The Timber Treasure

by Frank Lillie Pollock

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.