“Paddle in this way—slow,” Tom ordered. “Don’t make a move toward that gun.”
McLeod looked into the rifle muzzle and seemed to hesitate. Then he suddenly took the paddle and forced the canoe up close to the shore, where it hung almost motionless in the slack water.
“Now what are you up to?” Tom demanded. “You tried to burn me out. Now you’ve been trailing me since yesterday; I know it. What are you and Harrison planning to do?”
“Why, I told you I was goin’ to run you off’n that there homestead,” McLeod growled. “You ain’t got no more right there than that Injun boy of yourn. I was there first. If there’s anything in it, I’m the one that gits it.”
“I know what’s in it,” Tom returned, “and so do you. But you haven’t got the ghost of a show, McLeod. I know where Dave Jackson is now. It isn’t over twenty miles from here, and I’ll be back on Coboconk with him in three days. He’s still got the rights to the place, I guess. You’d better drop this and go back home, before you do something that gets you into trouble.”
“These here woods is free, I guess,” said the man. “And you’ll never find Dave Jackson where you’re going.”
But he looked considerably dashed by Tom’s announcement.
“We’ll see about that,” retorted Tom. “And I can’t have you following me. I’m going to stop you. I ought to take your canoe, as Harrison did to me; but you might starve. I don’t want to shoot you.”
He reflected. It is a terrible thing to deprive a man of his canoe in that wilderness, where he may very likely perish before reaching any point where he can obtain supplies. And it is not easy for even a good hunter to live on the country.
“Throw me your paddle,” Tom ordered at last. “It’ll take you some time to make another, I guess, and you’ll never catch up with me when I have that start.”