"Nice, comfortable way you've got of painting things cheerful," the
Native Son drawled ironically.

"That's all right. I want you to realize what it's going to be like
before you get in so far you can't back out."

"Aw, who's said anything about backing out?" Happy Jack grumbled.

"Let's get right down to brass tacks and see how strong we can go on
money," Andy suggested, pulling a pencil out of an inner pocket. "Here,
girl, you do the bookkeeping while we call off the size of our pile. Put
'er down in this book till you can get another one. You can set me down
for two seventy-five--or make it three hundred. I can scrape it up, all
right. How about you, Pink? This is hard-boiled figures, now, and no
guess work."

Pink blew a mouthful of smoke while he did a little mental calculation.
Then he took his twisted-leather purse and emptied it into his saucer. He
investigated all his pockets and added eighty-five cents in small change.
Then he gravely began to count, not disdaining three pennies in the pile.
"I've got seventy-five dollars in the bank," he said. "Add ninety dollars
salary, and you have a hundred and sixty-five. Add six dollars and
eighty-seven cents, and you have--my pile."

Rosemary twisted her lips and wrote the figures opposite Pink's name.
Next came Weary, then Miguel and Big Medicine and the dried little man
who chewed violently upon a wooden toothpick and said he was good for
eight hundred, and mebby a little mite more.