In the Shadow of the Hills

by George C. Shedd

How correct had been his logic––logic not unmixed with intuition, perhaps––appeared when he was yet some fifty yards away from the door he sought. A tall bulky figure suddenly stepped forth from the building and instantly ran across the street and lost itself in the shifting, jostling crowd that was half-disclosed, half-concealed by the broken shadows of the moonlit trees.

Steele Weir proceeded to a spot near the office and halted. His first impulse to rush after Sorenson had been promptly suppressed, as cooler judgment ruled. To seek his quarry in that throng would be labor wasted, while to reveal his identity would be to court a disastrous interference with the business at hand. From where he stood he should much better be able to see Sorenson when he did emerge, unless he chose to remain in the crowd or steal away at the rear of the court house yard, a chance Weir must take.

Five minutes passed. The restless, talkative Mexicans 282 continued to swarm and buzz with excitement, ceaselessly moving about, forming and reforming in groups, agitatedly repeating newer and wilder rumors concerning events. Despite Weir’s intent watch for Sorenson, the engineer could not but observe the mob’s manifestations, observe them with sardonic humor. For their ebullition of the present would be nothing to what it would be if they learned he stood across the street, uncaged, unfettered, free and armed, a “gun-man” loose instead of a “gun-man” in jail.

All at once Weir noted out of the tail of his eye a slight stir among a number of horses standing with reins a-trail before a store a little way down the street. The horses were partly in the light, partly in the shadow, so that all he could see was that one or two of them had jerked aside quickly, then resumed their listless postures.

He was about to withdraw his eyes when he saw a man swing upon the back of one of them and start off at an easy canter. Weir sprang towards the spot at a run. That big figure could only be Sorenson’s, for no Mexican he had ever seen in San Mateo could match it. And the plan of escape showed the other’s craft in an emergency; gradually working his way through the crowd he had at last gained the protective shadow of the building on that side of the street and slipped along in it until he reached the horses.

Doubtless the man had conceived the plan at the instant he had stepped from his office, sweeping the street by one gauging look. With the whole town assembled at the court house, his departure was little likely to be noted by the Mexicans, while Madden and Weir would never suspect him of riding off on a horse, or suspect too late. Indeed, he rode at first as if in no great haste, 283 but as he turned his mount into a narrow by-way, more a lane than a street that disappeared between two mud walls, Weir saw him strike his heels into the pony’s flanks.

But for the startled movement of the nearby horses when Sorenson took stirrup, Weir would not have looked that way. He might possibly have seen the horseman start off, but that is not certain. He unquestionably would have supposed him an ordinary rider if he had not noticed the man until he reached the mouth of the lane.

Meantime the engineer had made his best speed to the line of waiting horses. Slowing to a walk so as not to scare them, though as he discovered on examination most of them looked too bony and spiritless for that, he approached and carefully inspected the bunch. He took his time in the selection: the more haste in choosing a mount might prove less speed in the end. He tightened the saddle-girths and ran a finger along the head straps of the bridle of the horse picked to judge their fit, receiving a snap from the pony’s teeth, which gave him satisfaction. Not only was this animal a wiry, tough-looking little beast, but he had life.

Up into the saddle Weir went, followed Sorenson’s line to the lane, down which he swung. Coming out into the next street, he pursued it to an intersecting street, and there galloped for the edge of town without trying to guess the way taken by his enemy. Once he reached the open fields he would quickly get sight of the man racing away somewhere on the mesa.

Evidently the quarry he pursued had not taken so direct a course as Weir, for when the latter at length came forth where he could have a wide view he perceived the horseman a quarter of a mile off and further east, galloping south. The engineer at once raced thither to 284 gain the same road and turning into it made for Sorenson.