Jean of the Lazy A

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"I beg your pardon for delaying your work," she
said coldly, and rose from the bench. "But you might
have explained your presence in the first place." She
wrapped the bird carefully in her handkerchief so that
only its beak and its bright eyes were uncovered, pulled
her hat forward upon her head, and walked away from
them down the path to the stables.

Robert Grant Burns turned slowly on his heels and
watched her go, and until she had led out her horse,
mounted and ridden away, he said never a word. Pete
Lowry leaned an elbow upon the camera and watched
her also, until she passed out of sight around the corner
of the dilapidated calf shed, and he was as silent as
the director.

"Some rider," Lee Milligan commented to the
assistant camera man, and without any tangible reason
regretted that he had spoken.

Robert Grant Burns turned harshly to the two
women. "Now then, you two go through that scene
again. And when you put out your hand to stop
Muriel, don't grab at her, Mrs. Gay. Hesitate! You
want your son to get the warning, but you've got your
doubts about letting her take the risk of going. And,
Gay, when you read the letter, try and show a little
emotion in your face. You saw how that girl looked
--see if you can't get that hurt, bitter look GRADUALLY,
as you read. The way she got it. Put in more feeling
and not so much motion. You know what I mean;
you saw the girl. That's the stuff that gets over.
Ready? Camera!"

CHAPTER IX

A MAN-SIZED JOB FOR JEAN

Jean was just returning wet-lashed from burying
the little brown bird under a wild-rose bush near
the creek. She had known all along that it would die;
everything that she took any interest in turned out
badly, it seemed to her. The wonder was that the bird
had lived so long after she had taken it under her
protection.

All that day her Aunt Ella had worn a wet towel
turban-wise upon her head, and the look of a martyr
about to enter a den of lions. Add that to the habitual
atmosphere of injury which she wore, and Aunt Ella
was not what one might call a cheerful companion.
Besides, the appearance of the wet towel was a danger
signal to Jean's conscience, and forbade any thought
of saddling Pard and riding away from the Bar Nothing
into her own dream world and the great outdoors.
Jean's conscience commanded her instead to hang her
riding-clothes in the closet and wear striped percale
and a gingham apron, which she hated; and to sweep
and dust and remember not to whistle, and to look
sympathetic,--which she was not, particularly; and to ask
her Aunt Ella frequently if she felt any better, and if
there was anything Jean could do for her. There never
was anything she could do, but conscience and custom
required her to observe the ceremony of asking. Aunt
Ella found some languid satisfaction in replying dolorously
that there was nothing that anybody could do,
and that her part in life seemed to be to suffer.

You may judge what Jean's mood was that day,
when you are told that she came to the point, not an
hour before the bird died, of looking at her aunt with
that little smile at the corners of her eyes and just
easing her lips. "Well, you certainly play your part
in life with a heap of enthusiasm," she had replied, and
had gone out into the kitchen and whistled when she
did not feel in the least like whistling. Her conscience
knew Jean pretty well, and did not attempt to reprove
her for what she had done.

Then she found the bird dead in the little nest she
had made for it, and things went all wrong.

She was returning from the burial of the bird, and
was trying to force herself back to her normal attitude
of philosophic calm, when she saw her Uncle Carl sitting
on the edge of the front porch, with his elbows
resting loosely upon his knees, his head bowed, and his
boot-heel digging a rude trench in the hard-packed
earth.

The sight of him incensed her suddenly. Once more
she wished that she might get at his brain and squeeze
out his thoughts; and it never occurred to her that she
would probably have found them extremely commonplace
thoughts that strayed no farther than his own
little personal business of life, and that they would
easily be translated to the dollar sign. His attitude
was one of gloomy meditation, and her own mood supplied
the subject. She watched him for a minute or
two, and his abstraction was so deep that he did not feel
her presence.

"Uncle Carl, just how much did the Lazy A cost
you?" she asked so abruptly that she herself was
surprised at the question. "Or putting it another way,
just how many dollars and cents did you spend in defending
dad?"

Carl started, which was perfectly natural, and glared
at her, which was natural also, when one considers that
Jean had without warning opened a subject tacitly
forbidden upon that ranch. His eyes hardened a little
while he looked at her, for between these two there was
scant affection.

"What do you want to know for?" he countered,
when she persisted in looking at him as though she was
waiting for an answer.

"Because I've a right to know. Some time,--
within four years,--I mean to buy back the Lazy A.
I want to know how much it will take." Until that
moment Jean had merely dreamed of some day buying
it back. Until she spoke she would have named the
idea a beautiful, impossible desire.

"Where you going to get the money?" Carl looked
at her curiously, as if he almost doubted her sanity.

"Rob a bank, perhaps. How much will it take to
square things with you? Of course, being a relative,
I expect to be cheated a little. So I am going to adopt
sly, sleuth-like methods and find out just how much
dad owed you before--it happened, and just how
much the lawyers charged, and what was the real market
value of the outfit, and all that. Dad told me--
dad told me that there was something left over for me.
He didn't explain--there wasn't time, and I--
couldn't listen to dollar-talk then. I've gone along all
this time, just drifting and getting used to facts, and
taking it for granted that everything is all right--"

"Well, what's wrong? Everything is all right, far
as I know. I can see what you're driving at--"

"And I'm a pretty fair driver, too," Jean cut in
calmly. "I'll reach my destination, I think,--give
me time enough."

"Whatever fool notion you've got in your head,
you'd better drop it," Carl told her harshly. "There
ain't anything you can do to better matters. I came
out with the worst of it, when you come right down to
facts, and all the nagging-"

Jean went toward him as if she would strike him
with her uplifted hand. "Don't dare say that! How
can you say that,--and think of dad? He got the
worst of it. He's the one that suffers most--and--
he's as innocent as you or I. You know it."

Carl rose from the porch and faced her like an
enemy. "What do you mean by that? I know it?
If I knew anything like that, do you think I'd leave a
stone unturned to prove it? Do you think--"

"I think we both know dad. And some things were
not proved,--to my satisfaction, at least. And you
know how long the jury was out, and what a time they
had agreeing. Some points were weak. It was simply
that they couldn't point to any one else. You know
that was it. If I could find Art Osgood--"

"What's he got to do with it?" Her uncle leaned
a little and peered into her face, which the dusk was
veiling.

"That is what I want to find out." Jean's voice
was quiet, but it had a quality which he had never
before noticed.

"You'd better," he advised her tritely, "let sleeping
dogs lie."

"That's the trouble with sleeping dogs; they do lie,
more often than not. These particular dogs have lied
for nearly three years. I'm going to stir them up and
see if I can't get a yelp of the truth out of them."

"Oh, you are!" Carl laughed ironically. "You'll
stir up a lot of unpleasantness for yourself and the rest
of us, is what you'll do. The thing's over and done
with. Folks are beginning to forget it. You've got a
home--"

Jean laughed, and her laugh was extremely unpleasant.

"You get as good as the rest of us get," her uncle
reminded her sharply. "I came near going broke myself
over the affair, if you want to know; and you
stand there and accuse me of cheating you out of
something! I don't know what in heaven's name you
expect. The Lazy A didn't make me rich, I can tell you
that. It just barely helped to tide things over. You've
got a home here, and you can come and go as you
please. What you ain't got," he added bitterly, "is
common gratitude."

He turned away from her and went into the house,
and Jean sat down upon the edge of the porch and
stared away at the dimming outline of the hills, and
wondered what had come over her.

Three years on this ranch, seeing her uncle every day
almost, living under the same roof with him, talking
with him upon the everyday business of life,--and to-
night, for the first time, the forbidden subject had been
opened. She had said things that until lately she had
not realized were in her mind. She had never liked
her uncle, who was so different from her father, but
she had never accused him in her mind of unfairness
until she had written something of the sort in her
ledger. She had never thought of quarrelling,--and
yet one could scarcely call this encounter less than a
quarrel. And the strange part of it was that she still
believed what she had said; she still intended to do the
things she declared she would do. Just how she would
do them she did not know, but her purpose was hardening
and coming clean-cut out of the vague background
of her mind.

After awhile the dim outline of the high-shouldered
hills glowed under a yellowing patch of light. Jean
sat with her chin in her palms and watched the glow
brighten swiftly. Then some unseen force seemed to
be pushing a bright yellow disk up through a gap in
the hills, and the gap was almost too narrow, so that the
disk touched either side as it slid slowly upward. At
last it was up, launched fairly upon its leisurely, drifting
journey across to the farther hills behind her. It
was not quite round. That was because one edge had
scraped too hard against the side of the hill, perhaps.
But warped though it was, its light fell softly upon
Jean's face, and showed it set and still and stern-eyed
and somber.

She sat there awhile longer, until the slopes lay
softly revealed to her, their hollows filled with inky
shadows. She drew a long breath then, and looked
around her at the familiar details of the Bar Nothing
dwelling-place, softened a little by the moonlight, but
harsh with her memories of unhappy days spent there.
She rose and went into the house and to her room, and
changed the hated striped percale for her riding-clothes.

A tall, lank form detached itself from the black
shade of the bunk-house as she went by, hesitated
perceptibly, and then followed her down to the corral.
When she had gone in with a rope and later led out
Pard, the form stood forth in the white light of the
moon.

"Where are you going, Jean?" Lite asked her in a
tone that was soothing in its friendliness.

"That you, Lite? I'm going--well, just going.
I've got to ride." She pulled Pard's bridle off the peg
where she always hung it, and laid an arm over his
neck while she held the bit against his clinched teeth.
Pard never did take kindly to the feel of the cold steel
in his mouth, and she spoke to him sharply before his
jaws slackened.

"Want me to go along with you?" Lite asked, and
reached for his saddle and blanket.

"No, I want you to go to bed." Jean's tone was
softer than it had been for that whole day. "You've
had all the riding you need. I've been shut up with
Aunt Ella and her favorite form of torture."

"Got your gun?" Lite gave the latigo a final pull
which made Pard grunt.

"Of course. Why?"

"Nothing,--only it's a good night for coyotes, and
you might get a shot at one. Another thing, a gun's
no good on earth when you haven't got it with you."

"Yes, and you've told me so about once a week ever
since I was big enough to pull a trigger," Jean
retorted, with something approaching her natural tone.
"Maybe I won't come back, Lite. Maybe I'll camp
over home till morning."

Lite did not say anything in reply to that. He
leaned his long person against a corral post and watched
her out of sight on the trail up the hill. Then he
caught his own horse, saddled it leisurely, and rode
away.

Jean rode slowly, leaving the trail and striking out
across the open country straight for the Lazy A. She
had no direct purpose in riding this way; she had not
intended to ride to the Lazy A until she named the
place to Lite as her destination, but since she had told
him so, she knew that was where she was going. The
picture-people would not be there at night, and she felt
the need of coming as close as possible to her father;
at the Lazy A, where his thoughts would cling, she felt
near to him,--much nearer than when she was at the
Bar Nothing. And that the gruesome memory of
what had happened there did not make the place seem
utterly horrible merely proves how unshakable was her
faith in him.

A coyote trotted up out of a hollow facing her,
stiffened with astonishment, dropped nose and tail, and
slid away in the shadow of the hill. A couple of
minutes later Jean saw him sitting alert upon his haunches
on a moon-bathed slope, watching to see what she would
do. She did nothing; and the coyote pointed his nose
to the moon, yap-yap-yapped a quavering defiance, and
slunk out of sight over the hill crest.

Her mind now was more at ease than it had been
since the day of horror when she had first stared black
tragedy in the face. She was passing through that
phase of calm elation which follows close upon the heels
of a great resolve. She had not yet come to the actual
surmounting of the obstacles that would squeeze hope
from the heart of her; she had not yet looked upon the
possibility of absolute failure.

She was going to buy back the Lazy A from her
Uncle Carl, and she was going to tear away that
atmosphere of emptiness and desolation which it had worn
so long. She was going to prove to all men that her
father never had killed Johnny Croft. She was going
to do it! Then life would begin where it had left off
three years ago. And when this deadening load of
trouble was lifted, then perhaps she could do some of
the glorious, great things she had all of her life dreamed
of doing. Or, if she never did the glorious, great
things, she would at least have done something to justify
her existence. She would be content in her cage if she
could go round and round doing things for dad.

A level stretch of country lay at the foot of the long
bluff, which farther along held the Lazy A coulee close
against its rocky side. The high ridges stood out boldly
in the moonlight, so that she could see every rock and
the shadow that it cast upon the ground. Little, soothing
night noises fitted themselves into her thoughts and
changed them to waking dreams. Crickets that hushed
while she passed them by; the faint hissing of a half-
wakened breeze that straightway slept upon the grasses
it had stirred; the sleepy protest of some bird which
Pard's footsteps had startled.

She came into Lazy A coulee, half fancying that it
was a real home-coming. But when she reached the
gate and found it lying flat upon the ground away from
the broad tread of the picture-people's machine, her
mind jarred from dreams back to reality. From sheer
habit she dismounted, picked up the spineless thing of
stakes and barbed wire, dragged it into place across
the trail, and fastened it securely to the post. She
remounted and went on, and a little of the hopefulness
was gone from her face.

"I'll just about have to rob a bank, I guess," she told
herself with a grim humor at the tremendous undertaking
to which she had so calmly committed herself.
"This is what dad would call a man-sized job, I
reckon." She pulled up in the white-lighted trail and
stared along the empty, sagging-roofed sheds and stables,
and at the corral with its open gate and warped
rails and leaning posts. "I'll just about have to rob
a bank,--or write a book that will make me famous."

She touched Pard with a rein end and went on slowly.
"Robbing a bank would be the quickest and easiest,"
she decided whimsically, as she neared the place where
she always sheltered Pard. "But not so ladylike. I
guess I'll write a book. It should be something real
thrilly, so the people will rush madly to all the bookstores
to buy it. It should have a beautiful girl, and
at least two handsome men,--one with all the human
virtues, and the other with all the arts of the devil and
the cruel strength of the savage. And--I think some
Indians and outlaws would add several dollars' worth of
thrills; or else a ghost and a haunted house. I wonder
which would sell the best? Indians could steal the girl
and give her two handsome men a chance to do chapters
of stunts, and the wicked one could find her first
and carry her away in front of him on a horse (they
do those things in books!) and the hero could follow in
a mad chase for miles and miles--

"But then, ghosts can be made very creepy, with
tantalizing glimpses of them now and then in about every
other chapter, and mysterious hints here and there, and
characters coming down to breakfast with white, drawn
faces and haggard eyes. And the wicked one would
look over his shoulder and then utter a sardonic laugh. Sardonic
is such an effective word; I don't believe
Indians would give him any excuse for sardonic laughter."

She swung down from the saddle and led Pard into
his stall, that was very black next the manger and very
light where the moon shone in at the door. "I must
have lots of moonlight and several stormy sunsets, and
the wind soughing in the branches. I shall have to
buy a new dictionary,--a big, fat, heavy one with the
flags of all nations and how to measure the contents
of an empty hogshead, and the deaf and dumb alphabet,
and everything but the word you want to know the meaning
of and whether it begins with ph or an f."

She took the saddle off Pard and hung it up by a
stirrup on the rusty spike where she kept it, with the
bridle hung over the stirrup, and the saddle blanket
folded over the horn. She groped in the manger and
decided that there was hay enough to last him till morning,
and went out and closed the door. Her shadow
fell clean cut upon the rough planks, and she stood for a
minute looking at it as if it were a person. Her Stetson
hat tilted a little to one side, her hair fluffed loosely
at the sides, leaving her neck daintily slender where it
showed above the turned-back collar of her gray sweater;
her shoulders square and capable and yet not too heavy,
and the slim contour of her figure reaching down to
the ground. She studied it abstractedly, as she would
study herself in her mirror, conscious of the individuality,
its likeness to herself.

"I don't know what kind of a mess you'll make of it,"
she said to her shadow, "but you're going to tackle it,
just the same. You can't do a thing till you get some
money."

She turned then and went thoughtfully up to the
house and into her room, which had as yet been left
undisturbed behind the bars she had placed against idle
invasion.

The moon shone full into the window that faced the
coulee, and she sat down in the old, black wooden rocker
and gazed out upon the familiar, open stretch of sand
and scant grass-growth that lay between the house and
the corrals. She turned her eyes to the familiar bold
outline of the bluff that swung round in a crude oval
to the point where the trail turned into the coulee from
the southwest. Half-way between the base and the
ragged skyline, the boulder that looked like an
elephant's head stood out, white of profile, hooded with
black shade. Beyond was the fat shelf of ledge that
had a small cave beneath, where she had once found a
nest full of little, hungry birds and upon the slope
beneath the telltale, scattered wing-feathers, to show what
fate had fallen upon the mother. Those birds had died
also, and she had wept and given them Christian burial,
and had afterwards spent hours every day with her little
rifle hunting the destroyer of that small home. She
remembered the incident now as a small thread in the
memory-pattern she was weaving.

While the shadows shortened as the moon swung
high, she sat and looked out upon the coulee and the
bluff that sheltered it, and she saw the things that were
blended cunningly with the things that were not. After
a long while her hands unclasped themselves from behind
her head and dropped numbly to her lap. She
sighed and moved stiffly, and knew that she was tired
and that she must get some sleep, because she could not
sit down in one spot and think her way through the
problems she had taken it upon herself to solve. So she
got up and crept under the Navajo blanket upon the
couch, tucked it close about her shoulders, and shut her
eyes deliberately. Presently she fell asleep.

CHAPTER X

JEAN LEARNS WHAT FEAR IS LIKE

Sometime in the still part of the night which
comes after midnight, Jean woke slowly from
dreaming of the old days that had been so vivid in her
mind when she went to sleep. Just at first she did not
know what it was that awakened her, though her eyes
were open and fixed upon the lighted square of the
window. She knew that she was in her room at the Lazy
A, but just at first it seemed to her that she was there
because she had always been sleeping in that room.
She sighed and turned her face away from the moonlight,
and closed her eyes again contentedly.

Half dreaming she opened them again and stared up
at the low ceiling. Somewhere in the house she heard
footsteps. Very slowly she wakened enough to listen.
They were footsteps,--the heavy, measured tread of
some man. They were in the room that had been her
father's bedroom, and at first they seemed perfectly
natural and right; they seemed to be her dad's footsteps,
and she wondered mildly what he was doing, up
at that time of night.

The footsteps passed from there into the kitchen and
stopped in the corner where stood the old-fashioned
cupboard with perforated tin panels in the doors and at the
sides, and the little drawers at the top,--the kind that
old people call a "safe." She heard a drawer pulled
out. Without giving any conscious thought to it, she
knew which drawer it was; it was the one next the wall,
--the one that did not pull out straight, and so had to
be jerked out. What was her dad . . . ?

Jean thrilled then with a tremor of fear. She had
wakened fully enough to remember. That was not her
dad, out there in the kitchen. She did not know who
it was; it was some strange man prowling through the
house, hunting for something. She felt again the
tremor of fear that is the heritage of womanhood alone
in the dark. She pulled the Navajo blanket up to her
ears with the instinct of the woman to hide, because
she is not strong enough to face and fight the danger
that comes in the dark. She listened to the sound of
that drawer being pushed back, and the other drawer
being pulled out, and she shivered under the blanket.

Then she reached out her hand and got hold of her
six-shooter which she had laid down unthinkingly upon a
chair near the couch. She wondered if she had locked
the outside door when she came in. She could not
remember having done so; probably she had not, since it is
not the habit of honest ranch-dwellers to lock their doors
at night. She wanted to get up and see, and fasten
it somehow; but she was afraid the man out there might
hear her. As it was, she reasoned nervously with herself,
he probably did not suspect that there was any
one in the house. It was an empty house. And unless
he had seen Pard in the closed stall. . . . She wondered
if he had heard Pard there, and had investigated and
found him. She wondered if he would come into this
room. She remembered how securely she had nailed
up the door from the kitchen, and she breathed freer.
She remembered also that she had her gun, there under
her hand. She closed her trembling fingers on the
familiar grip of it, and the feel of it comforted her and
steadied her.

Yet she had no desire, no slightest impulse to get up
and see who was there. She was careful not to move,
except to cover the doorway to the kitchen with her
gun.

After a few minutes the man came and tried the
door, and Jean lifted herself cautiously upon her elbow
and waited in grim desperation. If he forced that
door open, if he came in, she certainly would shoot;
and if she shot,--well, you remember the fate of that
hawk on the wing.

The man did not force the door open, which was
perhaps the luckiest thing that ever happened to him. He fussed
there until he must have made sure that it was fastened firmly
upon the inside, and then he left it and went into what had been
the living-room. Jean did not move from her half-sitting
position, nor did she change the aim of her gun. He might come
back and try again.

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