The Keeper of the Bees, page 32
“Oh, I’m a kid round this neighborhood. What’s your next?”
“Drag that trunk into the bedroom.”
The Scout Master advanced and stooped to one end of the trunk, looked around and about and said politely: “Kindly take the other end. These rugs are also antique and furniture can’t be dragged over them, and besides that, your trunk is about twice my size, even if it is a steamer.”
Miss Worthington hesitated a minute and then took one end of the trunk and helped to carry it into the Bee Master’s sleeping room. The little Scout looked at the open closet from which Jamie’s clothing had been removed, at the open drawers from which he had taken his belongings, and a wave of anger surged up that very nearly upset the brand of self-possession that the Scout Master was trying to maintain. The thought that was at that minute in the small head was whether fists that were sufficiently hard, muscle that was sufficiently tough, were not equal to the task, of pitching this interloper through the window down a particularly steep piece of mountain-side leading toward the sea. But the mentality of the little person spoke up.
“Go on and pitch her! Chances are big soft Jamie would be standing outside and catch her in a blanket and bring her in and put her to bed and stand up all night himself watching to see whether she was going to open that chest or not, and he prodibly wouldn’t stop her If she did. What’s the use if I did pitch her? It wouldn’t get me anywhere. I better just stick around and stay on the job and see what she’s going to do.”
So the Scout Master ran innumerable errands and watched with blood literally at the point of boiling while the house was searched from top to bottom. Drawers were emptied, books shifted on shelves. At last the little Scout lost patience.
“Say, what’s eating you?”
Miss Worthington fairly jumped.
“Think you’re going to find the Kohinoor or the Drums of Jeopardy?”
“Whadda you mean?” demanded Miss Worthington. “Sounds too funny,” said the Scout Master, “to hear you say you are Miss Worthington and then say ‘whadda.’ I should think the Bee Master would have taught you when you was about two years old to say ‘What do you,’ and I didn’t suppose you would know what I was referring to, but it’s strange he didn’t teach his own child. He’s the one who taught me that the Kohinoor is the biggest sparkler in the world, and the Drums of Jeopardy are the biggest emeralds. I got that out of a picture show. It was a hair-raiser, too. And it had the prettiest girl in it, a girl with dark hair and eyes and a reasonable amount of lip stick and her make-up on straight, and she could act, too! She was just a humdinger, I’ll tell the world!”
“If you are so carefully educated,” said Miss Worthington, “why do you use the slang that you do?”
The little Scout laughed.
“Oh, I’ve got to sling that brand of guff to keep in favor with the Scouts. If I talked among them the way Dad makes me talk at home, I wouldn’t be Scout Master with my bunch very long. When we play we’re Indians and bandits and pirates and things like that, we talk that way ’cause it makes it realler, and anyway, nobody expects a ten-year-old kid to talk the way a woman of thirty would.”
“I am not thirty!” snapped Miss Worthington.
“Excuse me,” said the Scout Master, “I knew you were close to forty. I only said thirty for politeness.”
“I’m done with you now,” said Miss Worthington. “You may go home, but you’d better come around again in the morning and see if there’s anything you can do for me.” “All right,” said the Scout Master. “I’ll be right here, and I’ll start home whenever you pay me for what I’ve done today. I’ve been flying pretty lively all afternoon and I’m getting hungry enough to eat up every hot dog on the corner stand!”
“I’ll pay you in the morning,” said Miss Worthington. “I’ll take my pay now,” said the little Scout. “I happen to be out of change and I’m tellin’ you I’m hungry.” Miss Worthington produced her pocketbook and, taking some small change from it, dropped it into the outstretched hand. The little Scout counted it twice.
“Say, you ain’t throwing your change to the birds, are you?”
But the inquiry was good-humored. The Scout Master had decided to be on the job in the morning.
“What time do you want me?”
“Better make it about nine.”
“All right,” said the Scout Master, “maybe I can get here an hour sooner and wipe up the dust on the furniture or straighten things out for you, or clean your shoes. I often clean my mother’s shoes. I know how.”
“That’s fine,” said Miss Worthington, “come as soon as you want to.”
“I’ll be right here,” said the little Scout, “and for your own sake, ’cause I’m so fond of you, I’m just telling you before I start that you better remember how California feels about antique furniture.”
The little Scout closed the door and went down the path and scaled the fence and said to Jamie: “I can’t chase up a reason for staying there any longer, and I’m about sick hungry. If you can hang out the night and do something to scare her off about getting into that chest until morning, I’ll go on the job again pretty soon after seven, and I’ll stick at it until I see if I can’t make something happen.”
Then the line of march was taken up to the nearest hot dog stand. A few rods away the little Scout turned.
“Let me wise you up to this: if she gets desperate in the night like the hardened criminals do, she may try breaking my chest. Be a good idea for you to take the ax or anything she could pry with out of the tool house and fasten the windows on the inside where they latch and lock it on the outside. If she can’t find anything that just suits her to attack with, maybe she will let it be until morning.”
And that was what Miss Worthington did. She was tired herself. Being too lazy to cook, she ate bread and milk, took a bath, and went to bed early, and she was still asleep when the Scout Master arrived in the morning. Depending on the assurance that he would be called if needed, Jamie, reeling for lack of sleep, stretched himself on his bed and went over the edge. The situation for that day was up to the little Scout.
18. The Little Scout on the War Path
Up until ten o’clock the little Scout served as kitchen maid, lady’s maid, house maid, errand boy, anything the interloper required. Then a load of worthless paper was sent to the incinerator which stood in the middle of the lower portion of Jamie’s side of the garden, halfway between the hives of the Black Germans and the long row of the Italians. As the Scout Master scratched the match and lighted the papers and stood a few minutes to watch the burning, an ominous rumbling that came from somewhere in the direction of the Italians became noticeable.
“Um-hum-m-m,” said the little Scout. “Dunno but I better call Jamie. Some of his bees are going to swarm.” Coming back up the walk there was a pause of a second beside the hydrant. The Scout Master had intended to set a few drops trickling to keep the mint bed happy, but the heaviest hose was attached and stretched up the walk. The nozzle could be seen lying above one of the jacqueranda trees, open enough to let a tiny stream drip no faster than the earth would absorb it for the watering of the tree. That jacqueranda tree seemed to be particularly precious because, under its lacy shade of serene blue, some of the very happiest hours that the Bee Master had ever conjured up for the amusement of the little Scout had been spent. So the Scout Master left the back walk and circled around the house, and turned the nozzle one faint degree wider open, and laid it down in a new place as a slight expression of devotion to that special jacqueranda.
As the nozzle touched the earth there came from inside the house a splintering crash. The little Scout straightened suddenly, eyes wide open, muscles tense, and with a lighter step than ever was used in the fairiest pirouetting, the ground was covered to the side window. Carefully drawing the weight of the body upward, the little Scout peered through the open window in time to see the lid of the antique chest wide open. The ax, that must have been secured and hidden somewhere in the house before Jamie had locked up the previous night, lay on the floor.
Breathlessly the Scout Master clung to the window and peered in. The time was past for diplomacy. War had been declared. The enemy had invaded the most sacred stronghold of the Bee Master, of the little Scout, of the Keeper of the Bees. It was time for action. Clinging to the window sill with eyes wide open and mouth considerably wider, the little Scout watched while the waste paper basket that belonged beside the Bee Master’s writing desk, the big Indian cooking basket, was filled indiscriminately with everything that could be gathered up from the contents of the chest that was a picture, a paper that looked as if it might contain the slightest record of any transaction.
Nothing but playthings, jewelry, ornaments, laces, and scarves were left. The basket was heaped to the top. Then Miss Worthington arose, possessed herself of a handful of matches from a dish over the mantel, and picking up the basket, started toward the back door.
Deftly the Scout Master dropped from the window sill, raced to the jacqueranda, caught up the hose, and darted down the side of the vine-laden pergola until the hydrant was reached. There was a pause to shut off the hose and turn the hydrant until the hose swelled and writhed like a snake. Behind the thickest wall of vines the little Scout crouched and hung on to the hose, both eyes trained on the incinerator, still smoking and with fire in the bottom from the papers that were smoldering. Peering through the vines of the pergola, the Scout Master could see that the girl was not yet coming and again the soft buzzing called attention to the neighborhood of the incinerator. The little Scout leaned low and peered from side to side and stepping lightly, remaining screened to get a clear view, watched for the girl’s approach. Then in an ominous roar almost at one and the same time from two hives of Italians there came streaming swarms of bees that were leaving their hives, honeycombs filled and bee crowded, to seek new homes, at the behest of the old queen.
The little Scout’s eyes opened wider. The hose dropped from the small fingers. One leap carried to an opening in the pergola. A twist carried through, and small feet raced wildly up the back walk and to the back porch and shaking hands grabbed the bee drum. One glance in the kitchen showed Miss Worthington on her knees beside the basket with nervous fingers sorting out the papers and the things that she had thrust into it with small discrimination.
“For a little time,” said the Scout Master, grabbing up the drum, “I sure am thankful.” And a wild race began for the region of the incinerator, and softly on the morning air broke the slow rhythmic “Drum, drum, drum-drum-drum,” and the bees that were swarming in the air began to gather. The drum led them first to an orange branch within three yards of the incinerator, then headed off another bunch and guided them toward a fig branch on the opposite side. “Drum, drum,” the little Scout stood with bulging eyes and parted lips in a cloud of bees, watching first one swarm and then the other. The air was still thick with them, but it was apparent to experienced eyes that the queen of each swarm had settled and that was all that was necessary.
“Drum, drum, drum-drum-drum,” the eyes alternated between the bees and the back porch. There she came; the basket full to overflowing, one hand circling it full of matches, the other hand full of the papers that it was most essential to destroy. Keeping under cover of the trees and the flowers and the pergola, stooping, on silent feet, the little Scout slipped back to the hydrant, made sure that it was wide open, dropped the drum, and picked up the nozzle of the hose that operated with the pressure of water carried at such force as a running current flowing through pipes large enough to motor on with a small automobile and carried in many places straight down mountain-sides, would attain.
The hose twisted as if it were a living thing, and the little Scout eased off the hydrant a trifle in the fear that the hose might burst.
The interloper hurried down the back walk as fast as her feet would carry her over its winding and precipitous way and dumped the contents of the basket into the incinerator. On top of it the precious papers were thrown and then the match was scratched and held a second to make sure that it was blazing before the papers were touched off at the top. As the hand holding the match reached toward the papers, a stream of water that shook the incinerator on its base struck it and began speedily soaking its entire contents and a shrill voice, keyed to the top note of wild excitement, shouted: “Look you careful there! You’ve got swarming bees on each side of you! You’ll be stung to death in just about one minute, ’cause God knows your scent ain’t right!”
How much Miss Worthington knew about bees was debatable. One thing the little Scout recognized: She knew enough about them to be afraid. She looked to the right and then to the left and decided she would risk it, though the bees were coming closer.
“Turn off that hose!” she shouted. “Turn off that hose!”
“Not on your life!” retorted the little Scout. “You ain’t a-going to burn up those papers! They don’t belong to you. Don’t you touch ’em! Don’t you touch one of ’em! If you do, I’ll hit you with this hose until I knock you spang into the nearest of the bees behind you! You don’t know mountain water pressure, but I can do it!”
“Turn off that hose!” cried the young woman, clinging to the side of the incinerator and looking with bulging eyes at the two swarms of bees milling so alarmingly near, looking up at the air above her gradually filling with the roaring wings of bees scenting something they did not like, bees already nervous with the strain of leaving the hive in which they had been reared and following their queen to a new location.
“What are you trying to do?” cried Miss Worthington.
“I’m not trying,” shouted the Scout Master. “I’m doing! I’m going to have the truth out of you or I’m going to set two swarms of bees on you, and they will sting you until you are the deadest of anybody that ever went dead, just the horrid way you ought to go to pay for little Mary. I know you! I’ve seen your picture! You’ve got it there in that incinerator. You ain’t the Bee Master’s daughter any more than you are mine! Your mother had you when she vamped him into marrying her. You are trying to play you are Mary. You are trying to cheat to get this yet. See ’em closing in on you. See ’em coming closer! Hear them roar!”
The terrified girl looked on every side of her. Escape was cut off to the rear, the roaring hose was menacing her in front. If she left the incinerator with the papers she had consigned to it unburned, there was no hope for her claim, no chance for any proof she had brought with her to be effective. She must get the papers or be defeated.
But the little fiend at the end of that roaring hose- Resolutely she bent over the incinerator and began with shaking hands to gather up the papers. In that instant the little Scout trained the hose, running full force, squarely in the back of the hives of Black Germans, trained it and so held it that they rocked on their foundations and there came pouring from them in distracted hosts the vilest tempered bees that the history of bee-keeping ever has known. The object most prominently in front of them was the smoking incinerator and the taint that was carried on the air, the most maddening taint that their experience knew, was the taint of the human being exhaling from every pore the odor of formic acid—the odor of fear. The Black Germans began to rise with a roar. The little Scout set the water tap wide open and manipulated the hose nozzle to its full strength and watched it beat a hole into a bed of marigolds, tearing them out of the earth. And above the roar of the bees, and above the rush of the water, the voice that matched the face that Jamie had seen the night before, the voice of a small pagan intent on wreaking justice, carried high and shrill: “Now you are surrounded! Now you got ’em on three sides! Now you got ’em all around you! Now you’ll get it! I’ll give you just one chance! Drop those papers!”
The girl looked up. Within a few yards of her roared the Italians on one hand. At her back another swarm was even closer, and down on her from the front came the Black Germans.
“Turn that hose on me!” she shrieked. “Cover me with water! Beat ’em off with it!”
Then the little Scout stepped out in full view on tiptoes and kept the hose precisely where it was.
“Turn that hose on our bees, nice innocent bees, tending to their own business, making sweets to feed the world? Them bees is friends of mine! I’m the Bee Master’s partner. Half of this place he gave to me. You think you are going to steal it! You think you are going to burn his papers I Come clean now, or the bees will get you, and it will not be five minutes until you’ll be deader, you’ll be deader than any liar or anything ever was before! Look out! They are in front of you! Come clean! Say you ain’t the Bee Master’s daughter!”
Clinging to the incinerator, the girl cast a terrified glance around her. She was in a circle of bees and she had heard of Black Germans. She knew them when she saw them. There had been bee gardens in her childhood when she had been an inmate of the home of the Bee Master. She screamed at the top of her voice.
“Stop your noise,” said the Scout Master. “Come clean, I say, come clean! Say ‘Michael Worthington was not my father.’”
At that instant the first Black German hit its victim on the head not far from the right ear and went into execution.
“No! No!” shrieked the girl. “He wasn’t my father!” “Say you are trying to steal this place and you’ve got no right to it,” said the little Scout.
The girl righted herself and tried to take a step forward. Another Black German hit her squarely on the forehead.
“Yes! Yes!” she cried. “I am trying to steal it! I have got no right to it!”
“Um-huh!” said the little Scout. “Now say you are trying to burn those papers to get rid of all the evidence that would keep you from being the thief you are trying to be! Say it, and say it damn quick!”
“Yes! Yes!” panted the tortured girl. “I’ll say anything! For God’s sake, turn that hose on me. Clear a way through! Quick! Quick, or you will be too late!” “You will tell the truth about one thing more first,” said the little Scout.
