"How would he know anything? Joe Weir didn't know, so how can this fellow know? Don't get scared at a shadow." It was the bearded, rough-tongued Burkhardt who spoke, concluding his words with a blasphemous oath. "There's the Mexican who saw what happened--and that boy who looked in at the back door," Gordon asserted. "We just caught sight of him and couldn't make out his face against the light. Then he had skipped when we ran there. We never did learn who he was." "Do you think he remembers?" Sorenson said, scornfully. "He may be dead. He may be on the other side of the world. Just some kid who happened to drift by at the minute and look in, and there's not one chance in a million he's anywhere around these parts yet. He would have blabbed long ago to some one if he had been; don't figure him in, he's lost." "Saurez isn't, though." At this Vorse put in a word. "He saw more than one killing in those days when he was roustabout for me. It was only one more to him. Probably he has forgotten it. Anyway," Vorse ended with deadly emphasis, "he knows what would happen to him even now if he remembered it and talked. Leave him out of the calculation too." "Then that just makes the four of us," said Burkhardt. "Nobody else. So this fellow Weir doesn't know a thing." "But we can't be absolutely sure," Judge Gordon replied. "Well, he'd need proof, wouldn't he?" "Certainly, to bring legal action. But how do we know he hasn't even that? Look all around the question as a lawyer does; let us assume the millionth chance, for instance. Suppose that he somewhere met and became acquainted with that boy. Suppose that he learned the latter had been here at the time and saw the shooting; and heard his story. Suppose that Weir knows this instant where he is and can produce him as a witness in court." "I reckon in this county his testimony wouldn't count for much," Burkhardt, who had been sheriff, stated, with a harsh laugh. Sorenson, however, was impressed by the Judge's reasoning, for he drummed with fingers on the desk and sat in brooding silence. So likewise sat Vorse, who had heard Weir's utterance and beheld his face. "He knows something," he repeated, in a convinced tone. "Or he's a damned good bluffer." "I passed him here at the door this afternoon," the banker remarked. "I turned to look at him, guessing who he was, and he had stopped and was looking at me. Cool about it too. We'll have to watch him." "Perhaps if we just tip him off to keep his mouth shut tight, that will be enough," Burkhardt suggested. "If he knows the four of us are ready----" Vorse sniffed. "You think he can be bluffed?" he said. "You haven't seen him yet; go take a look. We'll not throw any scare into him. If he were that kind, he wouldn't have told us who he is. He wanted us to know he's after us, that's my opinion. He wants to shake our nerve--and he shook the Judge's all right that day at my bar."