“I don’t see how I ever imagined him an honorable 200 man,” she said to her father. “For all his pretended politeness he was ready if necessary to bully me. One thing he can’t ever say is that I didn’t tell him exact facts; what I omitted was the circumstances giving rise to the facts.” And her father, who now knew from Weir the story of the happening of thirty years before, assured her that she need be troubled over no moral hairsplitting.
The incident, as Steele Weir perceived, diverted both suspicion and danger from Janet, at least for a time. A big gain that. And he was impressed by the subtle sagacity of the maneuver.
“That wasn’t just a clever move, it was a flash of genius,” he told father and daughter. Then after a few minutes more of talk he said: “Now I must be running up to the dam. To-day is Sunday and the works are quiet, so if I find everything all right I shall strike back immediately for Terry Creek and the cabin up above. I want to make a search for that paper by daylight.”
“After your hard night?” Janet exclaimed. “I snatched some sleep when we had done talking last night, but father says you and he had none. You can’t make that terrible ride again without rest!”
“Missing a night in bed is nothing new,” he laughed. “Once or twice in my life I’ve not had my clothes off in a week, and only such cat-naps as I could steal meantime. But I’ll not boast of that; your father probably has gone longer periods without sleep, or with only broken rest, than ever I did. Most doctors do. Be sure and let me know if anything new occurs.”
But if Weir’s mind was put at ease so far as Janet was concerned, he had more than enough other cares to burden his thoughts. The loss of the deposition, chief of all; then the matter of effecting Martinez’ release, 201 wherever he was immured; and finally, as he learned from Meyers and Atkinson on reaching camp, the insidious promise of trouble in the “free whiskey party.”
“Perhaps whoever supplied the fire-water underestimated this copper-lined crew’s capacity and didn’t furnish enough,” Meyers suggested. “Nobody was really drunk last night and here it is nearly noon, with the men all hanging about camp. If there was whiskey yet to be had, some of these thirsty, rollicking scrappers of ours would be right back at the spigot this morning.”
“Maybe so,” Atkinson admitted. “Seems so––and yet I ain’t easy in my mind. The men don’t act right; they behave as if they’re just waiting; they’re restless and not a man could I get to open his mouth about where they found the stuff. If there wasn’t to be any more, they would have told and tried to kid me. They appear to me as if just biding their time. Some men weren’t gone, of course, those who don’t drink. They stayed in the bunk-house and they know nothing.”
“We’ll go on the supposition then that there will be more coming, and act accordingly,” Weir stated, at once. “Watch them close, and put up a warning that men who are not at work in the morning, or who bring booze into camp, will be fired.”
“That’s the trouble,” the superintendent declared. “I don’t think they brought a drop in except in their skins. And as we say, they weren’t drunk. There’s not a thing we can object to and they know it; somebody has put ’em wise how to act. Here they are, sober this morning, behaving themselves, and so on. We can’t keep men from going for a walk if they want to; we can’t string barb-wire around the camp and hold them in; we can’t 202 even say they can’t touch a bottle if a stranger offers them one when they’re on the outside.”