Jean of the Lazy A
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B. M. Bower >> Jean of the Lazy A
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"No, I don't." Robert Grant Burns chuckled fatly
and held out his hand with a big, pink cameo on his
little finger. "Let's see what a famous scenario looks
like. What is it,--that plot you were telling me awhile
ago?"
"Why, yes. I'm putting on the meat." There was
a slight hesitation before Jean handed him the pages
she had done. "I expect it's awfully crude," she
apologized, with one of her diffident spells. "I'm
afraid you'll laugh at me."
Robert Grant Burns was reading rapidly, mentally
photographing the scenes as he went along. He held
out his hand again without looking toward her.
"Lemme take your pencil a minute. I believe I'd have
a panoram of the coulee,--a long shot from out there
in the meadow. And show the brother and you leaving
the house and riding toward the camera; at the gate,
you separate. You're going to town, say. He rides
on toward the hills. That fixes you both as belonging
here at the ranch, identifies you two and the home ranch
both in thirty feet or so of the film, with a leader that
tells you're brother and sister. See what I mean?"
He scribbled a couple of lines, crossed out a couple,
and went on reading to where he had interrupted Jean
in the middle of a sentence.
"I see you're writing in a part for that Lite Avery;
how do you know he'd do it? Or can put it over if he
tries? He don't look to me like an actor."
"Lite," declared Jean with a positiveness that would
have thrilled Lite, had he heard her, "can put over
anything he tries to put over. And he'll do it, if I tell
him he must!" Which showed what were Jean's ideas,
at least on the subject of which was the master.
"What you going to call it a The Perils of the
Prairie, say?" Burns abandoned further argument on
the subject of Lite's ability.
"Oh, no! That's awfully cheap. That would stamp
it as a melodrama before any of the picture appeared
on the screen."
Robert Grant Burns had not been serious; he had been
testing Jean's originality. "Well, what will we call it,
then?"
"Oh, we'll call it--" Jean nibbled the rubber on
her pencil and looked at him with that unseeing,
introspective gaze which was a trick of hers. "We'll call
it--does it hurt if we use real names that we've a right
to?" She got a head-shake for answer. "Well, we'll
call it,--let's just call it--Jean, of the Lazy A.
Would that sound as if--"
"Great! Girl, you're a winner! Jean, of the Lazy
A! Say, that title alone will jump the releases ten
per cent., if I know the game. Featuring Jean herself;
pictures made right at the Lazy A Ranch. Say, the
dope I can give our publicity man--"
Thereupon Jean, remembering Gil Huntley's lecture
on the commercial side of the proposition, startled his
enthusiasm with one naive question.
"How much will the Great Western Film Company
pay me extra for furnishing the story I play in? "
"How much?" Robert Grant Burns blurted the
words automatically.
"Yes. How much? If it will jump your releases
ten per cent. they ought to pay me quite a lot more than
they're paying me now."
"You're doing pretty well as it is," Burns reminded
her, with a visible dampening of his eagerness.
"For keeping your cut-and-dried stories from falling
flat, yes. But for writing the kind of play that will
have just as many `punches' and still be true to life,
and then for acting it all out and putting in those
punches,--that's a different matter, Mr. Burns. And
you'll have to pay Lite a decent salary, or I'll quit right
here. I'm thinking up stunts for us two that are
awfully risky. You'll have to pay for that. But it will
be worth while. You wait till you see Lite in action!"
Gil would have been exuberant over the literal manner
in which Jean was taking his advice and putting
it to the test, had he overheard her driving her bargain
with Robert Grant Burns. He would have been exuberant,
but he would never have dared to say the things
that Jean said, or to have taken the stand that she
took. Robert Grant Burns found himself very much
in the position which Lite had occupied for three years.
He had well-defined ideas upon the subject before them,
and he had the outer semblance of authority; but his
ideas and his authority had no weight whatever with
Jean, since she had made up her mind.
Before Jean left the subject of salary, Robert Grant
Burns found himself committed to a promise of an
increase, provided that Jean really "delivered the goods"
in the shape of a scenario serial, and did the stunts
which she declared she could and would do.
Before she settled down to the actual planning of
scenes, Robert Grant Burns had also yielded to her
demands for Lite Avery, though you may think that he
thereby showed himself culpably weak, unless you realize
what sort of a person Jean was in argument. Without
having more than a good-morning acquaintance with
Lite, Burns agreed to put him on "in stock" and to pay
him the salary Jean demanded for him, provided that,
in the try-out of the first picture, Lite should prove he
could deliver the goods. Burns was always extremely
firm in the matter of having the "goods" delivered;
that was why he was the Great Western's leading director.
Mere dollars he would yield, if driven into a corner
and kept there long enough, but he must have results.
These things being settled, they spent about two hours
on the doorstep of Jean's room, writing the first reel of
the story; which is to say that Jean wrote, and Burns
took each sheet from her hands as it was finished, and
read and made certain technical revisions now and then.
Several times he grunted words of approbation, and
several times he let his fat, black cigar go out, while he
visualized the scenes which Jean's flying pencil portrayed.
"I'll go over and get Lite," she said at last, rubbing
the cramp out of her writing-hand and easing her shoulders
from their strain of stooping. "There'll be time,
while you send the machine after some real hats for your
rustlers. Those toadstool things were never seen in this
country till you brought them in your trunk; and this
story is going to be real! Your rustlers won't look much
different from the punchers, except that they'll be riding
different horses; we'll have to get some paint somewhere
and make a pinto out of that wall-eyed cayuse
Gil rides mostly. He'll lead the rustlers, and you want
the audience to be able to spot him a mile off. Lite
and I will fix the horse; we'll put spots on him like a
horse Uncle Carl used to own."
"Maybe you can't get Lite," Burns pointed out,
eyeing her over a match blaze. "He never acted to me
like he had the movie-fever at all. Passes us up with a
nod, and has never showed signs of life on the subject.
Lee can ride pretty well," he added artfully, "even if he
wasn't born in the saddle. And we can fake that rope
work."
"All right; you can send the machine in with a wire
to your company for a leading woman." Jean picked
up her gloves and turned to pull the door shut behind
her, and by other signs and tokens made plain her
intention to leave.
"Oh, well, you can see if he'll come. I said I'd try
him out, but--"
"He'll come. I told you that before." Jean stopped
and looked at her director coldly. "And you'll keep
your word. And we won't have any fake stuff in this,
--except the spots on the pinto." She smiled then.
"We wouldn't do that, but there isn't a pinto in the
country right now that would be what we want. You
had better get your bunch together, because I'll be back
in a little while with Lite."
As it happened, Lite was on his way to the Lazy A,
and met Jean in the bottom of the sandy hollow. His
eyes lightened when he saw her come loping up to him.
But when she was close enough to read the expression
of his face, it was schooled again to the frank
friendship which Jean always had accepted as a matter
of course.
"Hello, Lite! I've got a job for you with the
movies," Jean announced, as soon as she was within
speaking distance. "You can come right back with
me and begin. It's going to be great. We're going
to make a real Western picture, Lite, you and I. Lee
and Gil and all the rest will be in it, of course; but
we're going to put in the real West. And we're going
to put in the ranch,--the REAL Lazy A, Lite. Not these
dinky little sets that Burns has toggled up with bits of
the bluff showing for background, but the ranch just
as it--it used to be." Jean's eyes grew wistful while
she looked at him and told him her plans.
"I'm writing the scenario myself," she explained,
"and that's why you have to be in it. I've written in
stuff that the other boys can't do to save their lives.
REAL stuff, Lite! You and I are going to run the ranch
and punch the cows,--Lazy A cattle, what there are left
of them,--and hunt down a bunch of rustlers that have
their hangout somewhere down in the breaks; we don't
know just where, yet. The places we'll ride, they'll
need an airship to follow with the camera! I haven't
got it all planned yet, but the first reel is about done;
we're going to begin on it this afternoon. We'll need
you in the first scenes,--just ranch scenes, with you and
Lee; he's my brother, and he'll get killed-- Now,
what's the matter with you?" She stopped and eyed
him disapprovingly. "Why have you got that stubborn
look to your mouth? Lite, see here. Before you say a
word, I want to tell you that you are not to refuse this.
It--it means money, Lite; for you, and for me, too.
And that means--dad at home again. Lite--"
Bite looked at her, looked away and bit his lips. It
was long since he had seen tears in Jean's steady, brown
eyes, and the sight of them hurt him intolerably. There
was nothing that he could say to strengthen her faith,
absolutely nothing. He did not see how money could
free her father before his sentence expired. Her faith
in her dad seemed to Lite a wonderful thing, but he
himself could not altogether share it, although he had
lately come to feel a very definite doubt about Aleck's
guilt. Money could not help them, except that it could
buy back the Lazy A and restock it, and make of it the
home it had been three years ago.
Lite, in the secret heart of him, did not want Jean
to set her heart on doing that. Lite was almost in a
position to do it himself, just as he had planned and
schemed and saved to do, ever since the day when he
took Jean to the Bar Nothing, and announced to her
that he intended to take care of her in place of her
father. He had wanted to surprise Jean; and Jean,
with her usual headlong energy bent upon the same
object, seemed in a fair way to forestall him, unless he
moved very quickly.
"Lite, you won't spoil everything now, just when I'm
given this great opportunity, will you?" Jean's voice
was steady again. She could even meet his eyes without
flinching. "Gil says it's a great opportunity, in
every way. It's a series of pictures, really, and they
are to be called `Jean, of the Lazy A.' Gil says they
will be advertised a lot, and make me famous. I don't
care about that; but the company will pay me more, and
that means--that means that I can get out and find
Art Osgood sooner, and--get dad home. And you will
have to help. The whole thing, as I have planned it,
depends upon you, Lite. The riding and the roping,
and stuff like that, you'll have to do. You'll have to
work right alongside me in all that outdoor stuff,
because I am going to quit doing all those spectacular,
stagey stunts, and get down to real business. I've made
Burns see that there will be money in it for his company,
so he is perfectly willing to let me go ahead with
it and do it my way. Our way, Lite, because, once you
start with it, you can help me plan things." Whereupon,
having said almost everything she could think of
that would tend to soften that stubborn look in Lite's
face, Jean waited.
Lite did a great deal of thinking in the next two or
three minutes, but being such a bottled-up person, he
did not say half of what he thought; and Jean, closely
as she watched his face, could not read what was in his
mind. Of Aleck he thought, and the slender chance
there was of any one doing what Jean hoped to do; of
Art Osgood, and the meager possibility that Art could
shed any light upon the killing of Johnny Croft; of the
Lazy A, and the probable price that Carl would put upon
it if he were asked to sell the ranch and the stock; of
the money he had already saved, and the chance that, if
he went to Carl now and made him an offer, Carl would
accept. He weighed mentally all the various elements
that went to make up the depressing tangle of the whole
affair, and decided that he would write at once to Rossman,
the lawyer who had defended Aleck, and put the
whole thing into his hands. He would then know just
where he stood, and what he would have to do, and what
legal steps he must take.
He looked at Jean and grinned a little. "I'm not
pretty enough for a picture actor," he said whimsically.
"Better let me be a rustler and wear a mask, if you
don't want folks to throw fits."
"You'll be what I want you to be," Jean told him
with the little smile in her eyes that Lite had learned to
love more than he could ever say. "I'm going to make
us both famous, Lite. Now, come on, Bobby Burns has
probably chewed up a whole box of those black cigars,
waiting for us to show up."
I am not going to describe the making of "Jean, of
the Lazy A." It would be interesting, but this is not
primarily a story of the motion-picture business, remember.
It is the story of the Lazy A and the problem that
both Jean and Lite were trying to solve. The Great
Western Film Company became, through sheer chance,
a factor in that problem, and for that reason we have
come into rather close touch with them; but aside from
the fact that Jean's photo-play brought Lite into the
company and later took them both to Los Angeles, this
particular picture has no great bearing upon the matter.
Robert Grant Burns had intended taking his company
back to Los Angles in August, when the hot winds
began to sweep over the range land. But Jean's story
was going "big." Jean was throwing herself into the
part heart and mind. She lived it. With Lite riding
beside her, helping her with all his skill and energy and
much enthusiasm, she almost forgot her great undertaking
sometimes, she was so engrossed with her work.
With his experience, suggesting frequent changes, she
added new touches of realism to this story that made the
case-hardened audience of the Great Western's private
projection room invent new ways of voicing their
enthusiasm, when the negative films Pete Lowry sent in to
headquarters were printed and given their trial run.
They were just well started when August came with
its hot winds. They stayed and worked upon the serial
until it was finished, and that meant that they stayed
until the first October blizzard caught them while they
were finishing the last reel.
Do you know what they did then? Jean changed a
few scenes around at Lite's suggestion, and they went out
into the hills in the teeth of the storm and pictured Jean
lost in the blizzard, and coming by chance upon the
outlaws at their camp, which she and Lite and Lee had
been hunting through all the previous installments of
the story. It was great stuff,--that ride Jean made in
the blizzard,--and that scene where, with numbed
fingers and snow matted in her dangling braid, she held
up the rustlers and marched them out of the hills, and
met Lite coming in search of her.
You will remember it, if you have been frequenting
the silent drama and were fortunate enough to see the
picture. You may have wondered at the realism of
those blizzard scenes, and you may have been curious to
know how the camera got the effect. It was wonderful
photography, of course; but then, the blizzard was real,
and that pinched, half frozen look on Jean's face in the
close-up where she met Lite was real. Jean was so cold
when she turned the rustlers over to Lite that when she
started to dismount and fell in a heap,--you remember?
--she was not acting at all. Neither was Lite acting
when he plunged through the drift and caught Jean in
his arms and held her close against him just as that scene
ended. In the name of realism they cut the scene, because
Lite showed that he forgot all about the outlaws
and the part he was playing.
So they finished the picture, and the whole company
packed their trunks thankfully and turned their faces
and all their thoughts westward.
Jean was not at all sure that she wanted to go. It
seemed almost as though she were setting aside her great
undertaking; as though she were weakly deserting her
dad when she closed the door for the last time upon her
room and turned her back upon Lazy A coulee. But
there were certain things which comforted her; Lite was
going along to look after the horses, he told her just the
day before they started. For Robert Grant Burns, with
an eye to the advertising value of the move, had decided
that Pard must go with them. He would have to hire
an express car, anyway, he said, for the automobile and
the scenery sets they had used for interiors. And there
would be plenty of room for Pard and Lite's horse and
another which Robert Grant Burns had used to carry
him to locations in rough country, where the automobile
could not go. The car would run in passenger service,
Burns said,--he'd fix that,--so Lite would be right
with the company all the way out.
Jean appreciated all that as a personal favor, which
merely proved how unsophisticated she really was. She
did not know that Robert Grant Burns was thinking
chiefly of furnishing material for the publicity man to
use in news stories. She never once dreamed that the
coming of "Jean, of the Lazy A" and Jean's pet horse
Pard, and of Lite, who had done so many surprising
things in the picture, would be heralded in all the Los
Angeles papers before ever they left Montana.
Jean was concerned chiefly with attending to certain
matters which seemed to her of vital importance. If she
must go, there was something which she must do first,
--something which for three years she had shrunk from
doing. So she told Robert Grant Burns that she would
meet him and his company in Helena, and without a
word of explanation, she left two days in advance of
them, just after she had had another maddening talk
with her Uncle Carl, wherein she had repeated her
intention of employing a lawyer.
When she boarded the train at Helena, she did not tell
even Lite just where she had been or what she had been
doing. She did not need to tell Lite. He looked into
her face and saw there the shadow of the high, stone wall
that shut her dad away from the world, and he did not
ask a single question.
CHAPTER XIX
IN LOS ANGELES
When she felt bewildered, Jean had the trick
of appearing merely reserved; and that is what
saved her from the charge of rusticity when Robert
Grant Burns led her through the station gateway and
into a small reception. No less a man than Dewitt,
President of the Great Western Film Company, clasped
her hand and held it, while he said how glad he was to
welcome her. Jean, unawed by his greatness and the
honor he was paying her, looked up at him with that
distracting little beginning of a smile, and replied
with that even-more distracting little drawl in her
voice, and wondered why Mrs. Gay should become so
plainly flustered all at once.
Dewitt took her by the arm, introduced her to a
curious-eyed group with a warming cordiality of manner,
and led her away through a crowd that stared and whispered,
and up to a great, beautiful, purple machine with
a colored chauffeur in dust-colored uniform. Dewitt
was talking easily of trivial things, and shooting a
question now and then over his shoulder at Robert Grant
Burns, who had shed much of his importance and seemed
indefinably subservient toward Mr. Dewitt. Jean
turned toward him abruptly.
"Where's Lite? Did you send some one to help him
with Pard?" she asked with real concern in her voice.
"Those three horses aren't used to towns the size of
this, Mr. Burns. Lite is going to have his hands full
with Pard. If you will excuse me, Mr. Dewitt, I think
I'll go and see how he's making out."
Mr. Dewitt glanced over her head and met the
delighted grin of Jim Gates, the publicity manager. The
grin said that Jean was "running true to form," which
was a pet simile with Jim Gates, and usually accompanied
that particular kind of grin. There would be an
interesting half column in the next day's papers about
Jean's arrival and her deep concern for Lite and her
wonderful horse Pard, but of course she did not know
that.
"I've got men here to help with the horses," Mr.
Dewitt assured her, while he gently urged her into the
machine. "They'll be brought right out to the studio.
I'm taking you home with me in obedience to my wife's,
orders. She is anxious to meet the young woman who
can out-ride and out-shoot any man on the screen, and
can still be sweet and feminine and lovable. I'm quoting
my wife, you see, though I won't say those are not
my sentiments also."
"Your poor wife is going to receive a shock," said
Jean in an unimpressed tone. "But it's dear of her
to want to meet me." Back of her speech was an irritated
impatience that she should be gobbled and carried
off like this, when she was sure that she ought to be
helping Lite get that fool Pard unloaded and safely
through the clang and clatter of the down-town district.
Robert Grant Burns, half facing her on a folding seat,
sent her a queer, puzzled glance from under his
eyebrows. Four months had Jean been working under his
direction; four months had he studied her, and still she
puzzled him. She was not ignorant--the girl had been
out among civilized folks and had learned town ways;
she was not stupid--she could keep him guessing, and
he thought he knew all the quirks of human nature, too.
Then why, in the name of common sense, did she take
Dewitt and his patronage in this matter-of-fact way, as
if it were his everyday business to meet strange
employees and take them home to his wife? He glanced
at Dewitt and caught a twinkle of perfect understanding
in the bright blue eyes of his chief. Burns made a
sound between a grunt and a chuckle, and turned his
eyes away immediately; but Dewitt chose to make
speech upon the subject.
"You haven't spoiled our new leading woman--
yet," he observed idly.
"Oh, but he has," Jean dissented. "He has got me
trained so that when he says smile, my mouth stretches
itself automatically. When he says sob, I sob. He just
snaps his fingers, Mr. Dewitt, and I sit up and go
through my tricks very nicely. You ought to see how
nicely I do them."
Mr. Dewitt put up a hand and pulled at his close-
cropped, white mustache that could not hide the twitching
of his lips. "I have seen," he said drily, and
leaned forward for a word with the liveried chauffeur.
"Turn up on Broadway and stop at the Victoria," he
said, and the chin of the driver dropped an inch to prove
he heard.
Dewitt laid his fingers on Jean's arm to catch her
attention. "Do you see that picture on the billboard over
there?" he asked, with a special inflection in his nice,
crisp voice. "Does it look familiar to you?"
Jean looked, and pinched her brows together. Just
at first she did not comprehend. There was her name
in fancy letters two feet high: "JEAN, OF THE LAZY
A." It blared at the passer-by, but it did not look
familiar at all. Beneath was a high-colored poster of
a girl on a horse. The horse was standing on its hind
feet, pawing the air; its nostrils flared red; its tail
swept like a willow plume behind. The machine slowed
and stopped for the traffic signal at the crossing, and
still Jean studied the poster. It certainly did not look
in the least familiar.
"Is that supposed to be me, on that plum-colored
horse?" she drawled, when they slid out slowly in the
wake of a great truck.
"Why, don't you like it?" Dewitt looked at Jim
Gates, who was again grinning delightedly and
surreptitiously scribbling something on the margin
of a folded paper he was carrying.
Jean turned upon him a mildly resentful glance.
"No, I don't. Pard is not purple; he's brown. And
he's got the dearest white hoofs and a white sock on his
left hind foot; and he doesn't snort fire and brimstone,
either." She glanced anxiously at the jam of wagons
and automobiles and clanging street-cars. "I don't
know, though," she amended ruefully, "I think perhaps
he will, too, when he sees all this. I really ought to
have stayed with him."
"You don't think Lite quite capable of taking care
of him."
"Oh, yes, of course he is! But I just feel that
way."
Dewitt shifted a little, so that he was half facing her,
and could look at her without having to turn his head.
If his eyes told anything of his thoughts, the President
of the Great Western Film Company was curious to
know how she felt about her position and her sudden
fame and the work itself. Before they had worked
their way into the next block, he decided that Jean was
not greatly interested in any of these things, and he
wondered why.
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