"Doesn't interest you at
all! Well, it does me. Three months ago I bought into this affair
because I was as sure as any man could be that I'd collect a hundred
per cent on my money, next spring. Elliott and Ainnesley? Pah!--Nice
gentle old ladies, when it comes to a game like this. They're
anachronists; they are honest business men, twenty years behind the
times. You've heard of taking candy from children. Well, that's what
it looked like then. But it doesn't look that way any longer. Talk
with you? Yes, I did want to talk. I wanted to tell you that if you'd
like to switch I'm willing, right now. I wanted to tell you that if
you'd rather be a good little boy and get into line, I'm willing and
more than willing. Because I can promise you, since I talked it over
with O'Mara this afternoon, that we haven't any nice, dead-sure thing
on our hands any longer.
"Oh, you can sit there and smile your cold-blooded smile! And if you
think I'm experiencing pangs of conscience you're mistaken. All I
have, I got from other men who--who weren't strong enough to hang on to
it. There isn't any friendship in business--or if there is I never
played it that way. I'm just telling you that now is our one
opportunity, if we want to join hands and hurrah with the rest of them
for the completion of this job by next May. We lose a railroad at a
bargain, perhaps, but we've still got a mighty good right-of-way to the
border, that will insure our welcome in the ranks.
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