“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.”
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 65 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 66 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 67 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 69 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 70 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 71 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,” 72 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 73 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? 74 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.
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 77 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. 78 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 80 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 81 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 82 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.
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 84 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 85 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 86 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 87 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 88 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 89 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.”