Jean of the Lazy A Part 6

"What's the matter over there? Aren't they glad they're out of the sand?" Jean held her horse quiet while she studied the buzzing group.

"Something busted. I guess we done some damage." Lite grinned and watched them over his shoulder.

"You needn't go any further with me, Lite. That fat man's the one that had the cattle. I am going over to the ranch for awhile, but don't tell Aunt Ella." She turned to ride on up the hill toward the Lazy A, but stopped for another look at the perturbed motorists. "Well anyway, we snaked them out of the sand, didn't we, Lite?"

"We sure did," Lite chuckled. "They don't seem thankful, but I guess they ain't any worse off than they was before. Anyway, it serves them right. They've no business here acting fresh."

Lite said that because he was not given the power to peer into the future, and so could not know that Fate herself had sent Robert Grant Burns into their lives; and that, by a somewhat roundabout method, she was going to use the Great Western Film Company and Jean and himself for her servants in doing a work which Fate had set herself to do.

CHAPTER VIII

JEAN SPOILS SOMETHING

Jean found the padlock key where she had hidden it under a rock ten feet from the door, and let herself into her room. The peaceful familiarity of its four walls, and the cheerful patch of sunlight lying warm upon the faded rag carpet, gave her the feeling of security and of comfort which she seldom felt elsewhere.

She wandered aimlessly around the room, brushing the dust from her books and straightening a tiny fold in the cradle quilt. She ran an investigative forefinger along the seat of her father's saddle, brought the finger away dusty, pulled one of the stockings from the overflowing basket and used it for a dust cloth. She wiped and polished the stamped leather with a painstaking tenderness that had in it a good deal 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 to write, sitting on the arm of an old, cane-seated chair while she did so. As I told you before, Jean never wrote anything in that book except when her moods demanded expression of some sort; when she did write, she said exactly what she thought and felt at the time. So if you are permitted to know what she wrote at this time, you will have had a peep into Jean's hidden, inner life that none of her world save Lite knew anything about. She wrote rapidly, and she did not always take the trouble to finish her sentences properly,--as if she never could quite keep pace with her thoughts. So this is what that page held when finally she slammed the book shut and slid it back into the desk:

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

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

If I could find Art Osgood I believe I could make him tell--I know he knows something, even if he didn't do it himself. I believe he did--But what can you do when you're a woman and haven't any money and must stay where you're put and can't even get out and do the little you might do, because somebody must have you around to lean on and tell their troubles to.... I don't blame Aunt Ella so much--but thank goodness, I can do without a shoulder to weep on, anyway. What's life for 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 for him all the time and that would make life worth while. Poor dad--four more 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 it back out of sight in the desk. She picked up her hat and gloves, and went out with blurred eyes, and began to climb the bluff above the little spring, where a faint, little-used trail led to the benchland above. By following a rock ledge to where it was broken, and climbing through the crevice to where the trail marked faintly the way to the top, one could in a few minutes leave the Lazy A coulee out of sight below, and stand on a high level where the winds blew free from the mountains in the west to the mountains in the east.

Some day, it was predicted, the benchland would be cut into squares and farmed,--some day when the government brought to reality a long-talked-of irrigation project. But in the meantime, the land lay unfenced and free. One could look far away to the north, and at certain times see the smoke of pa.s.sing trains through the valley off there. One could look south to the distant river bluffs, and east and west to the mountains. Jean often climbed the bluff just for the wide outlook she gained. The cage did not seem so small when she could stand up there and tire her eyes with looking. Life did not seem quite so purposeless, and she could nearly always find little whispers of hope in the winds that blew there.

She walked aimlessly and yet with a subconscious purpose for ten minutes or so, and her face was turned directly toward the eastern hills. 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 soft green of the nearer slopes, and at the peaceful blue of the sky arched over 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 not looking now into the past that was so full of heartbreak, but into the future as hope pictured it for her.

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

A sparrow hawk swooped down quite close to Jean and then shot upward with a little brown bird in its claws, and startled her out of her castle building. She felt a hot anger against the hawk, which was like the sudden grasp of misfortune; and a quick sympathy with the bird, which was like herself and dad, caught unawares and held helpless. But she did not move, and the hawk circled and came back on his way to the nesting-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 hawk dropped head foremost to the gra.s.s and lay there crumpled and quiet.

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

Jean cuddled it up against her cheek, and talked to it and pitied it and promised it much in the way of fat little bugs and a warm nest and her tender regard. For the hawk she had no pity, nor a thought beyond the one investigative glance she gave its body to make sure that she had hit it where she meant to hit it. Lite had taught her to shoot like that,--straight and quick. Lite was a man who trimmed life down to the essentials, and he had long ago impressed it upon her that if she could not shoot quickly, and hit where she aimed, there was not much use in her attempting to shoot at all. Jean proved by her scant interest in the hawk how well she had learned the lesson, and how sure she 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 reach any vital organ. She was afraid of septic poisoning, she told the bird; but added comfortingly: "There--you needn't worry one minute over that. 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 then we'll go bug-hunting. I believe I know where there's the fattest, juiciest bugs!" She cuddled the bird against her cheek, and started back across the wide point of the benchland to where the trail led down the bluff to the house.

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

It seemed to her that she was lately fated to come plump into the middle of that fat Mr. Burns' unauthorized picture-making. The first thing she saw when she rounded the corner was the camera perched high upon its tripod and staring at her with its one round eye; and the humorous-eyed Pete Lowry turning a crank at the side and counting in a whisper. Close beside her the two women were standing in animated argument which they carried on in undertones with many gestures to point their meaning.

"Hey, you're in the scene!" called Pete Lowry, and abruptly stopped counting 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. Jean backed a step and sat down upon the bench, and looked from one to the other. The two women glanced at her wide-eyed and moved away with mutual embracings. Jean lifted her hands and looked at the soft little crest and beady eyes of the bird, to make sure that it was not disturbed by these strangers, before she gave her attention to the expostulating Mr. Burns.

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

"About fifteen feet of good scene," Pete Lowry told her dryly, but with that 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 the red sweater who wore a pencil over one ear and was always smiling to himself about something. But what she did was to cross her feet and murmur a sympathetic sentence to the little brown bird. Inwardly she resented deeply this bold trespa.s.s of Robert Grant Burns; but she meant to guard against making herself ridiculous again. She meant to be sure of her ground before she ordered them off. The memory of her humiliation before the supposed rustlers was too vivid to risk a repet.i.tion of the experience.

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

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

She pushed back her hat until its crown rested against the rough boards, and cuddled the little brown bird against her cheek again, and talked to it caressingly. Though she seemed unconscious of his presence, she heard every word that Robert Grant Burns was muttering to himself. Some of the words were plain, man-sized swearing, if she were any judge of language. It occurred to her that she really ought to go and find that peroxide, but she could not forego the pleasure of irritating this man.

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

"Gee! I'd like to make that," Pete Lowry said in an undertone to his a.s.sistant.

Jean did not know that he referred to herself and the unstudied picture she made, sitting there with her hat pushed back, and the little bird blinking at her from between her cupped palms. But she looked at him curiously, with an impulse to ask questions about what he was doing with that queer-looking camera, and how he could inject motion into photography. While she watched, he drew out a narrow, gray strip of film and made mysterious markings upon it with the pencil, which he afterwards thrust absent-mindedly behind his ear. He closed a small door in the side of the camera, placed his palm over the lens and turned 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 both hands,--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 a hurry. 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 go on with our work."

Jean sat still upon the bench and looked at him. "I suppose so; but why should I be doing you favors? You haven't seemed to appreciate them, so far. Of course, I dislike to seem disobliging, or anything like that, but your tone and manner would not make any one very enthusiastic about pleasing you, Mr. Burns. In fact, I don't see why you aren't apologizing for being here, instead of ordering me about as if I worked for you. This bench--is my bench. This ranch--is where I have lived nearly all my life. I hate to seem vain, Mr. Burns, but at the same time I think it is perfectly lovely of me to explain that I have a right here; and I consider myself an angel of patience and graciousness and many other rare virtues, because I have not even hinted that you are once more taking liberties with other people's property." She looked at him with a smile at the corners of her eyes and just easing the firmness of her lips, as if the humor of the situation was beginning to appeal to her.

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

The two women exclaimed under their breaths to each other and moved farther away, as if from an impending explosion. The a.s.sistant camera man gurgled and turned his back abruptly. Lee Milligan, wandering up from the stables, stopped and stared. No one, within the knowledge of those present, had ever spoken so to Robert Grant Burns; no one had ever dreamed of speaking thus to him. They had seen him when rage had mastered him and for slighter cause; it was not an experience that one would care to repeat.

Robert Grant Burns walked up to Jean as if he meant to lift her from the bench and hurl her by sheer brute force out of his way. He stopped so 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 the tone of one who gives a last merciful chance of escape from impending doom.

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

Robert Grant Burns came to a pause. Jean sensed that he was waiting for some reply, and she looked up at him. His hand was just reaching out to her shoulder, but it dropped instead to his coat pocket and fumbled for his handkerchief. Her eyes strayed to Pete Lowry. He was looking upward with that measuring glance which belongs to his profession, estimating the length of time the light would be suitable for the scene he had focussed. She followed his glance to where the shadow of the kitchen had crept closer to the bench. Jean was not stupid, and she had pa.s.sed through the various stages of the kodak fever; she guessed what was in the mind of the operator, and when she met 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. If he comes to his senses before he has a stroke of apoplexy, will you show me how you run that thing?"