In the Shadow of the Hills Part 49

"But you never killed a man out of mere wanton desire to slay," Steele responded firmly. "I too have killed men in fights in Mexico. That fact doesn't weight my mind."

"In the line of your duty, in the line of your duty. But I was drunk.

He was a friend. When I became sober, I saw him with a bullet hole in his head."

"Do you remember nothing of shooting him?"

"Nothing, nothing."

"How do you know you killed him?" his son demanded with inexorable logic. "What is the proof?"

A low groan escaped his father.

"Men said I had killed him. But my own mind was blank."

"Who were the men? Were they present at the time?"

"They were four--Sorenson, Vorse, Gordon, Burkhardt."

"Were you arrested and tried?"

"No. They helped me to escape. Because of your mother, they said, and because they said they were my friends. But I never felt they were really friends. For they were always against new-comers and wanted to keep things in their own hands. You were only three or four years old at that time, Steele, so you wouldn't remember anything about matters there."

"What were you doing at San Mateo, father?"

Now that the hideous past at last stood uncovered the son was able to turn upon it his incisive mind; he would drag out and scrutinize every bone of the skeleton which had terrorized his father and shadowed his own life Facts faced are never so dreadful as fears unmaterialized.

And more, he sought with all the love of a son for circ.u.mstances that would mitigate, excuse, or even justify his father's act.

"I was ranching," was the low answer. "I had come to San Mateo two years before from the east, bringing you and your mother and considerable money. I bought a ranch and stocked it with cattle; I was doing well, in spite of the fact I was new to the country and the business. Also I was making friends, and I had been nominated for the legislature of the Territory to run against Gordon. But I had taken to drinking with the men I met, other cattlemen, because I fancied no harm in it. And then while in a drunken stupor I killed Jim Dent."

"Had you quarreled with him?"

"Never, never--till that moment I killed Jim. They said I quarreled with him then. But I remember nothing. Jim was my best friend; I would have trusted him with my life. Even now I can't make it seem real I shot him, though it must be true by those four witnesses."

"What of your ranch? Your political nomination?"

"I withdrew from the latter; that was one of the terms made by Gordon on which they were to help me escape instead of turning me over for prosecution. And my ranch and cattle, I had to deed them over to the four men too."

"Then their friendship wasn't disinterested," Steele said quickly, with suspicion dawning on his face.

"They weren't really friends, I knew that."

"How were they to arrange your escape?"

The senior Weir seemed to shudder at the question.

"By bribing the sheriff and county attorney. I was then to leave the country at once, never showing my face again, or I should be arrested.

I was still half dazed by whiskey and terror; I took your mother and you and fled this far, when my money gave out. So here I've remained ever since, for here I could hide and here was her grave."

"What's the last thing you remember of the circ.u.mstance previous to learning Dent was dead?" he asked.

"Ah, though I had been drinking I can remember clearly up to the time I stopped playing poker with Jim and the four men, for we were losing and I felt they were working a crooked deal on us somehow. I asked Jim to quit also, for though I hadn't lost much he was losing fast and playing recklessly. But he wouldn't drop out of the game, and when Vorse and Sorenson cursed me and said for me to mind my own business I went back to a table near the rear door and laid my head on my arms and went to sleep. When I was awake again, Vorse and Gordon were holding me up by their table and Jim was dead on the floor. I had come forward, they said, begun a big row with Dent and finally shot him."

"Then the only witnesses were these four men who were gambling with him, who cursed you when you attempted to persuade him to drop his cards," Steele proceeded, "one of whom was your political adversary, men who were old-timers and opposed to new-comers, who pretended to be your friends but took your ranch and cattle. It begins to look to me as if they not only killed your friend Dent but double-crossed you in the bargain. Did you look in your gun afterwards?"

"No. I was sick with the horror of the accusation, I tell you, Steele.

I had no way to deny it; it seemed indeed as if I must have killed him. And from that day until this I've never had the courage of soul to reload my pistol, or even clean it. It hangs there on the wall with the very sh.e.l.ls, two empty, the rest unfired, that it carried that day in San Mateo."

Weir sprang up and crossed to the nail where hung the weapon. The latter he drew from the holster and broke open, so that the cartridges were ejected into his hand. For an instant he stared at them, but at length walked to the bed before which he extended his palm.

"Look--look for yourself!" he exclaimed hoa.r.s.ely. "You never killed Jim Dent; drunk or sober, you never killed any one. You're not a murderer. You're the innocent victim of those four infamous scoundrels; they deceived you, they ruined your life; and their d.a.m.nable fraud not only killed my mother in her youth, as I guess, by grief and despair, but has brought you now to your death too."

His father had raised himself on an arm to gaze incredulously at the six unfired cartridges lying in Weir's palm. Then all at once his bearded lips trembled and a great light of joy flashed upon his face.

"Innocent--innocent!" he whispered. "Steele, my son,--Helen, my wife!

No stain on my soul!"

As he sank back Steele's arms caught him. He did not speak again, but his eyes rested radiantly on his boy's before they glazed in death.

Fear had pa.s.sed from them, forever.

CHAPTER x.x.xIII

UNDER THE MOON

Lights still were burning at headquarters when Steele Weir slowly drove his runabout up the hillside slope to the dam camp. The men who had acted as guards about the jail, except those who went with Madden, were somewhere on the road behind him, returning home in the wagons. A reaction of mind and body had set in for Weir; after the previous night's loss of sleep and prolonged exertions, after the swift succession of dramatic events, after the tremendous call that had been made upon his brain power, nervous force and will, he experienced a strange unrest of spirit. His triumph seemed yet incomplete, somehow unsatisfying.

It was as he approached the camp that he saw a slender girlish figure sitting on a rock in the moonlight. He swung his car off the road beside the spot where Janet Hosmer sat.

"What, you are still awake?" he asked, with a smile.

"Could I sleep while not knowing what was happening or what danger you might be in?" she returned. "Mr. Pollock said we must not think of returning home until quiet was restored in San Mateo. One of the engineer's houses was given to us by Mr. Meyers before he left, where Mary and I could sleep. But I could not close my eyes. So much had happened, so much was yet going on! So I came out here to be alone and to think and watch."

"And your father?"

"He's attending the wounded Mexicans in the store."

Steel alighted and tossing his hat upon the car seat gazed out over the mesa, misty in the moonlight.

"There will be no more trouble," said he. "Sorenson and Burkhardt are Madden's prisoners, and on their way to a place of safe-keeping in another county. Vorse is dead. The people in town have a fairly good understanding of matters now, I think."

"How in the world did such a change of opinion occur?" Janet exclaimed.

"I had a little talk with the crowd and made explanations. The feeling for me was almost friendly when I left; what enmity remains will soon die out, I'm sure."

Though unaware from Steele Weir's laconic statement of what had actually occurred, the girl divined that his words concealed vastly more than their surface purport. With the general hostility against the engineer that had existed, for him to swing the community to his side meant a dramatic moment and a remarkable moral conquest.