Part 10 (1/2)

”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.