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 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 inqui