The Girl from Hollywood. Edgar Rice Burroughs
“There’s a new trail, Grace, and it don’t belong there. Let’s go and take a look at it.”
They rode ahead until they reached the trail at a point where it crossed the bottom of the basin and started up the side they had been ascending. The man leaned above his horse’s shoulder and examined the trampled turf.
“Horses,” he said. “I thought so, and it’s been used a lot this winter. You can see even now where the animals slipped and floundered after the heavy rains.”
“But you don’t run horses in this pasture, do you?” asked the girl.
“No; and we haven’t run anything in it since last summer. This is the only bunch in it, and they were just turned in about a week ago. Anyway, the horses that made this trail were mostly shod. Now what in the world is anybody going up there for?” His eyes wandered to the heavy brush into which the trail disappeared upon the opposite side of the basin. “I’ll have to follow that up to-morrow — it’s too late to do it today.”
“We can follow it the other way toward the ranch,” she suggested.
They found the trail wound up the hillside and crossed the hogback in heavy brush, which, in many places, had been cut away to allow the easier passage of a horseman.
“Do you see,” asked Custer as they drew rein at the summit of the ridge, “that although the trail crosses here in plain sight of the ranch house, the brush would absolutely conceal a horseman from the view of any one at the house? It must run right down into Jackknife Cañon. Funny none of us have noticed it, for there’s scarcely a week that that trail isn’t ridden by some of us!”
As they descended into the cañon, they discovered why that end of the new trail had not been noticed. It ran deep and well marked through the heavy brush of a gully to a place where the brush commenced to thin, and, there, it branched into a dozen dim trails that joined and blended with the old, well-worn cattle paths of the hillside.
“Somebody’s mighty 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.
“They must come and go this way,” he said.
“Perhaps they’re the ones mother and I have heard passing at night,” suggested the girl. “If they are, they come right through your property below the house — not this way.”
He opened the gate from the saddle and they passed through, crossing the barranco and stopping for a moment to look at the pigs and talk with the herdsman. Then, they rode on toward the ranch house a half mile farther down the widening cañon. It stood upon the summit of a low hill, the declining sun transforming its plastered walls, its cupolas, the sturdy arches of its arcades into the semblance of a Moorish castle.
At the foot of the hill, they dismounted at the saddle-horse stable, tied their horses, and ascended the long flight of rough concrete steps toward the house. As they rounded the wild sumac bush at the summit, they were espied by those sitting in the patio around three sides of which the house was built.
“Oh, here they are now!” exclaimed Mrs. Pennington. “We were so afraid that Grace would ride right on home, Custer. We had just persuaded Mrs. Evans to stay for dinner. Guy is coming, too.”
“Mother, you here, too?” cried the girl. “How nice and cool it is in here! It would save a lot of trouble if we brought our things, Mother.”
“We are hoping that at least one of you will, very soon,” said Colonel Pennington, who had risen and now put an arm affectionately about the girl’s shoulders.
“That’s what I’ve been telling her again this afternoon,” said Custer; “but instead she wants to —”
The girl turned toward him with a little frown and shake of her head.
“You’d better run down and tell Allen that we won’t use the horses until after dinner,” she said.
He grimaced good-naturedly and turned away.
“I’ll have him take Senator home,” he said. “I can drive you and your mother down in the car when you leave.”
As he descended the steps that wound among the umbrella trees taking on their new foliage, he saw Allen examining the Apache’s shoes. As he neared them, the horse pulled away from the man, his suddenly lowered hoof striking Allen’s instep. With an oath, the fellow stepped back and swung a vicious kick to the animal’s belly. Almost simultaneously, a hand fell heavily upon his shoulder. He was jerked roughly back, whirled about, and sent spinning a dozen feet away where he stumbled and fell. As he scrambled to his feet, white with rage, he saw the younger Pennington before him.
“Go to the office and get your time,” ordered Pennington.
“I’ll get you first, you son of a —”
A hard fist connecting suddenly with his chin put a painful period to his sentence before it was completed and stopped his mad rush.
“I’d be more careful of my conversation, Allen, if I were you,” said Pennington quietly. “Just because you’ve been drinking is no excuse for that. Now go on up to the office as I told you to.”
He had caught the odor of whisky as he jerked the man past him.
“You goin’ to can me for drinkin’ — you!” demanded Allen.
“You know what I’m canning you for. You know that’s the one thing that don’t go on Ganado. You ought to get what you gave the Apache, and you’d better beat it before I lose my temper and give it to you!”
The man rose slowly to his feet. In his mind, he was revolving his chances of successfully renewing his attack; but, presently, his judgment got the better of his desire and his rage. He moved off slowly up the hill toward the house. A few yards, and he turned.
“I ain’t a goin’ to ferget this, you — you —”
“Be careful!” Pennington admonished.
“Nor you ain’t goin’ to ferget it, neither, you fox-trottin’ dude!”
Allen turned again to the ascent of the steps. Pennington walked to the Apache and stroked his muzzle.
“Old boy,” he crooned, “there don’t anybody kick you and get away with it, does there?”
Halfway up, Allen stopped and turned again.
“You think you’re the whole cheese, you Penningtons, don’t you?” he called back. “With all your money an’ your fine friends! Fine friends, yah! I can put one of ‘em where he belongs any time I want — the darn bootlegger! That’s what he is. You wait — you’ll see!”
“A-ah, beat it!” sighed Pennington wearily.
Mounting the Apache, he led Grace’s horse along the foot of the hill toward the smaller ranch house of their neighbor some half mile away. Humming a little tune, he unsaddled Senator, turned him into his corral, saw that there was water in his trough, and emptied a measure of oats into his manger — for the horse had cooled off since the afternoon ride. As neither of the Evans ranch hands appeared, he found a piece of rag and wiped off the Senator’s bit, turned the saddle blankets wet side up to dry, and then, leaving the stable, crossed the yard to mount the Apache.
A young man in riding