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