“You said nothing about the paper? Did you get it?”
“No; it wasn’t on him. I’ll return for another look, but it fell in the fire, I think, and burned.”
“Do you know what was in it, Mr. Weir?”
“No. But I can guess.”
“I know a little of its contents, from what he said before you entered. It was a statement, something about his father and others doing dishonest acts, I think. He didn’t seem to be quite clear what it was about 175 either, but he spoke of your father and declared he hoped the others had swindled him, which he inferred had happened. I didn’t know your father ever had been in this country. That’s the reason you hate those men, Mr. Sorenson and Mr. Vorse and Mr. Burkhardt; because of some injury they worked your father.”
“That’s the reason. And that too is why they’re trying to get rid of me one way or another. But they didn’t hire the Mexican to attempt to shoot me; Ed Sorenson employed him. Martinez, when you told me the man’s name, telegraphed around the country from Bowenville till he got track of the fellow. He also secured evidence that a white man resembling Ed Sorenson had been seen talking with him at the place he came from. So we can draw our conclusions.”
“Then he hired the man to assassinate you!”
“Looks like it. Because I took Mary Johnson away from him, and from fear. He was afraid you might learn of the matter, I suppose, and decided to get rid of me. He’s a coward at heart, but none the less a criminal by instinct, so he hired another to do what he dared not attempt himself. A crook like his father, but with less nerve.”
Janet was silent while the car wound its way down the creek road, through the misty darkness and among the invisible peaks. The full danger that she had escaped was but now making itself clear to her mind.
“If he would go so far as to try to murder you,” she faltered, “I surely could have expected no pity from him.”