The Timber Treasure

by Frank Lillie Pollock

Pulling a heap of dead leaves between two logs, he tried to rest, to sleep; but he was far too uneasy. Without a blanket, the night seemed cold, despite the fire. His little ax was gone, and he had no means of cutting logs large enough to make an efficient heat. He tried to huddle under the leaves, dozed intermittently with horrible dreams of danger, and at last got up in the gray dawn, feeling aching and empty.

The fire had burned entirely out while he slept. There was not even a spark left in the ashes, and to his horror he found that he had no matches. He had used the last in his pockets, and the water-tight box in reserve was gone with the stolen supplies.

This blow almost took away his remaining courage. Fortunately he had roasted the whole hare last night, and most of it was still left. It would last one day.

“After that, I’ll have to eat raw meat, like a wolf,” he thought.

But it was as easy to go on toward Roswick as in any other direction, and he was still determined not to let Harrison win. It occurred to him that the prospecting season was well advanced; he was in the mining country, and he might fall in with a party of mineral hunters at any time. If not—well, he was tough and muscular, and he could surely endure hardships for a day or two.

So he put the rest of the cooked meat carefully in his pockets, his rifle under his arm, and started briskly up the river. There was no trail, and it was rough going. The margin of the stream was grown thickly with willow and spruce and cedar, frequently marshy, sometimes rocky, always hard to get through. From time to time he had to wade a tributary creek. Worse still, the river went in huge curves, so that he felt sure he was traveling two miles for every mile he made westward.

But he was afraid to leave the guidance of the river, and he struggled along. He grew very hungry; hare meat was not filling, but he controlled his desire to eat until noon. Then, after swallowing far less than he wanted, he clambered into a tall tree on the crest of a hill and looked anxiously off into the west.

He could see a long way. It was an infinity of sweeping hill and hollow, all blue-green with the spruces in the sunshine, smoky, unlimited, with here and there a gray gleam of rock. Far away to the right he detected the glitter of a long strip of water—no doubt his river, sweeping in one of its long curves.

He stayed there for some time surveying the desolate landscape. There was nowhere any sign of fire or indication of human life. It occurred to him that he would do well to make straight across country to the water, instead of wasting muscle by following the river around its many bends. He fixed the direction well in his mind, slid down to the ground, and struck out across the woods.

For a time he found the traveling easier. The forest was light and scattered, and the ground firm. Twice he was encouraged by coming upon what seemed to be an old trail, and once he found prospect holes dug the season before.