"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 embarra.s.sment 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 n.o.ble 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 a.n.a.lyze. 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 a.s.surance 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 G.o.d! 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 pa.s.sed 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 l.u.s.tful beast's nature? She must love him, of course. He must have been careful to exhibit to her only such qualities as would gain her affection and respect, or rather hollow shams of qualities he never had possessed. Propinquity, lack of rivals in this little town, no doubt were largely responsible for her feeling for the man. But it was like standing by and seeing her fair young body, her fresh pure life, her high soul, flung to a devouring swine.

And by the rules of the game he couldn't open his lips to utter a word of warning! That was the worst of it, that was the worst of it. No, not by the rules of the game; not, for that matter, by the rules of life; for the latter run that only can the person concerned see with his or her own eyes what a loved one's character is, and must make and abide by her own judgments.

Steele Weir all at once stopped in his tracks. He stared straight before him for a time seeing Janet Hosmer's face as it appeared when she anxiously gazed at him from Martinez' door, coming out of the night like a pallid moon-flower. At that instant she had feared he had been wounded; her heart was fluttering with anguish. The tension of his body relaxed and his hands slowly unclosed and involuntarily his eyes went up to the moon sailing serenely in the sky above the treetops and the flat-roofed adobe houses. What vaster blessing could life bestow than to have such a look come seeking one beloved!

He went on thoughtfully.

"She shall not marry him," he said to himself, with a quick resolve.

What were the rules of any game when an innocent girl's happiness was at stake? Did he care for conventions, or even the contempt she herself might feel for him for apparently belittling her lover? He could stand that, so that her eyes were opened and the fellow's yellow heart made plain. At the proper time he should act, view his part as she might. A snap of his fingers for being misunderstood! He would go his own way afterwards.

The thing had its curious features, too. No mistake, the shock of hearing Sorenson senior talking to the sheriff and the crowd, working up sentiment, had stirred her indignation and wonder and uneasiness and alarm. She was no fool, as she had said. She had a clear, practical mind, give it something to work on. Her intuition had immediately grasped the fact that there might be cellars under the Sorenson household of which she knew nothing and which should be promptly entered with a strong light. Whether the momentary desire would last, that was the question. To-morrow, or the first time she found herself in Ed Sorenson's rea.s.suring 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 pa.s.sing. 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-gla.s.s 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?"