In the Shadow of the Hills Part 34

"That for your word of honor!" the lawyer cried, snapping his fingers in the air. "And in any case, you're an accessory after the fact. You let me stay."

Pollock stepped forward.

"Is this Mr. Martinez? Glad to meet you, sir. Mr. Weir has spoken very favorably of you and of your handling of legal matters for the irrigation company, of which I am a director. Pollock is my name. Are you a notary? Ah, that is good. There will be some papers to acknowledge and witness and so on."

He pointed at seats, seemingly having direction of matters, and the visitors sat down. Judge Gordon had sagged down in the padded leather chair in which he sat; his face was colorless, his eyes moving aimlessly to and fro, his white mustache and hair in disorder.

"Let us begin on business at once," Pollock stated, on his feet as was usual when entering a discussion and removing his eye-gla.s.ses. "I called on Judge Gordon this afternoon after my talk with you, Weir, and disclosed the evidence which has been gathered relative to the fraud perpetrated on your father and the crime against the man Dent. I a.s.sumed, and rightly, that to a man of the Judge's legal mind the facts we hold would prove the futility of resistance, and I set out to convince him of the wisdom of sparing himself a long losing fight, in which he would be opposing not only the evidence which was sure to convict him, and not only you, Mr. Weir, but our company which proposed to see the fight through. I went so far, Weir, as to promise him immunity from your wrath and from public prosecution."

Weir arose slowly.

"No," said he, "no."

"But, my dear fellow----"

"No. He made my father's life a h.e.l.l for thirty years. Why should I spare him?"

"If granting him freedom from prosecution did actually spare him anything, I should say 'No' also, standing in your place. But with the facts made public as they will be, with Judge Gordon losing his legislative office and the esteem in which he had been held, with him relinquishing the bulk of his fortune as he agrees, with his finding it necessary to go elsewhere to live at his time of life, with the thought constantly in his mind of how low he has been brought, don't you think he will be suffering quite adequately? I should think so. He would probably die quicker in prison, but I believe he will suffer more outside. See, I don't hesitate to measure the alternatives, for the Judge and I have discussed and canva.s.sed the whole situation, which was necessary, of course, in order to arrive at a clear understanding." And Pollock smiled genially.

"Does he admit my charges?"

"He hasn't denied them."

"Will he admit them?"

"I've outlined exactly what we must have--deeds to his property and an acknowledged statement of the Joseph Weir and James Dent affair, supplementing the Saurez affidavit, which by the way he at first thought we did not possess but which an account of what happened last night in the mountains and your recovery of the same"--Pollock's eyelid dropped for an instant towards Weir--"convinced him of. This statement is not to be produced as evidence against his a.s.sociates except in the last extremity, and if not needed is always to be kept secret. We are to give him, when the papers are signed, a draft for ten thousand dollars. This will permit him to have something to live on. He states that he will want to go from San Mateo at once."

During this speech Weir's eyes had glanced to and fro between the lawyer ticking off his words with his gla.s.ses and the figure in the leather chair. Old and shattered as Judge Gordon had suddenly become, wretched as Weir saw him to be, the engineer nevertheless felt no pity. The man had been in the conspiracy that had ruined his father; he suffered now not because of remorse but through fear of public opinion; and was a fox turned craven because he found himself enmeshed in a net. And to save his own skin he was selling out his friends.

Weir's face went dark, but Pollock quickly stepped forward and drew him into a corner of the room.

"Keep calm, man," was the lawyer's low advice. "Do you think if we had him tied up as tightly as I've made him believe that I should propose a compromise in his case. He's the weak link. Do you think I've had an easy time the last three hours bringing him to the point he's at? I had to invent evidence that couldn't possibly exist. I had to give him a merciless mental 'third degree.' I told him if he refused I was going to Sorenson with the same offer, who would jump at the chance.

And, my dear man, we haven't, in reality, enough proof to convict a mouse since you lost that paper. So now, so far as he's concerned, you must bend a little, a very little--and you'll be able to hang the remaining three."

This incisive reasoning was not to be denied.

"I yield," said Weir.

Beaming, Mr. Pollock walked back to the table.

"Mr. Weir consents," he stated. "Mr. Martinez, if you will go to your office and bring the necessary forms and your seal we can make the transfers and statement and wind the matter up."

An hour later Judge Gordon had signed the deeds, stock certificates from his safe and bills of sale spread before him, pa.s.sing the ownership of lands, cattle and shares in companies to Pollock for equitable division between Weir and the Dent heirs if found. The old Mexican servants were called in and witnessed his shaky signatures to the papers.

At the statement regarding the Dent shooting and Weir fraud, which Pollock had dictated to Martinez with Gordon's a.s.sistance, he staggered to his feet while the pen dropped from his hand.

"I can't sign it, I can't sign it; they would kill me!" he groaned.

The two aged servants stared at him wonderingly.

"My dear Judge, they'll never know of it until it's too late for them to do anything--if they ever know," came the easterner's words, in smooth persuasiveness.

Judge Gordon brushed a hand over his eyes.

"Give me a moment," he muttered.

He stood for a time motionless. Then he walked across the room and opened a door and entered an inner chamber.

"He won't live a year after this," Pollock whispered to his companions.

The speaker could have shortened the time immensely and have still been safe in his prophecy. For when at the end of five minutes he sent the woman to request the Judge to return, she stumbled out of the bed-chamber with affrighted eyes. She said the Judge was asleep on his bed and could not be aroused.

Sleep of the profoundest, the men discovered on going in. And in his fingers was an empty vial. So far as Judge Gordon was concerned Weir had had his revenge.

CHAPTER XXII

AN OLD ADOBE HOUSE

Revenge Weir had. But even in death Judge Gordon, true to his evasive, contriving character, had tricked him; and the irony lay in the fact that in this last act the trick was unpremeditated, unconscious, unintentional. Instead of the signed confession, necessary above everything else, which seemed almost in his fingers, the man had left a little poison vial.

Night had settled over the earth when the three men, after directing the Mexican servants to bring the undertaker, went out of the house, for considerable time had been occupied in the discussion and the preparation of papers preceding Judge Gordon's tragic end. With him Mr. Pollock carried the doc.u.ments pertaining to the property rest.i.tution. These, considered in connection with the suicide, would const.i.tute something like a confession, he grimly a.s.serted.

Avoiding the main street of San Mateo they drove out of the town for camp. The first part of the ride was pursued in silence, for each was busy with his own thoughts in consequence of the sudden shocking termination of the meeting. When about half way to camp, however, their attention was taken from the subject by a sight wholly unexpected, a scene of high colors and of a spirit that mocked at what had just happened.

Some way off from the road, at one side, two bonfires burned brightly before an adobe house, the flames leaping upward in the darkness and lighting the long low-roofed dwelling and the innumerable figures of persons. At the distance the place was from the highway, perhaps two hundred yards, one could make out only the shadowy forms of men--of a considerable number of men, at that.

"I never saw any one at that old tumble-down house before, Martinez,"

Weir remarked, lessening the speed of the car. "Always supposed it empty."

"No one does live there. The ground belongs to Vorse, who leases it for farming to Oterez. Perhaps Oterez is giving a party there. They are dancing."

Weir brought the machine to a full stop, with suspicion rapidly growing in his mind. The place was owned by Vorse, for one thing, and the number about the house was too large for an ordinary Mexican family merry-making, for another. In view of what had occurred the previous night all "parties" in the neighborhood of the dam deserved inquiry, and this house was but a mile from camp.

They could now hear the sound of music, the shrill quick sc.r.a.p of a pair of fiddles and the notes of guitars. Against the fire-light too they could distinguish the whirl of skirts.

"Just run over there, will you, Martinez, and have a look at that dance?" Weir said. "See how much whiskey is there, and who the people are."

The Mexican jumped down, climbed through the barb-wire fence bordering the field and disappeared towards the house.

"I told you about some one giving the men booze last night," the engineer addressed his remaining companion. "We found the place off south along the hills where that business happened, and stationed a man there to warn us if another attempt was made to use the spot. But I shouldn't be surprised if this is the location used for to-night; it has all the signs. We suspected that this evening would be the real blow-out and if the men are going there I shall send down the foremen and engineers to break it up. Vorse's owning this house and his being the source of the liquor is almost proof. I met Atkinson returning to the dam when you sent him back from town and he'll know something is up if the workmen have been melting away from camp. This is simply another d.a.m.nably treacherous move of the gang against us to interfere with our work, starting a big drunk and perhaps a row. We'll stop it right at the beginning."

"Are the officials of this county so completely under Sorenson and his crowd's thumbs that they won't move in a case like this?" Pollock questioned.

"Yes."