Page:Caroline Lockhart--The Fighting Shepherdess.djvu/334

 price on what's left up to sixteen dollars in the stack. What you goin' to do if you have to feed?"

"I won't have to feed; I'll take my chance on that. It's goin' to be an open winter," confidently.

" It's startin' in like it," Wentz replied dryly, as he glanced through the window where the falling snowflakes all but obscured the opposite side of the street. Then, emphatically: " I tell you, Neifkins, you Old Timers take too big risks."

" I suppose," the sheepman sneered, " you'd recommend my gettin' loaded up with a few hundred tons of hay I won't need."

"I'd recommend anything that would make you safe." Wentz lowered his voice, which vibrated with earnestness as he leaned forward in his chair: " Do you know what it means if a storm catches you and you have a big loss? It means that only a miracle will keep this bank from goin' on the rocks. We're hangin' on by our eyelashes now, waiting for the payment of your first big note to give us a chance to get our breath. I have the ague every time I see a hard-boiled hat comin' down the street, thinkin' it's a bank examiner. You know as well as I do that you've borrowed to the amount of your stock, and way beyond the ten per cent limit of the capital stock which we as a national bank are allowed to loan an individual — that it's a serious offense if we're found out."

" If I don't," Neifkins replied insolently, " it ain't because you haven't told me often enough."

" But you don't seem to realize the position we're in. If you did, you'd play safe and ship. It's true enough that you might make more by holding on, but it's just as true that a big storm could wipe you out." His voice sank still lower and trebled as he confessed: " It's the