se
a compromise in his case. He's the weak link. Do you think I've had an
easy time the last three hours bringing him to the point he's at? I
had to invent evidence that couldn't possibly exist. I had to give him
a merciless mental 'third degree.' I told him if he refused I was
going to Sorenson with the same offer, who would jump at the chance.
And, my dear man, we haven't, in reality, enough proof to convict a
mouse since you lost that paper. So now, so far as he's concerned, you
must bend a little, a very little--and you'll be able to hang the
remaining three."

This incisive reasoning was not to be denied.

"I yield," said Weir.

Beaming, Mr. Pollock walked back to the table.

"Mr. Weir consents," he stated. "Mr. Martinez, if you will go to your
office and bring the necessary forms and your seal we can make the
transfers and statement and wind the matter up."

An hour later Judge Gordon had signed the deeds, stock certificates
from his safe and bills of sale spread before him, passing the
ownership of lands, cattle and shares in companies to Pollock for
equitable division between Weir and the Dent heirs if found. The old
Mexican servants were called in and witnessed his shaky signatures to
the papers.

At the statement regarding the Dent shooting and Weir fraud, which
Pollock had dictated to Martinez with Gordon's assistance, he
staggered to his feet while the pen dropped from his hand.

"I can't sign it, I can't sign it; they would kill me!" he groaned.

The two aged servants stared at him wonderingly.

"My dear Judge, they'll never know of it until it's too late for them
to do anything--if they ever know," came the easterner's words, in
smooth persuasiveness.

Judge Gordon brushed a hand over his eyes.

"Give me a moment," he muttered.

He stood for a time motionless. Then he walked across the room and
opened a door and entered an inner chamber.

"He won't live a year after this," Pollock whispered to his
companions.

The speaker could have shortened the time immensely and have still
been safe in his prophecy. For when at the end of five minutes he sent
the woman to request the Judge to return, she stumbled out of the
bed-chamber with affrighted eyes. She said the Judge was asleep on his
bed and could not be aroused.

Sleep of the profoundest, the men discovered on going in. And in his
fingers was an empty vial. So far as Judge Gordon was concerned Weir
had had his revenge.

CHAPTER XX