In the event that Mrs. Colton should not desire to continue with them, the associates demanded an accounting in which the liabilities of Mr. Colton on account of the $1,000,000 note, his share of the net indebtedness of the Western Development Company, and the sum of the alleged embezzlements, should be set against the estimated value of the stock and bonds of which Colton died possessed. In estimating the value of Mr. Colton’s securities, moreover, the associates declared that the question was not as to the amount which could be realized eventually and after the underlying property had had a chance to prove itself, but the market value at the time of negotiations. Mr. Crocker’s testimony on this point expresses very fully the attitude of the associates. He said: Mr. Wilson and I had frequent conversations, and he sometimes asserted we could do so and so with these bonds, that we could realize 80 or 90 cents on them. I said in reply, “Possibly we can; I don’t know; it is a matter of speculation; it depends on the future of the roads.” Sometimes he would claim they would bring 80 or 85 cents; and then I would say, “Very likely they may,” but it would require time to do it, and a great deal of management necessarily to bring that out, and if Mrs. Colton desired to realize the full value of these securities after this lengthy handling of them, all she had to do was to pay the amount of the note and continue in the company and we would manage them for her, as well as we would for ourselves, of course, and she should receive the full benefit of our knowledge and experience in handling these securities, and we would get every dollar out of them we could, and she should have her share to the last cent. Then he would reply: “Well, that can’t be. We are determined to go out of this.” “Well,” I says, “then it is a matter of speculation.”[237] Unquestionably these were hard terms, for it was out of the question for Mrs. Colton to continue with the associates in 1879, a fact of which these gentlemen must have been well aware. She did not have the necessary money, she could not afford in any case to risk her livelihood in so speculative an undertaking as building railroads in southern California, and the relations between her and the Huntington group did not savor of trust and confidence. The expressions of willingness to continue to treat Mrs. Colton as one of themselves cost the associates nothing, and were worth as much. Nor was the standard of valuation of the Colton assets offered by the associates, easily to be defended on ethical grounds. Mr. Colton had not played fair, it is true, but on his part he had been led into an improvement agreement and caused to sign a $1,000,000 note, in at least partial reliance upon the value of the stock of railroads under the associates’ control, which was given him in exchange. It was hardly appropriate for the Huntington group now to insist that the collateral security had no value.