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

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"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 fiance 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