It was the comb honey in the one-pound sections on which they were depending for an early sale at a fancy price, and naturally they wished to take this off first. The only place to pile and sort it was in the cabin, and they proceeded to turn the boys’ bedroom into a storehouse. There was no furniture to take out; they merely removed the bedding, and laid boards over the bunk to make a platform. Carl nailed wire gauze over the window, and Bob constructed a rough screen for the outer door. With the bees in that fierce robbing humor the place must, above all things, be kept bee-tight.
It was a ticklish task to take off the supers, for the bees were intensely irritable, and a hive was no more than opened when a host of robbers collected, eager to pilfer a mouthful. The boys had to be quick in their movements. Bob opened the hive, and the moment the lid was up Carl drove great blasts of smoke into the super, at the same time keeping enough smoke in the surrounding air to repel the thieves. Bob then seized the super, knocked it on the ground to jar out the few bees left in it, and hurried with it to the cabin.
In the storeroom Alice was waiting to sort and grade the honey. The delicate sections were glued fast in the frames that held them, and had to be pried carefully out. The very finest sections, sealed white and smooth all over, were classed as “Fancy”; those of slightly rougher appearance ranked as “No. 1.” A certain number of the rest might be saleable at a low price; the honey was just as good as the “Fancy,” but their appearance was against them. But the larger part was worth nothing, except for the honey that could be obtained by the extractor.
From the first it became apparent that there was going to be more honey than they had expected, and their hopes began to go nervously upward. When the opening of a hive showed a good super, with all its combs smooth and white, the boys chuckled, and Bob exulted in its weight as he lugged it into the house. Some colonies had as many as three supers like this, but many had only one or two, and some, where the colony had swarmed, only a worthless and unfinished set of combs.
Beside these, there were the extracting supers, containing a good deal of honey, but they did not intend to extract at once. The comb honey came first.
The piles of supers accumulated in the little room faster than Alice could remove the sections. With rising hope, the boys worked feverishly, and shortly after noon they carried in the last super. Then they set to work to assist Alice at the sorting and grading.
Every section had to be looked at and estimated, the propolis and wax scraped from the wood, and then placed carefully in the shipping-cases. The emptied supers were put outdoors; the supers with unfinished sections were set by themselves. All three worked hard that afternoon, and much of the next day, but it was not till nearly supper-time that they emptied the last super, and filled the last shipping case.
There were 3840 sections. Of these, 1200 ranked as “Fancy,” and about 600 as “No. 1.” Nearly 2000 sections were unsaleable.
“These we can eat ourselves,” remarked Alice.
“We ought to get $2.50 a dozen for the best, and $2 for the ‘No. 1’,” Bob estimated. “That comes to—”
“$350,” said Carl, who was a lightning calculator. “Why, that’s not so bad! Then all those unsaleable sections must have at least a thousand pounds of honey in them that we can extract. Besides, there must be three or four hundred dollars’ worth of extracted honey on the hives which we’ll be able to sell later.”
“Hurrah!” shouted Bob. “We’ll pull through, after all.”
“Yes, and with something to the good!” cried Alice.
In their relief and joy they joined hands and performed a wild dance around the shipping cases. It did not last long, though, for they were tired and stiff with bending over the supers; they were gummy with propolis and wax, and sticky with honey, and on the window was a cluster of bees the size of a small swarm, which had been carried in with the honey. After dark Carl brushed them off into a bucket, carried them out, and poured them down in front of a weak hive. They crawled gladly in, and as they all had their sacs full of honey, they were admitted. A honey-laden bee is always welcome to any hive.
The comb honey had to be sold at once, for the time was growing short. Bob proposed that he should go over to Morton and make the sale in Toronto by telegraph, or by long-distance telephone if he could get connections. It was a good plan, but Carl was anxious to be on hand to hear how the negotiations went; Alice was no less eager, and was, moreover, unwilling to be left alone at the cabin, so it ended in preparations for all of them to go to Morton and make the deal together.
“Above all things, we must be careful to leave the cabin bee-tight,” Alice warned them. “Just fancy the bees finding a way in. They’d carry all that honey back to the hives before we got home.”
So they plugged every chink in the logs most carefully with wet clay and moss, looked to the wire screens, and even blocked up the chimney. The cabin door they fastened with a big padlock and chain, and Alice packed up half a dozen of the best sections for a gift to Mr. Farr.
“No use trying to sweeten him,” Bob warned her. “He’ll take it, but he’ll be as hard as nails with us all the same. He keeps business and friendship separate, you know.”
“Anyway I’m going to take him the honey. I rather like him, you know,” Alice persisted.
They went down in the boat, a slow and rather lazy drift with the current in the warm morning sunshine. About noon they reached Morton, and found that they could get telegraph connections at the railway station, and long-distance telephone at the hotel.
As a first step, Bob telegraphed to the headquarters of the Provincial Bee-keepers’ Association to learn what the season had been throughout the country, and how prices were ranging. It was two o’clock in the afternoon before the reply came; the waiting had been something of a strain, and Bob looked nervous when he ripped open the yellow envelope, but then his face brightened.
“Splendid! Listen to this!” he cried.
“‘Honey crop reported about one third normal throughout Ontario. Severe drought. Members advised to hold for good prices. Market firm.’”
“The drought must have been worse with them than it was with us,” said Carl. “Well, prices are likely to go ’way up, and we ought to have a chance to make some money.”
“It looks so,” replied Bob, “and now I want you to let me do the negotiating. I’m an ignoramus at handling bees, but I think I can sell honey better than either of you.”
“Who’ll you sell it to?” asked Alice.
“I’m going to try Mr. Brown, of Brown & Son, you know, the wholesale grocery people. We used to buy a lot of stock from him for the store. I’ve often bought from him by long-distance, and I’ll see if I can’t sell to him the same way. Anyhow, I think he’ll give us a square deal.”
The telephone was not in a booth, but merely attached to the wall of the hotel office. However, there was no one in sight or hearing at the time, and they might as well have been in a private room. Bob called the long-distance connection, and after about fifteen minutes’ waiting got a reply from the Toronto grocery dealers. Alice and Carl stood beside him, and listened breathlessly to the conversation.
“Is that Mr. Brown?” cried Bob. “This is Bob Harman—of Harman’s Corners, you know. No, I’m not there just now. I’m running a bee-ranch up north. A bee-ranch. Honey-bees, you know. Yes. Yes, we have a lot of splendid comb-honey. Are you in the market?”
For a moment he listened attentively.
“We have about a hundred dozen ‘Fancy’ and about fifty dozen ‘No. 1,’” he continued. “We ask $3 and $2.50 a dozen for the two grades, freight paid to Toronto.”
“What an awful price! We’ll never get it,” whispered Alice, startled.
“Don’t speak. You’ll shake his nerve,” Carl muttered.
“No,” Bob was saying into the transmitter. “We wouldn’t care to take much less. There’s been a bad crop everywhere, and honey is scarce this year. Oh, we couldn’t think of taking that. What’s that? All right. In an hour, then. Good-by.” He turned away from the telephone.
“They actually had the nerve to offer $2.25 for the ‘Fancy,’ and $2 for the other,” he said. “They said they had bought a lot of ‘Fancy’ at $2, but I think that was pure bluff. And I thought they were sure to give us a square deal! Well, I’m to ring them up again in an hour, and if they won’t come up to a decent figure, there are other dealers in Toronto.”
It seemed a long time to wait. Alice carried her gift of honey to Mr. Farr, and came back reporting that he had seemed much pleased. But he had shaken his head grimly at her account of the poor season.
“The old skinflint needn’t worry,” said Carl, angrily. “He’ll get his money all right.”
“Yes, but I’m not going to sacrifice that honey,” said Bob with decision. “It’s cost us too much—with cats and moose and stings and bears and wendigos. It ought to be worth a dollar a pound. If we can’t do well in Toronto, we’ll ring up Montreal. Honey prices are often better there.”
They did not wait much beyond the hour in calling Mr. Brown again, and this time Bob got him with very little delay.
“Yes,” he said in reply to some question, “I’ve thought it over, and we can’t possibly accept what you offer. We’ll shade the price to $2.80 for the best grade, but we think we should have at least $2.50 for the other. It’s really beautiful honey.”
He listened a moment and frowned. “Hold the line a moment,” he said at last. “I must consult my brother.”
He turned to Carl and Alice, holding his hand over the transmitter, so that their conversation should not leak through to Toronto.
“He says his best figure is $2.60 and $2.30, cash down,” he said in a low tone. “What shall we do?”
“Take it, by all means. That isn’t so bad,” said Carl, anxiously.
“Yes, take it—take it!” Alice begged. “We mustn’t lose the sale.”
Bob looked at them thoughtfully for a moment, and then an expression of determination crossed his face. He turned back to the telephone.
“Sorry—can’t do it!” he said, firmly. “We will take $2.70 and $2.40, but that’s positively our last word. We’re thinking of shipping to Montreal.”
Alice turned pale, and clutched Bob’s arm in remonstrance, but he paid no attention to her.
“No,” he said into the telephone, “I’m not trying to drive any hard bargain, Mr. Brown. But there’s scarcely any comb-honey this year, and prices are going up. Shall we ship? All right. That will be satisfactory. We can ship to-morrow or the day after. Good-by!”
He hung up the telephone and made a wild leap into the air.
“Victory!” he exclaimed. “We get $2.70 and $2.40, cash on delivery. About twenty cents a dozen more than we’d counted on. It was the mention of Montreal that fetched them, for they were keen to get the honey. We’re saved!”
“Frenzied finance!” said Carl, who had been jotting down some figures on a scrap of paper. “But it comes to $390, and with the $200 we’ve got we’ll be able to make our payment all right. Let’s get that honey shipped at once.”
First, however, they had to arrange for a teamster to go out to the apiary for the honey; then they had to make some purchases in the village, and when they had finished their errands, it was too late for the long pull up the river that afternoon. So they all stayed at the hotel and started up-stream at eight o’clock the next morning.
It was nearly noon when they arrived at the apiary landing, and they were tired, but light-hearted with success. They went up toward the cabin with their arms full of packages, and suddenly Alice, who was in front, uttered a sharp cry.
A cloud of robber bees hung roaring about the cabin. The door, which they had left locked, stood half open. They dropped their parcels and rushed up. The main room was swarming with bees, but fortunately the screen door into the honey room was shut, and they had not been able to get in, though they were trying hard.
But a glance through the wire showed that the honey had been pillaged. The piles of supers were overturned; so were the stacks of full shipping cases, and half of them seemed to be gone.
Alice gave one glance through the door at the wreck and then dropped on a bench and hid her face in her hands. Bob rushed into the store-room, with Carl at his heels.
A great part of the best honey was gone—nearly all the “No. 1” grade and some of the “Fancy.” They could not tell accurately at the moment how much. More than a thousand pounds seemed to be missing, but the thief had abstained from taking any of the unsaleable sections.
“It can’t have been gone long!” said Carl, excitedly. “Let’s see if there are any tracks.”
As they hastened out they noticed that the heavy staple that held the padlock had been pried off. The ground near the door was too hard to show tracks, but a little way from the river they found footprints heading toward the cabin, and in the gravel along the shore they found the mark where a boat had been drawn up.
“Gone by water!” said Bob grimly. “Do you suppose it was that half-breed squatter?”
“There’s no one else living along the river within ten miles. He must have seen us all going down the river yesterday, and knew that he had a clear field. What fools we were to leave all that honey. We’re done for now!”
“Not much!” returned Bob. “If that fellow has the honey, we’ll get it back. Here, come along!”
He led the way rapidly back to the cabin, took down his rifle, and began to fill the magazine with cartridges. Carl picked up his shotgun.
“Bob! What are you going to do?” exclaimed Alice.
“Get that honey back,” replied her brother shortly. “Going down the river.”
“Well, if you’re going, I’ll go too and paddle the boat.”
“No, you stay here, Allie. There won’t be any shooting, but this is no girl’s business. Stay here and get the bees out of here and things straightened up. We won’t be long—I hope!”
“No, you stay here, Allie. There won’t be any shooting, but this is no girl’s business”
Alice looked entreating and frightened, but Bob was immovable. Carrying their guns, the two boys went back to the boat and in another minute were shooting down the stream as fast as the oars and current could take them. As they went they decided upon a plan of action. They did not want any collision with the half-breed. If it came to weapons, it would mean somebody killed or wounded, and that would be worse than losing the whole crop of honey. They only wanted to make sure that he had really stolen the honey, and where he had hidden it. Afterwards they would see about recovering it.
They landed near the great slough, left the boat, and went cautiously through the woods to the edge of the clearing. No one was in sight. No dog barked this time, and the cabin door was shut.
“Perhaps they’ve gone away with the haul,” muttered Bob. “The only way is to go up and find out.”
So they marched boldly across the stumpy field to the cabin, and knocked.
“Entrez!” cried a voice from within, and Bob pushed open the door.
There was a startled exclamation from within. Larue rose from a seat where he was doing something with a large piece of buckskin, and he looked black as he saw the two boys standing armed in the doorway. His wife, a tall, rather handsome and shabbily-dressed woman, stopped short in the middle of the floor, looking frightened. Two pretty, gipsy-like children slunk into the background.
“Bon jour! bon jour!” said both Bob and Carl politely.
“Bon jour,” responded the squatter, and his face softened a little. “What do you want? You speak French?”
“Only a little—not enough to talk,” replied Bob. “Mr. Larue, our house was broken into while we were away, and about a thousand pounds of honey stolen—over $200 worth. We came to see if you knew anything about it.”
“Me? How should I know anyt’ing about zat?” returned Larue.
It was hard to put the accusation direct, and Bob hesitated a little.
“The honey was taken away by boat. You have a boat, and you’re the only person that lives down this way, so—”
“You say I steal your honey?” cried the squatter angrily. “I tell you I know nottings about it. Look! Is the honey here?”
Carl and Bob both looked, and Bob sniffed as well, and sniffed again with suspicion. The cabin was all one large room, and a thousand pounds of honey certainly could not have been concealed in it. It contained only the simplest furniture, a dirty cooking stove, a table, two rough beds, on which were spread the two fine bearskins that Alice had seen, and a small cupboard. But Bob suddenly darted forward and picked up a small fragment of honeycomb from the floor under the table.
“Where did this come from?” he cried.
“Bee-tree,” returned the half-breed, cunningly.
“I don’t believe it!” exclaimed Carl, examining the bit of wax. “This comb was built on foundation. It came from our bee-yard.”
“Give us back our honey, and we’ll say nothing more about it,” urged Bob. “You don’t need to steal honey. We’ll give you all you can eat.”
“Voila!” cried Larue. “I know nottings about your honey. It is that you want to make trouble. You come here to see me; bien, you are welcome. You come here to insult me; you go outside quick.”
“When we come back, we’ll bring a constable!” cried Carl.
The woman said a sentence to her husband in rapid French, which the boys failed to catch.
“Let your constable come,” continued the squatter. “He find nottings. But as for you, you git out and stay out. I know nottings about your honey. Va-t-en! Git!”
“Come along! No use talking any more!” muttered Bob, and the boys departed, feeling rather beaten and angry. They crossed the clearing and paused to look back from the cover of the woods. Larue was standing in his doorway, gazing after them.
“All the same, I know the honey is somewhere about this place,” Bob broke out. “Why, I could smell it. I couldn’t be mistaken. And that piece of comb—”
“It was certainly a piece of a section,” Carl agreed. “I’m afraid, though, that I made a bad break in threatening him with a constable. He’ll be sure to move the plunder right away to some place where nobody could ever find it.”
“He certainly hasn’t got it in his cabin. Maybe it’s stored in the barn.”
“Likely enough. Or somewhere near here in the woods. How we’ll ever locate it is more than I can imagine.”
“If it’s in any exposed place some bees will be likely to find it and rob it out for him. Wish they would!” said Bob.
Carl looked quickly at his brother and meditated in silence for a moment.
“Look here!” he exclaimed at last. “Why can’t we send bees to scout for that honey. They might even carry it back, and no power on earth could stop them if they got going. Of course they couldn’t lug the sections home, but they’d lick out all the honey and put it in their hives again, and we could extract it. That would be better than losing it all.”
Bob looked dubious at first, and then he began to laugh.
“Robbing the robber!” he exclaimed. “I don’t know but what it might work. Anyway, it’s a brilliant idea and ought to be tried. None of those shipping cases had their tops closed, and the bees could get into them without any trouble. But how’ll we work it? It’s three miles from here to the bee-yard.”
“Yes, we’d have to bring some hives down here within range,” replied Carl. “We could float them down in the boat. Four or five would do to see if they found the honey, and then we could bring more.”
They got into their boat and pulled up-stream again. From a distance they saw Alice waiting at the landing, peering eagerly down the river.
“Thank goodness, you’re back!” she exclaimed fervently. “I’ve been so worried. Did you have a fight? Did you find the honey?”
“Neither honey nor fight,” returned Bob, as they went ashore. “But we think we know where the honey is, and we’re going to send some messengers after it to-morrow.”
“Messengers? What do you mean?” cried Alice, mystified. Carl chuckled and outlined the plan to her, much to her amusement, though she was doubtful of its success.
“Why, there’s a thousand pounds of honey missing,” she said. “A colony can’t carry more than ten pounds of honey a day. What a lot of colonies it would take, or what a long time, to have them bring all that back, even if they find it!”
However, the boys were determined to give the plan a trial, and as soon as it was dark they loaded half a dozen of their strongest colonies into the boat. Along with them they took supers of empty combs.
It crowded the boat considerably and made an awkward cargo, but they got it safely down the river. Landing near Larue’s clearing, they put the hives ashore and then carried them, one by one, with much labor and stumbling, through the woods. Within two hundred yards of Larue’s barn, but well back among the trees they set the hives down behind a cedar thicket. Bob then laid a trail of honey from the hives almost to the barn, sprinkling a little on the ground and leaves every few feet. Before he had quite reached the barn, the hound began to bay noisily, and the boys scuttled off to the river and paddled homeward.
About nine o’clock the next morning they made their way cautiously down to their ambushed “messengers” to see what was going on. They found things active. Bees were coming and going rapidly, dropping heavily laden in front of the hives. Every colony was alert, excited and bad-tempered. The intelligent insects knew well that honey was coming from some unnatural source. Robbing was in the air; they felt it, and every entrance was massed with guards in readiness for a possible attack.
“They’ve found it!” exclaimed Carl, gleefully.
The boys sat down and watched. All the bees were certainly going straight toward Larue’s clearing, and they came heavily back, dropping by scores at the hives, almost too heavy to fly. In the course of an hour the activity had greatly increased.
“Yes, they’ve located it, all right,” said Bob. “They’re heading toward his barn, it seems to me. I wish I dared go and look, but we’d better be careful not to show our noses. Larue is probably on the watch.”
They put on the supers of empty combs to give storage room for the honey and went back to the cabin for dinner, laughing. But they were too much excited to stay long away from the ambushed hives, and they returned to them toward the middle of the afternoon. Alice was intensely anxious to be allowed to go with them, but the situation was highly delicate, and they decided that it was hardly safe.
When they came within a hundred yards of the hidden hives they heard the roar of the bees. Never before had they seen such a fury of work. A black belt, a river of bees, seemed to be flowing over the trees toward the clearing. The entrances were almost choked as the insects poured out and in, and the ground in front was covered with crawling bees that had dropped exhausted.
They were savagely cross, too, as bees always are when robbing is going on. There was fighting at the entrance of every hive, probably due to bees mistaking their doors in the new location. The whole front of the hive was brown with guards, and it was dangerous to go nearer than twenty feet. Bob had brought a veil with him, though, and he opened one of the supers. He received several stings on the hands, but reported that the combs were nearly half full already, and not with nectar, but with thick, ripened honey.
“No doubt at all that it’s our honey coming back,” he said. “I wonder what Mr. Larue thinks of all this. If we’re careful, he’ll never suspect that we had any hand in it. He’ll just take it as a kind of judgment for his thieving. But what oceans of bees seem to be going over. You wouldn’t think that half a dozen hives could send out so many.”
“I’ve a notion that the bees from the home yard are coming here too,” said Carl. “Just look in the air.”
In fact, a long air-line of bees could be discerned going straight up the river above the trees. It was a long flight, of course, but bees have been known to go four or five miles when honey is scarce. Perhaps the home apiary might have found the stolen honey even if they had not moved any bees.
During that afternoon the excitement rose to a perfect frenzy. A torrent of bees swept overhead, from the ambushed hives to the clearing and up the river toward home. The boys began to grow uneasy; as Carl had said, no power on earth could stop things now, and it looked rather as if they had unlocked forces that were too much for them. Carl hastened home to look at conditions there, and came back breathless, reporting the apiary in a turmoil. Bees were flying, robbing, fighting and bringing in honey. Many of the colonies had not yet learned where the honey was coming from, and were flying around the cabin in clouds, or trying to pounce on some weaker colony.
“But there must be over a million bees going to the Frenchman’s place,” he said. “I think we ought to try to find out what’s going on there. The whole family may be stung to death.”
It did look dangerous, but they were greatly afraid to be seen. Larue’s indignation must be well up to shooting-point before this. But they crept cautiously toward the clearing.
Before they reached the edge of the woods they could hear a roar like a distant cataract; and when they came into the open they were appalled at what they saw.
