tom awoke with a vague sense of impending disaster, and looked about, unable for a moment to realize where he was. it was just dawn. a gray light hung over the woods. the remains of his fire barely smoked, and frost lay white as snow over everything. then he remembered—the journey, the wreck of the burned house, the ruin of all his plans; and he got up from his nest of hay, unable to remain quiet.
he built up the fire again, feeling empty and miserable. his supper had been a poor one, and there was nothing for breakfast. perhaps he might shoot a partridge, he thought, but he felt too inert and lifeless to go on the hunt. at this point he recollected the boxes of dates and candy he had with him, and he got them out and devoured them. it was a queer breakfast, but it comforted his stomach considerably. the heat of the fire began to take the chill out of his blood. over the trees in the east the sun began to come up gloriously, and with some renewed courage tom began to think of the journey back to oakley.
he hated intensely to do it, yet there seemed no other course. it would be a hard, long tramp besides, lasting more than one day, and he would have to depend on what he could shoot. the best thing would be to acquire some provisions before starting; and he filled the magazine of his rifle from the box of cartridges in his pocket, and started into the woods.
he was eager, besides, to explore a little farther before leaving the place. it was just possible that uncle phil’s house was still in the vicinity. the burned building might have been some unused structure; the real place might be farther on. he skirted the old beaver meadow and plunged into the woods—a jungle of small spruces and jack-pine, much of it dead as if attacked by some disease. a hare bobbed out from the thickets, incautiously sat up to look at the intruder, and rolled over the next moment. tom picked it up and hung it at his belt, reflecting that here was meat for at least one meal.
he listened intently for a possible answer to the echo of his shot, but there was no human sound. pushing on, he reached the deserted clearing, glanced over the fire ruin again, and went on to examine the roughly cut road he had stumbled into the evening before.
this trail led him out to the bank of the little river, and ended. he followed the stream up some rods. here and there a tree had been cut at least a year ago, but there were no further signs of settlement, not even a blazed trail. he made a wide circle with a radius of a mile and came back to the clearing, unable to cherish any more hope. this clearing was all the settlement there was.
he looked at it disconsolately. it was untidy and studded with stumps. all around its edges great heaps of logs and brush had been piled up. south of the former house these had burned, and the fire had penetrated for some distance into the woods, probably catching from the dwelling. at the farthest end of the clearing there were about three acres of struggling green, the green of some autumn-planted grain. other green sprouts showed near the ruin—perhaps the relics of a garden. it was not in the least the sort of homestead he had pictured from his cousins’ descriptions, and he thought rather indignantly of the exaggerated accounts they had given him.
he poked over the rubbish again. the ashes were full of nails and screws, bits of glass, and bits of iron. he picked up the old ax-head, and thought of taking it with him. it would be better than nothing, perhaps, in collecting firewood; but he decided that it was too heavy to carry. he put the torn and stained copy of “ivanhoe” in his pocket; it would be something to read. nothing else seemed to be of the slightest value to him.
there was no use in lingering about the place any longer. he turned back irresolutely through the woods, and headed toward the river. ricks of dead driftwood were piled along its rocky banks. a couple of swimming muskrats dived in a circle of ripples as he came up. tom paused, and as he stood there a lithe black form popped up between two logs within twenty yards.
it was a mink, and a large one. almost instinctively he put up his rifle and drew a bead on the little fur-bearer’s head. it was broadside to him, but it was a small mark to hit at that distance, and a bullet anywhere but in the head would ruin the pelt. he aimed long, expecting it to dodge away, but it vanished only at the report.
he hardly hoped to have hit, but he found it on the other side of the log, almost decapitated. it was a nearly black pelt and in prime condition. if it had been trapped it might have been worth twenty dollars, but the mangled head would reduce its value. he carefully wiped the fur, however, and skinned the animal, reflecting that this would help pay the expenses of his ill-starred venture.
he rolled up the skin temporarily and put it in his pocket, till he should have time to stretch it, and continued his way down the stream. there were plenty of traces of fur everywhere. he saw several more muskrats though no more of the shy minks. but the signs showed that there were minks there in abundance, and there were probably martins in the woods, foxes, skunks, and perhaps sables and fishers. dave had said that there was plenty of fur in the district, and he had been right in this, at any rate.
it would be a splendid place for a winter’s trapping, tom thought, and he almost regretted that it was not november instead of april. the trapping season was almost over now. it crossed his mind that he might stop here for the remainder of it and make what he could. but he had no traps, no grub, none of the necessary camping outfit.
he followed the stream down to the lake, and turned up the shore to the spot where he had landed the day before. his dunnage sack was still safe in the tree fork. he opened it and got out the camp cooking outfit of nested aluminum that he had packed in toronto. there were salt and pepper boxes, both luckily full, and he put these in his pocket, hesitated, and then walked back over the shore to the old barn again.
here he relighted the fire, skinned the rabbit, and set the quarters to roast on forked sticks. he was voraciously hungry after the long walk and his insufficient breakfast. while the meat was browning he carefully cleaned the fat from the mink skin and stretched it on a bent twig, and then devoured half the hare, gnawing the bones, sitting back on his pile of hay.
despite salt and pepper, it was rather dry and flavorless, but the meat heartened him wonderfully. he felt equal now to starting on the tramp to oakley. he could make fully half the distance to-day, and finish it to-morrow. he would, however, have to abandon his dunnage. he might be able to send for it, but it was a poor chance.
he hesitated, reluctant to go. he crumbled the hay in his hands. it was good hay—wild rich grass from the flats where the beavers of old time had their pond. dave must have made a good profit out of this hay, he reflected, glancing over the brown meadow beyond him. there were perhaps eight or ten acres of it, a long oval, with the remains of the old beaver dam still visible at the lower end. evidently it had been mowed last summer, and this wild hay always brings a good price at the winter lumber camps.
“this meadow would make ten tons easily,” he said to himself; “likely more. it’ll bear over a hundred dollars’ worth of hay this summer, and nobody to cut it. if i want some easy farming, here’s my chance.”
the idea came to him carelessly, but it suddenly assumed weight. he could make something more by trapping in the next few weeks—at least another hundred dollars.
“it’ll be hard luck if i can’t get rabbits and birds enough to live on,” he muttered. “there’ll be trout soon, too. it’s getting warm. this old barn would be a good enough place to live in.”
the hay would have to be mowed in july. he would have to cut it, turn it over, and stack it entirely by hand, but he knew he could sell it in the stack as it stood. living here would cost hardly anything. at the end of the summer he could go back to toronto with a hundred dollars or so to show for his time.
or why should he not stay up here till christmas for the early winter trapping? it would be more profitable than playing foot-ball; and he could spare the time, for he was going to have to take his last year’s collegiate work over again anyhow. for that matter, why should he not keep control of this homestead? it was assuredly abandoned. it had a clearing, at least one building, some grain planted, a field of hay. he had wished for such a forest farm. here was one at least partly made to his hand. he would be eighteen years old that summer, and eligible to take a government homestead grant. if uncle phil had made no sign by that time he could apply to have the rights transferred to himself, and he was perfectly certain that his relatives had no intention of ever resuming possession.
he laughed to himself, but with a new thrill of hope. all sorts of possibilities seemed suddenly to be opening out, just when things had looked blackest. he got up and walked back toward the river, thinking hard, more and more fascinated by his scheme. it was wild enough, but almost anything was better than creeping back in humiliation to toronto. there was pulp-wood on the place too, which he could cut in his spare time. as for the land itself, it did not promise extraordinary fertility. much of it was rocky, and the stunted growth of the trees indicated poor soil. just south of the barn ran an immense ridge of gravel lightly overgrown with white birches. but tom did not at that moment dwell much on the actual details of agriculture.
he went down to the lake shore and brought his dunnage sack up to the old barn. it was a heavy load to carry on his shoulder, and he had no tump-line; but he dropped it at the barn-door at last, aching and played out, so that he had to drop on the hay and rest. he was getting out of training, he told himself.
when he had recovered breath, he began to unpack his belongings. without having definitely pronounced a decision to stay here, he went on acting as if the decision had been made. to stop a day or two would do no harm anyway, he thought, if he could pick up food enough; and he went into the log barn to see what could be done with it.
it could be turned into a shack that would at least be good enough for the summer, he thought. the chinks between the logs would not matter much, and he could stop the worst of them with moss. clearing away all the loose hay at the farther end disclosed a pile of loose boards, which would be useful for patching. he might build a partition across one portion of the building. under the hay were also a long piece of very good rope, a bit of chain and a broken pitchfork, and a number of loose nails. there were plenty of other nails in the fire wreck.
growing interested, tom made a huge broom of spruce branches and swept out the litter from the floored portion of the barn and brushed down the walls. there was a hole in the roof just above. he climbed up with a board or two and contrived to cover it in a temporary fashion. in one corner of the old stalls he fitted a rude bunk and filled it with hay. unpacking his dunnage, he spread the blankets he had used on camping trips before, and hung up his clothing, his aluminum cooking utensils, the few odds and ends he had brought with him.
after this, he tramped over to the burned cabin to look for nails. there were plenty; he quickly filled his pocket, but they were fire-killed and brittle. they would be of some use, however, and he secured the old ax-head also. the broken iron pot struck him as still having possibilities; the lower half at any rate could be used. he came upon an old tin plate that had not been burned. it might have been the dog’s dish, kept outdoors; but he was not too proud to take it; and, laden with this junk, he returned to the barn again.
the glow of the fire and the blowing smoke as he came up, and the litter of his activities gave him a queer thrill of home. in a couple of days more, he promised himself, it would look still more homelike.
he scoured out the rusty pot with sand and water, and cleaned the tin plate in the same way. the ax-head was in bad condition, but with two of the hardest stones he could find he ground laboriously at the edge until some sharpness was restored. the temper was entirely out of the metal, and so he heated it dull-red in the fire and then dropped it into cold water. after this hardening he again ground the edge and reheated it, this time to a brighter red, and again cooled it suddenly. this treatment produced a rough sort of temper. the edge held at any rate, and tom shaped a crude, straight handle from an ironwood sapling.
rough as it was, this ax was an immense and immediate help. he chopped up a supply of firewood with very little difficulty and was delighted to find that the edge did not blunt. if anything, he had made the steel too hard; it had chipped a little.
his foraging about the ruin had been so successful that he determined to go back on the morrow and turn over the ashes thoroughly. there might be many more things that would be useful. the most worthless rubbish took on astonishing value in his complete destitution, and he found an extraordinary pleasure in thus salvaging broken junk and making use of it.
his mind recurred to the fur trade. by lying in wait along the creek he might shoot an odd mink, but this was a most uncertain and wasteful method. he thought of figure-four traps, of deadfalls.
these are seldom very successful where fur animals are shy and much trapped, but in this unfrequented spot he thought they might work. he split up one of the pine boards and whittled out half a dozen sets of figure-fours, which would fall to pieces at a touch of the baited spindle.
half a dozen whiskey-jacks had been squalling about the roof of the barn for hours, and he shot one of them for bait. he set two of his deadfalls beside the tiny creek in the beaver meadow, where there were muskrat signs, building a little inclosure of stakes and logs with a heavy timber supported over the entrance on the figure-four spring. going through the woods to the river, he set four more traps along the shore, close to the driftwood where the minks were sure to pass.
it was growing late in the afternoon, and he was hungry again. remembering that he had nothing eatable but half a rabbit, for which he felt no appetite, he made a circuit through the woods in the hope of picking up a grouse. he did start up several; three of them perched on a tree and sat in full view, craning their necks stupidly to look at him, but he managed to make a clean miss, and they went off with a scared roar of wings. with a shot-gun he might have bagged half a dozen; but no more sitting shots presented themselves, and he came back to the barn empty-handed.
the sky had clouded over, and a raw april wind blew. twilight fell drearily over the bare woods and the black spruces. tom cooked his rabbit and ate it without any great relish. he was very tired, and felt once more filled with indecision and distress. more than ever it seemed madness to attempt to remain in this place indefinitely. to make the discomfort worse, the wind changed so that it drove the fire toward the barn. he had to put it out, lest the building should catch fire. vainly he longed for an interior hearth so that he could heat the place, but he got into his bunk, piled all his blankets and spare clothing over himself, and shivered for some time, but eventually went to sleep.
he awoke about sunrise, feeling stiff and cold. once more he felt that he had been a fool to stay here even as long as this. already he might have been back in oakley, headed for toronto.
he built up the fire and warmed himself. there were some scraps of rabbit left from last night, and he ate them morosely, feeling that he had carried a diet of rabbit about as far as it would go. this morning he would have to pick up something better; afterward he would plan his retreat to oakley, and when he had finished the scanty meal he took up his rifle and started toward the river, where he had set the deadfalls.
he had a stroke of luck at once. coming quietly out by the stream he espied four ducks on the water close to the shore. it was not more than twenty yards, and he knocked over one, and missed with a second bullet; then the birds went splashing and squawking away through the air.
he retrieved the duck with a long stick, hung it on his belt and walked up the shore. the first of his traps was untouched. the second was sprung and the bait taken, but the animal had eluded the falling log. tom reset it, rebaiting it with the head of the duck. he had not much faith in his deadfalls, but the next one was down and had a muskrat in it—a dark, sleek pelt, quite flattened with the weight of the heavy timber.
tom was unreasonably elated over his prize. it showed that his traps were good for something after all, and it ran through his mind that he might set a whole string of them up and down the river. he skinned the musquash and put the pelt in his pocket; then he walked slowly up the shore, on the lookout for more ducks.
he saw no more, but, turning into the woods, he managed to pick a partridge out of a tree. he followed his former trail toward the burned cabin, for he wanted to look over the ruins again for something useful. he laid down his rifle and game, and pulled the burned timbers apart pretty thoroughly. he took out a number of good boards that might some time be of service, and found a broken cup, an unbroken saucer, and a useless table knife, but nothing else that was worth taking away.
walking about the clearing, however, he made a much more important find. he observed a slight mound of earth, some scattered boards and straw almost filling a depression in the ground, and he guessed that it was a last year’s potato pit. it had been emptied, of course, but tom burrowed about among the earth and straw at the bottom and was rewarded by finding, one by one, nearly a peck of rather small scattered potatoes.
he yelled with delight. he had grown terribly nauseated with a meat diet. his mouth watered at the sight of these grubby little spuds. taking off his coat, he wrapped them up sack wise in it, and started back immediately for his barn, which already had come to be home.
he had a real dinner that day—wild duck roasted in fragments, and potatoes baked in the ashes and eaten with salt and grease from the duck. nothing had ever seemed so delicious. there might be still more potatoes in the pit—possibly some other vegetables. stimulated by the food, his courage revived again, and he definitely resolved to stay here at least until the end of the spring trapping season. if necessary he could tramp down to oakley and exchange a pelt or two for flour, pork, and sugar. as for a longer stay, there would be time to decide upon that later.
he went back that afternoon to the burned cabin to look for more potatoes, but, after turning the pit thoroughly out, he found only three. he shot a rabbit, however, that had come out of the woods to nibble at the sprouting grain in the clearing, and with the potatoes in his pocket and the rabbit at his belt he walked across to the river and down the shore.
a half a mile down, the stream broke into a series of rapids, swirling among black boulders. the rocks and piled drift logs at the foot of the rapids looked like a good place for mink, and he stopped to examine the “sign.” minks and musquashes dwelt there, surely; their traces were abundant. he sat down on a log, looking the place over, considering where he might construct a few deadfalls, when he was startled by the sudden appearance of a canoe at the head of the rapid above him.
it shot into sight like an arrow, steered by a single paddler, a dark-faced young fellow, with a big pack piled amidships. the canoeman had not seen him; his whole attention was fixed on running the rapid; he was half-way down it, going like a flash, when tom foolishly sprang up and shouted from the shore.
the paddler cast a quick, startled glance aside, and it was his undoing. the canoe swerved, and capsized with the suddenness of winking. tom caught a glimpse of the overturned keel darting past him. the man had gone out of sight in the smother of spray and foam; then tom saw him come up in the swirl of the tail of the rapid, struggling feebly.
the water was not waist-deep, and tom rushed in and dragged him out. it was a young indian, half choked and perhaps partly stunned, but not drowned by any means. he coughed and kicked when tom deposited him on the shore; and, seeing, that he was safe, tom made another plunge and rescued the big bale of goods that was drifting fast down-stream. the capsized canoe had lodged against a big half-submerged log lower down, and was secure for the time being.
returning to his indian, he found him sitting up, looking dazed and angry, and spitting out water. it was a young fellow of about tom’s own age, wearing a mackinaw coat and trousers, and a battered felt hat which had stuck to his head, and he looked at tom with intensely black and angry eyes.
“hello! feeling better?” tom cried.
the indian boy spluttered a rapid mixture of unintelligible french and ojibway.
“what you do that for?” he swerved into english. “you make me upset—mos’ drown. i lose canoe—pelts—gun—everyt’ing.”
“oh no. i got your stuff ashore, and there’s your canoe yonder,” said tom. “sorry i scared you. i shouldn’t have called out, but there’s nothing lost, anyway.”
the indian got to his feet, went dripping to the rescued pack, and turned it over carefully.
“all right, eh? merci,” he said, his anger dying out. “all my winter trapping here. thought heem sure lost. say, you live here? what your name?”
“tom jackson. yes, i guess i live here.”
“you good fellow, tom. me, i’m charlie. say, must make a fire, quick.”
both of them were drenched and shivering, and the breeze was cold.
“come along over to my camp. fire there,” said tom. “we’ll put your canoe safe first.”
they pulled the canoe high and dry, rescuing a shot-gun that was tied in it, and then the two boys took up the heavy pack and started across the ridge to the old barn.
the fire was still smoldering, and tom built it up to a roaring flame. he hastened to change his wet clothes for dry ones; but charlie, who had no other clothes, merely stood in the heat until he steamed like a kettle, finally becoming passably dry. he said there was tea in his pack, however, and tom hastened to get it out. there was a little sugar, too; and they hastened to boil the tea, and drank great mugs of the hot, strong, sweet beverage, the first hot drink tom had had for several days.
as charlie thawed out he explained that he belonged to an ojibway village north of oakley, but he had been trapping far in the northwest with two friends all winter. they had taken another route home; he was returning this way alone with his fur pack, and after selling the plunder he was going to spend the summer at his village. the boy had been partly educated at a mission station. he spoke both english and french in some fashion, frequently mixing them, and when excited he combined them with his native tongue in a manner that would have shattered the nerves of a philologist.
he presently opened up his pack of furs, and tom was astonished at the showing. there were nearly fifty minks, scores of muskrats, besides skunks, sables, foxes, fishers, and weasels. altogether there must have been upward of a thousand dollars’ worth of peltry, and all the skins were taken off, cured, and stretched with a neatness that showed the boy an expert at his craft. there were several deer hides also, and one bearskin. charlie told a great tale of how they had smoked the bear out of his winter nest.
“you trap, too,” he said, his eye lighting on tom’s single mink skin. “good pelt, if it ain’t shot. too bad. ain’t stretched right neither. you git mebbe seven dollar.”
“more than that,” said tom. “look here, you want to trade? i’ll swap you that pelt for some of your traps and grub and—what else you got?”
“dunno,” said charlie cunningly. “what you want?”
the boys plunged into a war of bargaining, in which the indian patience wore out the white nerve. in the end tom secured four good steel traps, a little tea and sugar and flour from the remains of charlie’s provisions, and a box of matches, in exchange for the mink and the muskrat skin, an old pair of trousers, and a brilliant red and green necktie which irresistibly took charlie’s fancy.
when it was over charlie thawed out still more, and his black eyes twinkled as he looked over his acquisitions.
“tom, you good fellow. say, i show you how to trap. you git heap mink here.”
charlie kept his promise. he stayed three days, looked the field over, and gave tom quantities of concise expert advice where to set his traps and what bait to use. he expounded deadfalls to him—how to lay blood trails along a trap line, how to stretch and cure the pelts properly. altogether his instructions were worth almost as much as his traps, and during his stay tom caught another mink and two muskrats. the boys grew to be great friends in those days, and then charlie collected his property again and launched his canoe.
“bo’ jour, tom!” he said. “you good fellow. i see you again some time, mebbe.”
he went off down the stream, the red and green tie fluttering over his shoulder. tom hated to see him go. the old barn by the lake seemed doubly lonesome now, but the visit had given him the dose of fresh courage he needed to carry out his enterprise.
