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.”