In the Shadow of the Hills by George C. Shedd (the best ebook reader for android txt) 📕

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