In the Shadow of the Hills Part 39

"Mr. Johnson's evidence."

"Johnson's!" came in surprised tones from all four of the men uninformed of the rancher's story.

"Yes, he saw the man Dent killed and the plotters make your father, Mr. Weir, believe he had done the killing."

Steele stared at Johnson dumbfounded.

"Just that; I saw the whole dirty trick worked, looking through the back door of the saloon."

"Then you were the boy!" Weir gasped. "The boy who looked in! After thirty years I supposed that boy gone, lost, vanished beyond finding."

"I stayed right here," was the reply. "Of course I kept my mouth shut about what I had seen. I worked on ranches and rode range and at last got the little place on Terry Creek and married. Nothing strange in my remaining in the country where I grew up, especially as I only knew the cattle business."

Weir swung about to Madden.

"Here's a live witness," said he. "With the other proof his evidence should be final."

"Whenever you say, I'll arrest the men. As for this warrant I have, I'll just continue to carry it in my pocket," the sheriff stated. "I must remark that I never heard of a more villainous plot, taking it all around, than you've brought to light."

"And the charges must cover everything," Pollock said sternly. "From Dent's murder to the conspiracy against the irrigation company."

"I'll stay here in case you need me to stop any trouble with your workmen," Madden remarked.

But trouble though imminent was coming from another direction, as was suddenly shown when a man, dust-covered and hatless, rushed into the office.

"They're on the way," he cried.

"Who? The workmen?" Weir demanded.

"No. I don't know anything about the workmen, but a bunch of Mexicans, fifty or more, are headed this way to blow up the dam. I saw and heard them."

"Where?"

"At the spring a mile south. I was watching down there, where Atkinson had sent me after supper, relieving the man who kept lookout during the afternoon. That was where the booze was dealt out last night, you remember. I was sitting there when I heard a crowd coming. At first I thought it was our men, but when they stopped to drink and smoke, I saw by their talk they were Mexicans. But there was one white man with them, a leader. He and a Mexican talked in English. They're to raid the camp, crawling up the canyon, to dynamite the dam first, then fire the buildings."

"Then they're on the road here now?"

"Yes." The speaker licked his lips. "I cut along the hillside until I got ahead of them, but it was slow going in the dark and stumbling through the sage. They must be close at hand by this time, though I came faster than they did. The white man said to the Mexican that they wanted to reach the dam just at moonrise, and that will be pretty quick now."

"Go to the bunk-house and call the men waiting there, and get a gun yourself," Weir ordered. "The storekeeper will give you one." When the messenger had darted out, he looked at the others. "You must take these girls away from here, doctor, at once."

"But I don't go," Johnson snapped forth, drawing his revolver and giving the cylinder a spin.

"I never could hit anything, and haven't had a firearm in my hand for years, but I can try," Pollock stated. "This promises to be interesting, very interesting."

"Very," said Weir.

For a little he stood in thought, while the others gazed at him without speaking. His straight body seemed to gather strength and power before their eyes, his clean-cut features to become hard and masterful.

"Up the canyon he said they were coming, didn't he?" he remarked at last, more to himself than to them. "Very well, so much the better.

Johnson, you and Madden take charge of the men when they come and line them along the hillside this side of the dam. Put out all lights."

With which he strode out of the building.

They looked after him in uncertainty.

"I'm not going; you may be hurt, and need me," Mary stated, with a stubborn note in her voice.

"Then keep out of reach--and run for town if the ruffians get into camp," was her father's answer.

"I stay too," Janet exclaimed, resolutely.

CHAPTER XXV

NO QUARTER

The peril threatening the unfinished dam now alone engaged Steele Weir's mind. Personal considerations did not enter into his calculations, least of all thought of personal danger; for when he placed himself in an undertaking whatever rested under his hand, as in this case the irrigation company's property, became for him a trust to attend, to direct, to guard. Even more than if it had been his own property did he feel the obligation, for the interests concerned were not his. But the matter went deeper than a prospective money loss; it struck down to principles and rights--the principles of order and industry as against viciousness and havoc; the rights of law-abiding men who create as against the wantonness of lawless men who would destroy.

Were it his own workmen who, inflamed by drink and incited by a spirit of recklessness, were coming to wreck the camp in a moment of mad intoxication, he would have made allowances for the cause. Before resorting to extreme measures in defending his charge, he first would have sought to bring them to their senses. Drunken men are men unbalanced, irrational.

But here was another case: an attack by a secret, sober, malevolent band, who in cold blood approached to demolish the company works. Not liquor moved them on their mission, but money--money paid by his arch enemies. The men were simply hired tools, brazenly indifferent no doubt to crimes, desperate in character certainly, for a handful of coins ready to wipe out a million dollars' worth of property and effort. Such deserved no consideration or quarter.

Weir proposed to give none. With enemies of this kind he had but one policy, strike first and strike with deadly force. One does not seek to dissuade a rattlesnake; one promptly stamps it under heel. One cannot compromise with ravenous wolves; one shoots them down. One does not wait to see how far a treacherous foe will go; one forestalls and crushes him before he begins. Moreover, if wise, one does it in such fas.h.i.+on that the enemy will not arise from the blow.

With the information given him by the guard posted at the spring Weir immediately grasped the true nature of the plot. The "whiskey party"

was but a means of withdrawing the workmen from the scene, of weakening the camp, while a picked company of ruffians wrecked the property. It was an a.s.sault intended to wipe out the works and end construction, coincident with his arrest. Both the company and he were to pay the penalty for resisting the powers that rule San Mateo. And if the tale were spread that the destruction had been wrought by his workmen while drunk, who would doubt it?

Like shadows the band of Mexican desperadoes would come, dynamite the dam, fire the buildings, stampede the horses, and like shadows vanish again. In the unexpectedness of the raid, in the confusion, in the dim light, no one would with certainty be able to say who the a.s.sailants were. A scheme ferocious in its conception and diabolical in its cunning! But there was one flaw--the element of chance. Chance had given Weir warning.

A strong man warned is a strong man armed.

As the engineer stood in the office, swiftly measuring the imminent menace of which he had just been told, calculating the meager instruments of defense at hand, his mind sweeping up all the salient aspects, features, advantages and disadvantages of the situation, he seized on the one weak spot in the attacking party's plan. At that spot he would strike.

So giving Johnson and Madden the order to take charge of the little handful of guards, he had plunged out into the night.

The men from the bunk-house were already running toward the office, before the door of which the rancher gathered them together to make sure of their arms and ammunition. All told, when Martinez and Pollock presently came from the store with guns, the little party numbered eleven.

"Is this all there are of us?" Dr. Hosmer asked.

"We are worth all that crowd that's coming," Johnson exclaimed, taking a spare gun Martinez had brought him.

"Did Weir send the rest of the engineers down to that house? I understood so."

"That's where they are, I reckon."

Dr. Hosmer considered for a minute.