Jean of the Lazy A by B. M. Bower (read e book TXT) 📕

a little. "Oh, I forgot. I must be hurried and worried—and I must sob," she corrected herself.

So she hurried, and every movement she made counted for something accomplished. She picked up the bridle and shortened her hold upon the lead rope, and discovered that the sorrel had a trick of throwing up his head and backing away from the bit. She knew how to deal with that habit, however; but in her haste she forgot to look as worried as Muriel had looked, and so appeared to her audience as being merely determined. She got the bridle on, and then she saddled the sorrel. And for good measure she picked up the reins, caught the stirrup and went up, pivoting the horse upon his hind feet as though she meant to dash madly off into the distance. But she only went a couple of rods before she pulled him up sharply and dismounted.

"That didn't take me long, did it?" she asked. "I could have hurried a lot more if I had known the horse." Then she stopped dead still and looked at Robert Grant Burns.

"Oh, my goodness, I forgot to sob!" she gasped. And she caught her hat brim and pulling her Stetson more firmly down upon her head, turned and ran up the path to the house, and shut herself into her room.

CHAPTER XII TO "DOUBLE" FOR MURIEL GAY

While she breakfasted unsatisfactorily upon soda crackers and a bottle of olives which happened to have been left over from a previous luncheon, Jean meditated deeply upon the proper beginning of a book. The memory of last night came to her vividly, and she smiled while she fished with a pair of scissors for an olive. She would start the book off weirdly with mysterious sounds in an empty room. That, she argued, should fix firmly the interest of the reader right at the start.

By the time she had fished the olive from the bottle, however, her thoughts swung from the artistic to the material aspect of those mysterious footsteps. What had the man wanted or expected to find? She set down the olive bottle impulsively and went out and around to the kitchen door and opened it. In spite of herself, she shuddered as she went in, and she walked close to the wall until she was well past the brown stain on the floor. She went to the old-fashioned cupboard and examined the contents of the drawers and looked into a cigar-box which stood open upon the top. She went into her father's bedroom and looked through everything, which did not take long, since the room had little left in it. She went into the living-room, also depressingly dusty and forlorn, but try as she would to think of some article that might have been left there and was now wanted by some one, she could imagine no reason whatever for that nocturnal visit. At the same time, there must have been a reason. Men of that country did not ride abroad during the still hours of the night just for the love of riding. Most of them went to bed at dark and slept until dawn.

She went out, intending to go back to her literary endeavors; if she never started that book, certainly it would never make her rich, and she would never be able to make war upon circumstances. She thought of her father with a twinge of remorse because she had wasted so much time this morning, and she scarcely glanced toward the picture-people down by the corrals, so she did not see that Robert Grant Burns turned to look at her and then started hurriedly up the path to the house.

"Say," he called, just before she disappeared around the corner. "Wait a minute. I want to talk to you."

Jean waited, and the fat man came up breathing hard because of his haste in the growing heat of the forenoon.

"Say, I'd like to use you in a few scenes," he began abruptly when he reached her. "Gay can't put over the stuff I want; and I'd like to have you double for her in some riding and roping scenes. You're about the same size and build, and I'll get you a blond wig for close-ups, like that saddling scene. I believe you've got it in you to make good on the screen; anyway, the practice you'll get doubling for Gay won't do you any harm."

Jean looked at him, tempted to consent for the fun there would be in it. "I'd like to," she told him after a little silence. "I really would love it. But I've got some work that I must do."

"Let the work wait," urged Burns, relieved because she showed no resentment against the proposal. "I want to get this picture made. It's going to be a hummer. There's punch to it, or there will be, if—"

"But you see," Jean's drawl slipped across his eager, domineering voice, "I have to earn some money, lots of it. There's something I need it for. It's—important."

"You'll earn money at this," he told her bluntly. "You didn't think I'd ask you to work for nothing, I hope. I ain't that cheap. It's like this: If you'll work in this picture and put over what I want, it'll be feature stuff. I'll pay accordingly. Of course, I can't say just how much,—this is just a try-out; you understand that. But if you can deliver the goods, I'll see that you get treated right. Some producers might play the cheap game just because you're green; but I ain't that kind, and my company ain't that kind. I'm out after results." Involuntarily his eyes turned toward the bluff. "There's a ride down the bluff that I want, and a roping—say, can you throw a rope?"

Jean laughed. "Lite Avery says I can," she told him, "and Lite Avery can almost write his name in the air with a rope."

"If you can make that dash down the bluff, and do the roping I want, why—Lord! You'll have to be working a gold mine to beat what I'd be willing to pay for the stuff."

"There's no place here in the coulee where you can ride down the bluff," Jean informed him, "except back of the house, and that's out of sight. Farther over there's a kind of trail that a good horse can handle. I came down it on a run, once, with Pard. A man was drowning, over here in the creek, and I was up on the bluff and happened to see him and his horse turn over,—it was during the high water. So I made a run down off the point, and got to him in time to rope him out. You might use that trail."

Robert Grant Burns stood and stared at her as though he did not see her at all. In truth, he was seeing with his professional eyes a picture of that dash down the bluff. He was seeing a "close-up" of Jean whirling her loop and lassoing the drowning man just as he had given up hope and was going under for the third time. Lee Milligan was the drowning man! and the agony of his eyes, and the tenseness of Jean's face, made Robert Grant Burns draw a long breath.

"Lord, what feature-stuff that would make!" he said under his breath. "I'll write a scenario around that rescue scene." Whereupon he caught himself. It is not well for a director to permit his enthusiasm to carry him into injudicious speech. He chuckled to hide his eagerness. "Well, you can show me that location," he said, "and we'll get to work. You'll have to use the sorrel, of course; but I guess he'll be all right. This saddling scene will have to wait till I send for a wig. You can change clothes with Miss Gay and get by all right at a distance, just as you are. A little make-up, maybe; she'll fix that. Come on, let's get to work. And don't worry about the salary; I'll tell you to-night what it'll be, after I see you work."

When he was in that mood, Robert Grant Burns swept everything before him. He swept Jean into his plans before she had really made up her mind whether to accept his offer or stick to her literary efforts. He had Muriel Gay up at the house and preparing to change clothes with Jean, and he had Lee Milligan started for town in the machine with the key to Burns' emergency wardrobe trunk, before Jean realized that she was actually going to do things for the camera to make into a picture.

"I'm glad you are going to double in that ride down the bluff, anyway," Muriel declared, while she blacked Jean's brows and put shadows around her eyes. "I could have done it, of course; but mamma is so nervous about my getting hurt that I hate to do anything risky like that. It upsets her for days."

"There isn't much risk in riding down the bluff," said Jean carelessly. "Not if you've got a good horse. I wonder if that sorrel is rope broke. Have you ever roped off him?"

"No," said Muriel, "I haven't." She might have added that she never roped off any horse, but she did not.

"I'll have to try him out and see what he's like, before I try to rope for a picture. I wonder if there'll be time now?" Jean was pleasantly excited over this new turn of events. She had dreamed of doing many things, but never of helping to make moving pictures. She was eager and full of curiosity, like a child invited to play a new and fascinating game, and she kept wondering what Lite would have to say about her posing for moving pictures. Try to stop her, probably,—and fail, as usual!

When she went out to where the others were grouped in the shade, she gave no sign of any inner excitement or perturbation. She went straight up to Burns and waited for his verdict.

"Do I look like Miss Gay?" she drawled.

The keen eyes of Burns half closed while he studied her.

"No, I can't say that you do," he said after a moment. "Walk off toward the corrals,—and, say! Mount the sorrel and start off like you were in a deuce of a hurry. That'll be one scene, and I'd like to see how you do it when you can have your own way about it, and how close up we can make it and have you pass for Gay."

"How far shall I ride?" Jean's eyes had a betraying light of interest.

"Oh—to the gate, maybe. Can you get a long shot down the trail to the gate, Pete, and keep skyline in the scene?"

Pete moved the camera, fussed and squinted, and then nodded his head. "Sure, I can. But you'll have to make it right away, or else wait till to-morrow. The sun's getting around pretty well in front."

"We'll take it right after this rehearsal, if the girl can put the stuff over right," Burns muttered. "And she can, or I'm badly mistaken. Pete, that girl's—" He stopped short, because the shadow of Lee Milligan was moving up to them. "All right, Miss—say, what's your name, anyway?" He was told, and went on briskly. "Miss Douglas, just start from off that way,—about where that round rock is. You'll come into the scene a little beyond. Hurry straight up to the sorrel and mount and ride off. Your lover is going to be trapped by the bandits, and you've just heard it and are hurrying to save him. Get the idea? Now let's see you do it."

"You don't want me to sob, do you?" Jean looked over her shoulder to inquire. "Because if I were going to save my lover, I don't believe I'd want to waste time weeping around all over the place."

Burns chuckled. "You can cut out the sob," he permitted. "Just go ahead like it was real stuff."

Jean was standing by the rock, ready to start. She looked at Burns speculatively. "Oh, well, if it were real, I'd run!"

"Go ahead and run then!" Burns commanded.

Run she did, and startled the sorrel so that it took quick work to catch him.

"Camera! She might not do it like that again, ever!" cried Burns.

She