The Quirt | Page 4

big fish swam lazily. If one small fish
now and then disappeared with mysterious abruptness, the other small
fish would perhaps scurry here and there for a time, but few would
leave the pool for the safe shallows beyond.
This is a tale of the little fishes.
CHAPTER TWO
THE ENCHANTMENT OF LONG DISTANCE
Lorraine Hunter always maintained that she was a Western girl. If she
reached the point of furnishing details she would tell you that she had
ridden horses from the time that she could walk, and that her father was
a cattle-king of Idaho, whose cattle fed upon a thousand hills. When
she was twelve she told her playmates exciting tales about rattlesnakes.
When she was fifteen she sat breathless in the movies and watched
picturesque horsemen careering up and down and around the thousand
hills, and believed in her heart that half the Western pictures were taken
on or near her father's ranch. She seemed to remember certain
landmarks, and would point them out to her companions and whisper a
desultory lecture on the cattle industry as illustrated by the picture. She
was much inclined to criticism of the costuming and the acting.

At eighteen she knew definitely that she hated the very name Casa
Grande. She hated the narrow, half-lighted hallway with its "tree"
where no one ever hung a hat, and the seat beneath where no one ever
sat down. She hated the row of key-and-mail boxes on the wall, with
the bell buttons above each apartment number. She hated the jangling
of the hall telephone, the scurrying to answer, the prodding of
whichever bell button would summon the tenant asked for by the caller.
She hated the meek little Filipino boy who swept that ugly hall every
morning. She hated the scrubby palms in front. She hated the pillars
where the paint was peeling badly. She hated the conflicting odors that
seeped into the atmosphere at certain hours of the day. She hated the
three old maids on the third floor and the frowsy woman on the first,
who sat on the front steps in her soiled breakfast cap and bungalow
apron. She hated the nervous tenant who occupied the apartment just
over her mother's three-room-and-bath, and pounded with a broom
handle on the floor when Lorraine practised overtime on chromatic
scales.
At eighteen Lorraine managed somehow to obtain work in a Western
picture, and being unusually pretty she so far distinguished herself that
she was given a small part in the next production. Her glorious duty it
was to ride madly through the little cow-town "set" to the post-office
where the sheriff's posse lounged conspicuously, and there pull her
horse to an abrupt stand and point excitedly to the distant hills. Also
she danced quite close to the camera in the "Typical Cowboy Dance"
which was a feature of this particular production.
Lorraine thereby earned enough money to buy her fall suit and coat and
cheap furs, and learned to ride a horse at a gallop and to dance what
passed in pictures as a "square dance."
At nineteen years of age Lorraine Hunter, daughter of old Brit Hunter
of the TJ up-and-down, became a real "range-bred girl" with a real
Stetson hat of her own, a green corduroy riding skirt, gray flannel shirt,
brilliant neckerchief, boots and spurs. A third picture gave her further
practice in riding a real horse,--albeit an extremely docile animal called
Mouse with good reason. She became known on the lot as a real

cattle-king's daughter, though she did not know the name of her father's
brand and in all her life had seen no herd larger than the thirty head of
tame cattle which were chased past the camera again and again to make
them look like ten thousand, and which were so thoroughly "camera
broke" that they stopped when they were out of the scene, turned and
were ready to repeat the performance ad lib.
Had she lived her life on the Quirt ranch she would have known a great
deal more about horseback riding and cattle and range dances. She
would have known a great deal less about the romance of the West,
however, and she would probably never have seen a sheriff's posse
riding twenty strong and bunched like bird-shot when it leaves the
muzzle of the gun. Indeed, I am very sure she would not. Killings such
as her father heard of with his lips drawn tight and the cords standing
out on the sides of his skinny neck she would have considered the grim
tragedies they were, without once thinking of the "picture value" of the
crime.
As it was, her West was filled with men who died suddenly in gobs of
red paint and girls who rode loose-haired and panting with hand