“Let me go alone, Father. Give me authority to act for you. You’re not strong enough to go into the woods.”
“I guess I’m plenty strong enough when there’s something really to be done,” laughed the old lumberman. “It was doing nothing that was killing me—sitting still and seeing nothing but ruin. No, this is just the medicine I want.”
Tom still felt dubious, but Mr. Jackson insisted on action.
“I don’t see why we can’t start to-morrow,” he said. “We can get our outfit and men at Ormond. I guess that’s the nearest railway point to the lake.”
“I thought Oakley was the nearest.”
“Oakley’s down the river—thirty-five miles or so, isn’t it? And we couldn’t take teams up the river in canoes. Ormond is straight west from the Coboconk lakes, only twenty miles, and there’s a logging road, or used to be. That’s the way you go to Phil’s ranch. You can’t teach me much about that district, Tom. Just wait till we get out there.”
Tom’s mother was astounded, half an hour later, to find Mr. Jackson walking briskly up and down the balcony arm in arm with his son, talking with enthusiasm about business matters. Mr. Jackson laughed at her alarm; he declared he felt a hundred per cent. better already, and, in fact, he presently ate a better lunch than he had eaten for a long time. Afterward, however, he consented to take his prescribed nap, and while he was sleeping Tom detailed the new enterprise to his mother. On her suggestion Tom went to consult the doctor who was attending his father. For a dangerously sick man to start suddenly upon the trail did seem a risky experiment.
“This may be just the thing he needs,” said the physician, after listening to Tom’s tale. “Inaction and worry were the hardest things on him. He hasn’t any real disease at all. Make him travel as comfortably as possible, and try to keep him from overexerting himself, and you may bring him back cured.”
Tom did not tell his father about this visit to the doctor, but he was able to throw himself into the preparations with a much better conscience. They did not, however, leave for a day or two. It was not so very far to the Coboconk district, but it was a very circuitous journey by rail. They had to go half-way to Toronto and then back upon a branch line to reach Ormond, and it was late in the afternoon when they at last got off at that backwoods village. The timber treasure lay only twenty-two miles to the east, but it was twenty-two miles of dense second-growth forest penetrated only by the almost disused logging roads.
Ormond was a village of two-score houses and a store or two, larger than Oakley but not now so flourishing. Once this district had been the seat of a thriving lumber industry; Mr. Jackson had worked over it before setting up in Toronto; but most of the pine had been long ago cut, and dull times had come upon Ormond. But Tom was astonished to find his father well known and remembered there still. The proprietor of the hotel, elderly, bearded, and rough, stared at his guests for a moment, and then uttered a shout of recognition.