Jean of the Lazy A

  CHAPTER VIII

  JEAN SPOILS SOMETHING

  Jean found the padlock key where she had hidden it under a rock tenfeet from the door, and let herself into her room. The peacefulfamiliarity of its four walls, and the cheerful patch of sunlight lyingwarm upon the faded rag carpet, gave her the feeling of security and ofcomfort which she seldom felt elsewhere.

  She wandered aimlessly around the room, brushing the dust from herbooks and straightening a tiny fold in the cradle quilt. She ran aninvestigative forefinger along the seat of her father's saddle, broughtthe finger away dusty, pulled one of the stockings from the overflowingbasket and used it for a dust cloth. She wiped and polished thestamped leather with a painstaking tenderness that had in it a gooddeal of yearning, and finally left it with a gesture of hopelessness.

  She went next to her desk and fumbled the quirt that lay there still.Then she pulled out the old ledger, picked up a pencil, and began towrite, sitting on the arm of an old, cane-seated chair while she didso. As I told you before, Jean never wrote anything in that bookexcept when her moods demanded expression of some sort; when she didwrite, she said exactly what she thought and felt at the time. So ifyou are permitted to know what she wrote at this time, you will havehad a peep into Jean's hidden, inner life that none of her world saveLite knew anything about. She wrote rapidly, and she did not alwaystake the trouble to finish her sentences properly,--as if she nevercould quite keep pace with her thoughts. So this is what that pageheld when finally she slammed the book shut and slid it back into thedesk:

  I don't know what's the matter with me lately. I feel as if I wantedto shoot somebody, or rob a bank or run away--I guess it's the oldtrouble nagging at me. I KNOW dad never did it. I don't know why, butI know it just the same--and I know Uncle Carl knows it too. I'd liketo take out his brain and put it into some scientific machine thatwould squeeze out his thoughts--hope it wouldn't hurt him--I'd give himether, maybe. What I want is money--enough to buy back this place andthe stock. I don't believe Uncle Carl spent as much defending dad ashe claims he did--not enough to take the whole ranch anyway. If I hadmoney I'd find Art Osgood if I had to hunt from Alaska to Africa--don'tbelieve he went to Alaska at all. Uncle Carl thinks so.... I'd likethe price of that machine I helped drag out of the sand--some peoplecan have anything they want but all I want is dad back, and this placethe way it was before....

  If I had any brains I could write something wonderful and be rich andfamous and do the things I want to do--but there's no profit in justfeeling wonderful things; if I could make the world see and feel what Isee and feel--when I'm here, or riding alone....

  If I could find Art Osgood I believe I could make him tell--I know heknows something, even if he didn't do it himself. I believe hedid--But what can you do when you're a woman and haven't any money andmust stay where you're put and can't even get out and do the little youmight do, because somebody must have you around to lean on and telltheir troubles to.... I don't blame Aunt Ella so much--but thankgoodness, I can do without a shoulder to weep on, anyway. What's lifefor if you've got to spend your days hopping round and round in a cage.It wouldn't be a cage if I could have dad back--I'd be doing things forhim all the time and that would make life worth while. Poor dad--fourmore years is--I can't think about it. I'll go crazy if I do--

  It was there that she stopped and slammed the book shut, and pushed itback out of sight in the desk. She picked up her hat and gloves, andwent out with blurred eyes, and began to climb the bluff above thelittle spring, where a faint, little-used trail led to the benchlandabove. By following a rock ledge to where it was broken, and climbingthrough the crevice to where the trail marked faintly the way to thetop, one could in a few minutes leave the Lazy A coulee out of sightbelow, and stand on a high level where the winds blew free from themountains in the west to the mountains in the east.

  Some day, it was predicted, the benchland would be cut into squares andfarmed,--some day when the government brought to reality along-talked-of irrigation project. But in the meantime, the land layunfenced and free. One could look far away to the north, and atcertain times see the smoke of passing trains through the valley offthere. One could look south to the distant river bluffs, and east andwest to the mountains. Jean often climbed the bluff just for the wideoutlook she gained. The cage did not seem so small when she couldstand up there and tire her eyes with looking. Life did not seem quiteso purposeless, and she could nearly always find little whispers ofhope in the winds that blew there.

  She walked aimlessly and yet with a subconscious purpose for tenminutes or so, and her face was turned directly toward the easternhills. She stopped on the edge of the bluff that broke abruptly there,and sat down and stared at the soft purple of the hills and the softgreen of the nearer slopes, and at the peaceful blue of the sky archedover it all. Her eyes cleared of their troubled look and grew dreamy.Her mouth lost its tenseness and softened to a half smile. She was notlooking now into the past that was so full of heartbreak, but into thefuture as hope pictured it for her.

  She was seeing the Lazy A alive again and all astir with the businessof life; and her father saddling Sioux and riding out to look after thestock. She was seeing herself riding with him,--or else cooking thethings he liked best for his dinner when he came back hungry. She satthere for a long, long while and never moved.

  A sparrow hawk swooped down quite close to Jean and then shot upwardwith a little brown bird in its claws, and startled her out of hercastle building. She felt a hot anger against the hawk, which was likethe sudden grasp of misfortune; and a quick sympathy with the bird,which was like herself and dad, caught unawares and held helpless. Butshe did not move, and the hawk circled and came back on his way to thenesting-place in the trees along the creek below. He came quite close,and Jean shot him as he lifted his wings for a higher flight. The hawkdropped head foremost to the grass and lay there crumpled and quiet.

  Jean put back her gun in its holster and went over to where the hawklay. The little brown bird fluttered terrifiedly and gave a piteous,small chirp when her hand closed over it, and then lay quite still inher cupped palms and blinked up at her.

  Jean cuddled it up against her cheek, and talked to it and pitied itand promised it much in the way of fat little bugs and a warm nest andher tender regard. For the hawk she had no pity, nor a thought beyondthe one investigative glance she gave its body to make sure that shehad hit it where she meant to hit it. Lite had taught her to shootlike that,--straight and quick. Lite was a man who trimmed life down tothe essentials, and he had long ago impressed it upon her that if shecould not shoot quickly, and hit where she aimed, there was not muchuse in her attempting to shoot at all. Jean proved by her scantinterest in the hawk how well she had learned the lesson, and how sureshe was of hitting where she aimed.

  The little brown bird had been gashed in the breast by a sharp talon.Jean was much concerned over the wound, even though it did not reachany vital organ. She was afraid of septic poisoning, she told the bird;but added comfortingly: "There--you needn't worry one minute overthat. I'm almost sure there's a bottle of peroxide down at the house,that isn't spoiled. We'll go and put some on it right away; and thenwe'll go bug-hunting. I believe I know where there's the fattest,juiciest bugs!" She cuddled the bird against her cheek, and startedback across the wide point of the benchland to where the trail led downthe bluff to the house.

  She was wholly absorbed in the trouble of the little brown bird; andthe trail, following a crevice through the rocks and later windingalong behind some scant bushes, partially concealed the buildings andthe house yard from view until one was well down into the coulee. So itwas not until she was at the spring, looking at the moist earth therefor fat bugs for the bird, that she had any inkling of visitors. Thenshe heard voices and went quickly around the corner of the house towardthe sound.

  It seemed to her that she was lately fated to come plump into themiddle of that fat Mr. Burns' unauthorized picture-making. The firstthin
g she saw when she rounded the corner was the camera perched highupon its tripod and staring at her with its one round eye; and thehumorous-eyed Pete Lowry turning a crank at the side and counting in awhisper. Close beside her the two women were standing in animatedargument which they carried on in undertones with many gestures topoint their meaning.

  "Hey, you're in the scene!" called Pete Lowry, and abruptly stoppedcounting and turning the crank.

  "You're in the scene, sister. Step over here to one side, will you?"The fat director waved his pink-cameoed hand impatiently.

  An old bench had been placed beside the house, under a window. Jeanbacked a step and sat down upon the bench, and looked from one to theother. The two women glanced at her wide-eyed and moved away withmutual embracings. Jean lifted her hands and looked at the soft littlecrest and beady eyes of the bird, to make sure that it was notdisturbed by these strangers, before she gave her attention to theexpostulating Mr. Burns.

  "Did I spoil something?" she inquired casually, and watched curiouslythe pulling of many feet of narrow film from the camera.

  "About fifteen feet of good scene," Pete Lowry told her dryly, but withthat queer, half smile twisting his lips.

  Jean looked at him and decided that, save for the company he kept,which made of him a latent enemy, she might like that lean man in thered sweater who wore a pencil over one ear and was always smiling tohimself about something. But what she did was to cross her feet andmurmur a sympathetic sentence to the little brown bird. Inwardly sheresented deeply this bold trespass of Robert Grant Burns; but she meantto guard against making herself ridiculous again. She meant to be sureof her ground before she ordered them off. The memory of herhumiliation before the supposed rustlers was too vivid to risk arepetition of the experience.

  "When you're thoroughly rested," said Robert Grant Burns, in the tonethat would have shriveled the soul of one of his actors, "we'd like tomake that scene over."

  "Thank you. I am pretty tired," she said in that soft, drawly voicethat could hide so effectually her meaning. She leaned her headagainst the wall and gave a luxurious sigh, and crossed her feet theother way. She believed that she knew why Robert Grant Burns wasgrowing so red in the face and stepping about so uneasily, and why thewomen were looking at her like that. Very likely they expected her toprove herself crude and uncivilized, but she meant to disappoint themeven while she made them all the trouble she could.

  She pushed back her hat until its crown rested against the roughboards, and cuddled the little brown bird against her cheek again, andtalked to it caressingly. Though she seemed unconscious of hispresence, she heard every word that Robert Grant Burns was muttering tohimself. Some of the words were plain, man-sized swearing, if she wereany judge of language. It occurred to her that she really ought to goand find that peroxide, but she could not forego the pleasure ofirritating this man.

  "I always supposed that fat men were essentially; sweet-tempered," sheobserved to the world in general, when the mutterings ceased for amoment.

  "Gee! I'd like to make that," Pete Lowry said in an undertone to hisassistant.

  Jean did not know that he referred to herself and the unstudied pictureshe made, sitting there with her hat pushed back, and the little birdblinking at her from between her cupped palms. But she looked at himcuriously, with an impulse to ask questions about what he was doingwith that queer-looking camera, and how he could inject motion intophotography. While she watched, he drew out a narrow, gray strip offilm and made mysterious markings upon it with the pencil, which heafterwards thrust absent-mindedly behind his ear. He closed a smalldoor in the side of the camera, placed his palm over the lens andturned the little crank several times around. Then he looked at Jean,and from her to the director.

  Robert Grant Burns gave a sweeping, downward gesture with bothhands,--a gesture which his company knew well,--and came toward Jean.

  "You may not know it," he began in a repressed tone, "but we're in ahurry. We've got work to do. We ain't here on any pleasure excursion,and you'll be doing me a favor by getting out of the scene so we can goon with our work."

  Jean sat still upon the bench and looked at him. "I suppose so; but whyshould I be doing you favors? You haven't seemed to appreciate them, sofar. Of course, I dislike to seem disobliging, or anything like that,but your tone and manner would not make any one very enthusiastic aboutpleasing you, Mr. Burns. In fact, I don't see why you aren'tapologizing for being here, instead of ordering me about as if I workedfor you. This bench--is my bench. This ranch--is where I have livednearly all my life. I hate to seem vain, Mr. Burns, but at the sametime I think it is perfectly lovely of me to explain that I have aright here; and I consider myself an angel of patience and graciousnessand many other rare virtues, because I have not even hinted that youare once more taking liberties with other people's property." Shelooked at him with a smile at the corners of her eyes and just easingthe firmness of her lips, as if the humor of the situation wasbeginning to appeal to her.

  "If you would stop dancing about, and let your naturally sweetdisposition have a chance, and would explain just why you are here andwhat you want to do, and would ask me nicely,--it might help you morethan to get apoplexy over it."

  The two women exclaimed under their breaths to each other and movedfarther away, as if from an impending explosion. The assistant cameraman gurgled and turned his back abruptly. Lee Milligan, wandering upfrom the stables, stopped and stared. No one, within the knowledge ofthose present, had ever spoken so to Robert Grant Burns; no one hadever dreamed of speaking thus to him. They had seen him when rage hadmastered him and for slighter cause; it was not an experience that onewould care to repeat.

  Robert Grant Burns walked up to Jean as if he meant to lift her fromthe bench and hurl her by sheer brute force out of his way. He stoppedso close to her that his shadow covered her.

  "Are you going to get out of the way so we can go on?" he asked, in thetone of one who gives a last merciful chance of escape from impendingdoom.

  "Are you going to explain why you're here, and apologize for your toneand manner, which are extremely rude?" Jean did not pay his rage thecompliment of a glance at him. She was looking at the dainty beak ofthe little brown bird, and was telling herself that she could not bebullied into losing control of herself. These two women should nothave the satisfaction of calling her a crude, ignorant, country girl;and Robert Grant Burns should not have the triumph of browbeating herinto yielding one inch of ground. She forced herself to observe thewonderfully delicate feathers on the bird's head. It seemed morecontent now in the little nest her two palms had made for it. Its heartdid not flutter so much, and she fancied that the tiny, bead-like eyeswere softer in their bright regard of her.

  Robert Grant Burns came to a pause. Jean sensed that he was waitingfor some reply, and she looked up at him. His hand was just reachingout to her shoulder, but it dropped instead to his coat pocket andfumbled for his handkerchief. Her eyes strayed to Pete Lowry. He waslooking upward with that measuring glance which belongs to hisprofession, estimating the length of time the light would be suitablefor the scene he had focussed. She followed his glance to where theshadow of the kitchen had crept closer to the bench. Jean was notstupid, and she had passed through the various stages of the kodakfever; she guessed what was in the mind of the operator, and when shemet his eyes full, she smiled at him sympathetically.

  "I should dearly love to watch you work," she said to him frankly."But you see how it is; Mr. Burns hasn't got hold of himself yet. Ifhe comes to his senses before he has a stroke of apoplexy, will youshow me how you run that thing?"

  "You bet I will," the red-sweatered one promised her cheerfully.

  "How much longer will it be before this bench is in the shade?" sheasked him next.

  "Half an hour,--maybe a little longer." Pete glanced again anxiouslyupward.

  "And--how long do these spasms usually last?" Jean's head tilted towardRobert Grant Burns as impersonally as if she w
ere indicating a horsewith colic.

  But the camera man had gone as far as was wise, if he cared to continueworking for Burns, and he made no reply whatever. So Jean turned herattention to the man whose bulk shaded her from the sun, and whoseremarks would have been wholly unforgivable had she not chosen toignore them.

  "If you really are anxious to go on making pictures, why don't you stopall that ranting and be sensible about it?" she asked him. "You can'tbully me into being afraid of you, you know. And really, you aremaking an awful spectacle of yourself, going on like that."

  "Listen here! Are you going to get off that bench and out of thescene?" By a tremendous effort Robert Grant Burns spoke that sentencewith a husky kind of calm.

  "That all depends upon yourself, Mr. Burns. First, I want to know bywhat right you come here with your picture-making. You haven'texplained that yet, you know."

  The highest paid director of the Great Western Film Company looked ather long. With her head tilted back, Jean returned the look.

  "Oh, all right--all right," he surrendered finally. "Read that paper.That ought to satisfy you that we ain't trespassing here or anywhereelse. And if you'd kindly,"--and Mr. Burns emphasized the word"kindly,"--"remove yourself to some other spot that is just ascomfortable--"

  Jean did not even hear him, once she had the paper in her hands and hadbegun to read it. So Robert Grant Burns folded his arms across hisheaving chest and watched her and studied her and measured her with hismind while she read. He saw the pulling together of her eyebrows, andthe pinching of her under-lip between her teeth. He saw how sheunconsciously sheltered the little brown bird under her left hand inher lap because she must hold the paper with the other, and he quiteforgot his anger against her.

  Sitting so, she made a picture that appealed to him. Had you asked himwhy, he would have said that she was the type that would photographwell, and that she had a screen personality; which would have been highpraise indeed, coming from him.

  Jean read the brief statement that in consideration of a certain sumpaid to him that day by Robert G. Burns, her uncle, Carl Douglas,thereby gave the said Robert G. Burns permission to use the Lazy Aranch and anything upon it or in any manner pertaining to it, for thepurpose of making motion pictures. It was plainly set forth thatRobert G. Burns should be held responsible for any destruction of ordamage to the property, and that he might, for the sum named, use anycattle bearing the Lazy A or Bar O brands for the making of pictures,so long as he did them no injury and returned them in good condition tothe range from which he had gathered them.

  Jean recognized her uncle's ostentatious attempt at legal phraseologyand knew, even without the evidence of his angular writing, that thedocument was genuine. She knew also that Robert Grant Burns wasjustified in ordering her off that bench; she had no right there, wherehe was making his pictures. She forced back the bitterness that filledher because of her own helplessness, and folded the paper carefully.The little brown bird chirped shrilly and fluttered a feeble protestwhen she took away her sheltering hand. Jean returned the paperhastily to its owner and took up the bird.

  "I beg your pardon for delaying your work," she said coldly, and rosefrom the bench. "But you might have explained your presence in thefirst place." She wrapped the bird carefully in her handkerchief sothat only its beak and its bright eyes were uncovered, pulled her hatforward upon her head, and walked away from them down the path to thestables.

  Robert Grant Burns turned slowly on his heels and watched her go, anduntil she had led out her horse, mounted and ridden away, he said nevera word. Pete Lowry leaned an elbow upon the camera and watched heralso, until she passed out of sight around the corner of thedilapidated calf shed, and he was as silent as the director.

  "Some rider," Lee Milligan commented to the assistant camera man, andwithout any tangible reason regretted that he had spoken.

  Robert Grant Burns turned harshly to the two women. "Now then, you twogo through that scene again. And when you put out your hand to stopMuriel, don't grab at her, Mrs. Gay. Hesitate! You want your son toget the warning, but you've got your doubts about letting her take therisk of going. And, Gay, when you read the letter, try and show alittle emotion in your face. You saw how that girl looked--see if youcan't get that hurt, bitter look GRADUALLY, as you read. The way shegot it. Put in more feeling and not so much motion. You know what Imean; you saw the girl. That's the stuff that gets over. Ready?Camera!"