They had considered as closed and sealed the account of early secret, lawless acts by which they had acquired wealth and a grip on the community. They were now law-observing members of society; they controlled even if they sometimes failed to possess the goodwill of the county--and they were not men to measure position by friendships; their councils determined how much or how little other men should own and in local politics their fingers moved the puppets that served their will. With the entrance here of the powerful group of financiers who were constructing the irrigation project they recognized the threat to their old-time supremacy. Cattle and sheep interests would succumb to farming; a swarm of new, independent settlers would arrive like locusts; and their leadership would eventually be challenged if not ended. New towns would spring up. New money would flow in to dispute their financial mastery. New leaders would arise to assail their political dominion. And against the prospect of all this they had initiated a secret warfare, endeavoring by stealth to ruin the irrigation company at the beginning and nip the danger in the bud. Now it had been revealed all at once that they had not only a general and impersonal enemy in the form of the company, but a specific one in the form of a man, its manager. Out of nowhere he had emerged, out of thirty years' silence, a sinister figure who tapped with significant finger the book of their secret past while his eyes steadfastly demanded a reckoning. Did he know all, or nothing? Knowing, did he deliberately leave them in doubt in order to shatter their confidence? At least one of the four had been badly shaken on learning Weir's identity, and all now were uneasy. It was as if Fate after a long silence was about to open the sealed record. "Perhaps you were just imagining things, Judge," Sorenson was saying. Senator Gordon moistened his lips and tugged nervously at his gray mustache. "No, no," he exclaimed. "Just ask Vorse. The man said his name was Weir and that he was the son of Joe Weir. Then--then----" "Well?" Sorenson demanded, frowning at the other's visible trepidation. "Weir added, 'And I know what happened thirty years ago in this selfsame room.' Those were his very words. Isn't that true, Vorse?" "Yes." "They could mean only one thing," said Gordon. "When the Judge went out he said to me," Vorse stated, "'That was for you too.' I had my hand on my gun under the counter as he said it, ready if he made a move. He knew what I had there, but it didn't faze him. He's a better man than Joe Weir ever was, I want to remark, and different; he has nerve and a bad eye. He knows something, lay your bets on that." "How much? How much? If we only knew how much!" Judge Gordon vouchsafed, testily.