Tammie, knowing they'd been out and would go no more, curled up on one of the bearskin rugs. Ted took a chicken from the refrigerator and began to stuff it with a dressing made of bread dough, giblets, apples and seasoning. It was a task he'd done often, and his thoughts wandered.
Al, who'd never gone beyond the sixth grade, had a near-worshipful regard for education and he'd insisted that his son be educated. After graduating with honors from Lorton High, Ted himself realized that college training would be valuable. But there were other factors involved.
With no desire to become a trapper and woodsman like his father, Ted wanted to stay in the Mahela. It was worthy and wonderful. Wilderness would always be needed, and, deep inside him, Ted saw himself running a grand lodge to which guests could come and partake of the benefits Crestwood's clients certainly found. People who came back to the wilderness always seemed to be coming back to the source of things and finding spiritual values that lay only at the source.
Ted had taken a flunkey's job at Crestwood two days after he graduated. It did not pay as much as he might have earned elsewhere, but it was what he wanted and he saved as much as possible. Meanwhile, his dream continued to grow. The couple of hundred dollars he had put aside was a mere drop in the bucket compared to the—Ted had never even dared let himself imagine how many—thousands he needed. But he knew he would find a way and, above all, he wished that he could make his father know it, too.
Ted lighted the oven, put his chicken in to roast and scrubbed potatoes to be baked in their jackets. He mixed biscuit dough. Since neither he nor Al cared for dessert, he didn't prepare any. But he did take a package of carrots and peas from the freezer. He remembered whimsically that, before they had the freezer, his father used to can dozens of quarts of vegetables. Dreamily he went about setting the table. As he did so, he noticed a man in an expensive car driving up the Lorton Road.
There was a squeal of brakes as he stopped suddenly and a shriek of tires as he turned up the Harkness drive. He was a short man, and fat, but his smile was nice, although his eyes were shrewd.
"Do you own this land?" he demanded.
Al and Ted told him that they owned it, whereupon the short, fat man declared breathlessly that a diamond mine had just been discovered in their back yard and that he, personally, would guarantee them a hundred thousand dollars for the mining rights! He would give fifty thousand at once, and it was all right with him if they built a great resort in front, as long as they didn't interfere with his mine.
Ted grinned ruefully as his daydream faded and he went to call his father to dinner.