Jean of the Lazy A Part 11

"No," said Muriel, "I haven't." She might have added that she never roped off any horse, but she did not.

"I'll have to try him out and see what he's like, before I try to rope for a picture. I wonder if there'll be time now?" Jean was pleasantly excited over this new turn of events. She had dreamed of doing many things, but never of helping to make moving pictures. She was eager and full of curiosity, like a child invited to play a new and fascinating game, and she kept wondering what Lite would have to say about her posing for moving pictures. Try to stop her, probably,--and fail, as usual!

When she went out to where the others were grouped in the shade, she gave no sign of any inner excitement or perturbation. She went straight up to Burns and waited for his verdict.

"Do I look like Miss Gay?" she drawled.

The keen eyes of Burns half closed while he studied her.

"No, I can't say that you do," he said after a moment. "Walk off toward the corrals,--and, say! Mount the sorrel and start off like you were in a deuce of a hurry. That'll be one scene, and I'd like to see how you do it when you can have your own way about it, and how close up we can make it and have you pa.s.s for Gay."

"How far shall I ride?" Jean's eyes had a betraying light of interest.

"Oh--to the gate, maybe. Can you get a long shot down the trail to the gate, Pete, and keep skyline in the scene?"

Pete moved the camera, fussed and squinted, and then nodded his head.

"Sure, I can. But you'll have to make it right away, or else wait till to-morrow. The sun's getting around pretty well in front."

"We'll take it right after this rehearsal, if the girl can put the stuff over right," Burns muttered. "And she can, or I'm badly mistaken. Pete, that girl's--" He stopped short, because the shadow of Lee Milligan was moving up to them. "All right, Miss--say, what's your name, anyway?" He was told, and went on briskly. "Miss Douglas, just start from off that way,--about where that round rock is. You'll come into the scene a little beyond. Hurry straight up to the sorrel and mount and ride off. Your lover is going to be trapped by the bandits, and you've just heard it and are hurrying to save him. Get the idea?

Now let's see you do it."

"You don't want me to sob, do you?" Jean looked over her shoulder to inquire. "Because if I were going to save my lover, I don't believe I'd want to waste time weeping around all over the place."

Burns chuckled. "You can cut out the sob," he permitted. "Just go ahead like it was real stuff."

Jean was standing by the rock, ready to start. She looked at Burns speculatively. "Oh, well, if it were real, I'd run!"

"Go ahead and run then!" Burns commanded.

Run she did, and startled the sorrel so that it took quick work to catch him.

"Camera! She might not do it like that again, ever!" cried Burns.

She was up in the saddle and gone in a flurry of dusts while Robert Grant Burns stood with his hands on his hips and watched her gloatingly.

"Lord! But that girl's a find!" he e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed, and this time he did not seem to care who heard him. He cut the scene just as Jean pulled up at the gate. "See how she set that sorrel down on his haunches?" he chuckled to Pete. "Talk about feature-stuff; that girl will jump our releases up ten per cent., Pete, with the punches I can put into Gay's parts now. How many feet was that scene, twenty-five?"

"Fifteen," corrected Pete. "And every foot with a punch in it. Too bad she's got to double for Gay. She's got the face for close-up work, believe me!"

To this tentative remark Robert Grant Burns made no reply whatever. He went off down the path to meet Jean, critically watching her approach to see how nearly she resembled Muriel Gay, and how close she could come to the camera without having the subst.i.tution betrayed upon the screen. Muriel Gay was a leading woman with a certain a.s.sured following among movie audiences. Daring horsewomanship would greatly increase that following, and therefore the financial returns of these Western pictures. Burns was her director, and it was to his interest to build up her popularity. Since the idea first occurred to him, therefore, of using Jean as a subst.i.tute for Muriel in all the scenes that required nerve and skill in riding, he looked upon her as a double for Muriel rather than from the viewpoint of her own individual possibilities on the screen.

"I don't know about your hair," he told her, when she came up to him and stopped. "We'll run the negative to-night and see how it shows up.

The rest of the scene was all right. I had Pete make it. I'm going to take some scenes down here by the gate, now, with the boys. I won't need you till after lunch, probably; then I'll have you make that ride down off the bluff and some close-up rope work."

"I suppose I ought to ride over to the ranch," Jean said undecidedly.

"And I ought to try out this sorrel if you want me to use him. Would some other day do just--"

"In the picture business," interrupted Robert Grant Burns dictatorially, "the working-hours of an actor belong to the director he's working for. If I use you in pictures, your time will belong to me on the days when I use you. I'll expect you to be on hand when I want you; get that?"

"My time," said Jean resolutely, "will belong to you if I consider it worth my while to let you have it. Otherwise it will belong to me."

Burns chuckled. "Well, we might as well get down to bra.s.s tacks and have things thoroughly understood," he decided. "I'll use you as an extra to double for Miss Gay where there's any riding stunts and so on.

Miss Gay is a good actress, but she can't ride to amount to anything.

With the clothes and make-up you--impersonate her. See what I mean?

And for straight riding I'll pay you five dollars a day; five dollars for your time on the days that I want to use you. For any feature stuff, like that ride down the bluff, and the roping, and the like of that, it'll be more. Twenty-five dollars for feature-stuff, say, and five dollars for straight riding. Get me?"

"I do, yes." Jean's drawl gave no hint of her inner elation at the prospect of earning so much money so easily. What, she wondered, would Lite say to that?

"Well, that part's all right then. By feature-stuff, I mean anything I want you to do to put a punch in the story; anything from riding bucking horses and shooting--say can you shoot?"

"Yes, I think so."

"Well, I'll have use for that, too, later on. The more stunts you can pull off, the bigger hits these pictures are going to make. You see that, of course. And what I've offered you is a pretty good rate; but I expect to get results. I told you I wasn't any cheap John to work for.

Now get this point, and get it right: I'll expect you to report to me every morning here, at eight o'clock. I may need you that day and I may not, but you're to be on hand. If I do need you, you get paid for that day, whether it's one scene or twenty you're to work in. If I don't need you that day, you don't get anything. That's what being an extra means. You start in to-day, and if you make the ride down the bluff, it'll be twenty-five to-day. But you can't go riding off somewhere else, and maybe not be here when I want you. You're under my orders, like the rest of the company. Get that?"

"I'll try it for a week, anyway," she said. "Obeying your orders will be the hardest part of it, Mr. Burns. I always want to stamp my foot and say 'I won't' when any one tells me I must do something." She laughed infectiously. "You'll probably fire me before the week's out,"

she prophesied. "I'll be as meek as possible, but if we quarrel,--well, you know how sweet-tempered I can be!"

Burns looked at her queerly and laughed. "I'll take a chance on that,"

he said, and went chuckling back to the camera. To have a girl absolutely ignore his position and authority, and treat him in that off-hand manner of equality was a new experience to Robert Grant Burns, terror among photo-players.

Jean went over to where Muriel and her mother were sitting in the shade, and asked Muriel if she would like to ride Pard out into the flat beyond the corrals, where she meant to try out the sorrel.

"I'd like to use you, anyway," she added frankly, "to practice on. You can ride past, you know, and let me rope you. Oh, it won't hurt you; and there'll be no risk at all," she hastened to a.s.sure the other, when she saw refusal in Muriel's eyes. "I'll not take any turns around the horn, you know."

"I don't want Muriel taking risks like that," put in Mrs. Gay hastily.

"That's just why Burns is going to have you double for her. A leading woman can't afford to get hurt. Muriel, you stay here and rest while you have a chance. Goodness knows it's hard enough, at best, to work under Burns."

Jean looked at her and turned away. So that was it--a leading woman could not afford to be hurt! Some one else, who didn't amount to anything, must take the risks. She had received her first little lesson in this new business.

She went straight to Burns, interrupted him in coaching his chief villain for a scene, and asked him if he could spare a man for half an hour or so. "I want some one to throw a rope over on the run," she explained naively, "to try out this sorrel."

Burns regarded her somberly; he hated to be interrupted in his work.

"Ain't there anybody else you can rope?" he wanted to know. "Where's Gay?"

"'A leading woman,'" quoted Jean serenely, "'can't afford to get hurt!'"

Burns chuckled. He knew who was the author of that sentence; he had heard it before. "Well, if you're as fatal as all that, I can't turn over my leading man for you to practice on, either," he pointed out to her. "What's the matter with a calf or something?"

"You won't let me ride out of your sight to round one up," Jean retorted. "There are no calves handy; that's why I asked for a man."

Whereupon the villains looked at one another queerly, and the chuckle of their director exploded into a full-lunged laugh.

"I'm going to use all these fellows in a couple of scenes," he told her. "Can't you practice on a post?"

"_I_ don't have to practice. It's the sorrel I want to try out."

Jean's voice lost a little of its habitual, soft drawl. Really, these picture-people did seem very dense upon some subjects!