“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 trembled as he confessed: “It’s the honest God’s truth that any two dozen of our largest depositors could close our doors to-day. I beg of you, Neifkins, to ship as soon as you can get cars.”
Neifkins squared his thick shoulders in the chair.
“Look here—I don’t allow no man to tell me how to run my business! When that note comes due I’ll be ready to meet it, so there’s no need of you gettin’ cold feet as reg'lar as a cloud comes up.” He arose. “This storm ain’t goin’ to last. May be a lot of snow will fall, but it won’t lay.”
Neifkins’ sanguine predictions were not fulfilled, for the next day the sagging wires broke and Neifkins floundered through snow to his knees on his way down town. It lay three feet deep on the level and was still falling as though it could not stop. Every road and trail was obliterated. All the surrounding country was a white trackless waste and Prouty with its roofs groaning under their weight looked like a diamond-dusted picture on a Christmas card.
There was less resonance in Neifkins’ jubilant tone when he stamped into the bank and declared that it was a record-breaker of a snow fall.