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Updated: May 10, 2025
Zip! "Guess there's a bee-tree somewhere around here, from the way the bees are buzzin'," said Si. "'Taint no bees," replied Shorty; "it's a mighty sight worse'n that. Them's bullets, Si Don't ye see the dumed galoots over yonder a-shootin' at us?" Si was no coward, and he was determined to show that he wasn't.
If some lone wolf, the last of his pack, had once made his den there, his bones had long since crumbled into dust and gone to fertilize the rank vegetation that formed the undergrowth of this wild spot. I did find, however, a bee-tree in the woods, with an ample cavity in its trunk, and an opening through which convenient access could be had to the stores of honey within.
In "taking up" a bee-tree it is usual first to kill or stupefy the bees with the fumes of burning sulfur or with tobacco smoke. But this course is impracticable on the present occasion, so we boldly and ruthlessly assault the tree with an ax we have procured.
We ate all the honey we could, and went home, and next morning got baskets and all day long carried honey out of the bee-tree and had enough to last our families for a whole year, the best honey I ever saw in the Big Deep Woods, and the most I ever expect to see. "We didn't get it quite all, though, for the second morning when we came back we found the tree occupied.
These creatures love the bright glades and sunny openings, often met with in the prairie-forests of the wild West. "Well, as I have said, we were all eager to witness how our bee-hunter, Cudjo, would set about finding the bee-tree for up to this time he had kept the secret to himself, to the great tantalisation of Harry, whose impatience had now reached its maximum of endurance.
"I suppose he's wandering around somewhere close by," replied Thad. "Bumpus certainly has got a big bump of curiosity, and is always poking into everything he can think of. I heard him asking you this very morning when you would find a bee-tree for him, the way you used to do up in Maine. He's just bound to get honey, if there's any to be found around this region."
Let him glimpse or smell a white man, an' he goes scatterin' off across hill an' canyon like a quart of licker among forty men. They're shore apprehensife of them big bullets an' hard-hittin' guns, them b'ars is; an' they wouldn't listen to you, even if you talks nothin' but bee-tree an' gives a bond to keep the peace besides.
On the following day we made nineteen kilometres, the river twisting in every direction, but in its general course running a little west of north. Once we stopped at a bee-tree, to get honey. The tree was a towering giant, of the kind called milk-tree, because a thick milky juice runs freely from any cut. Our camaradas eagerly drank the white fluid that flowed from the wounds made by their axes.
I reckon I'm the one to keep camp. My rifle was right at my elbow, but I didn't seem to know enough to use it. Dick! Look at that hole in that tree and all those insects around it. It's a bee-tree. There's a barrel of honey there that belongs to us!" "Do you s'pose the bees know that it belongs to us, or will they make trouble for us?" "Of course they'll make trouble.
Father saw him, came in, took his rifle down from the hooks and told mother he believed he would shoot first. Mother would not hear a word to it and after living a year or two longer, in mortal fear of him, he died a natural death. We learned afterward that Joseph Pardee was the man he had intended to kill. He said, "Pardee had cut a bee-tree that belonged to Indian."
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