"We don't want the bees," the trapper explained; "we want to get some honey, and in order to do that we have to find the nest of a swarm of wild honey-bees."

The trapper made a little box of bark and caught a bee, after it had worked for quite a while on a clump of goldenrod.

In an open place, he let the bee go. "Now, watch," he said to Bill, "and point your finger in the direction it flies and run after it as far as you can follow it."

Bill did not know why he should run after the bee, but he followed through gra.s.s and weeds until he tumbled over a hidden log.

Barker laughed when Bill picked himself out of the weeds.

"That's fine," he commented. "My eyes are getting a little dull on such small creatures and I can't run as fast as I once could, so I took you along to do the spying and the running. You see, we know now that this bee goes east from here to reach its home."

The two hunters now walked a few hundred yards in the same direction and then caught another bee. Again Bill saw the liberated insect make a straight line eastward.

In this manner, they proceeded until they came close to the bluffs on the Wisconsin side.

"We're on their line, all right," Barker expressed himself gleefully.

"If it doesn't end at some settler's bee-hive, we ought to find our bee-tree pretty soon."

The next bee surprised Bill by going directly west; but the trapper clapped his hands and called: "We've pa.s.sed the tree, so we'll just work back carefully and watch for a good-looking hollow tree. If we can't find it, we shall have to run a cross-line, which is sure to find it."

But they found the wild bees, at the next trial, without running a cross-line. "Here they are, here they are!" Bill called, as he stood under a big white-oak.

Hundreds of black bees were entering and leaving a knot-hole about six feet above the ground.

"It's a big swarm," Barker told the boy; "and they are in a good place for us. Sometimes they go into a hollow limb thirty feet high, where you can't get at them.

"To-morrow, we'll come back and get some honey. Now let's go home and tell Tim and Tatanka about our luck."

CHAPTER IX-HUNTING BEES AND DRIVING FISH

Tatanka was not enthusiastic about the prospect of a bee hunt.

"The Indians," he told his friends, "do not like the little black honey-flies. They call them white men's flies, because they came into our country with the white man. We like Tumahga-tanka, the big b.u.mblebee, that builds his cells in an old mouse-nest on the ground. But Tumahga-tanka is like the Indians: he gathers only very little honey food, just for a day or two. Only our small boys hunt them and take their little honey in the evening when their wings are cold and stiff so they cannot fly on the naked body of the boys and sting them.

"The little honey-flies are like white men. They gather much honey for many days of rain and for all the moons of winter. They make a store in a big tree and fill it with honey, so they can stay at home and eat honey till the maple buds break and till the wild plums and wild strawberries hang out their white flowers. They are like white men, who work all the time and gather big houses full of corn and meat and make big woodpiles for the winter.

"Tumahga-tanka is like the Indian. He travels much, he often sleeps among the flowers at night, and he is always poor and hungry like the Indian."

"Where do the b.u.mblebees go in winter," asked Tim, "if they do not gather enough honey to live on?"

Tatanka did not know. "Perhaps they sleep like Mahto, the bear, or like Meetcha, the bear's little brother."

"Will you go with us?" asked Barker, "when we go to get the honey?"

"Yes, I will go with you," Tatanka promised. "But I do not like to fight the little black bees. They are as many as leaves on a tree, and they will get very angry and will sting when you come to rob them of their food."

"Why shouldn't we go at night, when they can't see us and when it is too cool for them to fly much?" asked Bill.

"No," said Barker, "we shall go in daylight, when we can see what we are doing."

The sun was already several hours high, next morning, when the bee-hunters were ready.

Under a clump of sumachs Barker prepared himself for the raid. He tied a piece of mosquito netting over his hat and face. The sleeve of his hunting-shirt he tied firmly to his wrists, and he put on his buckskin hunting-gloves.

"Now, I'm ready," he laughed. "You can sit down and watch me."

With a saw, he had procured from the trader at Reed's Landing, he rapidly made two cuts in the tree, one near the ground and the other just below the knot-hole entrance.

The bees came pouring out of the knot-hole. Hundreds and thousands of them buzzed madly about the trapper's head; they crawled all over him, trying to find a spot where they could sting the robber of their treasure-house.

Some of the angry bees discovered the two spectators and Meetcha. Bill let out a yell and ran. Tatanka tried to fight them off, but some got into his hair. He gave a ringing Sioux warwhoop and tumbled after Bill in a most ludicrous manner. Little gray Meetcha had been watching the fun as if puzzled at the strange behavior of his master. But now a mad bee buzzed right into the hairs of his ear. Meetcha seemed to listen a second, then he began to paw his ears frantically and to roll in the gra.s.s. Now he sat up again, as if to listen. Some more bees were after him. Again he pawed his ears wildly, and rolled on the gra.s.s as if he were performing in a circus. Then he scampered hurriedly after Bill and Tatanka.

When Barker had finished his cross-cuts with the saw, he began to use his sharp ax vigorously and with the aid of an iron wedge, such as wood-cutters use, he split a large slab out of the hollow tree.

There was the wild bee hive, full of great irregular combs of honey, white, yellow, and brown!

The hunter gave a yell. "Come on, boys," he shouted; "get your honey. We could fill a wash-tub full. The biggest lot of wild honey I ever saw."

The bees had almost stopped swarming about the hunter and had settled in black ma.s.ses on the broken combs and were gorging themselves on the dripping honey.

Bill and Tatanka would not come near the tree.

"I am not afraid to fight the Chippewas," remarked Tatanka, "but I do not like the little black bees."

Barker filled a birch-bark bucket with honey and then put the slab again in place on the tree.

"I left them enough for the winter," he told his friends. "It would not be right to rob the little creatures of all, because it is so late in the season now that they could not gather another supply for the winter."

Little Tim enjoyed very much the story Bill told him of the bee hunt, and he laughed heartily when his brother told how Meetcha had fought the angry bees. However, although Tim was now well on the road to recovery, it was quite evident that he could not go on the long journey to Vicksburg before winter, and Barker and Tatanka made their preparations to winter in the river bottom below Lake Pepin.

The trapper had bought a gill-net about fifty feet long and on the first warm day after the bee hunt, he proposed a fishing trip to Beef Slough, one of the sluggish side-channels of the Mississippi.

One who has never seen the Great River is apt to imagine that, like smaller rivers, it has only one channel, but below the mouth of the St.

Croix, it generally flows in one main channel and one or more side-channels. The steamboats naturally take the main channel, but hunters, canoeists, and fishermen often find their best sport on the side-channels, or sloughs, as they are often called..

Bill was in a flutter of excitement when he and Barker arrived at Beef Slough, for he had never fished with a gill-net. The trapper first cut two stout poles, to each of which he tied one end of the net. He next set the net across the slough so that it reached almost from side to side.

A gill-net really consists of three nets. The net in the middle has small meshes and is made of rather fine twine, the two nets on the outside have very large meshes, a foot or more square. When a fish runs against the middle net, the fine meshes catch him behind the gills and hold him, or, if he is very big and strong, he makes a pocket of the small net in trying to push through it and thus gets tangled up and caught.

After Barker had set the net, he told his boy companion: "Now, Bill, we'll make a big drive."

Bill did not know what Barker meant by making a drive for fish. He had heard of the Indians driving buffalo, but he did not get much time to think about the new kind of drive.

"Take that long pole and get into the boat with me," the trapper told him, as he paddled up the slough a little way.