Why not? he asked himself. She had helped him—this was a property to stir the most sluggish of imaginations. His imagination, his ambition was mounting. His paltry few logs would be sawed within three weeks—and then, what?
He thought back to Old Luke, of how he revered the Michigan forests which he had subdued; surely he had made his father see that he was not afraid to work, not above grubbing; as surely, he felt, his father would now stand ready to back him—would be as willing to help him as he had been ready to impose upon his helplessness with a cruel practical joke.
He walked on slowly, thinking, multiplying and losing his breath again before the ascending totals—" It will help her, when she needs help," he told himself. "I don't know what she needs, just—but—And if I could help her there'd be no obligation; and with no obligation I wouldn't feel small—and then, perhaps—"
He stopped his thinking aloud as a flush came into his cheeks. In his eyes was a light of ambition which had nothing to do with trees and logs and dollars and once more that creep went over his body as it had when he first heard the partridge drumming for his mate—
That evening John wrote a second letter to his father, longer, containing references to detail that he knew were intelligent references. The last paragraph read:
"By the way, how much backing would you give me if I could come to you with a chance to get behind several thousand acres of Michigan white pine that will go, say, twenty thousand to the acre?"
He sent that letter to Pancake by Goddard who took it with a surly nod; then John lighted his pipe and walked
