In a region as sparsely settled by white people as San Mateo and its adjoining counties there were not, as Janet put it, more than a dozen Johnson families. In fact, there were but two, she learned from her father: one at Bowenville, the small railroad town of three hundred people, a merchant with a wife and four little children; the other a rancher on Terry Creek, whose wife was dead and who had one child, a girl of sixteen or seventeen years of age.

“I may be away at dinner time, so don’t wait for me,” she told her father next morning. “I’m going out in the country a few miles––and you know my car! If you’d just let me squeeze some of these patients who never pay, you could have a new car yourself.”

“Mine’s all right,” he smiled.

“But mine isn’t. Look at it. You gave it to me only because you scorned to ride in it any longer yourself. It would do for me, you said, but you prance around in a bright shiny one yourself. I blush at the row mine makes; sounds like a boiler factory; I drive only along side streets. If the patients would pay what they owe, I could ride like a lady instead of a slinking magpie.”

The doctor leaned back in his chair and laughed (they were at breakfast) and remarked that old friends were best.

“Don’t call my asthmatic tin beast a friend; we’re bitter enemies,” said she.

It carried her to Terry Creek about noon, however, safely enough, whither she went with a firm resolution that crushed a certain embarrassment and anxiety. Suppose these people resented her inquiries.

She placed the bearded, tanned rancher at once, when she saw him working on a piece of harness before the door as she drove up. She had seen him in town at different times. She once had stopped here, too, several years previous when accompanying her father, who had been called to dress the rancher’s injured hand. The girl could not have been over twelve or thirteen then, a shabby, awkward girl wearing a braid who came out to gaze shyly at her sitting in the car.

Johnson arose from the ground and approached as she alighted, while the girl’s head popped into sight at the door.

“I’m Dr. Hosmer’s daughter, Janet,” she stated, putting out her hand and smiling. “I’ve come to see you on a matter. Shall we go into the house?”

With curiosity sharing a vague hostility in his bearing he led her in, where his daughter was setting the table. Janet also told the girl who she was. At once dismay and startlement greeted the announcement. But she invited Janet to be seated, she herself withdrawing to a spot by the stove.

No need for Janet to beat about the bush with her errand.

“Mr. Johnson,” she said, “I’ve come to you and your daughter for a little help if you can give it.” That seemed the best way to break down their reserve, an appeal rather than simply blunt questions––and what was it if not an appeal? “What I have to say is 109 just among the three of us and I know it will go no farther. You’re acquainted with my father; he’s respected by every one.”

“He is,” Johnson stated, nodding.

“The situation is this, to speak plainly: last night I heard something that has caused me to come to you for information; I’m engaged to Ed Sorenson, and in a moment of anger he denounced Mr. Weir, the engineer at the dam, for having told me a false story––lies––about him and your daughter.”

Janet perceived the quick, troubled look exchanged by man and girl.

“Mr. Weir has never mentioned your daughter’s name in my hearing; I think him incapable of discussing any one maliciously. He’s very careful of what he says. I consider him a very honorable man. At any rate, he said nothing of what Ed Sorenson suggested, and if the latter himself hadn’t spoken of the thing I should have had no inkling that there had been anything justifying an inquiry on my part. There may not be. But why should he imagine Mr. Weir had told me ‘lies’ linking him and your daughter?”

“I know Weir––and I know Ed Sorenson, too,” was the rancher’s grim rejoinder.

“This is a disagreeable subject, I know. But I’m not here out of mere curiosity, but a desire to learn if something has been concealed from me by Ed Sorenson that I should be informed of. His manner, his words, the whole incident has filled me with doubts. See, I’m trusting you absolutely.” And she extended a hand in a gesture bespeaking sincerity.

Johnson peered at her in silence from under shaggy brows.

“I ask myself why Mr. Sorenson took it for granted 110 that the engineer had been telling me false stories and if there was any ground for such fears,” she went on. “He had nothing to be afraid of, no matter what might be said, if he had done nothing unworthy. I can’t imagine Mr. Weir, for instance, being alarmed in that way.”

“They’re telling plenty of lies about him, for that matter, but I guess it doesn’t worry him any,” Johnson said.

“What I ask you touches a delicate subject, perhaps,” Janet continued, reluctantly. “You may feel that I’m pushing in where I’m not concerned. But if Mr. Sorenson has done anything discreditable––if he has acted in a way to make me ashamed when I know, then it becomes a matter affecting my happiness too. I would never marry a man who had done something dishonorable, for if I did so knowingly I should be dishonored and dishonorable as well.”

Johnson suddenly thrust a brown forefinger at her.

“Do you want to know what Sorenson did?” he demanded, wrathfully.

Janet gripped her hands together. “Yes.”

“You’ll not go spreading it all around the country? But I guess you won’t as long as it would make you out a fool too. I’ll not have Mary’s name dragged about in a lot of gossip.”

“I assure you I shall remain silent, for her sake and my own.”

“All right, I’ll tell you. You’re too good a girl––any decent girl is––to marry Ed Sorenson. He met Mary at a dance last spring in town where she went with some friends of ours, and made love to her but wouldn’t let her tell me or any one. We don’t get to town so very often; she never knew he was engaged 111 to marry you, there never happening to be any mention of it to her. Then he got her to go to Bowenville one day awhile ago, under promise to marry her there––Mary is only sixteen, a little girl yet. To me, anyway.”

Janet felt the working of his love in those simple words. Felt it but half-consciously, though, for her own soul was stifling at Ed Sorenson’s revealed infamy.

“When he got her there, he told her they would have to go away farther to be married––to Los Angeles.” Again his finger came up, this time to be shaken at her like a hammer. “He never intended to marry her; he planned to get her there, ruin her, and cast her off. That’s the sort of man you’re going to marry!”

“I remember he expected to be away for a couple of weeks––a business trip, he said. But afterwards he explained that it hadn’t been necessary to go.”

“A business trip! Yes, the dirty kind of business he likes. And if it hadn’t been that Weir heard him explaining to Mary that she must go on and interfered––there in the restaurant––Ed Sorenson might have succeeded. Mary trusted him, thought he was straight. But he’s crooked, crooked as his old man. When Weir told him to his face what he thought of his tricks, he let it out he was engaged to you. Didn’t mean to, of course. Weir said he would stay right with them and see that they got married next day before a minister, then Sorenson snapped out he was to marry you. That opened Mary’s eyes, that and his refusing to go before a preacher as the engineer demanded. So Weir brought her home to me.

“And that isn’t all I know,” he snarled. “Mexicans and cowboys and others have talked––women don’t 112 hear these things––how he’s had to pay Mexicans hush-money for girls of theirs he’s wronged. But what do people care? He’s rich, he’s old man Sorenson’s boy; everything’s kept quiet; and he goes around as big as life.” With a muttered oath he turned away, his lips shut hard and his beard sticking out savagely.

He came back to her again.

“The young one gets it from the old one,” he exclaimed. “Bad crooked blood in both of them. I know. I’ve been here ever since I was a boy and remember things Sorenson believes every one has forgotten, I know how he got his start, how he and the rest of his bunch cleaned out Dent of his ranch and cattle gambling and then killed him when he discovered they had used marked cards, how at the same time they robbed another man–––”

Janet struggled to her feet. She had covered her eyes and bowed her head before the torrent of his vehemence.

“No more, I want to hear no more,” she gasped. “Let me go home. I’m sick.”

“It all makes me sick, too,” he answered. “Sick and sore, both. But it’s the truth. I’m sorry if it’s been a bad pill to swallow, but it’s the God’s truth, girl. I’m sorry it couldn’t be any other way, but I wouldn’t see you marry that scoundrel if I lost a hand stopping you. Mary felt sick at first, too; she’s over it now. You’ll not feel bad long. Better stay for dinner with us.”

“I couldn’t swallow a bite. Thank you for your kindness in asking me––and for telling me what I wanted to know, too. Father never knew, or he would have warned me. People saw I was engaged to Ed Sorenson and would say nothing to father, of course. 113 I shall always count you as one of my best friends, Mr. Johnson. And you too, Mary; you must come down and stay with me sometime, for I imagine you get lonely here. No, another day I’ll remain to dinner––and I want to be alone now.”

They pressed her no further, seeing her wretchedness of spirit. But they walked with her to the car and shook hands with her when she was in and urged her to come again.

When she had disappeared in the aspens among which the trail led, Mary said to her father:

“You said they killed a man named Dent.”

“They did. I saw the killing.”

“And nothing was ever done about it?”

“No. Nobody but me knew of the happening and I’d of had a bullet through my heart if I’d talked. I might yet even now, so see that you keep your mouth shut.”

“You told her.”

“I was mad, so mad I could say anything. But she isn’t the kind to repeat the story; I’m not afraid on that score. She’s clean strain all through.”

“Did you know the man whom Sorenson and the others killed?” Mary questioned, in some awe.

“I knew of him, but I was only a lad then. I saw it all through the back door of Vorse’s saloon where it happened, but I’ve never breathed about it to a soul. I didn’t want to be murdered some dark night. Those four men would see that the job was done quick even now, I’m saying, if they were on to the fact. I know ’em, if nobody else does.”

Mary’s skin crawled with prickles of fear.

“They must be awful bad.”

“They were devils then, and I don’t think they’ve 114 changed to angels to-day, though they try to appear decent. I know ’em; I know what they’ll do once they start. You can’t make sheep out of wolves just by giving ’em a fleece.”

“You said they robbed another man at the same time they killed that Dent.”

“Yes; and it only goes to show the hellish crooks they are. It was another man in the saloon. He was drunk. They made him believe he had killed Dent. Then said they’d help him to get away if he gave them his property. He was a rich fellow who had come out from the east and gone to ranching, a tenderfoot. They took his stuff and he skipped the country with his wife. That was the last of him, and I reckon he believes to this day that he’s a murderer. And that’s how they got the start of their wealth, or a big part of it, Sorenson and Vorse and the other two. They’ve got the San Mateo Cattle Company, with fifty thousand head of steers, and ten or twenty bands of sheeps and ranches, and the bank, and all the rest, and they walk around like honest men. But they’re thieves and murderers, Mary, thieves and murderers! I’d rather be the man I am, poor and with nothing but this little mortgaged piece of ground and my few cattle, than them, who robbed Dent and killed him and then robbed and drove out Weir.”

“Was that the other man’s name?”

“Yes.”

“That’s funny. The same as the man who brought me home.”

“There are lots of Weirs, like the Johnsons.”

“Not so many, I guess. Maybe they’re related. Did the man who skipped have any children?”

“No. None I ever heard of, though I didn’t know much about him. Just him and his wife, I think.”

Johnson had perceived no resemblance between the engineer and the vanished man of whom he spoke. As for that, however, he had no clear recollection of the elder Weir’s face; he was but twelve years old at the time of the dramatic event, thirty years before.

“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.