An hour passed before the thunderstorm settled down to a steady drizzle. Jed and Lizzie decided they would run for it and get back to the cabin to care for the berries.
As soon as they arrived at the lodge, Jed stripped his rifle down and cleaned it so it would not rust, while Lizzie spread the blackberries on the kitchen table to dry. Between the two of them, they ate quite a few, but over two gallons still remained for Jed to dry. He couldn’t set them out for drying, though, until the rain stopped.
The storage area was a wreck, but Jed rummaged about until he found the bee smoker and two bee bonnets. If the rain stopped soon, there was a chance they could rob the hive in the afternoon, since he did not want to pick wet berries.
Lizzie busied herself preparing lunch, trying unsuccessfully to keep her mind from dwelling on Jed. It was funny how she had known him all her life, had been in the same classes from kindergarten all the way through her senior year, but had never thought of him other than as a casual friend. She found herself wanting to do something extra special. After taking a quick look at their greatly diminished supplies, she decided there was just enough flour, sugar, and other ingredients to make a cobbler. She would use some of the blackberries and surprise him. The supplies were saved for something special, and this seemed special enough. Looking outside, she decided Jed was busy and wouldn’t be in for a while. Hurrying to save the surprise, she gathered the ingredients and mixed them together. After putting the cobbler in the oven, Lizzie went into her room to brush her hair and make herself look as nice as she could.
Jed walked into the lodge with his hands full of bee bonnets and the smoker. The sky had started to lighten, and it seemed as if the rain was tapering off. The idea of fresh honey was appealing. He sniffed, smelling the aroma of something delicious.
“Hey, Lizzie, what’s cookin’?”
Lizzie walked from her room with heart fluttering. She had her hair brushed out and down, instead of tied up in a loose bun like she had been wearing it. Her hair had grown long in the last three months and now reached well below her shoulder blades. She noticed it always caught Jed’s eye when she wore it down, although he never said anything. She gathered her hair in her hands and draped it casually over her shoulder for him to notice.
“Oh, it’s nothing much. I just made a cobbler.”
Jed’s mouth watered. Due to their diminished supplies, their diet had been bland lately. Their diet was healthy, but there had been very few sweets or baked goods.
“It smells wonderful!”
Lizzie felt his eyes on her as she walked past him to go to the oven, but he said nothing else.
Jed ate his cobbler slowly, savoring the sweetness of each bite, rolling each morsel around on his tongue. “What’s the special occasion? It’s not your birthday or something, is it?”
“Oh, no. It’s nothing like that. I just thought you deserved something special.” Lizzie felt like she had fireworks going off inside as she looked into Jed’s eyes. “You’d better enjoy it, because there is no more sugar.”
“Oh, don’t worry. I am!” With that, he picked up his saucer and licked the remaining juices from the surface, bringing a giggle of delight from Lizzie.
After polishing the saucer with his tongue, Jed asked if Lizzie would go with him to rob the beehive. The hive was higher in the tree than he could reach from the ground, and he wanted help steadying the ladder. The hive wasn’t terribly high, but he didn’t want to worry about the ladder moving while he was working with bees. Regretfully, Lizzie gathered her hair and wrapped it into a bun, seeing Jed watch out of the corner of her eye. She wondered if he felt for her what she felt for him.
Jed took coals from the stove for the smoker, then, with Lizzie carrying the bee equipment, walked outside and picked up the short ladder needed to climb the tree. He had difficulty carrying the ladder with his rifle slung over his back while also carrying the smoker. The smoker burned his leg every time he bumped it. Lizzie, on the other hand, had her hands full of the bee bonnets, gloves, and a large bucket. Fortunately, they only had to walk about half a mile to the bee tree.
“Look up there, just below the fork in the tree. See the shiny spot by that little hole? Watch. You’ll see bees going in and out,” Jed whispered.
Lizzie saw several bees coming and going in just a few minutes’ time. It was easy to see why the bark was shiny around the hole. Bees landed on the bark and walked into the hole while others crawled out and launched themselves into the air. Thousands of bees had worn the bark smooth. “It’s an old hive,” Jed whispered. He had no idea why he whispered, like he didn’t want the bees to hear him or something. “This tree is probably loaded.”
Jed leaned the ladder on a branch to the side and a little lower than the bee hole and settled the base carefully in the dirt before he put on long gloves. He had Lizzie tie a string around the tops of the gloves so there was no gap the bees could access and tied other strings around the bottoms of his pants legs. He helped Lizzie do the same, and then both donned bee bonnets and settled them carefully over their heads. After pumping the bellows on the smoker a few times, he was satisfied with the stream of smoke emanating from the contraption.
“I’ll climb up and smoke them well. Hold the ladder steady, and be ready for me to hand the smoker back down to you.”
Lizzie nodded and stepped under the ladder where she could grasp it firmly.
Jed carefully climbed the ladder, burning himself once when the smoker brushed against his leg. He placed the nozzle of the smoker into the entry hole and pumped the bellows several times, injecting smoke deep into the hive. Reaching down, he handed the smoker to Lizzie, saying, “Be careful where you set that. It’s hot!”
With a hatchet he took from his belt, Jed chopped the hole larger, enough to see inside the tree and to dip out honey. Lizzie handed him the bucket and a long-handled ladle with which he began dipping.
“I knew it. This whole tree is full!”
Jed worked rapidly to fill the bucket before the bees came out of their stupor.
“I doubt we will be able to get any more honey from this hive,” Jed remarked as he carried the five-gallon bucket, nearly full of honey, back to the lodge. “The bees will more than likely find another place and will move the honey. I tried to disturb the hive as little as possible, but since I had to enlarge the opening, I doubt they will stay. We’ll watch and see.” He would come back in a day or so and check. If the bees moved, as he suspected they would, he would recover the ladder, since it was more than he could carry with the bucket of honey. Lizzie carried the smoker and the bee bonnets, and her mouth watered. The honey smelled sweet, and she didn’t think it smelled very wild. Her mind raced with ideas of what she could make with it.