Jean of the Lazy A

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Jean started a savings account in the little bank
where her father had opened an account before she was
born, and Lite was made to writhe inwardly with her
boasting. Lite, if you please, had long ago started a
savings account at that same bank, and had lately cut
out poker, and even pool, from among his joys, that his
account might fatten the faster. He had the same
object which Jean had lately adopted so zealously, but he
did not tell her these things. He listened instead while
Jean read gloatingly her balance, and talked of what she
would do when she had enough saved to buy back the
ranch. She had stolen unwittingly the air castle which
Lite had been three years building, but he did not say a
word about it to Jean. Wistful eyed, but smiling with
his lips, he would sit while Jean spoiled whole sheets
of perfectly good story-paper, just figuring and estimating
and building castles with the dollar sign. If Robert
Grant Burns persisted in his mania for "feature-stuff"
and "punches" in his pictures, Jean believed that she
would have a fair start toward buying back the Lazy
A long before her book was published and had brought
her the thousands and thousands of dollars she was sure
it would bring. Very soon she could go boldly to a
lawyer and ask him to do something about her father's
case. Just what he should do she did not quite know;
and Lite did not seem to be able to tell her, but she
thought she ought to find out just how much the trial
had cost. And she wished she knew how to get about
setting some one on the trail of Art Osgood.

Jean was sure that Art Osgood knew something about
the murder, and she frequently tried to make Lite agree
with her. Sometimes she was sure that Art Osgood
was the murderer, and would argue and point out her
reasons to Lite. Art had been working for her uncle,
and rode often to the Lazy A. He had not been friendly
with Johnny Croft,--but then, nobody had been very
friendly with Johnny Croft. Still, Art Osgood was
less friendly with Johnny than most of the men in the
country, and just after the murder he had left the
country. Jean laid a good deal of stress upon the
circumstance of Art Osgood's leaving on that particular
afternoon, and she seemed to resent it because no one
had tried to find Art. No one had seemed to think his
going at that time had any significance, or any bearing
upon the murder, because he had been planning
to leave, and had announced that he would go that
day.

Jean's mind, as her bank account grew steadily to
something approaching dignity, worked back and forth
incessantly over the circumstances surrounding the murder,
in spite of Lite's peculiar attitude toward the subject,
which Jean felt but could not understand, since
he invariably assured her that he believed her dad was
innocent, when she asked him outright.

Sometimes, in the throes of literary composition, she
could not think of the word that she wanted. Her
eyes then would wander around familiar objects in the
shabby little room, and frequently they would come to
rest upon her father's saddle or her father's chaps: the
chaps especially seemed potent reminders of her father,
and drew her thoughts to him and held them there.
The worn leather, stained with years of hard usage and
wrinkled permanently where they had shaped themselves
to his legs in the saddle, brought his big, bluff
presence vividly before her, when she was in a certain
receptive mood. She would forget all about her story,
and the riding and shooting and roping she had done
that day to appease the clamorous, professional appetite
of Robert Grant Burns, and would sit and stare, and
think and think. Always her thoughts traveled in a
wide circle and came back finally to the starting point:
to free her father, and to give him back his home, she
must have money. To have money, she must earn it;
she must work for it. So then she would give a great
sigh of relaxed nervous tension and go back to her heroine
and the Indians and the mysterious footsteps that
marched on moonlight nights up and down a long porch
just outside windows that frequently framed white,
scared faces with wide, horror-stricken eyes which saw
nothing of the marcher, though the steps still went up
and down.

It was very creepy, in spots. It was so creepy that
one evening when Lite had come to smoke a cigarette or
two in her company and to listen to her account of the
day's happenings, Lite noticed that when she read the
creepy passages in her story, she glanced frequently over
her shoulder.

"You want to cut out this story writing," he said
abruptly, when she paused to find the next page. "It's
bad enough to work like you do in the pictures. This
is going a little too strong; you're as jumpy to-night as
a guilty conscience. Cut it out."

"I'm all right. I'm just doing that for dramatic
effect. This is very weird, Lite. I ought to have a
green shade on the lamp, to get the proper effect. I--
don't you think--er--those footsteps are terribly
mysterious?"

Lite looked at her sharply for a minute. "I sure
do," he said drily. "Where did you get the idea,
Jean?"

"Out of my head," she told him airily, and went on
reading while Lite studied her curiously.

That night Jean awoke and heard stealthy footsteps,
like a man walking in his socks and no boots, going all
through the house but never coming to her room. She
did not get up to see who it was, but lay perfectly still
and heard her heart thump. When she saw a dim, yellow
ray of light under the door which opened into the
kitchen, she drew the blanket over her head, and got
no comfort whatever from the feel of her six-shooter
close against her hand.

The next morning she told herself that she had given
in to a fine case of nerves, and that the mysterious
footsteps of her story had become mixed up with the
midnight wanderings of a pack-rat that had somehow gotten
into the house. Then she remembered the bar of light
under the door, and the pack-rat theory was spoiled.

She had taken the board off the doorway into the
kitchen, so that she could use the cookstove. The man
could have come in if he had wanted to, and that knowledge
she found extremely disquieting. She went all
through the house that morning, looking and wondering.
The living-room was now the dressing-room of Muriel
and her mother, and the make-up scattered over the
centertable was undisturbed; the wardrobe of the two
women had apparently been left untouched. Yet she
was sure that some one had been prowling in there in the
night. She gave up the puzzle at last and went back to
her breakfast, but before the company arrived in the big,
black automobile, she had found a stout hasp and two
staples, and had fixed the door which led from her room
into the kitchen so that she could fasten it securely on
the inside.

Jean did not tell Lite about the footsteps. She was
afraid that he might insist upon her giving up staying
at the Lazy A. Lite did not approve of it, anyway, and
it would take very little encouragement in the way of
extra risk to make him stubborn about it. Lite could
be very obstinate indeed upon occasion, and she was
afraid he might take a stubborn streak about this, and
perhaps ride over every night to make sure she was all
right, or do something equally unnecessary and foolish.

She did not know Lite as well as she imagined, which
is frequently the case with the closest of friends. As
a matter of fact, Jean had never spent one night alone
on the ranch, even though she did believe she was doing
so. Lite had a homestead a few miles away, upon
which he was supposed to be sleeping occasionally to
prove his good faith in the settlement. Instead of spending
his nights there, however, he rode over and slept in
the gable loft over the old granary, where no one ever
went; and he left every morning just before the sky
lightened with dawn. He did not know that Jean was
frightened by the sound of footsteps, but he had heard
the man ride up to the stable and dismount, and he
had followed him to the house and watched him through
the uncurtained windows, and had kept his fingers close
to his gun all the while. Jean did not dream of anything
like that; but Lite, going about his work with the
easy calm that marked his manner always, was quite as
puzzled over the errand of the night-prowler as was
Jean herself.

For three years Lite had lain aside the mystery of
the footprints on the kitchen floor on the night after
the inquest, as a puzzle he would probably never solve.
He had come to remember them as a vagrant incident
that carried no especial meaning. But now they seemed
to carry a new significance,--if only he could get at the
key. For three years he had gone along quietly, working
and saving all he could, and looking after Jean in
an unobtrusive way, believing that Aleck was guilty,--
and being careful to give no hint of that belief to any
one. And now Jean herself seemed to be leading him
unconsciously face to face with doubt and mystery.
It tantalized him. He knew the prowler, and for that
reason he was all the more puzzled. What had he
wanted or expected to find? Lite was tempted to face
the man and ask him; but on second thought he knew
that would be foolish. He would say nothing to Jean.
He thanked the Lord she slept soundly! and he would
wait and see what happened.

Jean herself was thoughtful all that day, and was
slow to lighten her mood or her manner even when Gil
Huntley rode beside her to location and talked
enthusiastically of the great work she was doing for a
beginner, and of the greater work she would do in the
future, if only she took advantage of her opportunities.

"It can't go on like this forever," he told her
impressively for the second time, before he was sure of her
attention and her interest. "Think of you, working
extra under a three-day guarantee! Why, you're
what's making the pictures! I had a letter from a
friend of mine; he's with the Universal. He'd been
down to see one of our pictures,--that first one you
worked in. You remember how you came down off that
bluff, and how you roped me and jerked me down off
the bank just as I'd got a bead on Lee? Say! that
picture was a RIOT! Gloomy says he never saw a picture get
the hand that scene got. And he wanted to know who
was doubling for Gay, up here. You see, he got next
that it was a double; he knows darned well Gay never
could put over that line of stuff. The photography
was dandy,--Pete's right there when it comes to camera
work, anyway,--and that run down the bluff, he said,
had people standing on their hind legs even before the
rope scene. You could tell it was a girl and no man
doubling the part. Gloomy says everybody around the
studio has begun to watch for our releases, and go just
to see you ride and rope and shoot. And Gay gets all
the press-notices! Say, it makes me sick!" He
looked at Jean wistfully.

"The trouble is, you don't realize what a raw deal
you're getting," he said, with much discontent in his
tone. "As an extra, you're getting fine treatment and
fine pay; I admit that. But the point is, you've no
business being an extra. Where you belong is playing
leads. You don't know what that means, but I do.
Burns is just using you to boost Muriel Gay, and I say
it's the rawest deal I ever saw handed out in the
picture game; and believe me, I've seen some raw deals!"

"Now, now, don't get peevish, Gil." Jean's drawl
was soft, and her eyes were friendly and amused. So
far had their friendship progressed. "It's awfully
dear of you to want to see me a real leading lady. I
appreciate it, and I won't take off that lock of hair I said
I'd take when I shoot you in the foreground. Burns
wants a real thrilling effect close up, and he's told me
five times to remember and keep my face turned away
from the camera, so they won't see it isn't Gay. If I
turn around, there will have to be a re-take, he says; and
you won't like that, Gil, not after you've heard a bullet
zip past your ear so close that it will fan your hair.
Are--aren't you afraid of me, Gil?"

"Afraid of you?" Gil's horse swung closer, and
Gil's eyes threatened the opening of a tacitly forbidden
subject.

"Because if you get nervous and move the least little
bit-- To make it look real, as Bobby described the
scene to me, I've got to shoot the instant you stop to
gather yourself for a spring at me. It's that lightning-
draw business I have to do, Gil. I'm to stand three
quarters to the camera, with my face turned away,
watching you. You keep coming, and you stop just an
instant when you're almost within reach of me. In
that instant I have to grab my gun and shoot; and it
has to look as if I got you, Gil. I've got to come pretty
close, in order to bring the gun in line with you for the
camera. Bobby wants to show off the quick draw that
Lite Avery taught me. That's to be the `punch' in
the scene. I showed him this morning what it is
like, and Bobby is just tickled to death. You see, I
don't shoot the way they usually do in pictures--"

"I should say not!" Gil interrupted admiringly.

"You haven't seen that quick work, either. It'll
look awfully real, Gil, and you mustn't dodge or duck,
whatever you do. It will be just as if you really were
a man I'm deadly afraid of, that has me cornered at
last against that ledge. I'm going to do it as if I meant
it. That will mean that when you stop and kind of
measure the distance, meaning to grab me before I can
do anything, I'll draw and shoot from the level of my
belt; no higher, Gil, or it won't be the lightning-draw
--as advertised. I won't have time to take a fine aim,
you know."

"Listen!" said Gil, leaning toward her with his eyes
very earnest. "I know all about that. I heard you and
Burns talking about it. You go ahead and shoot, and
put that scene over big. Don't you worry about me;
I'm going to play up to you, if I can. Listen! Pete's
just waiting for a chance to register your face on the
film. Burns has planned his scenes to prevent that,
but we're just lying low till the chance comes. It's
got to be dramatic, and it's got to seem accidental. Get
me? I shouldn't have told you, but I can't seem to
trick you, Jean. You're the kind of a girl a fellow's
got to play fair with."

"Bobby has told me five times already to remember and
keep my face away from the camera," Jean pointed
out the second time. "Makes me feel as if I had lost
my nose, or was cross-eyed or something. I do feel as
if I'd lose my job, Gil."

"No, you wouldn't; all he'd do would be to have a
re-take of the whole scene, and maybe step around like
a turkey in the snow, and swear to himself. Anyway,
you can forget what I've said, if you'll feel more
comfortable. It's up to Pete and me, and we'll put it over
smooth, or we won't do it at all. Bobby won't realize
it's happened till he hears from it afterwards. Neither
will you." He turned his grease-painted face toward
her hearteningly and smiled as endearingly as the
sinister, painted lines would allow.

"Listen!" he repeated as a final encouragement,
because he had sensed her preoccupation and had misread
it for worry over the picture. "You go ahead and
shoot, and don't bother about me. Make it real.
Shoot as close as you like. If you pink me a little I
won't care,--if you'll promise to be my nurse. I want
a vacation, anyway."

CHAPTER XIV

PUNCH VERSES PRESTIGE

It seems to be a popular belief among those who are
unfamiliar with the business of making motion
pictures that all dangerous or difficult feats are merely
tricks of the camera, and that the actors themselves
take no risks whatever. The truth is that they take a
good many more risks than the camera ever records;
and that directors who worship what they call "punch"
in their scenes are frequently as tender of the physical
safety of their actors as was Napoleon or any other great
warrior who measured results rather than wounds.

Robert Grant Burns had discovered that he had at
least two persons in his company who were perfectly
willing to do anything he asked them to do. He had
set tasks before Jean Douglas that many a man would
have refused without losing his self-respect, and Jean
had performed those tasks with enthusiasm. She had
let herself down over a nasty bit of the rim-rock whose
broken line extended half around the coulee bluff, with
only her rope between herself and broken bones, and
with her blond wig properly tousled and her face turned
always towards the rock wall, lest the camera should
reveal the fact that she was not Muriel Gay. She had
climbed that same rock-rim, with the aid of that same
rope, and with her face hidden as usual from the camera.
She had been bound and gagged and flung across Gil
Huntley's saddle and carried away at a sharp gallop,
and she had afterwards freed herself from her bonds in
the semi-darkness of a hut that half concealed her
features, and had stolen the knife from Gil Huntley's
belt while he slept, and crept away to where the horses
were picketed. In the revealing light of a very fine
moon-effect, which was a triumph of Pete's skill, she
slashed a rope that held a high-strung "mustang" (so
called in the scenario), and had leaped upon his bare
back and gone hurtling out of that scene and into
another, where she was riding furiously over dangerously
rough ground, the whole outlaw band in pursuit and
silhouetted against the skyline and the moon (which
was another photographic triumph of Pete Lowry).

Gil Huntley had also done many things that were
risky. Jean had shot at him with real bullets so many
times that her nervousness on this particular day was
rather unaccountable to him. Jean had lassoed him
and dragged him behind Pard through brush. She
had pulled him from a quicksand bed,--made of cement
that showed a strong tendency to "set" about his form
before she could rescue him,--and she had fought with
him on the edge of a cliff and had thrown him over;
and his director, anxious for the "punch" that was his
fetish, had insisted on a panorama of the fall, so that
there was no chance for Gil to save himself the bruises
he got. Gil Huntley's part it was always to die a
violent death, or to be captured spectacularly, because
he was the villain whose horrible example must bear a
moral to youthful brains.

Since Jean had become one of the company, he nearly
always died at her hands or was captured by her. This
left Muriel Gay unruffled and unhurt, so that she could
weep and accept the love of Lee Milligan in the artistic
ending of which Robert Grant Burns was so fond.

Jean had never before considered it necessary to warn
Gil and implore him not to be nervous, and Gil took her
solicitude as an encouraging sign and was visibly
cheered thereby. He knew little of guns and fine
marksmanship, and he did not know that it is extremely
difficult to shoot a revolver accurately and instantaneously;
whereas Jean knew very well that Gil Huntley might
be thrown off ledges every day in the week without taking
the risk he would take that day.

The scene was to close a full reel of desperate
attempts upon the part of Gil Huntley to win Muriel;
such desperate attempts, indeed, that Muriel Gay spent
most of the time sitting at ease in the shade, talking
with Lee Milligan, who was two thirds in love with her
and had half his love returned, while Jean played her
part for her. Sometimes Muriel would be called upon
to assume the exact pose which Jean had assumed in a
previous scene, for "close-up" that would reveal to
audiences Muriel's well-known prettiness and help to
carry along the deception. Each morning the two stood
side by side and were carefully inspected by Robert
Grant Burns, to make sure that hair and costumes were
exactly alike in the smallest detail. This also helped
to carry on the deception--to those who were not aware
of Muriel's limitations. Their faces were not at all
alike; and that is why Jean's face must never be seen
in a picture.

This shooting scene was a fitting climax to a long and
desperate chase over a difficult trail; so difficult that
Pard stumbled and fell,--supposedly with a broken
leg,--and Jean must run on and on afoot, and climb
over rocks and spring across dangerous crevices. She
was not supposed to know where her flight was taking
her. Sometimes the camera caught her silhouetted
against the sky (Burns was partial to skyline silhouettes),
and sometimes it showed her quite close,--in
which case it would be Muriel instead of Jean,--clinging
desperately to the face of a ledge (ledges were also
favorite scenes), and seeking with hands or feet for a
hold upon the rough face of the rock. During the last
two or three scenes Gil Huntley had been shown gaining
upon her.

So they came to the location where the shooting scene
was to be made that morning. Burns, with the camera
and Pete and Muriel and her mother and Lee Milligan,
drove to the place in the machine. Jean and Gil
Huntley found them comfortably disposed in the shade,
out of range of the camera which Pete was setting up
somewhat closer than usual, under the direction of
Burns.

"There won't be any rehearsal of this," Burns stated
at last, stepping back. "When it's done, if you don't
bungle the scene, it'll be done. You stand here, Jean,
and kind of lean against the rock as if you're all in from
that chase. You hear Gil coming, and you start forward
and listen, and look,--how far can she turn, Pete;
without showing too much of her face?"

Pete squinted into the finder and gave the information.

"Well, Gil, you come from behind that bush. She'll
be looking toward you then without turning too much.
You grin, and come up with that eager, I-got-you-now
look. Don't hurry too much; we'll give this scene
plenty of time. This is the feature scene. Jean,
you're at the end of your rope. You couldn't run
another step if you wanted to, and you're cornered
anyway, so you can't get away; get me? You're scared.
Did you ever get scared in your life?"

"Yes," said Jean simply, remembering last night
when she had pulled the blanket over her head.

"Well, you think of that time you were scared. And
you make yourself think that you're going to shoot the
thing that scared you. You don't put in half the punch
when you shoot blanks; I've noticed that all along. So
that's why you shoot a bullet. See? And you come
as close to Gil as you can and not hit him. Gil, when
you're shot, you go down all in a heap; you know what
I mean. And Jean, when he falls, you start and lean
forward, looking at him,--remember and keep your face
away from the camera!--and then you start toward
him kind of horrified. The scene stops right there, just
as you start towards him. Then Gay takes it up and
does the remorse and horror stuff because she's killed a
man. That will be a close-up.

"All right, now; take your places. Sure your gun
is loose so you can pull it quick? That's the feature of
this scene, remember. You want to get it across BIG!
And make it real,--the scare, and all that. Hey, you
women get behind the camera! Bullets glance, sometimes,
and play the very mischief." He looked all
around to make sure that everything was as it should
be, faced Jean again, and raised his hand.

"All ready? Start your action! Camera!"

Jean had never before been given so much dramatic
work to do, and Burns watched her anxiously, wishing
that he dared cut the scene in two and give Muriel that
tense interval when Gil Huntley came creeping into the
scene from behind the bush. But after the first few
seconds his strained expression relaxed; anxiety gave
place to something like surprise.

Jean stood leaning heavily against the rock, panting
from the flight of the day before,--for so must emotion
be carried over into the next day when photo-
players work at their profession. Her face was dropped
upon her arms flung up against the rock in an attitude
of complete exhaustion and despair. Burns involuntarily
nodded his head approvingly; the girl had the
idea, all right, even if she never had been trained to act
a part.

"Come into the scene, Gil!" he commanded, when
Jean made a move as though she was tempted to drop
down upon the ground and sob hysterically. "Jean,
register that you hear him coming."

Jean's head came up and she listened, every muscle
stiffening with fear. She turned her face toward Gil,
who stopped and looked at her most villainously. Gil,
you must know, had come from "legitimate" and was
a clever actor. Jean recoiled a little before the leering
face of him; pressed her shoulder hard against the ledge
that had trapped her, and watched him in an agony of
fear. One felt that she did, though one could not see
her face. Gil spoke a few words and came on with a
certain tigerish assurance of his power, but Jean did not
move a muscle. She had backed as far away from him
as she could get. She was not the kind to weep and
plead with him. She just waited; and one felt that she
was keyed up to the supreme moment of her life.

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