunno,” Sam muttered, still sniffing. He pushed forward into the dense shrubbery, poked about a few minutes, and then uttered a loud yell. Before the boys could turn back he emerged, trundling a battered wheelbarrow, caked with dirty rosin—the identical wheelbarrow that Joe had discovered in the river orchard. He recognized it at once.
“But this wasn’t much to smell, Sam. Can’t you do better than that?” laughed Bob. “Not much rosin on this.”
“Dis here wasn’t what I done smelt—no suh, Mr. Bob,” replied the negro. “Smelt somethin’ heap powerfuler’n dis—yes-suh.”
He sniffed again, growing serious and intent. Neither of the white boys could smell anything, but a negro sometimes has wonderful olfactories. Sam dived into the thicket again; they could hear him crashing about, out of sight. A long, green whip-snake bolted from his feet. He penetrated deeper, stopped, threshed about for a minute, and then they heard him calling in a startled voice:
“Mr. Joe, come dis way! Come ’long quick!”
The boys rushed after him, tearing through the dense tangle of shrubs and interlacing vines. Sam stood with his head thrust into a particularly dense thicket of tall, close-growing titi-shrubs, and the boys parted the shrubs and looked also.
To their astonishment, the thicket was hollow. The whole interior of it had been cut out, and the open space was occupied by a great mound of rubbish—the lopped-off shrubs, leaves, vines, palmetto-tops, partly dead, partly showing still green.
“What on earth?” Bob muttered, puzzled.
But Joe, with an energetic exclamation, plunged forward and flung the cut branches aside. A piny smell came out. A cascade of brown lumps rattled down, great fragments of brown and amber, caked with bark and pine needles.
“The rosin, by jingo!” Joe shouted.
“Whoop-ee, Mr. Joe! Told you I smelt it!” shrieked Sam. “Knew we’d fin’ dat ole rosin one of dese days!”
“Found it, sure enough!” Bob exclaimed, scarcely less excited. “But, gracious, what a lot!”
The interior of the thicket must have been thirty feet square, and it was heaped up with the masking layer of chopped shrubs and creepers. The boys poked into it at different points, and found rosin everywhere. There was no delusion this time. Here were the whole contents of the river orchard “mine,” the rosin from the old Marshall distillery, come back to the descendants of the family at last.
“I knowed we’d find it!” Sam exulted. “I ain’t said nothin’, but I knowed we’d find dat rosin. You done said you’d give me a thousand dollars if we got ten thousand dollars’ worf. Don’t you reckon dey’re a thousand barrels dere, Mr. Joe?”
“You deserve it, for we’d never have found it but for you,” said Joe. “But there isn’t a thousand barrels there—nothing like it. There sure is an enormous lot, though. Now this sets us safe,” he added, turning to Bob. “Burnam said he’d go halves with me on it. He never thought then that I’d locate it, and neither did I. But he’ll let me handle his half too—I know he will—as an advance on what he owes me. This saves the bee speculation. Hurrah!”
“Look here, Joe, we can’t let you risk all this—” Bob began.
“Nonsense! I want to buy into this bee game,” Joe laughed. “It’s the best investment I know. Besides, this stuff really belongs to you, I reckon, as much as it does to me. It was your grandfather, too, that made it. But how are we going to get away with it? Suppose Blue Bob’s boat came up the bayou this minute!”
“Oh, lordy!” Sam muttered.
“Let’s cover it up again and get away,” Bob suggested. “We’ll talk it over. But you bet we’ll get it out somehow.”
They carefully replaced the covering of brush and leaves upon the pile of rosin, and retreated, taking pains to efface their traces as far as possible. Once in the boat again, they made all speed back to the apiary; they dreaded at every turning to encounter the returning rivermen, and they were intensely relieved when they reached the old cabin without seeing any one or being seen.
Alice and Carl were waiting anxiously for them, and they poured out the news of their discovery—news of such importance that it temporarily swamped every other interest.
“Oh, Joe! It’s splendid of you to want to put all that into the bees!” Alice exclaimed. “I feel as if we shouldn’t let you, but I can’t resist the temptation.”
“Don’t worry. You couldn’t hinder me. But remember, we haven’t got it yet,” Joe returned. “Those men might come back at any moment.”
“Evidently they’ve had it here all this time,” said Bob. “We might have found it the first time we struck that place if we’d had more time to look. We thought they’d finished melting up the rosin, but they must have only commenced. They didn’t dare to do it while we’ve been here, so they covered it up and hid it. No wonder they’ve been in a hurry for us to move!”
“But can we sell the stuff in the rough, just as it is?” Carl asked.
“Oh, yes,” Joe assured him. “Of course, we wouldn’t get quite so much as if it were refined, but any turpentine-camp will buy it. We might send it to Harper’s camp about half-way down to Mobile. I know Harper, and he’ll treat us right on it.”
“But how’ll we get it there?” Carl exclaimed.
This was the crux of the question. For some moments there was silence, while they pondered.
“I’ve been thinking of that,” said Joe, slowly. “So far as I can see, the only way will be to load it into that barge down by the river and have the steamboat take it when she comes back.”
“Ship the rosin instead of the bees?” cried Alice.
“Well, that rosin may be worth three or four thousand dollars,” Joe argued. “The bees aren’t worth half that. Besides, we’ve got to seize our chance while those pirates are away. Even if they came back we could still ship the bees. The chances are that they won’t trouble to dig into that rosin heap till they know we’re gone. If we ship the bees first and have to wait for the boat to come back, I don’t believe we’d ever get a chance at the rosin; but if we can get the rosin off now, I think we can be almost sure of getting away with both. Of course, it’s a chance. I’ll do whatever you-all think.”
They talked it over at great length, but Joe’s reasoning seemed sound. The rosin was too big a thing to risk losing.
“Another thing,” Joe added. “The river boats aren’t usually very heavily loaded when they come down-river at this time of year. There’s every chance that they can load our bees aboard somewhere, or part of them anyway, so that they can go with the rosin.”
“Suppose those pirates turned up just as we were carrying off the plunder!” Carl suggested.
“Nothing to do then but defend ourselves,” said Bob with determination. “We’re as many as they are, after all, and as well armed. I’d say, fight!”
“Fight it is!” Joe agreed. “But I hope it won’t come to that. I believe our luck will hold a little longer.”
“Well, there’s no time to lose in getting started. It’ll take us goodness knows how long to raft that stuff down the bayou in our flatboat. And the steamer’ll be back in two or three days,” said Bob.
“We can save some trouble by towing the barge as far as possible up the bayou,” Joe proposed. “Yes, we ought to start right away.”
Nothing else but this last, biggest chance of all was talked of during the rest of the morning and while they prepared and ate dinner. It was a risk; there was danger in it indeed. Nobody was disposed to back out, and yet they hesitated to start. However, after dinner the boys all went down to the river and, with immense labor, towed and poled the big barge up the bayou and moored it below the bee-yard. Beyond that the channel was too crooked and narrow for its passage.
This took them until nearly the middle of the afternoon, and then, without debate, they took the final plunge. Alice declined to be left alone at the cabin, so they all got into the flat boat and poled up the bayou until they reached the hiding-place of the treasure. Tying up the boat, they landed. With an ax Bob rapidly cut a clear path through the jungle, and they ripped away the covering of brush from the rosin heap.
“Now we’ve cast the die!” said Joe. “We’ve got to work hard and quick—day and night, if necessary—until this stuff is all loaded. Alice’ll stand guard for us. Sam, get out that wheelbarrow.”
Luckily it was only a few yards from the rosin to the water. With the old shovel they had found, it was a mere matter of seconds to fill the wheelbarrow; Sam trundled it down to the bayou, and the first load of rosin went rattling into the boat.
Ripping away the cover of brush from the heap finally disclosed a second shovel, and this expedited matters. Sam was kept briskly trotting to and fro with the laden barrow. Carl, who had no shovel, made an attempt to scoop up the rosin with a piece of board; and Alice, after looking on for some time, went a little way down the stream and posted herself on guard, ready to give the alarm if a boat should be seen coming up.
The single wheelbarrow was the great hindrance. The white boys stood idle for half the time, while Sam was wheeling the load; nevertheless the flatboat slowly filled up. The cargo seemed to have taken scarcely a noticeable amount from the great pile.
“Gracious, there’s a powerful lot of the stuff!” exclaimed Carl.
“Dere shore is!” Sam chuckled. “Bet you has to give me dat thousand dollars, after all, Mr. Joe.”
They all got aboard, standing uncertainly on the lumpy cargo, and navigated the flatboat down to the apiary and the barge. Here Sam and Carl hastily began to shovel the stuff into the bigger boat. Bob meanwhile went up to the cabin, where they heard sounds presently of sawing and hammering. Before the boys had completed the transfer of the cargo he came back, carrying a sort of stretcher—a shallow box with handles.
“It’ll be a heavy business, but it’ll help the wheelbarrow out,” he remarked, as he exhibited it.
So it did. The box held about a hundred pounds of the brown lumps, and with a boy carrying each end it doubled the speed of loading. The second filling of the flatboat was completed in far less time than the first, and again they floated down and shoveled the rosin into the barge. Everything had gone with wonderful smoothness so far; there was no sign of the river pirates’ return and their confidence and hope increased with every wheelbarrow-load.
The sun was falling low over the swamps now, but they kept at work to the last spark of light, and brought down the last load in almost total darkness. While they were shoveling it into the barge, Alice went up to the cabin and prepared fried pork, corn-bread, and coffee.
“We’ve made a big start, anyway,” said Carl rejoicing as he ate.
“Yes, but only a start,” returned Bob. “When does that steamboat come back? Day after to-morrow? It’ll take us all our time to get that stuff moved before to-morrow night.”
“Why not tackle it again to-night?” Joe suggested. “We can make fires and torches to give us light enough to shovel by.”
They were all tired, and gummed up with rosin, but after they had eaten and rested for an hour the proposition seemed less unattractive. They took to the flatboat again, carrying torches of fat-pine, and at the treasure-place they lighted a fire of pine and lumps of rosin that gave out a smoky and lurid illumination. It was enough to shovel by, as Joe said, but it was a disquieting fact that the glare could be seen a long way off. However, if the river-men were anywhere in the vicinity they would be sure to come up within a few hours in any case, so the fire-light could do nothing but hasten the danger a little.
They kept their firearms handy while they worked, and half a dozen times there was a sudden alarm, a halt, and a hasty grabbing of guns. But these alarms all turned out false. They floated the load down to the barge without interruption, transferred it, and went back for another. This one also moved in safety, and their nervousness began to subside.
For hour after hour they worked, shoveling, poling, shoveling, carrying the heavy stretcher, in the hot, wet atmosphere of the swamp, in the orange glare of the rosin-fed fire. They streamed with sweat; mosquitoes buzzed in clouds, but no one had time to notice them. Load after load went down the bayou and was shoveled into the barge, until, an hour after midnight, their endurance gave out.
“Better knock off,” Bob advised. “No use overdoing it; and we’ve got a heavy day to-morrow.”
They ate another late supper, nodding with exhaustion, barely able to keep awake. Carl suggested doubtfully that some one ought to stand sentry, but they were all too tired to care. They tumbled into their various couches, and went almost instantly to sleep. Joe felt that Carl’s suggestion was right; he made a faint attempt to keep awake for some time, but he awoke suddenly with a start and found gray dawn in the air. It was morning; a heavy mist lay on the swamp and the bayou. Everything was undisturbed. The cabin had not been burned during the night, and the rest of his party were still soundly asleep.
He got up, feeling sore and stiff, and awakened the others. Breakfast was a rather silent and glum meal, but the influence of hot food and coffee spread by degrees through their muscles, and they mustered up energy to attack the big task again.
They had made progress the night before. A great end of the rosin heap was gone, perhaps a third of it. And the barge was nearly half filled. It was doubtful if they would be able to take away the whole of the mound.
However, they set to work to get what they could. Stiffened muscles gradually suppled again, and they shoveled and wheeled, poled the boat and shifted the cargo, all through that hot, sticky morning. They struck work for an hour at noon, then attacked it again, doggedly determined to finish that afternoon. About four o’clock they stopped for more food. The furious work seemed to keep them always ravenously hungry.
“It’s a good thing we’re leaving presently,” Alice remarked. “There’s just about provisions to last us. This is the end of the sugar.”
“Plenty of honey,” said Joe. “We won’t suffer for sweet anyhow.”
A dash of rain came down that afternoon and cooled the air. By sunset the barge had about as much rosin as she could carry, Joe thought, though there were still a good many cubic feet left in the pile. They ventured to bring down another boat-load, then another, and stopped for supper, undecided whether to continue after dark. But while they we’re eating they were all startled by a long, deep-toned murmur, like a vast echo, that seemed to rise from every direction upon the air.
“The steamboat, by jingo!” ejaculated Joe. “She’s a day ahead of her schedule this time.”
“And we haven’t got the barge down to the river. We’ll miss her!” Alice cried.
“Oh, she won’t be along for hours yet,” Joe reassured. “Plenty of time to finish supper, and then meet her. But this puts an end to mining out any more rosin.”
“Don’t you reckon we’ve done a thousand barrels, Mr. Joe?” Sam demanded anxiously from the background, where he was eating corn-bread and honey.
“When it’s all melted down and barreled up it may make half that,” the woods-rider answered. “Hard to guess. But isn’t that good enough? It ought to bring three thousand dollars.”
The far-away steamboat blew again as he was speaking. Growing anxious, Carl went up to the top of the ridge to look and listen. He reported that the wind was blowing the wrong way; the boat might be nearer than they thought, and he imagined he had caught a distant flash of her searchlight.
Accordingly they finished supper in a hurry and went down to get the barge off. The current would float it down, very slowly indeed, but certainly, and it would only have to be roped to the steamer’s side. Bob remained at the cabin, to pack up the supplies. The chances were that the boat would be able to take bees and everything.
“I know these river boats,” Joe said confidently. “She’s sure not to have much freight this trip, and she’ll wait all night while we bring the bees down. I’d bet she’d wait most of to-morrow too for that much cargo.”
It would not take long to cover the hive-entrances with wire-gauze and take them down to the river on the flatboat, and during the absence of the others Bob busied himself with preparing the wire, tacks, and all necessary apparatus for an instant move. Alice had gone with the rest to see the rosin shipped, and soon after the barge had disappeared down the dark bayou Bob heard the roar of the whistle much louder and nearer, and saw the unmistakable flash of the light, playing on the sky over the forest like summer lightning.
It was two hours, however, before the steamer finally blew her whistle deafeningly off the bayou. By the reflection of the lights Bob could see that she had stopped. She stayed there for perhaps half an hour; then, to his dismay, she roared a long blast and started again, her white light playing on the sky as she went down and around the River Island on her way to Mobile.
It was another half hour before he heard the sound of oars coming up the bayou. He went down to the shore cautiously. The boat pulled in, and Sam and Joe came ashore out of the darkness.
“Wouldn’t she wait for the bees?” exclaimed Bob anxiously. “Where’s Carl and Alice?”
“No, she wouldn’t wait,” replied Joe, in a strange voice. “She was loaded down with freight; she couldn’t have carried a single beehive. That’s nothing. But she isn’t coming back, Bob. This is her last trip.”
“What?” cried Bob, incredulously.
“She’s to be laid up for a couple of months anyway. She hasn’t been paying lately, and there’s some labor trouble with the freight-handlers at the Mobile dock. The captain only got the word at Selma two days ago. No more boats on the river for the rest of this spring. I shipped the rosin down to Harper’s camp. Carl goes with it, and I made Alice go too. For we’re stranded here, don’t you see, Bob? We can’t get away, not with the bees; and those pirates are going to be back directly.”
Bob was silent, completely stunned with this catastrophe. Sam made the boat fast, and the three of them began to walk despondently up the slope to the cabin in the dark.
“Alice and Carl can get a car or buggy from Harper’s up to Uncle Louis’s,” Joe continued. “Alice didn’t want to go, but we made her. This is going to be too dangerous a place for any girl. There wasn’t time to arrange anything, but Carl is going to see if he can’t have help sent down to us—if we can only hold out till it comes.”
They stopped outside the cabin. Dimly in the gloom they could see the pale outline of the rows of beehives, all full of good, straight, new combs and crowded with live bees—a valuable property which the boys had built up out of nothing.
“Those pirates are sure to be back within a day or two,” Joe went on. “They’ll see how we’ve looted the rosin, and then they’ll get us. But what are we to do? Can’t go off and desert the bee-ranch.”
“I should say not,” cried Bob, clenching his fists. “I won’t do that! We mustn’t be beaten now. Joe, we’ve just got to get these bees out of here right away, and down to the railroad!”
“I’m with you. But how are we going to do it?” Joe returned.
Bob had no answer ready. Sam was building a fire and preparing to get supper. Away down the river the steamboat roared sullenly, echoing weirdly over the forests. They were all tired and unstrung with the reaction from that day and night of hard labor, and the wilderness seemed desperately lonely, dangerous, and depressing. The corn-bread that Sam stirred up did not have the flavor of Alice’s hands, and, worse still, there was very little of it left. The pork was almost gone too.
“We’ll have to do some hunting,” said Joe, gloomily.
But the food question troubled them only slightly. It was the problem of getting the bees away that occupied their whole minds. They talked it over from every point of view without reaching any solution, until nearly ten o’clock. Then came a heavy downpour of rain that drove them into the cabin.
It was a torrential deluge that leaked through the cabin roof in a dozen places, but the cabin was at any rate better than the rough shelter outside. The rain slackened a little; they tried to sleep, but lay awake for a long time. Joe dozed at last, and awakened to hear the rain thundering in torrents on the roof again. A stream was falling on his legs. He got up, struck a match, and endeavored to find a less damp spot. Bob was soundly asleep, but Sam suddenly stole forward out of the corner where he had lain down.
“What’s the matter? Getting wet, Sam?” Joe inquired.
“No-suh, Mr. Joe, I don’t min’ dat none. I ain’t been sleepin’. I been studyin’—bout dem bees, Mr. Joe. What I been studyin’ on is dis. Why can’t we-all make a sorter raft, an’ float dem bees down to whar you-all wants ’em?”