when you go to the theatre, sit in a comfortable seat, and look at the gay, laughing girls who are doing all sorts of stunts in the front row, you are evidently under the impression that their lives are simply one unending series of revels and that they live in luxurious ease. in your fancy you see them going to magnificent apartments to enjoy late dinners washed down by high-priced wine; you think, perhaps, that they dress just as you see them on the stage, and that all they have to do is ask for anything they happen to want and it is theirs.
your imagination paints you a wonderful picture of love behind the scenes, but like children’s fairy tales, half is a dream.
you are simply bringing into existence a mental painting in very attractive colors, and if you could make it real it would be a very fine thing for the girl who makes up that she may look well from behind the footlights.
there are few short cuts to the stage and the roads are for the most part hard and tiresome. the woman who gets there, and by that i mean the one who finally lands with a reputation, usually has a past that would make interesting reading—if it could be published, which is out of the question.
to-day there is a woman in new york who is a star.
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so far as real talent is concerned she ought to have been a star years ago, but there was some hitch and she failed to connect.
she’s all right now, however, and when she pulls down her fat bundle of bills every week she doesn’t think of the old days on the pacific coast when she was doing one turn an hour in the mining camps, and well content if she got enough at the end of the show to pay for her room and give her a balance on the side to keep up her wardrobe—stage wardrobe, i mean—for she didn’t seem to care much how she dressed when on the street, and so far as that was concerned, she was on the street very little, for reasons that are obvious.
she was a nice looking little girl in those days, full of ginger and all that sort of thing, and she had the kind of magnetism that made a good many men think they couldn’t live without her. she was bright and saucy, and happy-go-lucky, taking things as they came, singing her songs with an abandon and grace that went a long way toward filling up the house.
but it was when she danced that she was at her best. that half-wild spanish cachuca made those rough men rise to their feet and cheer her as if she was the most wonderful girl in the world, and when the boys were flush many a hundred dollars in gold went over the flickering footlights to her feet, so that she really and truly danced on gold. it was the westerners’ way of paying homage to anyone they liked, and it is done to-day, but not to so great an extent.
you see, there was no limit on those fellows in the blue shirts and bearded faces, and what was a handful
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of gold more or less to them then or at any other time?
they were an open-handed lot, living only for the day, and to the devil with to-morrow, lavishing all they had upon anyone whom they liked.
as the money rolled in to her so it rolled out, easily and without apparent effort, and at the end of a year she had just what she started with—a couple of dresses, the most part of which was tinsel.
and that brings me right back into the heart of this story, the preliminary having been sufficiently long to give you a thorough introduction to this little lady—queen of the mining camps.
it isn’t likely you ever heard of a fellow who for some romantic reason or other called himself palo alto bill. he was a tin horn gambler, good at short cards, willing to take a chance at any proposition that ever came over the hills, so long as he could figure in it financially, but he had no heart. it was all bill from first to last, and he didn’t have enough generosity in his entire system to drop a bone to a hungry dog. you know the breed—they think they are all right, but they are so eaten up with selfishness, and egotism, and vanity, that they stride along with their elbows pushed out, as if they were going to shove everybody else off the earth.
he was handsome all right, with black hair—black as an indian’s—a curling mustache, and a wonderfully taking way with a woman.
this was the combination that stacked itself up against the little singer with the suggestion that they travel in double harness for mutual benefit.
that was all there was to it.
a wonderful but untrue picture of love behind the scenes
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he saw her, he liked her; why shouldn’t he have her? and if she had been married it would have been the same to him. he would in all probability have suggested an elopement on a pair of fast horses.
“how long have you been in the business, sis?” was the way he started it.
he was smoking a cigarette at the time and he didn’t even take the trouble to look at her, but holding his head back, blew the rings of smoke, one after the other, toward the low ceiling.
“oh, about a year, and i’ve been making good ever since i started.”
“that’s what you have. i suppose you’ve got a big bunch of coin by this time, eh?”
“if i have i wish someone would find it for me. there may be a lot of fun in the game, but there’s no money, that is, not yet.”
“well, let me give you just one straight tip. what you want is a manager—someone to boom you. suppose you and i double up, and then i’ll show you how to get the money, and hold it, too. nothing cheap about me. you’re a good fellow and i’m a good fellow, and we can do well together. i’ll put you where you belong, for you ain’t getting half of what’s coming to you. how about it?”
just remember that this was in the west, where a girl has a mighty hard time of it without a protector of some sort, and that there were a hundred tie-ups by mutual consent for one real swell matrimonial clinch, with a sky-pilot to sing his little song of “i now pronounce you man and wife.” also bear in mind that she had known bill about six months and that his style rather appealed to her, because he was artistic in a
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crude sort of a way, and besides, he wore his clothes with a certain amount of grace that was good for the female eye to look on.
so they tied up together and bill began his life of ease and prosperity. the next week was announced as her grand farewell appearance, and she was the recipient every night of a testimonial of so substantial a character that, as she herself put it, her salary seemed like pennies for candy. in these many testimonials might have been recognized the fine italian touch of bill, who had a hermann-like knack of waving his hands in the empty air and producing real money. and while she was busy picking up the nuggets and gold bucks which the enthusiastic miners flung at her, he was attending to his end of the contract by arranging a tour. he had a few schemes under his hat that would have brought him in all kinds of money if he had had a fair swing, but he was born with the soul of a grafter, and that is very much like a taint in the blood, in that it can never be effaced. it may disappear for a while, but it is always liable to turn up at the most unexpected time.
when the week was done the company started—the company in this case being a couple of miners, who were in hard luck and who went ahead of the show; bill and the girl.
i saw her the other night in a famous eating place on broadway putting away a chop and a small bottle, and i wondered then if she remembered san bernardino that june morning when everything she had in the world was held in one small bag which bill carried.
the plan of procedure was simple. she was to get a date in a town, bill was to go around and boom her
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as the best that ever hit the coast, and tell of the hit she made in ’frisco. then when she came on the stage to do her dance the two hobos were to start the cheering. toward the finish of the act one of them was to walk down the aisle to the footlights and toss up a handful of gold coins, and then the other was to follow suit. that would start the crowd giving up; for after all, people are like sheep, they will always follow a leader.
it was a good stunt, and there wasn’t any chance for a failure.
it worked out just as bill figured it would, and it kept him busy enough looking after the money end of the game.
it was the turn in the tide for her so far as her fortunes and popularity were concerned, and she simply created a furore wherever she appeared. in those days she wore a twenty-dollar gold piece around her neck. it was held by a string which ran through a hole she had bored herself with a great deal of labor. it was the first piece of money she had ever received over the footlights and she said it was her mascot, and declared she would always keep it. it might have been her mascot, but i’ll bet a hundred to one that she hasn’t it now.
put a good looking girl on the stage, have her make a hit so that she is talked about, and she’ll attract more men than a leg show in paris. there’s an irresistible fascination about the stage that makes even bald-headed old papas fall. it’s a hard thing to figure out, but it’s a fact, nevertheless.
in this particular case they flocked around her like sheep for a shelter when a storm is in the air, and the
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girl took to wearing good clothes, ordered from ’frisco, and using to their full capacity the services of a maid.
and then there came upon the scene the other man. he had hit the coast from colorado, and his mine was turning out the yellow stuff so fast that he had more than he could do to spend it. he was busily engaged in the exciting pastime of buying everything he saw when he met the girl that bill was leading along the golden road to wealth. there was nothing half-way about his methods, so he promptly went out and bought the biggest diamond he could find, put it in an envelope upon which he wrote in lead pencil:
“the best stone for the nicest girl; come and have a bottle of wine with me after the show.”
he didn’t need to sign his name to it, for the stage hand who received a ten-dollar gold piece as a tip for taking it to her pointed him out as he sat at one of the tables well up toward the stage.
“he seemed to be kind of stuck on you,” he remarked casually; “will i tell him you’ll see him?”
she put the ring on her finger and looked at it critically, holding it first this way and that so that the light would catch it. the inspection evidently pleased her, for she said:
“sure; he’s entitled to it after this.”
that is how it came about that, still in her stage dress, she went directly from the stage to the table where croesus sat and smiled on him, while the diamond flashed like a calcium.
one bottle broke the ice, two put them on a friendly footing, and three made them lifelong friends. they were on the fourth and their heads were close together.
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he was talking in a low tone, while she was listening intently and nodding her head in affirmation every moment or so when bill happened along.
he didn’t like the looks of this and he showed it plainly. he touched her on the shoulder with an air of proprietorship and remarked curtly:
“come on.”
“who’s your friend?” asked the wine opener; “introduce me.”
“i’m the real one,” said bill.
“husband?” asked the other, laconically.
“not yet,” she answered.
“oh,” and his eyebrows were lifted a trifle. then he turned to bill. “sit down and have a drink; i want to talk to you.”
then the fifth bottle was brought on.
he held his brimming glass aloft.
“wish me luck, old man, for i’m going to take this little girl away from you,” and his blue eyes looked into bill’s black ones with a steady and disconcerting gaze.
“i guess we’ve got something to say about that,” said bill, putting his glass down suddenly.
“not much. you see, i’m going to give you a thousand dollars and that will be your meal ticket until you find a new prima donna.”
“you made a mistake,” said bill, “you meant $5,000.”
“i agree with you; i did make a mistake; it’s $2,500, and you’d better grab it quick, because it’s easy money and it’s the limit, too.”
the girl was playing with the ring, turning it around her finger aimlessly, never once looking and
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saying no word. bill drained his glass, put it down, and then looked at the stage.
“do i get it now?” he asked abruptly.
“yes, now.”
he held out his hand, palm upward, with a suggestive movement, and in just fifteen seconds it held an order on the assay office for the amount. it was as easy as going into a store and buying a blue flannel shirt. thirty days later—a record for speed, by the way—the girl opened in san francisco as the star in a farce comedy on which ten thousand dollars had been spent before the curtain went up. she had talent, but not enough to make good, and after a week’s losing run the play was shelved. she gained a lot of experience and had a suite of rooms at the best hotel in town, which was something for a girl who had previously been housed in an eight by ten. that was what gave her a running jump into the profession, so to speak. she landed on both feet now, but none of her friends would dare bring up the subject of the glorious west to her.
that were best forgotten.
