DEFEAT
He had just sense enough to control his panic. Tom had never before
been thoroughly “turned around,” but he remembered the hunter’s
maxim for those in such a predicament: sit down, shut your eyes for
half an hour, and let things right themselves.
He sat down and shut his eyes, but things did not right themselves.
The sun dipped below the trees. He was afraid to start in any
direction, and he thought he might as well spend the night where he
was. Indeed, he felt too weak and empty to go farther without
eating.
He gnawed the bones of his rabbit without satisfying his appetite.
The idea of eating raw meat did not seem so repulsive to him now,
and he stole hungrily into the darkening woods. A pair of feeding
grouse whirred up and alighted together in a tree. It was an easy
shot, but his hands trembled. He missed, and almost wept with
disappointment. Ten minutes later, however, he had better luck, and
he bagged a hare, tearing the body badly with the bullet.
He skinned and dressed it hastily, and chewed strips of the raw
flesh. It tasted almost delicious, but half an hour afterward he
grew deathly sick and vomited. The fit passed, leaving him weak and
worn out, and too miserable to care whether he was lost or not.
He had not energy enough to look for a better place for the night,
nor to pull twigs for a bed. He lay down and drew himself together
as well as he could under his heavy jacket, slept a little, awoke
shivering a dozen times, and at last wearily saw the dawn breaking.
There was white frost on the earth.
The night, however, had restored his normal sense of direction. It
seemed right that the sun should rise where it did, and the light
and warmth brought a little comfort. He ventured to chew a little
more of the raw meat and this time felt no evil effects. Thinking
over the situation, he came to the conclusion that this could not be
the Fish River. He would not follow it but would strike due west in
the hope of running into some settlement or camp.
So he started again across the woods. The ground grew more broken
and rocky. Creeks flowed down rocky gullies; almost impassable
swamps alternated with boulder-strewn hillsides. Once he came upon
the “discovery-post” of an ancient mining claim. What mineral had
been sought he did not know, but a great pit had been dug, the grave
of somebody’s hopes, long since deserted, and showing no trace of
recent life.
Half a dozen times during that forenoon he dropped to rest, quite
worn out. Noon did not mean dinner-time. His sickness had not
recurred, but he was afraid to eat much of his uncooked hare, and
only chewed morsels as he stumbled along. So far as shooting any
more game was concerned, luck seemed still against him, and he did
not greatly care.
The sun wheeled from his shoulder to straight ahead, and began to
sink. He almost lost expectation of getting anywhere at all. Roswick
and the mining-camp seemed a myth. There seemed to be nothing in the
whole world but the endless miles of spruce and jack-pine, swamp and
rock, which he kept doggedly struggling through.
He was too wearied even to keep up his anger against McLeod, or to
think with any interest of the timber treasure. It was all a dulled
memory. It was only the force of a past determination that kept
driving him ahead.
The sun went down almost without his noticing it, until the woods
began to grow dark. He threw himself recklessly on the ground where
he happened to be. Probably he could survive that night, but he felt
sure that another one would be his last. But he was so bone-weary
that he slept with merciful soundness, hardly even disturbed by the
cold, till he awoke to find the earth once more powdered with the
frost.
He arose stiffly, feeling rheumatic twinges, and plodded forward
once more. The weight of the light rifle was growing intolerable. He
was mortally afraid lest he should begin to walk in the deadly
circle of lost men, and he kept one eye on the sun. His mind was so
confused that its changing position disconcerted him sadly.
Then all at once a sound electrified him—a crashing through the
undergrowth not many rods ahead. It sounded as if several men were
going through at a run. Tom made a staggering rush forward, shouting
loudly. In five minutes he heard running water, and then broke out
upon the shore of a small river. On the shore opposite him he saw
the marks of many heavy boots, but no one was in sight.
Again and again he shouted, but no one answered. He could only guess
that a party of hunters had gone past after a deer or a bear.
Shaking with exhaustion and excitement, he sat down on a rock to
listen and wait.
After he had waited half an hour a boat shot up the stream, poled
rapidly by four roughly dressed white men. They ran the boat ashore
close to him, pitched out a collection of picks, shovels, and
dunnage, and were about to rush away when Tom arose and shouted to
them.
They turned and stared, spoke together hastily, and seemed about to
go on. But Tom’s forlorn appearance must have struck them, for one
of the men came forward hurriedly.
“We’re in a hurry. Are you in on the rush? Why, what’s the matter?”
“The rush?” said Tom dizzily. “I—I don’t know. I’ve been on the
trail—lost. Can you give me something to eat?”
The man stared, darted back to his outfit, and returned in a moment
with a large lump of bread and a slice of meat.
“Here,” he said. “Eat this. We can’t stop. There’s a big gold
discovery in the next township, and everybody’s on the dead run for
it. Stop here, and you’ll see lots of fellows pass. You’re all right
now. Want anything else? Well, so long!”
And the prospecting party rushed into the woods, leaving Tom
ravenously devouring the food. It gave him new life. When he had
eaten it he lay back and rested luxuriously, feeling sleepy. He was
near the mining-camps at last, and hope flowed back into him.
Within ten minutes another _bateau_ came up and landed a little
below him, and its crew vanished in the woods without noticing him.
Close behind that boat came another, its occupants singing and
shouting in French, as if on a lark.
Tom got up and went down the shore, where the boats seemed to land.
But it was nearly an hour before he saw another party. Then two men
came by in a canoe, paddling fast, scarcely giving a glance to the
boy on the shore. They were almost past when Tom saw clearly the
face of the man in the stern, and he gasped as if he had been hit by
a bullet.
“Dave!” he exclaimed.
He was not heard. He shouted again, and fired his rifle in the air.
“Dave Jackson! Cousin Dave!” he yelled.
The men glanced curiously back, but the canoe did not stop, and it
disappeared around a bend in the stream. But Tom, electrified with
surprise and anxiety, rushed after it. Rounding the bend, he saw it
far up the river, driving hard ahead with all the force of two
strong paddlers, who were evidently determined not to stop for
anything.
The ground along the shore was rough and tangled, and he could not
pause to pick his way. He tripped and fell, blundering into thickets
and morasses, struggling on, almost weeping at the thought of
failure at the last inch.
He would certainly have failed; he could have never have overtaken
the paddlers, but the canoe ran suddenly inshore. The men hastily
unloaded her, shouldered the packs and the canoe itself, and started
into the woods. Evidently they planned to portage to some other
waterway.
Tom reached the spot of debarkation a few minutes after they had
left it. He struck off on their well-marked trail, and, as they were
bent double under their loads, he had no difficulty now in
overtaking them. Dave Jackson was carrying the canoe, and he stared
from under the inverted gunwale in utter astonishment when Tom
breathlessly hailed him.
“Tom!” he exclaimed. “It isn’t possible. What in the world are you
doing up here? Surely that wasn’t you who yelled at us from the
shore?”
“Thank goodness, I’ve come up with you, Dave!” Tom gasped, almost
dropping where he stood. “Hold on! Put down that canoe. I’ve been on
the trail for days—got robbed—almost starved—trying to find you.”
Then he did drop, dizzily collapsing on a log. Dave set down the
canoe, but his partner, a big, bearded prospector, growled
impatiently.
“Got no time to stop, Jackson. All them fellows’ll get in ahead of
us. If that young chap wants to talk to you, let him come along
too.”
“I can’t go another inch,” Tom protested. “And you’ve got to come
back with me, Dave. It’s awfully important. I’ve come from Coboconk
Lake—your old homestead.”
Dave uttered an exclamation of surprise.
“My old hay farm? You don’t say! Then you’ve been at father’s farm.
Bet they were glad to see you. Did they tell you I was up this way?”
Tom stared bewildered.
“No, there wasn’t anybody there. The place was burned out. I thought
you’d all abandoned it. But never mind that. Dave, I’ve found the
lost walnut raft.”
“You’re joking!” his cousin ejaculated.
“Not a bit of it. I saw the timber. It’s ashore now—part of it
anyway. It’s on your land, and you’ve got to come back to claim it.”
And Tom briefly summarized the story of his adventures.
“Gracious, what luck!” Dave exclaimed. “I’d looked, off and on, all
around that lake for signs of the old raft, but I never thought of
poking into that swamp at the narrows. But you’re all wrong, Tom.
That isn’t my land. I didn’t even have the land where I put up the
old barn. It was just a hay-making place. I homesteaded a hundred
acres back where you saw the burned shack, but when the shack burned
I let it go.”
“But wasn’t that Uncle Phil’s place?” stammered Tom.
“I should say not!” Dave laughed. “Was that what you thought? You
must have thought we were a pretty shiftless lot. I guess your
guides didn’t know where we really lived. Our ranch is west of the
river. You leave it before you come to the lake. There’s a trail
cut, that you ought to have seen. We’ve got a good farm there, sixty
acres planted, house, barns, live stock, and all the rest. It’s
about twelve miles from my old shack.”
“You don’t mean to say Uncle Phil was living only twelve miles from
me all the time?” cried Tom. “Why, at Oakley they said they hadn’t
seen any of you all winter.”
“Likely not. I’ve been up here in the camps, and we don’t get our
mail and things at Oakley any more. There’s a new post-office and
store eight miles nearer, started last summer.”
“But what about the walnut? Haven’t we any rights in it at all?”
asked Tom, in despair.
“I’m afraid not,” said his cousin, after some thought. “But then,
neither has your man down there who’s trying to get it. He evidently
thinks I own that land. McLeod squatted there for a while before my
time. But he never homesteaded any of it. He wasn’t a farmer. No,
the only person who can claim that raft, it seems to me, is the
Daniel Wilson Lumber Company, that cut it—or its heirs or assigns,
if it has any. If it hasn’t, I expect the government’ll claim it.”
Tom groaned. He had never anticipated such a flatly crushing
conclusion to the expedition that had almost cost him his life.
“I’d go to the land agent in Oakley and make a claim,” Dave went on.
“Maybe you can homestead that land where the raft lies. You’re not
old enough? Put it in my name. Go and see father and see what he
says.”
“But you’ll come back with me, Dave?” said Tom. “It’s a matter of
maybe fifty thousand dollars.”
“If we get it. But I don’t honestly think there’s a chance. I’ve got
a better thing up here. With a little luck, I’ll make my everlasting
fortune. The samples of free-milling ore out of this new field are
something wonderful. It’s better shot than any timber—that doesn’t
belong to us anyway. Better come along with me, and we’ll make a big
strike together.”
Tom shook his head. He did not have the gold-fever, and he could not
relinquish hopes of the walnut timber that he had suffered so much
to secure. There was a loud crashing of brush in the distance.
Another party of gold hunters was on the trail.
“Say, Jackson, we’ve got to be moving!” cried the bearded man,
fuming with impatience.
“All right—in a second. Look here, Tom, we can’t stop. Your best
plan is to go back there and try to stand Harrison and McLeod off
till you find out definitely what’s right. They can’t claim the raft
any more than you can—unless,” he added, “they’ve gone and
homesteaded the land where the timber lies. That would give them
possession, anyway, and that’s nine points of the law. But they’d
likely have done that the first thing if they had thought it was
open for filing. You go and see father. And look here, I’ll come
down myself as soon as I get our claims staked—in a week, maybe.”
“All right,” said Tom, gloomily. “But where am I now? How do I get
out of here?”
“You’re about six miles from the Roswick camp. You made a pretty
good shot at it, after all. Follow this river straight down to
Roswick; then you have to take the stage out to the railway, and
that’ll take you round to Waverley, and you come in to Oakley the
same way as you did the first time. Got any money?”
“Not a cent.”
Dave plunged his hand into his pockets. “How much do you want? the
railway fare’ll be about six dollars. Here’s fifteen. Will that do?”
“Plenty,” said Tom gratefully. “I sha’n’t forget this, Dave, and
I’ll repay you when—”
“You’ll never need to. I’m going to be a rich man by fall. Now we
really must rush on, or my partner’ll have a fit. Tell father and
mother I’m all right. Sure you won’t come with us yet? You’d
better.”
“No,” said Tom. “I’m going to see my own game played out.”
“Good luck with it, then. Good-by!”
Dave and his partner picked up their loads and vanished crashing
through the underbrush. Tom turned back toward the river, rather
despondently. Physically he felt better; the rest and the food and
the talk with Dave had done him good, but he was deeply depressed by
his cousin’s pessimistic outlook. Still, he was determined not to
let go while there was the slightest chance left. Harrison had no
more right to the raft than he himself, at any rate, it appeared. He
would see that Harrison did not get it, then, until the real
ownership of the walnut could be ascertained.
He made his way down the river shore, meeting three or four parties
of prospectors, in _bateaux_ and canoes, and one on foot. It took
him a good three hours to reach the mining-camp, where he found
merely a collection of sheds and shanties, a store and a towering
derrick or two. The place was almost depopulated, for all its
inhabitants were on the gold-rush.
He was able to get dinner at the mine boarding-house, and then hung
about until the stage left late in the afternoon. An hour’s ride
placed him at the railway station, and he boarded a mixed train,
which carried him about fifty miles. He changed to a connecting
line, waited half the night, and once more took the long stage drive
to Oakley.
It was late in the afternoon, but he was desperately anxious to find
what was going on at Coboconk Lake. By this time Tom was somewhat
known at Oakley, and he was able to borrow a canoe, by paying four
dollars for the accommodation; and, after snatching a hurried meal,
he started up the river.
Daylight lasted late at that season, and Tom pushed ahead as fast as
possible. The recent plentiful food and rest had restored his
youthful physique to its full strength, and he was expert at the
paddle now. Night found him on the river, however, but an almost
full moon rose immediately after sunset, making it possible to go
on. He was on the lookout for the trail of which Dave had spoken as
leading to his uncle’s homestead, but in the dim light on the shore
he could not pick it out. The house was several miles back, anyhow,
and he had no idea of trying to reach it that night. He wanted to
visit the timber treasure first.
Little Coboconk spread dark and silvery under the moon as he came
into it from the river. He paddled ahead, straight up to the
narrows, and then paused, checking the paddle. There was a fire on
the shore, apparently a large fire that had burned low, and close to
it in the shadow two or three large white blurs that looked
strangely like tents.
He went on cautiously, in desperate anxiety. They were tents, sure
enough, two very large ones, and a smaller one. But no one was in
sight about the encampment. It was little after midnight, and
doubtless everybody was asleep.
Tom could hardly doubt who had set up this camp. All his hopes sank
to nothing; nevertheless, determined to find out the truth, he
paddled up to the shore, landed, and stood looking about for a
moment. He saw that several of the half-buried logs had been dug out
and rolled together, but before he could investigate any further a
tent flap was pulled open, there was a sudden exclamation, and a man
bounded out, half dressed, presenting a revolver.
“We’ve got you this time! Throw up your hands!” he cried,
triumphantly.
Tom instantly put his hands up. The man approached. The boy had
never seen him before. He looked like a woodsman or lumber-jack. He
peered into Tom’s face, and uttered an exclamation of surprise.
“I thought it was that murdering young Injun. Who are you? What do
you want here?”
“Who are you yourself?” returned Tom angrily. “This is my place. I
was here before you. What are you camping here for?”
And he took down his hands. Two other men came out of the big
tent—rough lumbermen both of them.
“Better wake up the boss and tell him we’ve caught some spy prowlin’
round here, that says he owns the camp,” said Tom’s captor.
One of the men went over to the smaller tent. There was a sound of
voices; a few minutes elapsed. Then a man came hastily out, carrying
a flashlight, and Tom recognized Harrison, as he had expected.
But Harrison was far from expecting the meeting. He turned the light
on Tom as he came up, and started. For several seconds there was
silence, while the flashlight wavered.
“I didn’t expect to see you back here, Jackson,” said Harrison at
last, in his usual easy tone. “I thought you’d gone for good. I only
wished you’d taken that young Ojibway with you. He’s been—”
“I guess you didn’t expect to see me,” retorted Tom hotly. “You
thought I was dead up in the woods, didn’t you? McLeod did his best.
You tried to burn me out, and you tried to murder me, and now you
come in and steal—”
“Hold on! That’s a pretty rough way to talk,” Harrison interrupted
him. “You must be crazy. Here, if you’ve got anything to say to me,
come along to my tent.”
Tom, boiling with indignation, was conducted to Harrison’s
sleeping-tent, where the man turned on an electric lantern, and sat
down on the cot-bed from which he had lately arisen.
“You’ve got no kick coming at all,” Harrison resumed. “I made you a
proposition to get out, right at the start, even though you had no
particular rights here. I discovered this walnut before you thought
of looking for it—”
“And then you tried to burn me out, and you sent McLeod to kill me
in the woods.”
“As for the fire, it was an accident. McLeod? Well, McLeod tells me
that you ambushed him and held him up and threatened to kill him. By
way of a joke, after that, he ran off with your canoe and hid it a
couple of miles down the river. Didn’t you find it again?”
Tom listened in absolute disbelief.
“Anyhow, you’ve got no sort of right to take out this timber,” he
said. “It belongs—if it belongs to anybody—to the man who cut it.”
“And he’s dead. Exactly,” said Harrison. “You see, I took the
precaution of going into all that matter long ago. Daniel Wilson
died ten years ago, but his son is living in Montreal. This son is
Wilson’s only heir. I went to see him, and came to an arrangement.
I’ll show you.”
Harrison opened a small box, and after rummaging through it, he
produced a large folded document, glanced at it, and handed it to
Tom.
It was worded in legal phraseology, hard to comprehend; but the boy
made out that Henry Wilson, whose name was undersigned, transferred
to A. C. Harrison all his rights in a certain quantity of walnut
timber supposed to be in or about Coboconk Lake, formerly the
property of the father of the said Henry Wilson.
“I get it out on a basis of paying him a royalty of ten dollars a
thousand feet, as you see,” said Harrison. “I paid him a hundred
dollars down. It was a gamble, for I wasn’t sure; but I’d been up
here before, and I had an idea of where that old raft might have
drifted. But you see it’s all straight and aboveboard—”
Tom was hardly listening. The paper appeared to be correctly drawn
up, properly signed, and witnessed. He could not doubt its validity.
There was nothing to do, then. Harrison had out-manœvered him at
every point. The game was up.
He turned almost sick with chagrin and defeat. He threw down the
paper and stood up, turning away without a word.
“Hold on. Where are you going?” cried Harrison.
“None of your business! I’m not likely to trouble you any more;
that’s all,” Tom returned through clenched teeth.
[Illustration: The game was up]
“Well, all right. Only I wish you’d call off that confounded Ojibway
boy you left here,” said Harrison, agreeably. “He seems to think
we’re trespassers. He’s shot up the camp twice. One of my men got a
buck-shot in the leg. It isn’t safe to go into the woods. Tell him
that if he doesn’t clear out we’ll hunt him down, and kill him or
take him out for the penitentiary.”
Tom had a moment’s pleasure at the thought of Charlie’s “shooting
up” Harrison’s camp; but he did not return a word. He strode down to
his canoe, and went shooting out into the moonlight of the lake. On
the shore he could see the little group of men looking after him.