"It was in the nature of an experiment. There were people who sneered. And it is working out well. There is not the slightest taint of charity in it. If I used a lot of money that may be a long time coming back to me that is my own business. Everybody here pays his own way. All these men needed was backing and direction."
Carr looked away across the clearing. His glance swept the houses, and fields, and the distant woods where the logging crews labored.
"And there are valleys and valleys," he said thoughtfully; "when they are cleared and cultivated there is endless room in them for people who want elbow-room, who want to live without riding on the other fellow's back.
"Better get in with us, Wes," he said abruptly. "I'm getting old. It won't be long before I have to quit. This thing will need a pilot for a long time yet. Men will always have to have a leader. You can do good here. Big oaks, you know, from little acorns. I mean, if this project continues to achieve success, it might blaze the way for a national undertaking. We said that a country that was worth living in was worth fighting for. We are liars and cheats if we do not make it so for those who did our fighting."
"I wouldn't mind taking a hand in this game," Thompson said. "But the war is still on. If that were over--well, yes, Toba Valley looks good to me."
Carr put his hand on Thompson's shoulder. "Ah, well," he said. "It won't be long now. You'll be back. You can put on an aërial mail service for us, as your first undertaking."
He chuckled, and they left their log and strolled back toward the house.
"Come and I'll show you what the valley looks like, Wes," Sophie said to him, when they had finished dinner, and Carr had his nose buried in mail just that evening arrived.
She led him a hundred yards upstream to where a footbridge slung upon steel cables spanned the Toba, crossed that and a little flat on the north side, and climbed up the flank of a slide-scarred hill until she came out on a little plateau.
"Look," she waved her hand, panting a little from the steepness of the climb.
Five hundred feet below, the valley of the Toba spread its timbered greenness, through which looped in sweeping curves the steel-gray of the river. In a great bend immediately beneath them lay the houses of the settlement, facing upon the stream. Farther along were isolated homesteads which he had not seen. Back of these spread little gardens, and the green square of cultivated fields, and beyond in greater expanse the stump-dotted land that was still in the making.