oney 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 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 "Terro