CHAPTER XX
CHANCE TAKES A HAND
A huge pipe organ was filling the theater with a vast undertone thatwas like the whispering surge of a great wind. Jean went into the softtwilight and sat down, feeling that she had shut herself away from theharsh, horrible world that held so much of suffering. She sighed andleaned her head back against the curtained enclosure of the loges, andclosed her eyes and listened to the big, sweeping harmonies that wereyet so subdued.
Down next the river, in a sheltered little coulee, there was a group ofgreat bull pines. Sometimes she had gone there and leaned against atree trunk, and had shut her eyes and listened to the vast symphonywhich the wind and the water played together. She forgot that she hadcome to see a picture which she had helped to create. She held hereyes shut and listened; and that horror of high walls and iron barsthat had haunted her for days, and the aged, broken man who was herfather, dimmed and faded and was temporarily erased; the lightness ofher lips eased a little; the tenseness relaxed from her face, as itdoes from one who sleeps.
But the music changed, and her mood changed with it. She did not knowthat this was because the story pictured upon the screen had changed,but she sat up straight and opened her eyes, and felt almost as thoughshe had just awakened from a vivid dream.
A Mexican series of educational pictures were being shown. Jeanlooked, and leaned forward with a little gasp. But even as she fixedher eyes and startled attention upon it, that scene was gone, and shewas reading mechanically of refugees fleeing to the border line.
She must have been asleep, she told herself, and had gotten thingsmixed up in her dreams. She shook herself mentally and remembered thatshe ought to take off her hat; and she tried to fix her mind upon thepictures. Perhaps she had been mistaken; perhaps she had not seen whatshe believed she had seen. But--what if it were true? What if she hadreally seen and not imagined it? It couldn't be true, she kept tellingherself; of course, it couldn't be true! Still, her mind clung to thatinstant when she had first opened her eyes, and very little of what shesaw afterwards reached her brain at all.
Then she had, for the first time in her life, the strange experience ofseeing herself as others saw her. The screen announcement andexpectant stir that greeted it caught her attention, and pulled herback from the whirl of conjecture into which she had been plunged. Shewatched, and she saw herself ride up to the foreground on Pard. Shesaw herself look straight out at the audience with that peculiar littleeasing of the lips and the lightening of the eyes which was just theinfectious beginning of a smile. Involuntarily she smiled back at herpictured self, just as every one else was smiling back. For that, youmust know, was what had first endeared her so to the public; the humanquality that compelled instinctive response from those who looked ather. So Jean in the loge smiled at Jean on the screen. ThenLite--dear, silent, long-legged Lite!--came loping up, and pushed backhis hat with the gesture that she knew so well, and spoke to her andsmiled; and a lump filled the throat of Jean in the loge, though shecould not have told why. Then Jean on the screen turned and wentriding with Lite back down the trail, with her hat tilted over one eyebecause of the sun, and with one foot swinging free of the stirrup inthat absolute unconsciousness of pose that had first caught theattention of Robert Grant Burns and his camera man. Jean in the logeheard the ripple of applause among the audience and responded to itwith a perfectly human thrill.
Presently she was back at the Lazy A, living again the scenes which sheherself had created. This was the fourth or fifth picture,--she didnot at the moment remember just which. At any rate, it had in it thatincident when she had first met the picture-people in the hills andmistaken Gil Huntley and the other boys for real rustlers stealing heruncle's cattle. You will remember that Robert Grant Burns had toldPete to take all of that encounter, and he had later told Jean to writeher scenario so as to include that incident.
Jean blushed when she saw herself ride up to those three and "throwdown on them" with her gun. She had been terribly chagrined over thatperformance! But now it looked awfully real, she told herself with alittle glow of pride. Poor old Gil! They hadn't caught her ropinghim, anyway, and she was glad of that. He would have looked absurd,and those people would have laughed at him. She watched how she haddriven the cattle back up the coulee, with little rushes up the bank tohead off an unruly cow that had ideas of her own about the direction inwhich she would travel. She loved Pard, for the way he tossed his headand whirled the cricket in his bit with his tongue, and obeyed theslightest touch on the rein. The audience applauded that cattle drive;and Jean was almost betrayed into applauding it herself.
Later there was a scene where she had helped Lite Avery and LeeMilligan round up a bunch of cattle and cut out three or four, whichwere to be sold to a butcher for money to take her mother to thedoctor. Lite rode close to the camera and looked straight at her, andJean bit her lips sharply as tears stung her lashes for someinexplicable reason. Dear old Lite! Every line in his face she knew,every varying, vagrant expression, every little twitch of his lips andeyelids that meant so much to those who knew him well enough to readhis face. Jean's eyes softened, cleared, and while she looked, her lipsparted a little, and she did not know that she was smiling.
She was thinking of the day, not long ago, when she had seen a bird flyinto the loft over the store-house, and she had climbed in a spirit ofidle curiosity to see what the bird wanted there. She had found Lite'sbed neatly smoothed for the day, the pillow placed so that, lyingthere, he could look out through the opening and see the house and thepath that led to it. There was the faint aroma of tobacco about theplace. Jean had known at once just why that bed was there, and almostshe knew how long it had been there. She had never once hinted thatshe knew; and Lite would never tell her, by look or word, that he waswatching her welfare.
Here came Gil, dashing up to the brow of the hill, dismounting andcreeping behind a rock, that he might watch them working with thecattle in the valley below. Jean met his pictured approach with alittle smile of welcome. That was the scene where she told him he gotoff the horse like a sack of oats, and had shown him how to swing downlightly and with a perfect balance, instead of coming to the earth witha thud of his feet. Gil had taken it all in good faith; the cameraproved now how well he had followed her instructions. And afterwards,while the assistant camera-man (with whom Jean never had feltacquainted) shouldered the camera and tripod, and they all tramped downthe hill to another location, there had been a little scene in theshade of that rock, between Jean and the star villain. She blushed alittle and wondered if Gil remembered that tentative love-making scenewhich Burns had unconsciously cut short with a bellowing order torehearse the next scene.
It was wonderful, it was fascinating to sit there and see those days ofhard, absorbing work relived in the story she had created. Jean lostherself in watching how Jean of the Lazy A came and went and lived herlife bravely in the midst of so much that was hard. Jean in the logeremembered how Burns had yelled, "Smile when you come up; looklight-hearted! And then let your face change gradually, while youlisten to your mother crying in there. There'll be a cut-back to showher down on her knees crying before Bob's chair. Let that tired,worried look come into your face,--the load's dropping on to yourshoulders again,--that kind of dope. Get me?" Jean in the logeremembered how she had been told to do this deliberately, just out ofher imagination. And then she saw how Jean on the screen camewhistling up to the house, swinging her quirt by its loop and with aspring in her walk, and making you feel that it was a beautiful day andthat all the meadow larks were singing, and that she had just had agallop on Pard that made her forget that she ever looked trouble in theface.
Then Jean in the loge looked and saw screen--Jean's mother kneelingbefore Bob's chair and sobbing so that her shoulders shook. She lookedand saw screen Jean stop whistling and swinging her quirt; saw herstand still in the path and listen; saw the smile fade out of her eyes.Jean in the loge thought suddenly of that moment when she
had looked atdad coming in where she waited, and swallowed a lump in her throat. Awoman near her gave a little stifled sob of sympathy when screen-Jeanturned and went softly around the corner of the house with all thelight gone from her face and all the spring gone out of her walk.
Jean in the loge gave a sigh of relaxed tension and looked around her.The seats were nearly all full, and every one was gazing fixedlyforward, lost in the pictured story of Jean on the screen. So that waswhat all those made-to-order smiles and frowns meant! Jean had donethem at Burns' command, because she had seen that the others simulateddifferent emotions whenever he told them to. She knew, furthermore,that she had done them remarkably well; so well that people respondedto every emotion she presented to them. She was surprised at thevividness of every one of those cut-and-dried scenes. They imposedupon her, even, after all the work and fussing she had gone through toget them to Burns' liking. And there, in the cool gloom of theVictoria, Jean for the first time realized to the full the true abilityof Robert Grant Burns. For the first time she really appreciated himand respected him, and was grateful to him for what he had taught herto do.
Her mood changed abruptly when the Jean picture ended. The musicchanged to the strain that had filled the great place when she entered,nearly an hour before. Jean sat up straight again and waited, alert,impatient, anxious to miss no smallest part of that picture which hadstartled her so when she had first looked at the screen. If the thingwas true which she half believed--if it were true! So she stared withnarrowed lids, intent, watchful, her whole mind concentrated upon whatshe should presently see.
"Warring Mexico!" That was the name of it; a Lubin special release, ofthe kind technically called "educational." Jean held her breath,waiting for the scene that might mean so much to her. There: this mustbe it, she thought with a flush of inner excitement. This surely mustbe the one:
"NOGALES, MEXICO. FEDERAL TROOPS OF GENERAL KOSTERLISKY, WITH AMERICANSOLDIERS OF FORTUNE SERVING ON STAFF OF NOTED GENERAL."
Jean had it stamped indelibly upon her brain. She waited, with a quickintake of breath when the picture stood out with a sudden claritybefore her eyes.
A "close-up" group of officers and men,--and some of the men Americansin face, dress, and manner. But it was one man, and one only, at whomshe looked. Tall he was, and square-shouldered and lean; with his hatset far back on his head and a half smile curling his lips, and hiseyes looking straight into the camera. Standing there with his weightall on one foot, in that attitude which cowboys call "hipshot." ArtOsgood! She was sure of it! Her hands clenched in her lap. ArtOsgood, at Nogales, Mexico. Serving on the staff of GeneralKosterlisky. Was the man mad, to stand there publicly before themerciless, revealing eye of a motion-picture camera? Or did his vanityblind him to the risk he was taking?
The man at whom she sat glaring glanced sidewise at some person unseen;and Jean knew that glance, that turn of the head. He smiled anew andlifted his American-made Stetson a few inches above his head and heldit so in salute. Just so had he lifted and held his hat high one day,when she had turned and ridden away from him down the trail. Jeancaught herself just as her lips opened to call out to him inrecognition and sharp reproach. He turned and walked away to where thetroopers were massed in the background. It was thus that she had firstglimpsed him for one instant before the scene ended; it was just as heturned his face away that she had opened her eyes, and thought it wasArt Osgood who was walking away from the camera.
She waited a minute, staring abstractedly at the refugees who werepresented next. She wished that she knew when the picture had beentaken,--how long ago. Her experience with motion-picture making, herlistening to the shop-talk of the company, had taught her much; sheknew that sometimes weeks elapse between the camera's work and theactual projection of a picture upon the theater screens. Still, thiswas, in a sense, a news release, and therefore in all probabilityhurried to the public. Art Osgood might still be at Nogales, Mexico,wherever that was. He might; and Jean made up her mind and laid herplans while she sat there pinning on her hat.
She got up quietly and slipped out. She was going to Nogales, Mexico,wherever that was. She was going to get Art Osgood, and she didn'tcare whether she had to fight her way clear through "Warring Mexico."She would find him and get him and bring him back.
In the lobby, while she paused with a truly feminine instinct to tipher hat this way and that before the mirror, and give her hair atentative pat or two at the back, the grinning face of Lite Avery inhis gray Stetson appeared like an apparition before her eyes. Sheturned quickly.
"Why, Lite!" she said, a little startled.
"Why, Jean!" he mimicked, in the bantering voice that was like home toher. "Don't rush off; haven't seen you to-day. Wait till I get you aticket, and then you come back and help me admire ourselves. I camedown on a long lope when somebody said you caught a street car headedthis way. Thought maybe I'd run across you here. Knew you couldn'tstay away much longer from seeing how you look. Ain't too proud to sitalongside a rough-neck puncher, are you?"
Jean looked at him understandingly. Lite's exuberance was unusual; butshe knew, as well as though he had told her, that he had been lonesomein this strange city, and that he was overjoyed at the sight of her,who was his friend. She unpinned her hat which she had been at somepains to adjust at the exact angle decreed by fashion.
"Yes, I'll go back with you," she drawled. "I want to see how you likethe sight of yourself just as you are. It--it's good for one, after thefirst shock wears off." She would not say a word about that Mexicanpicture, she thought; but she wanted to see if Lite also wouldrecognize Art Osgood, and feel as sure of his identity as she had felt.That would make her doubly sure of her self. She could do what shemeant to do without any misgivings whatsoever. She could afford towait a little while and have the pleasure of Lite's presence besideher. Lite was homesick and lonesome;--she felt it in every tone and inevery look;--almost as homesick and lonesome as she was herself. Shewould not hurt him by going off and leaving him alone, even if she hadnot wanted to be with him and to watch the effect that Mexican picturewould have upon him. Lite believed Art Osgood was in the Klondyke.She would wait and see what he believed after he had seen that Nogalespicture.
She waited. She had missed Lite in the last day or so; she had seemedalmost as far away from him as from the Lazy A. But all the while shetalked to him in whispers when he had wanted to discuss the Jeanpicture, she was waiting, just waiting, for that Nogales picture.
When it came at last, Jean turned her head and watched Lite. And Litegave a real start and said something under his breath, and plucked ather sleeve afterwards to attract her attention.
"Look--quick! That fellow standing there with his arms folded. Skinme alive if it isn't Art Osgood!"
"Are you sure?" Jean studied him.
"Sure? Where're your eyes? Look at him! It sure ain't anybody else,Jean. Now, what do you reckon he's doing down in Mexico?"