With an exclamation, Tom rushed down to the lake. Charlie’s canoe was there, piled with salvaged outfit from the old barn; but Harrison’s canoe was gone, and Tom’s own canoe with the hole in the bottom now lay capsized with almost the whole bottom smashed out of her. The “fish sharp” had vanished.
CHAPTER V
ACROSS THE WILDERNESS
Harrison had crept away in the latter part of the night taking the only serviceable canoe with him, leaving Tom, as he imagined, without food or means of transport. It might have been a serious matter for the boy, worn out with hunger, but for Charlie’s opportune appearance.
Tom was, in fact, so empty and exhausted that he turned sick and dizzy, as much with wrath as with weakness, when he realized the treacherous trick Harrison had played. But after all no great harm was done, except that Harrison was away now with a long start on his plan—whatever that was—to get possession of the walnut timber.
Charlie meanwhile had at once begun to put bacon to toast and the pot to boil, which he had previously refrained from doing so as not to waken Tom. Tom was so hungry that he could have eaten the food raw. In fact he did chew a scrap of raw pork while he waited for the rest to cook; but after he had consumed an enormous breakfast of bacon, hard bread, and tea he felt much better, and his spirits rose.
Getting into the canoe, they paddled down to the narrows. There was no sign of Harrison about the place, but Tom thought he saw tracks that had not been made by himself. He pointed out the half-buried logs to the Indian boy, and explained that they were valuable stuff.
“Worth thousands of dollars—more than ten times all your fur catch,” he said. “Those other men want to get it—want to run us off. We mustn’t let them have it.”
The wild boy nodded, and looked at Tom with a sudden spark in his black eyes.
“Sure—they try to burn us off,” he said. “I see him—that red-hair man. He light fire. I see him—too late. I think mebbe I shoot him; then I think better not. I come an’ git stuff from our camp—look for you everywhere almost.”
“Well, I thought all along that McLeod had started that fire,” said Tom. “But I’m glad you didn’t shoot him. But how we’re going to hold the fort here I don’t know. It’ll take a lot of men, money, teams, to get this timber out. Maybe I’d better send you down to Oakley to get a telegram off to my father.”