“Now, come along and eat,” he said. “And remember! Not a word of this to a soul.”
Meanwhile Janet Hosmer was driving slowly down the canyon, oblivious that opportunity to unlock the whole mystery had been hers, never dreaming that she had just missed by the slenderest margin what Steele Weir would have given the world to know.
For an instant Fate had placed the key in her hand. She knew it not; it was withdrawn again and the door remained closed and locked while the threads of Destiny continued to be spun.
CHAPTER XII
THE PLOT
In Vorse’s saloon, where in the past so many evil ideas for the acquisition of money or power had sprouted, the scheme had its inception. It had been of slow growth, with innumerable suggestions considered, tested, discarded. The intended arrest and trial of Weir had been the first aim; but this had expanded until at last the plot had become of really magnificent proportions, cunning yet daring, devilish enough even to satisfy the hate and greed of its originators, consummate in design, absolutely safe and conclusive.
It was Sorenson who conceived the notion of pulling the irrigation project down in ruins at the moment of Weir’s own fall. Judge Gordon a few days later had pieced out the method, which was either to corrupt the workmen to wreck dam and camp or to place them in the equivocal position of having done so apparently though others did it in fact. Vorse and Burkhardt devised the details. Weir should be left free until the blow had fallen on the camp, whereupon he should be immediately clapped into jail on the murder charge, which, coming on top of the “riot,” would paralyze all company action and work. From such a crushing double-blow no concern could quickly recover, if indeed the loss did not result in total cessation of construction.
Thus shedding their coats of expedient lawfulness, 117 they reverted under the menace of Steele Weir’s presence to the men they were in an earlier age––an age when a few white land and cattle “barons” dominated the region, predatory, arrogant, masterful and despotic; the age just ceasing when the elder Weir and Dent arrived; the age of their youth forty years before, the age when railroads and telegraphs and law were remote, and chicanery and force were the common agents, and “guns” the final arbiters.