“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.