In order that the change from book to film may be made as quickly as possible, the author has written his story in the language of the moving-picture subtitle. All that the continuity-writer in the studio will have to do will be to take every third sentence from the book and make a subtitle from it. We might save him the trouble and do it here, together with some suggestions for incidental decorations.
Remember, nothing will be quoted below which is not in the exact wording of Zane Grey’s text. We first see Columbine Belllounds, adopted daughter of old Belllounds the rancher of Colorado. She is riding along the trail overlooking the valley.
“TODAY GIRLISH ORDEALS AND GRIEFS SEEMED BACK IN THE PAST: SHE WAS A WOMAN AT NINETEEN AND FACE TO FACE WITH THE FIRST GREAT PROBLEM IN HER LIFE.” (Suggestion for title decoration: A pair of reluctant feet standing at the junction of a brook and a river.)
She stops to pick some columbines and soliloquizes. The author says: “She spoke aloud, as if the sound of her voice might convince her,” but it is not clear from the text just what she expected to be convinced of. Here is her argument to herself:
“COLUMBINE!… SO THEY NAMED ME—THOSE MINERS WHO FOUND ME—A BABY—LOST IN THE WOODS—ASLEEP AMONG THE COLUMBINES.” (Decorative nasturtiums.)
Having convinced herself in these reassuring words as she stands alone on the ridge in God’s great outdoors, she explains that she has promised to marry Jack Belllounds, the worthless son of her foster-father, although any one can tell that she is in love with Wilson Moore, a cow-puncher on the ranch. You will understand what a sacrifice this was to be when the author says that “the lower part of Jack Belllounds’s face was weak.”
To the ranch comes “Hell-Bent” Wade, the mysterious man of the plains. He applies for a job, and not only that, but he gets it, which gives him a chance to let us know that:
“EIGHTEEN YEARS AGO HE HAD DRIVEN THE WOMAN HE LOVED AWAY FROM HIM, OUT INTO THE WORLD WITH HER BABY GIRL … JEALOUS FOOL!… TOO LATE HAD HE DISCOVERED HIS FATAL BLUNDER…. THAT WAS BENT WADE’S SECRET.” (Fancy sketch of a secret.)
And as we already know that Columbine is almost nineteen (I think she told herself this fact aloud once when she was out riding alone, just to convince herself), the shock is not so great as it might have been to hear Wade murmur aloud (doubtless to convince himself too), “Baby would have been—let’s see—’most nineteen years old now—if she’d lived.”
