Thorpe smiled.
“You know you can have it, if it's to be had, Wallace. I wasn't hesitating on that account. I was merely trying to figure out where we can raise such a sum as sixty thousand dollars. We haven't got it.”
“But you'll never have to pay it,” assured Wallace eagerly. “If I can save my margins, I'll be all right.”
“A man has to figure on paying whatever he puts his signature to,” asserted Thorpe. “I can give you our note payable at the end of a year. Then I'll hustle in enough timber to make up the amount. It means we don't get our railroad, that's all.”
“I knew you'd help me out. Now it's all right,” said Wallace, with a relieved air.
Thorpe shook his head. He was already trying to figure how to increase his cut to thirty million feet.
“I'll do it,” he muttered to himself, after Wallace had gone out to visit the mill. “I've been demanding success of others for a good many years; now I'll demand it of myself.”