The Girl from Hollywood by Edgar Rice Burroughs (book club books TXT) 📕
"Somebody's might foxy," observed the man; "but I don't see what it's all about. The days of cattle runners and bandits are over."
"Just imagine!" exclaimed the girl. "A real mystery in our lazy, old hills!"
The man rode in silence and in thought. A herd of pure-bred Herefords, whose value would have ransomed half the crowned heads remaining in Europe, grazed in the several pastures that ran far back into those hills; and back there somewhere that trail led, but for what purpose? No good purpose, he was sure, or it had not been so cleverly hidden.
As they came to the trail which they called the Camino Corto, where it commenced at the gate leading from the old goat corral, the man jerked his thumb toward the west along it
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At dinner that night Eva was unusually quiet until the colonel, noticing it, asked if she was ill.
“There!” she cried. “You all make life miserable for me because I talk too much, and then, when I give you a rest, you ask if I am ill. What shall I do? If I talk, I pain you. If I fail to talk, I pain you; but if you must know, I am too thrilled to talk just now-I am going to be married!”
“All alone?” inquired Custer.
Guy grinned sheepishly, and was about to venture an explanation when Eva interrupted him. The others at the table were watching the two with amused smiles.
“You see, momsy,” said Eva, addressing her mother, “Guy has sold a story. He got a thousand dollars for it-a thousand!”
“Oh, not a thousand!” expostulated Guy.
“Well, it was nearly a thousand-if it had been three hundred dollars more it would have been-and so now that our future’s assured we are going to be married. I hadn’t intended to mention it until Guy had talked with popsy, but this will be very much nicer, and easier for Guy.”
They were all laughing now, including Eva and Guy. The tears were rolling down Custer’s cheeks.
“That editor was guilty of grand larceny when he offered you seven hundred berries for the story. Why the gem alone is easily worth a thousand. Adieu, Mark Twain! Farewell, Bill Nye! You’ve got ‘em all nailed to the post, Guy Thackeray!”
The colonel wiped his eyes.
“I gather,” he said,. “that you two children wish to get married. Do I surmise correctly?”
“Oh, popsy, you’re just wonderful!” exclaimed Eva.
“Yes, how did you guess it, father?” asked Custer. “Marvellous deductive faculties for an old gentleman, I’ll say!”
“That will be about all from you, Custer,” admonished the colonel.
“Any time that I let a chance like this slip!” returned young Pennington. “Do you think I have forgotten how those two imps pestered the life out of Grace and me a few short years ago? Nay, nay!”
“I don’t blame Custer a bit,” said Mrs. Evans.
“Guy and Eva certainly did make life miserable for him and Grace.”
“That part of it is all right-it is Guy’s affair and Eva’s; but did you hear him refer to me as an old gentleman?”
They all laughed.
“But you are a gentleman,” insisted Custer.
The colonel, his eyes twinkling, turned to Mrs. Evans.
“Times have changed, Mae, since we were children. Imagine speaking thus to our fathers!”
“I’m glad they have changed, Custer. It’s terrible to see children afraid of their parents. It has driven so many of them away from home.”
“No danger of that here,” said the colonel.
“It is more likely to be the other way around,” suggested Mrs. Pennington. “In the future we may hear of parents leaving home because of the exacting tyranny of their children.”
“My children shall be brought up properly,” announced Eva, “with proper respect for their elders.”
“Guided by the shining example of their mother,” said Custer.
“And their Uncle Cutie,” she retorted.
“Come now,” interrupted the colonel, “let’s hear something of your plans. When are you going to be married?”
“Yes,” offered Custer. “Now that the seven hundred dollars has assured their future, there is no reason why they shouldn’t be married at once and take a suite at the Ambassador. I understand they’re as low as thirty-five hundred a month.”
“Aw, I have more than the seven hundred,” said Guy. “I’ve been saving up for a long time. We’ll have plenty to start with.”
Shannon noticed that he flushed just a little as he made the statement, and she alone knew why he flushed. It was too bad that Custer’s little sister should start her married life on money of that sort!
Shannon felt that at heart Guy was a good boy-that he must have been led into this traffic without any adequate realization of its criminality. Her own misfortune had made her generously ready to seek excuses for wrongdoing in others; but she dreaded to think what it was going to mean to Eva and the other Penningtons if ever the truth became known. From her knowledge of the sort of men with whom Guy was involved, she was inclined to believe that the menace of exposure or blackmail would hang over him for many years, even if the former did not materialize in the near future; for authorities, they would immediately involve him, and would try to put the full burden of responsibility upon his shoulders.
“I don’t want the financial end of matrimony to worry either of you,” the colonel was saying. “Guy has chosen a profession in which it may require years of effort to produce substantial returns. All I shall ask of my daughter’s husband is that he shall honestly apply himself to his work. If you do your best, Guy, you will succeed, and in the meantime I’ll take care of the finances.”
ON the following Monday a pock-marked Mexican appeared at the county jail in Los Angeles, during visitor’s hours, and asked to see Slick Allen. The two stood in a corner and conversed in whispers. Allen’s face wore an ugly scowl when his visitor told him of young Pennington’s interference with their plans.
“It’s getting too hot for us around there,” said Allen. “We got to move. How much junk you got left?”
“About sixty cases of booze. We got rid of nearly three hundred cases on the cast side, without sending ‘em through Evans. There isn’t much of the other junk left-a couple of pounds altogether, at the outside.”
“We got to lose the last of the booze,” said Allen; “but we’ll get our money’s worth out of it. Now you listen, and listen careful, Bartolo.”
He proceeded very carefully and explicitly to explain the details of a plan which brought a grin of sinister amusement to the face of the Mexican. It was not an entirely new plan, but rather an elaboration and improvement of one that Allen had conceived some time before in the event of a contingency similar to that which had now arisen.
“And what about the girl?” asked Bartolo. “She should pay well to keep the Pennington’s from knowing.”
“Leave her to me,” replied Allen. “I shall not be in jail forever.”
During the ensuing days of that late September week, when Shannon and Custer rode together, there was a certain constraint in their relations that was new and depressing. The girl was apprehensive of the outcome of his adventure on the rapidly approaching Friday, while he could not rid himself of the haunting memory of her solitary and clandestine ride over the mysterious trail that led into the mountains.
At last Friday came. Neither had reverted, since the previous Saturday, to the subject that was uppermost in the minds of each; but now Shannon could not refrain from seeking once more to defer Custer from his project. She had not been able to forget the sinister smile of the Mexican, or to rid her mind of an intuitive conviction that the man’s final statement had concealed a hidden threat. They were parting at the fork of the road-she had hesitated until the last moment.
“You still intend to try to catch those men tonight?” she asked.
“Yes-why?”
“I had hoped you would give it up. I am afraid something may happen. I-oh, please don’t go, Custer!” She wished that she might add: “For my sake.”
He laughed shortly. “I guess there won’t be any trouble. If there is, I can take care of myself.”
She saw that it was useless to insist further.
“Let me know if everything is all right,” she asked. “Light the light in the big cupola on the house when you get back-I can see it from my bedroom window-and then I shall know that nothing has happened. I shall be watching for it.”
“All right,” Custer promised, and they parted.
When he reached the house, the ranch bookkeeper came to tell him that the Los Angeles operator had been trying to get him all afternoon.
“Somebody in L. A. wants to talk to you on important business,” said the bookkeeper. “You’re to call back the minute you get here.” Five minutes later he had his connection. An unfamiliar voice asked if he were the younger Mr. Pennington.
“I am,” he replied.
“Some one cut your fence last Friday. You like to know who he is?”
“What about it? Who are you?”
“Never mind who I am. I was with them. They double-crossed me. You want to catch ‘em?”
“I want to know who they are, and why they cut my fence, and what the devil they’re up to back there in the hills.”
“You listen to me. You sabe Jackknife Canyon?”
“Yes.”
“Tonight they bring down the load just before dark. They do that every Friday, and hide the burros until very late. Then they come down into the valley while every one is asleep. Tonight they hide ‘em in Jackknife. They tie ‘em there an’ go away. About ten o’clock they come back. You be there nine o’clock, and you catch ‘em when they come back. Sabe?
“How many of ‘em are there?”
“Only two. You don’t have to be afraid-they don’t pack no guns. You take gun an’ you catch ‘em all alone.”
“But how do I know that. you’re not stringing me?”
“You listen. They double-cross me. I get even. You no want to catch ‘em, I no care-that’s all. Goodbye!”
Custer turned away from the phone, running his fingers through his hair in a characteristic gesture signifying perplexity. What should he do? The message sounded rather fishy, he thought; but it would do no harm to have a look into Jackknife Canyon around nine o’clock. If he was being tricked, the worst he could fear was that they had taken this method of luring him to Jackknife while they brought the loaded burros down from the hills by some other route. If they had done that, it was very clever of them; but he would not be fooled a second time.
Custer Pennington didn’t care to be laughed at, and so, if he was going to be hoaxed that night, he had no intention of having a witness to his idiocy. For that reason he did not take Jake with him, but rode alone up Sycamore when all the inmates of the castle on the hill thought him in bed and asleep.
When he turned into Jackknife, he reined the Apache in and sat for a moment listening. From farther up the canyon, out of sight, there came the shadow of a sound. That would be the tethered burros, he thought, if the whole thing was not a trick; but he was certain that he heard the sound of something moving there.
He rode on again, but he took the precaution of loosening his gun in its holster. There was, of course, the bare possibility of a sinister motive behind the message he had received. As he thought of it now, it occurred to him that his informant was perhaps a trifle too insistent in assuring him that it was safe to come up here alone. Well, the man had put it over cleverly, if that had been his intent.
Now Custer saw a dark mass beneath a sycamore. He rode directly toward it, and in another moment he saw that it represented half a dozen laden burros tethered to the tree. He moved the Apache close in to examine them. There was no sign of men about.
He examined the packs, leaning over and feeling one. What they contained he could
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