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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“I do not know.”
“I’ll get some one. I have given her something to quiet her.”
The doctor stepped to the telephone and gave a number. Evans entered the room where his sister lay. She was moving about restlessly and moaning, though it was evident that she was still unconscious.
Changed! Guy wondered that he had known her at all, now that he was closer to her. Her face was pinched and drawn. Her beauty was gone-every vestige of it. She looked old and tired and haggard, and there were terrible lines upon her face that stilled her brother’s heart and brought the tears to his eyes.
He heard the doctor summoning an assistant and directing him to bring ether. Then he heard him go out of the house by the front door-to get his instruments, doubtless. The brother knelt by the girl’s bed.
“Grace!” he whispered, and threw an arm about her.
Her lids fluttered, and she opened her eyes.
“Guy!”
She recognized him-she was conscious.
“Who did this?” he demanded. “What is his name?”
She shook her head.
“What is the use?” she asked. “It is done.”
“Tell me!”
“You would kill him-and be punished. It would only make it worse-for-you-and mother. Let it die with me!”
“You are not going to die. Tell me, who is he? Do you love him?”
“I hate him!”
“How were you injured?”
“He threw me-against-a table.”
Her voice was growing weaker. Choking back tears of grief and anger, the young man rose and stood beside her.
“Grace, I command you to tell me!”
Her eyes moved to something beyond the foot of the bed, back to his, and back again to whatever she had been looking at, as if she sought to direct his attention to something in that part of the room. He followed the direction of her gaze. There was a dressing table there, and on it a photograph of a man in a silver frame. Guy stepped to the table and picked up the picture.
“This is he?” His eyes demanded an answer. Her lips moved soundlessly, and weakly she nodded an affirmative. “What is his name?”
She was too weak to answer him. She gasped, and her breath came flutteringly. The brother threw himself upon his knees beside the bed, and took her in his arms. His tears mingled with his kisses on her cheek. The doctor came then and drew him away.
“She is dead!” said the boy, turning away and covering his face with his hands.
“No,” said the doctor, after a brief examination. “She is not dead. Get into the kitchen, and get some water to boiling. I’ll be getting things ready in here. Another doctor will be here in a few minutes.”
A moment later the doctor came in. He had removed his coat and vest and rolled up his sleeves. He placed his instruments in the pan of water on the stove, and then he went to the sink and washed his hands. While he scrubbed, he talked. He was an efficient-looking, businesslike person, and he inspired Guy with confidence and hope.
“She has a fighting chance,” he said. “I’ve seen worse cases pull through. She’s had a bad time, though. She must have been lying here for pretty close to twenty-four hours without any attention. I found her fully dressed on her bed-fully dressed except for what clothes she’s torn off in pain. If some one had called a doctor yesterday at this time, it might have been all right. It may be all right even now. We’ll do the best we can.”
The bell rang.
“That’s the doctor. Let him in, please.”
Guy went to the door and admitted the second physician, who removed his coat and vest and went directly to the kitchen. The first doctor was entering the room where Grace lay. He turned and spoke to his colleague, greeting him; then he disappeared within the adjoining room. The second doctor busied himself about the sink sterilizing his hands. Guy lighted another burner and put on another vessel with water in it.
A moment later the first doctor returned to the kitchen.
“It will not be necessary to operate, doctor,” he said. “We were too late!”
His tone and manner were still very businesslike and efficient, but there was an expression of compassion in his eyes as he crossed the room and put his arm about Guy’s shoulders.
“Come into the other room, my boy. I want to talk to you,” he said.
Guy, dry-eyed, and walking as one in a trance, accompanied him to the little living room.
“You have had a hard blow,” said the doctor. “What I am going to tell you may make it harder; but if she had been my sister I should have wanted to know about it. She is better off. The chances are that she didn’t want to live. She certainly made no fight for life-not since I was called.”
“Why should she want to die?” Guy asked dully. “We would have forgiven her. No one would have ever known about it but me.”
“There was something else-she was a drug addict. That was probably the reason why she didn’t want to live. The morphine I had to give her to quiet her would have killed three ordinary men.”
And so Guy Evans came to know the terrible fate that had robbed his sister of her dreams, of her ambition, and finally of her life. He placed the full responsibility upon the man whose picture had stood in its silver frame upon the girl’s dressing table. As he knelt beside the dead girl, he swore to search until he had learned the identity of that man, and found him, and forced from him the only expiation that could satisfy the honour of a brother.
THE death of Grace had, of course, its naturally depressing effect upon the circle of relatives and friends at Ganado; but her absence of more than a year, the infrequency of her letters, and the fact that they had already come to feel that she was lost to them, mitigated to some degree the keenness of their grief and lessened its outward manifestations. It was Guy who suffered most, for hugged to his breast was the gnawing secret of the truth of his sister’s life and death. He had told them that Grace had died of pneumonia, and they had not gone behind his assertion to search the records for the truth.
He did not, however, give up his search. He went often to Hollywood, where he haunted public places and the entrance to studios, in the hope that some day he would find the man he sought; but as the passing months brought no success, and the duties of his ranch and his literary work demanded more and more of his time, he was gradually compelled to push the furtherance of his vengeance into the background, though without any lessening of his determination to compass it eventually.
To Custer, the direct effect of Grace’s death was to revive the habit of drinking more than was good for him—a habit from which he had drifted away during the past year. That it had ever been a habit he would, of course, have been the last to admit. He was one of those men who could drink, or leave it alone. The world is full of them, and so are the cemeteries.
Shannon recognized the change in Custer. She attributed it to his grief, and to his increased drinking, which she had sensed almost immediately, as love does sense the slightest change in its object, however little apparent to another. She did not realize that he was purposely avoiding her. She was more than ever with Eva now, for Guy, having settled down to the serious occupations of man’s estate, no longer had so much leisure to devote to play.
She still occasionally rode at night, for the daytime rides with Custer were less frequent now. Much of his time was occupied closer in around the ranch, with the conditioning of the show herds for the coming autumn—an activity which gave him a plausible excuse for foregoing his rides with Shannon.
May, June, and July had come and gone—it was August again. Guy’s futile visits to Los Angeles were now infrequent. The life of Ganado had again assumed the cheerfulness of the past. The youth of the foothills and valley, reinforced by week-end visitors from the city, filled the old house with laughter and happiness. Shannon was always of these parties, for they would not let her remain away.
It was upon the occasion of one of them, early in August, that Eva announced the date of her wedding to Guy.
“The 2nd of September,” she told them. “It comes on a Saturday. We’re going to motor to—.”
“Hold on!” cautioned Guy. “That’s a secret!”
“And when we come back we’re going to start building on Hill Thirteen.”
“That’s a cow pasture,”’ said Custer.
“Well, it won’t be one any more. You must find another cow pasture.”
“Certainly, little one,” replied her brother. “We’ll bring the cows up here in the ballroom. With five thousand acres to pick from, you can’t find a bungalow site anywhere except in the best dairy cow pasture on Ganado!”
“Put on a fox trot, some one,” cried Guy. “Dance with your sister, Cus, and you’ll let her build bungalows all over Ganado. No one can refuse her anything when they dance with her.”
It was later in the evening, after a dance, that Shannon and Custer walked out on the driveway along the north side of the ballroom, and stood looking out over the moon—enchanted valley—a vista of loveliness glimpsed between masses of feathery foliage in an opening through the trees on the hillside just below them. They looked out across the acacias and cedars of lower hill toward the lights of a little village twinkling between two dome-like hills at the upper end of the valley. It was an unusually warm evening, almost too warm to dance.
“I think we’d get a little of the ocean breeze,” said Custer, “if we were on the other side of the hill. Let’s walk over to the water gardens. There is usually a breeze there, but the building cuts us off from it here.”
Side by side, in silence, they walked around the front of the building and along the south drive to the steps leading down through the water gardens to the stables. The steps were narrow and Custer went ahead—which is always the custom of men in countries where there are rattlesnakes.
As Shannon stepped from the cement steps to the gravel walk above the first pool, her foot came down upon a round stone, turning her ankle and throwing her against Custer. For support she grasped his arm. Upon such insignificant trifles may the fate of lives depend. It might have been a lizard, a toad, a mouse, or even a rattlesnake that precipitated the moment which, for countless aeons, creation had been preparing; but it was none of these. It was just a little round pebble—and it threw Shannon Burke against Custer Pennington, causing her to seize his arm. He felt the contact of those fingers, and the warmth of her body, and her cheek near his shoulder. He threw an arm about her to support her. Almost instantly she had regained her footing. Laughingly she drew away. “I stepped on a stone,” she said in explanation; “but I didn’t hurt my ankle.”
But still he kept his arm about her. At first Shannon did not understand, and, supposing that he still thought her unable to stand alone, she again explained that she was unhurt.
He stood looking down into her face, which was turned up
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