You've just gotta love The Girl From Montana?
Right. Our HELLO! hero and our shoot-a-baddie-to-the-floor heroine just ended the previous chapter right where Hill got bored and wandered off from her typewriter (I hope to god she didn't have to write all these things out longhand) so we shall have to plunge right into HELLO! responding to her questions about who is and what he is doing!
"I'm not anybody in particular," he answered, "and I'm not just sure where I belong. I live in Pennsylvania, but I didn't seem to belong there exactly, at least not just now, and so I came out here to see if I belonged anywhere else. I concluded yesterday that I didn't. At least, not until I came in sight of you. But I suspect I am running away myself. In fact, that is just what I am doing, running away from a woman!"
He looked at her with his honest hazel eyes, and she liked him. She felt he was telling her the truth, but it seemed to be a truth he was just finding out for himself as he talked.
I can well believe the guy wrapped head to toe in brown who wanders through the wilderness yelling "HELLO!" for twelve hours straight is only just now figuring out what he is doing.
"Why do you run away from a woman? How could a woman hurt you? Can she shoot?"
And you'd think she'd have more respect for a woman hurting a man, considering she's wanted to inter two men in three chapters.
"She uses other weapons," he said. "Her words are darts, and her looks are swords."
"What a queer woman! Does she ride well?"
"Yes, in an automobile!"
So the Girl From Montana has no idea what those are, and they discuss cars and stuff, until:
"My horse can go very fast. You do not know how fast. If you see her coming, I will change horses with you. You must ride to the nearest bench and over, and then turn backward on your tracks. She will never find you that way. And I am not afraid of a woman."
She kills them stone dead with spit. Ew. Anyway, this idea amuses him, and he explains that she left him. She places her brown hand on his horse's mane:
"I am sorry," she said simply.
"Thank you," he answered. "I'm sure I don't know why I told you. I never told any one before."
Can this man not have five seconds in which he knows what he is doing or why he is doing it?
So there is this random bit in which they discuss prayer, and end up praying together, which for GLH probably means they are engaged. They talk about god, which is not a topic either of them seem to know much about (of course.) So were you wondering what this twit was doing out here?
"Did you ride all night?" asked the girl.
"Pretty much," answered the man. "I stopped once to rest a few minutes; but a sound in the distance stirred me up again, and I was afraid to lose my chance of catching you, lest I should be hopelessly lost. You see, I went out with a party hunting, and I sulked behind. They went off up a steep climb, and I said I'd wander around below till they got back, or perhaps ride back to camp; but, when I tried to find the camp, it wasn't where I had left it."
He doesn't know where he is, he doesn't know what he's doing, he doesn't know how to shoot, he sulks on long trail rides, he can't keep up, and he can't find his way back. Only that last one is excusable considering that it's possible to get from sand stretches to cactus desert to forest to prairie in a night's ride, with two streams a day apart from each other.
"Well, you've got to lie down and sleep awhile," said the girl decidedly. "You can't keep going like that. It'll kill you. You lie down, and I'll watch, and get dinner. I'm going to cook that bird."
I assure you GLH was not much of a proto-feminist, but there's definitely something counter-cultural going on here. Also, finally, they take care of that bird. I can't tell you how much it's been bothering me to think of it ripening on her saddle all day.
When he came to himself, there was a curious blending of dream and reality. He thought his lady was coming to him across the rough plains in an automobile, with gray wings like those of the bird the girl had shot, and his prayer as he knelt in the sand was drawing her, while overhead the air was full of a wild, sweet music from strange birds that mocked and called and trilled. But, when the automobile reached him and stopped, the lady withered into a little, old, dried-up creature of ashes; and the girl of the plains was sitting in her place radiant and beautiful.
WHAT CAN IT MEAN. WAS IT A SUMMARY OF THIS BOOK!!??? I'm still wanting to know who killed the guy back there, who he was, and what those crackly letters she's still wearing in her shirt say, so we'd better get to those now that the bird is squared away.
"I caught two fishes in the brook. We'll take them along for supper," she said as they packed the things again for starting.
I admire her gumption and know-how, but I wish some attention were paid to whether or not she carries everything she kills with the guts still in it.
"The scoundrel!" he muttered, looking at the delicate features and clear, lovely profile of the girl. He felt a strong desire to throttle the evil man.
He asked a good many questions about her life, and was filled with wonder over the flower-like girl who seemed to have blossomed in the wilderness with no hand to cultivate her save a lazy, clever, drunken father, and a kind but ignorant mother. How could she have escaped being coarsened amid such surroundings.
She couldn't have, we've been over this. Coarsened? We're not even sure if she guts her wildfowl!
How was it, with such brothers as she had, that she had come forth as lovely and unhurt as she seemed? He somehow began to feel a great anxiety for her lonely future and a desire to put her in the way of protection. But at present they were still in the wilderness; and he began to be glad that he was here too, and might have the privilege of protecting her now, if there should be need.
At least puppies and small children recognize their own uselessness!
"We must go toward the moon," she said as she watched the bright spot coming in the east.
And she is their navigator, too. Meanwhile, her menacing but darkly handsome would-be wooer of chapter one comes skulking up to the cabin and sees someone there. He questions the trespasser:
In answer to his demand who was there came another torrent of profanity. It was one of his comrades of the day before. He explained that he and two others had come up to pay a visit to the pretty girl. They had had a wager as to who could win her, and they had come to try; but she was not here. The door was fastened. They had forced it. There was no sign of her about. The other two had gone down to the place where her brother was buried to see whether she was there... He had agreed to wait here, but he was getting uneasy. Perhaps, if the other two found her, they might not be fair.
The last comer with a mighty oath explained that the girl belonged to him, and that no one had a right to her. He demanded that the other come with him to the grave, and see what had become of the girl; and then they would all go and drink together-but the girl belonged to him.
Mrk! What is this? What is going on? This is like... the most often threatened-by-rape, even in absentia, of GLH's heroines ever. I sort of wonder how much was intentional and how much was innocent, but it's pretty clear. So the whole crew sets out to find her first and then figure out whatever their plans and intentions are, which seem to veer between "make her pick a husband" or far more direct means. Let's cut back to our happy pair.
Oh, much better choice. They are travelling through the night:
At first the cold shivers kept running up and down the young man as he realized that here before him in the sage-brush was a real live animal about which he had read so much, and which he had come out bravely to hunt. He kept his hand upon his revolver, and was constantly on the alert, nervously looking behind lest a troop of coyotes or wolves should be quietly stealing upon him. But, as the girl talked fearlessly of them in much the same way as we talk of a neighbor's fierce dog, he grew gradually calmer, and was able to watch a dark, velvet-footed moving object ahead without starting.
Oh, I think his story about how he got lost is so much hooey. "What is a coyote? Yes, yes I'd love to come hunt coyotes! How many troops do they travel in, and how quickly do they surround you from behind? Or is that wolves? Which are we hunting again? Where are you going? HELLO!"
So they talk about the men she's known, he admits he drinks socially, and she goes "YOU'RE JUST LIKE ALL THE OTHERS" which surprises him into promising never to drink again. He then says he only did at parties, and she goes "YOU'RE JUST LIKE ALL THE OTHERS" again until he crosses his heart and pinkie-swears. GLH, baby, there's a murdered dude a couple days' rides that way rotting in the desert and I'd like to get back to that plot thread, please.
There in the desert the man took his first temperance pledge, urged thereto by a girl who had never heard of a temperance pledge in her life, had never joined a woman's temperance society, and knew nothing about women's crusades. Her own heart had taught her out of a bitter experience just how to use her God-given influence.
Oh, fine, if you really think it's that important. But hurry up, please. Here, let's face dangers!
Once a bob-cat shot across their path but a few feet in front of them, and later a kit-fox ran growling up with ruffled fur; but the girl's quick shot soon put it to flight,
OH NO! NOT A FOX! THEY WILL SNEAK UP BEHIND YOU IN MASSES NEXT! They also hear gunfire and shouting somewhere, they decide to stop for the day, she says "awful things happen on a Sunday" and nothing more, and later he thinks he hears shouting and gunfire again. It all needs an editor. But then as he naps he has the sense that an ominous figure has slid by, and he awakens:
There was not a sound to be heard save a distant hawk in the heavens, and the breathing of the horses. He stepped over, and made sure that they were all right, and then came back. Was the girl still sleeping? Should he call her? But what should he call her? She had no name to him as yet. He could not say, "My dear madam" in the wilderness, nor yet "mademoiselle."
"How does this sound? 'Fair lady, are you imperiled?' No, that won't work. 'Awaken, maiden, I sense danger!' No, no. 'HELLO, HELLO!' Hm, too vague... a fine point of etiquette, this. Wonder if she's been carried off by now?"
At last the sense of uneasiness grew upon him until he spoke.
"Are you awake yet?" he ventured; but the words somehow stuck in his throat, and would not sound out clearly.
He should have gone with just bawling "HELLO, HELLO!" at the top of his lungs again. Bonus: he can keep that up for hours.
He ventured the question again,
I don't understand how this person has survived to adulthood.
but it seemed to go no further than the gray-green foliage in front of him. Did he catch an alert movement, the sound of attention, alarm? Had he perhaps frightened her?
Suddenly he lost the ability to shout through a bush. This man is painful.
His flesh grew creepy, and he was angry with himself that he stood here actually trembling and for no reason. He felt that there was danger in the air. What could it mean? He had never been a believer in premonitions or superstitions of any kind. But the thought came to him that perhaps that evil man had come softly while he slept, and had stolen the girl away. Then all at once a horror seized him, and he made up his mind to end this suspense and venture in to see whether she were safe.
Goody, maybe this time she WILL shoot him.
"I'm not anybody in particular," he answered, "and I'm not just sure where I belong. I live in Pennsylvania, but I didn't seem to belong there exactly, at least not just now, and so I came out here to see if I belonged anywhere else. I concluded yesterday that I didn't. At least, not until I came in sight of you. But I suspect I am running away myself. In fact, that is just what I am doing, running away from a woman!"
He looked at her with his honest hazel eyes, and she liked him. She felt he was telling her the truth, but it seemed to be a truth he was just finding out for himself as he talked.
I can well believe the guy wrapped head to toe in brown who wanders through the wilderness yelling "HELLO!" for twelve hours straight is only just now figuring out what he is doing.
"Why do you run away from a woman? How could a woman hurt you? Can she shoot?"
And you'd think she'd have more respect for a woman hurting a man, considering she's wanted to inter two men in three chapters.
"She uses other weapons," he said. "Her words are darts, and her looks are swords."
"What a queer woman! Does she ride well?"
"Yes, in an automobile!"
So the Girl From Montana has no idea what those are, and they discuss cars and stuff, until:
"My horse can go very fast. You do not know how fast. If you see her coming, I will change horses with you. You must ride to the nearest bench and over, and then turn backward on your tracks. She will never find you that way. And I am not afraid of a woman."
She kills them stone dead with spit. Ew. Anyway, this idea amuses him, and he explains that she left him. She places her brown hand on his horse's mane:
"I am sorry," she said simply.
"Thank you," he answered. "I'm sure I don't know why I told you. I never told any one before."
Can this man not have five seconds in which he knows what he is doing or why he is doing it?
So there is this random bit in which they discuss prayer, and end up praying together, which for GLH probably means they are engaged. They talk about god, which is not a topic either of them seem to know much about (of course.) So were you wondering what this twit was doing out here?
"Did you ride all night?" asked the girl.
"Pretty much," answered the man. "I stopped once to rest a few minutes; but a sound in the distance stirred me up again, and I was afraid to lose my chance of catching you, lest I should be hopelessly lost. You see, I went out with a party hunting, and I sulked behind. They went off up a steep climb, and I said I'd wander around below till they got back, or perhaps ride back to camp; but, when I tried to find the camp, it wasn't where I had left it."
He doesn't know where he is, he doesn't know what he's doing, he doesn't know how to shoot, he sulks on long trail rides, he can't keep up, and he can't find his way back. Only that last one is excusable considering that it's possible to get from sand stretches to cactus desert to forest to prairie in a night's ride, with two streams a day apart from each other.
"Well, you've got to lie down and sleep awhile," said the girl decidedly. "You can't keep going like that. It'll kill you. You lie down, and I'll watch, and get dinner. I'm going to cook that bird."
I assure you GLH was not much of a proto-feminist, but there's definitely something counter-cultural going on here. Also, finally, they take care of that bird. I can't tell you how much it's been bothering me to think of it ripening on her saddle all day.
When he came to himself, there was a curious blending of dream and reality. He thought his lady was coming to him across the rough plains in an automobile, with gray wings like those of the bird the girl had shot, and his prayer as he knelt in the sand was drawing her, while overhead the air was full of a wild, sweet music from strange birds that mocked and called and trilled. But, when the automobile reached him and stopped, the lady withered into a little, old, dried-up creature of ashes; and the girl of the plains was sitting in her place radiant and beautiful.
WHAT CAN IT MEAN. WAS IT A SUMMARY OF THIS BOOK!!??? I'm still wanting to know who killed the guy back there, who he was, and what those crackly letters she's still wearing in her shirt say, so we'd better get to those now that the bird is squared away.
"I caught two fishes in the brook. We'll take them along for supper," she said as they packed the things again for starting.
I admire her gumption and know-how, but I wish some attention were paid to whether or not she carries everything she kills with the guts still in it.
"The scoundrel!" he muttered, looking at the delicate features and clear, lovely profile of the girl. He felt a strong desire to throttle the evil man.
He asked a good many questions about her life, and was filled with wonder over the flower-like girl who seemed to have blossomed in the wilderness with no hand to cultivate her save a lazy, clever, drunken father, and a kind but ignorant mother. How could she have escaped being coarsened amid such surroundings.
She couldn't have, we've been over this. Coarsened? We're not even sure if she guts her wildfowl!
How was it, with such brothers as she had, that she had come forth as lovely and unhurt as she seemed? He somehow began to feel a great anxiety for her lonely future and a desire to put her in the way of protection. But at present they were still in the wilderness; and he began to be glad that he was here too, and might have the privilege of protecting her now, if there should be need.
At least puppies and small children recognize their own uselessness!
"We must go toward the moon," she said as she watched the bright spot coming in the east.
And she is their navigator, too. Meanwhile, her menacing but darkly handsome would-be wooer of chapter one comes skulking up to the cabin and sees someone there. He questions the trespasser:
In answer to his demand who was there came another torrent of profanity. It was one of his comrades of the day before. He explained that he and two others had come up to pay a visit to the pretty girl. They had had a wager as to who could win her, and they had come to try; but she was not here. The door was fastened. They had forced it. There was no sign of her about. The other two had gone down to the place where her brother was buried to see whether she was there... He had agreed to wait here, but he was getting uneasy. Perhaps, if the other two found her, they might not be fair.
The last comer with a mighty oath explained that the girl belonged to him, and that no one had a right to her. He demanded that the other come with him to the grave, and see what had become of the girl; and then they would all go and drink together-but the girl belonged to him.
Mrk! What is this? What is going on? This is like... the most often threatened-by-rape, even in absentia, of GLH's heroines ever. I sort of wonder how much was intentional and how much was innocent, but it's pretty clear. So the whole crew sets out to find her first and then figure out whatever their plans and intentions are, which seem to veer between "make her pick a husband" or far more direct means. Let's cut back to our happy pair.
Oh, much better choice. They are travelling through the night:
At first the cold shivers kept running up and down the young man as he realized that here before him in the sage-brush was a real live animal about which he had read so much, and which he had come out bravely to hunt. He kept his hand upon his revolver, and was constantly on the alert, nervously looking behind lest a troop of coyotes or wolves should be quietly stealing upon him. But, as the girl talked fearlessly of them in much the same way as we talk of a neighbor's fierce dog, he grew gradually calmer, and was able to watch a dark, velvet-footed moving object ahead without starting.
Oh, I think his story about how he got lost is so much hooey. "What is a coyote? Yes, yes I'd love to come hunt coyotes! How many troops do they travel in, and how quickly do they surround you from behind? Or is that wolves? Which are we hunting again? Where are you going? HELLO!"
So they talk about the men she's known, he admits he drinks socially, and she goes "YOU'RE JUST LIKE ALL THE OTHERS" which surprises him into promising never to drink again. He then says he only did at parties, and she goes "YOU'RE JUST LIKE ALL THE OTHERS" again until he crosses his heart and pinkie-swears. GLH, baby, there's a murdered dude a couple days' rides that way rotting in the desert and I'd like to get back to that plot thread, please.
There in the desert the man took his first temperance pledge, urged thereto by a girl who had never heard of a temperance pledge in her life, had never joined a woman's temperance society, and knew nothing about women's crusades. Her own heart had taught her out of a bitter experience just how to use her God-given influence.
Oh, fine, if you really think it's that important. But hurry up, please. Here, let's face dangers!
Once a bob-cat shot across their path but a few feet in front of them, and later a kit-fox ran growling up with ruffled fur; but the girl's quick shot soon put it to flight,
OH NO! NOT A FOX! THEY WILL SNEAK UP BEHIND YOU IN MASSES NEXT! They also hear gunfire and shouting somewhere, they decide to stop for the day, she says "awful things happen on a Sunday" and nothing more, and later he thinks he hears shouting and gunfire again. It all needs an editor. But then as he naps he has the sense that an ominous figure has slid by, and he awakens:
There was not a sound to be heard save a distant hawk in the heavens, and the breathing of the horses. He stepped over, and made sure that they were all right, and then came back. Was the girl still sleeping? Should he call her? But what should he call her? She had no name to him as yet. He could not say, "My dear madam" in the wilderness, nor yet "mademoiselle."
"How does this sound? 'Fair lady, are you imperiled?' No, that won't work. 'Awaken, maiden, I sense danger!' No, no. 'HELLO, HELLO!' Hm, too vague... a fine point of etiquette, this. Wonder if she's been carried off by now?"
At last the sense of uneasiness grew upon him until he spoke.
"Are you awake yet?" he ventured; but the words somehow stuck in his throat, and would not sound out clearly.
He should have gone with just bawling "HELLO, HELLO!" at the top of his lungs again. Bonus: he can keep that up for hours.
He ventured the question again,
I don't understand how this person has survived to adulthood.
but it seemed to go no further than the gray-green foliage in front of him. Did he catch an alert movement, the sound of attention, alarm? Had he perhaps frightened her?
Suddenly he lost the ability to shout through a bush. This man is painful.
His flesh grew creepy, and he was angry with himself that he stood here actually trembling and for no reason. He felt that there was danger in the air. What could it mean? He had never been a believer in premonitions or superstitions of any kind. But the thought came to him that perhaps that evil man had come softly while he slept, and had stolen the girl away. Then all at once a horror seized him, and he made up his mind to end this suspense and venture in to see whether she were safe.
Goody, maybe this time she WILL shoot him.