Tom was taken aback by this convincing denial.
“What did you want this land for, then?” he muttered.
“I told you. For a fishing camp. I don’t know that I do want it now, anyway. It’ll be nothing but ashes and burnt logs after this. I guess nobody will try to take it from you.”
Tom was silenced but not convinced. He dropped the subject, and examined his canoe, which had a good-sized hole punched in the bottom from collision with a rock as they came ashore. It was beyond repair.
“We’ve got nothing to eat,” he remarked, “and no way of getting anywhere—unless your partner comes back, or unless I can locate mine.”
“I saw somebody that looked like that Indian youngster of yours,” said Harrison, “just before I started out. He was paddling pretty fast up the lake in a loaded canoe. If he’s got away with all your outfit you’ll never see him back again.”
Tom had more confidence in Charlie, but the surface of Big Coboconk was shrouded in whirling vapor, and it would be impossible for anybody to find anything, except by chance. The fire had burned down close to the other shore now and seemed to be working down toward the narrows. Ashes and sparks sifted down even where they stood, but there was not much danger of the fire jumping the lake. In the hope of sighting either Charlie or McLeod, they established themselves on the point of a rocky promontory and stared through the bluish smoke drift, but without sighting any canoe. Harrison seemed to hold no grudge for Tom’s suspicions and talked easily, but Tom could not rid himself of a sense of hostility. He felt beaten. His barn was certainly burned; the beaver-meadow hay would be scorched and probably ruined; the whole homestead was uninhabitable now. He would have to find another or go home. As for the gravel quarry, Harrison’s words had sounded only too genuine. Probably the gravel was really of no value, after all.
They both grew very hungry, with nothing to eat. So far as they could judge, the fire seemed to be burning down along Little Coboconk, over a wide area, but the wind was perceptibly falling. Toward the middle of the afternoon Tom was startled by a prolonged, sullen reverberation that seemed to come from overhead.
“Thunder!” exclaimed Harrison. “Can it be going to rain? It’s too good to be true.”
Above the smoke clouds the sky was invisible, but within fifteen minutes the rain did begin to sprinkle and then came in torrents. It lasted three quarters of an hour, and then the thunderstorm seemed to move away westward, though the rain continued to fall in a steady soaking drizzle.