"No more, I want to hear no more," she gasped. "Let me go home. I'm sick."

"It all makes me sick, too," he answered. "Sick and sore, both. But it's the truth. I'm sorry if it's been a bad pill to swallow, but it's the G.o.d's truth, girl. I'm sorry it couldn't be any other way, but I wouldn't see you marry that scoundrel if I lost a hand stopping you.

Mary felt sick at first, too; she's over it now. You'll not feel bad long. Better stay for dinner with us."

"I couldn't swallow a bite. Thank you for your kindness in asking me--and for telling me what I wanted to know, too. Father never knew, or he would have warned me. People saw I was engaged to Ed Sorenson and would say nothing to father, of course. I shall always count you as one of my best friends, Mr. Johnson. And you too, Mary; you must come down and stay with me sometime, for I imagine you get lonely here. No, another day I'll remain to dinner--and I want to be alone now."

They pressed her no further, seeing her wretchedness of spirit. But they walked with her to the car and shook hands with her when she was in and urged her to come again.

When she had disappeared in the aspens among which the trail led, Mary said to her father:

"You said they killed a man named Dent."

"They did. I saw the killing."

"And nothing was ever done about it?"

"No. n.o.body but me knew of the happening and I'd of had a bullet through my heart if I'd talked. I might yet even now, so see that you keep your mouth shut."

"You told her."

"I was mad, so mad I could say anything. But she isn't the kind to repeat the story; I'm not afraid on that score. She's clean strain all through."

"Did you know the man whom Sorenson and the others killed?" Mary questioned, in some awe.

"I knew of him, but I was only a lad then. I saw it all through the back door of Vorse's saloon where it happened, but I've never breathed about it to a soul. I didn't want to be murdered some dark night.

Those four men would see that the job was done quick even now, I'm saying, if they were on to the fact. I know 'em, if n.o.body else does."

Mary's skin crawled with p.r.i.c.kles of fear.

"They must be awful bad."

"They were devils then, and I don't think they've changed to angels to-day, though they try to appear decent. I know 'em; I know what they'll do once they start. You can't make sheep out of wolves just by giving 'em a fleece."

"You said they robbed another man at the same time they killed that Dent."

"Yes; and it only goes to show the h.e.l.lish crooks they are. It was another man in the saloon. He was drunk. They made him believe he had killed Dent. Then said they'd help him to get away if he gave them his property. He was a rich fellow who had come out from the east and gone to ranching, a tenderfoot. They took his stuff and he skipped the country with his wife. That was the last of him, and I reckon he believes to this day that he's a murderer. And that's how they got the start of their wealth, or a big part of it, Sorenson and Vorse and the other two. They've got the San Mateo Cattle Company, with fifty thousand head of steers, and ten or twenty bands of sheeps and ranches, and the bank, and all the rest, and they walk around like honest men. But they're thieves and murderers, Mary, thieves and murderers! I'd rather be the man I am, poor and with nothing but this little mortgaged piece of ground and my few cattle, than them, who robbed Dent and killed him and then robbed and drove out Weir."

"Was that the other man's name?"

"Yes."

"That's funny. The same as the man who brought me home."

"There are lots of Weirs, like the Johnsons."

"Not so many, I guess. Maybe they're related. Did the man who skipped have any children?"

"No. None I ever heard of, though I didn't know much about him. Just him and his wife, I think."

Johnson had perceived no resemblance between the engineer and the vanished man of whom he spoke. As for that, however, he had no clear recollection of the elder Weir's face; he was but twelve years old at the time of the dramatic event, thirty years before.

"Now, come along and eat," he said. "And remember! Not a word of this to a soul."

Meanwhile Janet Hosmer was driving slowly down the canyon, oblivious that opportunity to unlock the whole mystery had been hers, never dreaming that she had just missed by the slenderest margin what Steele Weir would have given the world to know.

For an instant Fate had placed the key in her hand. She knew it not; it was withdrawn again and the door remained closed and locked while the threads of Destiny continued to be spun.

CHAPTER XII

THE PLOT

In Vorse's saloon, where in the past so many evil ideas for the acquisition of money or power had sprouted, the scheme had its inception. It had been of slow growth, with innumerable suggestions considered, tested, discarded. The intended arrest and trial of Weir had been the first aim; but this had expanded until at last the plot had become of really magnificent proportions, cunning yet daring, devilish enough even to satisfy the hate and greed of its originators, consummate in design, absolutely safe and conclusive.

It was Sorenson who conceived the notion of pulling the irrigation project down in ruins at the moment of Weir's own fall. Judge Gordon a few days later had pieced out the method, which was either to corrupt the workmen to wreck dam and camp or to place them in the equivocal position of having done so apparently though others did it in fact.

Vorse and Burkhardt devised the details. Weir should be left free until the blow had fallen on the camp, whereupon he should be immediately clapped into jail on the murder charge, which, coming on top of the "riot," would paralyze all company action and work. From such a crushing double-blow no concern could quickly recover, if indeed the loss did not result in total cessation of construction.

Thus shedding their coats of expedient lawfulness, they reverted under the menace of Steele Weir's presence to the men they were in an earlier age--an age when a few white land and cattle "barons"

dominated the region, predatory, arrogant, masterful and despotic; the age just ceasing when the elder Weir and Dent arrived; the age of their youth forty years before, the age when railroads and telegraphs and law were remote, and chicanery and force were the common agents, and "guns" the final arbiters.

To them Weir was like a reincarnated spirit of that age. He guessed if he did not know their past. He had appeared in order to challenge their supremacy, end their rule, avenge his father's dispossession at their hands. He instinctively and by nature was an enemy; he would have been their enemy in any other place and under any other circ.u.mstances. He was a head-hunter, and in turn was to be hunted down. He was the kind who neither made compromises nor asked quarter.

He veiled his purposes in as great secrecy as did they, and when he struck it would be suddenly, fiercely, mercilessly--if he struck. They were determined he should not strike, being himself first surprised and crushed, for though in ignorance of what he could bring against them their fears were real. Everything, indeed, about the man antagonized them, alarmed them, stirred their hate and filmed their eyes with blood. He must be destroyed.

"And with him the dam," Sorenson had said. "Both together." For there was no effort to conceal among themselves their savage intention.

"He'll never come to trial," Vorse remarked, with a malignant gleam in his blue eyes and a shutting of his thin lips. "An attempted jail delivery by 'friends' will fix that. All they will have to do then is to buy him a pine box."

"If the man had but stayed away!" Judge Gordon exclaimed. Cunning, not force, was his forte; and the measures in prospect at times had oppressed him with dreadful forebodings. He was growing old, feeble, and here when he was ent.i.tled to peace he still had to fight for his own.

In accordance with the scheme Burkhardt vanished from San Mateo for a time, ostensibly on business but in fact on a journey across the Mexican line, where he conducted negotiations with a certain "revolucionista" of no particular notoriety as yet, of avaricious character, unscrupulous nature, and with a small following of fellow bandits and a large animosity for Americans. His ambition was to emulate the brilliant Villa. But pickings had been poor of late, no more than that of stealing a few horses from across the border. To Burkhardt, who had heard of him and sought him out, he listened with interest and bargained with zest. Five thousand in gold for fifty men was like pearls from Paradise. And whatever this Yankee's own private purpose, it was a chance for the chieftain to strike secretly and safely at Americans, in addition.

"They will come through in squads after they've slipped across the line," Burkhardt reported. "They're to pose as laborers."

"When?" Sorenson asked.

"Along next week. They're to drop off down along the railroad at different towns and I'll run them up into the mountains with some grub. Then we'll a.s.semble them quietly a couple miles off from the dam, where they'll be handy on the chosen night. Afterwards we'll slip them back to the railroad, and they fade into Mexico. Weir's workmen will be drunk and rowing--and will have done the job, eh?" Burkhardt shook with suppressed, evil laughter.

"If they're drunk, they may join in and help," Judge Gordon stated, acutely. "A mob full of whiskey will do anything. If they did take a hand, it would round out the case against them perfectly. Very likely next day they, too, would fade, as you put it, Burkhardt; they would want to get out of this part of country as quickly as possible when they realized what had happened. I see no flaw in our plan.

Fortunately the three directors who are coming will be gone by the end of next week."

"What's that? What directors?" Burkhardt asked.

"They're to be here on an inspection trip, so they wrote, and will be pleased to hear our complaints in regard to the question of workmen."

Gordon's tone was ironical. "I wrote them protesting Weir's discharge of our people, you remember, but that was some time ago."

"What's the use of paying attention to the fools now?"