“Hold on!” he cried, and the steersman guided the canoe ashore. He looked at the landmarks more carefully. It must be the place Lynch had meant. Somewhere about five miles to the west lay the railway.
“I stop here, Charlie,” he said hurriedly. “You go on to Oakley as fast as you can paddle, and get the doctor. I’ll be back soon.”
Charlie had already been provided with a note for the doctor, tucked safely inside his felt hat. He nodded impassively.
“Sure, I go quick, Tom,” he said. “I watch for you come back.”
He put Tom ashore, and went on down the stream with quick paddle-strokes, not once glancing back. Tom did not stay to watch him, either. He glanced at the compass on his watch-chain and struck straight in from the river.
The train was due at half-past ten. He had an hour, and long-distance running had been his speciality in track athletics. It was only five miles, and, however rough the country might be, he felt quite confident of being able to cover the distance in time.
For a little way he had to go slowly, pushing his path through a dense tangle of spruce and tamarac, but, once well away from the river, the woods opened out. He went up and down one rolling ridge after another, splashed through a rock-strewn brook or two, crossed a strip of level forest, and then had to slow down for a last year’s burned slash, where the ground was terribly encumbered with dead, charred logs and jagged spikes of branches and roots.
A smell of smoke seemed to hang about the place still, he fancied, and then a veering gust brought him a whiff of smoke that was certainly fresh. He was afraid to swerve from the compass bee-line, but he felt extremely uneasy. He passed the old “burn” and entered a region of jack-pine, and presently there was no mistaking the bluish haze and the odor of ashes and smoke that filled the air. Then the woods ceased all at once, and he found himself on the edge of a great ruined slash that fire had made within two or three days, at the most.
He halted, despairingly. There seemed no end to the burned strip, north or south, and he could get no clear notion of its width, for the air was full of smoke and clouds of fine ashes that drove in whirls before the wind. It might not be very wide, but it looked too dangerous to cross. Yet he felt sure that he must be near the railroad; he had surely come three or four miles, and as he stood irresolute he heard the long blast of a locomotive far away through the trees.
He thought it was miles up toward Ormond. The railway must be only a short distance ahead, and he plunged desperately into the smoky belt.