CHAPTER XVII
"WHY DON'T YOU GIVE THEM SOMETHING REAL?"
"Well, you don't seem crazy about it. What's the matter?" Robert GrantBurns stood in his favorite attitude with his hands on his hips and hisfeet far apart, and looked down at Jean with a secret anxiety in hiseyes. Without realizing it in the least, Jean's opinion had come tohave a certain weight with Robert Grant Burns. "What's wrong withthat?" Burns, having sat up until two o'clock to finish that particularscenario to his liking, plainly resented the expression on Jean's facewhile she read it.
"Oh, nothing, only I'm getting awfully sick of these kidnap-and-rescue,and kiss-in-the-last-scene pictures, and Wild West stuff without a realWestern man in the whole thing. I'd like to do something real for achange."
Robert Grant Burns grunted and reached for his slighted brain-child."What you want? Mother on, knitting. Girl washing dishes. Loverarrives; they sit on front steps and spoon. Become engaged. Loverhitches up team, girl climbs into wagon, they drive to town. Tenscenes of driving to town. Lover gets out, ties team in front ofcourthouse. Goes in and gets license. Three scenes of licensebusiness. Goes out. Two scenes of driving to minister and hitchingteam to gate. One scene of getting to door. One scene getting insidethe house. One scene preacher calling his wife and hired girl. Onescene 'Do you take this woman,' one scene 'I do.' Fifteen scenesgetting team untied and driving back to ranch. That's about as muchpep as there is in real life in the far West, these days. Somethinglike that would suit you, maybe. It don't suit the people who pay goodnickels and dimes to get a thrill, though."
"Neither does this sort of junk, if they've got any sense. Think ofpaying nickel after nickel to see Lee Milligan rush to the girl's door,knock, learn the fatal news, stagger back and clap his hand to his browand say 'Great Heaven! GONE!'" Jean, stirred to combat by the sarcasmof Robert Grant Burns, did the stagger and the hand-to-brow andgreat-heaven scene with a realism that made Pete Lowry turn his backsuddenly. "They've seen Gil abduct me or Muriel seven times in aperfectly impossible manner, and they--oh, why don't you give themsomething REAL? Things that are thrilling and dangerous and terribledo happen out here, Mr. Burns. Real adventures and real tragedies--"She stopped, and Burns turned his eyes involuntarily toward thekitchen. He had heard all about the history of the Lazy A, though hehad been very careful to hide the fact that he had heard it. Jean'sglance, following that of her director, was a revealing one. She bither lip; and in a moment she went on, with her chin held a shade higherand her pride revolting against subterfuge.
"I didn't mean that," she said quietly. "But--well, up to a certainpoint, I don't mind if you put in real things, if it will be goodpicture-stuff. You're featuring me, anyway, it seems. Listen."Jean's face changed. Her eyes took that farseeing look of the dreamer.She was looking full at Burns, but he knew that she did not see him atall. She was looking at a mental picture of her own conjuring, hejudged. He stood still and waited curiously, wondering, to use hismanner of speech, what the girl was going to spring now.
"Listen: Instead of all this impossible piffle, let's start a realstory. I--I've--"
"What kind of a real story?" The tone of Robert Grant Burns wascarefully non-committal, but his eyes betrayed his eagerness. The girldid have some real ideas, sometimes! And Robert Grant Burns was notthe one to refuse a real idea because it did not come from his ownbrain.
"Well," Jean flushed with an adorable shyness at the apparent egotismof her idea, "since you seem to want me for the central figure ineverything, suppose we start a story like this: Suppose I am left hereat the Lazy A with my mother to take care of and a ranch and a lot ofcattle; and suppose it's a hard proposition, because there's really agang of rustlers that have been running off stock and never gettingcaught, and they have a grudge against my family and grab our cattleevery chance they get. Suppose--suppose they killed my brother when hewas about to round them up, and they want to drive me and my mother outof the country. Scare us out, you know. Well,--" she hesitated andglanced diffidently at the boys who had edged up to listen,--"thatwould leave room for all kinds of feature stuff. Say that I have justone or two boys that I can depend on, boys that I know are loyal. Withan outfit the size of ours, that keeps me in the saddle every day andall day; and I would have some narrow escapes, I reckon. You've gotyour rustlers all made to order,--only I'd make them up differently, ifI were doing it. Have them look real, you know, instead of stagey."(Whereat Robert Grant Burns winced.) "Lee could be one of my loyalcowboys; you'd want some dramatic acting, I reckon, and he could dothat. But I'd want one puncher who can ride and shoot and handle arope. For that, to help me do the real work in the picture, I wantLite Avery. There are things I can do that you have never had me do,for the simple reason that you don't know the life well enough ever tothink of them. Real stunts, not these made-to-order,shoot-the-villain-and-run-to-the-arms-of-the-hero stuff. I'd have tohave Lite Avery; I wouldn't start without him."
"Well, go on." Robert Grant Burns still tried to sound non-committal,but he was plainly eager to hear all that she had to say.
"Well, that's the idea. They're trying to drive us out of the country,without really hurting me. And I've got my mind set on staying. Notonly that, but I believe they killed my brother, and I'm going to huntthem down and break up their gang or die in the attempt. There's yourplot. It needn't be overdone in the least, to have thrills enough.And there would be all kinds of chance for real range-stuff, like thehandling of cattle and all that.
"We can use this ranch just as it is, and have the outlaws down nextthe river. I'm glad you haven't taken any scenes that show the ranchas a whole. You've stuck to your close-up, great-heaven scenes somuch," she went on with merciless frankness, "that you've really notcheapened the place by showing more than a little bit at a time.
"You might start by making Lee up for my brother, and kill him in thefirst reel; show the outlaws when they shoot him and run off with abunch of stock they're after. Lite can find him and bring him home.Lite would know just how to do that sort of thing, and make people seeit's real stuff. I believe he'd show he was a real cow-puncher, evento the people who never saw one. There's an awful lot of differencebetween the real thing and your actors." She was so perfectly sincereand so matter-of-fact that the men she criticised could do no more thangrin.
"You might, for the sake of complications, put a traitor and spy on theranch. Oh, I tell you! Have Hepsibah be the mother of one of theoutlaws. She wouldn't need to do any acting; you could show hersneaking out in the dark to meet her son and tell him what she hasoverheard. And show her listening, perhaps, through the crack in adoor. Mrs. Gay would have to be the mother. Gil says that Hepsibahhas the figure of a comedy cook and what he calls a character face. Ibelieve we could manage her all right, for what little she would haveto do, don't you?"
Jean having poured out her inspiration with a fluency born of her firstenthusiasm, began to feel that she had been somewhat presumptuous inthus offering advice wholesale to the highest paid director of theGreat Western Film Company. She blushed and laughed a little, andshrugged her shoulders.
"That's just a suggestion," she said with forced lightness. "I'msubject to attacks of acute imagination, sometimes. Don't mind me, Mr.Burns. Your scenario is a very nice scenario, I'm sure. Do you wantme to be a braid-down-the-back girl in this? Or acurls-around-the-face girl?"
Robert Grant Burns stood absent-mindedly tapping his left palm with thefolded scenario which Jean had just damned by calling it a very nicescenario. Nice was not the adjective one would apply to it in sincereadmiration. Robert Grant Burns himself had mentally called it ahummer. He did not reply to Jean's tentative apology for her ownplot-idea. He was thinking about the idea itself.
Robert Grant Burns was not what one would call petty. He would not,for instance, stick to his own story if he considered that Jean's was abetter one. And, after all, Jean was now his leading woman, and it isnot unusual for a leading woman to manufa
cture her own plots,especially when she is being featured by her company. There was noquestion of hurt pride to be debated within the mind of him, therefore.He was just weighing the idea itself for what it was worth.
"Seems to me your plot-idea isn't so much tamer than mine, after all."He tested her shrewdly after a prolonged pause. "You've got a killingin the first five hundred feet, and outlaws and rustling--"
"Oh, but don't you see, it isn't the skeleton that makes thedifference; it's the kind of meat you put on the bones! Paradise Lostwould be a howling melodrama, if some of you picture-people tried tomake it. You'd take this plot of mine and make it just like thesepictures I've been working in, Mr. Burns: Exciting and all that, butnot the real West after all; spectacular without being probable. WhatI mean,--I can't explain it to you, I'm afraid; but I have it in myhead." She looked at him with that lightening of the eyes which was nota smile, really, but rather the amusement which might grow intolaughter later on.
"You'd better fine me for insubordination," she drawled whimsically,"and tell me whether it's to be braids or curls, so I can go and makeup." At that moment she saw Gil Huntley beckoning to her with afrantic kind of furtiveness that was a fair mixture of pinched-togethereyebrows and slight jerkings of the head, and a guarded movement of hishand that hung at his side. Gil, she thought, was trying to draw heraway before she went too far with her trouble-inviting freedom ofspeech. She laughed lazily.
"Braids or curls?" she insisted. "And please, sir, I won't do so nomore, honest."
Robert Grant Burns looked at her from under his eyebrows and made asound between his grunt of indignation and his chuckle of amusement."Sure you won't?" he queried shortly. "Stay the way you are, if youwant to; chances are you won't go to work right away, anyhow."
Jean flashed him a glance of inquiry. Did that mean that she had atlast gone beyond the limit? Was Robert Grant Burns going to FIRE her?She looked at Gil, who was sauntering off with the perfectly apparentexpectation that she would follow him; and Mrs. Gay, who was regardingher with a certain melancholy conviction that Jean's time as leadingwoman was short indeed. She pursed her lips with a rueful resignation,and followed Gil to the spring behind the house.
"Say, you mustn't hand out things like that, Jean!" he protested, whenthey were quite out of sight and hearing of the others. "Let me giveyou a tip, girl. If you've got any photo-play ideas that are worthtalking about, don't go spreading them out like that for Bobby to pickand choose!"
"Pick to pieces, you mean," Jean corrected.
"You're going to tell me I'm in bad. But I can't help it; he's putting onsome awfully stagey plots, and they cost just as much to produce as--"
"Listen here. You've got me wrong. That plot of yours could be workedup into a dandy series; the idea of a story running through a lot ofpictures is great. What I mean is, it's worth something. You don'thave to give stuff like that away, make him a present of it, you know.I just want to put you wise. If you've got anything that's worthusing, make 'em pay for it. Put 'er into scenario form and sell it to'em. You're in this game to make money, so why overlook a bet likethat?"
"Oh, Gil! Could I?"
"Sure, you could! No reason why you shouldn't, if you can deliver thegoods. Burns has been writing his own plays to fit his company; butaside from the features you've been putting into it, it's old stuff.He's a darned good director, and all that, but he hasn't got the knackof building real stories. You see what I mean. If you have, why--"
"I wonder," said Jean with a sudden small doubt of her literarytalents, "if I have!"
"Sure, you have!" Gil's faith in Jean was of the kind that scornsproof. "You see, you've got the dope on the West, and he knows it.Why, I've been watching how he takes the cue from you right along forhis features. Ever since you told Lee Milligan how to lay a saddle onthe ground, Burns has been getting tips; and half the time you didn'teven know you were giving them. Get into this game right, Jean. Make'em pay for that kind of thing."
Jean regarded him thoughtfully, tempted to yield. "Mrs. Gay says ahundred dollars a week--"
"It's good pay for a beginner. She's right, and she's wrong. They'refeaturing you in stuff that nobody else can do. Who would they put inyour place, to do the stunts you've been doing? Muriel Gay was a goodactress, and as good a Western lead as they could produce; and you knowhow she stacked up alongside you. You're in a class by yourself, Jean.You want to keep that in mind. They aren't just trying to be nice toyou; it's hard-boiled business with the Great Western. You're goingawfully strong with the public. Why, my chum writes me that you'reannounced ahead on the screen at one of the best theaters on Broadway!'Coming: Jean Douglas in So-and-so.' Do you know what that means? No,you don't; of course not. But let me tell you that it means a wholelot! I wish I'd had a chance to tip you off to a little businesscaution before you signed that contract. That salary clause shouldhave been doctored to make a sliding scale of it. As it is, you'restuck for a year at a hundred dollars a week, unless you springsomething the contract does not cover. Don't give away any more dope.You've got an idea there, if Burns will let you work up to it. Make 'empay for it."
"O-h-h, Gil!" came the throaty call of Burns; and Gil, with a last,earnest warning, left her hurriedly.
Jean sat down on a rock and meditated, her chin in her palms, and herelbows on her knees. Vague shadows; of thoughts clouded her mind andthen slowly clarified into definite ideas. Unconsciously she had beengrowing away from her first formulated plans. She was gradually layingaside the idea of reaching wealth and fame by way of the story-trail.She was almost at the point of admitting to herself that her story, asfar as she had gone with it, could never be taken seriously by any onewith any pretense of intelligence. It was too unreal, too fantastic.It was almost funny, in the most tragic parts. She was ready now todismiss the book as she had dismissed her earlier ambitions to become apoet.
But if she and Lite together could really act a story that had thestamp of realism which she instinctively longed for, surely it would beworth while. And if she herself could build the picture story theywould later enact before the camera,--that would be better, much betterthan writing silly things about an impossible heroine in the hope oflater selling the stuff!
Automatically her thoughts swung over to the actual building of thescenes that would make for continuity of her lately-conceived plot.Because she knew every turn and every crook of that coulee and everyboard in the buildings snuggled within it, she began to plan her scenesto fit the Lazy A, and her action to fit the spirit of the country andthose countless small details of life which go to make what we call thelocal color of the place.
There never had been an organized gang of outlaws just here in thispart of the country, but--there might have been. Her dad couldremember when Sid Cummings and his bunch hung out in the Bad Landsfifty miles to the east of there. Neither had she ever had a brother,for that matter; and of her mother she had no more than the indistinctmemory of a time when there had been a long, black box in the middle ofthe living-room, and a lot of people, and tears which fell upon herface and tickled her nose when her father held her tightly in his arms.
But she had the country, and she had Lite Avery, and to her it wasvery, very easy to visualize a story that had no foundation in fact.It was what she had done ever since she could remember--theday-dreaming that had protected her from the keen edge of herloneliness.