The Girl from Hollywood by Edgar Rice Burroughs (lightest ebook reader .txt) đź“–
- Author: Edgar Rice Burroughs
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“That would be foolish, dear,” he said. “No matter what one of us does, such an act would make it all the worse-for those who were left.”
“I can’t help it,” she said. “It isn’t just because I have had the honour of the Penningtons preached to me all my life. It’s because it’s in me-the Pennington honour. It’s a part of me, just as it’s a part of you, and mother, and father. It’s a part of the price we have to pay for being Penningtons. I have always been proud of it, Custer, even if I am only a silly girl.”
“I’m proud of it, too, and I haven’t jeopardized it; but even if I had, you mustn’t think about killing yourself on my account, or any one’s else.”
“Well, I know you’re not guilty, so I don’t have to.”
“Good! Let’s talk about something pleasant.”
“Why didn’t you see Grace while you were in Los Angeles?”
“I tried to. I called up her boarding place from the lawyer’s office. I understood the woman who answered the phone to say that she would call her, but she came back in a couple of minutes and said that Grace was out on location.”
“Did you leave your name?”
“I told the woman who I was when she answered the phone.”
“I’m sorry you didn’t see her,” said Mrs. Pennington. “I often think that Mrs. Evans, or Guy, should run down to Los Angeles occasionally and see Grace.”
“That’s what Shannon says,” said Custer. “I’ll try to see her next week, before I come home.”
“Shannon was up nearly all afternoon waiting to hear if we received any word from you. When you telephoned that you had been held to the Federal grand jury, she would scarcely believe it. She said there must be some mistake.”
“Did she say anything else?”
“She asked whether Guy got there before you were held and I told her that you said Guy visited you in the jail. She seems so worried about the affair-just as if she were one of the family. She is such a dear girl! I think I grow to love her more and more every day.”
“Yes,” said Custer, non-committally.
“She asked me one rather peculiar question,” Eva went on.
“What was that?”
“She asked if I was sure that it was you who had been held to the grand jury.”
“That was odd, wasn’t it?”
“She’s so sure of your innocence just as sure as we are,” said Eva.
“Well, that’s very nice of her,” remarked Custer.
THE next morning he saw Shannon, who came to ride with them, the Penningtons, as had been her custom. She looked tired, as if she had spent a sleepless night. She had-she had spent two sleepless nights, and she had had to fight the old fight all over again. It had been very hard, even though she had won, for it had shown her that the battle was not over. She had thought that she had conquered the craving; but that had been when she had had no troubles or unhappiness to worry her mind and nerves. The last two days had been days of suffering for her, and the two sleepless nights had induced a nervous condition that begged for the quieting influence of the little white powder.
Custer noticed immediately that something was amiss. The roses were gone from her cheeks, leaving a suggestion of the old pallor; and though she smiled and greeted him happily, he thought that he detected an expression of wistfulness and pain in her face when she was not conscious that others were observing her.
Presently he turned toward her.
“I am going to ride over to the east pasture after breakfast,” he said, and waited.
“Is that an invitation?”
He smiled and nodded.
“But not if it isn’t perfectly convenient,” he added.
“I’d love to come with you. You know I always do.”
“Fine! And you’ll breakfast with us?”
“Not to-day. I have a couple of letters to write that I want to get off right away; but I’ll be up between eight thirty and nine. Is that too late?”
“I’ll ride down after breakfast and wait for you-if I won’t be in the way.”
“I’ve been thinking.” said Eva. “I’ve been thinking how lonely it will be when you have to go away to jail.”
“Why, they can’t send me to jail-I haven’t done anything,” he tried to reassure her.
“Come, dear, don’t worry about it. The chances are that they’ll free me. Even if they don’t, you mustn’t feel quite so bitterly against the men who are responsible. There may be reasons that you know nothing of that would keep them silent. Let’s not talk about it. All we can do now is to wait and see what the grand jury is going to do. In the meantime I don’t intend to worry.”
Their ride that morning was over a loved and familiar trail that led across El Camino Corto over low hills into Horse Camp Canyon, and up Horse Camp to Coyote Springs; then over El Camino Largo to Sycamore Canyon and down beneath the old, old sycamores to the ranch. She felt that she knew each bush and tree and boulder, and they held for her the quiet restfulness of the familiar faces of old friends. She should miss them, but she would carry them in her memory forever.
When they came to the fork in the road, she would not let Custer ride home with her.
“At eight thirty, then,” he called her, as she urged Baldy into a canter and left them with a gay wave of the hand that gave no token of the heavy sorrow in her heart.
After breakfast, as she was returning to her bungalow to write her letters, she saw a Mexican boy on a bicycle turn in at her gate. They met in front of the bungalow.
“Are you Miss Burke?” he asked. “Bartolo says for you to come to his camp in the mountains this morning, sure,” he went on, having received an affirmative reply.
The girl thought for a moment. Possibly here was a way out of her dilemma. If she could force Bartolo by threats of exposure, he might discover a way to clear Custer Pennington without incriminating himself. She turned to the boy.
“Tell him I will come.”
“I do not see him again. He is up in his camp now. He told me this yesterday. He also told me to tell you that he would be watching for you, and if you did not come alone you would not find him.”
“Very well,” she said, and turned into the bungalow.
She wrote her letters, but she was not thinking about them. Then she took them over to Powers to take to the city for her. After that she went to the telephone and called the Rancho del Ganado, asking for Custer when she got the connection.
“I’m terribly disappointed,” she said, when he came to the telephone. “I find I simply can’t ride this morning; but if you’ll put it off until afternoon-”
“Why, certainly! Come up to lunch and we’ll ride afterward,” he told her.
“You won’t go, then, until afternoon?” she asked.
“I’ll ride over to the east pasture this morning, and we’ll just take a ride any old place that you want to go this afternoon.”
“All right,” she replied.
She had hoped that he would not ride that morning. There was a chance that he might see her, even though the east pasture was miles from the trail she would ride, for there were high places on both trails, where a horseman would be visible for several miles.
“This noon at lunch, then,” he said.
HALF an hour later Custer Pennington swung into the saddle and headed the Apache up Sycamore Canyon.
The trail to the east pasture led through Jackknife. As he passed the spot where he had been arrested on the previous Friday night, the man made a wry face-more at the recollection of the ease with which he had been duped than because of the fact of his arrest.
Below and to Custer’s right the ranch buildings lay dotted about in the dust like children’s toys upon a grey rug. Beyond was the castle on the hill, shining in the sun, and farther still the soft-carpeted valley, in greys and browns and greens. Then the young man’s glance wandered to the left and out over the basin meadow, and instantly the joy died out of his heart and the happiness from his eyes. Straight along the mysterious trail loped a horse and rider toward the mountains, and even at that distance he recognized them as Baldy and Shannon.
This was the end. He was through with her forever. What did he know about her? What did any of them know about her?
She was doubtless a hireling of the gang that had stolen the whisky and disposed of it through Guy. They had sent her here to spy on Guy and to watch the Penningtons. It was she who had set the trap in which he had been caught, not to save Guy, but to throw the suspicion of guilt upon Custer.
With the realization, the senseless fury of his anger left him. He turned the Apache away, and headed him again toward the east pasture; but deep within his heart was a cold anger that was quite as terrible, though in a different way.
Shannon Burke rode up the trail toward the camp of the smugglers, all unconscious that there looked down upon her from a high ridge behind eyes filled with hate and loathing-the eyes of the man she loved.
As she reached the foot of the trail, she saw Bartolo standing beneath a great oak, awaiting her. His pony stood with trailing reins beneath the tree. A rifle butt protruded from a boot on the right of the saddle. He came forward as she guided Baldy toward the tree.
“Buenos dias, senorita,” he greeted her, twisting his pock-marked face into the semblance of a smile.
“What do you want of me?” Shannon demanded.
“I need money,” he said. “You get money from Evans. He got all the money from the hootch we take down two weeks ago. We never get no chance to get it from him.”
“I’ll get you nothing!”
“You get money now-and whenever I want it,” said the Mexican, “or I tell about Crumb. You Crumb’s woman. I tell how you peddle dope. I know! You do what I tell you, or you go to the pen. Sabe?”
“Now listen to me,” said the girl. “I didn’t come up here to take orders from you. I came to give you orders.”
“What?” exclaimed the Mexican, and then he laughed aloud. “You give me orders? That is damn funny!”
“Yes, it is funny. You will enjoy it immensely when I tell you what you are to do.”
“Hurry, then; I have no time to waste.” He was still laughing.
“You are going to find some way to clear Mr. Pennington of the charge against him. I don’t care what the way is, so long as it does not incriminate any other innocent person. If you can do it without getting yourself in trouble, well and good. I do not care; but you must see that there is evidence before the grand jury next Wednesday that will prove Mr. Pennington’s innocence.”
“Is that all?” inquired Bartolo, grinning broadly.
“That is all.”
“And if I don’t it-eh?”
“Then I shall go before the grand jury and tell them about you, and Allen-about the opium and the morphine and the cocaine-how you smuggled the stolen booze from the ship off the coast up into the mountains.”
“You think
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