The Girl from Hollywood by Edgar Rice Burroughs (lightest ebook reader .txt) 📖
- Author: Edgar Rice Burroughs
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“I had intended telling you all this morning; but after the spurs, I couldn’t.”
“Do you really have to go?” Custer insisted.
“I don’t have to, but I think I ought to. Do you want me to stay—honestly?”
“Honest Injun!” he said, smiling.
“Maybe I will.”
He could have voiced no higher praise.
He asked about the fire, and especially about the horses. He was delighted when she told him that a man had just come down to say that the fire was practically out, and the colonel was coming in shortly; and that the veterinary had been there and found the team not seriously injured.
“I think that fire was incendiary,” he said; “but now that Slick Allen is in jail, I don’t know who would set it.”
“Who is Slick Allen,” she asked, “and why should he want to set fire to Ganado?”
He told her, and she was silent for a while, thinking about Allen and the last time she had seen him. She wondered what he would do when he got out of jail. She would hate to be in Wilson Crumb’s boots then, for she guessed that Allen was a hard character.
While she was thinking of Allen, Custer mentioned Guy Evans. Instantly there came to her mind, for the first time since that last evening at the Vista del Paso bungalow, Crumb’s conversation with Allen and the latter’s account of the disposition of the stolen whisky. His very words returned to her.
“Got a young high-blood at the edge of the valley handling it-a fellow by the name of Evans.”
She had not connected Allen or that conversation or the Evans he had mentioned with these people; but now she knew that it was Guy Evans who was disposing of the stolen liquor. She wondered if Allen would return to this part of the country after he was released from jail. If he did, and saw her, he would be sure to recognize her, for he must have had her features impressed upon his memory by the fact that she so resembled some one he had known.
If he recognized her, would he expose her? She did not doubt but that he would. The chances were that he would attempt to blackmail her; but, worst of all, he might tell Crumb where she was. That was the thing she dreaded most-seeing Wilson Crumb again, or having him discover her whereabouts; for she knew that he would leave no stone unturned and hesitate to stoop to no dishonourable act, to get her back again. She shuddered when she thought of him-a man whose love, even, was a dishonourable and dishonouring thing.
Then she turned her eyes to the face of the man lying there on the bed beside which she sat. He would never love her; but her love for him had already ennobled her.
Custer moved restlessly. Again he was giving evidence of suffering. She laid a cool palm upon his forehead, and stroked it. He opened his eyes and smiled up at her.
“It’s bully of you to sit with me,” he said; “but you ought to be in bed. You’ve had a pretty hard day, and you’re not as used to it as we are.”
“I am not tired,” she said, “and I should like to stay-if you would like to have me.”
He took her hand from his forehead and kissed it.
“Of course I like to have you here, Shannon-you’re just like a sister. It’s funny, isn’t it, that we should all feel that way about you, when we’ve only known you a few weeks? It must have been because of the way you fitted in. You belonged right from the start-you were just like us.”
She turned her head away suddenly, casting her eyes upon the floor and biting her lip to keep back the tears.
“What’s the matter?” he asked.
“I am not like you, Custer; but I have tried to be.”
“Why aren’t you like us?” he demanded.
“I-why, I-couldn’t ride a horse,” she explained lamely.
“Don’t make me laugh, please; my face is burned,” he pleaded in mock irony. “Do you think that’s all we know, or think of, or possess-our horsemanship? We have hearts, and minds, such as they are-and souls, I hope. It was of these things that I was thinking. I was thinking too, that we Penningtons demand a higher standard in women than is customary nowadays. We are a little old-fashioned, I guess. We want the blood of our horses and the minds of our women pure. Here is a case in point-I can tell you, because you don’t know the girl and never will. She was the daughter of a friend of Cousin William-our New York cousin. She was spending the winter in Pasadena, and we had her out here on Cousin William’s account. She was a pippin of a looker, and I suppose she was all right morally; but she didn’t have a clean mind. I discovered it about the first time I talked with her alone; and Eva asked me a question about something that she couldn’t have known about at all except through this girl. I didn’t know what to do. She was a girl and so I couldn’t talk about her to any one, not even my father or mother; but I didn’t want her around Eva. I wondered if I was just a narrow prig, and if, after all, there was nothing that any one need take exception to in the girl. I got to analyzing the thing, and I came to the conclusion that I would be ashamed of mother and Eva if they talked or thought along such lines. Consequently, it wasn’t right to expose Eva to that influence. That was what I decided, and I don’t just think I was right-I know I was.”
“And what did you do?” Shannon asked in a very small voice.
“I did what under any other circumstances would have been unpardonable. I went to the girl and asked her to make some excuse that would terminate her visit. It was a very hard thing to do; but I would do more than that-I would sacrifice my most cherished friendship-for Eva.”
“And the girl-did you tell her why you asked her to go?”
“I didn’t want to, but she insisted, and I told her.”
“Did she understand?”
“She did not.”
They were silent for some time.
“Do you think I did wrong?” he asked.
“No. There is mental virtue as well as physical. It is as much your duty to protect your sister’s mind as to protect her body.”
“I knew you’d think as I do about it; but let me tell you it was an awful jolt to the cherished Pennington hospitality. I hope I never have to do it again!”
“I hope you never do.”
He commenced to show increasing signs of suffering, presently, and then he asked for morphine.
“I don’t want to take it unless I have to,” he explained.
“No,” she said, “do not take it unless you have to.”
She prepared and administered it, but she felt no desire for it herself. Then Eva came to relieve her, and she bade them good night and went up to bed. She awoke about four o’clock in the morning, and immediately thought of the little black case; but she only smiled, turned over, and went back to sleep again.
IT was several weeks before Custer could ride again, and in the meantime Shannon had gone down to her own place to live. She came up every day on Baldy, who had been loaned to her until Custer should be able to select a horse for her. She insisted that she would own nothing but a Morgan, and that she wanted one of the Apache’s brothers.
“You’ll have to wait, then, until I can break one for you,” Custer told her. “There are a couple of four-year-olds that are saddle-broke and bridle-wise in a way; but I wouldn’t want you to ride either of them until they’ve had the finishing touches. I want to ride them enough to learn their faults, if they have any. In the meantime you just keep Baldy down there and use him. How’s ranching? You look as if it agreed with you. Nobody’d know you for the same girl. You look like an Indian, and how your cheeks have filled out!”
The girl smiled happily. Her cheeks were flushed, her eyes dancing. She was a picture of life and health and happiness; and Custer’s eyes were sparkling, too.
“Gee!” he exclaimed. “You’re a regular Pennington!”
“I wish I were!” the girl thought to herself. “You honour me,” was what she said aloud.
Custer laughed.
“That sounded rotten, didn’t it? But you know what I meant-it’s nice to have people whom we like like the same things we do. It doesn’t necessarily mean that we think our likes are the best in the world. I didn’t mean to be egotistical.”
Eva had just entered the patio. She walked over and perched on his knee and kissed him.
“Do you know, I think I’ll go on the stage or the screen-wouldn’t it be splishous, though?-‘Miss Eva Pennington is starring in the new and popular success based on the story by Guy Thackeray Evans, the eminent author!’ “
“Oh, Eva!” cried Shannon, genuine concern in her tone. “Surely you wouldn’t think of the screen, would you? You’re not serious?”
“Oh, yes,” said Custer. “She’s serious-serious is her middle name. Tomorrow she will want to be a painter, and day after tomorrow the world’s most celebrated harpist. Eva is nothing if not serious, while her tenacity of purpose is absolutely inspiring. Why, once, for one whole day, she wanted to do the same thing.”
Eva was laughing with her brother and Shannon.
“If she were just like every one else, you wouldn’t love your little sister any more,” she said, running her fingers through his hair. “Honestly, ever since I met Wilson Crumb, I have thought I should like to be a movie star.”
“Wilson Crumb!” exclaimed Shannon. “What do you know of Wilson Crumb?”
“Oh, I’ve met him,” said Eva airily. “Don’t you envy me?”
“What do you know about him, Shannon?” asked Custer. “Your tone indicated that you may have heard something about him that wasn’t complimentary.”
“No-I don’t know him. It’s only what I’ve heard. I don’t think you’d like him.” Shannon almost shuddered at the thought of this dear child even so much as knowing Wilson Crumb. “Oh, Eva!” she cried impulsively. “You mustn’t even think of going into pictures. I lived in Los Angeles long enough to learn that the life is oftentimes a hard one, filled with disappointment, disillusionment, and regrets-principally regrets.”
“And Grace is there now,” said Custer in a low voice, a worried look in his eyes.
“Can’t you persuade her to return?”
He shook his head.
“It wouldn’t be fair,” he said. “She is trying to succeed, and we ought to encourage her. It is probably hard enough for her at best, without all of us suggesting antagonism to her ambition by constantly urging her to abandon it, so we try to keep our letters cheerful.”
“Have you been to see her since she left? No, I know you haven’t. If I were you, I’d run down to L.A. It might mean a lot to her, Custer; it might mean more than you can guess.”
The girl spoke from a full measure of bitter experience. She realized what it might have meant to her had there been some man like this to come to her when she had needed the strong arm of a clean love to drag her from the verge of the mire. She would have gone away with such a man-gone back home, and thanked God
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