Tangled Trails.

by William MacLeod Raine.

CHAPTER I

NO ALTRUIST

Esther McLean brought the afternoon mail in to Cunningham. She put it on the desk before him and stood waiting, timidly, afraid to voice her demand for justice, yet too desperately anxious to leave with it unspoken.

He leaned back in his swivel chair, his cold eyes challenging her.

"Well," he barked harshly.

She was a young, soft creature, very pretty in a kittenish fashion, both sensuous and helpless. It was an easy guess that unless fortune stood her friend she was a predestined victim to the world's selfish love of pleasure, and fortune, with a cynical smile, had stood aside and let her go her way.

"I . . . I . . ." A wave of color flooded her face. She twisted a rag of a handkerchief into a hard wadded knot.

"Spit it out," he ordered curtly.

"I've got to do something . . . soon. Won't you--won't you--?" There was a wail of despair in the unfinished sentence.

James Cunningham was a grim, gray pirate, as malleable as cast iron and as soft. He was a large, big-boned man, aggressive, dominant, the kind that takes the world by the throat and shakes success from it. The contour of his hook-nosed face had something rapacious written on it.

"No. Not till I get good and ready. I've told you I'd look out for you if you'd keep still. Don't come whining at me. I won't have it."

"But--"

Already he was ripping letters open and glancing over them. Tears brimmed the brown eyes of the girl. She bit her lower lip, choked back a sob, and turned hopelessly away. Her misfortune lay at her own door.

She knew that. But-- The woe in her heart was that the man she had loved was leaving her to face alone a night as bleak as death.

Cunningham had always led a life of intelligent selfishness. He had usually got what he wanted because he was strong enough to take it. No scrupulous nicety of means had ever deterred him. Nor ever would. He played his own hand with a cynical disregard of the rights of others.

It was this that had made him what he was, a man who bulked large in the sight of the city and state. Long ago he had made up his mind that altruism was weakness.

He went through his mail with a swift, trained eye. One of the letters he laid aside and glanced at a second time. It brought a grim, hard smile to his lips. A paragraph read:

There's no water in your ditch and our crops are burning up. Your whole irrigation system in Dry Valley is a fake. You knew it, but we didn't. You've skinned us out of all we had, you d.a.m.ned bloodsucker.

If you ever come up here we'll dry-gulch you, sure.

The letter was signed, "One You Have Robbed." Attached to it was a clipping from a small-town paper telling of a meeting of farmers to ask the United States District Attorney for an investigation of the Dry Valley irrigation project promoted by James Cunningham.

The promoter smiled. He was not afraid of the Government. He had kept strictly within the law. It was not his fault there was not enough rainfall in the watershed to irrigate the valley. But the threat to dry-gulch him was another matter. He had no fancy for being shot in the back. Some crazy fool of a settler might do just that. He decided to let an agent attend to his Dry Valley affairs hereafter. He dictated some letters, closed his desk, and went down the street toward the City Club. At a florist's he stopped and ordered a box of American Beauties to be sent to Miss Phyllis Harriman. With these he enclosed his card, a line of greeting scrawled on it.

A poker game was on at the club and Cunningham sat in. He interrupted it to dine, holding his seat by leaving a pile of chips at the place.

When he cashed in his winnings and went downstairs it was still early.

As a card-player he was not popular. He was too keen on the main chance and he nearly always won. In spite of his loud and frequent laugh, of the effect of bluff geniality, there was no genuine humor in the man, none of the milk of human kindness.

A lawyer in the reading-room rose at sight of Cunningham. "Want to see you a minute," he said.

"Let's go into the Red Room."

He led the way to a small room furnished with a desk, writing supplies, and a telephone. It was for the use of members who wanted to be private. The lawyer shut the door.

"Afraid I've bad news for you, Cunningham," he said.

The other man's steady eyes did not waver. He waited silently.

"I was at Golden to-day on business connected with a divorce case. By chance I ran across a record that astonished me. It may be only a coincidence of names, but--"

"Now you've wrapped up the blackjack so that it won't hurt, suppose you go ahead and hit me over the head with it," suggested Cunningham dryly.

The lawyer told what he knew. The promoter took it with no evidence of feeling other than that which showed in narrowed eyes hard as diamonds and a clenched jaw in which the muscles stood out like ropes.

"Much obliged, Foster," he said, and the lawyer knew he was dismissed.

Cunningham paced the room for a few moments, then rang for a messenger.

He wrote a note and gave it to the boy to be delivered. Then he left the club.

From Seventeenth Street he walked across to the Paradox Apartments where he lived. He found a note propped up against a book on the table of his living-room. It had been written by the j.a.panese servant he shared with two other bachelors who lived in the same building.

Mr. Hull he come see you. He sorry you not here. He say maybe perhaps make honorable call some other time.

It was signed, "S. Horikawa."

Cunningham tossed the note aside. He had no wish to see Hull. The fellow was becoming a nuisance. If he had any complaint he could go to the courts with it. That was what they were for.

The doorbell rang. The promoter opened to a big, barrel-bodied man who pushed past him into the room.

"What you want, Hull?" demanded Cunningham curtly.

The man thrust his bull neck forward. A heavy roll of fat swelled over the collar. "You know d.a.m.n well what I want. I want what's comin' to me. My share of the Dry Valley clean-up. An' I'm gonna have it. See?"

"You've had every cent you'll get. I told you that before."

Tiny red capillaries seamed the beefy face of the fat man. "An' I told you I was gonna have a divvy. An' I am. You can't throw down Ca.s.s Hull an' get away with it. Not none." The shallow protuberant eyes glittered threateningly.

"Thought you knew me better," Cunningham retorted contemptuously.

"When I say I won't, I won't. Go to a lawyer if you think you've got a case. Don't come belly-aching to me."

The face of the fat man was apoplectic. "Like sin I'll go to a lawyer.

You'd like that fine, you double-crossin' sidewinder. I'll come with a six-gun. That's how I'll come. An' soon. I'll give you two days to come through. Two days. If you don't--h.e.l.l sure enough will cough."

Whatever else could be said about Cunningham he was no coward. He met the raving man eye to eye.

"I don't scare worth a cent, Hull. Get out. _p.r.o.nto_. And don't come back unless you want me to turn you over to the police for a blackmailing crook."