Jean of the Lazy A

  CHAPTER XV

  A LEADING LADY THEY WOULD MAKE OF JEAN

  Sometimes events follow docilely the plans that would lead them out ofthe future of possibilities and into the present of actualities, andsometimes they bring with them other events which no man may foreseeunless he is indeed a prophet. You would never think, for instance,that Gil Huntley and his blood sponge would pull from the future achain of incidents that would eventually--well, never mind what. Justfollow the chain of incidents and see what lies at the end.

  Pete Lowry and Gil had planned cunningly for a certain readjustment ofJean's standing in the company, for no deeper reasons than theirgenuine liking for the girl and a common human impulse to have a handin the ordering of their little world. In ten days Robert Grant Burnsreceived a letter from Dewitt, president of the Great Western FilmCompany, which amply fulfilled those plans, and, as I said, opened theway for other events quite unforeseen.

  There were certain orders from the higher-ups which Robert Grant Burnsmust heed. They were, briefly, the immediate transfer of Muriel Gay tothe position of leading woman in a new company which was being sent toSanta Barbara to make light comedy-dramas. Robert Grant Burns gruntedwhen he read that, though it was a step up the ladder for Muriel whichshe would be glad to take. The next paragraph instructed him to placethe young woman who had been doubling for Miss Gay in the positionwhich Miss Gay would leave vacant. It was politely suggested that headapt the leading woman's parts to the ability of this young woman;which meant that he must write his scenarios especially with her inmind. He was informed that he should feature the young woman in herremarkable horsemanship, etc. It was pointed out that her work wasbeing noticed in the Western features which Robert Grant Burns had beensending in, and that other film companies would no doubt make overturesshortly, in the hope of securing her services. Under separate coverthey were mailing a contract which would effectually forestall suchovertures, and they were relying upon him to see that she signed upwith the Great Western as per contract. Finally, it was suggested,since Mr. Dewitt chose always to suggest rather than to command, thatRobert Grant Burns consider the matter of writing a series of shortstories having some connecting thread of plot and featuring this MissDouglas. (This, by the way, was the beginning of the serial form ofmotion-picture plays which has since become so popular.)

  Robert Grant Burns read that letter through slowly, and then sat downheavily in an old arm-chair in the hotel office, lighted one of hisfavorite fat, black cigars, and mouthed it absently, while he read theletter through again. He said "John Jimpson!" just above a whisper. Heheld the letter in his two hands and regarded it strangely. Then helooked up, caught the quizzical, inquiring glance of Pete Lowry, andbeckoned that secret-smiling individual over to him. "Read that!" hegrunted. "Read it and tell me what you think of it."

  Pete Lowry read it carefully, and grinned when he handed it back. Hedid not, however, tell Robert Grant Burns just exactly what he thoughtof it. He merely said that it had to come sometime, he guessed.

  "She can't put over the dramatic stuff," objected Robert Grant Burns."She's got the face for it, all right, and when she registers realemotions, it gets over big. The bottled-up kind of people always do.But she's never acted an emotion she didn't feel--"

  "How about that all-in stuff, and the listening-and--waiting businessshe put across before she took a shot at Gil that time she fainted?"Pete reminded him. "If you ask me, that little girl can act."

  "Well, whether she can or not, she's got to try it," said Burns withsome foreboding. "She's been going big, with Gay to do all theclose-up, dramatic work. The trouble is, Pete, that girl always does asshe darn pleases! If I put her opposite Lee in a scene and tell her toact like she is in love with him, and that he's to kiss her and she'sto kiss back,--" he flung out his hands expressively. "You must knowthe rest, as well as I do. She'd turn around and give me a call-down,and get on her horse and ride off; and I and my picture could go tothunder, for all of her. That's the point; she ain't been through themill. She don't know anything about taking orders--from me or anybodyelse." It is a pity that Lite did not hear that! He might have amendedthe statement a little. Jean had been taking orders enough; she knew agreat deal about receiving ultimatums. The trouble was that she seldompaid any attention to them. Lite was accustomed to that, but RobertGrant Burns was not, and it irked him sore.

  "Well, she's sure got the screen personality," Pete defended. "I'vesaid it all along. That girl don't have to act. Put her in the part,and she is the part! She's got something better than technique, Burns.She's got imagination. She puts herself in a character and lives it."

  "Put her on a horse and she does," Burns conceded gloomily. "But willyou tell me what kind of work she'll make of interior scenes, and lovescenes, and all that? You've got to have it, to pad out your story.You can't let your leading character do a whole two--or three-reelpicture on horseback. There wouldn't be any contrast. Dewitt don'tknow that girl the way I do. If he'd had to side-step and scheme andgive in the way I've done to keep her working, he wouldn't put herplaying straight leads, not until she'd had a year or two of training--"

  "Taming is a better word," Pete suggested drily. "There'll be fun whenshe gets to playing love scenes opposite Lee. You better let him takethe heavies, and put Gil in for leads, Burns."

  Robert Grant Burns was so cast down by the prospect that he made noattempt to reply, beyond grunting something about preferring to drive ateam of balky mules to making Jean do something she did not want to do.But, such is the mind trained to a profession, insensibly he driftedaway into the world of his imagination, and began to draw therefrom thefirst tenuous threads of a plot wherein Jean's peculiar accomplishmentswere to be featured. Robert Grant Burns had long ago learned to adjusthimself to circumstances which in themselves were not to his liking.He adjusted himself now to the idea of making Jean the Western star hisemployers seemed to think was inevitable.

  That night before he went to bed he wrote a play which had in itfifty-two scenes. Thirty-five of them were what is known technicallyas exteriors. In most of them Jean was to ride on horseback throughwild places. The rest were dramatic close-ups. Robert Grant Burnswent over it carefully when it was finished, and groaning inwardly hecut out two love scenes which were tense, and which Muriel Gay and LeeMilligan would have "eaten up," as he mentally expressed it. The loveinterest, he realized bitterly, must be touched upon lightly in hisscenarios from now on; which would have lightened appreciably the heartof Lite Avery, if he had only known it, and would have erased from hismind a good many depressing visions of Jean as the film sweetheart ofthose movie men whom he secretly hated.

  Jean did not hesitate five minutes before she signed the contract whichBurns presented to her the next morning. She was human, and she hadlearned enough about the business to see that, speaking from a purelyprofessional point of view, she was extremely fortunate. Not everygirl, surely, can hope to jump in a few weeks from the lowly positionof an inexperienced "extra" to the supposedly exalted one of leadingwoman. And to her that hundred dollars a week which the contractinsured her looked a fortune. It spelled home to her, and thevindication of her beloved dad, of whom she dared not think sometimes,it hurt her so.

  Her book was not progressing as fast as she had expected when she beganit. She had been working at it sporadically now for eight weeks, andshe had only ten chapters done,--and some of these were terribly short.She had looked through all of the novels that she owned, and hadcomputed the average number of chapters in each; thirty she decidedwould be a good, conservative number to write. She had even dividedthose thirty into three parts, and had impartially allotted ten toadventure, ten to mystery and horror, and ten to love-making. Such anarrangement should please everybody, surely, and need only be workedout smoothly to prove most satisfying.

  But, as it happened, comedy would creep into the mystery and horror,which she mentally lumped together as agony. Adventure ran riot, andstraight love-making
chapters made her sleepy, they bored her so. Shehad tried one or two, and she had found it impossible to concentrateher mind upon them. Instead, she had sat and planned what she would dowith the money that was steadily accumulating in the bank; a pitifullittle sum, to be sure, to those who count by the thousands, butcheering enough to Jean, who had never before had any money of her own.

  So she signed the contract and worked that day so light-heartedly thatRobert Grant Burns forgot his pessimism. When the light began to fadeand grow yellow, and the big automobile went purring down the trail totown, she rode on to the Bar Nothing to find Lite, and tell him howfortune had come and tapped her on the shoulder.

  She did not see Lite anywhere about the ranch, and so she did not puther hopes and her plans and her good fortune into speech. She did seeher Aunt Ella, who straightway informed her that people were talkingabout the way she rode here and there with those painted-up people, andlet the men put their arms around her and make love to her. Her AuntElla made it perfectly plain to Jean that she, for one, did notconsider it respectable. Her Aunt Ella said that Carl was going to dosomething about it, if things weren't changed pretty quick.

  Jean did not appear to regard her aunt's disapproval as of anyimportance whatever, but the words stung. She had herself worried alittle over the love-making scenes which she knew she would now becalled upon to play. Jean, you will have observed, was not given tosentimental adventurings; and she disliked the idea of letting LeeMilligan make love to her the way he had made love to Muriel Gaythrough picture after picture. She would do it, she supposed, if shehad to; she wanted the salary. But she would hate it intolerably. Shemade reply with sarcasm which she knew would particularly irritate herAunt Ella, and left the house feeling that she never wanted to enter itagain as long as she lived.

  The sight of her uncle standing beside Pard in an attitude of disgustedappraisement of the new Navajo blanket and the silver-trimmed bridleand tapideros which Burns had persuaded her to add to her ridingoutfit,--for photographic effect,--brought a hot flush of resentment.She went up quietly enough, however. Indeed, she went up so quietlythat he started when she appeared almost beside him and picked upPard's reins, and took the stirrup to mount and ride away. She did notspeak to him at all; she had not spoken to him since that night whenthe little brown bird had died! Though perhaps that was because shehad managed to keep out of his way.

  "I see you've been staking yourself to a new bridle," Carl began in atone quite as sour as his look. "You must have bought out all the tindecorations they had in stock, didn't you?"

  Jean swung up into the saddle before she looked at him. "If I did,it's my own affair," she retorted. "I paid for the tin decorationswith my own money."

  "Oh, you did! Well, you might have been in better business than payingfor that kind of thing. You might," he sneered up at her, "have beenpaying for your keep these last three years, if you've got more moneyof your own than you know what to do with."

  Jean could not ride off under the sting of that gratuitous insult. Sheheld Pard quiet and looked down at him with hate in her eyes. "Iexpect," she said in a queer, quiet wrath, "to prove before long thatmy own money has been paying for my 'keep' these last three years; forthat and for other things that did not benefit me in the least."

  "I'd like to know what you mean by that!" Carl caught Pard by thebridle-rein and looked up at her in a white fury that startled evenJean, accustomed as she was to his sudden rages that contrasted withhis sullen attitude toward the world.

  "What do you think I would mean? Let go my bridle. I don't want toquarrel with you."

  "What did you mean by proving--what do you expect to prove?" His handwas heavy on the rein, so that Pard began to fret under the restraint."You've got to quit running around all over the country with them showfolks, and stay at home and behave yourself. You've got to quit hangingout at the Lazy A. I've stood as much as I'm going to stand of yourperformances. You get down off that horse and go into the house andbehave yourself; that's what you'll do! If you haven't got any shameor decency--"

  Jean scarcely knew what she did, just then. She must have dug Pardwith her spurs, because the first thing that she realized was the lungehe gave. Carl's hold slipped from the rein, as he was jerked sidewise.He made an ineffective grab at Jean's skirt, and he called her a nameshe had never heard spoken before in her life. A rod or so away shepulled up and turned to face him, but the words she would have spokenstuck in her throat. She had never seen Carl Douglas look like that;she had seen him when he was furious, she had seen him when he sulked,but she had never seen him look like that.

  He called her to come back. He made threats of what he would do if sherefused to obey him. He shook his fist at her. He behaved like a mantemporarily robbed of his reason; his eyes, as he came up glaring ather, were the eyes of a madman.

  Jean felt a tremor of dread while she looked at him and listened tohim. He was almost within reach of her again when she wheeled and wentoff up the trail at a run. She looked back often, half fearing that hewould get a horse and follow her, but he stood just where she had lefthim, and he seemed to be still uttering threats and groundlessaccusations as long as she was in sight.