Munsey's Magazine, November 1922

This installment of Edgar Rice Burroughs's serial "The Girl from Hollywood" covers a crisis at the Ganado ranch in Southern California. Custer Pennington, hearing of a conversation between Wilson Crumb and Shannon Burke, drowns his sorrows in liquor. That evening, naïve Eva Pennington, deceived by film producer Crumb's promises of film work, rides alone to meet him at a sycamore tree. When he attempts to seduce her, she strikes him with her riding quirt and flees—but Crumb blackmails her into silence by threatening to expose compromising information about her fiancé Guy Evans, claiming Evans allowed Custer to take the blame for stolen bootlegging profits. Colonel Pennington discovers Eva's absence, learns the truth from her tears, and orders the film company off his property. Early the next morning, Shannon Burke, seemingly erasing hoofprints from a road, discovers Crumb's body beneath the sycamore tree and reports it to the colonel. The narrative suggests both men—Custer and the colonel—may have sought vengeance for Eva's assault.