In the Shadow of the Hills. George C. Shedd
in the railed-off space in the San Mateo Cattle Company’s office constituted the cattle company. Moreover, they comprised the financial, political and general power of this remote section of New Mexico. In face, manner, garb, they were dissimilar. 45 Vorse, clothed in gray, was hawk-nosed and impassive; and though now, like his companions, wealthy beyond simple needs he nevertheless continued the operation of his saloon that had been a landmark in San Mateo for forty years. Burkhardt was rough-featured, rough-tongued, choleric, and coatless: typically the burly, uncurried, uncouth stock man, whose commonest words were oaths or curses and whose way with obstinate cattle or men was the way of the club or the fist. Gordon was the wily, cautious, unscrupulous politician; he had represented San Mateo in the legislature for years, both during the Territorial period and since New Mexico had become a state, and was not unknown in other parts of the southwest; but he was “Judge” only by courtesy, the title most frequently given him, never having been admitted to the bar or having practiced, and engaged himself ostensibly in the insurance and real estate business. Like the others, his share of the large cattle, sheep and land holdings of the group made him independent. Sorenson, the last of the four and in reality the leader because of a greater breadth of vision and a natural capacity for business, was dressed in a tailored suit of greenish plaid––a man with bushy eyebrows, a long fleshy nose, predatory eyes, a heavy cat-fish mouth and a great, barrel-like body that reared two or three inches over six feet when he stood on his feet. But one thing they had in common, in addition to the gray hair of age, and that was a joint liability for the past. For years they had believed that liability extinguished through the operation of time. They had considered as closed and sealed the account of early secret, lawless acts by which they had acquired wealth and a grip on the community. They were now law-observing members of society; they controlled even if they sometimes failed 46 to possess the goodwill of the county––and they were not men to measure position by friendships; their councils determined how much or how little other men should own and in local politics their fingers moved the puppets that served their will.
With the entrance here of the powerful group of financiers who were constructing the irrigation project they recognized the threat to their old-time supremacy. Cattle and sheep interests would succumb to farming; a swarm of new, independent settlers would arrive like locusts; and their leadership would eventually be challenged if not ended. New towns would spring up. New money would flow in to dispute their financial mastery. New leaders would arise to assail their political dominion. And against the prospect of all this they had initiated a secret warfare, endeavoring by stealth to ruin the irrigation company at the beginning and nip the danger in the bud.
Now it had been revealed all at once that they had not only a general and impersonal enemy in the form of the company, but a specific one in the form of a man, its manager. Out of nowhere he had emerged, out of thirty years’ silence, a sinister figure who tapped with significant finger the book of their secret past while his eyes steadfastly demanded a reckoning. Did he know all, or nothing? Knowing, did he deliberately leave them in doubt in order to shatter their confidence?
At least one of the four had been badly shaken on learning Weir’s identity, and all now were uneasy. It was as if Fate after a long silence was about to open the sealed record.
“Perhaps you were just imagining things, Judge,” Sorenson was saying.
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Senator Gordon moistened his lips and tugged nervously at his gray mustache.
“No, no,” he exclaimed. “Just ask Vorse. The man said his name was Weir and that he was the son of Joe Weir. Then––then–––”
“Well?” Sorenson demanded, frowning at the other’s visible trepidation.
“Weir added, ‘And I know what happened thirty years ago in this selfsame room.’ Those were his very words. Isn’t that true, Vorse?”
“Yes.”
“They could mean only one thing,” said Gordon.
“When the Judge went out he said to me,” Vorse stated, “ ‘That was for you too.’ I had my hand on my gun under the counter as he said it, ready if he made a move. He knew what I had there, but it didn’t faze him. He’s a better man than Joe Weir ever was, I want to remark, and different; he has nerve and a bad eye. He knows something, lay your bets on that.”
“How much? How much? If we only knew how much!” Judge Gordon vouchsafed, testily.
“How would he know anything? Joe Weir didn’t know, so how can this fellow know? Don’t get scared at a shadow.” It was the bearded, rough-tongued Burkhardt who spoke, concluding his words with a blasphemous oath.
“There’s the Mexican who saw what happened––and that boy who looked in at the back door,” Gordon asserted. “We just caught sight of him and couldn’t make out his face against the light. Then he had skipped when we ran there. We never did learn who he was.”
“Do you think he remembers?” Sorenson said, scornfully. “He may be dead. He may be on the other side of the world. Just some kid who happened to drift by 48 at the minute and look in, and there’s not one chance in a million he’s anywhere around these parts yet. He would have blabbed long ago to some one if he had been; don’t figure him in, he’s lost.”
“Saurez isn’t, though.”
At this Vorse put in a word.
“He saw more than one killing in those days when he was roustabout for me. It was only one more to him. Probably he has forgotten it. Anyway,” Vorse ended with deadly emphasis, “he knows what would happen to him even now if he remembered it and talked. Leave him out of the calculation too.”
“Then that just makes the four of us,” said Burkhardt. “Nobody else. So this fellow Weir doesn’t know a thing.”
“But we can’t be absolutely sure,” Judge Gordon replied.
“Well, he’d need proof, wouldn’t he?”
“Certainly, to bring legal action. But how do we know he hasn’t even that? Look all around the question as a lawyer does; let us assume the millionth chance, for instance. Suppose that he somewhere met and became acquainted with that boy. Suppose that he learned the latter had been here at the time and saw the shooting; and heard his story. Suppose that Weir knows this instant where he is and can produce him as a witness in court.”
“I reckon in this county his testimony wouldn’t count for much,” Burkhardt, who had been sheriff, stated, with a harsh laugh.
Sorenson, however, was impressed by the Judge’s reasoning, for he drummed with fingers on the desk and sat in brooding silence. So likewise sat Vorse, who had heard Weir’s utterance and beheld his face.
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“He knows something,” he repeated, in a convinced tone. “Or he’s a damned good bluffer.”
“I passed him here at the door this afternoon,” the banker remarked. “I turned to look at him, guessing who he was, and he had stopped and was looking at me. Cool about it too. We’ll have to watch him.”
“Perhaps if we just tip him off to keep his mouth shut tight, that will be enough,” Burkhardt suggested. “If he knows the four of us are ready–––”
Vorse sniffed.
“You think he can be bluffed?” he said. “You haven’t seen him yet; go take a look. We’ll not throw any scare into him. If he were that kind, he wouldn’t have told us who he is. He wanted us to know he’s after us, that’s my opinion. He wants to shake our nerve––and he shook the Judge’s all right that day at my bar.”
“He did,” Gordon admitted. “The thing was so infernally unexpected. Almost like Joe Weir himself appearing. I didn’t sleep a wink that night, what with my heart being bad and what with seeing him.”
“Suppose he has proofs?” Vorse asked after a pause, while his narrowed eyes moved from one to another of