Tangled Trails: A Western Detective Story

E-text prepared by Al Haines
A Western Detective Story
Author of The Big-Town Round-Up, Gunsight Pass, Etc.
Grosset & Dunlap Publishers New York Made in the United States of America Copyright, 1921, by William Macleod Raine All Rights Reserved Third Impression, March, 1922
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.