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 held
over the heart, hurrying for doctors, and cowboys and parsons and such.
She had seen many a man whip pistol from holster and dare a mob with
lips drawn back in a wolfish grin over his white, even teeth, and
kidnappings were the inevitable accompaniment of youth and beauty.
Lorraine learned rapidly. In three years she thrilled to more
blood-curdling adventure than all the Bad Men in all the West could
have furnished had they lived to be old and worked hard at being bad
all their lives. For in that third year she worked her way
enthusiastically through a sixteen-episode movie serial called "The
Terror of the Range." She was past mistress of romance by that time.
She knew her West.
It was just after the "Terror of the Range" was finished that a great
revulsion in the management of this particular company stopped
production with a stunning completeness that left actors and actresses
feeling very much as if the studio roof had fallen upon them.
Lorraine's West vanished. The little cow-town "set" was being torn
down to make room for something else quite different. The cowboys
appeared in tailored suits and drifted away. Lorraine went home to the
Casa Grande, hating it more than ever she had hated it in her life.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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