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 bumblebee, 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 bumblebees 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 grass. 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 grass 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 masses 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.

“Now,” he ordered, as he turned around and started back toward the net, “beat the water with that pole and make as much noise as you can.”

Very soon the two men could see streaks in the smooth water. “Oh, I see,” exclaimed Bill, as he splashed the water to right and left, “we’re trying to drive them into the net. There, we’ve got one! See the float go down. There’s another one. Watch the big one! He isn’t going in. Look at him. See him run along the net. Look at him! He’s run around the net and is going down the river like a streak!”

“He is a big old buffalo-sucker,” the trapper laughed. “He is too wise to be caught in a gill-net.”

“Say, Mr. Barker,” the boy asked, “can fish think?”

“I reckon some of the old ones can,” Barker answered. “Well never catch that big fellow. I think he weighs fifteen pounds, I reckon his nose has touched a net before.”

The net was literally filled with fish of many kinds, suckers, pickerel, pike, bass, big sunfish, and fierce-looking gars.

“We don’t want those alligators,” the boy remarked, when the trapper threw several of the gars into the boat. “They have a long snout and are covered with horny plates just like alligators,” the boy continued. “They surely would be alligators if they had legs. I couldn’t eat them.”

“That’s all right,” Barker laughed. ”You needn’t. Most white men throw them away, but I learned from the Indians how to fix them. You pour boiling water on their plates and they come off in big pieces. Their meat has a fine flavor and they don’t have any sharp little bones like pickerel and most of the suckers. I think you’ll eat them after they are smoked or fried.”