Transcriber’s Note
Table of Contents added by Transcriber and placed in the Public Domain.
THE GIRL FROM HOLLYWOOD
[Illustration: The director’s eyes snapped.... “Only a camera man and
myself are here,” he said]
THE
GIRL FROM HOLLYWOOD
BY
EDGAR RICE BURROUGHS
AUTHOR OF “TARZON OF THE APES,” “THE
RETURN OF TARZON,” ETC.
FRONTISPIECE BY
P. J. MONAHAN
NEW YORK
THE MACAULAY COMPANY
COPYRIGHT, 1923,
BY EDGAR RICE BURROUGHS
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I 1
II 9
III 16
IV 21
V 32
VI 46
VII 54
VIII 58
IX 63
X 70
XI 79
XII 88
XIII 96
XIV 103
XV 115
XVI 129
XVII 145
XVIII 151
XIX 164
XX 168
XXI 180
XXII 189
XXIII 195
XXIV 204
XXV 211
XXVI 218
XXVII 226
XXVIII 236
XXIX 244
XXX 249
XXXI 254
XXXII 264
XXXIII 275
XXXIV 283
XXXV 293
XXXVI 304
XXXVII 308
THE GIRL FROM HOLLYWOOD
CHAPTER I
The two horses picked their way carefully downward over the loose
shale of the steep hillside. The big bay stallion in the lead sidled
mincingly, tossing his head nervously, and flecking the flannel shirt
of his rider with foam. Behind the man on the stallion a girl rode a
clean-limbed bay of lighter color, whose method of descent, while less
showy, was safer, for he came more slowly, and in the very bad places
he braced his four feet forward and slid down, sometimes almost sitting
upon the ground.
At the base of the hill there was a narrow level strip; then an
eight-foot wash, with steep banks, barred the way to the opposite side
of the cañon, which rose gently to the hills beyond. At the foot of
the descent the man reined in and waited until the girl was safely
down; then he wheeled his mount and trotted toward the wash. Twenty
feet from it he gave the animal its head and a word. The horse broke
into a gallop, took off at the edge of the wash, and cleared it so
effortlessly as almost to give the impression of flying.
Behind the man came the girl, but her horse came at the wash with a
rush--not the slow, steady gallop of the stallion--and at the very
brink he stopped to gather himself. The dry bank caved beneath his
front feet, and into the wash he went, head first.
The man turned and spurred back. The girl looked up from her saddle,
making a wry face.
“No damage?” he asked, an expression of concern upon his face.
“No damage,” the girl replied. “Senator is clumsy enough at jumping,
but no matter what happens he always lights on his feet.”
“Ride down a bit,” said the man. “There’s an easy way out just below.”
She moved off in the direction he indicated, her horse picking his way
among the loose bowlders in the wash bottom.
“Mother says he’s part cat,” she remarked. “I wish he could jump like
the Apache!”
The man stroked the glossy neck of his own mount.
“He never will,” he said. “He’s afraid. The Apache is absolutely
fearless; he’d go anywhere I’d ride him. He’s been mired with me twice,
but he never refuses a wet spot; and that’s a test, I say, of a horse’s
courage.”
They had reached a place where the bank was broken down, and the girl’s
horse scrambled from the wash.
“Maybe he’s like his rider,” suggested the girl, looking at the Apache;
“brave, but reckless.”
“It was worse than reckless,” said the man. “It was asinine. I
shouldn’t have led you over the jump when I know how badly Senator
jumps.”
“And you wouldn’t have, Custer”--she hesitated--“if----”
“If I hadn’t been drinking,” he finished for her. “I know what you were
going to say, Grace; but I think you’re wrong. I never drink enough to
show it. No one ever saw me that way--not so that it was noticeable.”
“It is always noticeable to me and to your mother,” she corrected him
gently. “We always know it, Custer. It shows in little things like what
you did just now. Oh, it isn’t anything, I know, dear; but we who love
you wish you didn’t do it quite so often.”
“It’s funny,” he said, “but I never cared for it until it became a
risky thing to get it. Oh, well, what’s the use? I’ll quit it if you
say so. It hasn’t any hold on me.”
Involuntarily he squared his shoulders--an unconscious tribute to the
strength of his weakness.
Together, their stirrups touching, they rode slowly down the cañon
trail toward the ranch. Often they rode thus, in the restful silence
that is a birthright of comradeship. Neither spoke until after they
reined in their sweating horses beneath the cool shade of the spreading
sycamore that guards the junction of El Camino Largo and the main trail
that winds up Sycamore Cañon.
It was the first day of early spring. The rains were over. The
California hills were green and purple and gold. The new leaves lay
softly fresh on the gaunt boughs of yesterday. A blue jay scolded from
a clump of sumac across the trail.
The girl pointed up into the cloudless sky, where several great birds
circled majestically, rising and falling upon motionless wings.
“The vultures are back,” she said. “I am always glad to see them come
again.”
“Yes,” said the man. “They are bully scavengers, and we don’t have to
pay ’em wages.”
The girl smiled up at him.
“I’m afraid my thoughts were more poetic than practical,” she said. “I
was only thinking that the sky looked less lonely now that they have
come. Why suggest their diet?”
“I know what you mean,” he said. “I like them, too. Maligned as they
are, they are really wonderful birds, and sort of mysterious. Did
you ever stop to think that you never see a very young one or a dead
one? Where do they die? Where do they grow to maturity? I wonder what
they’ve found up there! Let’s ride up. Martin said he saw a new calf up
beyond Jackknife Cañon yesterday. That would be just about under where
they’re circling now.”
They guided their horses around a large, flat slab of rock that some
camper had contrived into a table beneath the sycamore, and started
across the trail toward the opposite side of the cañon. They were in
the middle of the trail when the man drew in and listened.
“Some one is coming,” he said. “Let’s wait and see who it is. I haven’t
sent any one back into the hills to-day.”
“I have an idea,” remarked the girl, “that there is more going on up
there”--she nodded toward the mountains stretching to the south of
them--“than you know about.”
“How is that?” he asked.
“So often recently we have heard horsemen passing the ranch late at
night. If they weren’t going to stop at your place, those who rode up
the trail must have been headed into the high hills; but I’m sure that
those whom we heard coming down weren’t coming from the Rancho del
Ganado.”
“No,” he said, “not late at night--or not often, at any rate.”
The footsteps of a cantering horse drew rapidly closer, and presently
the animal and its rider came into view around a turn in the trail.
“It’s only Allen,” said the girl.
The newcomer reined in at sight of the man and the girl. He was
evidently surprised, and the girl thought that he seemed ill at ease.
“Just givin’ Baldy a work-out,” he explained. “He ain’t been out for
three or four days, an’ you told me to work ’em out if I had time.”
Custer Pennington nodded.
“See any stock back there?”
“No. How’s the Apache to-day--forgin’ as bad as usual?”
Pennington shook his head negatively.
“That fellow shod him yesterday just the way I want him shod. I wish
you’d take a good look at his shoes, Slick, so you can see that he’s
always shod this same way.” His eyes had been traveling over Slick’s
mount, whose heaving sides were covered with lather. “Baldy’s pretty
soft, Slick; I wouldn’t work him too hard all at once. Get him up to it
gradually.”
He turned and rode off with the girl at his side. Slick Allen looked
after them for a moment, and then moved his horse off at a slow walk
toward the ranch. He was a lean, sinewy man, of medium height. He might
have been a cavalryman once. He sat his horse, even at a walk, like
one who has sweated and bled under a drill sergeant in the days of his
youth.
“How do you like him?” the girl asked of Pennington.
“He’s a good horseman, and good horsemen are getting rare these days,”
replied Pennington; “but I don’t know that I’d choose him for a
playmate. Don’t you like him?”
“I’m afraid I don’t. His eyes give me the creeps--they’re like a
fish’s.”
“To tell the truth, Grace, I don’t like him,” said Custer. “He’s one of
those rare birds--a good horseman who doesn’t love horses. I imagine he
won’t last long on the Rancho del Ganado; but we’ve got to give him a
fair shake--he’s only been with us a few weeks.”
They were picking their way toward the summit of a steep hogback. The
man, who led, was seeking carefully for the safest footing, shamed out
of his recent recklessness by the thought of how close the girl had
come to a serious accident through his thoughtlessness. They rode along
the hogback until they could look down into a tiny basin where a small
bunch of cattle was grazing, and then, turning and dipping over the
edge, they dropped slowly toward the animals.
Near the bottom of the slope they came upon a white-faced bull standing
beneath the spreading shade of a live oak. He turned his woolly face
toward them, his red-rimmed eyes observing them dispassionately for
a moment. Then he turned away again and resumed his cud, disdaining
further notice of them.
“That’s the King of Ganado, isn’t it?” asked the girl.
“Looks like him, doesn’t he? But he isn’t. He’s the King’s likeliest
son, and unless I’m mistaken he’s going to give the old fellow a
mighty tough time of it this fall, if the old boy wants to hang on to
the grand championship. We’ve never shown him yet. It’s an idea of
father’s. He’s always wanted to spring a new champion at a great show
and surprise the world. He’s kept this fellow hidden away ever since he
gave the first indication that he was going to be a fine bull. At least
a hundred breeders have visited the herd in the past year, and not one
of them has seen him. Father says he’s the greatest bull that ever
lived, and that his first show is going to be the International.”
“I just know he’ll win,” exclaimed the girl. “Why look at him! Isn’t he
a beauty?”
“Got a back like a billiard table,” commented Custer proudly.
They rode down among the heifers. There were a dozen
beauties--three-year-olds. Hidden to one side, behind a small bush, the
man’s quick eyes discerned a little bundle of red and white.
“There it is, Grace,” he called, and the two rode toward it.
One of the heifers looked fearfully toward them, then at the bush, and
finally walked toward it, lowing plaintively.
“We’re not going to hurt it, little girl,” the man assured her.
As they came closer, there arose a thing of long, wabbly legs, big
joints, and great, dark eyes, its spotless coat of red and white
shining with health and life.
“The cunning thing!” cried the girl. “How I’d like to squeeze it! I
just love ’em, Custer!”
She had slipped from her saddle, and, dropping her reins on the ground,
was approaching the calf.
“Look out for the cow!” cried the man, as he dismounted and moved
forward to the girl’s side, with his arm through the Apache’s reins.
“She hasn’t been up much, and she may be a little wild.”
The calf stood its ground for a moment, and then, with tail erect,
cavorted madly for its mother, behind whom it took refuge.
“I just love ’em! I just love ’em!” repeated the girl.
“You say the same thing about the colts and the little pigs,” the man
reminded her.
“I love ’em all!” she cried, shaking her head, her eyes twinkling.
“You love them because they’re little and helpless, just like babies,”
he said. “Oh, Grace, how you’d love a baby!”
The girl flushed prettily. Quite suddenly he seized her in his arms and
crushed her to him, smothering her with a long kiss. Breathless, she
wriggled partially away, but he still held her in his arms.
“Why won’t you, Grace?” he begged. “There’ll never be anybody else for
me or for you. Father and mother and Eva love you almost as much as I
do, and on your side your mother and Guy have always seemed to take it
as a matter of course that we’d marry. It isn’t the drinking, is it,
dear?”
“No, it’s not that, Custer. Of course I’ll marry you--some day; but not
yet. Why, I haven’t lived yet, Custer! I want to live. I want to do
something outside of the humdrum life that I have always led and the
humdrum life that I shall live as a wife and mother. I want to live a
little, Custer, and then I’ll be ready to settle down. You all tell me
that I am beautiful, and down, away down in the depth of my soul, I
feel that I have talent. If I have, I ought to use the gifts God has
given me.”
She was speaking very seriously, and the man listened patiently and
with respect, for he realized that she was revealing for the first time
a secret yearning that she must have long held locked in her bosom.
“Just what do you want to do, dear?” he asked gently.
“I--oh, it seems silly when I try to put it in words, but in dreams it
is very beautiful and very real.”
“The stage?” he asked.
“It is just like you to understand!” Her smile rewarded him. “Will you
help me? I know mother will object.”
“You want me to help you take all the happiness out of my life?” he
asked.
“It would only be for a little while--just a few years, and then I
would come back to you--after I had made good.”
“You would never come back, Grace, unless you failed,” he said. “If
you succeeded, you would never be contented in any other life or
atmosphere. If you came back a failure, you couldn’t help but carry
a little bitterness always in your heart. It would never be the same
dear, care-free heart that went away so gayly. Here you have a real
part to play in a real drama--not make-believe upon a narrow stage
with painted drops.” He flung out a hand in broad gesture. “Look at
the setting that God has painted here for us to play our parts in--the
parts that He has chosen for us! Your mother played upon the same
stage, and mine. Do you think them failures? And both were beautiful
girls--as beautiful as you.”
“Oh, but you don’t understand, after all, Custer!” she cried. “I
thought you did.”
“I do understand that for your sake I must do my best to persuade you
that you have as full a life before you here as upon the stage. I am
fighting first for your happiness, Grace, and then for mine. If I fail,
then I shall do all that I can to help you realize your ambition. If
you cannot stay because you are convinced that you will be happier
here, then I do not want you to stay.”
“Kiss me,” she demanded suddenly. “I am only thinking of it, anyway, so
let’s not worry until there is something to worry about.”