THE TIMBER TREASURE

Tom arose and shouted to them

THE

TIMBER TREASURE

FRANK LILLIE POLLOCK

Author of “Wilderness Honey,” “The

Woods Rider,” etc.

ILLUSTRATED

THE CENTURY CO.

New York and London

1923

The Century Co.

Copyright, 1913, 1921, by

Perry Mason Company

PRINTED IN U. S. A.

This story has appeared serially in “The Youth’s Companion,” and my thanks are due the publishers for permission to reprint it.

Frank Lillie Pollock.

CONTENTS
I	[The End of a Trail]
II	[Indian Charlie]
III	[The Fish Sharp]
IV	[Burned Out]
V	[Across the Wilderness]
VI	[Defeat]
VII	[Not Too Late]
VIII	[The Treasure]
IX	[Victory]
X	[A Fight in the Dark]
XI	[Fire and Water]

ILLUSTRATIONS

[Tom arose and shouted to them]
[Tom rushed in and dragged him out]
[The game was up]
[Tom caught the half-directed blow]

THE TIMBER TREASURE

CHAPTER I
THE END OF A TRAIL

The heavy spruce forest broke away into scattered clearings; the road began to show more sign of use. The shriek of a sawmill began to be audible through the trees, and then the stage rolled into Oakley, splashed with mud from wheels to top, and the tired horses stopped. Tom Jackson crawled out, cramped and chilled with the rough twenty-mile drive, and looked about anxiously for a familiar face.

The stage was standing opposite an unpainted frame hotel, where a group of men had collected to meet it. There were rough woodsmen, forest farmers, dark-faced French habitants, an Indian or two, slouching and silent; the driver as he got down from his seat was exchanging jocularities with some of these, but no one spoke to Tom, and he saw no one whom he recognized. He had a twinge of anxiety. He had written to Uncle Phil to meet him that day. There had been plenty of time, and he had felt certain of seeing either Uncle Phil or one of his sons. Could the letter possibly have gone astray?

Tom’s canvas dunnage sack was handed out to him, and his rifle in its case. He deposited these on the hotel steps, and again searched the group with his eyes. Becoming certain that he knew no one there, he applied to the nearest man, a raw-boned, bearded person in the rough dress of a backwoods settler. He had been talking freely, and seemed to know everybody.

“Have you seen anything of Mr. Phil Jackson around here to-day—or either of his boys?”

“Don’t believe as I know ’em,” returned the pioneer, looking Tom over with acute curiosity. “Was you expectin’ to see ’em?”

“Yes, I wrote them to meet me here, but I don’t see any of them.”

“Well, the town ain’t very big. You can’t miss ’em if they’re here,” the other said, encouragingly.

This had already struck Tom’s mind. The straggling, muddy street of log houses, frame shacks, three or four stores was barely a hundred yards long, and then the vast northern Canadian forest closed in again. Away at the end of the village he had a glimpse of a good-sized river, yellow and swollen with melting snow. There were stray drifts of snow and patches of ice still lingering in sheltered places everywhere, rather to Tom’s surprise, for spring had seemed well advanced when he left Toronto; and despite the sunshine the air was full of a raw harshness, charged with a smell of pine and snow.

He carried his baggage into the hotel and left it there, glancing into the bar and sitting-room. Emerging again, he found the knot of idlers had scattered, and the horses were being unharnessed from the stage. He walked down the board sidewalk as far as it went, scrutinizing every face, looking into the stores, with anxiety growing upon him. Oakley was his uncle’s post-office, but his homestead was some thirty miles back in the woods, and Tom had no idea in which direction nor how to get there.

All at once it occurred to him that they must know at the post-office. That was the place for information. He had passed it already; he had seen the sign, and he turned more hopefully back. The post-office was a general store as well. It was full of a mixed smell of leather and molasses and tobacco, and there was a group of fur-capped settlers smoking and talking beside the big stove. Among them Tom recognized the man he had already spoken with, and they all stopped talking and looked at the boy with great interest. Tom felt that they instantly recognized him as from the city, though he had taken pains to wear his roughest and heaviest clothes, a flannel shirt and high shoepacks which he had used in the woods before; but his hands and face were suspiciously untanned.

The postmaster, a spectacled elderly man, was behind a wire compartment at the rear of the store, and had just finished sorting the mail brought in by the stage when Tom approached him.

“Why, no,” he answered. “I ain’t see Phil Jackson to-day. Fact is, I don’t believe I’ve set eyes on him all winter. Seems to me I heard he’d gone away—him and the boys.”

It was indeed six or eight months since Tom had heard from any of his uncle’s family, but he had never dreamed that they could have left the north Canadian ranch where they had been for five years, and where they were doing prosperously.

“No, Jackson ain’t gone away,” put in one of the men by the stove. “Mebbe he don’t come in to Oakley no more, but he’s still on his homestead.”

“He ain’t been gettin’ his mail here lately, anyways,” said the postmaster. “There’s a letter here for him now—been here a week.”

He reached up to the pigeonholes, and took out a letter, peering at it through his glasses. With a shock Tom recognized the handwriting of the address.

“Why, that’s my own letter!” he cried. “That’s the letter I wrote him. He never got it.”

There was a silence in the store. Tom endeavored to collect himself.

“I fully expected him to meet me here,” he said at last. “Now I’ve got to get out to his ranch some way. Do you know where it is?”

There was a difference of opinion. Nobody seemed to be quite sure.

“I believe he lives over north somewheres,” said the postmaster. “I dunno.”

“Down the river, ain’t it?” said another.

“No, it ain’t,” said a third, decisively. “I know where the Jackson place is. It’s up on Little Coboconk, just below the narrers. I seen Dave Jackson there one day last fall. He was gettin’ out beaver-medder hay.”

“How far is it? How can I get there?” cried Tom.

“Must be ’bout thirty mile. I dunno how to get there—’less you had a canoe. You go right up the river to the Coboconk lakes,” said the postmaster.

“Me and my pardner’s plannin’ to go up past there,” said the man who knew the place. “Guess we could fix it to go to-morrow. We could take you up, if you know how to ride in a canoe without fallin’ out.”

“I’ve paddled a canoe a good many hundred miles,” said Tom indignantly. “I’d be glad to go if you can take me. How much’ll you charge me for the trip?”

The frontiersman glanced sidewise at the boy, and spat against the hot stove.

“Run you up for ten dollars.”

Tom knew well that this was outrageous. If he had been a dweller in that neighborhood he would have been welcome to go for nothing, for the sake of an extra hand at the paddles. And about twenty dollars was all he owned.

“Can’t afford to pay more than five,” he said firmly.

“Oh, well; make it five,” said the other, a little shamefacedly. “We’ll start early—six o’clock, say. You stoppin’ at the hotel?”

Tom had no other place to stop, though he could ill spare the additional dollar or two. He went back and engaged a room, and tried to amuse himself for the rest of the afternoon by looking over the straggling little backwoods village and its environs. He had seen others exactly like it, but he had never before been so close as this to Uncle Phil’s homestead, though he had been many times invited to visit it.

Tom’s home was in Toronto, where his father was in the wholesale lumber business. But there had been a frequent inter-change of letters between the city and the north woods; Uncle Phil always sent down a deer in November, and twice the boys, Dave and Ed, had paid a visit to Toronto. They were three and five years older than Tom, but the cousins had become great friends, and the tales Tom heard of backwoods adventure made him regard it as a sort of ideal life.

Tom had spent his whole life in Toronto, but he did not care for the city. He had unusual physical strength for his seventeen years; he had made several summer camping and canoeing trips into the north woods; he could use a rifle, an ax, and a paddle; and he would immensely have liked to be old enough to go into the woods, secure a hundred acres of free government land, trap, hunt, prospect for minerals. There was iron in those wildernesses, graphite, mica, asbestos, silver, maybe gold too. There were pulp-wood and pine and fine hard woods. Dave had found a clump of “bird’s-eye” maple and obtained three hundred dollars for half a dozen logs. All this appealed much more strongly to Tom than his present university studies and the prospect of a subsequent desk in his father’s office. He came by these tastes honestly enough, for his father in his younger days had been a trapper, a timber-cruiser, a prospector in these same woods, until, growing older and making money, he had settled into a conservative city business.

Mr. Jackson looked with no favor on his son’s disinclination for business. There was time enough, however. Tom had finished his second year at Toronto University, where he had distinguished himself mainly in other ways than scholastically. He was a brilliant Rugby halfback, and had come close to breaking an intercollegiate record for the half-mile. Tom had enjoyed these two college years hugely, and had, in fact, taken little thought of anything but enjoyment. His father was not a millionaire, but Tom had usually only to ask for money in order to get it, and he had spent it with a tolerably free hand. Thinking now of the sums he had squandered, he squirmed with remorse.

The lumber business in Ontario is no longer what it was. Mr. Jackson was a dour and silent trader, who would no more have brought business troubles home with him than he would have discussed household matters with his office staff. He rarely mentioned the business to his son. Perhaps he hoped that Tom would volunteer an interest in the business, but it never occurred to the boy to do this. In fact, as Tom thought of it now, his father had become almost a stranger to him since he had entered the university and had taken up a multiplicity of new personal interests, social and sporting. He met his father only by chance at home, it seemed: at dinner, rarely at luncheon, on Sundays, sometimes of an evening. Tom almost never entered the big lumber-yards and office at the foot of Bathurst Street, and he had spent most of the last two vacations canoeing and camping near the Georgian Bay with a party of young friends.

He had planned to do the same this last summer. A party of college friends was going north to a club-house that some of them possessed near the Lake of Bays. It was to be rather an expensive outing; they were to take three motor-boats, several guides, a cook, and a princely outfit of supplies. Tom’s share of the expenses came to upward of a hundred dollars. He applied to his father for a check, and received a rather curt refusal, accompanied by no explanation.

It was the first time that he could remember having been denied money, and he felt bitterly aggrieved. He canceled his plans, however, and the motor-boats went without him.

About three weeks later his father summoned him to the office.

“I guess I can let you have that money after all, Tom,” he said; and, as he took out his checkbook, he added almost apologetically:

“I really couldn’t do it when you asked me before. Money was like blood to me just then. In fact, I don’t know whether the bank would have cashed the check.”

“Why, has business been as bad as that, Father?” Tom exclaimed, appalled. “I had no idea, or I’d never—”

“The lumber business is pretty well played out in this part of the country,” replied Mr. Jackson. “It’s only far in the north that there’s any white pine left, and I’ve always been a white pine man. I’ll have to go in for pulp-wood, or move west, or shut up shop within a few years. This spring things were worse than I ever knew them to be. For a while it really looked as if I’d have to shut up shop.”

Jackson had never before said so much upon business affairs to his son. The revelation came upon Tom like a thunderbolt. Looking at his father with awakened eyes, he saw for the first time the deep-drawn lines of age and worry upon the face of the veteran lumberman.

“Things are much better now, though,” Jackson hastened to say. “I have a deal or two in hand that should make everything smooth. I think the worst is over.”

“I don’t want this money, Father!” Tom cried. “Look here, can’t I do something? Let me come into the office—or into the yards.”

“Afraid you wouldn’t be much use there, Tommy. We’re too busy to break in new hands. No, take your good time while you can. Your business just now is to get an education. That’s all I want to say to you, Tommy. Don’t neglect it. Foot-ball is all right, but don’t neglect the important thing.”

Tom went away from this interview ashamed, humiliated, and full of good resolutions. He put the check into his bank, resolved to draw no more money for personal expenses that whole year, and instead of going on a holiday trip he, like many other students, secured a job as government fire ranger in the new country north of Lake Temiscaming.

He spent three months thus, mostly in a canoe, and came back brown and hard-trained in the early autumn, for the collegiate term. His good condition made him more than ever in demand for athletics, and his ardor for reform had lost a little of its fine edge during the summer. Nobody ever studied during the autumn term anyhow, he reflected, and he played foot-ball assiduously until the season closed. With the coming of the winter he took a lively interest in hockey; and not until the end of February did he begin to realize that he had made an even worse hash than usual of his scholastic year, and that he would almost infallibly fail to pass the June examinations.

With characteristic impulsiveness he dropped all sports, took no exercise, and plunged heavily into study to make up for lost time. He burned the midnight oil until daylight came; he grew pale and his health fell off, and, as a natural result, in March he was attacked by a serious inflammation of the eyes. He spent a week or so in a darkened room, and came out under orders not to look at a printed page for a month, and not to think of study for the rest of the spring and summer.

He was thrown into compulsory idleness, and he had the pleasure of knowing that it was by his own fault and foolishness. He thought again of suggesting that he take some minor part in the lumber business; but Mr. Jackson was evidently undergoing troubles of his own just then. Business was bad again; he was in ill health besides; he was short-tempered and sarcastic, and Tom’s conscience made him afraid. His eyes, besides, negatived office work; and at last he went down and spoke privately to Williams, the yard foreman, for a job on the lumber piles.

Williams smiled at first, but when he found that Tom really meant it he grew serious, and spoke plainly:

“We couldn’t have the boss’s son in the yard, Mr. Tom; you know we couldn’t. I couldn’t let you loaf on the job, and I couldn’t drive you like the rest of the hands. Oh, I know you wouldn’t loaf, but there’s nothing to learn here anyway. It’s all manual work—lifting and loading and handling. Stay around with me for a day and you can learn it all—if that’s what you’re after.”

Checked again, Tom’s thoughts turned back to the north, where his heart had always been. It was too early for fire ranging; that work is not undertaken until midsummer; but he began to think of Uncle Phil’s homestead in the backwoods, and, little by little, in his hours of enforced inaction, he formed a plan.

His eyes were good enough for all outdoor purposes, and his health needed strong exercise. He would go up and stay with Uncle Phil and the boys, and help them at the spring cultivation, the logging, all the forest and farm work. There would be no doubt about his welcome; another strong arm is always useful in the woods. He would look over the surrounding country. Within a few months he would be eighteen, and capable of homesteading a hundred acres himself. Why should he not do it? There would be pulp-wood on the land, perhaps minerals. If necessary, he could still return to the city rather late next autumn, and continue his studies.

“But I’ll never be any good as a student or at business,” he thought mournfully. “I’m no good at anything but foot-ball, and paddling a canoe and shooting and chopping timber. I’d better go in for what I can do.”

He ventured to confide part of this project to his mother, who endeavored to dissuade him, but finally admitted that a summer in the woods might do him good. He casually introduced the subject to Mr. Jackson, and got an ironical remark that he would “probably be no more useless there than anywhere else,” which put an end to the conversation. It left Tom with some feeling of bitterness. He was not going to ask for any money; on the contrary, he was going to be self-supporting. He had enough money in his bank-account for the articles of outfit he needed, and for his railway fare and for the stage across to Oakley; and while at his uncle’s farm he would have no need of money. He left with the casual manner of going on a pleasure-trip, but he was inwardly determined that it should be winter before the city should see him again, and that he would have something definite to show for the time between.

It had been a great disappointment to find no one at Oakley to meet him. He had counted on a jubilant welcome from his cousins; but he ought to have remembered that pioneers do not go thirty miles to the post-office every week. He would have a little more trouble and expense; that was all; and he went to bed in the bare, cold hotel room in the sure expectation of sleeping the next night at Uncle Phil’s farm.

He was up at daylight, breakfasting early; and when the canoemen called for him punctually at six o’clock he was ready to shoulder his dunnage sack and rifle and go down to the river at the far end of the street.

They put Tom in the middle, and entrusted him with a paddle when he assured them that he was used to this sort of navigation. The Coboconk River was running full and strong with the April freshets and the melting snows, and the three of them found it stiff work to propel the loaded Peterboro up against the current. The roofs of the village passed out of sight, and after the first mile there was no trace of settlement along the wooded shores. It was a rough, picturesque country, densely timbered with small pine and spruce and hemlock, and streaks of snow still lay in the shaded woods. Half a dozen times they started a flock of wild ducks splashing and squawking from the water. There was plenty of game in these woods. Tom had eaten venison steak for supper at the hotel, he felt sure, though it was called beef out of deference to the game-laws. There were bears in this spruce wilderness, and deer and lynxes and sometimes wolves; and muskrats and minks and ermines swarmed along the streams and in the swamps.

Toward noon they reached the end of the river, where it flowed out of the Coboconk lakes, and here they stopped to eat a cold lunch. There were two of the Coboconk lakes: Little Coboconk and Big Coboconk, connected by a narrow strait. The little lake, which they now entered, was perhaps three miles long, and Tom’s destination was just at the upper end. They skirted up close along the shores, and the canoemen scanned the shores narrowly. There was no clearing, nor smoke, nor any trace of a farm. They passed the mouth of a small river and went on almost to the connecting straits, and then the men ran the canoe up to a stranded log.

“Here you are,” said his guide. “See this here trail? That takes you on to Dave Jackson’s barn, where he put his hay. I dunno just where the house is, but you keep a-follerin’ the trail and you can’t miss it.”

They heaved Tom’s dunnage ashore after him, and paddled quickly on toward the upper lake. Tom felt indignant and cheated. He had expected to be landed at his uncle’s door for his five dollars, and he found himself put ashore with a hundred pounds of dunnage and his destination indefinitely distant. But the canoe was already out of sight in the spruce-bordered channel, and there was no help for it.

It was impossible to think of carrying the heavy canvas sack for any distance, and so he hoisted it into the low fork of a tree, intending to get Dave to come down and help him bring it home. He had brought a few delicacies as presents for the younger children—a box of candy, a box of dates and figs—and he crammed these into his pockets, put his rifle under his arm, and started inland.

There was a sort of trail, as the canoeman had said—a faint indication of wheelmarks certainly made no later than last autumn. It was possible to follow them, however, and here and there trees had been cut to open the way; after perhaps a mile of tramping Tom came in sight of the barn he expected.

It was a rough, unchinked log structure, with the door yawning wide, standing close by a wide flat of long grass and reeds, through which a tiny stream slowly wandered—evidently the beaver meadow where Dave had cut his hay. But there was no house in sight, and the woods came up densely around the beaver meadow, with no trace of either road or clearing.

Tom’s heart sank with discouragement. Nevertheless, the barn indicated that he was on the right track, and the house could not be very remote. Experimentally he uncased his rifle and fired it—three shots, the wilderness signal of distress. No woodsman would neglect to answer that call, and he listened long for an answering signal, but none came. The whiskey-jacks squalled from the spruces, excited by the shots, but there was nothing else.

He struck off, however, beyond the beaver meadow, still in the same direction he had been going. Within half a mile he came upon a rushing, swollen little river, doubtless the same which he had seen flowing into the lake. He followed its shores for some distance, and then struck away into the woods, on the watch for a blazed trail or any sign of clearing. But he had been walking in irregular directions for nearly an hour when he suddenly stumbled into a half-cleared road and saw the opening of a large clearing ahead. Full of hope, he rushed forward and then stopped short with a cry of despair.

Before him lay a stumpy clearing of perhaps a dozen acres, showing something green at one end but overgrown with dead weeds at the other. There was no house, but a great heap of charred timber and ashes showed where a house had once stood and had been burned down.

“This must be the wrong place; it must be further on,” Tom muttered, struggling against a horrible conviction. But he went up and examined the wreck left from the fire.

Amid the pell-mell confusion of half-burned logs, joists, and planks was a litter of tin cans, broken kitchenware, scraps of paper and cloth. He could not make out any relics of any sort of furniture; most of the household effects must have been salvaged. There was a broken iron pot, half full of water and deep red with rust—an old ax with the handle burned out. Everything showed signs of having been exposed to the wet a long time. Plainly the fire had not taken place this spring. It must have been during the winter, or, more likely, last autumn.

But surely this wretched place, this tiny clearing, could not be the prosperous homestead that he had imagined Uncle Phil to possess. He groped over the rubbish in search of some evidence. He turned up a scrap of planed board which might have been part of a door-casing. Letters were cut on it with a jack-knife. They were partly charred away, but what was left was plain enough, and he spelled the confirmatory letters “ave Jackso.” It was Dave’s work, he could hardly doubt; and a few moments later he unearthed a tattered book, a copy of Scott’s “Ivanhoe,” water-soaked and scorched, but with his cousin Ed’s name scribbled a dozen times on the fly-leaves.

Tom groaned. There could be no further doubt, nor hope. It was the place, right enough; but the house had been burned and the family had gone, abandoning the claim. Where they had gone he could not even guess; probably it was far, since none of them had been seen at Oakley all winter.

Tom sat down on a blackened log, and tears started into his eyes. Bitterly now he regretted his rashness in coming on without an answer to his letter. There was nothing for it now but to go back to Oakley. He would have to walk. It was thirty miles; and how could he carry his dunnage? And, once there, he would have to make the still more humiliating retreat to Toronto.

He sat there for some time, too confused to be able to think clearly. It was growing late in the afternoon. He could not possibly start on the long tramp back that night. But he shrank from the notion of staying in the neighborhood of that ruined dwelling, where there was no shelter whatever; and he determined to go back to the log barn, which would at any rate afford him cover.

Having a definite notion of his directions, he struck a bee-line across the woods and succeeded in coming out within a hundred yards of the old beaver marsh. It was not more than a mile in a direct line from the burned house, and he investigated the barn with a view to its possibilities for a camp.

It was rather better than he had expected. There were great chinks in the walls, and the roof did not seem tight; but part of the place had been floored with planks and was partitioned off with stalls for two horses. The rest of the flooring was earth, damp and muddy, but at the farthest end was a remnant of the old hay.

Pulling out scraps of boards from the building, he lighted a fire just outside the door. Dusk was beginning to fall, and the snap and glow of the flames lightened the dreariness a little. He went into the woods and gathered up what dead and fallen timber he could drag in. It is hard to collect fuel without an ax, but worse yet to have the camp-fire fail in the night, and he labored until he thought he had enough to last through the dark hours. He had blankets in his dunnage pack, but he did not feel equal to the task of carrying it up from the lake; and he dragged out a heap of hay to the barn-door and threw himself down upon it. By good luck he had saved a portion of his noonday lunch; there had been more than he wanted then, and if it was not much now it was better than nothing, and he ate it hungrily. What he would eat on the tramp back to Oakley he could not imagine. He would have to trust to his rifle; but he did not have the heart to grapple with any more difficulties just then.

Darkness fell. Through the woods, in the intense stillness, he could hear the faint rush of the little river pouring over its rocks. Owls hooted occasionally from the woods. Once he heard the discordant squall of a hunting lynx; but he was tired out and heart-sick, and he felt reckless of any wild animal.

The air grew frosty, and the stars glittered white in the steely-blue sky. He piled on more wood, brought out all the rest of the hay he could find, and burrowed under it, with his rifle beside him; and despite his misery, he fell soundly asleep at last.

CHAPTER II
INDIAN CHARLIE

Tom awoke with a vague sense of impending disaster, and looked about, unable for a moment to realize where he was. It was just dawn. A gray light hung over the woods. The remains of his fire barely smoked, and frost lay white as snow over everything. Then he remembered—the journey, the wreck of the burned house, the ruin of all his plans; and he got up from his nest of hay, unable to remain quiet.

He built up the fire again, feeling empty and miserable. His supper had been a poor one, and there was nothing for breakfast. Perhaps he might shoot a partridge, he thought, but he felt too inert and lifeless to go on the hunt. At this point he recollected the boxes of dates and candy he had with him, and he got them out and devoured them. It was a queer breakfast, but it comforted his stomach considerably. The heat of the fire began to take the chill out of his blood. Over the trees in the east the sun began to come up gloriously, and with some renewed courage Tom began to think of the journey back to Oakley.

He hated intensely to do it, yet there seemed no other course. It would be a hard, long tramp besides, lasting more than one day, and he would have to depend on what he could shoot. The best thing would be to acquire some provisions before starting; and he filled the magazine of his rifle from the box of cartridges in his pocket, and started into the woods.

He was eager, besides, to explore a little farther before leaving the place. It was just possible that Uncle Phil’s house was still in the vicinity. The burned building might have been some unused structure; the real place might be farther on. He skirted the old beaver meadow and plunged into the woods—a jungle of small spruces and jack-pine, much of it dead as if attacked by some disease. A hare bobbed out from the thickets, incautiously sat up to look at the intruder, and rolled over the next moment. Tom picked it up and hung it at his belt, reflecting that here was meat for at least one meal.

He listened intently for a possible answer to the echo of his shot, but there was no human sound. Pushing on, he reached the deserted clearing, glanced over the fire ruin again, and went on to examine the roughly cut road he had stumbled into the evening before.

This trail led him out to the bank of the little river, and ended. He followed the stream up some rods. Here and there a tree had been cut at least a year ago, but there were no further signs of settlement, not even a blazed trail. He made a wide circle with a radius of a mile and came back to the clearing, unable to cherish any more hope. This clearing was all the settlement there was.

He looked at it disconsolately. It was untidy and studded with stumps. All around its edges great heaps of logs and brush had been piled up. South of the former house these had burned, and the fire had penetrated for some distance into the woods, probably catching from the dwelling. At the farthest end of the clearing there were about three acres of struggling green, the green of some autumn-planted grain. Other green sprouts showed near the ruin—perhaps the relics of a garden. It was not in the least the sort of homestead he had pictured from his cousins’ descriptions, and he thought rather indignantly of the exaggerated accounts they had given him.

He poked over the rubbish again. The ashes were full of nails and screws, bits of glass, and bits of iron. He picked up the old ax-head, and thought of taking it with him. It would be better than nothing, perhaps, in collecting firewood; but he decided that it was too heavy to carry. He put the torn and stained copy of “Ivanhoe” in his pocket; it would be something to read. Nothing else seemed to be of the slightest value to him.

There was no use in lingering about the place any longer. He turned back irresolutely through the woods, and headed toward the river. Ricks of dead driftwood were piled along its rocky banks. A couple of swimming muskrats dived in a circle of ripples as he came up. Tom paused, and as he stood there a lithe black form popped up between two logs within twenty yards.

It was a mink, and a large one. Almost instinctively he put up his rifle and drew a bead on the little fur-bearer’s head. It was broadside to him, but it was a small mark to hit at that distance, and a bullet anywhere but in the head would ruin the pelt. He aimed long, expecting it to dodge away, but it vanished only at the report.

He hardly hoped to have hit, but he found it on the other side of the log, almost decapitated. It was a nearly black pelt and in prime condition. If it had been trapped it might have been worth twenty dollars, but the mangled head would reduce its value. He carefully wiped the fur, however, and skinned the animal, reflecting that this would help pay the expenses of his ill-starred venture.

He rolled up the skin temporarily and put it in his pocket, till he should have time to stretch it, and continued his way down the stream. There were plenty of traces of fur everywhere. He saw several more muskrats though no more of the shy minks. But the signs showed that there were minks there in abundance, and there were probably martins in the woods, foxes, skunks, and perhaps sables and fishers. Dave had said that there was plenty of fur in the district, and he had been right in this, at any rate.

It would be a splendid place for a winter’s trapping, Tom thought, and he almost regretted that it was not November instead of April. The trapping season was almost over now. It crossed his mind that he might stop here for the remainder of it and make what he could. But he had no traps, no grub, none of the necessary camping outfit.

He followed the stream down to the lake, and turned up the shore to the spot where he had landed the day before. His dunnage sack was still safe in the tree fork. He opened it and got out the camp cooking outfit of nested aluminum that he had packed in Toronto. There were salt and pepper boxes, both luckily full, and he put these in his pocket, hesitated, and then walked back over the shore to the old barn again.

Here he relighted the fire, skinned the rabbit, and set the quarters to roast on forked sticks. He was voraciously hungry after the long walk and his insufficient breakfast. While the meat was browning he carefully cleaned the fat from the mink skin and stretched it on a bent twig, and then devoured half the hare, gnawing the bones, sitting back on his pile of hay.

Despite salt and pepper, it was rather dry and flavorless, but the meat heartened him wonderfully. He felt equal now to starting on the tramp to Oakley. He could make fully half the distance to-day, and finish it to-morrow. He would, however, have to abandon his dunnage. He might be able to send for it, but it was a poor chance.

He hesitated, reluctant to go. He crumbled the hay in his hands. It was good hay—wild rich grass from the flats where the beavers of old time had their pond. Dave must have made a good profit out of this hay, he reflected, glancing over the brown meadow beyond him. There were perhaps eight or ten acres of it, a long oval, with the remains of the old beaver dam still visible at the lower end. Evidently it had been mowed last summer, and this wild hay always brings a good price at the winter lumber camps.

“This meadow would make ten tons easily,” he said to himself; “likely more. It’ll bear over a hundred dollars’ worth of hay this summer, and nobody to cut it. If I want some easy farming, here’s my chance.”

The idea came to him carelessly, but it suddenly assumed weight. He could make something more by trapping in the next few weeks—at least another hundred dollars.

“It’ll be hard luck if I can’t get rabbits and birds enough to live on,” he muttered. “There’ll be trout soon, too. It’s getting warm. This old barn would be a good enough place to live in.”

The hay would have to be mowed in July. He would have to cut it, turn it over, and stack it entirely by hand, but he knew he could sell it in the stack as it stood. Living here would cost hardly anything. At the end of the summer he could go back to Toronto with a hundred dollars or so to show for his time.

Or why should he not stay up here till Christmas for the early winter trapping? It would be more profitable than playing foot-ball; and he could spare the time, for he was going to have to take his last year’s collegiate work over again anyhow. For that matter, why should he not keep control of this homestead? It was assuredly abandoned. It had a clearing, at least one building, some grain planted, a field of hay. He had wished for such a forest farm. Here was one at least partly made to his hand. He would be eighteen years old that summer, and eligible to take a government homestead grant. If Uncle Phil had made no sign by that time he could apply to have the rights transferred to himself, and he was perfectly certain that his relatives had no intention of ever resuming possession.

He laughed to himself, but with a new thrill of hope. All sorts of possibilities seemed suddenly to be opening out, just when things had looked blackest. He got up and walked back toward the river, thinking hard, more and more fascinated by his scheme. It was wild enough, but almost anything was better than creeping back in humiliation to Toronto. There was pulp-wood on the place too, which he could cut in his spare time. As for the land itself, it did not promise extraordinary fertility. Much of it was rocky, and the stunted growth of the trees indicated poor soil. Just south of the barn ran an immense ridge of gravel lightly overgrown with white birches. But Tom did not at that moment dwell much on the actual details of agriculture.

He went down to the lake shore and brought his dunnage sack up to the old barn. It was a heavy load to carry on his shoulder, and he had no tump-line; but he dropped it at the barn-door at last, aching and played out, so that he had to drop on the hay and rest. He was getting out of training, he told himself.

When he had recovered breath, he began to unpack his belongings. Without having definitely pronounced a decision to stay here, he went on acting as if the decision had been made. To stop a day or two would do no harm anyway, he thought, if he could pick up food enough; and he went into the log barn to see what could be done with it.

It could be turned into a shack that would at least be good enough for the summer, he thought. The chinks between the logs would not matter much, and he could stop the worst of them with moss. Clearing away all the loose hay at the farther end disclosed a pile of loose boards, which would be useful for patching. He might build a partition across one portion of the building. Under the hay were also a long piece of very good rope, a bit of chain and a broken pitchfork, and a number of loose nails. There were plenty of other nails in the fire wreck.

Growing interested, Tom made a huge broom of spruce branches and swept out the litter from the floored portion of the barn and brushed down the walls. There was a hole in the roof just above. He climbed up with a board or two and contrived to cover it in a temporary fashion. In one corner of the old stalls he fitted a rude bunk and filled it with hay. Unpacking his dunnage, he spread the blankets he had used on camping trips before, and hung up his clothing, his aluminum cooking utensils, the few odds and ends he had brought with him.

After this, he tramped over to the burned cabin to look for nails. There were plenty; he quickly filled his pocket, but they were fire-killed and brittle. They would be of some use, however, and he secured the old ax-head also. The broken iron pot struck him as still having possibilities; the lower half at any rate could be used. He came upon an old tin plate that had not been burned. It might have been the dog’s dish, kept outdoors; but he was not too proud to take it; and, laden with this junk, he returned to the barn again.

The glow of the fire and the blowing smoke as he came up, and the litter of his activities gave him a queer thrill of home. In a couple of days more, he promised himself, it would look still more homelike.

He scoured out the rusty pot with sand and water, and cleaned the tin plate in the same way. The ax-head was in bad condition, but with two of the hardest stones he could find he ground laboriously at the edge until some sharpness was restored. The temper was entirely out of the metal, and so he heated it dull-red in the fire and then dropped it into cold water. After this hardening he again ground the edge and reheated it, this time to a brighter red, and again cooled it suddenly. This treatment produced a rough sort of temper. The edge held at any rate, and Tom shaped a crude, straight handle from an ironwood sapling.

Rough as it was, this ax was an immense and immediate help. He chopped up a supply of firewood with very little difficulty and was delighted to find that the edge did not blunt. If anything, he had made the steel too hard; it had chipped a little.

His foraging about the ruin had been so successful that he determined to go back on the morrow and turn over the ashes thoroughly. There might be many more things that would be useful. The most worthless rubbish took on astonishing value in his complete destitution, and he found an extraordinary pleasure in thus salvaging broken junk and making use of it.

His mind recurred to the fur trade. By lying in wait along the creek he might shoot an odd mink, but this was a most uncertain and wasteful method. He thought of figure-four traps, of deadfalls.

These are seldom very successful where fur animals are shy and much trapped, but in this unfrequented spot he thought they might work. He split up one of the pine boards and whittled out half a dozen sets of figure-fours, which would fall to pieces at a touch of the baited spindle.

Half a dozen whiskey-jacks had been squalling about the roof of the barn for hours, and he shot one of them for bait. He set two of his deadfalls beside the tiny creek in the beaver meadow, where there were muskrat signs, building a little inclosure of stakes and logs with a heavy timber supported over the entrance on the figure-four spring. Going through the woods to the river, he set four more traps along the shore, close to the driftwood where the minks were sure to pass.

It was growing late in the afternoon, and he was hungry again. Remembering that he had nothing eatable but half a rabbit, for which he felt no appetite, he made a circuit through the woods in the hope of picking up a grouse. He did start up several; three of them perched on a tree and sat in full view, craning their necks stupidly to look at him, but he managed to make a clean miss, and they went off with a scared roar of wings. With a shot-gun he might have bagged half a dozen; but no more sitting shots presented themselves, and he came back to the barn empty-handed.

The sky had clouded over, and a raw April wind blew. Twilight fell drearily over the bare woods and the black spruces. Tom cooked his rabbit and ate it without any great relish. He was very tired, and felt once more filled with indecision and distress. More than ever it seemed madness to attempt to remain in this place indefinitely. To make the discomfort worse, the wind changed so that it drove the fire toward the barn. He had to put it out, lest the building should catch fire. Vainly he longed for an interior hearth so that he could heat the place, but he got into his bunk, piled all his blankets and spare clothing over himself, and shivered for some time, but eventually went to sleep.

He awoke about sunrise, feeling stiff and cold. Once more he felt that he had been a fool to stay here even as long as this. Already he might have been back in Oakley, headed for Toronto.

He built up the fire and warmed himself. There were some scraps of rabbit left from last night, and he ate them morosely, feeling that he had carried a diet of rabbit about as far as it would go. This morning he would have to pick up something better; afterward he would plan his retreat to Oakley, and when he had finished the scanty meal he took up his rifle and started toward the river, where he had set the deadfalls.

He had a stroke of luck at once. Coming quietly out by the stream he espied four ducks on the water close to the shore. It was not more than twenty yards, and he knocked over one, and missed with a second bullet; then the birds went splashing and squawking away through the air.

He retrieved the duck with a long stick, hung it on his belt and walked up the shore. The first of his traps was untouched. The second was sprung and the bait taken, but the animal had eluded the falling log. Tom reset it, rebaiting it with the head of the duck. He had not much faith in his deadfalls, but the next one was down and had a muskrat in it—a dark, sleek pelt, quite flattened with the weight of the heavy timber.

Tom was unreasonably elated over his prize. It showed that his traps were good for something after all, and it ran through his mind that he might set a whole string of them up and down the river. He skinned the musquash and put the pelt in his pocket; then he walked slowly up the shore, on the lookout for more ducks.

He saw no more, but, turning into the woods, he managed to pick a partridge out of a tree. He followed his former trail toward the burned cabin, for he wanted to look over the ruins again for something useful. He laid down his rifle and game, and pulled the burned timbers apart pretty thoroughly. He took out a number of good boards that might some time be of service, and found a broken cup, an unbroken saucer, and a useless table knife, but nothing else that was worth taking away.

Walking about the clearing, however, he made a much more important find. He observed a slight mound of earth, some scattered boards and straw almost filling a depression in the ground, and he guessed that it was a last year’s potato pit. It had been emptied, of course, but Tom burrowed about among the earth and straw at the bottom and was rewarded by finding, one by one, nearly a peck of rather small scattered potatoes.

He yelled with delight. He had grown terribly nauseated with a meat diet. His mouth watered at the sight of these grubby little spuds. Taking off his coat, he wrapped them up sack wise in it, and started back immediately for his barn, which already had come to be home.

He had a real dinner that day—wild duck roasted in fragments, and potatoes baked in the ashes and eaten with salt and grease from the duck. Nothing had ever seemed so delicious. There might be still more potatoes in the pit—possibly some other vegetables. Stimulated by the food, his courage revived again, and he definitely resolved to stay here at least until the end of the spring trapping season. If necessary he could tramp down to Oakley and exchange a pelt or two for flour, pork, and sugar. As for a longer stay, there would be time to decide upon that later.

He went back that afternoon to the burned cabin to look for more potatoes, but, after turning the pit thoroughly out, he found only three. He shot a rabbit, however, that had come out of the woods to nibble at the sprouting grain in the clearing, and with the potatoes in his pocket and the rabbit at his belt he walked across to the river and down the shore.

A half a mile down, the stream broke into a series of rapids, swirling among black boulders. The rocks and piled drift logs at the foot of the rapids looked like a good place for mink, and he stopped to examine the “sign.” Minks and musquashes dwelt there, surely; their traces were abundant. He sat down on a log, looking the place over, considering where he might construct a few deadfalls, when he was startled by the sudden appearance of a canoe at the head of the rapid above him.

It shot into sight like an arrow, steered by a single paddler, a dark-faced young fellow, with a big pack piled amidships. The canoeman had not seen him; his whole attention was fixed on running the rapid; he was half-way down it, going like a flash, when Tom foolishly sprang up and shouted from the shore.

The paddler cast a quick, startled glance aside, and it was his undoing. The canoe swerved, and capsized with the suddenness of winking. Tom caught a glimpse of the overturned keel darting past him. The man had gone out of sight in the smother of spray and foam; then Tom saw him come up in the swirl of the tail of the rapid, struggling feebly.

The water was not waist-deep, and Tom rushed in and dragged him out. It was a young Indian, half choked and perhaps partly stunned, but not drowned by any means. He coughed and kicked when Tom deposited him on the shore; and, seeing, that he was safe, Tom made another plunge and rescued the big bale of goods that was drifting fast down-stream. The capsized canoe had lodged against a big half-submerged log lower down, and was secure for the time being.

Tom rushed in and dragged him out

Returning to his Indian, he found him sitting up, looking dazed and angry, and spitting out water. It was a young fellow of about Tom’s own age, wearing a Mackinaw coat and trousers, and a battered felt hat which had stuck to his head, and he looked at Tom with intensely black and angry eyes.

“Hello! Feeling better?” Tom cried.

The Indian boy spluttered a rapid mixture of unintelligible French and Ojibway.

“What you do that for?” he swerved into English. “You make me upset—mos’ drown. I lose canoe—pelts—gun—everyt’ing.”

“Oh no. I got your stuff ashore, and there’s your canoe yonder,” said Tom. “Sorry I scared you. I shouldn’t have called out, but there’s nothing lost, anyway.”

The Indian got to his feet, went dripping to the rescued pack, and turned it over carefully.

“All right, eh? Merci,” he said, his anger dying out. “All my winter trapping here. Thought heem sure lost. Say, you live here? What your name?”

“Tom Jackson. Yes, I guess I live here.”

“You good fellow, Tom. Me, I’m Charlie. Say, must make a fire, quick.”

Both of them were drenched and shivering, and the breeze was cold.

“Come along over to my camp. Fire there,” said Tom. “We’ll put your canoe safe first.”

They pulled the canoe high and dry, rescuing a shot-gun that was tied in it, and then the two boys took up the heavy pack and started across the ridge to the old barn.

The fire was still smoldering, and Tom built it up to a roaring flame. He hastened to change his wet clothes for dry ones; but Charlie, who had no other clothes, merely stood in the heat until he steamed like a kettle, finally becoming passably dry. He said there was tea in his pack, however, and Tom hastened to get it out. There was a little sugar, too; and they hastened to boil the tea, and drank great mugs of the hot, strong, sweet beverage, the first hot drink Tom had had for several days.

As Charlie thawed out he explained that he belonged to an Ojibway village north of Oakley, but he had been trapping far in the northwest with two friends all winter. They had taken another route home; he was returning this way alone with his fur pack, and after selling the plunder he was going to spend the summer at his village. The boy had been partly educated at a mission station. He spoke both English and French in some fashion, frequently mixing them, and when excited he combined them with his native tongue in a manner that would have shattered the nerves of a philologist.

He presently opened up his pack of furs, and Tom was astonished at the showing. There were nearly fifty minks, scores of muskrats, besides skunks, sables, foxes, fishers, and weasels. Altogether there must have been upward of a thousand dollars’ worth of peltry, and all the skins were taken off, cured, and stretched with a neatness that showed the boy an expert at his craft. There were several deer hides also, and one bearskin. Charlie told a great tale of how they had smoked the bear out of his winter nest.

“You trap, too,” he said, his eye lighting on Tom’s single mink skin. “Good pelt, if it ain’t shot. Too bad. Ain’t stretched right neither. You git mebbe seven dollar.”

“More than that,” said Tom. “Look here, you want to trade? I’ll swap you that pelt for some of your traps and grub and—what else you got?”

“Dunno,” said Charlie cunningly. “What you want?”

The boys plunged into a war of bargaining, in which the Indian patience wore out the white nerve. In the end Tom secured four good steel traps, a little tea and sugar and flour from the remains of Charlie’s provisions, and a box of matches, in exchange for the mink and the muskrat skin, an old pair of trousers, and a brilliant red and green necktie which irresistibly took Charlie’s fancy.

When it was over Charlie thawed out still more, and his black eyes twinkled as he looked over his acquisitions.

“Tom, you good fellow. Say, I show you how to trap. You git heap mink here.”

Charlie kept his promise. He stayed three days, looked the field over, and gave Tom quantities of concise expert advice where to set his traps and what bait to use. He expounded deadfalls to him—how to lay blood trails along a trap line, how to stretch and cure the pelts properly. Altogether his instructions were worth almost as much as his traps, and during his stay Tom caught another mink and two muskrats. The boys grew to be great friends in those days, and then Charlie collected his property again and launched his canoe.

“Bo’ jour, Tom!” he said. “You good fellow. I see you again some time, mebbe.”

He went off down the stream, the red and green tie fluttering over his shoulder. Tom hated to see him go. The old barn by the lake seemed doubly lonesome now, but the visit had given him the dose of fresh courage he needed to carry out his enterprise.

CHAPTER III
THE FISH SHARP

It rained all the next day—a cold, dismal rain that was enough to depress anybody’s spirits. The fire sizzled and smoked, sending choking clouds into the old barn, where Tom had to keep under cover. He employed himself in putting a better edge on the broken ax, and in trying to reharden some of the old nails he had gathered. Before another rain could come, he decided, he would construct some sort of shed over his fireplace, so that it would be water-tight.

Getting out the old boards from the rear of the barn, he put up a partial, rough partition so as to make a room about fifteen feet square near the door. Almost destitute of tools, he made a poor job of it, but it helped to pass a dreary day. When the rain slackened once or twice he made brief excursions into the wet woods with his rifle, returning once with a partridge and once with a rabbit. In the bad weather the game lay close and was not shy.

But the next morning the weather had turned mild and sunny and seemed likely to stay so. Visiting his traps late in the afternoon, he found two minks in the steel traps, and a muskrat under one of the deadfalls. He was greatly encouraged and prepared the pelts with the utmost pains, according to Indian Charlie’s directions.

Cold as the rain had seemed, yet it brought the spring. The birches on the ridge began to be shrouded in a mist of pale green, the maples showed crimson buds, and the patch of struggling grain in the old clearing began to come on vigorously. Apparently it was autumn rye, and Tom began to look at it with more interest. It would be yet another small source of profit, if he stayed to harvest it.

Spring came on with the magical swiftness of the North. Leaves sprang from the trees. The snow water left the river, trout began to rise, and Tom got out his fishing-tackle and secured a welcome variation of diet. He needed it, for the last of Charlie’s flour and sugar went quickly, and at last he was absolutely driven to make the long-projected trip to Oakley. It was a wearisome tramp and worse still on the return; for he came back on the fourth day, carrying thirty pounds on his shoulders—bacon, tea, salt, flour, sugar, a saw and hammer. After his solitude, Oakley had seemed almost metropolitan, and the village was indeed unusually astir, for a big dam was to be built there for a paper-pulp factory, and the place was full of imported laborers.

The old clearing looked almost like home when he got back. He found four trapped muskrats and a mink. Nothing had disturbed his possessions. The grass was beginning to sprout in the old beaver meadow, and the determination grew in him that he would never give the place up. He felt sure that nobody would claim it now, and in a few months he could file homestead papers for it himself. In the autumn he could return to Toronto and continue his collegiate work during the winter. He would plant more grain and clear more land. If Oakley should happen to boom into an industrial town, the claim might become very valuable.

He continued his improvements upon the old barn till it had some suggestion of real comfort. He tended his traps assiduously, making the most of the short remainder of the season. He lived roughly and worked hard, living on flour cakes, meat, and fish, and drinking water. He was a poor cook; he grew very sick of this monotonous diet, and there were times when he would have traded the best of his mink pelts for an apple-pie. There were dreary days of cold spring rain—once of flurrying snow—days that held him idle indoors, when he grew half mad with loneliness and discouragement.

The trapping season came to an end. For some time he had noticed that the fur was deteriorating. He had not done quite so well as he had hoped, but he had seven minks, sixteen muskrats, two raccoons, and a fox pelt. With a little luck he might have had a bearskin, for he caught sight of the animal in plain view within fifty yards, but his rifle happened to be back at the cabin.

He had grown thin, wiry, brown, and bright-eyed. He had never been in such training before, and when he started to Oakley with his fur he had no difficulty in making the journey in a little more than a day. The local storekeeper took advantage of the fact that Tom’s furs were all not thoroughly dried to drive a hard bargain; but the boy finally secured $180, most of which he was expected to take in trade. Goods were what he needed, however, and he laid in a stock of food, ammunition, a new ax, a spade, and a number of miscellanies, together with what few books he could pick up. It was far too much to pack back to his farm, and he invested another twelve dollars in a second-hand canoe—a very dilapidated and much-patched Peterboro, which looked sound enough for all practical purposes.

In this craft he made the trip back a great deal more quickly and comfortably than he had come down. It was late in the afternoon when he turned up into the little river, now much shrunken, paddled up to his trapping ground, put the canoe ashore, and struggled over the ridges with his load of supplies. The old barn stood as he had left it, but when he approached the door he received a shock.

Some one had been there—indeed, more than one person. The door, which he had left closed, was half open, and there were fresh footmarks all about the place. Tom hastily glanced over his possessions. They showed traces of having been disturbed, but so far as he could see nothing was missing. The tracks, going and coming, pointed toward the lake, and at least two persons had made them. He could detect one moccasin track, and one showing the print of leather heels.

It was growing dusk by that time, and Tom was too tired to follow up the trail. After satisfying himself that nothing had been stolen, he unpacked his fresh supplies and reëstablished himself, cooked his supper, and went to his blankets early.

Being tired, he slept later than usual, and on arising his mind at once recurred to his late visitors. He got through breakfast hurriedly and, taking his rifle, started to follow up the trail toward the lake.

It was hard to follow, for the weather had been dry and the ground was hard. The carpet of pine and spruce leaves under the trees left little sign, but Tom got the general direction of the trail, picked it up at intervals, and finally came out on the shore. Some distance down the beach he caught a faint curl of smoke. Hastening that way, he came upon the camp.

There was a small gray canvas tent, a half-dead fire, cooking apparatus scattered about, a pair of wet trousers hung up to dry, but no one in sight. Tom called but got no answer. It was, he judged, the camp of a trout-fishing party, and they were probably somewhere out on the water. Then he caught sight of a boat drawn half ashore and went down to look at it.

It was a flat-bottomed punt, a most unusual craft for the north woods, but it had a more unusual feature still. A square foot of the bottom had been cut out and a glass-bottomed box inserted. Tom perceived its purpose at once. He had seen the like before. It is a device adopted by nature students for looking into the depths of clear water; but he had not expected to find a naturalist on the Coboconk lakes.

Considerably puzzled, he looked up and down the water and thought he made out the shape of a floating canoe far up at the end of Big Coboconk, but he was not sure. Again he shouted two or three times, and at last he went back to his own place again. Crossing the gravelly ridge below the barn, he saw the footprints clearly, and saw too that some one had dug into the gravel and had driven deep holes as if with an iron bar. Prospecting, perhaps. There was mineral in the district, Tom knew. He wondered if there might be a mine on his property. But, if there had been one, Cousin Dave would surely have discovered it; for Dave had done a good deal of prospecting, though without any great success.

Tom half expected another visit from the strange campers that day and kept within sight of his dwelling, but no one appeared. On the following morning he went over to the river, got his canoe, and paddled down to the lake. He went slowly up through the narrows into the bigger lake, and saw, as he had rather expected, two boats lying a quarter of a mile ahead and not far from the shore.

One was a canoe, with a single man in it, doing nothing. The other boat, the punt, looked empty at that distance, but as he watched it a man’s head and shoulders rose out of it and then sank again. The canoeman, leaning over, shoved the punt ahead a little.

Tom paddled quickly up, highly interested. The canoeman turned and looked, and then the occupant of the punt rose out of his crouching position in the bottom. He was a tall man of middle age, with a black mustache and a square jaw. He was roughly dressed as any woodsman, yet somehow he did not seem quite to belong to the wilderness. His assistant was a much less pleasing individual, an unmistakable frontiersman, rough and slovenly, with a shock of grizzled reddish hair, and a surly and suspicious face.

“Hello!” called the punter, in answer to Tom’s hail. “Where’d you come from? Camping? Fishing?”

“No, I live back yonder,” said Tom, indicating the direction. “I think you paid a call there the other day. I was away at Oakley.

“Oh!” exclaimed the other. “I thought that was Jackson’s homestead.”

“Yes. I’m Tom Jackson,” returned Tom, quietly.

Both men looked at the boy curiously.

“Well, my name’s Harrison,” said the man in the punt. “This is Dan McLeod, my guide. Is there anybody at your ranch?”

“I’m there,” Tom assured him, growing somehow uneasy.

“Yes, but your father? Or any of the rest?”

“Why, they’re all away for a while,” Tom explained cautiously. “The house got burned, you see.”

“And in the meantime you’re holding down their homestead for them?”

“I surely am,” said Tom firmly. “Sorry I missed you the other day. Are you on a fishing trip yourself, or—what?” with a curious glance at the glass-bottomed boat.

Harrison laughed.

“Want to see? Take a look, then.”

Tom leaned over and tried to look, finally getting into the punt and putting his face close to the glass plate. The water, though deep, was extremely clear, and the stones and sunken logs could be seen distinctly on the floor of the lake.

“Naturalist?” he inquired.

“Ichthyologist—fish sharp,” said Harrison, nodding. “I’m writing a series of articles for a sporting paper on fly-fishing, and I’m experimenting to see how different flies actually look when seen through water. See here.”

And he hauled up from the water a long gut cast, decorated with a number of trout and bass flies placed at short intervals.

“Studying baits from the point of view of the fish,” he went on. “At the same time I observe the movements of the fish while feeding.”

Tom looked at this apparatus with considerable respect.

“Are you writing for one of the Toronto papers?” he asked. “I know most of them.”

“Are you from Toronto?” said Harrison quickly. “You’re not by chance related to Jackson the lumber merchant there, are you?”

“Why—er—yes, I am some relation of his,” returned Tom, embarrassed. He bent to look through the glass again, and a memory of a legend of the Coboconk lakes came into his mind.

“Haven’t seen anything of the lost raft down there, have you?” he inquired, laughingly.

“Never heard of it. What is it?”

“Your guide ought to know, if he belongs to this district. Why, a raft of valuable timber—black walnut—was sunk and lost on this lake twenty-five or thirty years ago. Everybody has taken a look for it but it’s never been located.”

“Sunk? Why, timber floats, doesn’t it?” said Harrison puzzled.

“Not walnut, unless it’s buoyed with some lighter wood. This raft, they say, was cut by the Wilson Lumber Company. It was floated with pine logs, but it got caught in a storm, broke up, and the walnut went to the bottom—nobody knows where.”

The “fish sharp” looked rather quizzically at him, as if he suspected a joke.

“Some catch in that, isn’t there?” he said. “Never heard of dry wood sinking before. I’d as soon expect to see an ax float.”

As a matter of fact, however, the thing had happened exactly as Tom had said. The “lost raft” had become a tradition of the Coboconk lakes. It was Dave Jackson who had told Tom the story, and Dave had searched for traces of the walnut himself. Tom also had thought of having a look for it when he had nothing else to do. But the lumbering off of the heavy timber had, as usual, affected the watercourses, and the lake had shrunk somewhat and changed its configuration considerably in the last twenty years, so that nobody now knew exactly where the raft had started from shore. The lake had a sandy and soft bottom, and it was probable that the scattered logs had long since sunk deep in the ooze. Experts said, however, that the timber would not be injured by its long immersion.

“Well, if you happen to see a pile of walnut logs on the bottom, I advise you to hook your line on them,” said Tom, laughing. “It was a big raft, and they say that at present prices it would be worth a hundred thousand dollars.”

The ichthyologist gave a cheerfully incredulous laugh, and the sullen-faced guide grinned. Tom paddled away.

“Come up and see me again when I’m home,” he shouted over his shoulder, and Harrison called an acceptance, diving immediately afterward into the bottom of his boat to peer through the glass window.

Tom expected to see his visit returned, but day after day passed in solitude. Twice he went down to the lake but could see nothing of the sporting writer and his guide, though the camp was still there and showed that it was occupied. The weather turned unseasonably warm, almost hot. Birches and maples were in full leaf, and mosquitoes began to be troublesome. Once Tom thought he saw human figures moving about the thickets down toward the lake shore, but no one came near his shack for a week. Then one afternoon Harrison and McLeod tramped in from the woods.

“Hello,” Harrison greeted him. “Sorry we couldn’t get up to see you sooner. But we’re going away to-morrow, and I thought we’d just say good-by.”

“Finished your fish experiments?” Tom asked.

“Yes—got some good fresh material. I think I’ll make a hit with my articles.”

They sat down in front of the old barn in the sunshine. Harrison and his guide lighted pipes, and for some time they chatted casually.

“By the way,” said Harrison at last, “how far does this claim of yours extend? What’s its boundary?”

“Why, down to the lake,” Tom responded, though he was by no means sure of it.

“I see. I suppose you wouldn’t care to sell the place?”

“I couldn’t. It’s my uncle’s.”

“Yes, but he seems to have abandoned it. You’ve taken it over. Isn’t that how it stands? I don’t think your cultivation and improvements would satisfy the government land agents, though. I don’t know exactly what your legal position is, but I might pay you something for them, whatever they are, on condition that you turn the ranch over to me at once.”

“What in the world do you want of it?” Tom demanded.

“It would make a good fishing camp,” Harrison returned.

There were a dozen places along the lake that were as good, Tom knew well. He had a strong revival of the queer suspicion that had associated itself with these strangers. He thought again of the drill-holes he had found in the sand and gravel. There was something behind Harrison’s offer.

“I certainly couldn’t do anything till I’ve seen Uncle Phil or the boys,” he said firmly. “They might turn up any day; I can’t tell. I can let you know if they do.”

“All right,” returned the other, with an air of indifference. “It’s not an important matter. But your uncle’ll never be back. I heard at Oakley that he’d left the county. I’d pay a few hundred dollars to have the place turned over to me, so I could start building a camp. Fact is, I think I could sell it to a city fishing club for a good price. Well, do as you like. I’ll be at Oakley for a while. Come and see me if you’re there.”

Tom bade them good-by with an appearance of cordiality and confidence, but inwardly he was in a turmoil of excitement. Harrison had discovered something valuable on this claim; he felt sure of it. Perhaps his scientific investigations into the water had been only a blind. For a moment Tom thought of the lost raft of walnut. But this would be in the lake, if anywhere, and Harrison’s interest was in the land. It must be mineral. Tom thought of gold and silver, graphite and mica, iron and nickel—all of them found now and again in that district. He hardly dared to go out prospecting just then himself; he gave the other party plenty of time to get away, and passed that evening in perplexed planning. But the next morning at sunrise he hurried down to the gravel ridges where he had seen the traces of Harrison’s digging.

First of all he assured himself that the camp was broken and the intruders really gone. All along the sand of the shore he saw places where they had been probing deep, as if with an iron bar. But most of these traces lay farther back. A gravelly ridge, overgrown with small birches, showed marks of having been prospected from end to end.

Tom knew little of prospecting, but he did know that gold was the only sort of valuable mineral that could possibly be found in that bank of sand and gravel. He went back to camp for a cooking pan, and with excited hopes he began to examine and wash out the possibly precious sand.

A tiny rivulet cutting across the ridge supplied him with water. He swirled the stuff in his pan, throwing out the gravel by degrees, peering eagerly into the bottom for the faintest yellow glitter. But there seemed to be nothing but mere sand and gravel. He went from place to place, washing out samples here and there with such scrupulous care that he felt sure he could have detected the tiniest flake of metal. He worked from one end of the ridge to the other but could find no trace of anything but ordinary gravel.

He stopped, deeply disappointed. Still, he had by no means looked over his whole claim. Some of the rocks, some of the hills might show the outcrop of something valuable. He would have to prospect the whole place; and then a fact came to him that threw out all his calculations.

If a discovery of mineral can be made and proved, a claim may be staked out anywhere, even on homesteaded land. If Harrison had found mineral he had nothing to do but stake his claim. The rights of none of the Jacksons could have interfered with him at all, and he could have had no object in wishing to oust Tom from the property.

It could not be mineral that Harrison had found. Again Tom thought of the sunken raft, and dismissed the notion. He sat on the ground, idly stirring up the gravel with his foot. It reminded him of the enormous heaps of gravel he had seen piled at Oakley for the concrete work on the new dams. Wagons were hauling it ten miles, he had heard; there were no good gravel deposits nearer. And then it flashed upon him that this gravel itself was perhaps the mineral that Harrison wanted.

What was more likely? This great bank of thousands of cubic feet lay near the lake and could be floated down the river on flatboats and unloaded right at the required spot, almost without expense for transportation. Tom felt certain that he had hit on the truth. A gravel quarry cannot be staked like a mining claim; it goes with the homestead rights.

And then Tom remembered that he had no rights in the place at all; and what the rights of his uncle or of Dave were in the deserted farm he did not know. But he firmly determined to hold on to that valuable ground with all his might. What it might be worth he could not guess, but several thousand dollars’ worth of gravel and sand ought to come out of that quarry, and the cement workers at Oakley could use it all.

Tom spent the next two days in great perturbation and anxiety. He was tempted to paddle down to Oakley and to make inquiry of every man in the place for information regarding Uncle Phil; but he disliked leaving the claim. Harrison might somehow steal a march upon him. Those days passed slowly and anxiously. A hot wave swept over the wilderness, as often happens in early spring. The woods grew dry and smoky through the spring green. Tom slept outside his cabin for greater coolness. And then on the third day he saw a man coming up from the lake, and recognized Harrison’s guide, McLeod.

McLeod, carrying a rifle under his arm, came up and greeted the boy with a curt nod. Tom felt that some crisis was approaching, and gathered his wits.

“I thought you and Harrison had gone back to Oakley,” he said.

“Left Harrison there,” said McLeod. “I come back. I wanter talk to you. Now look here! What’s all this? You ain’t young Jackson. This here ain’t your ranch.”

“Yes, I’m Tom Jackson, sure enough,” Tom affirmed.

“No, I knowed all the Jacksons, and there wasn’t no Tom. You ain’t got no rights—”

“Look here,” Tom interrupted. He took out a small snap-shot photograph, taken in Toronto of himself and his two cousins, which he had carried for a long time pasted in his pocket-book. The woodsman looked at it scrutinizingly.

“Looks like you,” he admitted. “And that’s Dave, sure enough. But that thar pictur don’t give you no rights here. Dave took this place—bought it off me, he did. He never told me nothin’ about you. I homesteaded the place first. I built this here barn myself. I sold it to Dave, and now he’s deserted it I’m goin’ to have it back. Who’s goin’ to stop me?”

“There’s plenty more land just as good and better, all around here,” said Tom. “What do you and Harrison want this for?”

“Dunno what Harrison wants,” McLeod muttered, with a crafty glance. “I want it ’cause it’s mine by rights.”

“Quarry rights?” said Tom. “Gravel rights, eh? Is that the idea? They’re using lots of gravel at Oakley now, and you could bring it down from here cheaper than hauling it.”

McLeod looked a little dazed for an instant. Then he cast a swift, cunning glance at Tom’s face.

“Say,” he said, “can’t we split on this? Mebbe I can steer Harrison off, and—”

“No, I won’t split anything,” returned Tom curtly.

“Well, if you won’t, then you’ve got to clear out of here. If you don’t, we’ll run you off.”

“See here!” Tom exclaimed. “You just run off yourself. If it comes to that, I’ve got a rifle, too. I’ve got a right here as the Jacksons’ representative, and I’m going to stay; and if there’s any gravel or anything else sold off this place I’ll sell it myself. Now you get out and tell Harrison what I said.”

McLeod glowered at him for a moment, shifting his rifle under his arm. Tom’s own weapon was ten feet away. Then the woodsman shrugged his shoulders slightly, turned on his heel, and departed without another word.

When he was out of sight Tom took his rifle and crept after him. Arriving at the lake, he espied McLeod’s canoe far over by the other shore. It was moving slowly downward, and passed out of sight. Presumably the man was really bound back to Oakley.

Tom remained on the shore for an hour or two to make sure that the man did not come back. He felt desperately lonely now and unsupported. He was uncertain of his rights, with no one to advise him, with war almost openly declared against him, and with, perhaps, a small fortune at stake.

He turned back at last slowly toward his old barn again, turning plans of defense over in his mind. To his surprise he saw from a distance that the fire had been freshly built up. A brisk smoke was rising; the kettle was on, and a humped figure sat with its back toward him. Tom hurried up in alarm and suspicion, and saw a dark, familiar face.

“Fur all sold,” said Indian Charlie. “I come stay with you, Tom.”

CHAPTER IV
BURNED OUT

Tom gave a loud hurrah, and whacked Charlie on the shoulder. Nothing could have delighted him more than this reinforcement, just when the air was full of trouble.

“You’ve come at the right time, Charlie!” he exclaimed. “I needed you. But say!” he added anxiously, “have you got any grub?”

“Got flour, pork, tea,” answered the wild boy. “Beans, sugar too. Sure, we eat heap. Ketch plenty fish, shoot plenty deer, rabbit.”

“Shoot maybe more than rabbit,” said Tom, sitting down on the other side of the fire. “There’s trouble, Charlie. I’m on the warpath.”

Charlie fixed bright black eyes on him with an interested grunt, and Tom endeavored to explain briefly that enemies were trying to dislodge him from his position, which he intended to hold, by force if needful.

“Sure, I help you, Tom,” he agreed. “We fight him if he come. You watch for him—I hunt grub—then we fight. We do firs’ rate.”

To Charlie’s aboriginal mind it perhaps seemed a reduction of life to the natural and simple elements of fighting the enemy and getting something to eat; but Tom was not able to take it so easily. He was greatly cheered by Charlie’s companionship, however, and he knew that the Indian boy’s woodcraft would make him most useful as a provider of game. It would be needed. Tom had none too much provision, and the two youthful appetites made deadly inroads on the supplies.

In fact, Charlie went out before dawn the very next morning and killed a deer—a feat which Tom had not yet performed. It was out of season, of course; but Charlie, being an Indian, was exempt from the game-laws, and they would need the meat.

It secured their food supply for a long time, and the Ojibway busied himself in cutting the venison in strips and drying it over a slow, smoky fire. It made a curiously tasteless mess when boiled, but Tom’s stomach was grown hardened to unsavory fare, and Charlie could eat and digest anything, and was anxious only that there should be enough of it.

From that time Charlie took charge of the provisioning, and spent most of the time prowling in the woods, almost always coming back with a hare, a duck, or some other game. He caught trout; he found an early nest of wild duck’s eggs, which he robbed without scruple. He hunted with an old, inferior, muzzle-loading shot-gun, and was a far worse shot than Tom; but he made up for it by craft, and he could have lived well in a country where the white boy would have starved.

Meanwhile Tom did little hunting. He had lost interest in the growing grass of the beaver meadow and in the planted rye of the last year’s field. His thought was concentrated on the quarry claim, for he felt not the slightest doubt that this was the valuable point—worth more than all the grain and hay the farm could grow for years. If he could put through a contract for that gravel and go back to Toronto with a profit of a few thousand dollars to show his father he would feel that he had redeemed all his dignity and laid the basis for a new life. But for the moment he could do nothing whatever, and it was maddening to feel his inability. He was afraid to leave the claim. He expected an attack from some direction, but he did not know where to look for it. Every day he went down to the lake and looked over the water, but he never saw any sign of a canoe or camp.

A week later Charlie had started to the spring for water before breakfast, when he stopped, stooped, scrutinized the ground, and came back hurriedly.

“Somebody been here las’ night!” he announced.

Tom went to look. He was unable to make out anything where the Indian boy pointed, nothing but a shapeless indentation in the dry earth.

“Yes—you look hard!” Charlie insisted, pointing to one spot after another; and at last with a cry of triumph he indicated the clear imprint of a moccasined foot in soft earth just below the spring.

The Timber Treasure

THE TIMBER TREASURE

CHAPTER ITHE END OF A TRAIL

CHAPTER IIINDIAN CHARLIE

CHAPTER IIITHE FISH SHARP

CHAPTER IVBURNED OUT

CHAPTER I
THE END OF A TRAIL

CHAPTER II
INDIAN CHARLIE

CHAPTER III
THE FISH SHARP

CHAPTER IV
BURNED OUT