Checked again, Tom’s thoughts turned back to the north, where his heart had always been. It was too early for fire ranging; that work is not undertaken until midsummer; but he began to think of Uncle Phil’s homestead in the backwoods, and, little by little, in his hours of enforced inaction, he formed a plan.
His eyes were good enough for all outdoor purposes, and his health needed strong exercise. He would go up and stay with Uncle Phil and the boys, and help them at the spring cultivation, the logging, all the forest and farm work. There would be no doubt about his welcome; another strong arm is always useful in the woods. He would look over the surrounding country. Within a few months he would be eighteen, and capable of homesteading a hundred acres himself. Why should he not do it? There would be pulp-wood on the land, perhaps minerals. If necessary, he could still return to the city rather late next autumn, and continue his studies.
“But I’ll never be any good as a student or at business,” he thought mournfully. “I’m no good at anything but foot-ball, and paddling a canoe and shooting and chopping timber. I’d better go in for what I can do.”
He ventured to confide part of this project to his mother, who endeavored to dissuade him, but finally admitted that a summer in the woods might do him good. He casually introduced the subject to Mr. Jackson, and got an ironical remark that he would “probably be no more useless there than anywhere else,” which put an end to the conversation. It left Tom with some feeling of bitterness. He was not going to ask for any money; on the contrary, he was going to be self-supporting. He had enough money in his bank-account for the articles of outfit he needed, and for his railway fare and for the stage across to Oakley; and while at his uncle’s farm he would have no need of money. He left with the casual manner of going on a pleasure-trip, but he was inwardly determined that it should be winter before the city should see him again, and that he would have something definite to show for the time between.
It had been a great disappointment to find no one at Oakley to meet him. He had counted on a jubilant welcome from his cousins; but he ought to have remembered that pioneers do not go thirty miles to the post-office every week. He would have a little more trouble and expense; that was all; and he went to bed in the bare, cold hotel room in the sure expectation of sleeping the next night at Uncle Phil’s farm.
He was up at daylight, breakfasting early; and when the canoemen called for him punctually at six o’clock he was ready to shoulder his dunnage sack and rifle and go down to the river at the far end of the street.
They put Tom in the middle, and entrusted him with a paddle when he assured them that he was used to this sort of navigation. The Coboconk River was running full and strong with the April freshets and the melting snows, and the three of them found it stiff work to propel the loaded Peterboro up against the current. The roofs of the village passed out of sight, and after the first mile there was no trace of settlement along the wooded shores. It was a rough, picturesque country, densely timbered with small pine and spruce and hemlock, and streaks of snow still lay in the shaded woods. Half a dozen times they started a flock of wild ducks splashing and squawking from the water. There was plenty of game in these woods. Tom had eaten venison steak for supper at the hotel, he felt sure, though it was called beef out of deference to the game-laws. There were bears in this spruce wilderness, and deer and lynxes and sometimes wolves; and muskrats and minks and ermines swarmed along the streams and in the swamps.
Toward noon they reached the end of the river, where it flowed out of the Coboconk lakes, and here they stopped to eat a cold lunch. There were two of the Coboconk lakes: Little Coboconk and Big Coboconk, connected by a narrow strait. The little lake, which they now entered, was perhaps three miles long, and Tom’s destination was just at the upper end. They skirted up close along the shores, and the canoemen scanned the shores narrowly. There was no clearing, nor smoke, nor any trace of a farm. They passed the mouth of a small river and went on almost to the connecting straits, and then the men ran the canoe up to a stranded log.
“Here you are,” said his guide. “See this here trail? That takes you on to Dave Jackson’s barn, where he put his hay. I dunno just where the house is, but you keep a-follerin’ the trail and you can’t miss it.”
They heaved Tom’s dunnage ashore after him, and paddled quickly on toward the upper lake. Tom felt indignant and cheated. He had expected to be landed at his uncle’s door for his five dollars, and he found himself put ashore with a hundred pounds of dunnage and his destination indefinitely distant. But the canoe was already out of sight in the spruce-bordered channel, and there was no help for it.