“What’s the last thing you remember of the circumstance previous to learning Dent was dead?” he asked.
“Ah, though I had been drinking I can remember clearly up to the time I stopped playing poker with Jim and the four men, for we were losing and I felt they were working a crooked deal on us somehow. I asked Jim to quit also, for though I hadn’t lost much he was losing fast and playing recklessly. But he wouldn’t drop out of the game, and when Vorse and Sorenson cursed me and said for me to mind my own business I went back to a table near the rear door and laid my head on my arms and went to sleep. When I was awake again, Vorse and Gordon were holding me up by their table and Jim was dead on the floor. I had come forward, they said, begun a big row with Dent and finally shot him.”
“Then the only witnesses were these four men who were gambling with him, who cursed you when you attempted to persuade him to drop his cards,” Steele proceeded, “one of whom was your political adversary, men who were old-timers and opposed to new-comers, who pretended to be your friends but took your ranch and cattle. It begins to look to me as if they not only killed your friend Dent but double-crossed you in the bargain. Did you look in your gun afterwards?”
“No. I was sick with the horror of the accusation, I tell you, Steele. I had no way to deny it; it seemed indeed as if I must have killed him. And from that day until this I’ve never had the courage of soul to reload my pistol, or even clean it. It hangs there on the wall with the very shells, two empty, the rest unfired, that it carried that day in San Mateo.”
Weir sprang up and crossed to the nail where hung the weapon. The latter he drew from the holster and broke open, so that the cartridges were ejected into his hand. For an instant he stared at them, but at length walked to the bed before which he extended his palm.
“Look––look for yourself!” he exclaimed hoarsely. “You never killed Jim Dent; drunk or sober, you never killed any one. You’re not a murderer. You’re the innocent victim of those four infamous scoundrels; they deceived you, they ruined your life; and their damnable fraud not only killed my mother in her youth, as I guess, by grief and despair, but has brought you now to your death too.”
His father had raised himself on an arm to gaze incredulously at the six unfired cartridges lying in Weir’s palm. Then all at once his bearded lips trembled and a great light of joy flashed upon his face.
“Innocent––innocent!” he whispered. “Steele, my son,––Helen, my wife! No stain on my soul!”
As he sank back Steele’s arms caught him. He did not speak again, but his eyes rested radiantly on his boy’s before they glazed in death. Fear had passed from them, forever.