CHAPTER V
JEAN RIDES INTO A SMALL ADVENTURE
At the mouth of the coulee, she turned to the left instead of to theright, and so galloped directly away from the Bar Nothing ranch, downthe narrow valley known locally as the Flat, and on to the hills thatinvited her with their untroubled lights and shadows and the deep scarsshe knew for canyons.
There were no ranches out this way. The land was too broken and toobarren for anything but grazing, so that she felt fairly sure of havingher solitude unspoiled by anything human. Solitude was what shewanted. Solitude was what she had counted upon having in that littleroom at the Lazy A; robbed of it there, she rode straight to the hills,where she was most certain of finding it.
And then she came up out of a hollow upon a little ridge and saw threehorsemen down in the next coulee. They were not close enough so thatshe could distinguish their features, but by the horses they rode, bythe swing of their bodies in the saddles, by all those little,indefinable marks by which we recognize acquaintances at a distance,Jean knew them for strangers. She pulled up and watched them, puzzledfor a minute at their presence and behavior.
When first she discovered them, they were driving a small bunch ofcattle, mostly cows and calves, down out of a little "draw" to thelevel bottom of the narrow coulee. While she watched, herself screenedeffectually by a clump of bushes, she saw one rider leave the cattleand gallop out into the open, stand there looking toward the mouth ofthe coulee, and wave his hand in a signal for the others to advance.This looked queer to Jean, accustomed all her life to seeing men gocalmly about their business upon the range, careless of observationbecause they had nothing to conceal. She urged Pard a little nearer,keeping well behind the bushes still, and leaned forward over thesaddle horn, watching the men closely.
Their next performance was enlightening, but incredibly bold for thebusiness they were engaged in. One of the three got off his horse andstarted a little fire of dry sticks under a convenient ledge. Anotheruntied the rope from his saddle, widened the loop, swung it twice overhis head and flipped it neatly over the head of a calf.
Jean did not wait to see any more than that; she did not need to seeany more to know them for "rustlers." Brazen rustlers, indeed, to goabout their work in broad daylight like that. She was not sure as tothe ownership of the calf, but down here was where the Bar Nothingcattle, and what few were left of the Lazy A, ranged while the feed wasgood in the spring, so that the probabilities were that this theftwould strike rather close home. Whether it did or not, Jean was notone to ride away and leave range thieves calmly at work.
She turned back behind the bushy screen, rode hastily along the ridgeto the head of the little coulee and dismounted, leading Pard down asteep bank that was treacherous with loose shale. The coulee was moreor less open, but it had convenient twists and windings; and if youthink that Jean failed to go down it quietly and unseen, that merelyproves how little you know Jean.
She hurried as much as she dared. She knew that the rustlers would bein something of a hurry themselves, and she very much desired to rideon them unawares and catch them at that branding, so that there wouldbe no shadow of a doubt of their guilt. What she would do after shehad ridden upon them, she did not quite know.
So she came presently around the turn that revealed them to her. Theywere still fussing with the calf,--or it may have been anotherone,--and did not see her until she was close upon them. When they didsee her, she had them covered with her 38-caliber six-shooter, that sheusually carried with her on the chance of getting a shot at a coyote ora fox or something like that.
The three stood up and stared at her, their jaws sagging a little atthe suddenness of her appearance, and their eyes upon the gun. Jeanheld it steady, and she had all the look of a person who knew exactlywhat she meant, and who meant business. She eyed them curiously,noting the fact that they were strangers, and cowboys,--though of atype that she had never seen on the range. She glanced sharply at thebeaded, buckskin jacket of one of them, and the high, wide-brimmedsombrero of another.
"Well," she said at length, "turn your backs, you've had a good look atme. Turn--your--backs, I said. Now, drop those guns on the ground.Walk straight ahead of you till you come to that bank. You needn'tlook around; I'm still here."
She leaned a little, sending Pard slowly forward until he was close tothe six-shooters lying on the ground. She glanced down at themquickly, and again at the men who stood, an uneasy trio, with theirfaces toward the wall, except when they ventured a glance sidewise orback at her over one shoulder. She glanced at the cattle huddled inthe narrow mouth of the "draw" behind them, and saw that they wereindeed Bar Nothing and Lazy A stock. The horses the three had beenriding she did not remember to have seen before.
Jean hesitated, not quite knowing what she ought to do next. So farshe had acted merely upon instincts born of her range life andtraining; the rest would not be so easy. She knew she ought to havethose guns, at any rate, so she dismounted, still keeping the three inline with her own weapon, and went to where the revolvers lay on theground. With her boot toe she kicked them close together, and stoopedand picked one up. The last man in the line turned toward herprotestingly, and Jean fired so close to his head that he ducked.
"Believe me, I could kill the three of you if I wanted to, before youcould turn around," she informed them calmly, "so you had better standstill till I tell you to move." She frowned down at the rustler's gunin her hand. There was something queer about that gun.
"Hey, Burns," called the man in the middle, without venturing to turnhis head, "come out of there and explain to the lady. This ain't inthe scene!"
"Oh, yes, it is!" a voice retorted chucklingly. "You bet your life thisis in the scene! Lowry's been pamming it all in; don't you worry aboutthat!" Jean was startled, but she did not lower her gun from its steadyaiming at the three of them. It was just some trick, very likely,meant to throw her off her guard. There were more than the three, andthe fourth man probably had her covered with a gun. But she would notturn her head toward his voice, for all that.
"The gentleman called Burns may walk out into the open and explain, ifhe can," she announced sharply, her eyes upon the three whom she hadcaptured so easily.
She heard the throaty chuckle again, from somewhere to the left of her.She saw the three men in front of her look at each other with sicklygrins. She felt that the whole situation was swinging againsther,--that she had somehow blundered and made herself ridiculous. Itnever occurred to her that she was in any particular danger; men didnot shoot down women in that country, unless they were drunk or crazy,and the man called Burns had sounded extremely sane, humorous even.She heard a rattle of bushes and the soft crunching of footsteps comingtoward her. Still she would not turn her head, nor would she lower thegun; if it was a trick, they should not say that it had been successful.
"It's all right, sister," said the chuckling voice presently, almost ather elbow. "This isn't any real, honest-to-John bandit party. We'rejust movie people, and we're making pictures. That's all." Hestopped, but Jean did not move or make any reply whatever, so he wenton. "I must say I appreciate the compliment you paid us in taking itfor the real dope, sister--"
"Don't call me sister again." Jean flashed him a sidelong glance ofresentment. "You've already done it twice too often. Come around infront where I can see you, if you're what you claim to be."
"Well, don't shoot, and I will," soothed the chuckling voice. "My, my,it certainly is a treat to see a real, live Prairie Queen once. Beatsmaking them to order--"
"We'll omit the superfluous chatter, please." Jean looked him over andtagged him mentally with one glance. He did not look like arustler,--with his fat good-nature and his town-bred personality, andhis gray tweed suit and pigskin puttees, and the big cameo ring on hismanicured little finger, and his fresh-shaven face as round as the sunabove his head and almost as cheerful. Perfectly harmless, but Jeanwould not yield to the extent of softening her glance or her ma
nner onehundredth of a degree. The more harmless these people, the moreridiculous she had made herself appear.
The chuckly one grinned and removed his soft gray hat, held it againsthis generous equator, and bowed so low as to set him puffing a littleafterward. His eyes, however, appraised her shrewdly.
"Omitting all superfluous chatter, as you suggest, I am Robert GrantBurns, of the Great Western Film Company. These men are also membersof that company. We are here for the purpose of making Westernpictures, and this little bit of unlawful branding of stock which youwere flattering enough to mistake for the real thing, is merely a scenewhich we were making." He was about to indulge in what he would havetermed a little "kidding" of the girl, but wisely refrained afteranother shrewd reading of her face.
Jean looked at the three men, who had taken it for granted that theymight leave their intimate study of the clay bank and were comingtoward her. She looked at the gun she had picked up from theground,--being loaded with blank cartridges was what had made it lookso queer!--and at Robert Grant Burns of the Great Western Film Company,who had put on his hat again and was studying her the way he was wontto study applicants for a position in his company.
"Did you get permission to haze our cattle around like this?" she askedabruptly, to hide how humiliated she really felt.
"Why--no. Just for a few scenes, I did not consider it necessary."Plainly, the chuckly Mr. Burns was taken at a disadvantage.
"But it is necessary. Don't make the mistake, Mr. Burns, of thinkingthis country and all it contains is at the disposal of any chancestranger, just because we do not keep it under lock and key. You aremaking rather free with another man's personal property, when you usemy uncle's cattle for your rustling scenes."
"Your uncle? Well, I shall be very glad to make some arrangement withyour uncle, if that is customary."
"Why the doubt? Are you in the habit of walking into a man's house,for instance, and using his kitchen to make pictures withoutpermission? Has it been your custom to lead a man's horses out of hisstable whenever you chose, and use them for race pictures?"
"No, no--nothing like that. Sorry to have infringed upon yourproperty-rights, I am sure." Mr. Burns did not sound so chuckly now;but that may have been because the three picture-rustlers were quiteopenly pleased at the predicament of their director. "It never occurredto me that--"
"That the cattle were not as free as the hills?" The quiet voice ofJean searched out the tenderest places in the self-esteem of RobertGrant Burns. She tossed the blank-loaded gun back upon the ground andturned to her horse. "It does seem hard to impress it upon city peoplethat we savages do have a few rights in this country. We should havepolicemen stationed on every hilltop, I suppose, and 'No Trespassing'signs planted along every cow-trail. Even then I doubt whether wecould convince some people that we are perfectly human and that weactually do own property here."
While she drawled the last biting sentences, she stuck her toe in thestirrup and went up into the saddle as easily as any cowpuncher in thecountry could have done. Robert Grant Burns stood with his hands athis hips and watched her with the critical eye of the expert who seesin every gesture a picture, effective or ineffective, good, bad, ormerely so--so. Robert Grant Burns had never, in all his experience indirecting Western pictures, seen a girl mount a horse with suchunconscious ease of every movement.
Jean twitched the reins and turned towards him, looking down at thelittle group with unfriendly eyes. "I don't want to seem inhospitableor unaccommodating, Mr. Burns," she told him, "but I fear that I musttake these cattle back home with me. You probably will not want to usethem any longer."
Mr. Burns did not say whether she was right or wrong in her conjecture.As a matter of fact, he did want to use them for several more scenes;but he stood silent while Jean, with a chilly bow to the four of them,sent Pard up the rough bank of the little gulley. Rather, he made noreply to Jean, but he waved his three rustlers back, retreating himselfto where the bank stopped them. And he turned toward the bushes thathad at first hidden him from Jean, waved his hand in an imperativegesture, and called guardedly through cupped palms. "Take that! Allyou can get of it!" Which goes far to show why he was considered one ofthe best directors the Great Western Film Company had in its employ.
So Jean unconsciously made a picture which caused the eyes of RobertGrant Burns to glisten while he watched. She ignored the men who hadso fooled her, and took down her rope that she might swing the loop ofit toward the cattle and drive them back across the gulley and up thecoulee toward home. Cattle are stubborn things at best, and thislittle bunch seemed determined to seek the higher slopes. Put upon hermettle because of that little audience down below,--a mildly jeeringaudience at that, she imagined,--Jean had need of her skill and herfifteen years or so of experience in handling stock.
She swung her rope and shouted, weaving back and forth across thegulley, with little lunging rushes now and then to head off an animalthat tried to bolt past her up the hill. She would not have glancedtoward Robert Grant Burns to save her life, and she did not hear himsaying:
"Great! Great stuff! Get it all, Pete. By George, you can't beat thereal thing, can you? 'J get that up-hill dash? Good! Now panoram thedrive up the gulley--get it ALL, Pete--turn as long as you can see thetop of her hat. My Lord! You wouldn't get stuff like that in tenyears. I wish Gay could handle herself like that in the saddle, butthere ain't a leading woman in the business to-day that could put thatover the way she's doing it. By George! Say, Gil, you get on yourhorse and ride after her, and find out where she lives. We can't workany more now, anyway; she's gone off with the cattle. And, say! Youdon't want to let her get a sight of you, or she might take a shot atyou. And if she can shoot the way she rides--good night!"