Page:West of Dodge (1926).pdf/219

 I hope that railroad woman keeps clear. Nobody can afford to gamble, except on his surplus. This advice about puttin' all your eggs in one basket might do for a person that's only got one egg. I say if you've got two, put 'em in separate baskets, and see that the baskets are a good ways apart."

"Pretty sound finance, it seems to me," Hall agreed.

"Although I believe Charley's going to come out big," Cottrell said, somewhat hastily, as if to head off any impression to the contrary that might get abroad as having come from him. "He's got unlimited credit in the big Kansas City banks, they're fairly asking him to take their money. It's assurance enough for me when a business has the endorsement of a set of men as shrewd as those Kansas City bankers. I'd put some of them against the sharpest minds of Wall Street, any day."

"One of them told me once that the test of a banker's shrewdness was keeping clear of Wall Street," Hall recalled. "But I haven't seen him in a long time; I don't know whether they've got him yet."

"One mistake Burnett's making is that blame fool band," Cottrell declared with no compromising decisiveness. "It's a disgrace to this town to go haulin' that outfit around the country."

"They may improve," Hall said hopefully. "They appear to have a lot of individual confidence, if not any great amount of cohesion."

"They're as contrary as a crowd of old women when they begin to hammer on a tune. Well, I've got a reply from the state board in this matter of Old Doc Ross. The old rascal is a regular graduate of medicine, registered and solid as a rock. I'd have gambled the other way."