Tangled Trails | Page 7

unafraid, trained hard
as nails. She would go through with whatever she set out to do.
As his eyes rested on the fingers there came to him a swift, unreasoning
prescience of impending tragedy. To what dark destiny was she
moving?
CHAPTER IV
NOT ALWAYS TWO TO MAKE A QUARREL
Kirby put Wild Rose on the morning train for Denver. She had escaped
from the doctor by sheer force of will. The night had been a wretched
one, almost sleepless, and she knew that her fever would rise in the
afternoon. But that could not be helped. She had more important
business than her health to attend to just now.
Ordinarily Rose bloomed with vitality, but this morning she looked
tired and worn. In her eyes there was a hard brilliancy Kirby did not
like to see. He knew from of old the fire that could blaze in her heart,
the insurgent impulses that could sweep her into recklessness. What
would she do if the worst she feared turned out to be true?
"Good luck," she called through the open window as the train pulled
out. "Beat Cole, Kirby."
"Good luck to you," he answered. "Write me soon as you find out how
things are."
But as he walked from the station his heart misgave him. Why had he
let her go alone, knowing as he did how swift she blazed to passion
when wrong was done those she loved? It was easy enough to say that
she had refused to let him go with her, though he had several times
offered. The fact remained that she might need a friend at hand, might
need him the worst way.

All through breakfast he was ridden by the fear of trouble on her
horizon. Comrades stopped to slap him on the back and wish him good
luck in the finals, and though he made the proper answers it was with
the surface of a mind almost wholly preoccupied with another matter.
While he was rising from the table he made a decision in the flash of an
eye. He would join Rose in Denver at once. Already dozens of cars
were taking the road. There would be a vacant place in some one of
them.
He found a party just setting out for Denver and easily made
arrangements to take the unfilled seat in the tonneau.
By the middle of the afternoon he was at a boarding-house on Cherokee
Street inquiring for Miss Rose McLean. She was out, and the landlady
did not know when she would be back. Probably after her sister got
home from work.
Lane wandered down to Curtis Street, sat through a part of a movie,
then restlessly took his way up Seventeenth. He had an uncle and two
cousins living in Denver. With the uncle he was on bad terms, and with
his cousins on no terms at all. It had been ten years since he had seen
either James Cunningham, Jr., or his brother Jack. Why not call on
them and renew acquaintance?
He went into a drug-store and looked the name up in a telephone book.
His cousin James had an office in the Equitable Building. He hung the
book up on the hook and turned to go. As he did so he came face to
face with Rose McLean.
"You--here!" she cried.
"Yes, I--I had business in Denver," he explained.
"Like fun you had! You came because--" She stopped abruptly, struck
by another phase of the situation. "Did you leave Cheyenne without
riding to-day?"

"I didn't want to ride. I'm fed up on ridin'."
"You threw away the championship and a thousand-dollar prize
to--to--"
"You're forgettin' Cole Sanborn," he laughed. "No, honest, I came on
business. But since I'm here--say, Rose, where can we have a talk?
Let's go up to the mezzanine gallery at the Albany. It's right next door."
He took her into the Albany Hotel. They stepped out of the elevator at
the second floor and he found a settee in a corner where they might be
alone. It struck him that the shadows in her eyes had deepened. She was,
he could see plainly, laboring under a tension of repressed excitement.
The misery of her soul leaped out at him when she looked his way.
"Have you anything to tell me?" he asked, and his low, gentle voice
was a comfort to her raw nerves.
"It's a man, just as I thought--the man she works for."
"Is he married?"
"No. Going to be soon, the papers say. He's a wealthy promoter. His
name's Cunningham."
"What Cunningham?" In his astonishment the words seemed to leap
from him of their own volition.
"James Cunningham, a big land and mining man. You must have heard
of him."
"Yes, I've heard of him. Are you