"Can you give me any idea as to what might have kept them away?"said the master.
Hanky Rogers looked quickly around, began, "Playin' hook--" in a loud voice, but stopped suddenly without finishing the word, and became inaudible.The master saw fit to ignore him.
"Bee-huntin'," said Annie Roker vivaciously.
"Who is?" asked the master.
"Provy Smith, of course.Allers bee-huntin'.Gets lots o' honey.
Got two full combs in his desk last week.He's awful on bees and honey.Ain't he, Jinny?" This in a high voice to her sister.
The younger Miss Roker, thus appealed to, was heard to murmur that of all the sneakin' bee-hunters she had ever seed, Provy Smith was the worst."And squirrels--for nuts," she added.
The master became attentive,--a clue seemed probable here."Would Tribbs and Fleming be likely to go with him?" he asked.
A significant silence followed.The master felt that the children recognized a doubt of this, knowing the boys were not "chums;"possibly they also recognized something incriminating to them, and with characteristic freemasonry looked at one another and were dumb.
He asked no further questions, but, when school was dismissed, mounted his horse and started for the dwelling of the nearest culprit, Jackson Tribbs, four miles distant.He had often admired the endurance of the boy, who had accomplished the distance, including the usual meanderings of a country youth, twice a day, on foot, in all weathers, with no diminution of spirits or energy.He was still more surprised when he found it a mountain road, and that the house lay well up on the ascent of the pass.Autumn was visible only in a few flaming sumacs set among the climbing pines, and here, in a little clearing to the right, appeared the dwelling he was seeking.
"Tribbses," or "Tribbs's Run," was devoted to the work of cutting down the pines midway on a long regularly sloping mountain-side, which allowed the trunks, after they were trimmed and cut into suitable lengths, to be slid down through rude runs, or artificial channels, into the valley below, where they were collected by teams and conveyed to the nearest mills.The business was simple in the extreme, and was carried on by Tribbs senior, two men with saws and axes, and the natural laws of gravitation.The house was a long log cabin; several sheds roofed with bark or canvas seemed consistent with the still lingering summer and the heated odors of the pines, but were strangely incongruous to those white patches on the table-land and the white tongue stretching from the ridge to the valley.But the master was familiar with those Sierran contrasts, and as he had never ascended the trail before, it might be only the usual prospect of the dwellers there.At this moment Mr.Tribbs appeared from the cabin, with his axe on his shoulder.