Jean of the Lazy A

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The man at whom she sat glaring glanced sidewise at
some person unseen; and Jean knew that glance, that
turn of the head. He smiled anew and lifted his
American-made Stetson a few inches above his head and
held it so in salute. Just so had he lifted and held his
hat high one day, when she had turned and ridden away
from him down the trail. Jean caught herself just as
her lips opened to call out to him in recognition and
sharp reproach. He turned and walked away to where
the troopers were massed in the background. It was
thus that she had first glimpsed him for one instant
before the scene ended; it was just as he turned his face
away that she had opened her eyes, and thought it was
Art Osgood who was walking away from the camera.

She waited a minute, staring abstractedly at the
refugees who were presented next. She wished that she
knew when the picture had been taken,--how long ago.
Her experience with motion-picture making, her listening
to the shop-talk of the company, had taught her
much; she knew that sometimes weeks elapse between
the camera's work and the actual projection of a picture
upon the theater screens. Still, this was, in a sense, a
news release, and therefore in all probability hurried
to the public. Art Osgood might still be at Nogales,
Mexico, wherever that was. He might; and Jean made
up her mind and laid her plans while she sat there pinning
on her hat.

She got up quietly and slipped out. She was going
to Nogales, Mexico, wherever that was. She was going
to get Art Osgood, and she didn't care whether she had
to fight her way clear through "Warring Mexico."
She would find him and get him and bring him back.

In the lobby, while she paused with a truly feminine
instinct to tip her hat this way and that before the
mirror, and give her hair a tentative pat or two at the
back, the grinning face of Lite Avery in his gray Stetson
appeared like an apparition before her eyes. She
turned quickly.

"Why, Lite!" she said, a little startled.

"Why, Jean!" he mimicked, in the bantering voice
that was like home to her. "Don't rush off; haven't
seen you to-day. Wait till I get you a ticket, and then
you come back and help me admire ourselves. I came
down on a long lope when somebody said you caught a
street car headed this way. Thought maybe I'd run
across you here. Knew you couldn't stay away much
longer from seeing how you look. Ain't too proud to
sit alongside a rough-neck puncher, are you?"

Jean looked at him understandingly. Lite's exuberance
was unusual; but she knew, as well as though he
had told her, that he had been lonesome in this strange
city, and that he was overjoyed at the sight of her, who
was his friend. She unpinned her hat which she had
been at some pains to adjust at the exact angle decreed
by fashion.

"Yes, I'll go back with you," she drawled. "I want
to see how you like the sight of yourself just as you are.
It--it's good for one, after the first shock wears off."
She would not say a word about that Mexican picture,
she thought; but she wanted to see if Lite also would
recognize Art Osgood, and feel as sure of his identity as
she had felt. That would make her doubly sure of her
self. She could do what she meant to do without any
misgivings whatsoever. She could afford to wait a little
while and have the pleasure of Lite's presence beside
her. Lite was homesick and lonesome;--she felt it in
every tone and in every look;--almost as homesick
and lonesome as she was herself. She would not hurt
him by going off and leaving him alone, even if she had
not wanted to be with him and to watch the effect that
Mexican picture would have upon him. Lite believed
Art Osgood was in the Klondyke. She would wait and
see what he believed after he had seen that Nogales picture

She waited. She had missed Lite in the last day or
so; she had seemed almost as far away from him as
from the Lazy A. But all the while she talked to him
in whispers when he had wanted to discuss the Jean
picture, she was waiting, just waiting, for that Nogales
picture.

When it came at last, Jean turned her head and
watched Lite. And Lite gave a real start and said
something under his breath, and plucked at her sleeve
afterwards to attract her attention.

"Look--quick! That fellow standing there with
his arms folded. Skin me alive if it isn't Art Osgood!"

"Are you sure?" Jean studied him.

"Sure? Where're your eyes? Look at him! It
sure ain't anybody else, Jean. Now, what do you
reckon he's doing down in Mexico?"

CHAPTER XXI

JEAN BELIEVES THAT SHE TAKES MATTERS INTO

HER OWN HANDS

After all, Jean did not have to fight her way clear
through "Warring Mexico" and back again, in
order to reach Nogales. She let Lite take her to the
snug little apartment which she was to share with Muriel
and her mother, and she fancied that she had been very
crafty and very natural in her manner all the while he
was with her, and that Lite did not dream of what she
had in her mind to do. At any rate, she watched him
stalk away on his high-heeled riding-boots, and she
thought that his mind was perfectly at ease. (Jean, I
fear, never will understand Lite half as well as Lite
has always understood Jean.)

She caught the next down-town car and went straight
to the information bureau of the Southern Pacific,
established for the convenience of the public and the sanity of
employees who have something to do besides answer foolish
questions.

She found a young man there who was not averse to
talking at length with a young woman who was dressed
trimly in a street suit of the latest fashion, and who had
almost entrancing, soft drawl to her voice and a most
fascinating way of looking at one. This young man
appeared to know a great deal, and to be almost eager
to pass along his wisdom. He knew all about Nogales,
Mexico, for instance, and just what train would next
depart in that general direction, and how much it would
cost, and how long she would have to wait in Tucson for
the once-a-day train to Nogales, and when she might
logically expect to arrive in that squatty little town that
might be said to be really and truly divided against
itself. Here the nice young man became facetious.

"Bible tells us a city divided against itself cannot
stand," he informed Jean quite gratuitously. "Well,
maybe that's straight goods, too. But Nogales is cut
right through at the waist line with the international
boundary line. United States customhouse on one
corner of the street, Mexican customhouse in talking
distance on the other corner. Great place for holdups,
that!" This was a joke, and Jean smiled obligingly.
"First the United States holds you up, and then the
Mexicans. You get it coming and going. Well,
Nogales don't have to stand. It squats. It's adobe
mostly."

Jean was interested, and she did not discourage the
nice young man. She let him say all he could think of
on the subject of Nogales and the Federal troops
stationed there, and on warring Mexico generally. When
she left him, she felt as if she knew a great deal about
the end of her journey. So she smiled and thanked the
nice young man in that soft drawl that lingered pleasantly
in his memory, and went over to another window
and bought a ticket to Nogales. She moved farther
along to another window and secured a Pullman ticket
which gave her lower five in car four for her comfort.

With an impulse of wanting to let her Uncle Carl
know that she was not forgetting her mission, she sent
him this laconic telegram:

Have located Art. Will bring him back with me.
JEAN.

After that, she went home and packed a suit-case and
her six-shooter and belt. She did not, after all, know
just what might happen in Nogales, Mexico, but she
meant to bring back Art Osgood if he were to be found
alive; hence the six-shooter.

That evening she told Muriel that she was going to
run away and have her vacation--her "vacation"
hunting down and capturing a murderer who had taken
refuge in the Mexican army!--and that she would
write when she knew just where she would stop. Then
she went away alone in a taxi to the depot, and started
on her journey with a six-shooter jostling a box of
chocolates in her suit-case, and with her heart almost
light again, now that she was at last following a clue that
promised something at the other end.

It was all just as the nice young man had told her.
Jean arrived in Tucson, and she left on time, on the
once-a-day train to Nogales.

Lite also arrived in Tucson on time, though Jean did
not see him, since he descended from the chair car with
some caution just as she went into the depot. He did
not depart on time as it happened; he was thirsty, and
he went off to find something wetter than water to drink,
and while he was gone the once-a-day train also went
off through the desert. Lite saw the last pair of wheels
it owned go clipping over the switch, and he stood in the
middle of the track and swore. Then he went to the
telegraph office and found out that a freight left for
Nogales in ten minutes. He hunted up the conductor
and did things to his bank roll, and afterwards climbed
into the caboose on the sidetrack. Lite has been so
careful to keep in the background, through all these
chapters, that it seems a shame to tell on him now. But
I am going to say that, little as Jean suspected it, he
had been quite as interested in finding Art Osgood as
had she herself. When he saw her pass through the
gate to the train, in Los Angeles, that was his first
intimation that she was going to Nogales; so he had stayed
in the chair car out of sight. But it just shows how
great minds run in the same channel; and how, without
suspecting one another, these two started at the same
time upon the same quest.

Jean stared out over the barrenness that was not like
the barrenness of Montana, and tried not to think that
perhaps Art Osgood had by this time drifted on into
obscurity. Still, if he had drifted on, surely she could
trace him, since he had been serving on the staff of a
general and should therefore be pretty well known.
What she really hated most to think of was the possibility
that he might have been killed. They did get killed,
sometimes, down there where there was so much fighting
going on all the time.

When the shadows of the giant cactus stretched
mutilated hands across the desert sand, and she believed
that Nogales was near, Jean carried her suit-case to the
cramped dressing-room and took out her six-shooter and
buckled it around her. Then she pulled her coat down
over it with a good deal of twisting and turning before
the dirty mirror to see that it looked all right, and
not in the least as though a perfect lady was packing a
gun.

She went back and dipped fastidious fingers into the
box of chocolates, and settled herself to nibble candy and
wait for what might come. She felt very calm and self-
possessed and sure of herself. Her only fear was that
Art Osgood might have been killed, and his lips closed
for all time. So they rattled away through the barrenness
and drew near to Nogales.

Casa del Sonora, whither she went, was an old, two-
story structure of the truly Spanish type, and it was
kept by a huge, blubbery creature with piggish eyes and
a bloated, purple countenance and the palsy. As much
of him as appeared to be human appeared to be Irish;
and Jean, after the first qualm of repulsion, when she
faced him over the hotel register, detected a certain
kindly solicitude in his manner, and was reassured.

So far, everything had run smoothly, like a well-
staged play. Absurdly simple, utterly devoid of any
element of danger, any vexatious obstacle to the
immediate achievement of her purpose! But Jean was not
thrown off her guard because of the smoothness of the
trail.

The trip from Tucson had been terribly tiresome; she
was weary in every fibre, it seemed to her. But for all
that she intended, sometime that evening, to meet Art
Osgood if he were in town. She intended to take him
with her on the train that left the next morning. She
thought it would be a good idea to rest now, and to
proceed deliberately, lest she frustrate all her plans by
over-eagerness.

Perhaps she slept a little while she lay upon the bed
and schooled herself to calmness. A band, somewhere,
playing a pulsing Spanish air, brought her to her feet.
She went to the window and looked out, and saw that
the street lay cool and sunless with the coming of dusk.

From the American customhouse just on the opposite
corner came Lite Avery, stalking leisurely along in his
high-heeled riding-boots. Jean drew back with a little
flutter of the pulse and watched him, wondering how he
came to be in Nogales. She had last seen him boarding
a car that would take him out to the Great Western
Studio; and now, here he was, sauntering across the
street as if he lived here. It was like finding his bed
up in the loft and knowing all at once that he had been
keeping watch all the while, thinking of her welfare and
never giving her the least hint of it. That at least was
understandable. But to her there was something
uncanny about his being here in Nogales. When he was
gone, she stepped out through the open window to the
veranda that ran the whole length of the hotel, and
looked across the street into Mexico.

She was, she decided critically, about fifteen feet
from the boundary line. Just across the street fluttered
the Mexican flag from the Mexican customhouse. A
Mexican guard lounged against the wall, his swarthy
face mask-like in its calm. While she leaned over the
railing and stared curiously at that part of the street
which was another country, from the hills away to the
west, where were camped soldiers,--the American
soldiers,--who prevented the war from slopping over the
line now and then into Arizona, came the clear
notes of a bugle held close-pressed against the lips of a
United States soldier in snug-fitting khaki. The boom
of the sundown salute followed immediately after. In
the street below her, Mexicans and Americans mingled
amiably and sauntered here and there, killing time during
that bored interval between eating and the evening's
amusement.

Just beyond the Mexican boundary, the door of a
long, adobe cantina was flung open, and a group of men
came out and paused as if they were wondering what
they should do next, and where they should go. Jean
looked them over curiously. Mexicans they were not,
though they had some of the dress which belonged on
that side of the boundary.

Americans they were; one knew by the set of their
shoulders, by the little traits of race which have nothing
to do with complexion or speech.

Jean caught her breath and leaned forward. There
was Art Osgood, standing with his back toward her and
with one palm spread upon his hip in the attitude she
knew so well. If only he would turn! Should she run
down the stairs and go over there and march him across
the line at the muzzle of her revolver? The idea
repelled her, now that she had actually come to the point
of action.

Jean, now that the crisis had arrived, used her
woman's wile, rather than the harsher but perhaps less
effective weapons of a man.

"Oh, Art!" she called, just exactly as she would have
called to him on the range, in Montana "Hello,
Art!"

Art Osgood wheeled and sent a startled, seeking
glance up at the veranda; saw her and knew who it was
that had called him, and lifted his hat in the gesture
that she knew so well. Jean's fingers were close to her
gun, though she was not conscious of it, or of the
strained, tense muscles that waited the next move.

Art, contrary to her expectations, did the most natural
thing in the world. He grinned and came hurrying toward
her with the long, eager steps of one who goes to
greet a friend after an absence that makes of that meeting
an event. Jean watched him cross the street. She
waited, dazed by the instant success of her ruse, while
he disappeared under the veranda. She heard his feet
upon the stairs. She heard him come striding down the
hall to the glass-paneled door. She saw him coming
toward her, still grinning in his joy at the meeting.

"Jean Douglas! By all that's lucky!" he was
exclaiming. "Where in the world did you light down
from?" He came to a stop directly in front of her,
and held out his hand in unsuspecting friendship.

CHAPTER XXII

JEAN MEETS ONE CRISIS AND CONFRONTS ANOTHER

"Well, say! This is like seeing you walk out
of that picture that's running at the Teatro
Palacia. You sure are making a hit with those moving-
pictures; made me feel like I'd met somebody from
home to stroll in there and see you and Lite come
riding up, large as life. How is Lite, anyway?"

If Art Osgood felt any embarrassment over meeting
her, he certainly gave no sign of it. He sat down on
the railing, pushed back his hat, and looked as though
he was preparing for a real soul-feast of reminiscent
gossip. "Just get in?" he asked, by way of opening
wider the channel of talk. He lighted a cigarette and
flipped the match down into the street. "I've been here
three or four months. I'm part of the Mexican revolution,
though I don't reckon I look it. We been keeping
things pretty well stirred up, down this way. You
looking for picture dope? Lubin folks are copping all
kinds of good stuff here. You ain't with them, are
you?"

Jean braced herself against slipping into easy conver-
sation with this man who seemed so friendly and
unsuspicious and so conscience-free. Killing a man, she
thought, evidently did not seem to him a matter of any
moment; perhaps because he had since then become a
professional killer of men. After planning exactly how
she should meet any contingency that might arise, she
found herself baffled. She had not expected to meet
this attitude. She was not prepared to meet it. She
had taken it for granted that Art Osgood would shun
a meeting; that she would have to force him to face her.
And here he was, sitting on the porch rail and swinging
one spurred and booted foot, smiling at her and talking,
in high spirits over the meeting--or a genius at
acting. She eyed him uncertainly, trying to adjust
herself to this emergency.

Art came to a pause and looked at her inquiringly.
"What's the matter?" he demanded. "You called me
up here--and I sure was tickled to death to come, all
right!--and now you stand there looking like I was a
kid that had been caught whispering, and must be kept
after school. I know the symptoms, believe me!
You're sore about something I've said. What, don't
you like to have anybody talk about you being a movie-
queen? You sure are all of that. You've got a license
to be proud of yourself. Or maybe you didn't know
you was speaking to a Mexican soldier, or something like
that." He made a move to rise. "Ex-cuse ME, if I've
said something I hadn't ought. I'll beat it, while the
beating's good."

"No, you won't. You'll stay right where you are."
His frank acceptance of her hostile attitude steadied
Jean. "Do you think I came all the way down here
just to say hello?"

"Search me." Art studied her curiously. "I
never could keep track of what you thought and what
you meant, and I guess you haven't grown any easier to
read since I saw you last. I'll be darned if I know
what you came for; but it's a cinch you didn't come
just to be riding on the cars."

"No," drawled Jean, watching him. "I didn't. I
came after you."

Art Osgood stared, while his cheeks darkened with
the flush of confusion. He laughed a little. "I sure
wish that was the truth," he said. "Jean, you never
would have to go very far after any man with two eyes
in his head. Don't rub it in."

"I did," said Jean calmly. "I came after you. I'd
have found you if I had to hunt all through Mexico and
fight both armies for you."

"Jean!" There was a queer, pleading note in Art's
voice. "I wish I could believe that, but I can't. I
ain't a fool."

"Yes, you are." Jean contradicted him pitilessly.
"You were a fool when you thought you could go away
and no one think you knew anything at all about--
Johnny Croft."

Art's fingers had been picking at a loose splinter on
the wooden rail whereon he sat. He looked down at it,
jerked it loose with a sharp twist, and began snapping
off little bits with his thumb and forefinger. In a minute
he looked up at Jean, and his eyes were different.
They were not hostile; they were merely cold and watchful
and questioning

"Well?"

"Well, somebody did think so. I've thought so for
three years, and so I'm here." Jean found that her
breath was coming fast, and that as she leaned back
against a post and gripped the rail on either side, her
arms were quivering like the legs of a frightened horse.
Still, her voice had sounded calm enough.

Art Osgood sat with his shoulders drooped forward a
little, and painstakingly snipped off tiny bits of the
splinter. After a short silence, he turned his head
and looked at her again.

"I shouldn't think you'd want to stir up that trouble
after all this while," he said. "But women are queer.
I can't see, myself, why you'd want to bother hunting
me up on account of--that."

Jean weighed his words, his look, his manner, and
got no clue at all to what was going on back of his eyes.
On the surface, he was just a tanned, fairly good-looking
young man who has been reluctantly drawn into an
unpleasant subject.

"Well, I did consider it worth while bothering to
hunt you up," she told him flatly. "If you don't think
it's important, you at least won't object to going back
with me?"

Again his glance went to her face, plainly startled.
"Go back with you?" he repeated. "What for?"

"Well--" Jean still had some trouble with her
breath and to keep her quiet, smooth drawl, "let's make
it a woman's reason. Because."

Art's face settled to a certain hardness that still was
not hostile. "Becauses don't go," he said. "Not with
a girl like you; they might with some. What do you
want me to go back for?"

"Well, I want you to go because I want to clear
things up, about Johnny Croft. It's time--it was
cleared up."

Art regarded her fixedly. "Well, I don't see yet
what's back of that first BECAUSE," he sparred.
"There's nothing I can do to clear up anything."

"Art, don't lie to me about it. I know--"

"What do you know?" Art's eyes never left her
face, now. They seemed to be boring into her brain.
Jean began to feel a certain confusion. To be sure,
she had never had any experience whatever with fugitive
murderers; but no one would ever expect one to act
like this. A little more, she thought resentfully, and
he would be making her feel as if she were the guilty
person. She straightened herself and stared back at
him.

"I know you left because you--you didn't want to
stay and face-things. I--I have felt as if I could
kill you, almost, for what you have done. I--I don't
see how you can SIT there and--and look at me that
way." She stopped and braced herself. "I don't want
to argue about it. I came here to make you go back
and face things. It's--horrible--" She was thinking
of her father then, and she could not go on.

"Jean, you're all wrong. I don't know what idea
you've got, but you may as well get one or two things
straight. Maybe you do feel like killing me; but I
don't know what for. I haven't the slightest notion of
going back; there's nothing I could clear up, if I did
go."

Jean looked at him dumbly. She supposed she
should have to force him to go, after all. Of course,
you couldn't expect that a man who had committed a
crime will admit it to the first questioner; you couldn't
expect him to go back willingly and face the penalty.
She would have to use her gun; perhaps even call on
Lite, since Lite had followed her. She might have felt
easier in her mind had she seen how Lite was standing
just within the glass-paneled door behind the dimity
curtain, listening to every word, and watching every
expression on Art Osgood's face. Lite's hand, also, was
close to his gun, to be perfectly sure of Jean's safety.
But he had no intention of spoiling her feeling of
independence if he could help it. He had lots of faith in
Jean.

"What has cropped up, anyway?" Art asked her
curiously, as if he had been puzzling over her reasons for
being there. "I thought that affair was settled long
ago, when it happened. I thought it was all straight
sailing--"

"To send an innocent man to prison for it? Do
you call that straight sailing?" Jean's eyes had in
them now a flash of anger that steadied her.

"What innocent man?" Art threw away the stub
of the splinter and sat up straight. "I never knew any
innocent man--"

"Oh! You didn't know?"

"All I know," said Art, with a certain swiftness of
speech that was a new element in his manner, "I'm
dead willing to tell you. I knew Johnny had been
around knocking the outfit, and making some threats,
and saying things he had no business to say. I never
did have any use for him, just because he was so
mouthy. I wasn't surprised to hear--how it ended
up."

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