In the Shadow of the Hills Part 1

In the Shadow of the Hills.

by George C. Shedd.

CHAPTER I

IN A HOSTILE COUNTRY

Eastward out of the Torquilla Range the Burntwood River emerged from a gorge, flowing swift and turbulent during the spring months, shallow and murmurous the rest of the year, to pa.s.s through a basin formed by low mountains and break forth at last from a canyon and wind away over the mesa. In the canyon was being erected the huge reservoir dam which was in the future to store water for irrigating the broad acres spreading from its base.

The construction camp rested on one of the hillsides above the dam.

And here one summer afternoon a man stepped forth from the long low tar-papered shack that served as headquarters, directing his gaze down the road across the mesa at a departing automobile. He was Steele Weir, the new chief, a tall, strong, tanned man of thirty-five, with lean smooth-shaven face, a straight heavy nose, mouth that by habit was set in grim lines, and heavy brows under which ruled cold, level, insistent, gray eyes. He had come suddenly, unexpectedly, returning with Magney, the engineer in charge, when the latter had been summoned east for a conference with the company's directors. He had replaced Magney, who was now whirling away to the nearest railway point, Bowenville, thirty-five miles distant.

He thoughtfully watched the car, a black spot in a haze of dust, speeding towards the New Mexican town of San Mateo, on the Burntwood River two miles below camp, its cl.u.s.ter of brown adobe houses showing indistinctly through the cottonwoods that embowered the place. For Magney he felt a certain amount of sympathy, for the engineer was leaving with a recognition of defeat; he was a likeable man, as Steele Weir had discovered during their brief acquaintance, a good theoretical engineer, but lacking in the prime quality of a successful chief--fighting spirit and an indomitable will.

Under Magney the work of construction had been inaugurated the previous summer, but progress had not been as rapid as desired; there had been delays, labor difficulties, local opposition during the months since; and Weir had been chosen to succeed Magney. In his profession Weir had a reputation, built on relentless toil and sound ideas and daring achievements--a reputation enhanced by a character of mystery, for the man was unmarried, reserved, without intimates or even friends, locking his lips about his life, and welcoming and executing with grim indifference to risk engineering commissions of extreme hazard, on which account he had acquired the soubriquet of "Cold Steel" Weir.

Who first bestowed upon Weir that name is not known. But it was not misapplied. Cold steel he had proved himself to be a score of times in critical moments when other men would have broken: in pus.h.i.+ng bridges over mountain chasms, in mine disasters, in strikes, in almost hopeless fights against bandits in Mexico. And it was this ability to handle difficulties that had brought about the decision of the directors of the company to put him in charge, as the man best qualified, at San Mateo, where the situation was unsatisfactory, costly, baffling.

Since his arrival a week before he had been consulting with Magney, studying maps and blue-prints, examining the work and a.n.a.lyzing general conditions. What had been accomplished had been well done; he had no criticism to offer on that score. It was the delay; the work was considerably behind schedule, which of course meant excessive cost; and this had undermined the spirit of the enterprise. In a dozen places, in a dozen ways, Magney, his predecessor, had been hampered, checked, defeated--and the main contributing cause was poor workmen, inefficient work. On that sore Weir's skillful finger fell at once.

Standing there before the low office building he watched Magney depart. He, Steele Weir, had now taken over full charge of the camp and a.s.sumed full responsibility for the project's failure or success.

His eye pa.s.sed beyond the distant automobile to the town of San Mateo--a new town for him, but a town like many he had seen in the southwest and in Mexico. And aside from its connection with the construction work, it held a fascinating interest, a profound interest for the man, the interest that any spot would which has at a distance cast a black and sinister shadow over one's life. San Mateo--the name lay like a smoldering coal in his breast!

At length he turned and strode down the hillside to the dam site in the canyon. The time had come to shut his hand about the work and let his hold be felt. He located the superintendent directing the pouring of concrete in the frames of the dam core, Atkinson, a man of fifty with a stubby gray mustache, a wind-bitten face and a tall angular frame. When Weir joined him he was observing with speculative eyes the indolent movements of a group of Mexican laborers.

"Those _hombres_ don't appear to be breaking any speed records, I see," Weir remarked, quietly.

"Humph," Atkinson grunted.

"What do they think this is? A rest cure?"

The superintendent's silence suddenly gave way.

"I ought to land on 'em with an ax-handle and put the fear of G.o.d in their lazy souls," he exclaimed, bitterly.

"Well, do it."

"What!"

"Do it."

"Say, am I hearing right?" Atkinson swung fully about to stare at the new chief. Then he went on, "They'd quit to a man if made to do a man's work; I supposed that Magney had told you that. A dozen times I've been ready to throw up my job from self-respect; I'm ashamed to boss work where men can loaf and I must keep my tongue between my teeth. I was considering just now the matter of leaving."

"No need, Atkinson. From this time these men will work or get their dismissal."

The other pushed his hat atilt and rubbed his head in surprise.

"What about that 'company policy' of hiring nothing but local labor to keep the community friendly which Magney was always kicking about?" he asked. "That was what made him sorer than anything else, and beat him.

He said the directors had tied his hands by promising that no workmen should be imported. If they promised that, they sure bunkoed themselves. Friendly, huh."

"The people haven't been friendly, eh?" Weir said.

"Does it look like it when these Mexicans won't work enough to earn their salt? They openly boast that we dare neither make them work nor fire them. They say Sorenson and his bunch will pull every man off the works if we lift a finger; and they all know about that fool promise of the directors. Friendly? Just about as friendly as a bunch of wildcats. This whole section, white men and Mexicans, are putting a knife into this project whenever they can. Do you think they want all that mesa fenced up and farmed? This is a range country; they propose to keep it range; they don't want any more people coming here--farmers, store-keepers, and white people generally."

"That's always the case in a range country before it's opened up,"

Weir said. "But they have to swallow the pill."

"Let me tell you something; they don't intend to swallow it here. They figure on keeping this county just as it is, for only themselves and their cattle and woolies, and everybody else keep out. The few big sheep and cattle men, white and Mex, have their minds made up to that, and they're the only ones who count; all the rest are poor Mexicans with nothing but fleas, children, goats and votes to keep Sorenson and his gang in control. They've set out to bust this company, or tire it out till it throws up the sponge. They've spiked Magney, and they'll try to spike you next, and every manager who comes. That's plain talk I'm giving you, Mr. Weir, but it's fact; and if it doesn't sound nice to your ears, you can have my resignation any minute."

"I've been hoping to hear it. From now on drive this crowd of coffee-colored loafers. Put the lash on their backs."

A gleam of unholy joy shone in Atkinson's eyes as he heard Weir's words.

"All right; that goes," he said. "But I'm warning you that they'll quit. You'll see 'em stringing out of camp for home to-night, and those who hang out till to-morrow will leave then for sure. By to-morrow night the dam will be as quiet as a church week-days.

They'll not show up again, either, until you send word for them to come back--and then they'll know you've surrendered. Magney tried it once, just once. And that's why you found me chewing tobacco so lamb-like and saying nothing."

"Turn your gat loose," Weir said. And turning on his heel, he went back to headquarters.

Before Atkinson fired a volley at the unsuspecting workmen he crossed the canyon to where a cub engineer was peering through a transit. The superintendent had overheard a sc.r.a.p of gossip among the staff one evening before Weir's arrival when they were discussing the advent of the new chief.

"What was that name you fellows were saying Weir was called by?" he asked.

The boy straightened up.

"'Cold Steel'--'Cold Steel' Weir. Anyway that's what Fergueson says,"

was the answer. "I never heard it before myself. His first name's Steele, you know, and he looks cold enough to be ice when he's asking questions about things, boring into a fellow with his eyes. But he's up against a hard game here."

"Maybe. But a man doesn't get a name like that for just parting his hair nice," Atkinson remarked. "He told me to stretch 'em"--a h.o.r.n.y thumb jerked towards the workmen--"and you'll see some real work hereabouts for the rest of the afternoon."

"And to-morrow will be Sunday three days ahead of time."

"Sure."

"What then?"

"You know as much about that as I do. Make your own guess." With which the speaker started off.

The morrow was "Sunday" with a vengeance. The majority of the laborers demanded their pay checks the minute work ceased at the end of the afternoon; Atkinson tightened orders, and by noon next day the last of the Mexicans had quit. The fires in the stationary engines were banked; the concrete mixers did not revolve; the conveyers were still; the dam site wore an air of abandonment. In headquarters the engineers worked over tracings or notes; and in the commissary store the half-dozen white foremen gathered to smoke and yarn. That was the extent of the activity.

Two days pa.s.sed. After dinner Weir held a terse long-distance telephone conversation, the only incident of the second day; and it was overheard by no one. On the fourth day this was repeated. At dawn of the fifth he despatched all of the foremen, enginemen and engineers with wagons to Bowenville; and about the middle of the afternoon, accompanied by his a.s.sistant, Meyers, and Atkinson, he sped in the manager's car down the river for San Mateo, two miles below the camp.

Of the town Steele Weir had had but a glimpse as he flashed through on his way to the dam the morning of his arrival twelve days earlier. It had but a single main street, from which littered side streets and alleys ran off between mud walls of houses. The county court house sat among cottonwood trees in an open s.p.a.ce. A few pretentious dwellings, homes of white men and the well-to-do Mexicans, arose among long low adobe structures that were as brown and characterless as the sun-dried bricks of which they were built. That was San Mateo.

Before doors and everywhere along the street workmen from the dam were idling. As Meyers brought the automobile to a stop before the court house, news of Weir's visit spread miraculously and Mexicans began to saunter forward to hear the engineer's words of surrender, couched in the form of a suave invitation to return to work. While the crowd gathered the three Americans sat quietly in the car. Then Steele Weir stood up.

"Who can speak for these men?" he demanded.