When Lite objected to her staying altogether at the Lazy A,Jean assured him that she was being terribly practical and cautious and businesslike,and pointed out to him that staying there would save Pard and herself the trip back and forth each day,and would give her time,mornings and evenings to work on her book.
Lite,of course,knew all about that soon-to-be-famous book.He usually did know nearly everything that concerned Jean or held her interest.Whether,after three years of futile attempts,Lite still felt himself entitled to be called Jean's boss,I cannot say for a certainty.He had grown rather silent upon that subject,and rather inclined to keep himself in the background,as Jean grew older and more determined in her ways.
But certainly he was Jean's one confidential friend,--her pal.So Lite,perforce,listened while Jean told him the plot of her story.And when she asked him in all earnestness what he thought would be best for the tragic element,ghosts or Indians,Lite meditated gravely upon the subject and then suggested that she put in both.That is why Jean lavishly indulged in mysterious footsteps all through the first chapter,and then opened the second with blood-curdling war-whoops that chilled the soul of her heroine and led her to suspect that the rocks behind the cabin concealed the forms of painted savages.
Her imagination must have been stimulated by her new work,which called for wild rides after posses and wilder flights away from the outlaws,while the flash of blank cartridges and the smoke-pots of disaster by fire added their spectacular effect to a scene now and then.
Jean,of course,was invariably the wild rider who fled in a blond wig and Muriel's clothes from pursuing villains,or dashed up to the sheriff's office to give the alarm.Frequently she fired the blank cartridges,until Lite warned her that blank cartridges would ruin her gun-barrel;after which she insisted upon using bullets,to the secret trepidation of the villains who must stand before her and who could never quite grasp the fact that Jean knew exactly where those bullets were going to land.
She would sit in her room at the Lazy A,when the sun and the big,black automobile and the painted workers were gone,and write feverishly of ghosts and Indians and the fair maiden who endured so much and the brave hero who dared so much and loved so well.
Lee Milligan she visualized as the human wolf who looked with desire upon Lillian.Gil Huntley became the hero as the story unfolded;and while I have told you absolutely nothing about Jean's growing acquaintance with these two,you may draw your own conclusions from the place she made for them in her book that she was writing.And you may also form some idea of what Lite Avery was living through,during those days when his work and his pride held him apart,and Jean did "stunts"to her heart's content with these others.
A letter from the higher-ups in the Great Western Company,written just after a trial run of the first picture wherein Jean had worked,had served to stimulate Burns'appetite for the spectacular,so that the stunts became more and more the features of his pictures.
Muriel Gay was likely to become the most famous photo-play actress in the West,he believed.That is,she would if Jean continued to double for her in everything save the straight dramatic work.
Jean did not care just at that time how much glory Muriel Gay was collecting for work that Jean herself had done.Jean was experiencing the first thrills of seeing her name written upon the face of fat,weekly checks that promised the fulfillment of her hopes,and she would not listen to Lite when he ventured a remonstrance against some of the things she told him about doing.Jean was seeing the Lazy A restored to its old-time home-like prosperity.She was seeing her dad there,going tranquilly about the everyday business of the ranch,holding his head well up,and looking every man straight in the eye.She could not and she would not let even Lite persuade her to give up risking her neck for the money the risk would bring her.
If she could change these dreams to reality by dashing madly about on Pard while Pete Lowry wound yards and yards of narrow gray film around something on the inside of his camera,and watched her with that little,secret smile on his face;and while Robert Grant Burns waddled here and there with his hands on his hips,and watched her also;and while villains pursued or else fled before her,and Lee Milligan appeared furiously upon the scene in various guises to rescue her,--if she could win her dad's freedom and the Lazy A's possession by doing these foolish things,she was perfectly willing to risk her neck and let Muriel receive the applause.
She did not know that she was doubling the profit on these Western pictures which Robert Grant Burns was producing.She did not know that it would have hastened the attainment of her desires had her name appeared in the cast as the girl who put the "punches"in the plays.She did not know that she was being cheated of her rightful reward when her name never appeared anywhere save on the pay-roll and the weekly checks which seemed to her so magnificently generous.
In her ignorance of what Gil Huntley called the movie game,she was perfectly satisfied to give the best service of which she was capable,and she never once questioned the justice of Robert Grant Burns.
