第63章 CHANCE TAKES A HAND(2)

She was thinking of the day,not long ago,when she had seen a bird fly into the loft over the store-house,and she had climbed in a spirit of idle curiosity to see what the bird wanted there.She had found Lite's bed neatly smoothed for the day,the pillow placed so that,lying there,he could look out through the opening and see the house and the path that led to it.There was the faint aroma of tobacco about the place.Jean had known at once just why that bed was there,and almost she knew how long it had been there.She had never once hinted that she knew;and Lite would never tell her,by look or word,that he was watching her welfare.

Here came Gil,dashing up to the brow of the hill,dismounting and creeping behind a rock,that he might watch them working with the cattle in the valley below.

Jean met his pictured approach with a little smile of welcome.That was the scene where she told him he got off the horse like a sack of oats,and had shown him how to swing down lightly and with a perfect balance,instead of coming to the earth with a thud of his feet.

Gil had taken it all in good faith;the camera proved now how well he had followed her instructions.And afterwards,while the assistant camera-man (with whom Jean never had felt acquainted)shouldered the camera and tripod,and they all tramped down the hill to another location,there had been a little scene in the shade of that rock,between Jean and the star villain.She blushed a little and wondered if Gil remembered that tentative love-making scene which Burns had unconsciously cut short with a bellowing order to rehearse the next scene.

It was wonderful,it was fascinating to sit there and see those days of hard,absorbing work relived in the story she had created.Jean lost herself in watching how Jean of the Lazy A came and went and lived her life bravely in the midst of so much that was hard.

Jean in the loge remembered how Burns had yelled,"Smile when you come up;look light-hearted!And then let your face change gradually,while you listen to your mother crying in there.There'll be a cut-back to show her down on her knees crying before Bob's chair.

Let that tired,worried look come into your face,--the load's dropping on to your shoulders again,--that kind of dope.Get me?"Jean in the loge remembered how she had been told to do this deliberately,just out of her imagination.And then she saw how Jean on the screen came whistling up to the house,swinging her quirt by its loop and with a spring in her walk,and making you feel that it was a beautiful day and that all the meadow larks were singing,and that she had just had a gallop on Pard that made her forget that she ever looked trouble in the face.

Then Jean in the loge looked and saw screen--Jean's mother kneeling before Bob's chair and sobbing so that her shoulders shook.She looked and saw screen Jean stop whistling and swinging her quirt;saw her stand 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 at dad coming in where she waited,and swallowed a lump in her throat.Awoman near her gave a little stifled sob of sympathy when screen-Jean turned and went softly around the corner of the house with all the light 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 fixedly forward,lost in the pictured story of Jean on the screen.So that was what all those made-to-order smiles and frowns meant!Jean had done them at Burns'command,because she had seen that the others simulated different emotions whenever he told them to.She knew,furthermore,that she had done them remarkably well;so well that people responded to every emotion she presented to them.She was surprised at the vividness of every one of those cut-and-dried scenes.They imposed upon her,even,after all the work and fussing she had gone through to get them to Burns'liking.And there,in the cool gloom of the Victoria,Jean for the first time realized to the full the true ability of Robert Grant Burns.For the first time she really appreciated him and respected him,and was grateful to him for what he had taught her to do.

Her mood changed abruptly when the Jean picture ended.The music changed 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 had startled her so when she had first looked at the screen.If the thing was true which she half believed--if it were true!So she stared with narrowed lids,intent,watchful,her whole mind concentrated upon what she should presently see.

"Warring Mexico!"That was the name of it;a Lubin special release,of the kind technically called "educational."Jean held her breath,waiting for the scene that might mean so much to her.There:this must be it,she thought with a flush of inner excitement.

This surely must be the one:

"NOGALES,MEXICO.FEDERAL TROOPS OF GENERAL KOSTERLISKY,WITH AMERICAN SOLDIERS OF FORTUNESERVING ON STAFF OF NOTED GENERAL."