In the Shadow of the Hills

At the dam Weir found Meyers and Atkinson anxiously waiting his return. The sudden concerted melting away of workmen from camp had been warning to his subordinates that the danger of a general spree had taken definite form, which the report of a pair of young engineers confirmed when they followed a group of laborers to the old adobe house and beheld the beginning of the debauch.

“Get out all the staff, Meyers, and you, Atkinson, all the foremen and sober men left, then go down the road and put that joint out of business, taking axes and whatever is necessary.”

“And if they fight?” Meyers asked.

“Try first to placate them. If that fails, some of you draw them off in order to permit the others to enter the house and destroy the whiskey. It’s a tough job, but you may succeed. If the crowd turns ugly as it may, being drunk, come back. No need to take the risk of broken heads or being beaten up. See, however, if you can’t outwit the outfit. Possibly you could push that mud house over from the rear by means of a beam; that would do the business. I leave it to you to decide what’s best to do, men, after you’ve examined the situation.”

“Well, pick out six to remain,” the other agreed.

For Meyers’ suggestion had raised a disagreeable possibility. It was never safe to ignore precautions when a gang of two or three hundred rough, active laborers, however loyal when sober, were made irresponsible and crazy by liquor; and one stage of drunkenness in such men was usually manifested in a wild desire for violence. The scheme of Weir’s enemies might comprise using this very act for wrecking the camp.

Six men, to be sure, would offer little resistance to stemming the movement once it was started, but the sight of steel in the guards’ hands might cause even a reckless mob to pause long enough for an appeal. If the men should be brought to listen, they could probably be diverted from their purpose, as impassioned crowds are easily swayed by men of force.

In any case the camp and dam should be defended to the last. That went without saying.

Meyers and Atkinson had little more than departed with their muster of engineers, foremen and sober workmen, some fifty in all, when the two cars driven by Dr. Hosmer and Janet arrived at headquarters. To the occupants of both machines the camp appeared singularly dark and silent, the office building and the commissary shack alone showing lights.

The four visitors entered the main room in the former building, where they found Mr. Pollock and Martinez.

“Oh, Mr. Martinez, you’ve escaped!” Janet exclaimed, after a surprised stare at the lawyer.

The Mexican smiled, bowed and drew one point of his black mustache through his fingers.

“I have indeed, Miss Janet,” said he. “Not without an unpleasant experience, however. I understand you secured the paper concerning which I telephoned you, and though I understand it has since been lost––through no fault of yours––I desire to express my thanks for your excellent assistance in the matter.”

“But it has been found again; we have it with us.”

Martinez gave a start, none the less sincere for being dramatic.

“What! Saurez’ deposition? Weir thought it burned. Why, this is the most wonderful luck in the world! It gives us the whip-hand again.”

Janet nodded.

“Mary Johnson here found it in a crack in the rocks when she and her father went up to the cabin to bring Ed Sorenson down. Father has it. That’s one reason we’re here. But there’s another; Mr. Sorenson has learned of his son’s accident, has seen him, talked with him, been told lies and now is in a dreadful rage, threatening every one concerned. He was at our house and made a scene. He’s coming here, or so he said, to kill Mr. Weir and obtain the document. So we hurried to the dam to give warning.”

At this juncture Mr. Pollock stepped forward.

Janet expressed her pleasure at his acquaintance and in turn introduced her father and the Johnsons.

“Mr. Weir spoke of you to us, but we weren’t aware he had informed you of the paper.” Then she added, “But he would wish to, naturally.”

Weir’s voice, without, in conversation with some one caused them all to look towards the door. In the panel of light falling on the darkness before the house they perceived the engineer’s tall figure by a horse, from which the rider was dismounting. Letting the reins drag and leaving the horse to stand, the latter walked with Weir into the room.

“Why, this is a delightful surprise!” the engineer exclaimed on beholding the four who had come while he was out. “And unexpected.” His eyes rapidly interrogated the different faces. “I suppose it’s business, not pleasure, that brings you.”

“That’s so,” said Johnson, the rancher, nodding.

“I haven’t served the warrant yet,” Madden replied.

“And you know that I’m not going to skip the country at the prospect of your serving it?”

“No. There’s no hurry; I’ll just sit around for a while. And understand, Weir, this arrest is none of my doings, except officially. I take no stock in the yarn about your having attacked the greaser you killed. Martinez’ and Miss Janet’s testimony at the inquest satisfied me in that respect.”

Mr. Pollock now drew Weir aside for a whispered conference. When they rejoined the others the engineer made the lawyer acquainted with the sheriff.

“Mr. Weir has agreed to my suggestion to take you into our confidence, Mr. Madden,” he stated. “There may be other warrants for you to serve soon, and I’m sure you will respect what we reveal. All of us here except you know the facts I’m about to relate; indeed, have shared in them to an extent; and in addition to our word we’ll present proof. You know Dr. Hosmer and his daughter certainly, you probably know Mr. Johnson and the young lady with him, and are aware whether their statements are to be relied on.”

“They are,” Madden answered, without hesitation.

“You’re already convinced of the truth of Weir’s innocence in the charge of murder now being preferred against him. Well, now, a friend at court is worth something; and we propose to make you that friend.”

“I’m not against him like most of the town, anyway,” was the sheriff’s answer.

“Go ahead with your explanation,” Pollock said to the engineer.

Thereupon Weir briefly sketched out events for the officer as they had occurred and as showing the motives which had inspired his enemies in seeking to destroy him:––the original plot against his father, his determination to uncover the four conspirators, the episode at the restaurant in Bowenville, the discovery of Ed Sorenson as the hirer of the dead Mexican assassin, the obtaining of Saurez’ deposition and Martinez’ imprisonment in Vorse’s saloon cellar, Janet’s abduction and rescue and the loss of the paper.

“But the paper isn’t lost,” Dr. Hosmer interrupted. “Mary Johnson found it and here it is.” With which he drew the crumpled document from his breast pocket and laid it on the table.

“You have it again!” Weir exclaimed. “You found it, Mary!” He stepped forward and took the girl’s hand in his for a moment. “You’re a friend indeed to bring this back to me.”

“I owed you more than that,” she said, coloring.

“But Mr. Sorenson has learned about his son and the paper and everything that happened, except Ed Sorenson told him lies instead of the truth,” Janet put in. “He’s terribly angry at all of us. He said he would kill you for crippling Ed.”

“Sorenson is welcome to try,” Weir responded, with a quick blaze in his eyes.

At this point Mr. Pollock interposed.

“You didn’t finish your story, Weir. Relate for Mr. Madden’s benefit what occurred at Judge Gordon’s house.”

“He’s dead, then?” Madden asked, at last.

“Yes. And the transfer of property made to Mr. Pollock amounts to an acknowledgment of his guilt. Now, I should like to have Martinez read this deposition, for I’ve never heard its contents myself.”

This the Mexican did, translating the Spanish paragraphs into English with fluent ease, ending by reading the list of witnesses. Martinez gave the paper a slap of his hand.

“And old Saurez was found dead in Vorse’s saloon by me an hour after he had signed this,” he said. “Draw your own conclusions.”

Madden shifted on his seat. He glanced at the document and at the others and then gazed out the door at the darkness.

“Looks like a clear case; I always imagined if these men’s past was dug into there would be a lot of crooked business turned up. But granting that everything is as shown, with Lucerio the county attorney under Sorenson’s thumb and the community as it is there’s a question if Saurez’ statement even will be enough to convict them.”

At that Janet jumped up, her eyes gleaming.

“That is not all the proof, not all by any means!” she cried.

“What more is there?”

“Mr. Johnson’s evidence.”

“Johnson’s!” came in surprised tones from all four of the men uninformed of the rancher’s story.

“Yes, he saw the man Dent killed and the plotters make your father, Mr. Weir, believe he had done the killing.”

Steele stared at Johnson dumbfounded.

“Just that; I saw the whole dirty trick worked, looking through the back door of the saloon.”

“Then you were the boy!” Weir gasped. “The boy who looked in! After thirty years I supposed that boy gone, lost, vanished beyond finding.”

“I stayed right here,” was the reply. “Of course I kept my mouth shut about what I had seen. I worked on ranches and rode range and at last got the little place on Terry Creek and married. Nothing strange in my remaining in the country where I grew up, especially as I only knew the cattle business.”

Weir swung about to Madden.

“Here’s a live witness,” said he. “With the other proof his evidence should be final.”

“Whenever you say, I’ll arrest the men. As for this warrant I have, I’ll just continue to carry it in my pocket,” the sheriff stated. “I must remark that I never heard of a more villainous plot, taking it all around, than you’ve brought to light.”

“And the charges must cover everything,” Pollock said sternly. “From Dent’s murder to the conspiracy against the irrigation company.”

“I’ll stay here in case you need me to stop any trouble with your workmen,” Madden remarked.

But trouble though imminent was coming from another direction, as was suddenly shown when a man, dust-covered and hatless, rushed into the office.

“They’re on the way,” he cried.

“Who? The workmen?” Weir demanded.

“No. I don’t know anything about the workmen, but a bunch of Mexicans, fifty or more, are headed this way to blow up the dam. I saw and heard them.”

“Where?”

“At the spring a mile south. I was watching down there, where Atkinson had sent me after supper, relieving the man who kept lookout during the afternoon. That was where the booze was dealt out last night, you remember. I was sitting there when I heard a crowd coming. At first I thought it was our men, but when they stopped to drink and smoke, I saw by their talk they were Mexicans. But there was one white man with them, a leader. He and a Mexican talked in English. They’re to raid the camp, crawling up the canyon, to dynamite the dam first, then fire the buildings.”

“Then they’re on the road here now?”

“Yes.” The speaker licked his lips. “I cut along the hillside until I got ahead of them, but it was slow going in the dark and stumbling through the sage. They must be close at hand by this time, though I came faster than they did. The white man said to the Mexican that they wanted to reach the dam just at moonrise, and that will be pretty quick now.”

“Go to the bunk-house and call the men waiting there, and get a gun yourself,” Weir ordered. “The storekeeper will give you one.” When the messenger had darted out, he looked at the others. “You must take these girls away from here, doctor, at once.”

“But I don’t go,” Johnson snapped forth, drawing his revolver and giving the cylinder a spin.

“I never could hit anything, and haven’t had a firearm in my hand for years, but I can try,” Pollock stated. “This promises to be interesting, very interesting.”

“Very,” said Weir.

For a little he stood in thought, while the others gazed at him without speaking. His straight body seemed to gather strength and power before their eyes, his clean-cut features to become hard and masterful.

“Up the canyon he said they were coming, didn’t he?” he remarked at last, more to himself than to them. “Very well, so much the better. Johnson, you and Madden take charge of the men when they come and line them along the hillside this side of the dam. Put out all lights.” With which he strode out of the building.

They looked after him in uncertainty.

“I’m not going; you may be hurt, and need me,” Mary stated, with a stubborn note in her voice.

“Then keep out of reach––and run for town if the ruffians get into camp,” was her father’s answer.

“I stay too,” Janet exclaimed, resolutely.

The peril threatening the unfinished dam now alone engaged Steele Weir’s mind. Personal considerations did not enter into his calculations, least of all thought of personal danger; for when he placed himself in an undertaking whatever rested under his hand, as in this case the irrigation company’s property, became for him a trust to attend, to direct, to guard. Even more than if it had been his own property did he feel the obligation, for the interests concerned were not his. But the matter went deeper than a prospective money loss; it struck down to principles and rights––the principles of order and industry as against viciousness and havoc; the rights of law-abiding men who create as against the wantonness of lawless men who would destroy.

Were it his own workmen who, inflamed by drink and incited by a spirit of recklessness, were coming to wreck the camp in a moment of mad intoxication, he would have made allowances for the cause. Before resorting to extreme measures in defending his charge, he first would have sought to bring them to their senses. Drunken men are men unbalanced, irrational.

Weir proposed to give none. With enemies of this kind he had but one policy, strike first and strike with deadly force. One does not seek to dissuade a rattlesnake; one promptly stamps it under heel. One cannot compromise with ravenous wolves; one shoots them down. One does not wait to see how far a treacherous foe will go; one forestalls and crushes him before he begins. Moreover, if wise, one does it in such fashion that the enemy will not arise from the blow.

With the information given him by the guard posted at the spring Weir immediately grasped the true nature of the plot. The “whiskey party” was but a means of withdrawing the workmen from the scene, of weakening the camp, while a picked company of ruffians wrecked the property. It was an assault intended to wipe out the works and end construction, coincident with his arrest. Both the company and he were to pay the penalty for resisting the powers that rule San Mateo. And if the tale were spread that the destruction had been wrought by his workmen while drunk, who would doubt it?

Like shadows the band of Mexican desperadoes would come, dynamite the dam, fire the buildings, stampede the horses, and like shadows vanish again. In the unexpectedness of the raid, in the confusion, in the dim light, no one would with certainty be able to say who the assailants were. A scheme ferocious in its conception and diabolical in its cunning! But there was one flaw––the element of chance. Chance had given Weir warning.

A strong man warned is a strong man armed.

As the engineer stood in the office, swiftly measuring the imminent menace of which he had just been told, calculating the meager instruments of defense at hand, his mind sweeping up all the salient aspects, features, advantages and disadvantages of the situation, he seized on the one weak spot in the attacking party’s plan. At that spot he would strike.

So giving Johnson and Madden the order to take charge of the little handful of guards, he had plunged out into the night.

The men from the bunk-house were already running toward the office, before the door of which the rancher gathered them together to make sure of their arms and ammunition. All told, when Martinez and Pollock presently came from the store with guns, the little party numbered eleven.

“Is this all there are of us?” Dr. Hosmer asked.

“We are worth all that crowd that’s coming,” Johnson exclaimed, taking a spare gun Martinez had brought him.

“Did Weir send the rest of the engineers down to that house? I understood so.”

“That’s where they are, I reckon.”

Dr. Hosmer considered for a minute.

“I can be there in five minutes in my car. The road is on the north side of the stream, as is this camp: the gang that’s heading here to blow things up is coming up from the south, so it will not block the way. Men could be here in twenty minutes from down yonder by running.”

“There comes the moon,” said the man who had been at the spring. “They must be near now.”

Far in the east the moon was stealing above the horizon. Under its light the mesa took form out of the darkness––the level sagebrush plain criss-crossed by willow-lined ditches and checkered by small Mexican fields, the winding shimmering Burntwood River with its border of cottonwoods, the narrow road, the distant town of San Mateo, a vague blot of shadow picked out by tiny specks of light.

The mountains too now reared in view, silent, silvered, majestic, towering about the camp on the lower base. One could see, as the moon swam higher, the low long buildings of the camp clustered on the hillside above the canyon, in the bottom of which was the dashing stream and the bone-white core of the dam.

“Look down yonder on the other side!” Martinez exclaimed suddenly, pointing a long thin forefinger at the mouth of the canyon where a group of black dots were moving up the river.

“That’s them,” said the man who had given the warning.

“And they’re armed,” said another. “You can see the moon shine on their gun-barrels.”

On the opposite side of the stream, some two hundred yards below the dam and three or four hundred feet lower in elevation than the camp, advancing up the canyon in a string, the men looked like a line of insects.

Weir now came into sight, walking quickly towards the group. That he saw the Mexicans down in the canyon was evident from his swift appraising glances thither.

“Johnson, move your men down halfway to the dam and have them scatter there behind bowlders. I shall go still lower down,” he said. “You will hold your fire until I signal with my hat from the dam.”

“You’re going to the dam?”

“Yes.”

“We ought to go with you.”

“I don’t need you. You’ll be more effective hidden above. You’ll have plenty of light as the moon is shining squarely in the gorge. And await my signal.”

“All right; you’re the general.”

“But take no extreme risks, Weir. The company doesn’t ask you to sacrifice yourself,” Pollock stated.

“The sacrifice will be down among those fellows,” Steele replied, with set jaw. “Don’t worry about me. Now, start, men.”

He stood for a little watching the rate of progress of the line of Mexicans ascending the stream, which was not rapid owing to the broken rocks lining the bank. Then he swung about to the two girls.

“Every one here now is under my orders,” he said. “You two will take your car and go at once. This is no place for you.”

“But–––” Janet began.

“I’m taking no chances that you shall fall into the hands of those scoundrels,” he declared, sternly. “They may succeed in reaching this spot. You must not be here; you must go.”

Taking each by an arm he piloted them to the car.

“Sorry, but it has to be,” he added. “This is work for men, and men alone.”

Janet and Mary climbed up into the seat.

“You––you will take care of yourself,” Janet said, tremulously.

“I expect to. Still, this isn’t going to be a croquet party; anything may happen. Good-by.”

With that he swung about and breaking into a run made for a small building half-buried in the hillside and apart from the camp. There he stooped and picked up under each arm what looked like a cylinder of some size and went down towards the dam. For a time they could see him, but all at once he slipped behind an outcrop of rock and they saw him no more.

Janet turned to eye her companion. Once more her face was pale.

“Well?” she inquired of Mary.

“I reckon we’d better do as he says. He’d be awful mad if we didn’t. Did you see his eyes when he talked to us?”

“But if he––he and others are wounded?”

Uneasily Mary gazed at the older girl and then down at the canyon. On the hillside the men led by her father were no longer in sight, somewhere concealed among the stones that dotted the earth. But down by the stream and now scarcely fifty yards from the white stretch of concrete barring the river bed through a tunnel in which the water foamed and escaped, the Mexicans were clearly visible, their hats bobbing about, their guns flinging upward an occasional gleam.

“It doesn’t seem as if anything was going to happen,” Mary went on in awed tones. “Things are so quiet and peaceful.”

“Why, look down there at the dam,” Mary said, whose eyes had been wandering from, point to point of the scene. “Isn’t that him?”

Janet’s heart gave a quicker beat, then seemed to sink in her breast as staring downward she recognized the engineer. He had come out all at once from the shade cast by a wooden framework. He had with him the burdens he had lifted from the ground before the little detached stone house at the edge of the camp, and these, the cylinders, he placed on the surface of the concrete core at the spot where he stood. Then he knelt down, struck a match, lighted a cigar––as if any man in his senses would stop to smoke in such a situation!––and busied himself at some task over the cylinders.

Only for an instant had he stood erect on the flat top of the dam. Apparently he had been unseen by the attackers, engaged in picking their footing: and now in his crouching position, retired from the upper edge of the dam’s front as he was, it was very likely that he was wholly out of view of the band.

At last Weir moved his cylinders forward towards this edge. Afterwards he straightened up and standing hands on hips, smoking his cigar, the tiny crimson glow of which rose and fell, he watched the party nearing the foot of the white gleaming wall, fifty feet below him.

“They’ll shoot him,” Mary was saying, “oh, they’ll kill him!”

A surge of terror swept Janet. Next thing she knew she was out of the car and running down the hillside among the stones and the stalks of sagebrush, frantic to reach him, to pull him out of view of the men beneath. Only a single one of them had to cast a glance upward and to raise his gun and fire, then he would die. He should not die! She should fling herself as a protection before him rather than that he should be slain!

On a sudden a hand reached up from a rock and seized her arm, stopping her with a jerk. Then she was roughly pulled down beside it. The man was Madden, the sheriff.

“What in hell are you doing?” he demanded harshly. “Have you gone crazy?”

His grip was not relinquished.

“But see him! Aren’t you men going to help him? Are you going to let him be killed?”

Madden forced her to her knees, so that she was sheltered by the outcrop of stone.

“Any man who can smoke a cigar like that at such a time as this knows just what he’s doing,” was the answer. “Keep quiet and watch.”

“Oh, I don’t want to see,” she said. But she continued to look with fascinated eyes at the lone, calm figure on the dam.

Presently Madden pushed his gun forward over the rock.

“They’ve caught sight of him,” he stated.

The greater part of the number of bandits had stopped in a group a few yards from the base of the white dam core, though a few stragglers were some way behind. Among these Steele Weir made out the figure of one whom he recognized as a white man; he whom the guard from the spring had mentioned as directing the company; and when at a number of exclamations from Mexicans who perceived the engineer the man lifted his face, Weir saw he was Burkhardt.

No more than this was needed to show whose the hand behind this treacherous conspiracy. Clear, too, it was that Burkhardt, determined that no mistake or abandonment of the operation should occur, had come to see it through in person. Weir could ask nothing better; he had one of the plotters caught in the act.

Apparently orders had been to carry through the first part of the diabolical plan of destruction in silence, that of gaining control of the dam, for when two or three Mexicans flung up rifles to shoot at Weir a sharp word from another Mexican, seemingly their leader, had checked the volley and shouted to Burkhardt.

The latter had stopped; he stared for a few seconds at the man on the white wall above and finally signaled with a wave of his arm.

“Come down here,” he ordered.

“What do you want here?”

“Come down, then you’ll learn,” Burkhardt shouted up, making no effort to hide the enmity in his voice.

Weir puffed at his cigar, removed it from his lips to glance at its glowing end, while the Mexicans stared up at him in silence, puzzled by this lone guard who carried no rifle, who did not flee away to spread an alarm and seek aid, and who so unexpectedly had appeared as if anticipating their visit.

Murmurs broke out. Why were they not allowed to shoot him at once in the approved Mexican bandit fashion and proceed to their work? If he were not shot at once, he yet could escape for aid. The party had to ascend the hillside in order to mount to the top of the concrete work. Time would be required to place and fire their charges of dynamite––and they were eager to get at the loot in the buildings above.

“Kill him,” Burkhardt roared suddenly, jerking forth his revolver and blazing at the engineer.

The bullet sang past Weir’s head. He did not duck; indeed, kept his place calmly while the Mexicans were raising their guns, as if to show his supreme contempt for their power. But at the instant Burkhardt fired again and a dozen rifles blazed he sprang back and dropped flat, leaving the deadly missiles to speed harmlessly above the dam.

This was the essence of his plan of defense. With guns the defenders on the hillside would be outnumbered and probably killed in an attack. The information that the assailants were to steal up the canyon, however, was the key that would unlock a desperate situation, and his mind had grasped the mode and means of defeating the enemy.

With the first shots quiet had returned. The night seemed for Weir as peaceful as ever, the earth bathed in moonlight, the camp at rest. Only before him there was the sputter of the two fuses, one at the right, one at the left, as the trains of fire burned towards the holes in the canisters. He watched these calculatingly. His cigar no longer of service had been cast aside.

All at once he rose erect again. A few men were starting along the wall to climb the hillside, but the greater number were gathered about Burkhardt and the Mexican leader. Now Weir glanced at them and now at the fuses.

“I warn you to leave this dam and camp, Burkhardt,” he shouted, when a few seconds had passed. “Don’t say I didn’t give you warning.”

Every head jerked upward at this surprising reappearance and voice. They had supposed him fled, the men down there, and were having a last hasty conference, doubtless as to the wisdom of now first attacking the camp. A grim smile came on the engineer’s face. Their astonishment was comic––or would have been at a moment less perilous and fraught with less grave consequences.

Weir stooped, picked up one of the canisters, blew on the fuse now burned so near the hole. Some men perhaps at this instant would have quailed for their own safety and at the prospect of hurling death among others. For death this tin cylinder meant for those below. But there was no tremor in Steele Weir’s arm or heart.

He was the man of metal who had won the name “Cold Steel”––calm, implacable, of steel-like purpose. With such enemies he could hold no other communion than that which gave death. For such there was no mercy. By the same sort of law that they would execute let them suffer––the law of lawlessness and force. Destruction they would give, destruction let them gain.

He straightened. He took a last look at the snapping, sparkling, smoldering fuse, then flung his burden full down upon the spot where the Mexicans were again pointing their guns at him. Swiftly picking up the second canister, while bullets whined by, he cast it down after the first. A glimpse of startled faces he had, of men attempting to scatter from before the huge missiles, then he flung himself full length upon the dam.

Interminably time seemed to stretch itself out as lying there he listened, waited, sought to brace himself for the impending shock. A quick doubt assailed his mind. Had the charges failed.

All at once the earth seemed rent by a roar that shook the very dam. Followed instantly a second volume of sound more terrific, more blasting in its quality, more dreadful in its power, deafening, stunning, as if the world had erupted.

“Their dynamite!” Weir breathed to himself.

His ear-drums appeared to be broken. His hat was gone. His body ached from the tremendous dispersion of air. But that he could still hear he discovered when through his shocked auditory nerves he distinguished, as if far off, faint booming echoes from the hills.

He got to his knees, finally to his feet. Pressing his hands to his head he gazed slowly about. Stones and a rain of earth were still falling, as if from a meteoric bombardment. About him he perceived sections of woodwork shaken to pieces, collapsed.

Stepping to the edge of the dam he peered downward. A vast hole showed in the earth before the wall though the wall itself was uninjured and only smeared with a layer of soil. Huge rocks lay where there had been none before, uprooted and flung aside by the explosion, dispersed by the gigantic blast. On the hillside half a dozen men were picking themselves up and struggling wildly to flee. Nearer, a few other forms lay in the moonlight mangled and still, or mangled, and writhing in pain. Of all the rest––nothing.

Almost completely Burkhardt’s predatory band had been blotted out. Weir’s thunderbolt had struck down into its very heart, and it had vanished.

As he turned and walked towards the end of the dam, he staggered a little. The sight had shaken even his iron nerve.

In his runabout, with Sheriff Madden at his side, and followed by Atkinson and half a dozen men for guards in two other machines, Weir sped along the road to San Mateo. They carried with them Burkhardt, who had been found stunned and slightly injured, and two Mexican bandits who had been captured. Those of the party of attackers yet alive but seriously hurt were being treated at camp by Dr. Hosmer, while the young engineers, armed and eager, were scouring the mountain side for the few Mexicans who had got away.

It seemed a miracle that Burkhardt had escaped death, but the explanation was found no doubt in the fact he had started from the spot where the canisters fell and so at the moment of explosion was outside the area of its full destruction. To Weir the matter went deeper than that. Providence appeared to have saved him for punishment, for the long term of imprisonment he deserved for his crimes.

“I’d much rather have him alive than dead,” Steele had remarked to Madden, when the man was brought up from the canyon a prisoner.

The first of these had arrived and the rest were tailing behind for half a mile when Weir and his companions set out for town, the blinding headlights of the machines scattering on either side of the road the approaching workmen. It was not likely many would go back to the house when they were told at headquarters how narrowly destruction of the works had been averted and how their spree had been a move in the plot. Between shame at being-duped and drowsiness resulting from drink they would, after a look at the hole blown in the earth at the base of the dam, want to seek their bunk-houses.

As they sped towards town Weir and Madden rapidly made their plans, for the sheriff having witnessed with his own eyes the enormity of the plotters’ guilt was all for quick action.

“These engineers of yours with us and the other men Meyers will bring down can be thrown as a guard around the jail,” he stated. “I’ll swear them all in as deputies. With Sorenson and Vorse locked up along with Burkhardt––and I’ll throw Lucerio, the county attorney, in with them on the off chance he’s an accomplice––there will be high feeling running in San Mateo. As quick as I can make arrangements, we’ll take them to safe quarters elsewhere––to-night if possible, to-morrow at the latest, in fast machines. These men have friends, remember.”

“You’ve Burkhardt handcuffed; it might be well to gag him, too, for fear the crowd might make trouble if he yelled for help,” Weir replied.

On the outskirts of town therefore the cars stopped. When Burkhardt, who had recovered his senses and with them a knowledge of his plight, perceived the sheriff’s intention his rage burst all bounds.

“You fool, you muddle-headed blunderer!” he exclaimed, with a string of oaths. “Take these cuffs off! You’ll lose your job for this trick. When I see Sorenson–––”

“When you see him, you’ll see him; and that will be inside a cell,” was the cool rejoinder. “I didn’t know you were a dynamiter and would-be murderer until to-night, but I watched you at work and saw you shoot twice at Weir.”

“You’ll unlock these, I say, here and now!” And the raging voice went off in a further stream of biting curses. “Look at me; I’m Burkhardt. You’re crazy to talk of throwing me in jail, with my influence and–––”

“Your influence be damned,” was the imperturbable answer. “You’ll have a long time in a penitentiary to see how much influence you have, if you don’t swing first.”

Burkhardt struggled fiercely for a moment against the steel bands about his wrists and the men who held him.

“No crook like this Weir shall ever send me behind bars, or any other man put me there. Wait till Sorenson and Vorse and Judge Gordon learn what you’re trying! Wait till they find out you’ve double-crossed us for this engineer! Wait till Gordon turns me loose with a habeas corpus, you’ll sweat blood for this night’s work, Madden!”

The sheriff shook out the red handkerchief with which he expected to bind the prisoner’s mouth.