OLD DICK’S BEES
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.