In the Shadow of the Hills

Excerpt

CHAPTER I

IN A HOSTILE COUNTRY

Eastward out of the Torquilla Range the Burntwood River emerged from a gorge, flowing swift and turbulent during the spring months, shallow and murmurous the rest of the year, to pass through a basin formed by low mountains and break forth at last from a canyon and wind away over the mesa. In the canyon was being erected the huge reservoir dam which was in the future to store water for irrigating the broad acres spreading from its base.

The construction camp rested on one of the hillsides above the dam. And here one summer afternoon a man stepped forth from the long low tar-papered shack that served as headquarters, directing his gaze down the road across the mesa at a departing automobile. He was Steele Weir, the new chief, a tall, strong, tanned man of thirty-five, with lean smooth-shaven face, a straight heavy nose, mouth that by habit was set in grim lines, and heavy brows under which ruled cold, level, insistent, gray eyes. He had come suddenly, unexpectedly, returning with Magney, the engineer in charge, when the latter had been summoned east for a conference with the company’s directors. He had replaced Magney, who was now whirling away to the nearest railway point, Bowenville, thirty-five miles distant.

He thoughtfully watched the car, a black spot in a haze of dust, speeding towards the New Mexican town of San Mateo, on the Burntwood River two miles below camp, its cluster of brown adobe houses showing indistinctly through the cottonwoods that embowered the place. For Magney he felt a certain amount of sympathy, for the engineer was leaving with a recognition of defeat; he was a likeable man, as Steele Weir had discovered during their brief acquaintance, a good theoretical engineer, but lacking in the prime quality of a successful chief––fighting spirit and an indomitable will.

Under Magney the work of construction had been inaugurated the previous summer, but progress had not been as rapid as desired; there had been delays, labor difficulties, local opposition during the months since; and Weir had been chosen to succeed Magney. In his profession Weir had a reputation, built on relentless toil and sound ideas and daring achievements––a reputation enhanced by a character of mystery, for the man was unmarried, reserved, without intimates or even friends, locking his lips about his life, and welcoming and executing with grim indifference to risk engineering commissions of extreme hazard, on which account he had acquired the soubriquet of “Cold Steel” Weir.

Who first bestowed upon Weir that name is not known. But it was not misapplied. Cold steel he had proved himself to be a score of times in critical moments when other men would have broken: in pushing bridges over mountain chasms, in mine disasters, in strikes, in almost hopeless fights against bandits in Mexico. And it was this ability to handle difficulties that had brought about the decision of the directors of the company to put him in charge, as the man best qualified, at San Mateo, where the situation was unsatisfactory, costly, baffling....