"A week"s a week, and I don"t intend to stay. Why did you limp when you came in? Get hurt?"
"Not really hurt. Jammed my leg against a fence. I drew Wild Fire."
"Did you win the championship?" the girl asked eagerly.
"No. Finals to-morrow. Sanborn an" me. How"s the arm? Bone broken?"
"Yes. Oh, it aches some. Be all right soon."
He drew her letters from his pocket. "Stopped to get your mail at the hotel. Thought you"d like to see it."
Wild Rose looked the envelopes over and tore one open.
"From my little sister Esther," she explained. "Mind if I read it?
I"m some worried about her. She"s been writing kinda funny lately."
As she read, the color ebbed from her face. When she had finished reading the letter Kirby spoke gently.
"Bad news, pardner?"
She nodded, choking. Her eyes, frank and direct, met those of her friend without evasion. It was a heritage of her life in the open that in her relations with men she showed a boylike unconcern of s.e.x.
"Esther"s in trouble. She--she--" Rose caught her breath in a stress of emotion.
"If there"s anything I can do--"
The girl flung aside the rug that covered her and rose from the chair.
She began to pace up and down the room. Presently her thoughts overflowed in words.
"She doesn"t say what it is, but--I know her. She"s crazy with fear--or heartache--or something." Wild Rose was always quick-tempered, a pa.s.sionate defender of children and all weak creatures. Now Lane knew that the hot blood was rushing stormily to her heart. Her little sister was in danger, the only near relative she had. She would fight for her as a cougar would for its young. "By G.o.d, if it"s a man--if he"s done her wrong--I"ll shoot him down like a gray wolf. I"ll show him how safe it is to--to--"
She broke down again, clamping tight her small strong teeth to bite back a sob.
He spoke very gently. "Does she say--?"
His sentence hung suspended in air, but the young woman understood its significance.
"No. The letter"s just a--a wail of despair. She--talks of suicide.
Kirby, I"ve got to get to Denver on the next train. Find out when it leaves. And I"ll send a telegram to her to-night telling her I"ll fix it. I will too."
"Sure. That"s the way to talk. Be reasonable an" everything"ll work out fine. Write your wire an" I"ll take it right to the office. Soon as I"ve got the train schedule I"ll come back."
"You"re a good pal, Kirby. I always knew you were."
For a moment her left hand fell in his. He looked down at the small, firm, sunbrowned fist. That hand was, as Browning has written, a woman in itself, but it was a woman competent, 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 pa.s.sion 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."