Page:Harold Titus--Timber.djvu/85

Rh The laugh will be on you, then. Maybe you'll do better in a small sense to give this up and try something else. Your father gave you these logs, I take it, because he thought you would fail. If you do fail you're wasting an opportunity to show him, among other things, that his joke was cruel, aren't you?"

"I'll show him yet, in some other way."

"But what about your pride?"

"Haven't any."

"Only a few moments ago you told me that you hadn't asked about this open secret because you were too proud. You didn't like to think yesterday that people wouldn't make a fuss over you." He frowned, letting his eyes run over the ravine. "Isn't there something to what I say? Haven't you a great deal of pride?"

A new emotion was stirring in young John Taylor. He was in a corner, without argument. He was trying to slide around the obstacle directly in his path, looking for an easy way out—and he was proud; but in this hour he had become humble and more honest with himself than he had ever been before.

"Maybe I have," he said, "but what can I do? Here are the logs; the railroad is gone, they'll spoil before snow."

"Whatever is done must be done at once." Her eyes travelled again down to the river and rested on the decks of cedar poles. "Do you want to try to turn this joke on your father, and do something hard and to be a pretty good American in peace times by saving this timber?"

"Will you show me the way?" he asked sharply. She smiled and shook her head.

"I don't know the way. I have an idea, but maybe