CHAPTER XXV
NO QUARTER
The peril threatening the unfinished dam now alone engaged Steele Weir’s mind. Personal considerations did not enter into his calculations, least of all thought of personal danger; for when he placed himself in an undertaking whatever rested under his hand, as in this case the irrigation company’s property, became for him a trust to attend, to direct, to guard. Even more than if it had been his own property did he feel the obligation, for the interests concerned were not his. But the matter went deeper than a prospective money loss; it struck down to principles and rights––the principles of order and industry as against viciousness and havoc; the rights of law-abiding men who create as against the wantonness of lawless men who would destroy.
Were it his own workmen who, inflamed by drink and incited by a spirit of recklessness, were coming to wreck the camp in a moment of mad intoxication, he would have made allowances for the cause. Before resorting to extreme measures in defending his charge, he first would have sought to bring them to their senses. Drunken men are men unbalanced, irrational.
But here was another case: an attack by a secret, sober, malevolent band, who in cold blood approached to demolish the company works. Not liquor moved them on their mission, but money––money paid by his arch enemies. The men were simply hired tools, brazenly indifferent 249 no doubt to crimes, desperate in character certainly, for a handful of coins ready to wipe out a million dollars’ worth of property and effort. Such deserved no consideration or quarter.
Weir proposed to give none. With enemies of this kind he had but one policy, strike first and strike with deadly force. One does not seek to dissuade a rattlesnake; one promptly stamps it under heel. One cannot compromise with ravenous wolves; one shoots them down. One does not wait to see how far a treacherous foe will go; one forestalls and crushes him before he begins. Moreover, if wise, one does it in such fashion that the enemy will not arise from the blow.
With the information given him by the guard posted at the spring Weir immediately grasped the true nature of the plot. The “whiskey party” was but a means of withdrawing the workmen from the scene, of weakening the camp, while a picked company of ruffians wrecked the property. It was an assault intended to wipe out the works and end construction, coincident with his arrest. Both the company and he were to pay the penalty for resisting the powers that rule San Mateo. And if the tale were spread that the destruction had been wrought by his workmen while drunk, who would doubt it?
Like shadows the band of Mexican desperadoes would come, dynamite the dam, fire the buildings, stampede the horses, and like shadows vanish again. In the unexpectedness of the raid, in the confusion, in the dim light, no one would with certainty be able to say who the assailants were. A scheme ferocious in its conception and diabolical in its cunning! But there was one flaw––the element of chance. Chance had given Weir warning.
A strong man warned is a strong man armed.