A SECRET CONFERENCE
On a certain afternoon Felipe Martinez, the lean and restless attorney
who had acted as the Mexican workmen's mouthpiece, observed through
the broad plate-glass window of the San Mateo Cattle Company's office
an incident that greatly interested him. For the moment he forgot the
resentment kindled by Sorenson's abrupt refusal and brutal words when
he asked for the nomination for county attorney. The election was in
the autumn; the nomination was equivalent to election; and Felipe
considered that he had too long been kept apart from that particular
spoil.
Martinez had once had a slight difference with the banker, and now
outrageously Sorenson had recalled it. He had stated that Martinez
should hold no political office; he gave offices only to men who did
exactly as he advised; his exact words were that the Mexican was
"tricky and no good." And picking up his hat Sorenson who had that day
returned home from the east went out of the bank, leaving Martinez to
stare out of the window and meditatively twist a point of his silky
black mustache.
It was before the window that there occurred the meeting between
Sorenson and the manager of the dam. Martinez perceived the two men
glance at each other and pass, but after a step or two both men
halted. As if worked by a single wire, they slowly swung about for a
second look. The Mexican's nimble brain calculated that they could not
have previously met and in consequence their behavior bespoke
something out of the ordinary.
The pair stood exactly where they had turned, three or four paces
apart, he noted. The Mexican's mind palpitated with a slight thrill of
excitement. The manner of each of the men was that of a fighting
animal looking over another animal of the same sort: neither uttering
a word, nor stirring a finger, nor yielding a particle in his fixed
unwinking gaze. Martinez could almost feel the exchanged challenge,
the cold antagonism, the hostile curiosity, the matching of wills, the
instant hate, between the men.
Though they had not met before, to be sure, nevertheless they were
enemies. Was it because of the discharge of the workmen? Then
Martinez' mind flashed back to the scene in Vorse's saloon when Gordon
had showed such sudden emotion at the engineer's name and his
enigmatical reference to some event in the past. That was it!
Something which had occurred thirty years ago, probably something
crooked. Men committed deeds in those early days that they would now
like to forget. He, Martinez, would look into the matter.
Sorenson passed out of sight, and Weir likewise proceeded on his way.
Thereupon the lawyer sauntered over to the court house, where
presently he became engrossed in a pile of tomes in the register's
office. As examining records is a part of a lawyer's regular work, it
never excites curiosity or arouses suspicion.
That same evening Martinez perceived Vorse enter Sorenson's office.
Vorse, he recalled, had been included in the engineer's threatening
remarks to Gordon. Shortly thereafter Gordon himself ambled along the
street and passed through the door. Last of all, Burkhardt, a short,
fleshy, bearded man, went into the building. The vultures of San
Mateo, as he secretly called them, had flocked together for
conference. Presently Martinez strolled by the office, outwardly
displaying no interest in the structure but furtively seeking to catch
a glimpse of the interior through a crack of the drawn shade. But in
this he was unsuccessful.
Of one thing he was certain, however. His prolonged examination of the
county records had revealed an old bill of sale of a ranch and several
herds of cattle from one Joseph Weir to Sorenson, Vorse, Gordon and
Burkhardt. He had placed his finger on the link connecting the
engineer with these men, the entire four, as this old bill of sale
thus recorded showed the intimate though unexpressed partnership of
the men, which was common knowledge over the country; and intuition
told him also that this private assembly of the quartette quickly on
Sorenson's return home had its inspiration in the new manager of the
dam.
Martinez determined to continue his investigations. Events might yet
prove that it would have been much better for the cattleman to have
given him the political nomination. Truly, it was possible. In any
case, it would do no harm to have "something on" Sorenson and the
others, these rulers of San Mateo. And there was the opposite side of
the affair--Weir's side; so it looked as if there might be profit
either way.
* * * * *
The four men sitting 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.
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 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.
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 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.
"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 his companions.
A considerable silence followed. The question jerked into full light
the issue that had all the while been lurking in the recesses of their
minds--an issue full of ghastly possibilities. Judge Gordon's fingers
trembled as he wiped with handkerchief the cold sweat on his brow.
"We're all in it," Vorse added.
Burkhardt brought his fist down on the desk with a sudden crash.
"If he has proofs, then it's him or us," he exclaimed, while the
blood suffused his face. "Him or us--and that means him! I'll never go
behind bars!"
"Sure not. None of us," Vorse said.
"It will mean----" Judge Gordon began in an agitated voice, but did
not finish.
Sorenson gave a nod of his head. His bear-trap mouth was compressed in
a determined evil line.
"Exactly. He'll never use his proofs. We're in too far to halt now if
matters come to the point of his trying to use them. He has a grip on
us in one way; he knows we can't declare his father, Joe Weir, did the
killing; that would make us--what do you call it, Judge?"
"Accomplices after the fact. Besides, it would then come out that we
had taken over and shared among us his stuff, fifty thousand apiece.
It's a deplorable situation we're in, gentlemen, deplorable. If we
were but able to start the story Joe Weir believed and fled because
of, it would cut the ground out from under this man's feet at once."
"It's him we'll cut, not the ground under him," Burkhardt growled,
thrusting his hairy chin forward towards the lawyer. "And cut his
damned throat."
"I hate to think of our being forced to--to homicide. Even justifiable
homicide."
"Homicide nothing! It's just killing a rattlesnake waiting in the
brush to strike. That's the way we used to do in the old days, and if
he's going to bring them back that's what we'll do again."
Sorenson smiled grimly.
"We'll wait till we're sure he has the proofs, then----"
"Then we'll act quick and sure," Vorse shot out.
"And quietly," the cattleman added. "We'll take no more chances this
time. It will be arranged carefully beforehand; all four of us will be
in it, of course,--equal responsibility; and there'll be no
witnesses."
Judge Gordon's face wore a pallid, sickish look.
"I hope to God there's some other way out of it," he muttered.
"So do all of us," Burkhardt snarled. "But if there isn't, it means
guns. For you, too, along with the rest of us."
Sorenson leaned forward and gazed from under his heavy brows,
compelling Gordon to meet his fixed look.
"You were keen enough at the time for your share of Joe Weir's stuff,"
he said. "So you'll play the hand out to the end now, the bad cards as
well as the good. You're no better than the rest of us, and it was you
who hatched the scheme for cleaning him up and who put over the
story."
"I know, I know. But--but this would be too much like cold-blooded
murder."
"Murder!" Sorenson grated. "Did you look straight into this fellow
Weir's eyes? Didn't you see something there that resembled murder?
He'd like only the chance to kill us one by one with his own hands: I
saw that much. Just as Burkhardt said, it's him or us. After you told
me about him, I had only to take one look. If he has the goods on
us--well, he'll have to die. Make up your mind to that. We're back to
the time of thirty years ago and fighting for our lives. We were not
only all in on the Weir job, but the Dent killing--all of us. Remember
that. If the facts become known, we'll be run into some other county
and court and hanged. And every enemy we've made in these years past
will put up his head and clamor for our blood. Let that sink into your
mind."
The effect of this low fierce utterance was to hammer the truth home.
The Judge was ashen. Vorse's face appeared like an evil mask.
Burkhardt glowered savagely.
At that instant there sounded the faint report of a shot in the
street. Then as the group sat unmoving, rigid, keyed to the highest
pitch of expectancy, there followed quickly two more shots.
Afterwards, silence.
"A gun-play!" issued from Vorse's lips, softly.
They all sprang up to hasten to the door.