CHAPTER XIII
PICTURES AND PLANS AND MYSTERIOUS FOOTSTEPS
When Lite objected to her staying altogether at the Lazy A, Jeanassured him that she was being terribly practical and cautious andbusinesslike, and pointed out to him that staying there would save Pardand 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. Heusually did know nearly everything that concerned Jean or held herinterest. Whether, after three years of futile attempts, Lite stillfelt himself entitled to be called Jean's boss, I cannot say for acertainty. He had grown rather silent upon that subject, and ratherinclined to keep himself in the background, as Jean grew older and moredetermined in her ways. But certainly he was Jean's one confidentialfriend,--her pal. So Lite, perforce, listened while Jean told him theplot of her story. And when she asked him in all earnestness what hethought would be best for the tragic element, ghosts or Indians, Litemeditated gravely upon the subject and then suggested that she put inboth. That is why Jean lavishly indulged in mysterious footsteps allthrough the first chapter, and then opened the second withblood-curdling war-whoops that chilled the soul of her heroine and ledher to suspect that the rocks behind the cabin concealed the forms ofpainted savages.
Her imagination must have been stimulated by her new work, which calledfor wild rides after posses and wilder flights away from the outlaws,while the flash of blank cartridges and the smoke-pots of disaster byfire added their spectacular effect to a scene now and then.
Jean, of course, was invariably the wild rider who fled in a blond wigand Muriel's clothes from pursuing villains, or dashed up to thesheriff's office to give the alarm. Frequently she fired the blankcartridges, until Lite warned her that blank cartridges would ruin hergun-barrel; after which she insisted upon using bullets, to the secrettrepidation of the villains who must stand before her and who couldnever quite grasp the fact that Jean knew exactly where those bulletswere 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 writefeverishly of ghosts and Indians and the fair maiden who endured somuch and the brave hero who dared so much and loved so well. LeeMilligan she visualized as the human wolf who looked with desire uponLillian. Gil Huntley became the hero as the story unfolded; and whileI have told you absolutely nothing about Jean's growing acquaintancewith these two, you may draw your own conclusions from the place shemade for them in her book that she was writing. And you may also formsome idea of what Lite Avery was living through, during those days whenhis work and his pride held him apart, and Jean did "stunts" to herheart's content with these others.
A letter from the higher-ups in the Great Western Company, written justafter a trial run of the first picture wherein Jean had worked, hadserved to stimulate Burns' appetite for the spectacular, so that thestunts became more and more the features of his pictures. Muriel Gaywas likely to become the most famous photo-play actress in the West, hebelieved. That is, she would if Jean continued to double for her ineverything save the straight dramatic work.
Jean did not care just at that time how much glory Muriel Gay wascollecting for work that Jean herself had done. Jean was experiencingthe first thrills of seeing her name written upon the face of fat,weekly checks that promised the fulfillment of her hopes, and she wouldnot listen to Lite when he ventured a remonstrance against some of thethings she told him about doing. Jean was seeing the Lazy A restoredto its old-time home-like prosperity. She was seeing her dad there,going tranquilly about the everyday business of the ranch, holding hishead well up, and looking every man straight in the eye. She could notand she would not let even Lite persuade her to give up risking herneck for the money the risk would bring her.
If she could change these dreams to reality by dashing madly about onPard while Pete Lowry wound yards and yards of narrow gray film aroundsomething on the inside of his camera, and watched her with thatlittle, secret smile on his face; and while Robert Grant Burns waddledhere and there with his hands on his hips, and watched her also; andwhile villains pursued or else fled before her, and Lee Milliganappeared furiously upon the scene in various guises to rescue her,--ifshe could win her dad's freedom and the Lazy A's possession by doingthese foolish things, she was perfectly willing to risk her neck andlet Muriel receive the applause.
She did not know that she was doubling the profit on these Westernpictures which Robert Grant Burns was producing. She did not know thatit would have hastened the attainment of her desires had her nameappeared 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 whenher name never appeared anywhere save on the pay-roll and the weeklychecks which seemed to her so magnificently generous. In her ignoranceof what Gil Huntley called the movie game, she was perfectly satisfiedto give the best service of which she was capable, and she never oncequestioned the justice of Robert Grant Burns.
Jean started a savings account in the little bank where her father hadopened an account before she was born, and Lite was made to writheinwardly with her boasting. Lite, if you please, had long ago starteda savings account at that same bank, and had lately cut out poker, andeven pool, from among his joys, that his account might fatten thefaster. He had the same object which Jean had lately adopted sozealously, but he did not tell her these things. He listened insteadwhile Jean read gloatingly her balance, and talked of what she would dowhen she had enough saved to buy back the ranch. She had stolenunwittingly the air castle which Lite had been three years building,but he did not say a word about it to Jean. Wistful eyed, but smilingwith his lips, he would sit while Jean spoiled whole sheets ofperfectly good story-paper, just figuring and estimating and buildingcastles with the dollar sign. If Robert Grant Burns persisted in hismania for "feature-stuff" and "punches" in his pictures, Jean believedthat she would have a fair start toward buying back the Lazy A longbefore her book was published and had brought her the thousands andthousands of dollars she was sure it would bring. Very soon she couldgo boldly to a lawyer and ask him to do something about her father'scase. Just what he should do she did not quite know; and Lite did notseem to be able to tell her, but she thought she ought to find out justhow much the trial had cost. And she wished she knew how to get aboutsetting some one on the trail of Art Osgood.
Jean was sure that Art Osgood knew something about the murder, and shefrequently tried to make Lite agree with her. Sometimes she was surethat Art Osgood was the murderer, and would argue and point out herreasons to Lite. Art had been working for her uncle, and rode often tothe Lazy A. He had not been friendly with Johnny Croft,--but then,nobody had been very friendly with Johnny Croft. Still, Art Osgood wasless friendly with Johnny than most of the men in the country, and justafter the murder he had left the country. Jean laid a good deal ofstress upon the circumstance of Art Osgood's leaving on that particularafternoon, and she seemed to resent it because no one had tried to findArt. No one had seemed to think his going at that time had anysignificance, or any bearing upon the murder, because he had beenplanning to leave, and had announced that he would go that day.
Jean's mind, as her bank account grew steadily to something approachingdignity, worked back and forth incessantly over the circumstancessurrounding the murder, in spite of Lite's peculiar attitude toward thesubject, which Jean felt but could not understand, since he invariablyassured her that he believed her dad was innocent, when she asked himoutright.
Sometimes, in the throes of literary composition, she could not thinkof the word that she wanted. Her eyes then would wander aroundfamiliar objects in the shabby little room, and frequently they wouldcome to rest upon her father's saddle or her father's chaps: the chapsespecially seemed potent reminders of her father, and drew her thoughtsto him and held them there. The worn leather, stained with years ofhard usage and wrinkled permanently where they had shaped themselves tohis
legs in the saddle, brought his big, bluff presence vividly beforeher, when she was in a certain receptive mood. She would forget allabout her story, and the riding and shooting and roping she had donethat day to appease the clamorous, professional appetite of RobertGrant Burns, and would sit and stare, and think and think. Always herthoughts traveled in a wide circle and came back finally to thestarting point: to free her father, and to give him back his home, shemust have money. To have money, she must earn it; she must work forit. So then she would give a great sigh of relaxed nervous tension andgo back to her heroine and the Indians and the mysterious footstepsthat marched on moonlight nights up and down a long porch just outsidewindows that frequently framed white, scared faces with wide,horror-stricken eyes which saw nothing of the marcher, though the stepsstill went up and down.
It was very creepy, in spots. It was so creepy that one evening whenLite had come to smoke a cigarette or two in her company and to listento her account of the day's happenings, Lite noticed that when she readthe creepy passages in her story, she glanced frequently over hershoulder.
"You want to cut out this story writing," he said abruptly, when shepaused to find the next page. "It's bad enough to work like you do inthe pictures. This is going a little too strong; you're as jumpyto-night as a guilty conscience. Cut it out."
"I'm all right. I'm just doing that for dramatic effect. This is veryweird, Lite. I ought to have a green shade on the lamp, to get theproper effect. I--don't you think--er--those footsteps are terriblymysterious?"
Lite looked at her sharply for a minute. "I sure do," he said drily."Where did you get the idea, Jean?"
"Out of my head," she told him airily, and went on reading while Litestudied her curiously.
That night Jean awoke and heard stealthy footsteps, like a man walkingin his socks and no boots, going all through the house but never comingto her room. She did not get up to see who it was, but lay perfectlystill and heard her heart thump. When she saw a dim, yellow ray oflight under the door which opened into the kitchen, she drew theblanket over her head, and got no comfort whatever from the feel of hersix-shooter close against her hand.
The next morning she told herself that she had given in to a fine caseof nerves, and that the mysterious footsteps of her story had becomemixed up with the midnight wanderings of a pack-rat that had somehowgotten into the house. Then she remembered the bar of light under thedoor, and the pack-rat theory was spoiled.
She had taken the board off the doorway into the kitchen, so that shecould use the cookstove. The man could have come in if he had wantedto, and that knowledge she found extremely disquieting. She went allthrough the house that morning, looking and wondering. The living-roomwas now the dressing-room of Muriel and her mother, and the make-upscattered over the centertable was undisturbed; the wardrobe of the twowomen had apparently been left untouched. Yet she was sure that someone had been prowling in there in the night. She gave up the puzzle atlast and went back to her breakfast, but before the company arrived inthe big, black automobile, she had found a stout hasp and two staples,and had fixed the door which led from her room into the kitchen so thatshe could fasten it securely on the inside.
Jean did not tell Lite about the footsteps. She was afraid that hemight insist upon her giving up staying at the Lazy A. Lite did notapprove of it, anyway, and it would take very little encouragement inthe way of extra risk to make him stubborn about it. Lite could bevery obstinate indeed upon occasion, and she was afraid he might take astubborn streak about this, and perhaps ride over every night to makesure she was all right, or do something equally unnecessary and foolish.
She did not know Lite as well as she imagined, which is frequently thecase with the closest of friends. As a matter of fact, Jean had neverspent one night alone on the ranch, even though she did believe she wasdoing so. Lite had a homestead a few miles away, upon which he wassupposed to be sleeping occasionally to prove his good faith in thesettlement. Instead of spending his nights there, however, he rodeover and slept in the gable loft over the old granary, where no oneever went; and he left every morning just before the sky lightened withdawn. He did not know that Jean was frightened by the sound offootsteps, but he had heard the man ride up to the stable and dismount,and he had followed him to the house and watched him through theuncurtained windows, and had kept his fingers close to his gun all thewhile. Jean did not dream of anything like that; but Lite, going abouthis work with the easy calm that marked his manner always, was quite aspuzzled over the errand of the night-prowler as was Jean herself.
For three years Lite had lain aside the mystery of the footprints onthe kitchen floor on the night after the inquest, as a puzzle he wouldprobably never solve. He had come to remember them as a vagrantincident that carried no especial meaning. But now they seemed tocarry a new significance,--if only he could get at the key. For threeyears he had gone along quietly, working and saving all he could, andlooking after Jean in an unobtrusive way, believing that Aleck wasguilty,--and being careful to give no hint of that belief to any one.And now Jean herself seemed to be leading him unconsciously face toface with doubt and mystery. It tantalized him. He knew the prowler,and for that reason he was all the more puzzled. What had he wanted orexpected to find? Lite was tempted to face the man and ask him; but onsecond thought he knew that would be foolish. He would say nothing toJean. He thanked the Lord she slept soundly! and he would wait and seewhat happened.
Jean herself was thoughtful all that day, and was slow to lighten hermood or her manner even when Gil Huntley rode beside her to locationand talked enthusiastically of the great work she was doing for abeginner, and of the greater work she would do in the future, if onlyshe took advantage of her opportunities.
"It can't go on like this forever," he told her impressively for thesecond time, before he was sure of her attention and her interest."Think of you, working extra under a three-day guarantee! Why, you'rewhat's making the pictures! I had a letter from a friend of mine; he'swith the Universal. He'd been down to see one of our pictures,--thatfirst one you worked in. You remember how you came down off thatbluff, and how you roped me and jerked me down off the bank just as I'dgot a bead on Lee? Say! that picture was a RIOT! Gloomy says he neversaw a picture get the hand that scene got. And he wanted to know whowas doubling for Gay, up here. You see, he got next that it was adouble; he knows darned well Gay never could put over that line ofstuff. The photography was dandy,--Pete's right there when it comes tocamera work, anyway,--and that run down the bluff, he said, had peoplestanding on their hind legs even before the rope scene. You could tellit was a girl and no man doubling the part. Gloomy says everybodyaround the studio has begun to watch for our releases, and go just tosee you ride and rope and shoot. And Gay gets all the press-notices!Say, it makes me sick!" He looked at Jean wistfully.
"The trouble is, you don't realize what a raw deal you're getting," hesaid, with much discontent in his tone. "As an extra, you're gettingfine treatment and fine pay; I admit that. But the point is, you've nobusiness being an extra. Where you belong is playing leads. You don'tknow what that means, but I do. Burns is just using you to boost MurielGay, and I say it's the rawest deal I ever saw handed out in thepicture game; and believe me, I've seen some raw deals!"
"Now, now, don't get peevish, Gil." Jean's drawl was soft, and hereyes were friendly and amused. So far had their friendship progressed."It's awfully dear of you to want to see me a real leading lady. Iappreciate it, and I won't take off that lock of hair I said I'd takewhen I shoot you in the foreground. Burns wants a real thrillingeffect close up, and he's told me five times to remember and keep myface turned away from the camera, so they won't see it isn't Gay. If Iturn around, there will have to be a re-take, he says; and you won'tlike that, Gil, not after you've heard a bullet zip past your ear soclose that it will fan your hair. Are--aren't you afraid of me, Gil?"
"Afraid of you?" Gil's horse swung closer, and Gil's eyes threatenedthe opening of a taci
tly forbidden subject.
"Because if you get nervous and move the least little bit-- To make itlook real, as Bobby described the scene to me, I've got to shoot theinstant you stop to gather yourself for a spring at me. It's thatlightning-draw business I have to do, Gil. I'm to stand three quartersto the camera, with my face turned away, watching you. You keepcoming, and you stop just an instant when you're almost within reach ofme. In that instant I have to grab my gun and shoot; and it has tolook as if I got you, Gil. I've got to come pretty close, in order tobring the gun in line with you for the camera. Bobby wants to show offthe quick draw that Lite Avery taught me. That's to be the 'punch' inthe scene. I showed him this morning what it is like, and Bobby isjust tickled to death. You see, I don't shoot the way they usually doin pictures--"
"I should say not!" Gil interrupted admiringly.
"You haven't seen that quick work, either. It'll look awfully real,Gil, and you mustn't dodge or duck, whatever you do. It will be justas if you really were a man I'm deadly afraid of, that has me corneredat last against that ledge. I'm going to do it as if I meant it. Thatwill mean that when you stop and kind of measure the distance, meaningto grab me before I can do anything, I'll draw and shoot from the levelof my belt; no higher, Gil, or it won't be the lightning-draw--asadvertised. I won't have time to take a fine aim, you know."
"Listen!" said Gil, leaning toward her with his eyes very earnest. "Iknow all about that. I heard you and Burns talking about it. You goahead and shoot, and put that scene over big. Don't you worry aboutme; I'm going to play up to you, if I can. Listen! Pete's justwaiting for a chance to register your face on the film. Burns hasplanned his scenes to prevent that, but we're just lying low till thechance comes. It's got to be dramatic, and it's got to seemaccidental. Get me? I shouldn't have told you, but I can't seem totrick you, Jean. You're the kind of a girl a fellow's got to play fairwith."
"Bobby has told me five times already to remember and keep my face awayfrom the camera," Jean pointed out the second time. "Makes me feel asif I had lost my nose, or was cross-eyed or something. I do feel as ifI'd lose my job, Gil."
"No, you wouldn't; all he'd do would be to have a re-take of the wholescene, and maybe step around like a turkey in the snow, and swear tohimself. Anyway, you can forget what I've said, if you'll feel morecomfortable. It's up to Pete and me, and we'll put it over smooth, orwe won't do it at all. Bobby won't realize it's happened till he hearsfrom it afterwards. Neither will you." He turned his grease-paintedface toward her hearteningly and smiled as endearingly as the sinister,painted lines would allow.
"Listen!" he repeated as a final encouragement, because he had sensedher preoccupation and had misread it for worry over the picture. "Yougo ahead and shoot, and don't bother about me. Make it real. Shoot asclose as you like. If you pink me a little I won't care,--if you'llpromise to be my nurse. I want a vacation, anyway."