"Exactly. We must protect her first. Kirby wouldn't want anything done that would hurt her. Suppose we put it up to him and see what he wants to do."
"But we can't have him kept in jail," she protested.
"I'll get him out on bond; if not to-day, tomorrow."
"Well," she agreed reluctantly. "If that's the best we can do."
Rose would have liked to have paid back Kirby's generosity in kind. If her sister had not been a factor of the equation she would have gone straight to the police with her story and suffered arrest gladly to help her friend. But the circumstances did not permit a heroic gesture. She had to take and not give.
"I won't have it," Kirby said flatly. "If Miss McLean tells her story to the district attorney he'll probably arrest her. It'll come out about her sister an' the papers will run scare-heads. No need of it a-tall. Won't hurt me to stay here a few days if I have to."
Jack, dapper and trim, leaned on his cane and watched his cousin. He felt a reluctant admiration for this virile cousin so picturesquely competent, so clean-cut and four-square of mind. Was he in love with the Wild Rose from Wyoming, whose spirit also was like a breath from the sweet hill pines? Or was his decision only the expression of a native chivalry that went out to all his friends and perhaps to all women?
"They'd certainly arrest her," Jack commented. "From a lawyer's point of view there's every reason why they should. Motive for the crime, sufficient; intention to force the victim to make reparation or punish him, declared openly; opportunity to commit it, confessed; presence on scene and eagerness to escape being seen there, admitted. The case against her is stronger than the one against you." He offered this last with a smile decorously but not wholly concealed.
"Yet she couldn't possibly have done it!" the cattleman replied.
"Couldn't she? I wonder." The Beau Brummel stroked his bit of mustache, with the hint of insolence his manner often suggested.
"Not possible," said Lane forcefully. "Uncle James was a big, two-fisted fighter. No slip of a girl could have overpowered him an' tied him. It's not within reason." He spoke urgently, though still in the low murmur both the cousins were using in order not to be overheard.