Jean of the Lazy A Part 4

She saw the three men in front of her look at each other with sickly grins. She felt that the whole situation was swinging against her,--that she had somehow blundered and made herself ridiculous. It never occurred to her that she was in any particular danger; men did not 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 coming toward her. Still she would not turn her head, nor would she lower the gun; 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 at her elbow. "This isn't any real, honest-to-John bandit party. We're just movie people, and we're making pictures. That's all." He stopped, but Jean did not move or make any reply whatever, so he went on. "I must say I appreciate the compliment you paid us in taking it for the real dope, sister--"

"Don't call me sister again." Jean flashed him a sidelong glance of resentment. "You've already done it twice too often. Come around in front 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. Beats making them to order--"

"We'll omit the superfluous chatter, please." Jean looked him over and tagged him mentally with one glance. He did not look like a rustler,--with his fat good-nature and his town-bred personality, and his gray tweed suit and pigskin puttees, and the big cameo ring on his manicured little finger, and his fresh-shaven face as round as the sun above his head and almost as cheerful. Perfectly harmless, but Jean would not yield to the extent of softening her glance or her manner one hundredth of a degree. The more harmless these people, the more ridiculous she had made herself appear.

The chuckly one grinned and removed his soft gray hat, held it against his generous equator, and bowed so low as to set him puffing a little afterward. His eyes, however, appraised her shrewdly.

"Omitting all superfluous chatter, as you suggest, I am Robert Grant Burns, of the Great Western Film Company. These men are also members of that company. We are here for the purpose of making Western pictures, and this little bit of unlawful branding of stock which you were flattering enough to mistake for the real thing, is merely a scene which we were making." He was about to indulge in what he would have termed a little "kidding" of the girl, but wisely refrained after another shrewd reading of her face.

Jean looked at the three men, who had taken it for granted that they might leave their intimate study of the clay bank and were coming toward her. She looked at the gun she had picked up from the ground,--being loaded with blank cartridges was what had made it look so 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 wont to study applicants for a position in his company.

"Did you get permission to haze our cattle around like this?" she asked abruptly, 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 thinking this country and all it contains is at the disposal of any chance stranger, just because we do not keep it under lock and key. You are making rather free with another man's personal property, when you use my uncle's cattle for your rustling scenes."

"Your uncle? Well, I shall be very glad to make some arrangement with your 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 without permission? Has it been your custom to lead a man's horses out of his stable whenever you chose, and use them for race pictures?"

"No, no--nothing like that. Sorry to have infringed upon your property-rights, I am sure." Mr. Burns did not sound so chuckly now; but that may have been because the three picture-rustlers were quite openly pleased at the predicament of their director. "It never occurred to me that--"

"That the cattle were not as free as the hills?" The quiet voice of Jean searched out the tenderest places in the self-esteem of Robert Grant Burns. She tossed the blank-loaded gun back upon the ground and turned to her horse. "It does seem hard to impress it upon city people that we savages do have a few rights in this country. We should have policemen stationed on every hilltop, I suppose, and 'No Trespa.s.sing'

signs planted along every cow-trail. Even then I doubt whether we could convince some people that we are perfectly human and that we actually do own property here."

While she drawled the last biting sentences, she stuck her toe in the stirrup and went up into the saddle as easily as any cowpuncher in the country could have done. Robert Grant Burns stood with his hands at his hips and watched her with the critical eye of the expert who sees in every gesture a picture, effective or ineffective, good, bad, or merely so--so. Robert Grant Burns had never, in all his experience in directing Western pictures, seen a girl mount a horse with such unconscious ease of every movement.

Jean twitched the reins and turned towards him, looking down at the little group with unfriendly eyes. "I don't want to seem inhospitable or unaccommodating, Mr. Burns," she told him, "but I fear that I must take these cattle back home with me. You probably will not want to use them 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 no reply to Jean, but he waved his three rustlers back, retreating himself to where the bank stopped them. And he turned toward the bushes that had at first hidden him from Jean, waved his hand in an imperative gesture, and called guardedly through cupped palms. "Take that! All you can get of it!" Which goes far to show why he was considered one of the best directors the Great Western Film Company had in its employ.

So Jean unconsciously made a picture which caused the eyes of Robert Grant Burns to glisten while he watched. She ignored the men who had so fooled her, and took down her rope that she might swing the loop of it toward the cattle and drive them back across the gulley and up the coulee toward home. Cattle are stubborn things at best, and this little bunch seemed determined to seek the higher slopes. Put upon her mettle because of that little audience down below,--a mildly jeering audience at that, she imagined,--Jean had need of her skill and her fifteen years or so of experience in handling stock.

She swung her rope and shouted, weaving back and forth across the gulley, with little lunging rushes now and then to head off an animal that tried to bolt past her up the hill. She would not have glanced toward Robert Grant Burns to save her life, and she did not hear him saying:

"Great! Great stuff! Get it all, Pete. By George, you can't beat the real thing, can you? 'J get that up-hill dash? Good! Now panoram the drive up the gulley--get it ALL, Pete--turn as long as you can see the top of her hat. My Lord! You wouldn't get stuff like that in ten years. I wish Gay could handle herself like that in the saddle, but there ain't a leading woman in the business to-day that could put that over the way she's doing it. By George! Say, Gil, you get on your horse and ride after her, and find out where she lives. We can't work any more now, anyway; she's gone off with the cattle. And, say! You don't want to let her get a sight of you, or she might take a shot at you. And if she can shoot the way she rides--good night!"

CHAPTER VI

AND THE VILLAIN PURSUED HER

The young man called Gil,--to avoid wasting time in saying Gilbert James Huntley,--mounted in haste and rode warily up the coulee some distance behind Jean. At that time and in that locality he was quite anxious that she should not discover him. Gil was not such a bad fellow, even though he did play "heavies" in all the pictures which Robert Grant Burns directed. A villain he was on the screen, and a bad one. Many's the man he had killed as cold-bloodedly as the Board of Censors.h.i.+p would permit. Many's the girlish, Western heart he had broken, and many's the time he had paid the penalty to brother, father, or sweetheart as the scenario of the play might decree. Many's the time he had followed girls and men warily through brush-fringed gullies and over picturesque ridges, for the entertainment of shop girls and their escorts sitting in darkened theaters and watching breathlessly the wicked deeds of Gilbert James Huntley.

But in his everyday life, Gil Huntley was very good-looking, very good-natured, and very harmless. His position and his salary as "heavy" in the Great Western Company he owed chiefly to his good acting and his thick eyebrows and his facility for making himself look treacherous and mean. He followed Jean because the boss told him to do so, in the first place. In the second place, he followed her because he was even more interested in her than his director had been, and he hoped to have a chance to talk with her. In his workaday life, Gil Huntley was quite accustomed to being discovered in some villainy, and to having some man or woman point a gun at him with more or less antagonism in voice and manner. But he had never in his life had a girl ride up and "throw down on him" with a gun, actually believing him to be a thief and a scoundrel whom she would shoot if she thought it necessary. There was a difference. Gil did not take the time or trouble to a.n.a.lyze the difference, but he knew that he was glad the boss had not sent Johnny or Bill in his place. He did not believe that either of them would have enough sense to see the difference, and they might offend her in some way,--though Gil Huntley need not have worried in the least over any man's treatment of Jean, who was eminently qualified to attend to that for herself.

He grinned when he saw her turn the cattle loose down the very next coulee and with a final flip of her rope loop toward the hindermost cow, ride on without them. He should have ridden in haste then to tell Robert Grant Burns that the cattle could be brought back in twenty minutes or so and the picture-making go on as planned. It was not likely that the girl would come back; they could go on with their work and get permission from the girl's uncle afterward. But he did not turn and hurry back. Instead, he waited behind a rock-huddle until Jean was well out of sight,--and while he waited, he took his handkerchief and rubbed hard at the make-up on his face, which had made him look sinister and boldly bad. Without mirror or cold cream, he was not very successful, so that he rode on somewhat spotted in appearance and looking even more sinister than before. But he was much more comfortable in his mind, which meant a good deal in the interview which he hoped by some means to bring about.

With Jean a couple of hundred yards in advance, they crossed a little flat so bare of concealment that Gil Huntley was worried for fear she might look back and discover him. But she did not turn her head, and he rode on more confidently. At the mouth of Lazy A coulee, just where stood the cl.u.s.ter of huge rocks that had at one time come hurtling down from the higher slopes, and the clump of currant bushes beneath which Jean used to hide her much-despised saddle when she was a child, she disappeared from view. Gil, knowing very little of the ways of the range folk, and less of the country, kicked his horse into a swifter pace and galloped after her.

Fifty yards beyond the currant bushes he heard a sound and looked back; and there was Jean, riding out from her hiding-place, and coming after him almost at a run. While he was trying to decide what to do about it, she overtook him; rather, the wide loop of her rope overtook him.

He ducked, but the loop settled over his head and shoulders and pulled tight about the chest. Jean took two turns of the rope around the saddle horn and then looked him over critically. In spite of herself, she smiled a little at his face, streaked still with grease paint, and at his eyes staring at her from between heavily penciled lids.

"That's what you get for following," she said, after a minute of staring at each other. "Did you think I didn't know you were trailing along behind me? I saw you before I turned the cattle loose, but I just let you think you were being real sly and cunning about it. You did it in real moving-picture style; did your fat Mr. Robert Grant Burns teach you how? What is the idea, anyway? Were you going to abduct me and lead me to the swarthy chief of your gang, or band, or whatever you call it?"

Having scored a point against him and so put herself into a good humor again, Jean laughed at him and twitched the rope, just to remind him that he was at her mercy. To be haughtily indignant with this honest-eyed, embarra.s.sed young fellow with the streaky face and heavily-penciled eyelids was out of the question. The wind caught his high, peaked-crowned sombrero and sent it sailing like a great, flapping bird to the ground, and he could not catch it because Jean had his arms pinioned with the loop.

She laughed again and rode over to where the hat had lodged. Gil Huntley, to save himself from being dragged ignominiously from the saddle, kicked his horse and kept pace with her. Jean leaned far over and picked up the hat, and examined it with amus.e.m.e.nt.

"If you could just live up to your hat, my, wouldn't you be a villain, though!" she commented, in a soft, drawling voice. "You don't look so terribly blood-thirsty without it; I just guess I'd better keep it for a while. It would make a dandy waste-basket. Do you know, if your face were clean, I think you'd look almost human,--for an outlaw."

She started on up the trail, nonchalantly leading her captive by the rope. Gil Huntley could have wriggled an arm loose and freed himself, but he did not. He wanted to see what she was going to do with him.

He grinned when she had her back turned toward him, but he did not say anything for fear of spoiling the joke or offending her in some way.

So presently Jean began to feel silly, and the joke lost its point and seemed inane and weak.

She turned back, threw off the loop that bound his arms to his sides, and coiled the rope. "I wish you play-acting people would keep out of the country," she said impatiently. "Twice you've made me act ridiculous. I don't know what in the world you wanted to follow me for,--and I don't care. Whatever it was, it isn't going to do you one particle of good, so you needn't go on doing it."

She looked at him full, refused to meet half-way the friendliness of his eyes, tossed the hat toward him, and wheeled her horse away.

"Good-by," she said shortly, and touched Pard with the spurs. She was out of hearing before Gil Huntley could think of the right thing to say, and she increased the distance between them so rapidly that before he had quite recovered from his surprise at her sudden change of mood, she was so far away that he could not have overtaken her if he had tried.

He watched her out of sight and rode back to where Burns mouthed a big, black cigar, and paced up and down the level s.p.a.ce where he had set the interrupted scene, and waited his coming.

"Rode away from you, did she? Where'd she take the cattle to? Left 'em in the next gulch? Well, why didn't you say so? You boys can bring 'em back, and we'll get to work again. Where'd you say that spring was, Gil? We'll eat before we do anything else. One thing about this blamed country is we don't have to be afraid of the light.

Got to hand it to 'em for having plenty of good, clear sunlight, anyway?"

He followed Gil to the feeble spring that seeped from under a huge boulder, and stooped uncomfortably to fill a tin cup. While he waited for the trickle to yield him a drink, he c.o.c.ked his head sidewise and looked up quizzically at his "heavy."

"You must have come within speaking distance, Gil," he guessed shrewdly. "Got any make-up along? You look like a mild case of the measles, right now. What did she have to say, anyhow?"

"Nothing," said Gil shortly. "I didn't talk to her at all. I didn't want to run my horse to death trying to say h.e.l.lo when she didn't want it that way."

"Huh!" grunted Robert Grant Burns unbelievingly, and fished a bit of gra.s.s out of the cup with his little finger. He drank and said no more.

CHAPTER VII

ROBERT GRANT BURNS GETS HELP

"You know the brand, don't you?" the proprietor of the hotel which housed the Great Western Company asked, with the tolerant air which the sophisticated wear when confronted by ignorance. "Easy enough to locate the outfit, by the cattle brand. What was it?"