“None of your business! I’m not likely to trouble you any more; that’s all,” Tom returned through clenched teeth.
The game was up
“Well, all right. Only I wish you’d call off that confounded Ojibway boy you left here,” said Harrison, agreeably. “He seems to think we’re trespassers. He’s shot up the camp twice. One of my men got a buck-shot in the leg. It isn’t safe to go into the woods. Tell him that if he doesn’t clear out we’ll hunt him down, and kill him or take him out for the penitentiary.”
Tom had a moment’s pleasure at the thought of Charlie’s “shooting up” Harrison’s camp; but he did not return a word. He strode down to his canoe, and went shooting out into the moonlight of the lake. On the shore he could see the little group of men looking after him.
CHAPTER VII
NOT TOO LATE
Tom felt singularly inclined to shoot up the camp himself, but he restrained himself and paddled down the lake, almost without knowing where he was going. He had, in fact, no plan in his mind. All his plans had fallen into ruin together. He thought of getting away from these woods; he thought of going back to the city. It seemed the only thing left to do. But first it occurred to him, he must see Charlie.
Not merely to give him Harrison’s warning, though the boy would certainly have to be checked in his now unnecessary warfare. But he had no food nor supplies, not even enough for the trip back to Oakley, nothing but his rifle and a few cartridges. Moreover he had, after some hesitation, left all his money with Charlie rather than risk taking it over the trail. There must be about seventy dollars, and he would need it badly.
He had very little idea where the Indian boy was to be found, but he paddled down the lower lake to the mouth of the little river that led up to his old camping ground. In the moonlight and shadow he made his way up this almost to the point where he had shot the mink on that far-away spring morning. Here he disembarked and started into the woods by the way he used to take.
It was rather dark in the shade, but the way was familiar to him, and he went ahead easily. But he had gone no more than two hundred yards when he heard something like a queer, metallic click not far ahead. An instinct made him stop short; and the next moment there was a blaze and a bang, and a load of heavy shot crashed into the tree trunk right at his side.