The Mountain Girl

• Watchlist

In a primitive log cabin buried among the rugged pines deep in the California mountains lives the Mountain Girl with her grandfather, a man of hoary age. Few visitors ever come to the cabin, but there is one who is almost a daily visitor, young Ned, a mountain ranger, who loves the Mountain Girl. The old grandfather looks forward each day to Ned's visits almost as eagerly as the girl does, for Ned always proves a good listener, and the old man's one amusement in life is relating anecdotes of his own youth. As a young man he was renowned far and wide for his prodigious strength, particularly in the grip of his hands and he never wearies of relating tales of his early prowess. One day a strange visitor is brought to the cabin by Ned. He is a dashing gambler from the mountain settlement at the head of the valley, who has been forcibly ejected from the settlement because of his too great skill at cards and because of a suspicion on the part of the rough mountaineers that his game was not always too straight. Ned had found him delirious after a terrible night spent alone in the mountains. The girl and the old man care for him until he has partially recovered from his shock and exposure. Devoid of gratitude, the gambler cast covetous eyes upon the Mountain Girl. Taking advantage of Ned's absence on a trip across the mountains, the gambler makes forcible love to the girl. The old man, helpless and paralyzed, is powerless to interfere. The girl fights for her honor in the cabin, while the old man sits helpless outside hearing the sounds of the struggle within. He prays for strength, and in answer to his prayers, strength is given him to drag himself to the door. The gambler, springing to bar his entrance, finds his throat caught in the clutch of the man whose grip was once the most powerful in the countryside. Desperately he tries to break it, but his efforts are of no avail. Slowly it squeezes the life out of him. A few moments later, Ned returning to the cabin, finds the old man dying with his head resting on his granddaughter's lap, and the body of the gambler dead on the cabin floor, support of an old mother. The doctor informs Agnes that if she does not arrange to remove the mother to some cool place she will succumb to the heat. As a desperate resort, Agnes writes a pitiful appeal for aid in getting her mother away from the city to some cool resort. She sows a number of copies of the appeal in the outing shirts at the factory. A wealthy bachelor, who is a philanthropist, buys one of the shirts and departs on a fishing trip in the mountains. Agnes' mother grows weaker and the girl anxiously inquires at the office for mail, hoping to receive some answer from the appeals sewed in the shirts. The only replies are a vulgarly written scrawl, trying to date her up, and a suggestion from a "charitably inclined" person that she place her old mother in a certain well-appointed poor house. In despair, Agnes steals money from the factory cash drawer, but in doing so, drops her handkerchief, which is initialed. The factory manager accompanies the police to her tenement that night, and they find part of the money, the rest having been spent to get things for her mother. Meanwhile the wealthy philanthropist on his fishing trip discovers Agnes' appeal sewed in the shirt. At first he does not give it serious thought, but that night his imagination pictures to him the old woman suffocating in the garret, and he cannot sleep. The next morning he leaves for the city to find the girl and save her mother. At the store they give him Agnes' address, and he arrives at the tenement just as Agnes is pleading with the police not to take her to jail, as she is her mother's sole support. She tells them that she stole the money to save her mother's life, but they do not believe her. The philanthropist stops the police and reimburses the manager. He displays Agnes' letter as a proof of her statement that she stole for her mother's sake. The philanthropist takes Agnes and her mother to the cool mountain resort where he was fishing and the old lady's life is saved. Stimulated by the refreshing out-of-doors, Agnes is transformed from the sullen factory slave to a joyous carefree girl. The bachelor's tender affection toward Agnes is suggested in the concluding scene.