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.