The white bulk of the steamboat came majestically around the bend, puffing pine smoke from her tall double chimneys, and hauled in to the landing. Joe was well known on the boat; Burnam was a heavy shipper of freight, and none of the turpentine men ever paid anything for passage. As he was not going far, there was no difficulty about Snowball’s transportation either, and the horse was led aboard and tied among the piles of wood for the furnaces on the lower deck.
There was an hour’s wait at the landing, and it was another hour down the winding river to Magnolia, which was the landing for Joe’s destination. He went ashore, mounted Snowball again, and rode up the road through swamps and pine woods, till the forests gave place to more and more continuous cultivated fields, and at last he sighted his uncle’s plantation.
The great, white, rambling ante-bellum house stood far back from the road, in a grove of oaks and chinaberry-trees. Beyond it were the scattered barns and stables, and farther still the remains of a dozen cabins that had been the slave quarters fifty years ago. As Joe rode in the gate he heard a shot and a shout of laughter. A pretty, brown-haired, bare-headed girl was standing in front of the house, her extended arm still holding a smoking pistol, while two boys were applauding her shot at a paper target pinned to an oak. They all glanced up at the trample of the hoofs, and Joe took off his hat and waved it. He knew at once that these must be his cousins from the far North.
The three young Harmans had arrived in Alabama in February, on a trip of combined business and pleasure. But for the business they would not have come; for it was a long way from their old home at Harman’s Corners, Ontario, to these Alabama forests, and they had to plan carefully to stand the expenses of the journey.
Three years before they had been left orphans, inheriting little but debts. Alice, however, had for some time been a skilful keeper of bees on a small scale, and they had invested all their worldly capital in a large outfit of bees in the wild country of northern Ontario. It had been a rough experience, sometimes a dangerous one; they had had plenty of adventures, and had come more than once within an ace of losing their apiary in the first season, but the venture had been a success. After the second season they had the apiary fully paid for, and the balance at the bank had been a growing source of satisfaction to them.
They had a big crop of honey, and it might have been well if they had been content, but they were tempted by a high cash offer for their bees, and they sold all but fifty hives in the autumn, trusting to be able to replace them at a lower figure before the next season. But this turned out difficult to do. Honey was beginning to rise greatly in price that autumn, and looked as if it would be higher still next year, and nobody had bees for sale. On the contrary, most apiarists wished to buy more, for they expected to coin gold the next summer.
Bitterly regretting their lost bees, the young Harmans searched and advertised without result.
“There’s only one thing to do—get bees from the South,” Alice said.
The Southern States, with their mild winters and early springs, have always been a great source of supply for bees for the North. Of late years a great trade has arisen in “pound packages”—a pound or two of bees and a queen, enclosed in a wire-screened box and shipped by express. Such a package of bees, put in a hive and provided with ready-built combs in May, will often build up to a powerful colony and gather as much honey as any wintered-over hive. But on investigation the Harmans found that prices even for Southern pound packages were rising to extravagant figures.
“Why couldn’t we go down, get some bees, and ship them ourselves?” Bob suggested.
It was the most attractive proposition of all. They wrote to Uncle Louis, whom they had never seen, but who had often invited them to come South and visit him. The letter brought a prompt and cordial reply. They were to come and spend the whole winter at his plantation. There were “worlds of bees” thereabouts, he said, and they could be bought in that remote place for little or nothing.
That settled the matter. But it was already well toward midwinter, and they were not able to leave immediately. They visited two or three large commercial bee-breeding ranches, spent some weeks in Mobile and along the Gulf, and then voyaged up the river to the plantation.
It was a wonderful and novel experience to them, a new and fascinating world, from the rambling, old-time house, the mules, and the negroes, to the vast pine forests and the black swamps along the river, full of wild turkeys, ducks, wildcats, and moccasin snakes. But so far they had failed to find the “world of bees.” Uncle Louis had written too optimistically.
But he gave them a welcome of Southern heartiness, and they enjoyed it all greatly. There were horses to ride, boats to row on the bayou, and game to shoot. Bob had brought his rifle and Carl his shotgun, and Alice had purchased in Mobile the long-barreled target revolver with which they were now practising.
They had been expecting Joe any day, and they knew at once who it must be, at sight of the black horse with the Mexican stirrups, the rifle in its sheath at the saddle, and the boyish rider in dark khaki, with a red tie and creased rough-rider hat. Joe had taken some pains to get himself and his horse up for the occasion, and he rode up and dismounted.
“I know this must be Cousin Alice,” he exclaimed, bowing very low over the hand of his cousin, who was a little disconcerted by so much ceremony. It was different from the abrupter manners of the Canadian country-folk.
He shook hands with Bob and Carl, and there was an exchange of greetings, while the cousins all took stock of one another. They were all within two or three years of the same age. Alice had almost exactly the years of Joe. Bob Harman, tall, strongly-built, fair-haired, was the oldest. Carl was the youngest, and his darker complexion recalled his mother, who had come from Alabama twenty years before.
The Harmans liked the looks of their new cousin, and Alice was privately much impressed with his picturesque appearance and his Southern manner. They had already begun to grow accustomed to the soft Alabama drawl and slurred speech; but Joe at first found difficulty in getting used to the sharper Northern accent.
“Having a little pistol practice?” he said. He shouted loudly for a negro, who presently came and led Snowball away to the stable.
“Try a shot?” Bob suggested. “I expect you can beat us all. Alice bought this pistol in Mobile. She had an idea that she’d have to carry a gun up here in the wild country.”
A few rounds of shooting broke the ice, and they were all presently on the greatest of good terms. They made wild practice, and Joe was no better than any of them.
“I haven’t shot much with a pistol for years,” he said. “I never tote one. I keep a rifle handy when I’m riding, for you never know what you might see. I’ll go back and get mine from the saddle, and we’ll try it.”
He hastened back to the stable and returned with the weapon. It was a small repeater, shooting a twenty-five caliber smokeless cartridge, light enough for rabbits or turkey, and powerful enough to kill anything in those woods, up to a bear or a man. They fired a few shots apiece with it at fifty yards. Bob was supposed to be a rifle-shot, but he was far outscored by Joe, who was used to the little rifle, and generally fired off a box of cartridges a week.
Leaving off shooting, they strolled back to the house and sat down on the steps of the wide veranda, overhung with budding honeysuckle. Uncle Louis was somewhere out on the plantation; Aunt Kate, his wife, was busy indoors and the cousins continued to grow better acquainted. Joe gave some account of his work in the turpentine industry.
“But I believe you-all keep bees up in Canada,” he said. “That seems funny to me. I wouldn’t think they’d do any good up there where it’s so cold.”
“It’s a better place than down here—for bees, I mean,” said Alice. “It isn’t as cold as you think. Our summers are shorter than yours, but just as hot. The winters are long, but then the bees are packed up warm and they have a complete rest, while down here they’re flying all the time, and they get worn out quicker.”
“Didn’t know a bee ever could get worn out,” said Joe. “But we’ve got bees here on the plantation. Didn’t Uncle Louis tell you?”
“I believe he did say there were some,” said Bob. “He was going to show them to us, but we have not seen them.”
“I’ll show ’em to you, if I can find them. I haven’t seen them myself for a year, but I reckon they’re still there.”
He led the way down past the side of the house to a peach orchard. Up against the fence there was a growth of blackberry-canes, and there, sure enough, was a hum of bees.
The Canadian experts had seen several of these primitive “bee-gums” since coming South, and they had got over the amusement that the first sight had caused them. The hives were boxes about a foot square and three feet high, standing on end, made of rough lumber, and showing a great many cracks and rotted holes, which the industrious insects had plastered up with wax and propolis. From a hole at the bottom the bees came and went, and they were flying now in scores, coming in heavy with honey or with their legs yellow with pollen.
“I expect they’re working on the titi,” Bob remarked, stooping to watch them. “Or maybe there’s some blackberry coming out in bloom.”
“Goodness!” exclaimed Joe. “I didn’t suppose you’d know what titi was. Surely you don’t have it up North.”
“I wouldn’t know a titi-tree if I saw one,” Bob confessed. “But before we came down here I read up about the Alabama honey-plants, and just when they all bloomed, and I know the titi ought to be on just about now. I wish you’d show me some.”
“I reckon you’re a real beeman, all right!” said the woods-rider, laughing. “I never knew there were any books about such things as honey-plants. Down here we just let the bees alone, except when they swarm, and when we rob them. They make honey all right, though. Why, one year I remember we robbed these six gums of pretty near a wash-tubful of honey.”
“About sixty pounds, I expect,” Bob calculated. “Alice, what did our best hive make last year?”
“Three hundred and eighty pounds,” said Alice promptly. “We weighed it separately, just to see how much there was. Our total crop last year was twenty-one thousand pounds. We sold most of it at eleven cents.”
Joe opened his eyes wide and glanced at all three of his cousins to make sure that they were not making fun of him.
“What, more than two thousand dollars, just out of bees?” he gasped. “I never heard of such a thing before. Down here we think bees are just a kind of foolishness. I don’t wonder that you are in the business.”
“Next year I’ll bet we make four thousand dollars, if we can only get the bees,” said Bob. “You see, we were fools. We sold out most of our outfit just when we should have held on. We were offered a big price and we took the bait. So we came down here after more, but I don’t know where we are going to get them. All I can hear of is just a few gums like these, scattered here and there; and we want to get a couple of hundred anyway.”
“A couple of hundred gums of bees!” mused Joe. “These things take my breath away—they sure do! But I believe you can get them. There’s certainly lots of bees in this country. I’d help you look for ’em, if I had time. Tell you what!” he added, remembering something, “you ought to locate Old Dick’s bees.”
“Old Dick? Who’s that?” Bob inquired.
“Why, Old Dick was a nigger that lived away down in the river swamps somewhere, and he had worlds of bees, they say. A whole yard full of gums. He used to ship his honey down to Mobile on the boat when he robbed them, and they say he once shipped a cake of wax that weighed a hundred pounds.”
“I shouldn’t wonder. I expect he got more beeswax than honey,” Alice put in. “Well, do you think we could buy his bees.”
“The old nigger’s dead. He lived there all alone with his wife and the bees, and at last he died and his wife moved away.”
“Then somebody must have taken the bees, too.”
“No, according to the story, they were left. Nobody valued bees much, and nobody cared much to fool with Old Dick’s bees. They say those were fighting bees. Anyway, the old man died eight or ten years ago, and they say the bees are there yet. Anybody could get ’em that wanted to take ’em away. Dick didn’t have any heirs.”
Alice’s eyes had grown brighter and brighter during this recital.
“Oh, we must get them!” she exclaimed. “Just think! What a piece of luck! Likely there would be as many as we wanted, and wouldn’t cost us a cent.”
“Do you know where they are, Joe?” Bob inquired.
“Haven’t the least idea, and I don’t believe anybody knows. Dick didn’t live on any road nor near anybody else. It was away down in the swamps by the river somewhere—several miles south, I reckon. I never saw anybody that had been to Dick’s place. I expect the whole establishment would be grown over with vines and blackberries by this time. But I reckon we ought to be able to locate it if we looked long enough.”
“Couldn’t you go with us? It would be just the sort of expedition we want,” asked Carl. “I expect there’d be game and fish.”
“Oh, yes. It’s a mighty rough country down there, where hardly anybody ever goes except hunters. Lots of quail and turkeys, but the open season for them is over. Might see a bear; lots of them down there, wildcats, too.”
“We saw something of wildcats in Canada,” said Carl. “We lived in a deserted shanty at our bee-ranch in the woods. I was there alone the first night, and the place was alive with cats—tame cats gone wild, you know. Savage brutes! I shot one, and got all clawed up.”
“Bears, too,” Bob remarked. “They raided our bee-yards twice. I wonder if they haven’t chewed up all Old Dick’s bees by this time.”
“Well, I don’t know,” said Joe. “I’d like first-rate to go on a bee hunt with you, and I’ll do it if I can get a few days off, a little later. In fact, you make me wish I was in bees along with you, instead of the turpentine business. Our camp is going to pieces, I’m afraid.”
“Well, if it does, you can learn honey production,” said Alice. “We might keep one lot of bees in Canada and another down here, and be able to work all the year around.”
Joe laughed. Bee-keeping still seemed to him a very unsubstantial sort of pursuit; but he had been greatly impressed by what his cousins had said. If he only had his capital out of Burnam’s turpentine business, he said to himself, he would look into the honey business. As it was, he was tied fast and could do nothing, and the mention of the camp recalled his financial perplexities.
That night at supper he asked Uncle Louis what he thought of Burnam’s financial status.
“The storm hit him hard,” he explained. “Half his orchard is wrecked. He says he’s going to turpentine the river orchard—the old Marshall tract. He owns that, doesn’t he?”
“I just thought that storm would hit your camp,” said Uncle Louis. “It missed us here—blowed down a few trees, but nothing to count. Yes, Burnam owns the old Marshall tract—used to belong to the grandfather of all you young folks—but it’s mortgaged, I know for a fact. Pretty heavy, I reckon.” He glanced at Joe anxiously. “Not worrying, are you?” he inquired. “Burnam’ll pull through. But I don’t believe I ought to have got your money into his business.”
“Oh, well, it was my fault too,” returned Joe. “I was wild to get into turpentine then. But now I’m thinking of going into the bee business.”
He laughed as he spoke, and so did his uncle, who made the usual joke about his probably getting stung.
“We’re going to hunt up Old Dick’s bees, Uncle Louis,” Alice cried. “Joe’s going to help us. Do you know anything about them?”
“Why I’ve heard the story,” said the planter, much amused. “I know for a fact that the old nigger did have right smart of bee-gums once. What became of ’em after he died I can’t say. I don’t see why some of ’em shouldn’t be there yet. There’s nothing to kill bees in this country, excepting thieves. Why, I knew an old gum that stood in a fence-corner for ten or twelve years, and nobody ever went near it, and the bees are alive and well now.”
“That’s the way you keep bees, too, isn’t it, Uncle Louis?” said Alice, slyly.
“We’ve got more important things to do with corn and cotton and hogs down here in the South, young lady,” said Mr. Marshall. “We don’t need to fool with insects.”
There was a shout of laughter at this retort, which reduced Alice to silence, but the conversation drifted irresistibly back to the bees. Joe heard talk of great apiaries, of colonies by the hundred, of tons of honey, of car-loads, indeed, mentioned like ordinary matters, and it filled him with greater and greater amazement. Even Uncle Louis was impressed, though he kept up his air of good-natured ridicule of the whole pursuit.
“But we certainly can’t go after Dick’s bees unless you go with us, Joe,” said Bob. “We don’t understand this country; we have to have a guide. Can’t you manage it?”
Joe shook his head doubtfully.
“Wish I could. But I’m afraid Burnam couldn’t spare me for another vacation just now. But what you-all must do,” he added, “is to come up with me, and see the turpentine camp, and the old Marshall place—the old family seat, you know. Nobody’s there now; the old house is rotting down. It won’t last much longer.”
The young Harmans accepted this proposition with enthusiasm. They all spent three active days on the plantation. They rode, practised with firearms, fished in the bayou and the river, hunted quail and rabbits, and once went out before dawn to stalk a wild-turkey roost—not to shoot, for the game was out of season, but to give the Northerners a look at the big birds. The cousins became great friends, and at the end of Joe’s holiday they all took the boat upstream together for Marshall’s Landing, as the place was still called.
From the landing they walked a mile through the woods to see the old house where their parents had been born, paintless now, crumbling and dilapidated. The glass was gone from the windows; there were birds’ nests in all the rooms, and a drove of half-wild hogs had made a burrow under the building. Like most deserted houses in the South, it was reputed by the negroes to be haunted.
“Over there is the river orchard, that Burnam owns,” said Joe, pointing toward the river. “All this used to belong to our people. They had over a hundred slaves, and used to grow hundreds of bales of cotton in the river-bottoms. I expect they owned ten thousand acres then, but it was mainly timbered, and timber wasn’t worth anything in those days. Only the bottom-lands were considered any account.”
They roamed curiously over the old place with its relics of flower-beds, its fruit orchard, and its chinaberry and walnut-trees, and then walked back to the landing. A rural telephone connected it with the camp, and Joe rang up the commissary-store and begged for Burnam’s car to be sent over, if it was not being used at the moment.
It came in half an hour, and the Harmans drove over to the camp, while Joe rode behind. The turpentine camp was another novel sight to the Northerners, and by good luck the still happened to be working. The men had collected enough gum from the wrecked tract to fill the retort, and they were “running a charge.”
Joe had nothing to do with this process, and he explained the operation to his cousins. The heavy barrels of gum were hoisted up to the platform above the furnace and emptied into the great copper retort, together with a certain amount of water. The copper cap was screwed down, and a fire lighted under the retort. Presently a trickle of colorless fluid began to come through the twisted worm of the condenser. It was the turpentine spirit, evaporating more quickly than water, and this was run off into a barrel, until it ceased and pure water began to come through the pipe.
The turpentine being all out, the negroes opened a gate at the bottom of the retort, letting out a great gush of black, boiling rosin, which ran into a trough, passing through three strainers. Still liquid and intensely hot, it was then ladled out into barrels, where it cooled and hardened, ready to be shipped. This rosin was worth six or seven dollars a barrel, and was a most valuable by-product of the turpentine industry.
All this was an old story to Joe, but it was fresh and exciting to the Canadians. Alice in particular was bubbling with enthusiasm. She made friends at once with the camp foreman and with Burnam himself, who, amused at her intense interest in the camp, conducted her about personally and showed her everything. He insisted that they should stay over at the camp till the next day, when he promised to send them home in his car.
So they stayed, having supper that night at the great table with all the white officers of the camp. Alice was placed in the seat of honor next to Burnam, with whom she was carrying on a laughing and chaffing dialogue, when she said suddenly:
“Mr. Burnam, I want you to do something for us. We’re going on an exploring trip into the woods soon, for three or four days, and we must have some one with us who knows the country. We want you to let us have Cousin Joe.”
“Down here in the South we never refuse anything to a lady,” returned the turpentine man. “And when she’s young and pretty like you we give her everything without asking. Sure you can have Joe if you want him.”
Alice blushed hotly at this, and Joe, taken by surprise, started to protest.
“No, I’ll be able to spare him for a while, as soon as we get the cups hung and the gum running in the river orchard,” Burnam went on more seriously. “Fact is, with half our tract ruined, I don’t really need three woods-riders any more. As soon as he gets the new orchard started Morris can look after it for a few days.”
“I knew you could fix it!” exclaimed Alice, beaming.
“But he’ll have to work double hard when he gets back, to make up,” said Burnam, with affected severity.