“We’re not going to tell ’em. At any rate, if we’re going to save anything from the wreck it’ll have to be every man for himself; do you understand?”
“All right, Abe. I daresay you’re right. That boy seems to have got us at last where the shoe pinches. But I hate to give up the fight.”
“So do I; but if we hold on much longer we won’t be able to get out at all, except on Thornton’s own terms—and what they will be the Lord only knows. I don’t believe he has any great love for either of us, especially you, since I understand he got on to the true inwardness of the Kansas City job you put up on him.”
“If I’d only dreamed of what was coming I’d have pickled him for keeps that time,” said Sid, smiting the arm of his chair savagely.
“You wouldn’t have killed him, Sid?” the other said, aghast.
“Oh, no. I’m no murderer. But there are ways of putting a chap out of the way for a time that answer quite as well.”
So it was arranged between these two gentlemen before they went home for the day that they should quietly begin to cover their own personal sales—their share of the six million bushels sold by the ring—without any reference to the obligations they owed their partners in distress.
Jarboe, Willicutt & Co., however, still hung on, hoping for a turn in the market at any moment.
Long ago they had clearly seen that it was not Jared Whitemore who was backing Vance Thornton.
As day by day Jack Fox, Vance’s known representative, settled promptly for the corn he had bought, they wondered how long his resources would hold out.