In the Shadow of the Hills
by George C. Shedd · English · Gutenberg #30037 · 490,164 chars · public domain (US)
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Title: In the Shadow of the Hills
Author: George C. Shedd
Release date: September 20, 2009 [eBook #30037]
Most recently updated: October 24, 2024
Language: English
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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK IN THE SHADOW OF THE HILLS ***
IN THE SHADOW OF THE HILLS
BY THE SAME AUTHOR
THE PRINCESS OF FORGE
THE ISLE OF STRIFE
THE INCORRIGIBLE DUKANE
THE LADY OF MYSTERY HOUSE
THE INVISIBLE ENEMY
IN THE SHADOW OF THE HILLS
IN THE SHADOW OF THE HILLS
BY
GEORGE C. SHEDD
AUTHOR OF
"THE LADY OF MYSTERY HOUSE," ETC.
NEW YORK
THE MACAULAY COMPANY
Copyright, 1919, By THE MACAULAY COMPANY
COPYRIGHT, 1919, BY THE FRANK A. MUNSEY CO.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I IN A HOSTILE COUNTRY 11
II A COMEDY--AND SOMETHING ELSE 23
III THE ENEMY'S SPAWN 34
IV A SECRET CONFERENCE 42
V A SHOT IN THE DARK 53
VI JANET HOSMER 64
VII IN THE COIL 75
VIII THE GATHERING STORM 83
IX AN UNEXPECTED ALLY 91
X BY RIGHT OF POSSESSION 99
XI JANET AND MARY 107
XII THE PLOT 116
XIII THE CURRENT OF EVENTS 121
XIV OLD SAUREZ' DEPOSITION 135
XV THE MASK DROPPED 145
XVI WEIR TAKES UP THE HUNT 158
XVII EARTH'S RETRIBUTION 167
XVIII IN THE NIGHT WATCHES 177
XIX A QUEER PAPER 189
XX ANXIETIES 197
XXI THE WEAK LINK 209
XXII AN OLD ADOBE HOUSE 219
XXIII WITH FANGS BARED 226
XXIV THE ALARM 238
XXV NO QUARTER 248
XXVI THE THUNDERBOLT 256
XXVII WEIR STRIKES WHILE THE IRON IS HOT 261
XXVIII VORSE 270
XXIX THE FOURTH MAN 279
XXX THE VICTOR 286
XXXI A FINAL CHALLENGE 294
XXXII THE RECLUSE 304
XXXIII UNDER THE MOON 314
IN THE SHADOW OF THE HILLS
CHAPTER I
IN A HOSTILE COUNTRY
Eastward out of the Torquilla Range the Burntwood River emerged from a
gorge, flowing swift and turbulent during the spring months, shallow
and murmurous the rest of the year, to pass through a basin formed by
low mountains and break forth at last from a canyon and wind away over
the mesa. In the canyon was being erected the huge reservoir dam which
was in the future to store water for irrigating the broad acres
spreading from its base.
The construction camp rested on one of the hillsides above the dam.
And here one summer afternoon a man stepped forth from the long low
tar-papered shack that served as headquarters, directing his gaze down
the road across the mesa at a departing automobile. He was Steele
Weir, the new chief, a tall, strong, tanned man of thirty-five, with
lean smooth-shaven face, a straight heavy nose, mouth that by habit
was set in grim lines, and heavy brows under which ruled cold, level,
insistent, gray eyes. He had come suddenly, unexpectedly, returning
with Magney, the engineer in charge, when the latter had been summoned
east for a conference with the company's directors. He had replaced
Magney, who was now whirling away to the nearest railway point,
Bowenville, thirty-five miles distant.
He thoughtfully watched the car, a black spot in a haze of dust,
speeding towards the New Mexican town of San Mateo, on the Burntwood
River two miles below camp, its cluster of brown adobe houses showing
indistinctly through the cottonwoods that embowered the place. For
Magney he felt a certain amount of sympathy, for the engineer was
leaving with a recognition of defeat; he was a likeable man, as Steele
Weir had discovered during their brief acquaintance, a good
theoretical engineer, but lacking in the prime quality of a successful
chief--fighting spirit and an indomitable will.
Under Magney the work of construction had been inaugurated the
previous summer, but progress had not been as rapid as desired; there
had been delays, labor difficulties, local opposition during the
months since; and Weir had been chosen to succeed Magney. In his
profession Weir had a reputation, built on relentless toil and sound
ideas and daring achievements--a reputation enhanced by a character of
mystery, for the man was unmarried, reserved, without intimates or
even friends, locking his lips about his life, and welcoming and
executing with grim indifference to risk engineering commissions of
extreme hazard, on which account he had acquired the soubriquet of
"Cold Steel" Weir.
Who first bestowed upon Weir that name is not known. But it was not
misapplied. Cold steel he had proved himself to be a score of times in
critical moments when other men would have broken: in pushing bridges
over mountain chasms, in mine disasters, in strikes, in almost
hopeless fights against bandits in Mexico. And it was this ability to
handle difficulties that had brought about the decision of the
directors of the company to put him in charge, as the man best
qualified, at San Mateo, where the situation was unsatisfactory,
costly, baffling.
Since his arrival a week before he had been consulting with Magney,
studying maps and blue-prints, examining the work and analyzing
general conditions. What had been accomplished had been well done; he
had no criticism to offer on that score. It was the delay; the work
was considerably behind schedule, which of course meant excessive
cost; and this had undermined the spirit of the enterprise. In a dozen
places, in a dozen ways, Magney, his predecessor, had been hampered,
checked, defeated--and the main contributing cause was poor workmen,
inefficient work. On that sore Weir's skillful finger fell at once.
Standing there before the low office building he watched Magney
depart. He, Steele Weir, had now taken over full charge of the camp
and assumed full responsibility for the project's failure or success.
His eye passed beyond the distant automobile to the town of San
Mateo--a new town for him, but a town like many he had seen in the
southwest and in Mexico. And aside from its connection with the
construction work, it held a fascinating interest, a profound interest
for the man, the interest that any spot would which has at a distance
cast a black and sinister shadow over one's life. San Mateo--the name
lay like a smoldering coal in his breast!
At length he turned and strode down the hillside to the dam site in
the canyon. The time had come to shut his hand about the work and let
his hold be felt. He located the superintendent directing the pouring
of concrete in the frames of the dam core, Atkinson, a man of fifty
with a stubby gray mustache, a wind-bitten face and a tall angular
frame. When Weir joined him he was observing with speculative eyes the
indolent movements of a group of Mexican laborers.
"Those _hombres_ don't appear to be breaking any speed records, I
see," Weir remarked, quietly.
"Humph," Atkinson grunted.
"What do they think this is? A rest cure?"
The superintendent's silence suddenly gave way.
"I ought to land on 'em with an ax-handle and put the fear of God in
their lazy souls," he exclaimed, bitterly.
"Well, do it."
"What!"
"Do it."
"Say, am I hearing right?" Atkinson swung fully about to stare at the
new chief. Then he went on, "They'd quit to a man if made to do a
man's work; I supposed that Magney had told you that. A dozen times
I've been ready to throw up my job from self-respect; I'm ashamed to
boss work where men can loaf and I must keep my tongue between my
teeth. I was considering just now the matter of leaving."
"No need, Atkinson. From this time these men will work or get their
dismissal."
The other pushed his hat atilt and rubbed his head in surprise.
"What about that 'company policy' of hiring nothing but local labor to
keep the community friendly which Magney was always kicking about?" he
asked. "That was what made him sorer than anything else, and beat him.
He said the directors had tied his hands by promising that no workmen
should be imported. If they promised that, they sure bunkoed
themselves. Friendly, huh."
"The people haven't been friendly, eh?" Weir said.
"Does it look like it when these Mexicans won't work enough to earn
their salt? They openly boast that we dare neither make them work
nor fire them. They say Sorenson and his bunch will pull every man off
the works if we lift a finger; and they all know about that fool
promise of the directors. Friendly? Just about as friendly as a
bunch of wildcats. This whole section, white men and Mexicans, are
putting a knife into this project whenever they can. Do you think they
want all that mesa fenced up and farmed? This is a range country;
they propose to keep it range; they don't want any more people
coming here--farmers, store-keepers, and white people generally."
"That's always the case in a range country before it's opened up,"
Weir said. "But they have to swallow the pill."
"Let me tell you something; they don't intend to swallow it here. They
figure on keeping this county just as it is, for only themselves and
their cattle and woolies, and everybody else keep out. The few big
sheep and cattle men, white and Mex, have their minds made up to that,
and they're the only ones who count; all the rest are poor Mexicans
with nothing but fleas, children, goats and votes to keep Sorenson and
his gang in control. They've set out to bust this company, or tire it
out till it throws up the sponge. They've spiked Magney, and they'll
try to spike you next, and every manager who comes. That's plain talk
I'm giving you, Mr. Weir, but it's fact; and if it doesn't sound nice
to your ears, you can have my resignation any minute."
"I've been hoping to hear it. From now on drive this crowd of
coffee-colored loafers. Put the lash on their backs."
A gleam of unholy joy shone in Atkinson's eyes as he heard Weir's
words.
"All right; that goes," he said. "But I'm warning you that they'll
quit. You'll see 'em stringing out of camp for home to-night, and
those who hang out till to-morrow will leave then for sure. By
to-morrow night the dam will be as quiet as a church week-days.
They'll not show up again, either, until you send word for them to
come back--and then they'll know you've surrendered. Magney tried it
once, just once. And that's why you found me chewing tobacco so
lamb-like and saying nothing."
"Turn your gat loose," Weir said. And turning on his heel, he went
back to headquarters.
Before Atkinson fired a volley at the unsuspecting workmen he crossed
the canyon to where a cub engineer was peering through a transit. The
superintendent had overheard a scrap of gossip among the staff one
evening before Weir's arrival when they were discussing the advent of
the new chief.
"What was that name you fellows were saying Weir was called by?" he
asked.
The boy straightened up.
"'Cold Steel'--'Cold Steel' Weir. Anyway that's what Fergueson says,"
was the answer. "I never heard it before myself. His first name's
Steele, you know, and he looks cold enough to be ice when he's asking
questions about things, boring into a fellow with his eyes. But he's
up against a hard game here."
"Maybe. But a man doesn't get a name like that for just parting his
hair nice," Atkinson remarked. "He told me to stretch 'em"--a horny
thumb jerked towards the workmen--"and you'll see some real work
hereabouts for the rest of the afternoon."
"And to-morrow will be Sunday three days ahead of time."
"Sure."
"What then?"
"You know as much about that as I do. Make your own guess." With which
the speaker started off.
The morrow was "Sunday" with a vengeance. The majority of the laborers
demanded their pay checks the minute work ceased at the end of the
afternoon; Atkinson tightened orders, and by noon next day the last of
the Mexicans had quit. The fires in the stationary engines were
banked; the concrete mixers did not revolve; the conveyers were still;
the dam site wore an air of abandonment. In headquarters the engineers
worked over tracings or notes; and in the commissary store the
half-dozen white foremen gathered to smoke and yarn. That was the
extent of the activity.
Two days passed. After dinner Weir held a terse long-distance
telephone conversation, the only incident of the second day; and it
was overheard by no one. On the fourth day this was repeated. At dawn
of the fifth he despatched all of the foremen, enginemen and engineers
with wagons to Bowenville; and about the middle of the afternoon,
accompanied by his assistant, Meyers, and Atkinson, he sped in the
manager's car down the river for San Mateo, two miles below the camp.
Of the town Steele Weir had had but a glimpse as he flashed through on
his way to the dam the morning of his arrival twelve days earlier. It
had but a single main street, from which littered side streets and
alleys ran off between mud walls of houses. The county court house sat
among cottonwood trees in an open space. A few pretentious dwellings,
homes of white men and the well-to-do Mexicans, arose among long low
adobe structures that were as brown and characterless as the sun-dried
bricks of which they were built. That was San Mateo.
Before doors and everywhere along the street workmen from the dam were
idling. As Meyers brought the automobile to a stop before the court
house, news of Weir's visit spread miraculously and Mexicans began to
saunter forward to hear the engineer's words of surrender, couched in
the form of a suave invitation to return to work. While the crowd
gathered the three Americans sat quietly in the car. Then Steele Weir
stood up.
"Who can speak for these men?" he demanded.
A lean Mexican with a long shiny black mustache and a thin neck
protruding from a soiled linen collar elbowed a way to the front.
"I'm authorized to speak for them," he announced, disclosing his white
teeth in an engaging smile.
"Are you one of the workmen?"
"No. I'm a lawyer and represent them in this controversy. By your
favor therefore let us proceed. You've come to persuade them to resume
work, and that is well. But there are conditions to be agreed upon
before they return, which with your permission I shall state--first,
no harsh driving of the workmen by foremen; second, full wages for the
days they have been idle; third, no Sunday work."
The engineer regarded the speaker without change of countenance.
"Have you finished?" he asked.
"Yes. There are minor matters, but they can be adjusted later. These
are the important points."
"Very well, this is my reply: I, not the workmen, make the terms for
work on this job--I, not these men, name the conditions on which they
may return. And they are as follows: no pay for the idle days; if the
workmen return they agree to work as ordered by superintendent and
foremen; and last, they must start for the dam within an hour or not
at all."
Incredulity, amazement rested on the Mexican spokesman's face as he
listened to this curt rejoinder.
"Preposterous, impossible, absurd!" he exclaimed. Then revolving on
his heels so as to face the crowd he swiftly repeated in Spanish what
Weir had said.
An angry stir followed, murmurs, sullen looks, a number of oaths and
jeers. The lawyer turned again to the engineer, spreading his hands in
a wide gesture and lifting his brows with exaggerated significance.
"You see, Mr. Weir, your position is hopeless," he remarked.
"Ask them if they definitely refuse."
The lawyer put the question to the crowd. A chorus of shouts
vehemently gave affirmation--a refusal immediate, disdainful,
unanimous.
"We'll now discuss the men's terms," the lawyer remarked politely and
with an air of satisfaction.
"There's nothing more to discuss. The matter is settled. They have
refused; they need not seek work at the dam again. Start the car,
Meyers."
The roar of the machine drowned the indignant lawyer's protest, the
crowd hastened to give an opening and the conference was at an end.
"Drive to Vorse's saloon; I want a look at Vorse," said Weir. "I see
the place a short way ahead."
When they entered the long low adobe building an anemic-appearing
Mexican standing at the far end of the bar languidly started forward
to serve them, but a bald-headed, hawk-nosed man seated at a desk
behind the cigar-case laid aside his newspaper, arose and checked the
other by a sidewise jerk of his head.
He received their orders for beer and lifted three dripping bottles
from a tub of water at his feet. His eyes passed casually over Steele
Weir's face, glanced away, then came back for a swift unblinking
scrutiny. The eyes his own met were as hard, stony and inscrutable as
his own. Finally Vorse, the saloon-keeper, turned his gaze towards the
window and extracting a quill tooth-pick from a vest pocket began
thoughtfully to pick his teeth.
"You're the new manager at the dam?" he asked presently, still
considering the street through the window.
"I am."
"And your name is Weir?"
"You've got it right."
The questions ended there. The three men from camp slowly consumed
their beer and exchanged indifferent remarks. At the end of five
minutes the Mexican lawyer, clutching the arm of an elderly,
gray-mustached man, entered the saloon.
They lined up at the bar nearby the others. The older of the pair
regarded the trio shrewdly, laid a calf-bound book that he carried
under his arm upon the counter and ordered "a little bourbon." When he
had swallowed this, he addressed the men from the engineering camp.
"Which of you is Mr. Weir?"
"I am he," Steele replied.
"Mr. Martinez here has solicited me, Mr. Weir, to use my offices in
explaining to you the workmen's point of view in the controversy that
exists relative to the work. I'm Senator Gordon, a member of the state
legislature, and I have no interest in the matter beyond seeing an
amicable and just arrangement effected."
Steele Weir fixed his eyes on the speaker with an intentness, a cold
penetration, that seemed to bore to the very recesses of his mind. In
that look there was something questioning and something menacing.
"There's no controversy and hence no need of your services. The men
stopped work, refused to return, and now the case is closed."
"My dear sir, let us talk it over," said the Senator, bringing forth a
pair of spectacles and setting the bow upon his nose.
The engineer's visage failed to relax at this pacific proposal.
"I gave them their chance and they declined; they'll have no other,"
he stated. "Those men have browbeaten the company long enough. They
refused, and as I anticipated that refusal I made preparations
accordingly; a hundred and fifty white workmen arrived at Bowenville
from Denver this morning and a hundred and fifty more will come
to-morrow. They will do the work."
The Senator's lips quivered and the upper one lifted in a movement
like a snarl, showing tobacco-stained teeth.
"The matter isn't closed, understand that," he snapped out. "We have
the directors' promise no outside labor shall be brought in here for
this job, and the promise shall be kept."
"The new men go to work in the morning," Weir said.
"You'll repent of this action, young man, you'll repent of it." The
Senator seized the whisky bottle and angrily poured himself a second
drink. "You'll repent of it as sure as your name is--is--whatever it
is."
The engineer took a step nearer the older man. His face now was as
hard as granite.
"Weir is my name," he said. "Did you ever hear it before?"
"Weir--Weir?" came in a questioning mutter.
"Yes, Weir."
The speaker's eyes held the Senator's in savage leash, and a slight
tremble presently began to shake the old man. Atkinson and Meyers and
even the volatile Mexican lawyer, Martinez, remained unstirring, for
in the situation they suddenly sensed something beyond their ken, some
current of deep unknown forces, some play of fierce, obscure and
fateful passion.
A shadow of gray stole over Gordon's lineaments.
"You are--are the son of----" came gasping forth.
"I am. His son."
"And--and----"
"And I know what happened thirty years ago in this selfsame room!"
The whisky that the Senator had poured into his glass suddenly slopped
over his fingers; his figure all at once appeared more aged, hollow,
bent. Without further word, with his hand still shaking, he set the
glass on the bar, mechanically picked up the law book and walked
feebly towards the door.
Steele Weir turned his gaze on the saloon-keeper, Vorse. The man's
right hand was under the bar and he seemed to be awaiting the
engineer's next move, taut, tight-lipped, malignant.
"That was for you too, Vorse," was flung at him. "One Weir went out of
here, but another has returned."
And he led his companions away.
CHAPTER II
A COMEDY--AND SOMETHING ELSE
Towards noon one day a week later Steele Weir, headed for Bowenville
in his car, had gained Chico Creek, half way between camp and San
Mateo, when he perceived that another machine blocked the ford. About
the wheels of the stalled car the shallow water rippled briskly, four
or five inches deep; entirely deep enough, by all appearances, to keep
marooned in the runabout the girl sitting disconsolately at the
wheel.
She was a very attractive-looking girl, Steele noted casually as he
brought his own car to a halt and sprang out to join her, wading the
water with his laced boots. As he approached he perceived that she had
a slender well-rounded figure, fine-spun brown hair under her hat
brim, clear brown eyes and the pink of peach blossoms in her soft
smooth cheeks.
But her look of relief vanished when she distinguished his face and
her shoulders squared themselves.
"Has your engine stopped?" he inquired.
"Yes."
"I'll look into the hood."
"I prefer that you would not."
For an instant surprise marked his countenance.
"You mean that you desire to remain here?" he asked.
"I don't wish to remain here, but I choose that in preference to your
aid."
The man, who had bent forward to lift one cover of the engine,
straightened up at that. He considered her intently and in silence
for a time, marking her heightened color, the haughty poise of her
head, the firm set of her lips.
"To my knowledge, I never saw you before in my life," he remarked at
last. "What, may I ask, is your particular reason for declining my
services?"
She was dumb for a little, while she tucked back a stray tendril of
hair. The act was performed with the left hand; and Weir's eyes, which
seldom missed anything, observed a diamond flash on the third finger.
"Well, I'd choose not to explain," said she, afterwards, "but if you
insist----"
"I don't insist, I merely request ... your highness."
A flash of anger shot from her eyes at this irony.
"Don't think I'm afraid to tell you!" she cried. "It's because you're
the manager of the construction camp; and if you've never seen me
before, I've at least had you pointed out to me. I wish no assistance
from the man who turns off his poor workmen without excuse or warning,
and brings want and trouble upon the community. It was like striking
them in the face. And then you break your promise not to bring in
other workmen!"
As she had said, she did not lack courage. Her words gushed forth in a
torrent, as if an expression of pent up and outraged justice,
disclosing a fervent sympathy and a fine zeal--and, likewise, a fine
ignorance of the facts.
"Well, why don't you say something?" she added, when he gave no
indication of replying.
Steele could have smiled at this feminine view of the matter that
violent assertions required affirmations or denials.
"What am I supposed to say?" he asked.
Apparently that exhausted her patience.
"You'll please molest me no longer," she stated, icily.
"Very well."
He raised the hood and inspected the engine. During his attempts to
start it, she sat nonchalantly humming an air and gazing at the
mountains as if her mind were a thousand miles away--which it was
not.
"Something wrong; it will have to be hauled in," said he finally.
No reply. Steele returned to his own car and descending into the creek
bed worked his way around her. When he was on the far bank, he
rejoined her again, carrying a coil of rope. One end of this he
fastened securely to the rear axle of her runabout.
"What are you going to do, sir?" she demanded, whirling about on her
seat and glaring angrily.
"Drag you out."
"You'll do nothing of the kind!"
"Oh, yes," was his calm response.
"Against my wishes, sir?"
"Certainly."
"This is abominable!"
"Perhaps."
"I'll put on the brakes." And put them on she did, with a savage
jerk.
But nevertheless Weir's powerful machine drew her car slowly up out of
the creek upon the road, where he forced it about until it pointed
towards San Mateo. Then he retied the rope on the front axle.
"Now for town," said he.
"Why did you haul me out of there, I demand to know?"
"Why? Because you were a public obstruction blocking traffic. If you
had remained there long enough you would have become a public
nuisance; and it's the duty of every citizen to abate nuisances. No
one would call you a nuisance, of course,--not to your face, at any
rate. But travelers might have felt some annoyance if compelled to
drive around you; they might even have had you arrested when they
learned you were acting out of willful stubbornness."
In a sort of incredulous wonder, of charmed horror, the girl heard
herself thus unfeelingly described.
"You--you barbarian!" she cried.
"Ready? We're off for town now."
"I'll run my car in the ditch and wreck it if you so much as pull it
another inch!"
"I don't like to be frustrated in my generous acts; they are so few,
according to common report. Well, we'll leave the car, but it must be
drawn off the road."
When this was accomplished, Weir replaced the rope in his machine.
Then he returned to her.
"What now? Do you intend to sit here in the hot sunshine, to say
nothing of missing your dinner?"
"That doesn't concern you."
Weir shook his head gravely.
"You must be saved from your own folly," said he.
Before she had realized what was happening, he had opened the door of
the runabout, swung her out upon the ground and was marching her
towards his own machine. Stupefaction at this quick, atrocious deed
left her an automaton; and before she had fully regained her control
they were speeding towards San Mateo, she at his side.
"This is outrageous!" she gasped.
Steele Weir did not speak until they entered town.
"Where is your home?" he asked.
"Turn to the right at the end of the street."
It was before a house of modern structure, banked with a bewildering
number of flowers and shaded by trees, that he halted the car. He
alighted, bared his head, assisted her to descend, bowed and then
without a word drove away, leaving her to stare after him with a
baffling mixture of feelings and the single indignant statement, "And
he didn't even wait long enough for me to thank him!" Nor did her
perplexity lessen when her car was left before the door during the
afternoon by one of the camp mechanics to whom Weir had telephoned
from San Mateo and who had put it in running order.
Weir himself proceeded to Bowenville, where matters regarding
shipments and the unloading of machinery engaged him the rest of the
day. Into his mind, however, there floated at moments the image of the
girl's face, banish it as he would. He had learned her name by asking
who was the owner of the house where she had alighted, information
necessary to direct the mechanic as to the delivery of the stalled
car. Hosmer it was; and the residence was that of Dr. Hosmer.
Presumably she was his daughter. And what a vivid, charming,
never-surrender enemy! Lucky the chap who had won this high-spirited
girl.
The memory of her eyes and her personality was still with him when
he ate his supper that evening in a restaurant in Bowenville. His own
past in relation to the other sex had been starred by no love
affair, not even by episodes of a sentimental nature; the character of
his work had for long periods kept him away from women's society,
but further than this there was the shadow upon his life, the shadow
of mystery that obliged him to follow a solitary course. He
considered himself unfree to seek friendships or favors among women.
By every demand of honor he was bound to solicit no girl's trust or
affection until that mystery was cleared and his father's innocence
established. It was for this reason that he seemed even to himself to
grow more hard, more harsh, more silent and aloof, until at last he
had come to believe that no fair face had the power to arouse his
interest or to quicken his pulse.
But now, this girl he had met at the ford!
Long-stifled emotions struggled in his breast. Sleeping desires awoke.
His spirit swelled like a caged thing within the shell of years of
indurated habit. A strange restlessness pervaded him. He had a fierce
passion somehow to rip in pieces the gray drab pattern of his
commonplace life.
Perhaps it was this revolt against the fetters of fate that caused him
to welcome the chance for action that presently was offered. The
restaurant was of an ordinary type, with a lunch counter at one side,
a row of tables down the middle and half a dozen booths along the wall
offering some degree of privacy. In one of these Steele Weir was
smoking a cigar and finishing his coffee before making his ride back
to camp. From the booth adjoining he had for some time been hearing
scraps of conversation; now all at once the voices rose in protest and
in answering explanation, in perplexed appeal and earnest assurance.
Weir's own reflections ceased. His head turned and remained fixed to
listen, while the cigar grew cold between his fingers. For ten minutes
or so his attitude of concentrated harkening to the two voices, a
girl's and a man's, remained unchanged. Little by little he was
piecing out the thread of the confidential dialogue--and of the little
drama being enacted in the booth.
His brows became lowering as he gathered its significance, his lips
drew together in a tight thin line. He did not move when he heard the
man push back his chair to leave the place, nor alter his position
until there came the sound of the door closing at the front of the
restaurant. Then he reached for his hat, stood up and went lightly
around into the other booth, where he pulled the green calico curtain
across the opening.
A girl of about seventeen, of plump clean prettiness, still sat at the
table, which was littered with dishes. The cheap finery of her hat and
dress showed a pathetic attempt to increase her natural comeliness. At
this minute her face showed amazement and a hint of apprehension.
"What are you coming in here for?" she demanded.
"I want to talk to you for a little while," Weir replied, seating
himself. "You will please listen. I've overheard enough of your talk
to catch its drift; you came here to be married, but now this man
wants to induce you to go to Los Angeles first."
"That isn't any of your business," the girl flashed back, going white
and red by turns.
"I'm making it mine, however. You live up on Terry Creek, by what I
heard; that's not far from my camp. I'm manager at the dam and my
name's Weir."
At this statement the girl shrank back, beginning to bite the hem of
her handkerchief nervously and gazing at him with terrified eyes.
"I'm here to help you, not harm you. You've run away from home to-day
to marry this fellow. Did he promise to marry you if you came to
Bowenville?"
"Yes."
"And now he wants you to go with him to Los Angeles first, promising
to marry you there?"
The girl hesitated, with a wavering look.
"Yes."
"He gives you excuses, of course. But they don't satisfy your mind,
do they? They don't satisfy mine, at any rate. It's the old trick.
Suppose when you reached the coast he didn't marry you after all and
put you off with more promises and after a week or two abandoned
you?"
"Oh, he wouldn't do that!" she cried, with a gulp.
"That's just what he is planning. He didn't meet you here until after
dark, I judge. You'll both go to the train separately--I overheard
that part. Afterwards he could return from the coast and deny that he
had ever had anything to do with you, and it would simply be your word
against his. And which would people hereabouts believe, tell me that,
which would they believe, yours or his, after you had gone wrong?"
The girl sat frozen. Then suddenly she began to cry, softly and with
jerks of her shoulders. Weir reached out and patted her arm.
"What's your name?" he asked.
"Mary--Mary Johnson."
"Mary, I'm interfering in your affairs only because I know what men
will do. You must take no chances. If this fellow is really anxious to
marry you, he'll do it here in Bowenville."
After a few sobs she wiped her eyes.
"He said he didn't dare get the license in San Mateo, or his folks
would have stopped our marriage."
"Then you should stay here to-night, go to the next county seat and be
married to-morrow. His parents are bound to learn about it once you're
married. A few days more or less make no difference. And though I
should return to my work, I'll just stay over a day and take you in my
car to-morrow to see that you're married straight and proper. Why go
clear to Los Angeles?"
"He said it would be our honeymoon--and--and I had never been away
from here."
"What's his name?"
She hesitated in uncertainty whether or not she should answer.
"Ed Sorenson," came at last from her lips.
Steele Weir slowly thrust his head forward, fixing her with burning
eyes.
"Son of the big cattleman?" he demanded.
"Yes, sir."
"And you love him?"
"Yes, oh, yes!"
Weir sat back in his seat, lighted a cigarette and stared past her
head at the opposite partition. The evil strain of the father had been
continued in the son and was working here to seduce this simple,
ignorant girl, incited by her physical freshness and the expectation
that she should be easy prey.
"Well, I doubt if he loves you," he said, presently.
"He does, he does!"
"If he really does above everything else in the world, he'll be
willing to marry you openly, no matter what his father may say or do.
That's the test, Mary. If he's in earnest, he'll agree at once to go
with us to the next county seat to-morrow and be married there by a
minister. Isn't that true? Answer me that squarely; isn't it true?"
"Yes, sir."
"Then by that we'll decide. If he agrees, well and good; if he
refuses, that will show him up--show he never had any intention of
marrying you. I'm a stranger to you, but I'm your friend. And you're
not going to Los Angeles unmarried!"
The last words were uttered in a level menacing tone that caused Mary
Johnson to shiver. To her, reared in the humble adobe house on her
father's little ranch on Terry Creek, a man who could manage the great
irrigation project seemed a figure out of her ken, a vast form working
against the sky. His statements were not to be disputed, whatever she
might think.
"Yes, sir," she said, just above a whisper.
"All right. Now we'll wait for him. He was coming back for you, wasn't
he?"
"Yes. I was to stay at the hotel till train time."
"Is this your grip?"
Weir jerked a thumb towards a worn canvas "telescope" fastened with a
single shawl strap, resting in the corner of the booth.
"It's mine. Yes, sir."
"How old is Ed Sorenson," he asked, after a pause.
"About thirty, maybe."
"How old are you?"
"Seventeen next month."
"But sixteen yet this month."
"Yes, sir."
He said nothing more. As the minutes passed, her timorous gaze
continued steadfastly on the stern countenance before her. She dully
expected something terrible to happen when Ed Sorenson appeared, for
she knew Ed would be angry; but she had been powerless to prevent the
intrusion of this terrible stranger.
Fear, in truth, a fear that left her heart cold, was her feeling as
she contemplated Weir. Yet under that, was there not something else? A
sense of safety, of comforting assurance of protection?
"You--you won't hurt Ed if he won't go with us?" she asked, in a low
voice. "If he gets mad and won't marry me here, I mean?"
The man's eyes came round to hers.
"I'll just break him in two, nothing more, Mary," was the calm
answer.
CHAPTER III
THE ENEMY'S SPAWN
The curtain to the booth was flung back.
"I've the train tickets; come along to the hotel----" exclaimed the
man who quickly entered. But the words died in his mouth at sight of
Weir sitting in the place he had vacated.
He was over average height, of strong fleshy build, with a small
blonde mustache on his upper lip. Under his eyes little pouches had
already begun to form; his mouth was full and sensual; but he still
retained an air of liveliness, of carelessness and agility, that might
at first sight seem the spontaneity of youth. He wore a brown suit, a
gray flannel shirt and Stetson hat--the common apparel of the
country.
"Who the devil are you? And what are you butting in here for?" he
exclaimed, with a vicious spark showing in his pale blue eyes. At the
same time he clapped a hand on Weir's shoulder, closing it in a hard
grasp.
Instantly Weir struck the hand off with his fist.
"Keep your dirty flippers to yourself," he said, rising.
The blood faded from the other's countenance, leaving it white with
rage.
"Get out of this booth, or I'll throw you out."
It was Weir's turn to act. Like a flash he caught Sorenson's elbow,
jerked him forward, spun him about and dropped him upon the chair.
"Sit there, you cradle-robber, until I'm through with you," he
commanded. "And if you don't want everybody in this restaurant to know
about your business with this girl, you'll lower your voice when you
talk."
Sorenson shot an uneasy glance towards the curtain and his wrath
became not less furious but better controlled. Clearly public
attention was the last thing he desired in this affair. He leaned
back, staring at Steele Weir insolently, and produced a cigarette, at
which he began to puff.
"Mary, get ready. We'll be going in a minute," said he.
"No, you'll not, Sorenson. I've taken a hand in your game. This girl
says you're going to marry her, is that right?" The other rolled his
eyes upward and began to whistle a jig tune softly. "Well, this is the
plan she and I've made. She'll remain at the hotel to-night--as will
you and I--and to-morrow we'll drive to another county seat in my car
and you'll secure a licence there. Then you'll go to a minister's,
where I'll act as a witness, and the ceremony will be performed.
Afterwards the pair of you can proceed to Los Angeles, or elsewhere as
you please, on your wedding journey."
"You're quite a little planner, aren't you?" the other jeered.
"That's the arrangement if you agree."
"I don't agree."
Mary Johnson, in whose eyes a light of hope had dawned during Weir's
low-toned statement, began nervously to bite her lip.
"Won't you do it, Ed?" she asked, timidly.
"We'll do as I planned, or nothing," he stated. Then with sudden spite
he continued, "You're responsible for this mixup. What did you let
this fellow in here for while I was gone? Didn't you have sense
enough to keep your mouth shut?"
Steele halted him by a gesture.
"Don't begin abusing her; you're not married to her yet. I overheard
your talk and guessed the low-lived, scoundrelly trick you proposed to
play on her."
"You damned eavesdropper----"
"Sure, eavesdropper is right," Weir interrupted, coolly. "So I just
stepped in here from my booth next door to discuss the situation with
her; you can't mislead an innocent girl like her with the intention of
shaking her when you get her into a city, not if I know about it and
am around. If you sincerely intend to marry her, and will do so
to-morrow in my presence, then I'll withdraw. Afterwards I mean, of
course."
Sorenson arose.
"Come, Mary. Stand aside, you!"
"She doesn't go with you," the engineer stated.
For a moment the men's eyes locked, those of one full of blue fire and
hatred, those of the other quiet as pieces of flint.
"And she shall keep with me while I telephone to your father that you
brought her here under promise of marriage, a girl of sixteen, without
her own parents' consent, and now refuse to marry her," Steele added.
A sneer twisted the other man's mouth.
"My father happens to be in the east, where he's been for a month," he
mocked. "If he were here, he wouldn't believe you; he'd know you were
a liar. He knows I'm engaged to marry----" Bite off the words as he
tried, they had escaped.
"Ah, that's the way of it!" Weir remarked with a silky smoothness.
"You expect to marry some other girl--and have no intention whatever
of marrying Mary here."
"To hell with you and your opinions!"
"First, you coax her to Bowenville by a promise, then you persuade her
by more promises to go to Los Angeles," the engineer proceeded
steadily, "and there you would betray and abandon her to a life on the
streets, like the yellow cur you are."
Sorenson snapped his fingers and moved round to the girl's side.
"Pay no attention to him," he addressed her. "He's only a crazy
fool."
But she drew back against the wall, staring at him with a strained,
searching regard.
"Will you marry me to-morrow as he asks?" she questioned anxiously.
"No. I explained the reason why once. Come on; let's get away from
him. Then I'll make everything clear and satisfactory to you."
For a moment she stood wavering, picking at her handkerchief, her face
pale and unhappy, questioning his countenance. Finally she turned to
look at Steele Weir, standing silently by.
"You never said you were engaged to another girl; you told me I was
the only one you loved," she muttered in a choked voice. "But I see
now you won't marry me. You wish me to go with you--but not to marry.
I'm going away--away anywhere. By myself! Where I'll never see any
one!" Burying her face in her hands, she shook with sobs.
"This is what comes from your putting an oar in," said Sorenson,
lifting his fist in a burst of fury to strike Weir.
The latter at once smote him across the mouth with open palm at the
vile epithet that followed. Sorenson staggered, then lunged forward,
tugging at something in his hip-pocket, while the table and dishes
went over in a crash.
Before he could draw the weapon Steele's fingers shot forth and seized
his wrist; his other hand closed about Sorenson's throat in an iron
grasp. Slowly under that powerful grip the younger man's struggles
ceased, his eyes dilated, his knees yielded and gave way. The revolver
was wrenched from his numbed hold. His eyeballs seemed afire; his
breast heaved in violent spasms for the denied breath; and his heart
appeared about to burst.
"You miserable skunk!" Weir said, barely moving his mouth. "I ought to
choke the life out of you." Then he released his hold. "I'll keep this
gun--and use it if you ever try to pull another on me! Now, make
tracks. Remember, too, to pay your bill as you go out."
When Sorenson had straightened his coat, giving Weir a malignant look
during the process, he departed. His air of disdainful insolence had
quite evaporated, but that he considered the action between them only
begun was plain, though he spoke not a word. Weir, however, heard him
give a quieting explanation to the waiter hovering outside, who had
been drawn by the crash of dishes.
"Thought a fight was going on," the aproned dispenser of food said to
Steele when he and the girl emerged.
"Just an accident. Nothing broken, I imagine," was the response.
"You couldn't break those dishes with a hammer; they're made for rough
work."
"If there's any damage, this may cover it." And Steele tossed the
fellow a dollar.
Outside the restaurant he slipped his hand inside Mary Johnson's arm
and led her along the street. With him he had brought the old strapped
grip.
"Where you taking me?" she asked, in a worried quaver.
"Home, Mary."
"Oh, I'm afraid to go home."
"Are you afraid of your own father and mother? They're the ones to
trust first of all."
"But when father--mother is dead--sees the telescope, he'll want to
know where I've been. He doesn't know I have it. I told him I might
stay with a girl at San Mateo over night, and then sneaked it out."
"The best thing is to tell him all about this occurrence."
"Oh, I can't."
"Then I shall. Leave that part to me."
And though her heart was filled with fresh alarms and fears at the
prospect, there seemed nothing else to do. She longed to flee, to hide
in some dark hole, to cover her shame from her father and the world,
but in the hands of this determined man she felt herself powerless.
What he willed, she dumbly did.
Terry Creek flowed out of the mountains four miles north of San Mateo,
an insignificant stream entering the Burntwood halfway down to
Bowenville. The Johnson ranch house was a mile up the canyon, where
the rocky walls expanded into a grassy park of no great area. They
reached the girl's home about half-past nine that night.
For two hours Weir remained talking with the father, describing the
affair at Bowenville, fending off his first bitter anger at the girl
and gradually persuading him to see that Mary had been deceived, lured
away on hollow promises and was guiltless of all except failing to
take him into her confidence. At last peace was made. Mary wept for a
time, and was patted on the head by her rough, bearded father, who
exclaimed, "There, there, don't cry. You're safe back again; we'll
just forget it."
Outside of the house, however, where he had accompanied Weir to his
car, he said with an oath:
"But I'll not forget Ed Sorenson, if I go to hell for it. My little
girl!"
"She's half a child yet, that's the worse of his offense," Steele
replied, savagely.
"Mary said you choked him."
"Some. Not enough."
"I'll not forget him--or you, Mr. Weir."
Steele mounted into his machine. He thoughtfully studied the rancher's
bearded, weather-tanned face, illuminated by the moonlight.
"At present I'd say nothing about this matter to any one. Later on you
may be able to use it in squaring accounts," the engineer advised.
"I hope so," was the answer, with a bitter note. "But talking would
only hurt Mary, not Ed Sorenson. Whatever the Sorensons do is all
right, you know, because they're rich. The daughter of a poor man like
me would get all the black end of the gossip; and I can't lift a
finger, that's what grinds me, unless I go out and shoot him, then
hang for it. For the bank's got a mortgage on my little bunch of
stock, and on my ranch here, and Sorenson, of course, is the bank.
Gordon and Vorse and a few others are in it too, but he's the bull of
the herd. If I opened my mouth about his son, I'd be kicked off of
Terry Creek, lock, stock and barrel. That's the way Sorenson keeps all
of us poor devils, white and Mexican, eating out of his hand. I've
just been poor since I came here a boy; the gang in San Mateo won't
let anybody but themselves have a chance. And I reckon old man
Sorenson wouldn't care much if his boy had ruined my girl. Cuss him a
little, maybe; that would be all. But I won't forget the whelp. Some
day my chance will come to play even." "Sure; if one just keeps quiet
and waits," Steele agreed. "Well, I must hit the trail. If you want
work any time, come over to the dam; we can always use a man with a
team." Johnson nodded. "After haying is done, maybe. And remember, I'm
much obliged to you for looking after my little girl. I won't forget
that, either." He reached up diffidently and shook hands with the
engineer. Weir's grip was sympathetic and sincere.
CHAPTER IV
A SECRET CONFERENCE
On a certain afternoon Felipe Martinez, the lean and restless attorney
who had acted as the Mexican workmen's mouthpiece, observed through
the broad plate-glass window of the San Mateo Cattle Company's office
an incident that greatly interested him. For the moment he forgot the
resentment kindled by Sorenson's abrupt refusal and brutal words when
he asked for the nomination for county attorney. The election was in
the autumn; the nomination was equivalent to election; and Felipe
considered that he had too long been kept apart from that particular
spoil.
Martinez had once had a slight difference with the banker, and now
outrageously Sorenson had recalled it. He had stated that Martinez
should hold no political office; he gave offices only to men who did
exactly as he advised; his exact words were that the Mexican was
"tricky and no good." And picking up his hat Sorenson who had that day
returned home from the east went out of the bank, leaving Martinez to
stare out of the window and meditatively twist a point of his silky
black mustache.
It was before the window that there occurred the meeting between
Sorenson and the manager of the dam. Martinez perceived the two men
glance at each other and pass, but after a step or two both men
halted. As if worked by a single wire, they slowly swung about for a
second look. The Mexican's nimble brain calculated that they could not
have previously met and in consequence their behavior bespoke
something out of the ordinary.
The pair stood exactly where they had turned, three or four paces
apart, he noted. The Mexican's mind palpitated with a slight thrill of
excitement. The manner of each of the men was that of a fighting
animal looking over another animal of the same sort: neither uttering
a word, nor stirring a finger, nor yielding a particle in his fixed
unwinking gaze. Martinez could almost feel the exchanged challenge,
the cold antagonism, the hostile curiosity, the matching of wills, the
instant hate, between the men.
Though they had not met before, to be sure, nevertheless they were
enemies. Was it because of the discharge of the workmen? Then
Martinez' mind flashed back to the scene in Vorse's saloon when Gordon
had showed such sudden emotion at the engineer's name and his
enigmatical reference to some event in the past. That was it!
Something which had occurred thirty years ago, probably something
crooked. Men committed deeds in those early days that they would now
like to forget. He, Martinez, would look into the matter.
Sorenson passed out of sight, and Weir likewise proceeded on his way.
Thereupon the lawyer sauntered over to the court house, where
presently he became engrossed in a pile of tomes in the register's
office. As examining records is a part of a lawyer's regular work, it
never excites curiosity or arouses suspicion.
That same evening Martinez perceived Vorse enter Sorenson's office.
Vorse, he recalled, had been included in the engineer's threatening
remarks to Gordon. Shortly thereafter Gordon himself ambled along the
street and passed through the door. Last of all, Burkhardt, a short,
fleshy, bearded man, went into the building. The vultures of San
Mateo, as he secretly called them, had flocked together for
conference. Presently Martinez strolled by the office, outwardly
displaying no interest in the structure but furtively seeking to catch
a glimpse of the interior through a crack of the drawn shade. But in
this he was unsuccessful.
Of one thing he was certain, however. His prolonged examination of the
county records had revealed an old bill of sale of a ranch and several
herds of cattle from one Joseph Weir to Sorenson, Vorse, Gordon and
Burkhardt. He had placed his finger on the link connecting the
engineer with these men, the entire four, as this old bill of sale
thus recorded showed the intimate though unexpressed partnership of
the men, which was common knowledge over the country; and intuition
told him also that this private assembly of the quartette quickly on
Sorenson's return home had its inspiration in the new manager of the
dam.
Martinez determined to continue his investigations. Events might yet
prove that it would have been much better for the cattleman to have
given him the political nomination. Truly, it was possible. In any
case, it would do no harm to have "something on" Sorenson and the
others, these rulers of San Mateo. And there was the opposite side of
the affair--Weir's side; so it looked as if there might be profit
either way.
* * * * *
The four men sitting in the railed-off space in the San Mateo Cattle
Company's office constituted the cattle company. Moreover, they
comprised the financial, political and general power of this remote
section of New Mexico. In face, manner, garb, they were dissimilar.
Vorse, clothed in gray, was hawk-nosed and impassive; and though now,
like his companions, wealthy beyond simple needs he nevertheless
continued the operation of his saloon that had been a landmark in San
Mateo for forty years. Burkhardt was rough-featured, rough-tongued,
choleric, and coatless: typically the burly, uncurried, uncouth
stock man, whose commonest words were oaths or curses and whose way
with obstinate cattle or men was the way of the club or the fist.
Gordon was the wily, cautious, unscrupulous politician; he had
represented San Mateo in the legislature for years, both during
the Territorial period and since New Mexico had become a state, and
was not unknown in other parts of the southwest; but he was "Judge"
only by courtesy, the title most frequently given him, never having
been admitted to the bar or having practiced, and engaged himself
ostensibly in the insurance and real estate business. Like the
others, his share of the large cattle, sheep and land holdings of
the group made him independent. Sorenson, the last of the four and
in reality the leader because of a greater breadth of vision and a
natural capacity for business, was dressed in a tailored suit of
greenish plaid--a man with bushy eyebrows, a long fleshy nose,
predatory eyes, a heavy cat-fish mouth and a great, barrel-like body
that reared two or three inches over six feet when he stood on his
feet. But one thing they had in common, in addition to the gray hair
of age, and that was a joint liability for the past. For years they
had believed that liability extinguished through the operation of
time. They had considered as closed and sealed the account of early
secret, lawless acts by which they had acquired wealth and a grip on
the community. They were now law-observing members of society; they
controlled even if they sometimes failed to possess the goodwill
of the county--and they were not men to measure position by
friendships; their councils determined how much or how little other
men should own and in local politics their fingers moved the puppets
that served their will.
With the entrance here of the powerful group of financiers who were
constructing the irrigation project they recognized the threat to
their old-time supremacy. Cattle and sheep interests would succumb to
farming; a swarm of new, independent settlers would arrive like
locusts; and their leadership would eventually be challenged if not
ended. New towns would spring up. New money would flow in to dispute
their financial mastery. New leaders would arise to assail their
political dominion. And against the prospect of all this they had
initiated a secret warfare, endeavoring by stealth to ruin the
irrigation company at the beginning and nip the danger in the bud.
Now it had been revealed all at once that they had not only a
general and impersonal enemy in the form of the company, but a
specific one in the form of a man, its manager. Out of nowhere he
had emerged, out of thirty years' silence, a sinister figure who
tapped with significant finger the book of their secret past while
his eyes steadfastly demanded a reckoning. Did he know all, or
nothing? Knowing, did he deliberately leave them in doubt in order
to shatter their confidence?
At least one of the four had been badly shaken on learning Weir's
identity, and all now were uneasy. It was as if Fate after a long
silence was about to open the sealed record.
"Perhaps you were just imagining things, Judge," Sorenson was saying.
Senator Gordon moistened his lips and tugged nervously at his gray
mustache.
"No, no," he exclaimed. "Just ask Vorse. The man said his name was
Weir and that he was the son of Joe Weir. Then--then----"
"Well?" Sorenson demanded, frowning at the other's visible trepidation.
"Weir added, 'And I know what happened thirty years ago in this
selfsame room.' Those were his very words. Isn't that true, Vorse?"
"Yes."
"They could mean only one thing," said Gordon.
"When the Judge went out he said to me," Vorse stated, "'That was for
you too.' I had my hand on my gun under the counter as he said it,
ready if he made a move. He knew what I had there, but it didn't faze
him. He's a better man than Joe Weir ever was, I want to remark, and
different; he has nerve and a bad eye. He knows something, lay your
bets on that."
"How much? How much? If we only knew how much!" Judge Gordon
vouchsafed, testily.
"How would he know anything? Joe Weir didn't know, so how can this
fellow know? Don't get scared at a shadow." It was the bearded,
rough-tongued Burkhardt who spoke, concluding his words with a
blasphemous oath.
"There's the Mexican who saw what happened--and that boy who looked in
at the back door," Gordon asserted. "We just caught sight of him and
couldn't make out his face against the light. Then he had skipped when
we ran there. We never did learn who he was."
"Do you think he remembers?" Sorenson said, scornfully. "He may be
dead. He may be on the other side of the world. Just some kid who
happened to drift by at the minute and look in, and there's not one
chance in a million he's anywhere around these parts yet. He would
have blabbed long ago to some one if he had been; don't figure him in,
he's lost."
"Saurez isn't, though."
At this Vorse put in a word.
"He saw more than one killing in those days when he was roustabout for
me. It was only one more to him. Probably he has forgotten it.
Anyway," Vorse ended with deadly emphasis, "he knows what would happen
to him even now if he remembered it and talked. Leave him out of the
calculation too."
"Then that just makes the four of us," said Burkhardt. "Nobody else.
So this fellow Weir doesn't know a thing."
"But we can't be absolutely sure," Judge Gordon replied.
"Well, he'd need proof, wouldn't he?"
"Certainly, to bring legal action. But how do we know he hasn't even
that? Look all around the question as a lawyer does; let us assume the
millionth chance, for instance. Suppose that he somewhere met and
became acquainted with that boy. Suppose that he learned the latter
had been here at the time and saw the shooting; and heard his story.
Suppose that Weir knows this instant where he is and can produce him
as a witness in court."
"I reckon in this county his testimony wouldn't count for much,"
Burkhardt, who had been sheriff, stated, with a harsh laugh.
Sorenson, however, was impressed by the Judge's reasoning, for he
drummed with fingers on the desk and sat in brooding silence. So
likewise sat Vorse, who had heard Weir's utterance and beheld his
face.
"He knows something," he repeated, in a convinced tone. "Or he's a
damned good bluffer."
"I passed him here at the door this afternoon," the banker remarked.
"I turned to look at him, guessing who he was, and he had stopped and
was looking at me. Cool about it too. We'll have to watch him."
"Perhaps if we just tip him off to keep his mouth shut tight, that
will be enough," Burkhardt suggested. "If he knows the four of us are
ready----"
Vorse sniffed.
"You think he can be bluffed?" he said. "You haven't seen him yet; go
take a look. We'll not throw any scare into him. If he were that kind,
he wouldn't have told us who he is. He wanted us to know he's after
us, that's my opinion. He wants to shake our nerve--and he shook the
Judge's all right that day at my bar."
"He did," Gordon admitted. "The thing was so infernally unexpected.
Almost like Joe Weir himself appearing. I didn't sleep a wink that
night, what with my heart being bad and what with seeing him."
"Suppose he _has_ proofs?" Vorse asked after a pause, while his
narrowed eyes moved from one to another of his companions.
A considerable silence followed. The question jerked into full light
the issue that had all the while been lurking in the recesses of their
minds--an issue full of ghastly possibilities. Judge Gordon's fingers
trembled as he wiped with handkerchief the cold sweat on his brow.
"We're all in it," Vorse added.
Burkhardt brought his fist down on the desk with a sudden crash.
"If he has proofs, then it's him or us," he exclaimed, while the
blood suffused his face. "Him or us--and that means him! I'll never go
behind bars!"
"Sure not. None of us," Vorse said.
"It will mean----" Judge Gordon began in an agitated voice, but did
not finish.
Sorenson gave a nod of his head. His bear-trap mouth was compressed in
a determined evil line.
"Exactly. He'll never use his proofs. We're in too far to halt now if
matters come to the point of his trying to use them. He has a grip on
us in one way; he knows we can't declare his father, Joe Weir, did the
killing; that would make us--what do you call it, Judge?"
"Accomplices after the fact. Besides, it would then come out that we
had taken over and shared among us his stuff, fifty thousand apiece.
It's a deplorable situation we're in, gentlemen, deplorable. If we
were but able to start the story Joe Weir believed and fled because
of, it would cut the ground out from under this man's feet at once."
"It's him we'll cut, not the ground under him," Burkhardt growled,
thrusting his hairy chin forward towards the lawyer. "And cut his
damned throat."
"I hate to think of our being forced to--to homicide. Even justifiable
homicide."
"Homicide nothing! It's just killing a rattlesnake waiting in the
brush to strike. That's the way we used to do in the old days, and if
he's going to bring them back that's what we'll do again."
Sorenson smiled grimly.
"We'll wait till we're sure he has the proofs, then----"
"Then we'll act quick and sure," Vorse shot out.
"And quietly," the cattleman added. "We'll take no more chances this
time. It will be arranged carefully beforehand; all four of us will be
in it, of course,--equal responsibility; and there'll be no
witnesses."
Judge Gordon's face wore a pallid, sickish look.
"I hope to God there's some other way out of it," he muttered.
"So do all of us," Burkhardt snarled. "But if there isn't, it means
guns. For you, too, along with the rest of us."
Sorenson leaned forward and gazed from under his heavy brows,
compelling Gordon to meet his fixed look.
"You were keen enough at the time for your share of Joe Weir's stuff,"
he said. "So you'll play the hand out to the end now, the bad cards as
well as the good. You're no better than the rest of us, and it was you
who hatched the scheme for cleaning him up and who put over the
story."
"I know, I know. But--but this would be too much like cold-blooded
murder."
"Murder!" Sorenson grated. "Did you look straight into this fellow
Weir's eyes? Didn't you see something there that resembled murder?
He'd like only the chance to kill us one by one with his own hands: I
saw that much. Just as Burkhardt said, it's him or us. After you told
me about him, I had only to take one look. If he has the goods on
us--well, he'll have to die. Make up your mind to that. We're back to
the time of thirty years ago and fighting for our lives. We were not
only all in on the Weir job, but the Dent killing--all of us. Remember
that. If the facts become known, we'll be run into some other county
and court and hanged. And every enemy we've made in these years past
will put up his head and clamor for our blood. Let that sink into your
mind."
The effect of this low fierce utterance was to hammer the truth home.
The Judge was ashen. Vorse's face appeared like an evil mask.
Burkhardt glowered savagely.
At that instant there sounded the faint report of a shot in the
street. Then as the group sat unmoving, rigid, keyed to the highest
pitch of expectancy, there followed quickly two more shots.
Afterwards, silence.
"A gun-play!" issued from Vorse's lips, softly.
They all sprang up to hasten to the door.
CHAPTER V
A SHOT IN THE DARK
Steele Weir driving his car down the street in the dusk had caught
sight of Felipe Martinez standing near the cattle company's office. He
stopped close by, beckoned. Martinez would do as well as another.
"You're a notary, I suppose?" he questioned.
"Yes, Mr. Weir. Most of us lawyers here are," he replied politely,
when he had advanced.
"I've some papers I want acknowledged to-night. Must get them into the
mail going down to Bowenville in the morning."
"Only too pleased to facilitate your business, Mr. Weir. My office is
down a few doors."
"Jump in."
"It's but a few steps."
"Then I'll get out here." And the engineer stopped the engine and
descended to the ground.
Along the street open doorways and windows were already beginning to
make yellow panels of lamplight in the thin gloom. The air was still
warm, balmy, scented by the lingering aroma of the greasewood smoke of
supper fires in Mexican ovens. Stars were jeweling the sky. Few
persons moved in the twilight.
One of these was a man who, standing at the door of a native saloon
across the street and a little farther up, had come diagonally over
towards the bank on seeing the engineer halt his car. He walked with a
slouching haste seldom exhibited by a Mexican and gained the spot as
Weir stepped out. There he slackened his pace while he scanned the
American with an intense, slow gaze that the engineer, chancing to
raise his eyes, squarely met.
The Mexicans always looked at him and fell silent when he passed since
he had shown who was master at the dam. In the eyes of some was merely
stupid curiosity, in some a shrinking, and in many a half-veiled
hostility. That did not trouble Weir. In Mexico he had dealt with
recalcitrant workmen of more lawless nature than these. He usually
ignored them altogether now as they no longer were in his employ. But
this man seized his attention.
It was not yet too dark to mark his face as he lounged past, slowly
turning his head about as he progressed until his chin was on his
shoulder, staring back. His look the while remained riveted on Weir--a
steady, contemplative, evil regard. In Chihuahua the engineer had once
seen a notorious local "killer" who had that same gaze.
Martinez had also glanced at the fellow.
"Who is that man? One of the discharged workmen?" Weir asked him, when
moving forward they in turn had passed the Mexican.
"No, I imagine not. At any rate, he doesn't belong in San Mateo or
anywhere hereabouts. I know everybody for fifty miles, for I've been
active in social and political affairs. He's unknown to me. A
stranger." Then a little farther along: "Here is my office, Mr. Weir.
I'll have a light in an instant. Ah, now. Be so good as to have a
chair and we'll expedite your business."
As Martinez filled out the acknowledgment blanks on the papers, his
eyes furtively skipped over the vital portions of the documents. The
latter were connected with company business. He had hoped they would
be personal so that he might learn something more of this manager's
affairs, possibly more of his secret antagonism for Sorenson and his
friends. Any intrigue appealed to the thin, slippery lawyer's soul,
but most of all some one's else intrigue into which he might
profitably put a finger. However, from these papers he was to learn
nothing.
He had considered all possibilities of the affair, all possible
solutions of what long ago might have occurred between Joseph Weir,
undoubtedly the father of the man sitting across the table from him,
and the four men now conferring in Sorenson's office. This was no
petty squabble, he divined. There was something going on under the
surface that was big--big! And very dangerous too, for the spirit of
that moment in Vorse's bar was not to be mistaken; it had been tense,
electric. Utmost caution on Martinez's part would therefore be
necessary.
As between the two parties, his sympathies at present inclined towards
Weir. The refusal on the latter's part to reëmploy the Mexican workmen
on their own terms was purely a matter of policy, and the lawyer's
first gusty anger had long been forgotten. But not so Sorenson's
sneering words of that afternoon. They struck to the heart of his
vanity, breeding an animosity that would last. Had not the banker
stated that the lawyer should hold no political office whatever? After
all his services? Had he not definitely shown that Martinez might
never expect anything there? Well, the lawyer wasn't one tamely to
yield his rights; he did not propose always to remain a scrimping,
pettifogging attorney, existing on crumbs.
When with a flourish he had appended his name to the acknowledgments
and affixed his seal, he sat back thoughtfully studying the engineer,
who was carefully examining the paragraphs for errors. He knew his
business, did Martinez; the man would find no mistakes. Then the
lawyer's eyes suddenly glistened. He arose and closed the door as Weir
thrust the documents into a stout linen envelope, addressed and
stamped.
"I'll be pleased to see your letter goes in the mail in the morning,"
he said, returning to his place. "The stage leaves at eight-thirty."
"Post-office is closed now, I suppose. Very well. It will be an
accommodation," the engineer responded.
Martinez leaned forward.
"If you can spare the time, I should like to have a little talk with
you," said he. "Pardon me if I appear presumptuous, but as you're
aware, Mr. Weir, I overheard your words to Judge Gordon in Vorse's
saloon. I inferred--check me at any instant if you consider this none
of my business!--that there exists some unpleasant feeling between you
two gentlemen and possibly others. Judge Gordon has always handled the
company's business in his private capacity of counselor. As you know,
he's a silent partner in many enterprises with Sorenson, Vorse and a
man named Burkhardt. They run this town and county. You should also
know that they're secretly opposed to your irrigation project,
whatever they profess. They've misled the people into believing it
will work an injury to this district, whereas it will of course be
beneficial. Unfortunately too they lead the people by the noses--but
not me! I refuse to be subservient."
He paused to note the effect of his words.
"Now, Mr. Weir, these are facts you can confirm if you're not already
informed of them, which I imagine you are. Because I'm independent in
my opinions and actions, I stand in disfavor with these gentlemen,
which may or may not be an objection in your view to what I have in
mind. And this is it. I should be pleased to execute any legal work
that you care to give me; it might be of advantage to your company at
times to have an attorney other than Judge Gordon, who is aligned
against you and will serve his own interests first. He's in a position
to cause you embarrassment."
"Our eastern attorneys draw all documents."
"Of course. But I was thinking of delays more than anything else.
There are a thousand ways a lawyer can push or halt matters at will,
and your project will never be free of legal red tape until
completed--if then! I'm not unselfish in this, I admit; the business
would be valuable to me. But aside from that, I'll give you this
advice anyway:--secure another lawyer in any case, one without
antagonistic personal interests, if you can find another in San Mateo
besides me. See, I'm frank! That may sound egotistical, but really I'm
the only free man of the lawyers here. And I've paid for my liberty!"
He made a sweeping gesture to indicate his shabby office. "If I had
taken orders, I could have been county attorney and probably a judge.
But I respect myself too much to take orders from Sorenson and his
bunch. I choose this sort of thing in preference."
Steele Weir maintained a non-committal silence. Again the thin
dark-skinned lawyer swiftly weighed the man before him, considered the
dangers in which he might become involved if he went a step farther,
recoiled, then grew bolder. Sorenson had marked him for poverty and
nonentity; under the favoring shelter of the irrigation company's
power he might arise from both. For at moments the acute Mexican
sensed the inevitable victory of the new forces at work; this, one of
the last strong-holds of old time cattle and sheep interests, would
break down and yield to the plow and fence.
"Now, there's something more, though I hesitate to mention it," he
went on, doubtfully. "While Sorenson and his crowd run things, it's
not because the people--and that means us Mexicans chiefly--love them.
We're indolent by nature; we idle rather than work; borrow when we can
rather than earn--I speak of our race, but we're learning that work
proves best in the long run. These men have squeezed my people, and
robbed them, and kept them down. Nothing more would I wish than to see
these leaders deposed. It's no secret they've built their wealth by
questionable methods, but who can prove it?
"Do you know what I suspect? You have something on Sorenson's crowd.
That's why they're uneasy; that's why the four are sitting over in the
cattle company's office this minute with their heads together, meeting
the minute Sorenson arrives home. I saw them go in. Leaving aside the
question of your own affairs, I'd like to have matters changed here in
this county so that every man has a fair chance. Anything that will
bring that about enlists my interest. When I heard your statement to
Gordon and saw his face, I knew there was something in the past that
alarmed him. I recalled a name I had once run across when abstracting
a title----"
It was not this ingenious twisting of the truth that caused the lawyer
to become filled with sudden dismay and stop, but the savage hardening
of the engineer's face.
"Go on," Weir commanded.
"Well, the name was Joseph Weir. I looked it up again to be sure, and
found the property had been deeded to Sorenson and the others, who
still have it. I wondered----"
"What did you wonder?" came with a devouring look.
"If--if Joseph Weir received consideration according to law."
Martinez' courage flowed back again. "I'll make no attempt to justify
my curiosity, sir, except to say that more than one man in the
southwest was done out of property in early days; and the practice has
not ceased, for that matter. But in these days the means is usually
legal and Mexicans the victims. Sharp mortgage dealings and so forth.
Now, if I've said too much, I'll instantly forget all about it. On the
other hand----"
"Well?"
"I might be of assistance. If you wish to look into that old
transaction, that is. If there was anything crooked about the deal,
and I set it down that there was with Sorenson mixed in, and with
Vorse and Burkhardt the witnesses named in the deed and Judge Gordon
taking the acknowledgment of Joseph Weir's signature, as the record
shows, then there should be some weak spot that could be attacked.
There may be men yet alive conversant with the circumstances; they
may know whether duress or fraud was exercised, supposing the sale
was not honest. Some of the old Mexicans may remember Weir, and could
give a clue; they have good memories for things of those days. Of
course, if the transaction was all right, then I'm all wrong in my
suppositions."
Weir arose.
"I can give you some of the company business, perhaps considerable of
it," he said.
Martinez sprang up, an expression of gratitude upon his face. He had
not realized all that he had hoped for, but he was nevertheless
delighted.
"I'm really sincere when I give you a thousand thanks, Mr. Weir," said
he, spreading his arms wide. "I'll not make promises as to the
efficiency of my services; let results speak for themselves."
"I always do," was the comment. "But I'll tell you what I demand in
any one associated with me--absolute trustworthiness first of all,
then loyalty and ability."
"Which leaves nothing," Martinez smiled.
He preceded the engineer and swung the door open, stepping aside. To
the visitor's question regarding fees for the acknowledgments taken,
he waved a declining hand.
"Nothing, nothing. Delighted to render you the service."
"Very well."
"I'll attend to the letter," the lawyer again assured him.
"Come out to the dam in a day or two."
"To-morrow, if you wish."
"To-morrow afternoon will do."
Steele Weir's frame filled the lighted doorway as he stepped forth
from the office. He paused to accustom his eyes to the darkness, for
during his colloquy with the attorney full night had descended. On the
same side of the street with himself and perhaps twelve or fifteen
paces off he saw a girl's figure appear and disappear before a window
as she moved along.
Then suddenly a tongue of red flame darted at him across the street,
where lay a space of unlighted gloom. His hat was whipped off his
head. The sharp report of a shot cracked between the adobe walls. With
an unbelievably rapid movement Steele Weir drew the revolver in his
pocket, and which he had carried ever since his encounter with young
Sorenson in the restaurant, fired twice where he had seen the flame
and leaped aside into the darkness beside the doorway. There he
waited, half crouching, for a further attack.
But none came. Men began to run towards the place. Shouts and calls
echoed along the street. In two minutes a crowd was surging before
Martinez' door wildly asking questions.
Weir pocketed his pistol and walked back into the office, where he
found his bullet-pierced hat lying on the floor and the attorney
standing frozen with astonishment. A stream of people followed at his
heels.
"Who did this shooting? Do you know, Felipe?" a tall raw-boned white
man who led them asked hastily.
"This gentleman, Mr. Weir, was fired on, sheriff," Martinez burst out
volubly.
"And I fired in return," the engineer stated. "The fellow was across
the street in the dark. You might look over there."
Turning and pushing his way through the packed door, the sheriff
disappeared. The crowd melted away again. Presently as Weir glanced
about he saw a new figure at the doorway, staring at him. He went
towards the girl there outlined in the lamplight.
"Was that you I saw moving along just before the exchange of
compliments, Miss Hosmer?" he asked.
"Yes. I was coming towards you on my way home."
"It probably gave you a fright."
"It did, indeed. I heard the shot and saw your hat knocked off. I just
went cold in my tracks. At first I believed you killed."
"I'm very much alive, as you see."
"But it was dreadful! Who would fire at you from the dark? Some one
tried to murder you!"
"It looks like it. Still here I am, ready to move your car out of the
water next time it's stalled."
She entered the room slowly.
"Who in San Mateo would do such a terrible thing, Mr. Martinez?" she
addressed the lawyer. The pallor was still on her face and her eyes
were large with horror.
"Ah, Miss Janet, if we but knew! We'd lay hands on him and send him to
the penitentiary."
Real emotion struggled in the lawyer's words. With the return of his
senses he had just begun to realize by what a narrow margin the
assassin's bullet had missed destroying his future client and
prospects.
A growing murmur across the street attracted their attention. Then as
they continued to chat of the event, the sheriff reappeared, directing
half a dozen men who laid a burden in the light of Martinez' doorway.
"You got him," he said to Weir, with ominous significance. "One bullet
through the head, one through his stomach. He's good and dead."
Weir walked forward and inspected that outstretched figure. It was the
man whose gaze had been so malevolently fastened upon him as he joined
Martinez before Sorenson's office.
"Who is he?" he asked.
"A strange Mexican. Some of these men say he showed up this morning
and hung around the saloons, not talking much. Haven't you ever seen
him, before?" The question expressed a perplexed curiosity.
"Once. When Martinez and I were coming here to transact some business.
He was taking a good look at me then when he passed us. That wasn't
over half an hour ago. Never saw him before that."
"He shot at you first?"
"I had just stepped out of this room. Could I see him hiding over
there? Or know he was there?" Then he added, "I was taken by surprise,
but I marked the flash of his gun."
The sheriff, Madden by name, looked at Weir appreciatively.
"You can use a gun yourself," said he, briefly.
Martinez now repeated the fact of the dead man having fired the first
shot, which Janet Hosmer confirmed.
"Well, is there anything more?" Weir questioned.
"Not to-night, I reckon," Madden replied. "We'll have an inquest in
the morning; show up then. Where will I find your father, Miss
Hosmer?"
"At home." Then to the engineer she explained, "Father acts in the
absence of the coroner, who's away just now."
"I'm very sorry this happened on your account," said he.
"And I'm very glad you were not hurt."
Outside the corpse was being borne away, followed by the curious, avid
crowd of Mexicans.
"You're still shaken by the thing," said Steele Weir. "It's enough to
upset any girl. Let me walk home with you, or you may be starting at
shadows all the way."
CHAPTER VI
JANET HOSMER
A silvery brightness shone in the east as they came out of Martinez'
office, that increased as they went forward until all at once the moon
arose into view, lighting the street, disclosing the flanking lines of
squat buildings, revealing the tall cottonwoods about the court house
and elsewhere thrust up in the town.
Janet Hosmer breathed a sigh of relief. The darkness had seemed potent
for further evil, but now it was as if the latter retreated with the
shadows. She felt a desire to go on alone, to separate herself from
this companion with whom chance had brought her in contact at a
dramatic moment, to get away from the whole terrible affair.
Involuntarily her spirit shrank at the nearness of the man, for though
he had struck back in self-defense he nevertheless had killed another
and the act somehow appeared to set him apart from ordinary men,
isolate him, give him the character of an Ishmael.
Yet her feelings were confused. Against this inclination was an avid
curiosity, or rather a wonderment, as to what must now be occurring in
his soul. Her eyes sought his face as he walked beside her. Neither
had spoken; and his countenance wore the same stern contained aspect,
calm, forceful, as the first time she had ever observed it. But what
was below the surface? What were the thoughts now revolving in his
mind and the emotions flowing in his breast? She could read nothing
on that composed mask of a face. Was it possible for a man to slay
another human being, even justifiably, without suffering a hurricane
of the spirit?
But perhaps he had killed men before. The fact of his carrying a
weapon and his swift deadly fire pointed ominously to previous
experience.
"Did you ever shoot any one before?" popped from between her lips.
Then she stopped, clapping her hand over her mouth in consternation
and staring at him palely.
Weir had halted too. He regarded her in silence for a little, a slight
smile resting on his face. They stood before the cattle company's
office and his look went past her once to embrace the small darkened
building.
"I'm not a murderer by trade, if that's what you mean," said he, at
last. "But I've killed a man or two before, yes." Then at the white
anguish of her lips and cheeks, his tone softened a degree as he went
on. "Unfortunately since becoming of age I've had to fight. If not
men, then the earth. If not the earth, then men. Sometimes both
together. You saw what happened to-night; that fellow was unknown to
me. He was not a workman who had been discharged and felt he had a
grievance----"
"Oh, no!" she interjected. "The Mexicans here wouldn't attempt to
murder you, however angry they might feel."
"I'm not so sure of that," he answered.
"But I am; I know them, I've lived among them!"
"Well, let that go. The man tried to kill me, at any rate. However, he
was merely a tool, hired for the business by some one else. Ordinarily
I don't discuss my affairs with any one, but since you've raised the
matter I'll just say that I've enemies in San Mateo who are anxious
to dispose of me."
"Such enemies here!"
"Yes. Who would be delighted to see me lie where that dead man lies
and who are apparently determined to effect it." He touched her sleeve
warningly. "But you will speak of this to no one."
"No, oh, no! Not a word!"
Steele gazed at her steadily. He already repented disclosing even so
little of his private concerns, an impulse altogether at variance with
his close-mouthed habit, but he had, for some vague reason, felt it
necessary to explain his course, to justify himself to this
clear-eyed, fine-spirited girl. He could not let her rest under a
misapprehension that he was a brute who reveled in blood-spilling. And
as he regarded her a conviction that she was absolutely to be trusted
settled firmly into his mind.
She would be staunch; oxen and ropes could not drag information from
her once she had determined not to speak. Yes, she would be loyal to
her given word--and to her friends. Weir's eyes glanced at the diamond
on her finger. It would be a girl like her with whom he would have
chosen to mate if fate had not directed his feet on a road which
seemingly left him no choice but incessant and solitary struggle.
"I hate it all; I have nothing but crusts and nettles!" he exclaimed,
with sudden fierce passion. And with a quick movement of his hand he
beckoned her on.
Submissively she accompanied him, her bosom rising and falling with a
quickened rhythm. Too much had happened, one thing piling on another,
for her to sort her thoughts or to attempt to understand things yet;
and in her tossing state of mind she went at his gesture as one
follows a guide, or as a simple matter of course.
In her mental turmoil that last passionate utterance of the man played
like a lambent flame. Tense, violent, spontaneous, it had come from
the heart. What harsh lot he had lived and sufferings borne she could
not even guess; but no man spoke with such unconscious bitterness who
had not undergone pain and travail of spirit. His head was now turned
a little towards her as they walked: she perceived him staring at the
moonlit street, his lips compressed, his brows knit.
Then he glanced about at her, his face clearing. "Pay no attention to
what I said," he remarked. "I shouldn't have let loose that way.
Hello, what's on now?"
Before them, and in front of the court house, was a packed crowd,
people who had run forth at the sound of shots, augmented by those who
had since arrived upon the scene. It was motionless.
"Stand back, stand back; don't trample the body!" came Sheriff
Madden's voice in an angry order.
The crowd surged a little apart in the center.
"How do you know this dead man fired the first shot?" asked some one,
vehemently.
The voices went lower so that Steele Weir and Janet Hosmer, who had
paused at the edge of the throng, were able only to catch the tones.
"Who was that who questioned the sheriff?" Weir whispered.
"Mr. Burkhardt, I think. Sounded like him."
So intent were the Mexicans upon the occurrence in their midst that
those close by remained with backs towards the pair, failing to
notice their presence. All craned eagerly to miss nothing of the
controversy.
"How do you know this engineer didn't start it?" came Burkhardt's
voice again.
"Don't be a fool; there were witnesses."
"I'd like to talk to those witnesses. I doubt if they really saw
anything. It looks to me as if there's another side to this
shooting."
"Well, of course you know--you, sitting there in Sorenson's office, as
you say," was the ironical retort.
At this juncture another voice interposed.
"Madden, we want no mistake here. This Weir doesn't bear a very good
reputation for peacefulness, from what I've learned. If this Mexican
has simply been shot down----"
"Who is that?" Steele demanded of the girl. "I can't see him."
"That"--Janet Hosmer's speech faltered--"that is Mr. Sorenson. Oh,
they misunderstand! Let me push in there and tell them how it
happened."
The engineer's hand closed about her arm.
"You'll do nothing of the kind," he commanded, low.
"But----"
"No. Remain quiet and listen."
Her eyes flew up to his at this extraordinary course, so injurious to
his own interests. She was anxious to press to the front and declare
his innocence in the affair of everything but defending his life from
an assassin. She could not understand why he also was not eager to
spring forward, why he restrained her. Then she saw the implacable
hatred on his face.
A thrill quivered through her body. The feeling she had at that
instant was one of being on the point of seeing behind the curtain of
a mystery, of making a discovery so sinister that she would gasp. Her
very finger almost rested upon it. Why were Mr. Sorenson and Mr.
Burkhardt talking as they were? Trying by innuendo to make it seem her
companion might have been guilty of a crime? Could it be---- Her blood
slowly congealed to ice at the horror of where her reasoning led.
_Could it be they were the enemies he meant!_
Such a thing was too dreadful, too absurd. They, the respected leaders
of the community, could never put a pistol in the dead wretch's hand
to slay this man beside her. Mr. Sorenson! The father of Ed, whom----
She stared blankly at her left hand.
Yet the banker's heavy, smooth words continued to assail her ears
steadily. She grasped their import once more.
"--for the story is too thin. No man could hit another across the
street in the dark as this engineer claims, not only once but twice
put a bullet where it would kill. Probably the dead man had something
on this Weir, and the latter knew it. It's not impossible he found the
fellow in his path, drew and murdered him at once, quickly put a hole
in his own hat and then carried the body across the way, running back
to Martinez' office. The thing could have been done in a minute.
Martinez' himself wouldn't have seen how it was worked. I'm not saying
that was exactly how it was done, or that this Weir did actually
murder him, but--investigate, Madden, investigate."
Steele Weir felt an angry tug at his sleeve. He looked around and
beheld Janet Hosmer's eyes distended with incredulity.
"Come away, come away," she whispered. "I should never have believed
it if I hadn't heard with my own ears!"
Keeping close to the line of buildings, they skirted the crowd, still
unnoticed, and left it behind. She walked with quick nervous steps;
her hand yet unconsciously grasped his coat sleeve. All the way to her
home, which they found dark since a messenger had called the doctor to
the court house and the Mexican girl servant also was gone, she said
nothing.
"Come up on the veranda; I want to talk," she announced when he opened
the gate.
"Wouldn't it be best if you took your mind off the whole thing, by a
book or something else? I'll go."
"As if I could take my mind off! There are matters in this I must
know. You may wonder when I say it, Mr. Weir, but this happening
concerns me more than you dream." Her dark glowing gaze brooded on him
with a sort of intense determination. Then she went on, "It--it
involves my whole future as well as your own, though in a different
way. So come inside, if you please."
Weir in silence accompanied her upon the dark, broad, vine-clad porch.
In the half-gloom he found chairs for them.
"I'm going to the point at once," she declared. "Why did Mr. Sorenson
talk in such a fashion?" And he could feel her bending forward as if
hanging on his answer.
"That's the one thing I can't discuss," said he.
"I must know, I must know."
"And unhappily I must refuse."
"Oh, Mr. Weir, if you could but understand what this involves for me,
you wouldn't hesitate! I was shocked at the shooting, but I saw its
necessity on your part; you're not one to run from a foe, a cowardly
foe least of all. But what I heard there in the street horrified me. I
couldn't believe it; I can scarcely credit my ears yet. Mr. Sorenson
and Mr. Burkhardt were not near when you were attacked; they are not
acquainted with the circumstances or facts as you, Mr. Martinez and I
know them; they apparently didn't appear until the crowd started away
with the dead man. Yet at once----"
"Ay, at once," Steele Weir let slip.
"At once, immediately, when they had barely heard the story, they
began to tear it to pieces and suggest another, making you out a
villain. You're only an acquaintance, sir, scarcely more than a
stranger, but as I listened it outraged all my sense of justice. Mr.
Sorenson, of all men! My brain was in a whirl. But it's steady now."
The engineer failed to open his lips at her pause.
"I'm no fool, Mr. Weir; I think of other things besides dressing my
hair and using a powder puff. I can sometimes put two and two
together--when I see the 'twos' clearly. Now, tell me why Mr. Sorenson
talked as he did, for I must have my eyes clear."
"Ask me anything but that, Miss Hosmer."
He sat distressed and uneasy at her prolonged muteness. Suddenly she
questioned quietly:
"Are those two men the enemies you spoke of?"
"It will save me embarrassment if I go," he remarked, starting to
rise. "I don't want you to hate me, you know, and still I can't say
anything."
Her grasp pulled him imperatively back.
"You shall not go yet."
"Then I can only continue to decline making answers. I frankly say
that I regret having uttered a word of explanation."
"I don't regret it. And I intend to keep questioning you, however rude
you may think me. I must know," she cried impetuously, "and I shall
know! Mr. Sorenson is one of the men you referred to, or he would
never seek to direct suspicion at you. I saw the look on your face,
sir, as he spoke. But why should you two be enemies! You come here a
stranger to San Mateo, or have you been here before sometime? Did you
know him before?"
Again he could feel her eyes straining at him.
"It seems mad to think of him and Mr. Burkhardt, and perhaps others,
hiring some one to shoot you down from a dark doorway. It is utterly
mad--crazy. But why should they want to convict you, in the crowd's
opinion at least, of murdering the man. It would not be just trouble
about the dam--oh, no. But I can't see through it at all. Why won't
you tell me? You can trust me--and I want to help you as well as help
myself. You certainly don't hold against me my silly nonsense and
unkind words of the day you brought me home from the ford."
"I didn't think them silly; they delighted me," he responded. "I
hadn't had anything happen to me so refreshing in years."
"We must be friends. Something tells me they're going to make you
trouble over this shooting, and you'll need friends."
"Something tells me you're right in both respects," he laughed.
"And friends must stick together."
"That's what they should do."
In the dusk of the vine-clad, flower-scented place where they sat he
experienced the subtle power of this intimacy. Not a soul stirred in
the empty moonlit street before the house. No sounds disturbed the
warm peace of the night. In this secluded spot only there ran the
murmur of their voices.
"I could never stand by and see any man unjustly accused and defamed
if I knew he was innocent, without lifting up my word in defense," she
proceeded. "But let me ask if on your side you're treating me
fairly?"
Weir could have groaned.
"You have a noble spirit, Miss Hosmer. You're more courageous and kind
than any girl I've ever known. Would you have me reveal what my best
judgment tells me should remain untold?"
"But what of me? Would you keep it to yourself if my future happiness
might turn on it?"
The appeal in her words shook Steele's heart.
"How does this business affect your happiness? How?" he asked, in
perplexity.
Now it was her turn to hesitate. Why should she pause, indeed, before
telling to this man what every one else knew. Yet hesitate she did,
from a feeling she could but partly analyze. Of her fiancé she had
already had disturbing secret doubts that had increased of late:
doubts of his habits, his character and the genuineness of his love;
so that it was with a little eddy of dissatisfaction and shame that
she admitted the relationship. More she questioned her own love as an
actual thing. In a startling way, too, this silent, forceful man, so
deadly in earnest and so earnestly deadly, so terrible in some
aspects, seemed at the instant to dwarf the other in stature and power
as if the latter were a plump manikin.
Perhaps at the last minute she had a shiver of dread at what might
issue from the engineer's lips in the way of facts if he took her at
her word and told her what she had demanded to know. Did she want to
know? Suppose she let the affair rest where it was and went forward
to the future in the comfortable assurance of ignorance.
In that case, it might be wooing later revelations that then could not
be escaped, revelations like consuming lightnings. She would settle it
now once for all.
"It does concern my future and my happiness vitally," she declared,
earnestly. "For this reason----"
"Yes?"
"I'm engaged to marry Ed Sorenson, son of Mr. Sorenson."
Weir leaped to his feet.
"Good God! That fellow!" he exclaimed, astounded.
Without another word he sprang down the steps and strode away. Janet
Hosmer, grasping the arms of her chair and staring after him, saw him
once bring down his clenched fist on nothing. Then he passed rapidly
along the street and out of sight.
CHAPTER VII
IN THE COIL
The Spirit of Irony couldn't have devised a more intolerable
situation. So thought Steele Weir as he strode away from the
dwelling, still laboring under the emotions provoked by the girl's
disclosure, wincing at his own biting thoughts and writhing at his
own helplessness. It needed only this revelation to cap the whole
diabolical evening.
He could not have remained with her now if his life had depended on
it. She, engaged to that scoundrel Ed Sorenson! How could she have
been so blind to the lustful beast's nature? She must love him, of
course. He must have been careful to exhibit to her only such
qualities as would gain her affection and respect, or rather hollow
shams of qualities he never had possessed. Propinquity, lack of rivals
in this little town, no doubt were largely responsible for her feeling
for the man. But it was like standing by and seeing her fair young
body, her fresh pure life, her high soul, flung to a devouring swine.
And by the rules of the game he couldn't open his lips to utter a word
of warning! That was the worst of it, that was the worst of it. No,
not by the rules of the game; not, for that matter, by the rules of
life; for the latter run that only can the person concerned see with
his or her own eyes what a loved one's character is, and must make and
abide by her own judgments.
Steele Weir all at once stopped in his tracks. He stared straight
before him for a time seeing Janet Hosmer's face as it appeared when
she anxiously gazed at him from Martinez' door, coming out of the
night like a pallid moon-flower. At that instant she had feared he had
been wounded; her heart was fluttering with anguish. The tension of
his body relaxed and his hands slowly unclosed and involuntarily his
eyes went up to the moon sailing serenely in the sky above the
treetops and the flat-roofed adobe houses. What vaster blessing could
life bestow than to have such a look come seeking one beloved!
He went on thoughtfully.
"She shall not marry him," he said to himself, with a quick resolve.
What were the rules of any game when an innocent girl's happiness was
at stake? Did he care for conventions, or even the contempt she
herself might feel for him for apparently belittling her lover? He
could stand that, so that her eyes were opened and the fellow's yellow
heart made plain. At the proper time he should act, view his part as
she might. A snap of his fingers for being misunderstood! He would go
his own way afterwards.
The thing had its curious features, too. No mistake, the shock of
hearing Sorenson senior talking to the sheriff and the crowd, working
up sentiment, had stirred her indignation and wonder and uneasiness
and alarm. She was no fool, as she had said. She had a clear,
practical mind, give it something to work on. Her intuition had
immediately grasped the fact that there might be cellars under the
Sorenson household of which she knew nothing and which should be
promptly entered with a strong light. Whether the momentary desire
would last, that was the question. To-morrow, or the first time she
found herself in Ed Sorenson's reassuring presence, she might consider
that her brain had been upset by events of this night, jiggled awry in
a sort of moonlight madness, and her apprehensions as to happiness
unfounded shadows.
Well, Weir would strike later.
He turned into the main street. Evidently the body of the dead Mexican
had been carried into the jail behind the court house, or somewhere.
The throng had dispersed, though its elements were every place
talking, in pairs or in little knots of people. As he came along,
these fell silent at his passing. They stared at him, motionless,
expressionless, with the characteristic Mexican stolidity that is the
heritage of Indian blood. By his automobile he found Martinez posted,
stroking his long black mustache and regarding Sorenson's office,
which was still lighted though the curtain remained drawn over the
broad plate-glass window.
"Just wanted to give you a whispered word," he said, in Steele Weir's
ear, darting a glance towards some of the Mexicans who, drawn by
insatiable curiosity, were lounging nearer.
"Speak," said the engineer.
"I came out of the office after you did and heard the talk." He made a
covert movement of forefinger towards the nearby building. "The four
of them are in there again. I saw you listening to Sorenson here in
the street; and would you care to have me express my opinion as to
what the signs indicate, Mr. Weir?"
"Go ahead."
"In the light of what I suggested during our talk in my office, the
silly twaddle of Burkhardt and Sorenson is understandable. I look
right through their scheme. They always frame up something against
anybody they want to dispose of; they do it in business matters
regularly, and very skillfully. They immediately perceived a chance,
sir, in this unfortunate encounter of yours and laid hands on it;
their talk was the first delicate maneuver to 'frame' you."
"Sure," was the unperturbed answer.
Martinez laid a finger on Weir's lapel.
"Frankly, feeling hasn't been good towards you because of the work
controversy at the dam," he went on, with another swift glance about.
"They will use that. On the other hand, you have Miss Janet and me as
witnesses in support of your story. Unfortunately Miss Janet is, as
you may not be aware, engaged to----"
Martinez paused dramatically.
"Well?"
"To Ed Sorenson," the lawyer half-hissed. "Nothing could be worse."
"Why?"
"Why? Look at the position she'll be in. Consider the pressure they
can put on her through that fact--and they'll not hesitate to do so,
in one way or another. Innocent as a dove, she is, Mr. Weir." He
thrust his head forward, showing his lips drawn apart and shining
teeth tight set. "And she's never heard a rumor of his hushed-up
affairs with poor, ignorant, Mexican girls who knew no better."
"We'll simply have to trust to her courage to tell the truth on the
proper occasion."
"Ah, but they'll trick her some way."
"And you?"
Martinez straightened, smiled, twirled his mustache.
"I? They aren't quite foxy enough for that, Mr. Weir," he boasted,
with glistening eyes.
The engineer was almost ready to believe that, but cunning was not the
only weapon in his enemies' arsenal. How would this lean lawyer stand
up under intimidation, bribes, threats?
"I trust so, Martinez," said he. "Do you think they will try to get me
sometime by an out-and-out gun-play?"
"No, no, no."
"Do you think they could if they tried?" Weir inquired, grimly.
The attorney paused with finger and thumb on the point of his
mustache, lifted his eyebrows and smiled broadly.
"They'll consider twice before they attempt it, after your expert
exhibition this evening," said he. "It was amazing, your speed, your
accuracy."
Steele tapped the man on the breast, who experienced a distinct tremor
at that significant touch and at the veiled menace in the dam
manager's eyes.
"There's always one bullet in my gun for the man who betrays me,
Martinez."
The lawyer licked his lips. On general principles he disliked
statements that committed one to the future. But it was necessary to
say something.
"To be sure. I should feel the same in your circumstances," he
responded. Then as Weir turned to his car, he continued: "The inquest
to-morrow morning should be over early. I'll visit you in the
afternoon as planned."
"Don't forget that letter," Weir called out.
Martinez marveled. Kill a man, and still remember a letter! That
magnified his respect immensely. Cool, that fellow! Then a slight
shiver as if a chill from those black peaks west of the town had
struck through his flesh rippled along his spine; for he had been
over at the jail with the crowd and had viewed that dead body lying
there on the stone floor. Not only cool, but dangerous and deadly,
this engineer. He, Martinez, must be discreet; it would not do to risk
gaining Weir's enmity. That cold-faced man could not be "monkeyed
with."
Martinez gnawed his mustache and eyed the dully illuminated office
window. He wondered if those four men inside had not at last found
their match, perhaps their master. Any one with half a brain could see
there was going to be a desperate struggle between the four and the
one, and he was not exactly sure yet that he wanted to venture farther
into the affair. But the very danger fascinated him with its subtle
and obscure features, exactly suited to his manipulation.
A man who had been standing apart sauntered nearer.
"Señor," he addressed the lawyer in Spanish.
Martinez whirled about.
"Ah, it's only you, Naharo."
"He is a bad fighter, eh?" And the man, almost white because of
intermixed blood, moved a hand in the direction Weir's car had gone.
"Perhaps not bad. Quick with a gun, however," was the careful reply.
"With his fists also. I saw, or if I did not see, I very nearly did
so--it is the same--saw him use them in Bowenville. And on that dog of
an Ed Sorenson who would have seduced my little Dolorosa, as he did
Cristobal's daughter, if I had not perceived what he was at."
The lawyer's ears were instantly pricked up. He caught the man by the
shirt-sleeve.
"Come with me," he said.
Once they were in his office he carefully closed and locked the door,
drawing the window shades. Literally he rubbed his hands one over the
other as he bade Naharo take a chair. Then the pair of them rolled and
lighted cigarettes.
"Perhaps I should say no more, Señor Martinez."
"It will go no farther. And if the engineer and Ed Sorenson had a
fight, then it must have been for that reason the latter's father
spoke as he did to-night. You heard him."
"Yes. And I did not understand why. It was not because of what
happened at Bowenville, unquestionably not, for it had to do with
another girl----"
"Ha, a girl! And the engineer mixed in it?"
"Listen. As I say, he would not have told his father, because he keeps
such things quiet; it is four years since he last had to pay money to
settle a matter. Some think he now behaves, but it is not true. But he
is more careful. So his father did not know about this."
"Tell it all, Naharo."
The other inhaled a puff of smoke and half-closed his eyes. Though
nearly white, he retained the Mexican's high cheek bones, and languor,
and unforgiving nature.
"I was in Bowenville, freighting up flour to the store of Smith's. I
had loaded by evening, to make an early start next day. I had gone
into the restaurant for supper, taking a seat far down at the end of
the counter near the kitchen. I was tired and thinking only of my
food. As I ate, there was a crash in one of the stalls and I looked
about. There was a fight, of course. But it ended at once. Then I
observed Ed Sorenson come out presently, jerking his collar and tie
straight. He was mad. He had been whipped, too. For he yet looked as
if he wanted to kill the other man in there, but he went away. Soon
the other man came out and with him was a young white girl, whom I
did not know. The man was this engineer and he carried an old piece of
baggage, not such as he would carry but as the girl might, for she
looked like a ranch girl who was poor. The girl was scared. The man
was calm as a priest. That scoundrel Ed Sorenson had been beaten. Aha,
so; it was clear. The engineer had put a spoke in the fellow's wheel.
Then I walked to the door and saw the two get into a car and start on
the trail this way. After that, I resumed my supper. You perceive, the
man had taken the girl away from the wolf."
Martinez' restless eyes wandered about the room as he digested this
account.
"Did you see the dead man?" he inquired, casually.
"Yes, señor."
Their looks met, held for an instant, dropped. Each read the thought
of the other: the motive for the attack on the engineer was clear. But
some convictions are better not expressed.
"I should have liked to see Señor Weir do the shooting," Naharo
stated. "Dios, such shooting! Two shots, two hits. And in the dark!"
Martinez' grinned.
"It will not please--whoever hired the dead man. He was hired for the
job, of course."
"Unquestionably, señor," was the reply.
CHAPTER VIII
THE GATHERING STORM
At the inquest next morning no outward sign indicated what Weir's
enemies might be at. Indeed, none of them was present. The engineer
made a statement; the two witnesses, Janet Hosmer and Felipe Martinez,
were briefly interrogated, and the finding was returned that the
unknown Mexican had met death from two bullet wounds while attempting
to kill Steele Weir.
One spectator there was who took a strong interest in proceedings, Ed
Sorenson. When, however, Janet Hosmer was notified by her father, who
was in charge, that she could withdraw, the young fellow hastened to
lead her away, with an audible remark that it was a shame she had had
to be "dragged into this disreputable gun-man's bloody show." Meaning
Steele Weir, naturally.
That feeling was being intensified against him was only too apparent
in the hostile manner of the crowd and in the silence with which it
received the finding. There was his former unpopularity, to begin
with; there was now added a race resentment, for the slain man,
stranger though he was, was Mexican; and finally, he knew not what
distilled poison of lies concerning his innocence in the night fray.
Nothing more was needed to reveal the swelling hate which secret fear
of Weir but increased than a volley of curses and abuse hurled at his
head from a native saloon doorway as he passed in his car on his way
home.
During the following week the engineer was too occupied with dam work
to have time for other matters. He pushed the concrete construction
and inspired his men with something of his own indomitable spirit, who
had learned of the cowardly attack in San Mateo and rallied to his
standard with a zeal and ardor for which the fact of employment alone
did not account. He had become a leader as well as their "boss." From
Meyers down to the humblest workman the camp had for him a new
admiration, a new respect and a new loyalty, which he could not help
but feel; he had proved that he could deliver the "goods"; and if the
Mexicans wanted war, the Americans here would be glad to oblige them.
Nor did they wait to let San Mateo know the fact.
"We're wid 'Cold Steel' Weir, our boss, four hundred of us, till ye
can skate on hell," a huge Irishman, one of half a dozen standing at
Vorse's bar on Saturday night, remarked when the saloon-man uttered a
sneer at the manager. "Say that agin and we'll tear your rotten booze
joint to pieces and make ye eat it! And if another stinkin' greaser
tries to wing him from the dark, we'll come down here and wipe your
dirty little town off the map! That goes both ways from the jack!" He
snapped his fingers under the other's nose by way of added insult.
A petty series of hostile acts against the company developed.
Teamsters were stoned by boys, which left them raging and murderous to
discover the men who set them on. Half a carload of cement in sacks
was ripped open and emptied on the earth at Bowenville. After Meyers,
Weir's assistant, found his automobile tires slashed to bits on coming
out of the post-office in San Mateo, it became necessary always to go
in pairs, one man to remain on watch. Weir himself just avoided a
serious accident one evening at dusk while a mile from the dam when he
instinctively ducked in his car as something grazed the top of his
wind-shield. A wire had been stretched across the road from a
telephone pole to a tree, at just the height to strike him at the
throat.
He halted and removed the deadly contrivance. Men on watch of his
movements could have prepared it against his return; and, indeed, he
thought he detected a pair of flitting shadows behind a row of willow
bushes lining a Mexican irrigation ditch, but in the dusk he could not
be sure. On running thither, he found no one.
The camp was not of a temper, however, to allow the attacks to be all
on one side. Atkinson, the superintendent, came to Weir one morning
towards the end of the week and informed him workmen were drifting
down to San Mateo nightly in hope of trouble.
"They'll get a knife put into them," Steele Weir replied, with a frown
that did not entirely hide his satisfaction at this evidence of
support.
"Maybe; and again maybe not," the superintendent stated, grinning. "A
bunch jumped some of our boys last night and I guess when the dust
settled there were a couple of Mexicans beaten nearly to death."
"Call the men all together this noon," Weir ordered.
At that hour he gave them a talk for what he called their long-eared
cussedness, and laid down a little law and wound up with a number of
reasonable explanations for the same. Every man who went out hunting
trouble was a camp liability, and would be fired. He did not propose
to give the town authorities a chance to jail workmen and impair the
dam work, just the thing they were waiting to do. The men should keep
away from San Mateo, or at least avoid disputes and rows. If they
spent no money there whatever it would sting the town where it would
hurt the most, in its pocket-book; and he himself was transferring the
company bank account to Bowenville, by way of example. If any man felt
the need of change from camp, he could have two days off at the end of
the month to spend at Bowenville. But keep away from the Mexicans!
"And if they come up here huntin' us when we show up no more?" yelled
the same big Irishman who had paid his respects to Vorse.
"In that case, tear their heads off," was the reply. "But put on your
gloves first or you'll dirty your fingers." Which bit of rough humor
caught the crowd's fancy and won a roar of laughter.
Later as the crowd dispersed to eat Atkinson said to Meyers, "The boss
knows how to handle men all right, all right; he put sugar on the
pill. The gang went off grinning. They know they've got to be
good--but only up to a limit."
Meantime Felipe Martinez had not been idle. He rode up to engineering
headquarters on his pony one evening and carried Weir out into the
open where their words would not be overheard. He reported that he was
quietly working for information of Weir's father among the older
Mexicans who would be likely to remember him, but proceeding
cautiously so that no one would suspect his purpose. He represented
himself to them as undertaking to write a history of San Mateo County;
he must depend upon them for data of early days; it would be a fine
book bound in leather, in which their names and possibly their
pictures would appear;--which never failed to flatter the parties with
whom he talked. And the lawyer laughed with amusement as he related
the success of his method.
"I have already seen some thirty or forty people, a few of whom
recalled your father, but no more. But this afternoon," he continued,
"I discovered a woman who worked at the Weir ranch house." Martinez
perceived the engineer's attention quicken. "She said the Weirs had a
little boy of four years of age, perhaps five. You, Mr. Weir, of
course. They suddenly paid and discharged her one day, packed a trunk
and drove hurriedly off; and the next morning Sorenson took possession
of the ranch and she went home. They drove off in a great haste--there
was no railroad anywhere near here then--and that was the last she
ever saw or heard of them."
"Yes."
"One thing more there was: she said there was a story that went around
for awhile afterwards that Weir and another had lost their ranches and
cattle gambling. For that reason Weir left the country; and for that
reason, too, the other man, Dent, by name, committed suicide in
Vorse's saloon where they had gambled. She said Saurez, an old man
living with his son up a little creek, would know about that, for he
used to clean out Vorse's bar-room in those days."
Steele Weir grasped Martinez's shoulder in a quick grip.
"He did! Get everything he knows out of him," he commanded.
"Leave it to me, Mr. Weir. I understand how to wheedle facts out of
these old fellows."
But it was doubtful if the engineer heard his words. He had dropped
his hand, stood opening and shutting his fingers, while on his face
grew the hard implacable look that always whetted the attorney's
curiosity.
Weir walked up on the hillside when Martinez had ridden away and there
sat down on a rock. It was a rift, though but a faint rift, that this
news made in the blank dark wall he had to confront; and he wished to
think. Proof as well as knowledge of what had happened in his father's
case was what he must have. Acting on intuition he had been able to
put fear into the hearts of the four men responsible for making his
father's life a hell, but proof of their guilt was necessary to make
them suffer in a similar fashion, to reveal their crime to the world,
to destroy them. Now at last, here was a possibility. If this former
roustabout of the saloon knew anything!
Well, he must be patient--the mill of the gods grinds slowly. But when
finally he had gained all the strands and woven the net! Unconsciously
his hands arose before his face like talons closing on prey and shut
on air, until their veins swelled. That was how he would serve them,
those men. Though they might fall on their knees and implore mercy,
not one beat of pity should move his heart.
It was almost dark when he arose. Behind him the great peaks soared
against the last greenish twilight. In the shacks the camp lamps were
showing at windows. At one side and in the canyon the concrete core of
the dam appeared white in the gloom, like a bank of snow. The murmur
of voices, an occasional distant laugh, came from men's quarters.
Presently he slanted down the hillside past the camp, until he struck
into a road leading towards town, where he began to walk forward,
hatless and without coat, through the soft dusk. He was disinclined
for work as yet, the work always piled on his desk; he desired yet
for a little to rest his spirit in the evening calm.
His thoughts had softened and turned to Janet Hosmer. He had not seen
her since the morning at the court house. He had not spoken with her
since that interview upon her veranda, which had terminated with his
shocked utterance. That he had thus given away to his feeling he had a
hundred times repented; and that he had so bruskly departed he was
profoundly chagrined. But what could he have done? No explanation was
possible. The situation in which he had been allowed of but one thing,
escape.
With the rising tide of emotion reflected by memory of that moment his
steps had quickened. All at once he discovered before him the rippling
sheen of water. He was at Chico Creek, a mile from camp, where he
first had met Janet Hosmer. Engaged with his tangled problem, he had
been unaware of the distance covered.
Pausing but an instant he waded through, smiling to himself at thought
of that afternoon's spirited encounter with the girl. She had not
dreamed then, nor he, that events would fling them together in a more
dramatic second meeting at Martinez' door.
Suddenly he perceived a white-clad figure before him, standing
motionless, leaning forward to peer his way as he walked forth from
the ford.
"It's you, Mr. Weir?" came in soft inquiry.
"Yes. How in the world do you happen to be here, Janet Hosmer?"
She laughed.
"I thought I recognized you marching through the stream, so I wasn't
alarmed."
"No one would think of harming you, I'm sure."
"But anyway I should have vanished if you had been a stranger."
"Not being one, you remained. I had no idea of such luck as this when
I set out for a walk."
Both pleasure and satisfaction sounded in his voice.
"I was just taking a little stroll myself," said she.
CHAPTER IX
AN UNEXPECTED ALLY
"Let me take the chance first thing to apologize for my behavior the
night we talked on your porch," Steele Weir exclaimed. "Your statement
of being engaged surprised me into words and conduct that has had me
in an unhappy state of mind ever since. Mr. Sorenson's talk to the
crowd stirred my anger. Had I known your exact relationship to him and
his son, I should have made no mistakes."
"I had urged you to speak, had I not?"
"Grant that. But I don't stand excused."
"There was no questioning the sincerity of your last expression that
night, in any case," she said. "But I've not been indignant because of
what you exclaimed or because you hate the Sorensons. 'Hate' isn't too
strong a word, is it? I'm none the less interested however to know
what it's all about. You see I don't take any stock in the reasons
commonly given: that you're a 'bad man,' an agent of a rich
corporation trying to put our people out of business, a public menace
and all the rest."
"Is that what they say?" Weir asked, with a laugh.
"Part of it. Nor does it fool father, for he said only yesterday that
there's something more at bottom of the feeling against you than
merely a fight of moneyed interests. He knows from what I told him
that that dead man tried to murder you; yet he hears constant talk of
your 'crime,' of evidence being gathered against you by the county
attorney, Mr. Lucerio, and of the penalty you shall pay. All absurd,
to be sure."
"Mr. Martinez tells me the same," Steele responded. "But he says also
that all the people do not believe the stories."
"That's true." And she appeared to reflect upon the circumstance.
To Weir nothing could be stranger than this talk on the dark road with
the girl who, too, should be naturally opposed to him. In fact, here
at this very spot and at their first meeting she had announced herself
as a critic and an enemy. He could smile over that now; she herself
probably did smile at the recollection. Yet she was calmly discussing
his situation without animus or even unfriendliness.
How could that be possible if she actually loved the man whom she
expected to marry, Ed Sorenson? Why did she not at once spring to arms
in defense of the Sorenson side? Unless--unless she suspected the
baseness of her lover and his father, and fear had replaced love.
All at once she spoke.
"They will put you in jail if they can, and bring you to trial,
and--and----"
"And hang me, that's what you hesitate to say," Steele finished for
her. "Whom do you mean by 'they'?"
"The people."
"Are the people here in this county really 'they'? Do the people, that
is, the mass of poor ignorant Mexicans, have anything to do with
public affairs? Both you and I know they do not."
"Why deny it!" she sighed. "It's generally known that four men, with
a few more at their skirts, run things. They nominate the men who are
to fill office--there's only one political party in the county worth
mentioning--and give them orders and expect them to obey. For that
reason father would never accept an office. He could be coroner; he
could be county treasurer; he could go to the legislature; or anything
else--if he would but wear their political livery. But he prefers to
be a free man. I used to think nothing of it, see no wrong in such a
state of affairs, for everything went along well enough and about the
same as ever as far as I could see."
"Possibly you didn't see everything that was occurring below the
surface even then."
"Exactly what father told me yesterday. We talked about everything
under the sun, I imagine. And I informed him that you walked home with
me the night of the shooting; I had not spoken of it before."
"That was proper; he should know it."
"He doesn't share in the feeling against you, Mr. Weir, let me assure
you of that. Ever since he heard my explanation of the shooting and
then met you at the inquest, he's convinced that you're being done a
great injustice."
Steele experienced a warm glow of pleasure.
"I liked your father at first sight," said he, simply. "But where does
all this leave us?" He spoke in a light tone of amusement that he was
far from feeling. "Our position is--odd."
"It is," she assented so earnestly that he began to laugh.
"You mustn't allow it to disturb you. I'm really presuming upon your
kindness of heart and innocence in enjoying your company now.
Acquaintance with me is a rather serious matter here in San Mateo and
carries consequences. You don't think for an instant that I'd allow my
personal pleasure--and pleasure it is to be with you, needless to
say--to bring you into ill-favor among your friends and to make you
the subject of gossip. I appreciate your good spirit towards me; and I
admire you greatly. But it will be well if I admire you at a distance
hereafter."
"I don't see whose business it is except mine."
To Steele Weir it was like pushing aside the only thing that
brightened his hard, toilsome existence thus to abjure future
companionship with her.
"Good heavens, do you fancy that comes easy for me to say?" he
exclaimed, drawing a deep breath. "I never before knew any one
who--well, I'll stop there."
"Who what?" she demanded.
"I nearly overstepped the bounds."
"Oh, that's it."
What imp of perversity was in the girl? Weir stared at her for a
moment through the gloom.
And then she remarked that she must be returning home, and said she
would be glad if he would accompany her part way as there was a
Mexican's house half way to town where a particularly vicious dog
always rushed out. The dog rushed out exactly as she had predicted,
barking savagely, so that she slipped her arm into the engineer's and
held fast until they were past.
"He does that only after dark; I hadn't expected to walk so far and it
was still light when I set out," said she.
The touch of her fingers on his sleeve, the light swing of her form at
his side, the subtle fragrance that emanated from her hair and face,
this intimate nearness on the dark road, the heavy scent of flowers
in the bordering fields,--all sent the blood thumping from his heart.
If he--if he were in Ed Sorenson's place, what love he could pour
out!
Ed Sorenson, the double-faced wretch who while engaged to her had
attempted to entice away for his own vile gratification the simple,
trustful girl on Terry Creek, he was to marry this sweet and charming
companion. What diabolical tragedies life could mix!
"See, the moon is rising," she said.
Over the edge of the mesa the yellow globe was bulging, rayless for
the moment, round and full.
"We're almost at the edge of town, and I'll stop here," he replied.
"As I said, I'd not bring down upon your head a single unpleasant
word."
"My head's not so tender," she responded quickly. "But I think you're
right--for the present." A tight little smile followed the words.
"We'll see."
"That's best."
"But I propose to stand by you. I told you that night I couldn't
remain indifferent when I saw an innocent man persecuted."
"You give me a tremendous amount of happiness."
"If I do, I'm glad. I don't believe you ever had much of it. Do you
know what is said? That you never smile. But I can swear that isn't
true, and I'm beginning to wonder if you really are--Heavens, what was
I about to say!"
"Go ahead. It's nothing terrible, I wager."
"Well, I won't finish that, but I'll ask a question even more
impertinent, if I may. Frankly, I'm dying of curiosity to know."
Weir turned his head to listen to the approach of a horseman. He could
see the man galloping towards them for town, having turned into the
road from a lane a short distance off, his horse's hoofs striking an
occasional spark from a stone. Then the engineer looked smilingly at
Janet Hosmer.
"I'll tell you anything--or almost anything." One subject alone was
sealed.
"It's that name."
"Name?"
"'Cold Steel.' How did you get it?"
"It was just pinned on me a few years ago. I'm not particularly proud
of it. I don't even know the rogue who gave me the label. And it means
nothing."
"Even your enemies are using it,--and I understand what it signifies."
She bent her eyes upon him for a time. "That is, what it signifies to
your friends."
"And to my enemies?"
"More gossip. They say it's because you're a gun-man and a knife-man.
Oh, I wish I didn't have to have my ears filled with such vicious
slander! But it means the same to enemies as to friends if they would
but admit it. I'll wait until this rider passes, then I must go."
No thought of friends or foes, both, or of any such person as Ed
Sorenson in particular, was in Steele's mind as he made answer.
"I'd stand here forever if you didn't go," he said, with a low
eagerness that caused her breath to flutter in spite of herself.
On her part, her mind was whispering, "He means it, I believe he
really means it." Which caused her to lift and lower her eyes
hurriedly, and feel a peculiar sense of trepidation and excitement.
Odd to state, she, too, just then had no recollection of any such
being as Ed Sorenson, which was the extreme of unloverliness.
"Before I do go, I've something to tell you," she said hurriedly,
dropping her voice. "It's this: the dead man's name was"--here her
tone went down to a mere sibilance--"Pete Ortez."
He leaned forward, once again the hard fierce man she had seen in
Martinez' office the night of the shooting.
"How did you learn that?"
"It--well, it was let slip inadvertently in my presence."
Weir would not press her further. Nor was there need, for the sudden
embarrassment on her face and indeed the information itself could have
but one source, the man who knew, Ed Sorenson.
"You're the equal of a thousand ordinary friends," he declared. "I can
make use of that item. Step aside, please; we're in the middle of the
road." And he drew her from in front of the horseman advancing upon
them.
They said nothing, but waited for the man to pass. But he pulled his
mount from a gallop to a trot, and from a trot to a foot pace, and at
last when squarely even with them came to a full stop. From under his
broad hat brim he silently considered the girl in white summer dress
and the bare-headed engineer.
Then he began to shake with laughter, which lasted but an instant. So
insulting, so sinister was that noiseless laugh that Janet's hand had
flown to Weir's arm, which she nervously clutched. As for Weir, his
limbs stiffened--she felt the tightening of the arm she grasped--as a
tiger's body grows taut preparatory to a spring.
The short, fleshy, insolent rider sitting there in the moonlight was
Burkhardt.
"Ed Sorenson better keep an eye on his little turtledove," he
remarked. And touching heel to his animal he swung ahead for town.
For one dazed minute they stared after him.
"Shoot him!" she suddenly said, through shut teeth.
"I haven't my gun along, or I'd be glad to oblige you."
"He deserves killing, the wretch!"
"On more accounts than one," he replied, quietly.
So quietly and so gravely, in truth, that her gust of rage subsided
before the low-spoken menace of the words. No quick anger was his but
a steady and deadly purpose. Again she felt the hard-held force, the
mystery of the man, as if flowing suddenly upward from subterranean
channels. What wrong had he suffered, what undeserved torture at the
hands of this man and others thus to freeze his soul?
But he immediately turned to her, asking, "Does that upset the
broth?"
A wan smile greeted his words.
"I expect it will keep the cook busy, anyway," she said.
CHAPTER X
BY RIGHT OF POSSESSION
Janet Hosmer made no effort to guess what her fiancé would say when
next he called, or to prepare a defense of explanations and excuses.
She was not that kind. What was necessary to be stated at the proper
time would arise to her lips. Nevertheless she had a heaviness of
heart, a natural distress as to the unpleasantness in prospect; and
had only the slightest hope that Ed would ignore or refuse to hear
Burkhardt's story. The man would tell her lover, of that she might
rest assured, out of hatred for the engineer if for no other reason.
She knew how passionately Ed was set against Steele Weir, for a score
of times she had heard his incensed opinions, increasing lately to
tirades. It had seemed strange at first that one could be so bitter
over a simple difference like that of who should work at the dam. But
ever since Weir had uttered his hoarse exclamation regarding her
engagement, words so full of protest and amazed indignation, she was
aware the cause went deeper.
At that moved ejaculation of her companion that night something, too,
had settled on her heart like a weight--an indefinable foreboding. The
anxiety aroused about Ed's father and his integrity came to include Ed
likewise. Loyalty of course required that she accept the man she had
promised to marry, without reservations. As between him and others
there should be but one choice. But did she really know him? Was he
simply the open, jolly, generous, upright adoring fellow he appeared?
Or were there less pleasant, more ignoble sides to his character? Was
he, as well as his father, capable of a mean, unworthy, selfish
persecution of another?
The engineer had made no open accusation against him--or against any
one, for that matter. She had done her best to get him to express
himself, but he had refused. Enemies he might have, but he would not
discuss the fact beyond admitting it was true. Only at moments when
his restraint slipped could she measure his feelings. Quite different
that from Ed Sorenson's voluble, heated denunciations of the other.
Yet, heavens, how appalled this reserved man had been at hearing of
her engagement! Far more than words, far more than any open charge,
did his face and incredulity, both so patently sincere, bespeak the
mistake she was making and justify gnawing doubts of her lover.
As she approached her home Ed Sorenson came dashing out to spring into
his runabout waiting before the gate. At sight of her he pulled up
short.
"Ah, here you are," he said.
"Yes, here I am," was her reply.
"You doubtless know what I've been told," he stated, significantly.
"No, I don't. I can only suspect."
"Is it true you've been meeting this man Weir on the quiet? Meeting
him while engaged to me? You know what I think of him, and what every
other respectable person thinks of him."
"Was that Mr. Burkhardt's report? That I am meeting Mr. Weir on the
quiet, to use your words?" she countered.
Sorenson made an angry gesture at what he considered an evasion.
"Janet, listen. He said he saw you at the edge of town, that you
were both bare-headed, standing close together, arms locked. Good
heavens, can't you imagine my feelings on hearing what he had to
say! He stopped me on the street and drew me aside to put me on my
guard, he said. Burkhardt wouldn't just make up a yarn like that
against you, and he's a good friend of mine. He didn't say half
what he suggested."
The girl turned her face towards the house, shut her eyes for an
instant. She could picture the rider's brutal leering face and
unspoken insinuations; and her brain also placed in the scene her
lover greedily if angrily drinking in the tale. Harkening to it
instead of knocking the man down, that was the worst of it.
Harkening--and believing.
"I'll not deign to resent your remark of meeting Mr. Weir 'on the
quiet'," said she, quietly. "I met him on the road accidentally."
"Don't you think I'm entitled to know something about it?" he asked,
with an edged tone.
"What is it you desire to know?"
Nearly an oath of wrath escaped his mouth, but he kept his control.
"Janet, you know what kind of a man he is," he said. "You know what I
feel against him, and father, and all our friends, and the town. And
the whole town, too, will probably hear of this, with a lot of gossip
added that isn't true."
"But I met him accidentally."
"You didn't have to chat with him like an old friend."
Janet Hosmer gave him a slow, meditative look.
"How do you know how I talked with him?"
"You talked with him. That in itself was too much."
"I don't view it in that light," she responded. "He was perfectly
civil. Whatever public opinion may be regarding the shooting, I know
he killed the man in self-defence. So that's nothing against him. You
would have done the same in his place."
Ed Sorenson leaned towards her.
"You were mistaken, Janet. I've said before that I feared you were,
but the prosecuting attorney has witnesses to the gun-play that he's
dug up. Martinez saw nothing; how could he from inside the office? And
remember that you're only a girl, Janet; in the darkness and with the
excitement you were confused. I haven't a doubt this scoundrel Weir
made you believe you saw what never occurred, when you appeared in
Martinez' office. When you've thought it over, you'll realize that
yourself. These new witnesses tell just the reverse of what you
fancied happened. I'm going to see that you're away from San Mateo
when the man's tried, as he will be."
No reply coming from her, he continued:
"He deceived you then and he'll endeavor to poison your mind right
along. You're too trustful. Now, I was angry at first, but if there
was anything in this meeting to-night that was out of the way, it was
his doing, I know. If he got familiar with you, as Burkhardt
hinted----"
"Well?"
"I'll kill the dog with my own hands!"
"You may rest easy. His conduct was irreproachable, Mr. Burkhardt to
the contrary."
Sorenson regarded her in perplexity, divided between anger and doubts.
Too, a new feeling unaccountably sprang into his breast--jealousy. In
the end apprehension all at once filled his mind, darkening his face
and bringing down his brows.
Uneasy as at first he had been after the row in the restaurant, he had
eventually dismissed the matter from his mind, for no rumor of it had
reached San Mateo. Neither Weir nor Johnson, the girl's father, had
blabbed of it, so his alarm passed; they didn't want to talk of it for
the girl's sake, any more than he wished it known, was his grinning
conclusion. The deuce would have been to pay if Janet had got wind of
the business. But now his fears came winging back a hundred-fold as he
stared at her.
"What did he say to you?" he asked, in a tense voice.
"Not that tone with me, if you please."
Sorenson, however, was past observation of her mood or temper.
"He told you a lot of lies about me, didn't he?" he went on, not
hiding the sneer. "And you believed them."
"He didn't say much, but what he did say was to the point. I don't
recall that there were any lies."
"There were, of course. It would be just his chance to give you his
made-up story about me and that Johnson girl. That was what so
interested you."
"No, he didn't say anything about you and any girl except me. Then
he only said he was sorry he couldn't have the pleasure of my
friendship----"
"Ay-ee," the other grated. His lips worked above his teeth.
A shudder passed over Janet Hosmer's skin at the sound and the sight,
for she had never seen him like this. A cold hand might have been
closing about her heart: his glare was animal-like and bestial. His
nature at the instant stood unclothed.
"And he said he would be at pains to avoid even chance meetings with
me, because it would make talk and cause me annoyance."
"He'll not meet you another time if I have anything to say about it."
"I see. But I wanted you to understand that he told me no lies, nor
repeated any story--about you and a Johnson girl, I think you said."
A visible breath of relief lifted his breast. He now would have
been glad for some one to boot him along the street for ever
mentioning the thing. He almost had put his foot in it. Apparently
she was not interested in seeking further knowledge of the subject
that he so ill-advisedly had brought up. Lucky for him she hadn't the
inquisitiveness of some girls.
The narrow escape restored a trace of his good humor, and he was
shrewd enough to divert her mind before the incident made an
impression. He reached out and patted her shoulder.
"Don't think me a scold, darling," said he. "Burkhardt upset me with
his news, that was all. He hates that gun-man so much that it's no
wonder he was angry at seeing him hoodwink you. He probably imagined a
lot. Just don't speak to Weir if he tries to stop you again. And
pretty soon we'll have him where he won't interfere with anybody."
"When will that be?"
"The county attorney's still collecting evidence. Nothing will be done
before the grand jury meets, which is in a couple of weeks. You must
arrange to go off on a visit about that time."
"Why?"
"So you won't have to go through the ordeal of appearing in court.
There are ways of fixing such things." He laughed softly. "Especially
here in San Mateo County. It's too rotten a business for you to have
to step into, this murder. Come along down to the drug store and have
some ice cream."
"Not to-night. I'm feeling a little tired."
"Then let us rest on your porch. I haven't seen you twice in the last
week."
"Some other evening, Ed. I promised father to help get up his account
books."
"You're not angry with me?" he asked. "If you're not, give me a kiss
before I go."
A sharp smile showed on her lips.
"I'm not angry, but I'm going to penalize you to that extent. If you
must have a cheek to press, go kiss----" She paused, while the
conviction darted into his mind that she had remembered that Johnson
girl blunder after all, then said: "Mr. Burkhardt's cheek."
Again relief swept him.
"Come, be kind, Janet," he began. But she was already through the gate
and skipping up the walk, vanishing in the gloom of the veranda. The
screen door clapped shut. "Peeved, all right. I'll have to be
extra-nice to her for a day or so until she calms down," he murmured
to himself. "Must send her a box of chocolates and some magazines
to-morrow to show my contrite heart; that always gets 'em. Hang it,
it's time to fix a day, too. We've been engaged long enough. She sure
has a figure and face--a beaut! I guess she didn't smell the booze on
my breath. Got to be careful about that till we're married." He jumped
into his car.
The screen door had clapped shut, but Janet had not entered. She had
employed the artifice to convey the impression it had. She did not
wish to go in to her work just yet, for calm as she had appeared
during the interview her emotions were running full tide. Love Ed
Sorenson? Marry him? She groped for and dropped into a wicker chair,
her head sinking in shame and self-abasement. Never--never!
And before her mind swam another face, a face with the hair ruffled
about the brow, clear of eyes and strong-lined, as she had beheld it
in the moonlight of the road.
All at once she tugged at a finger, fiercely pulling off the
engagement ring. She rubbed her cheek as well, with an angry hand, for
the memory of kisses was burning her as by fire.
Then she sat quite motionless for a long time.
"I'll just ask father," she exclaimed. "There can't be more than a
dozen Johnsons around here."
Which would have given Ed Sorenson a fresh jolt in his breathing
apparatus if he had overheard, and shriveled the cocky self-assurance
with which he sipped a high-ball that moment at Vorse's bar.
CHAPTER XI
JANET AND MARY
In a region as sparsely settled by white people as San Mateo and its
adjoining counties there were not, as Janet put it, more than a dozen
Johnson families. In fact, there were but two, she learned from her
father: one at Bowenville, the small railroad town of three hundred
people, a merchant with a wife and four little children; the other a
rancher on Terry Creek, whose wife was dead and who had one child, a
girl of sixteen or seventeen years of age.
"I may be away at dinner time, so don't wait for me," she told her
father next morning. "I'm going out in the country a few miles--and
you know my car! If you'd just let me squeeze some of these patients
who never pay, you could have a new car yourself."
"Mine's all right," he smiled.
"But mine isn't. Look at it. You gave it to me only because you
scorned to ride in it any longer yourself. It would do for me, you
said, but you prance around in a bright shiny one yourself. I blush at
the row mine makes; sounds like a boiler factory; I drive only along
side streets. If the patients would pay what they owe, I could ride
like a lady instead of a slinking magpie."
The doctor leaned back in his chair and laughed (they were at
breakfast) and remarked that old friends were best.
"Don't call my asthmatic tin beast a friend; we're bitter enemies,"
said she.
It carried her to Terry Creek about noon, however, safely enough,
whither she went with a firm resolution that crushed a certain
embarrassment and anxiety. Suppose these people resented her
inquiries.
She placed the bearded, tanned rancher at once, when she saw him
working on a piece of harness before the door as she drove up. She had
seen him in town at different times. She once had stopped here, too,
several years previous when accompanying her father, who had been
called to dress the rancher's injured hand. The girl could not have
been over twelve or thirteen then, a shabby, awkward girl wearing a
braid who came out to gaze shyly at her sitting in the car.
Johnson arose from the ground and approached as she alighted, while
the girl's head popped into sight at the door.
"I'm Dr. Hosmer's daughter, Janet," she stated, putting out her hand
and smiling. "I've come to see you on a matter. Shall we go into the
house?"
With curiosity sharing a vague hostility in his bearing he led her in,
where his daughter was setting the table. Janet also told the girl who
she was. At once dismay and startlement greeted the announcement. But
she invited Janet to be seated, she herself withdrawing to a spot by
the stove.
No need for Janet to beat about the bush with her errand.
"Mr. Johnson," she said, "I've come to you and your daughter for a
little help if you can give it." That seemed the best way to break
down their reserve, an appeal rather than simply blunt questions--and
what was it if not an appeal? "What I have to say is just among the
three of us and I know it will go no farther. You're acquainted with
my father; he's respected by every one."
"He is," Johnson stated, nodding.
"The situation is this, to speak plainly: last night I heard something
that has caused me to come to you for information; I'm engaged to Ed
Sorenson, and in a moment of anger he denounced Mr. Weir, the engineer
at the dam, for having told me a false story--lies--about him and your
daughter."
Janet perceived the quick, troubled look exchanged by man and girl.
"Mr. Weir has never mentioned your daughter's name in my hearing; I
think him incapable of discussing any one maliciously. He's very
careful of what he says. I consider him a very honorable man. At any
rate, he said nothing of what Ed Sorenson suggested, and if the latter
himself hadn't spoken of the thing I should have had no inkling that
there had been anything justifying an inquiry on my part. There may
not be. But why should he imagine Mr. Weir had told me 'lies' linking
him and your daughter?"
"I know Weir--and I know Ed Sorenson, too," was the rancher's grim
rejoinder.
"This is a disagreeable subject, I know. But I'm not here out of mere
curiosity, but a desire to learn if something has been concealed from
me by Ed Sorenson that I should be informed of. His manner, his words,
the whole incident has filled me with doubts. See, I'm trusting you
absolutely." And she extended a hand in a gesture bespeaking
sincerity.
Johnson peered at her in silence from under shaggy brows.
"I ask myself why Mr. Sorenson took it for granted that the engineer
had been telling me false stories and if there was any ground for such
fears," she went on. "He had nothing to be afraid of, no matter what
might be said, if he had done nothing unworthy. I can't imagine Mr.
Weir, for instance, being alarmed in that way."
"They're telling plenty of lies about him, for that matter, but I
guess it doesn't worry him any," Johnson said.
"What I ask you touches a delicate subject, perhaps," Janet continued,
reluctantly. "You may feel that I'm pushing in where I'm not
concerned. But if Mr. Sorenson has done anything discreditable--if he
has acted in a way to make me ashamed when I know, then it becomes a
matter affecting my happiness too. I would never marry a man who had
done something dishonorable, for if I did so knowingly I should be
dishonored and dishonorable as well."
Johnson suddenly thrust a brown forefinger at her.
"Do you want to know what Sorenson did?" he demanded, wrathfully.
Janet gripped her hands together. "Yes."
"You'll not go spreading it all around the country? But I guess you
won't as long as it would make you out a fool too. I'll not have
Mary's name dragged about in a lot of gossip."
"I assure you I shall remain silent, for her sake and my own."
"All right, I'll tell you. You're too good a girl--any decent girl
is--to marry Ed Sorenson. He met Mary at a dance last spring in town
where she went with some friends of ours, and made love to her but
wouldn't let her tell me or any one. We don't get to town so very
often; she never knew he was engaged to marry you, there never
happening to be any mention of it to her. Then he got her to go to
Bowenville one day awhile ago, under promise to marry her there--Mary
is only sixteen, a little girl yet. To me, anyway."
Janet felt the working of his love in those simple words. Felt it but
half-consciously, though, for her own soul was stifling at Ed
Sorenson's revealed infamy.
"When he got her there, he told her they would have to go away farther
to be married--to Los Angeles." Again his finger came up, this time to
be shaken at her like a hammer. "He never intended to marry her; he
planned to get her there, ruin her, and cast her off. That's the sort
of man you're going to marry!"
"I remember he expected to be away for a couple of weeks--a business
trip, he said. But afterwards he explained that it hadn't been
necessary to go."
"A business trip! Yes, the dirty kind of business he likes. And if it
hadn't been that Weir heard him explaining to Mary that she must go on
and interfered--there in the restaurant--Ed Sorenson might have
succeeded. Mary trusted him, thought he was straight. But he's
crooked, crooked as his old man. When Weir told him to his face what
he thought of his tricks, he let it out he was engaged to you. Didn't
mean to, of course. Weir said he would stay right with them and see
that they got married next day before a minister, then Sorenson
snapped out he was to marry you. That opened Mary's eyes, that and his
refusing to go before a preacher as the engineer demanded. So Weir
brought her home to me.
"And that isn't all I know," he snarled. "Mexicans and cowboys and
others have talked--women don't hear these things--how he's had to
pay Mexicans hush-money for girls of theirs he's wronged. But what do
people care? He's rich, he's old man Sorenson's boy; everything's kept
quiet; and he goes around as big as life." With a muttered oath he
turned away, his lips shut hard and his beard sticking out savagely.
He came back to her again.
"The young one gets it from the old one," he exclaimed. "Bad crooked
blood in both of them. I know. I've been here ever since I was a boy
and remember things Sorenson believes every one has forgotten, I know
how he got his start, how he and the rest of his bunch cleaned out
Dent of his ranch and cattle gambling and then killed him when he
discovered they had used marked cards, how at the same time they
robbed another man----"
Janet struggled to her feet. She had covered her eyes and bowed her
head before the torrent of his vehemence.
"No more, I want to hear no more," she gasped. "Let me go home. I'm
sick."
"It all makes me sick, too," he answered. "Sick and sore, both. But
it's the truth. I'm sorry if it's been a bad pill to swallow, but it's
the God's truth, girl. I'm sorry it couldn't be any other way, but I
wouldn't see you marry that scoundrel if I lost a hand stopping you.
Mary felt sick at first, too; she's over it now. You'll not feel bad
long. Better stay for dinner with us."
"I couldn't swallow a bite. Thank you for your kindness in asking
me--and for telling me what I wanted to know, too. Father never knew,
or he would have warned me. People saw I was engaged to Ed Sorenson
and would say nothing to father, of course. I shall always count you
as one of my best friends, Mr. Johnson. And you too, Mary; you must
come down and stay with me sometime, for I imagine you get lonely
here. No, another day I'll remain to dinner--and I want to be alone
now."
They pressed her no further, seeing her wretchedness of spirit. But
they walked with her to the car and shook hands with her when she was
in and urged her to come again.
When she had disappeared in the aspens among which the trail led, Mary
said to her father:
"You said they killed a man named Dent."
"They did. I saw the killing."
"And nothing was ever done about it?"
"No. Nobody but me knew of the happening and I'd of had a bullet
through my heart if I'd talked. I might yet even now, so see that you
keep your mouth shut."
"You told her."
"I was mad, so mad I could say anything. But she isn't the kind to
repeat the story; I'm not afraid on that score. She's clean strain all
through."
"Did you know the man whom Sorenson and the others killed?" Mary
questioned, in some awe.
"I knew of him, but I was only a lad then. I saw it all through the
back door of Vorse's saloon where it happened, but I've never breathed
about it to a soul. I didn't want to be murdered some dark night.
Those four men would see that the job was done quick even now, I'm
saying, if they were on to the fact. I know 'em, if nobody else
does."
Mary's skin crawled with prickles of fear.
"They must be awful bad."
"They were devils then, and I don't think they've changed to angels
to-day, though they try to appear decent. I know 'em; I know what
they'll do once they start. You can't make sheep out of wolves just by
giving 'em a fleece."
"You said they robbed another man at the same time they killed that
Dent."
"Yes; and it only goes to show the hellish crooks they are. It was
another man in the saloon. He was drunk. They made him believe he had
killed Dent. Then said they'd help him to get away if he gave them his
property. He was a rich fellow who had come out from the east and gone
to ranching, a tenderfoot. They took his stuff and he skipped the
country with his wife. That was the last of him, and I reckon he
believes to this day that he's a murderer. And that's how they got the
start of their wealth, or a big part of it, Sorenson and Vorse and the
other two. They've got the San Mateo Cattle Company, with fifty
thousand head of steers, and ten or twenty bands of sheeps and
ranches, and the bank, and all the rest, and they walk around like
honest men. But they're thieves and murderers, Mary, thieves and
murderers! I'd rather be the man I am, poor and with nothing but this
little mortgaged piece of ground and my few cattle, than them, who
robbed Dent and killed him and then robbed and drove out Weir."
"Was that the other man's name?"
"Yes."
"That's funny. The same as the man who brought me home."
"There are lots of Weirs, like the Johnsons."
"Not so many, I guess. Maybe they're related. Did the man who skipped
have any children?"
"No. None I ever heard of, though I didn't know much about him. Just
him and his wife, I think."
Johnson had perceived no resemblance between the engineer and the
vanished man of whom he spoke. As for that, however, he had no clear
recollection of the elder Weir's face; he was but twelve years old at
the time of the dramatic event, thirty years before.
"Now, come along and eat," he said. "And remember! Not a word of this
to a soul."
Meanwhile Janet Hosmer was driving slowly down the canyon, oblivious
that opportunity to unlock the whole mystery had been hers, never
dreaming that she had just missed by the slenderest margin what Steele
Weir would have given the world to know.
For an instant Fate had placed the key in her hand. She knew it not;
it was withdrawn again and the door remained closed and locked while
the threads of Destiny continued to be spun.
CHAPTER XII
THE PLOT
In Vorse's saloon, where in the past so many evil ideas for the
acquisition of money or power had sprouted, the scheme had its
inception. It had been of slow growth, with innumerable suggestions
considered, tested, discarded. The intended arrest and trial of Weir
had been the first aim; but this had expanded until at last the plot
had become of really magnificent proportions, cunning yet daring,
devilish enough even to satisfy the hate and greed of its originators,
consummate in design, absolutely safe and conclusive.
It was Sorenson who conceived the notion of pulling the irrigation
project down in ruins at the moment of Weir's own fall. Judge Gordon a
few days later had pieced out the method, which was either to corrupt
the workmen to wreck dam and camp or to place them in the equivocal
position of having done so apparently though others did it in fact.
Vorse and Burkhardt devised the details. Weir should be left free
until the blow had fallen on the camp, whereupon he should be
immediately clapped into jail on the murder charge, which, coming on
top of the "riot," would paralyze all company action and work. From
such a crushing double-blow no concern could quickly recover, if
indeed the loss did not result in total cessation of construction.
Thus shedding their coats of expedient lawfulness, they reverted
under the menace of Steele Weir's presence to the men they were in an
earlier age--an age when a few white land and cattle "barons"
dominated the region, predatory, arrogant, masterful and despotic; the
age just ceasing when the elder Weir and Dent arrived; the age of
their youth forty years before, the age when railroads and telegraphs
and law were remote, and chicanery and force were the common agents,
and "guns" the final arbiters.
To them Weir was like a reincarnated spirit of that age. He guessed if
he did not know their past. He had appeared in order to challenge
their supremacy, end their rule, avenge his father's dispossession at
their hands. He instinctively and by nature was an enemy; he would
have been their enemy in any other place and under any other
circumstances. He was a head-hunter, and in turn was to be hunted
down. He was the kind who neither made compromises nor asked quarter.
He veiled his purposes in as great secrecy as did they, and when he
struck it would be suddenly, fiercely, mercilessly--if he struck. They
were determined he should not strike, being himself first surprised
and crushed, for though in ignorance of what he could bring against
them their fears were real. Everything, indeed, about the man
antagonized them, alarmed them, stirred their hate and filmed their
eyes with blood. He must be destroyed.
"And with him the dam," Sorenson had said. "Both together." For there
was no effort to conceal among themselves their savage intention.
"He'll never come to trial," Vorse remarked, with a malignant gleam in
his blue eyes and a shutting of his thin lips. "An attempted jail
delivery by 'friends' will fix that. All they will have to do then is
to buy him a pine box."
"If the man had but stayed away!" Judge Gordon exclaimed. Cunning, not
force, was his forte; and the measures in prospect at times had
oppressed him with dreadful forebodings. He was growing old, feeble,
and here when he was entitled to peace he still had to fight for his
own.
In accordance with the scheme Burkhardt vanished from San Mateo for a
time, ostensibly on business but in fact on a journey across the
Mexican line, where he conducted negotiations with a certain
"revoluçionista" of no particular notoriety as yet, of avaricious
character, unscrupulous nature, and with a small following of fellow
bandits and a large animosity for Americans. His ambition was to
emulate the brilliant Villa. But pickings had been poor of late, no
more than that of stealing a few horses from across the border. To
Burkhardt, who had heard of him and sought him out, he listened with
interest and bargained with zest. Five thousand in gold for fifty men
was like pearls from Paradise. And whatever this Yankee's own private
purpose, it was a chance for the chieftain to strike secretly and
safely at Americans, in addition.
"They will come through in squads after they've slipped across the
line," Burkhardt reported. "They're to pose as laborers."
"When?" Sorenson asked.
"Along next week. They're to drop off down along the railroad at
different towns and I'll run them up into the mountains with some
grub. Then we'll assemble them quietly a couple miles off from the
dam, where they'll be handy on the chosen night. Afterwards we'll slip
them back to the railroad, and they fade into Mexico. Weir's workmen
will be drunk and rowing--and will have done the job, eh?" Burkhardt
shook with suppressed, evil laughter.
"If they're drunk, they may join in and help," Judge Gordon stated,
acutely. "A mob full of whiskey will do anything. If they did take a
hand, it would round out the case against them perfectly. Very likely
next day they, too, would fade, as you put it, Burkhardt; they would
want to get out of this part of country as quickly as possible when
they realized what had happened. I see no flaw in our plan.
Fortunately the three directors who are coming will be gone by the end
of next week."
"What's that? What directors?" Burkhardt asked.
"They're to be here on an inspection trip, so they wrote, and will be
pleased to hear our complaints in regard to the question of workmen."
Gordon's tone was ironical. "I wrote them protesting Weir's discharge
of our people, you remember, but that was some time ago."
"What's the use of paying attention to the fools now?"
"We must carry out the farce, Burkhardt, for the sake of appearances."
"I'd like to blow them up along with their dam!" was the scowling
rejoinder, "Well, let 'em inspect. Next time they come back there
won't be any."
"I believe we should arrest Weir before the thing's pulled off,"
Gordon said, meditatively. "It would be surer."
Sorenson set his heavy jaw.
"No. I want him to see the wreck; I want him to know just what's
happened before he's haled away; I want him feeling good and sick
already when he gets the next jolt."
"Sure. It's him or us, as I've said from the first; and I've always
believed in making a clean sweep," Vorse remarked. "We have the right
line this time. First, make his men drunk and sore; then smash the
works; then arrest him quick; and last finish him off with a bullet
during a pretended jail delivery."
"There will be elements of danger in the last," Judge Gordon stated,
cautiously.
Vorse smiled and Burkhardt grinned.
"Not so you'll notice it," said the latter. "The town won't know
anything about it until afterwards. Just a few good men at night,
masked and working fast, and the thing is done."
"I'll not feel easy till it's over."
"Keep up your nerve, Judge," Burkhardt grunted. "You used to be as
lively as anybody when you were young."
"I know, I know. But this Weir isn't going to stand idle. If he ever
gets a chance with his gun----"
"He won't get it," said Vorse.
"And he'll not resist the sheriff when Madden arrests him legally,"
Sorenson added. "Nothing could be better for us than if he did. He
knows that."
"Still I'll be glad when next week is past," the Judge replied, with a
sigh.
CHAPTER XIII
THE CURRENT OF EVENTS
Though outwardly the world's face was as calm as ever, though peace
seemed to bask on San Mateo and the broad mesa and lofty mountain
range, events were rapidly shaping themselves to bring a thunder crash
of contending forces. Not Weir, not even the little evil cabal
plotting so desperately against him, guessed the scope and power of
the passions to be released.
As a vital impulse towards the climax, though an unconscious one on
her part so far as the general play of circumstance was concerned,
Janet Hosmer informed Ed Sorenson of her determination to break their
engagement. This was the same evening she returned from the Johnson
ranch, when he called at her telephoned request. He went to her home
under the impression that his box of candy and bundle of new magazines
had restored him to favor. He was very jaunty, in fact, and bent on
persuading her to name an early day for their nuptials.
Imagine his wrath when she explained that she wished to say that she
could not marry him, at the same time handing him his ring and the
other trinkets he had bestowed upon her.
"Is it because of our little spat last night about the engineer?" he
demanded. "I apologized, Janet. I'm sorry still, and I love you above
everything else."
"I think not," said she.
"But I do, Janet. Above everything."
"No, not above yourself and your vices. You deceived me for a long
time, but now I know the truth. You aroused my suspicions when you
mentioned a Johnson girl; there's only one Johnson girl hereabouts, as
I learned; and this noon I visited her and her father. They informed
me fully about your conduct towards Mary at Bowenville and your
promises to marry her--that, when you were engaged to me. There are
other things I heard to-day. Of affairs with Mexican girls that are
shameful."
"Lies, lies!" was the passionate disclaimer. "Or if I have been
flirting a little, and never since my engagement, it's no more than
any fellow does."
"You can neither excuse nor justify your words and actions towards
Mary Johnson not a month ago."
"They're liars, I tell you."
"Will you confront them and say that?"
Taken by surprise Sorenson hesitated, flushed, and then made a gesture
of disdain.
"I'll not, because I'll not condescend to answer such baseless
charges," he stated. "I thought you had sense enough not to believe
every little thing you hear. Certainly I expect you not to believe
this, and I know you won't on consideration. Then we'll be married. I
came here to-night to urge you to marry me soon."
"I'll never marry you, and we're no longer engaged. You've acted
faithlessly and dishonorably. You're not the decent man I thought you
were."
"Don't you still love me, Janet?"
"No. I don't think I ever loved you; I was loving a man who didn't
exist, an illusion I imagined to be Ed Sorenson, not your real self.
If I loved at all, which I now doubt! And you never loved me, though
you may think you did and still do. But it's not so; for no man who
really loved a respectable girl could at the same time do what you
did. Think of it! While pretending to love me, you were secretly
trying to inveigle that poor ignorant girl away from home. You're not
a man; you're a beast. The shame and disgust and humiliation I suffer
at the thought of my position during that time, your effort to
hoodwink both Mary Johnson and me, so fills me with anger I can't talk
to you. Go, go! And please don't even speak to me hereafter, on the
street or anywhere else."
Instead of departing the man grasped her wrist and gave her a venomous
look.
"It was this sneak of an engineer, after all, who told you this lie
and turned you against me," he snarled.
"Let me go. Mr. Weir said nothing. It was you yourself who betrayed
yourself, or I should not have known as I do, thank heavens. Stop
holding my wrist!"
For an instant Sorenson wavered between whether he should obey her
command or strike her as his rage prompted. A very devil of passion
beating in his breast urged him to show her her place, deal with her
as he would like to do and as she deserved--throw her down and drag
her by the hair until she crawled forward and clasped his knees in
subjection. But the look in her eyes cooled this half-insane,
whiskey-inspired desire.
He took his hand off her wrist, picked up his hat.
"You can't throw me down this way," he sneered. "You're going to marry
me just the same, whether you think so or not. I have a voice in this
engagement, and you can't break your word and promise to me because
it happens to strike your fancy. Not for a single minute!"
"If you were a gentleman and a decent man you wouldn't say that."
"I'm not either, by your judgment, so I do say it. I say it again:
you're going to marry me, willingly or unwillingly. Now if after
thinking it over, you want to forget all this and go on as before, all
right. If not, our engagement still holds just the same. You may
release me, but I haven't released you. Remember that. And keep away
from that engineer if you know what's best for you!"
With a scowl he stalked out of the house, leaving a very angry, very
tremulous and very heart-sick girl. The fellow was in truth not a man,
she perceived, but a creature so conscienceless and loathsome that she
seemed contaminated through and through by his touch, his words, and
their previous relations. How grossly he had deceived her as to his
real character! What a horrible future as his wife she had escaped!
Nor was she yet free, for he promised to make an infinity of trouble.
That day she could do nothing. Her father noting her face asked what
was the trouble, and she told him the whole affair.
"I've heard rumors of late about him and was worried," he said. "You
did the only thing, of course. Pay no attention to his words; I'll see
he doesn't annoy you."
It was three or four days afterwards that she called Weir up at the
dam in a desire to hear the voice of a man she knew to be straight and
upright.
"I've wondered if a girl is allowed to look at your dam," she said on
impulse, when they had chatted for a moment. "Father, who was at your
camp to attend an injured man, says you're making famous progress."
"I'd be more than delighted to show you the work. But--I wonder----"
"Don't let what people say disturb you," she replied quickly, divining
his thought. "I've arranged all that." A somewhat obscure remark to
Weir.
"Then come any time--and often. I hope to be able to conduct you
around, the first visit at least. Next week I may not be able to do so
as a committee of directors arrive who'll take my time."
"Oh, indeed," Janet answered, politely.
"A manager has to be directed occasionally, or he may run wild," she
heard, with his laugh.
"I'll come before they do," she said.
Quite as she had announced she did run up to the canyon and go with
Weir over the hillsides and dam, asking questions and displaying a
great interest in the men and the operation of the machinery. The
concrete work was nearing an end. Already tracks were laid for the
dump trams that were to carry dirt from steam-shovels to the dam to
form its main body.
She perceived the immense labor of the project and the coördinated
effort required. The necessity in itself of dragging hither from
Bowenville all of the supplies, the material, the huge machines, was
overwhelming. The responsibility of combining scientific knowledge and
raw industry to an exact result struck her as prodigious. The handling
of hundreds of subordinate workmen and assistants of various grades
and skill demanded exceptional ability, understanding, will and
generalship. Yet these things the man at her side, Steele Weir,
accomplished and supplied; and appeared quite calm and unmoved about
it, as if it was all a matter of course.
She glanced at the ground, flushing. The thought of Ed Sorenson,
making only a pretense of doing anything useful and because his father
was rich doing nothing in reality but waste himself in vicious
practices, was in her mind. What must have the engineer believed of
her all this while when he knew Sorenson's true nature and infamous
record? Did he suppose her a light-headed feather, indifferent to
everything except that her husband should be rich? Very likely. There
were plenty of girls of that type. He naturally would suppose her
one.
And she could say nothing to put herself in a better light and to gain
his respect--for that she now desired greatly. She saw him as he was,
a big man, a strong man, a man whose respect was to be prized. Beside
him she felt herself small and ordinary. That was all right, but she
was determined he should not believe her insignificant, shallow,
unworthy, mercenary.
While she could not explain matters openly without shaming herself
and still lowering herself in his estimation, he being only an
acquaintance, yet there were ways of getting at the end. Janet could
act adroitly, like most women, when it best served the purpose.
"Do you know, I just learned from friends of yours on Terry Creek that
you're a public benefactor as well as an engineer," she stated, when
they paused on the hillside for a last look at the dam.
"I?" he exclaimed.
His eyes came around and found hers fixed on him.
"I happened to stop at the Johnson ranch. They didn't say so, but I
know they would be pleased to death if you would go to dinner there
some day. They have some fine fat chickens, if you like chicken fried
or baked, and they hesitate to ask you only because they're afraid
you'll refuse."
"Fried chicken is my weakness. Of course I'll go; at the first spare
chance."
But all the while Steele Weir's mind was eddying with wonderment. He
had colored at mention of the Johnson ranch, as if he had been caught
with a hand in a jam pot. And it meant only one thing: she knew of the
Bowenville episode. Involuntarily his eyes flashed to her left hand
with which she was brushing back the hair under her hat brim. There
was no diamond solitaire on its third finger. Surely, something had
happened.
"Well, I must be returning home. I just thought I'd give you a tiny
hint," said she. An odd smile rested on her lips as she spoke, for
hints may carry multiple suggestions.
"By Jove!" Weir said suddenly.
Man of action though she knew him to be, she never anticipated he
would or could act so directly. He reached out and seized her left
hand and scanned it significantly. Then he raised his eyes.
"What does this mean?" he asked, tapping the finger with one of his
own. "Does this mean----"
It was Janet's turn to become scarlet. She tried to smile again, but
it was a wavering smile that appeared.
"What does what mean?" she fenced.
"That--well, that the ring is off permanently?"
"Oh, yes."
"And that there's now a chance for me?"
Janet's eyes at that popped open very wide indeed. Meanwhile Weir
still held to the palm resting in his own.
"You?" she breathed, faintly.
"Me, yes."
Presently with a gentle movement she drew her hand free. She had been
quite dumbfounded, but not so dumbfounded that she did not realize
that this new situation had requirements of its own. He appeared
absolutely sincere and resolute.
"But I never dreamed of such a thing!" she stammered.
"Nor I--because until now I hadn't the right. All I ask is that you
give me your friendship--and a chance--and--well, we'll see."
"There's no reason why we shouldn't be friends," said she. "We are
already, aren't we?"
"Yes--now. I never actually thought so before."
"Things have changed," she stated. And her lips closed with a firm
pressure as she spoke. "Or I shouldn't have been here inspecting the
dam, should I?" Again the smile flashed upon her face. "You may
consider this a preliminary inspection to that of your high and mighty
directors, and I assure you my verdict--is that the word?--is
favorable. Now I must be going to the car. Father likes his meals on
time."
"And when shall I see you again?"
The note of eagerness in his voice set her heart moving a bit faster.
If he carried on his engineering work as he did his friendship, no
wonder he got things done.
"Why, when you wish to call, Mr. Weir. Both father and I shall be
pleased to have you come any time."
"I'll certainly avail myself of the privilege," said he. "You must
really go now?"
With a feeling of exaltation at this new turn of affairs he watched
her drive away from camp, a feeling that persisted during the
succeeding days.
The three directors arrived. That was Thursday evening; and Friday and
Saturday were devoted to a discussion of construction plans,
inspection of the works, analysis of costs and so on. Weir found the
men what he expected: quick to comprehend facts, incisive of mind, and
though of course not engineers yet able to measure results; while they
on their part were appreciative of the exceptional progress made and
of his thorough command of the project. They knew the first hour that
the right manager was in charge at last.
Saturday afternoon Sorenson and Judge Gordon called at headquarters,
by appointment, to discuss the grievance held locally against the
company. Weir was present at the meeting.
"As to whether the Mexican workmen who were discharged were actually
giving a full return in work for the wages, as you maintain,
gentlemen," said Mr. Pollock, one of the directors and a corporation
lawyer from New York, in reply to the visitors' statement, "that is a
question not of opinion but of fact."
"Fact, yes," Judge Gordon argued. "Fact supported by the evidence of
the three hundred workmen against that of a single man, your manager,
who had just come."
"Are not your three hundred men prejudiced witnesses?" the New Yorker
inquired, a slight smile upon his thin face.
"No more than is Mr. Weir."
"But Mr. Weir is the manager and consequently has the power of
decision in such matters."
"Not to the extent of revoking unfairly your promise, given orally, to
be sure, but still given, to employ local labor." Sorenson was the
speaker and his heavy face wore an expression of ill-disguised
contempt.
"Agreed. Local labor was to be hired," said Pollock. "But our company
isn't a philanthropic institution; it's run on strictly business
principles. Any agreement we made implied that local workmen should
give exactly what other workmen would give in work."
"They did so," Judge Gordon affirmed.
"There was no trouble until this man came," Sorenson remarked. "I
suppose he felt that he had to show his authority."
"Ah, but there was if not trouble at any rate dissatisfaction on our
part," Pollock stated, tapping a finger on the table. "Construction
wasn't progressing as we knew it should, which was the very reason for
getting a new manager, one who could speed it up. But as I said, it
all comes down to a question of fact. You gentlemen offer your
workmen's avowals of industry to support your claim; Mr. Weir, on the
other hand, gives us some definite records to back up his side. Here
they are for the last week the workmen from San Mateo and neighborhood
worked--his first week here; and for the succeeding weeks under the
men shipped in; in material used, in cubic yards of concrete
construction, and in percentage of work finished. Examine them if you
please. They show daily and weekly results to be just a trifle less
than double for the corresponding time the imported workmen have been
here. In other words, the new men have, while shortening the time of
completion, given twice as much work for exactly the same wage paid
your Mexicans. In other words, too, your local laborers cancelled our
agreement by their own incompetence."
"Your manager could easily have doctored those records," Sorenson
stated, coldly.
"You scarcely mean that, sir," Pollock instantly replied icily, his
amiability vanishing.
"Come, Judge, we may as well go, I think. We're appealing to a
prejudiced court." And Sorenson arose.
"Our decision to view the matter like Mr. Weir is because his position
is sustained by these facts, not because we're prejudiced, as you
insinuate. But I may add that it would not be strange if we were
prejudiced, as we've become convinced that you gentlemen haven't been
sincere in your attitude towards our company and if anything are
strongly hostile. Any one may be deceived for a time, and we were, but
not permanently. You would have done much better to have recognized
that we have a perfect right to build this project on land that we
bought and with water that we acquired. For it will be built in any
case and in spite of such local opposition as may be made." Pollock
flicked the ash from his cigar with a careful finger. "That is a mere
piece of information or a declaration of war, whichever way you wish
to take it."
"I told you we were wasting our time coming here," the cattleman said
to his companion.
"Good day, gentlemen," said Judge Gordon, politely.
And the pair went out to Sorenson's machine.
Shortly after, the two other directors left to catch a train at
Bowenville, Pollock planning to stay with Weir to formulate a report
during the next day or two for presentation to the entire directorate
at its next meeting. Sorenson caught a glimpse of the car whirling
through town, with Weir at the wheel, who with Pollock accompanied the
departing men that certain unsettled points might be discussed up to
the last moment.
As Weir and Pollock were returning, the latter eyed the engineer and
laughed.
"You've evidently brushed these fellows', Sorenson's and Gordon's, fur
the wrong way to please them. But they'll probably leave us alone from
now on."
"They'll not leave me alone."
"Eh? How's that?"
"Well, I have, as it happens, a little trouble with them on my own
hook. A private matter antedating the building of the dam. They're
after me. I had to put a piece of lead into a fellow who tried to kill
me from the dark one night. I speak of it in case you should be told
and wonder; otherwise I should not have mentioned the thing. I'm not
popular in San Mateo, in consequence."
"Ah, I had heard nothing of that. It interests me. You were not
touched."
"My hat, that was all."
"Very interesting, very interesting, indeed," was Pollock's only
comment. But if his tone was casual, his eyes were busy in sidelong
study of the engineer, making a new appraisal and drawing fresh
conclusions.
Meanwhile several knots were being tied in the web of circumstance.
Sorenson took his telephone and conversed briefly with Vorse, passing
the information that he had just seen the three directors leaving for
the east. So they were out of the way. In reply the saloon-keeper
stated that he would start the whisky end of the game that evening.
By the morrow, Sunday, when the camp was at rest, the workmen would
all be "celebrating." Burkhardt had reported the last load of
"southern cattle" shipped in and driven on the range the previous
evening--a seemingly innocent statement that Sorenson understood
perfectly. Up in the hills, safely hidden in the timber, lay the fifty
men brought from Mexico to make the assault on the dam the next night,
men whose instruments of destruction would be fire and dynamite.
Twenty-four hours more would bring the moment of action.
Ignorant of all this Ed Sorenson had been forming a little individual
scheme that would promote his own affairs, chief of which was to win
Janet Hosmer. Drinking heavily ever since his rebuff, he had sunk into
a condition of evil determination and recklessness that made him fit
for any desperate act. After much meditation fed by whisky, he had
evolved a plan that would bring him success. Thereupon he had loaded
his car with a quantity of selected stuff and made a mysterious
journey at night.
"She'll learn I meant business," was his frequent soliloquy.
And while these strands were being knit into the skein Martinez was
producing another. Quietly, carefully, persuasively, he had been
pursuing his own particular course of eliciting history for use in his
"Chronicle," as he named it,--and for another use concerning which he
was as still as death.
That he was successful in obtaining what he had been after was made
known to Weir about dusk that evening while he was talking with
Pollock in his office. But that he had not been so lucky in covering
his tracks was likewise apparent.
The telephone rang. Steele took down the receiver.
"See Janet Hosmer at once," Felipe Martinez' terrified voice came over
the wire. "She'll have it, the paper--the one you want. They've
learned I got it; they're after me now. Hammering on the door. If you
don't hurry----"
His words ceased abruptly in an anguished quaver. At the same time
Weir heard carried to him the sound of a crash as of a door smashed.
Excusing himself hurriedly, Steele Weir seized his holster from a nail
and buckled on the belt. Then snatching his hat, he ran outside the
building to his car.
"Now, who is he gunning for?" Pollock asked himself aloud, "I rather
wish he had invited me along."
But neither he nor Weir himself, nor any soul in San Mateo, knew that
at last the furious torrent of events had burst upon the community.
Weir sensed something. But Sorenson brooding on the morrow thought the
moment had not yet come. His son was occupied with his own treacherous
scheme. Even Vorse and Burkhardt smashing their way into Martinez'
office saw nothing beyond the immediate necessity. Yet the flood was
bearing down on all.
CHAPTER XIV
OLD SAUREZ' DEPOSITION
In order to understand why Vorse and Burkhardt were attacking
Martinez' office it is necessary to trace the lawyer's movements and
the incidents which precipitated that act. Martinez had, as stated,
not been idle. Following the clue obtained from the woman who had
worked in the elder Weir's household, he visited the old Mexican named
as having been used as roustabout by Vorse in early days. This was old
Saurez, whom he knew. The wrinkled old fellow seldom came to town now,
spending most of the time sitting against the sunny side of his son's
house on Pina Creek, twenty miles south, where he lived.
Martinez in the ten days that had elapsed since informing Weir he had
learned of Saurez' possible knowledge of the past had proceeded to
make himself agreeable to the gray-headed old man. He had explained
his "history." He exercised all the arts of graciousness and flattery.
Beginning at the present he worked back through the past to the
killing of Jim Dent and the flight of Joseph Weir, extracting tales of
early fights, raids, accidents, big storms, violent deaths and
killings, making elaborate notes, winning the narrator's confidence
and gradually drawing forth the facts he really sought.
Out of all the rambling talk and vague accounts of the Dent and Weir
affair Martinez was able to piece together the fragments in a clear
statement. This was that Saurez had seen Weir and Dent in Vorse's
saloon. The pair had gambled for a time with Vorse, Burkhardt (at that
time sheriff), Sorenson and Judge Gordon. After losing for a time Weir
refused to continue in the poker game, although he was drunk. Dent
played on notwithstanding Weir's urgence to desist; he had already
lost all his money and began staking his cattle and finally his ranch.
At this stage Weir had gone to sleep at another table, with his head
on his arms. Vorse had locked the front door to keep out visitors
during the big game. But the back door remained open for air.
Saurez had busied himself cleaning the bar. All at once he saw the
players spring up in their game, Dent talking angrily about cheating,
marked cards and so on. Then the guns came out when he pointed at a
card that was marked--for it had been marked with pinpricks as Saurez
saw later on examining the deck, which Dent had perceived in spite of
the whisky in him. And Sorenson and Vorse had both shot him where he
stood. Yes, shootings were not uncommon. Every one but he, Saurez, had
likely forgotten all about the matter. That was long ago.
Afterwards Vorse had sent the Mexican away for something or other,
with an injunction to keep his mouth closed. As said, speaking of it
now made no difference, though he expected Martinez to keep his
promise to publish none of the stories while he was still alive; that
was agreed. When the Mexican had left the saloon Weir was yet
sleeping, having only raised his head at the pistol shots to stare
drunkenly and then relapse. What occurred afterwards Saurez did not
know. Weir left the country. Dent was buried, the story being told
that he had committed suicide. Every one believed it: had he not lost
his ranch at poker? That was the end of the business. Other affairs
happened and it was forgotten.
On this Saturday Martinez had persuaded Saurez to accompany him to San
Mateo. It would be necessary to sign the stories, he explained
lightly, to give them proper weight and in order that when the book
was published after Saurez' death they would be seen to be true
accounts, with Saurez' picture that a photographer would make
appearing in the middle. He, Saurez, would be famous, and his sons and
grandsons would have copies of the book in their houses to show
visitors and the priest. Ah, it would be well to have the priest
witness Saurez' signature, then sceptical people would know indeed
that the stories were Saurez' own accounts. So on and so on.
The matter required infinite precautions, patience, skill on the
lawyer's part. He had prepared two or three dozen depositions of
events, as a husk for the real kernel. With Saurez in his office at
last he telephoned the priest to call at once and unostentatiously
caught on the street four other Mexicans of the better class, bringing
them in. When the priest arrived he closed the door and explained his
desire they should act as witnesses to Saurez' statements. He had
already solicited the _padre's_ advice as to the history; the others
all had heard of it; he gave them a number of the most harmless
depositions to read; and set Saurez to work making his mark on the
rest of the papers. During the reading and the accompanying lively
discussion of the witnesses, he had them pause to witness Saurez' mark
with their own names in the places provided. About the tenth
deposition when their attention was confused and flagging he slipped
the account concerning Weir and Dent, a many-paged attestation, upon
the table, so folded that nothing but the signing space was visible.
It was the critical instant for Martinez; his thin body was more
nervous than ever, his eyes brighter and more restless. But at last
the ordeal was over.
Saurez' heavy black cross was at the bottom of the important
deposition, the priest and the other four men had appended their
names, and all that remained to do was for Martinez to fill out the
acknowledgment and affix his seal. He whisked the document behind his
back and called attention to a humorous episode in a paper one of the
men still held, starting a laugh. Then he suggested they rest and
opened a bottle of wine, over which the others congratulated Saurez
and Martinez and predicted a wonderful fame for the "Chronicle."
Finally the lawyer perceived, as he said, that Saurez was weary.
Anyway, it was supper-time. The remaining papers could be signed
another day.
The witnesses departed, much pleased with the affair.
"Walk up and down outside for a little time while I straighten the
sheets, then we'll go eat and afterwards I'll drive you home to bed,"
the attorney said. "The fresh air will give you an appetite. Behold,
you're already becoming a famous man! I shall preserve these documents
safely as they are tremendously important to our town, our state, our
country!" And a grandiloquent gesture accompanied the words. "Come
back in a little while, my friend, then we'll see how much food you
can hide away."
Saurez much gratified at these words and at everything went out
slowly, for he was troubled by rheumatism. The instant his back
disappeared Martinez sprang to the table, swiftly filled out the
acknowledgment of the old man's signature to the Weir document,
clapped the page under the seal and pressed home the stamp. Then
pushing the folded statement into an envelope and that into his
pocket, he leaned back with a sigh of exhaustion. The thing was
accomplished at last, but the strain had been great. Weir's command to
secure evidence had been obeyed. Only the promise to await Saurez'
death, troubled Martinez, and with a convenient sophistry he decided
that an agreement not to print the narrative in a book did not extend
to using it in court. Weir would be delighted--it was a famous coup.
How long Martinez sat reveling in this well-earned satisfaction he was
unaware, until with a start he glanced at his watch. Three-quarters of
an hour had passed. He went out to look for Saurez. But he was not in
sight and though several persons had seen him they could not say where
he had gone. Martinez went again into his office. When another
half-hour had drifted by he decided the old man had encountered
friends and either caught a ride home or gone with one to supper. So
Martinez proceeded to his own meal.
Yet he was pervaded by an unaccountable uneasiness. The sun had set in
a bank of clouds and night was not far off. He made another search for
the old Mexican, inquiring here and there, until he was informed by
one that he had seen Saurez in Vorse's saloon talking with Vorse and
sipping a glass of brandy. That was half an hour before. A chill of
fear spread over the lawyer's skin.
Determined, however, to learn the worst, he stole to the saloon and
peered over the slatted door. The Mexican bar-keeper was wiping a
glass; Vorse was not in sight; and--ha! there was Saurez himself
drowsing by a table. Martinez slipped in and made his way to the
rear.
"Come; time to go home," he said softly, giving the old Mexican's
shoulder a shake. This did not arouse the sleeper, so he added force
to his hand, at which the other sagged forward limply.
Martinez jumped back. Next he stood quite still, staring. Then he
approached and lifting the drooping head, gazed at the wrinkled face
and glazed eyes.
"Miguel, come here!" he exclaimed, anxiously. "Saurez is dead."
"Dead!" The bar-keeper ran to the spot, eyes large with alarm and
excitement. "Dios, I thought him asleep! See, there is the glass in
which I gave him brandy at Señor Vorse's order. The old one said he
had come in to pay a little visit to his old employer and have a chat.
They talked for some time."
"Was Vorse asking him questions?"
"Yes. I think Saurez was telling him how he happened to be in town. I
paid little attention to them, however. After a while I glanced up and
saw Vorse standing by him. They were not talking. Then Vorse came away
and said the old man had fallen asleep, and he went out to supper."
Martinez again lifted the head and darted glances over the dead man's
breast. There were no wounds, but on the shriveled brown throat he saw
what might have been a thumb-mark. He could not be sure, yet that was
his guess.
"He was an old man," Miguel remarked.
"Yes. You should notify his son and also the undertaker, so the body
can be taken care of. I'll telephone the latter too when I reach my
office."
This Martinez did, informing Saurez's family that the old man had
died while apparently asleep at Vorse's, and expressed his sympathy
and sorrow.
One feature of the case he instantly perceived; he was released from
any obligation to keep silent regarding the old man's declaration.
Fortunate was he to have obtained it before Vorse had got wind of his
purpose. At the thought of Vorse he arose and locked both front and
back doors of the building, pulled down the window shades and turned
out the light.
It was almost dark by now. In the darkness he felt safer. Any one
passing would suppose him away. Perhaps he should spend the night
elsewhere--at the dam, for instance. Again the same shudder shook his
frame that he had experienced on seeing the mark on Saurez' throat.
Vorse had killed the old Mexican, of that he was convinced. With his
tongue made garrulous by brandy and by the presence of his old
employer the old man had doubtless related everything that occurred
between him and Martinez; and the vulture-like, bald-headed
saloon-keeper, recognizing that he had been unconsciously betrayed had
immediately acted to close this witness' lips forever against a second
utterance.
Martinez himself was in danger. The perspiration dampened his face as
he realized that as far as he was concerned the die was cast. He must
fling in his fortunes with Weir to the utmost. He would first stand in
defense on his right as a lawyer to secure evidence for a client, but
if this failed--and what rights would Vorse halt for?--he must depend
upon the paper. Once they had that, they would speedily put him out of
the way as they had done Saurez. But if they had it not, they would at
least hesitate to wreak their vengeance until they could get it into
their possession. He must place it in Weir's hands at once, then if
questioned refuse to inform them of its whereabouts. Perhaps they
would try to seize it some time this night. He stood up, lighted the
lamp, saw that all was well in the office and took his hat.
A peremptory knock sounded on the door of the rear room.
"Open up
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