第34章

Why had they stolen timber eighteen miles from the bend, when they could equally well have stolen just as good fourteen miles nearer the terminus of their drive?

Thorpe ruminated for some time without hitting upon a solution.

Then suddenly he remembered the two dams, and his idea that the men in charge of the river must be wealthy and must intend operating on a large scale.He thought he glimpsed it.After another pipe, he felt sure.

The Unknowns were indeed going in on a large scale.They intended eventually to log the whole of the Ossawinamakee basin.For this reason they had made their first purchase, planted their first foot-hold, near the headwaters.Furthermore, located as they were far from a present or an immediately future civilization, they had felt safe in leaving for the moment their holdings represented by the three sections already described.Some day they would buy all the standing Government pine in the basin; but in the meantime they would steal all they could at a sufficient distance from the lake to minimize the danger of discovery.They had not dared to appropriate the three mile tract Thorpe had passed through, because in that locality the theft would probably be remarked, so they intended eventually to buy it.Until that should become necessary, however, every stick cut meant so much less to purchase.

"They're going to cut, and keep on cutting, working down river as fast as they can," argued Thorpe."If anything happens so they have to, they'll buy in the pine that is left; but if things go well with them, they'll take what they can for nothing.They're getting this stuff out up-river first, because they can steal safer while the country is still unsettled; and even when it does fill up, there will not be much likelihood of an investigation so far in-country,--at least until after they have folded their tents."It seems to us who are accustomed to the accurate policing of our twentieth century, almost incredible that such wholesale robberies should have gone on with so little danger of detection.Certainly detection was a matter of sufficient simplicity.Someone happens along, like Thorpe, carrying a Government map in his pocket.He runs across a parcel of unclaimed land already cut over.It would seem easy to lodge a complaint, institute a prosecution against the men known to have put in the timber.BUT IT IS ALMOST NEVER DONE.

Thorpe knew that men occupied in so precarious a business would be keenly on the watch.At the first hint of rivalry, they would buy in the timber they had selected.But the situation had set his fighting blood to racing.The very fact that these men were thieves on so big a scale made him the more obstinately determined to thwart them.They undoubtedly wanted the tract down river.Well, so did he!

He purposed to look it over carefully, to ascertain its exact boundaries and what sections it would be necessary to buy in order to include it, and perhaps even to estimate it in a rough way.In the accomplishment of this he would have to spend the summer, and perhaps part of the fall, in that district.He could hardly expect to escape notice.By the indications on the river, he judged that a crew of men had shortly before taken out a drive of logs.After the timber had been rafted and towed to Marquette, they would return.

He might be able to hide in the forest, but sooner or later, he was sure, one of the company's landlookers or hunters would stumble on his camp.Then his very concealment would tell them what he was after.The risk was too great.For above all things Thorpe needed time.He had, as has been said, to ascertain what he could offer.

Then he had to offer it.He would be forced to interest capital, and that is a matter of persuasion and leisure.

Finally his shrewd, intuitive good-sense flashed the solution on him.

He returned rapidly to his pack, assumed the straps, and arrived at the first dam about dark of the long summer day.

There he looked carefully about him.Some fifty feet from the water's edge a birch knoll supported, besides the birches, a single big hemlock.With his belt ax, Thorpe cleared away the little white trees.He stuck the sharpened end of one of them in the bark of the shaggy hemlock, fastened the other end in a crotch eight or ten feet distant, slanted the rest of the saplings along one side of this ridge pole, and turned in, after a hasty supper, leaving the completion of his permanent camp to the morrow.

Chapter XVII

In the morning he thatched smooth the roof of the shelter, using for the purpose the thick branches of hemlocks; placed two green spruce logs side by side as cooking range; slung his pot on a rod across two forked sticks; cut and split a quantity of wood; spread his blankets; and called himself established.His beard was already well grown, and his clothes had become worn by the brush and faded by the sun and rain.In the course of the morning he lay in wait very patiently near a spot overflowed by the river, where, the day before, he had noticed lily-pads growing.After a time a doe and a spotted fawn came and stood ankle-deep in the water, and ate of the lily-pads.Thorpe lurked motionless behind his screen of leaves;and as he had taken the precaution so to station himself that his hiding-place lay downwind, the beautiful animals were unaware of his presence.

By and by a prong-buck joined them.He was a two-year-old, young, tender, with the velvet just off his antlers.Thorpe aimed at his shoulder, six inches above the belly-line, and pressed the trigger.

As though by enchantment the three woods creatures disappeared.But the hunter had noticed that, whereas the doe and fawn flourished bravely the broad white flags of their tails, the buck had seemed but a streak of brown.By this he knew he had hit.