章节正文
ducked.
"Believe me, I could kill the three of you if I
wanted to, before you could turn around," she informed
them calmly, "so you had better stand still till
I tell you to move." She frowned down at the rustler's
gun in her hand. There was something queer about
that gun.
"Hey, Burns," called the man in the middle, without
venturing to turn his head, "come out of there and
explain to the lady. This ain't in the scene!"
"Oh, yes, it is!" a voice retorted chucklingly.
"You bet your life this is in the scene! Lowry's
been pamming it all in; don't you worry about that!"
Jean was startled, but she did not lower her gun
from its steady aiming at the three of them. It was
just some trick, very likely, meant to throw her off her
guard. There were more than the three, and the fourth
man probably had her covered with a gun. But she
would not turn her head toward his voice, for all that.
"The gentleman called Burns may walk out into the
open and explain, if he can," she announced sharply,
her eyes upon the three whom she had captured so
easily.
She heard the throaty chuckle again, from somewhere
to the left of her. She saw the three men in front of
her look at each other with sickly grins. She felt that
the whole situation was swinging against her,--that
she had somehow blundered and made herself ridiculous.
It never occurred to her that she was in any
particular danger; men did not shoot down women in
that country, unless they were drunk or crazy, and the
man called Burns had sounded extremely sane, humorous
even. She heard a rattle of bushes and the soft
crunching of footsteps coming toward her. Still she
would not turn her head, nor would she lower the gun;
if it was a trick, they should not say that it had been
successful.
"It's all right, sister," said the chuckling voice presently,
almost at her elbow. "This isn't any real,
honest-to-John bandit party. We're just movie people, and
we're making pictures. That's all." He stopped, but
Jean did not move or make any reply whatever, so he
went on. "I must say I appreciate the compliment you
paid us in taking it for the real dope, sister--"
"Don't call me sister again." Jean flashed him a
sidelong glance of resentment. "You've already done
it twice too often. Come around in front where I can
see you, if you're what you claim to be."
"Well, don't shoot, and I will," soothed the chuckling
voice. "My, my, it certainly is a treat to see a
real, live Prairie Queen once. Beats making them to
order--"
"We'll omit the superfluouschatter, please." Jean
looked him over and tagged him mentally with one
glance. He did not look like a rustler,--with his fat
good-nature and his town-bred personality, and his gray
tweed suit and pigskin puttees, and the big cameo ring
on his manicured little finger, and his fresh-shaven
face as round as the sun above his head and almost as
cheerful. Perfectly harmless, but Jean would not
yield to the extent of softening her glance or her
manner one hundredth of a degree. The more harmless
these people, the more ridiculous she had made herself
appear.
The chuckly one grinned and removed his soft gray
hat, held it against his generousequator, and bowed so
low as to set him puffing a little afterward. His eyes,
however, appraised her shrewdly.
"Omitting all superfluouschatter, as you suggest,
I am Robert Grant Burns, of the Great Western Film
Company. These men are also members of that company.
We are here for the purpose of making Western
pictures, and this little bit of unlawful branding
of stock which you were flattering enough to mistake
for the real thing, is merely a scene which we were
making." He was about to indulge in what he would
have termed a little "kidding" of the girl, but wisely
refrained after another shrewdreading of her face.
Jean looked at the three men, who had taken it for
granted that they might leave their intimate study of
the clay bank and were coming toward her. She looked
at the gun she had picked up from the ground,--being
loaded with blank cartridges was what had made it look
so queer!--and at Robert Grant Burns of the Great
Western Film Company, who had put on his hat again
and was studying her the way he was wont to study
applicants for a position in his company.
"Did you get permission to haze our cattle around
like this?" she asked abruptly, to hide how humiliated
she really felt.
"Why--no. Just for a few scenes, I did not consider
it necessary." Plainly, the chuckly Mr. Burns
was taken at a disadvantage.
"But it is necessary. Don't make the mistake, Mr.
Burns, of thinking this country and all it contains is
at the disposal of any chance stranger, just because we
do not keep it under lock and key. You are making
rather free with another man's personal property, when
you use my uncle's cattle for your rustling scenes."
"Your uncle? Well, I shall be very glad to make
some arrangement with your uncle, if that is customary."
"Why the doubt? Are you in the habit of walking
into a man's house, for instance, and using his kitchen
to make pictures without permission? Has it been
your custom to lead a man's horses out of his stable
whenever you chose, and use them for race pictures?"
"No, no--nothing like that. Sorry to have
infringed upon your property-rights, I am sure." Mr.
Burns did not sound so chuckly now; but that may have
been because the three picture-rustlers were quite
openly pleased at the predicament of their director.
"It never occurred to me that--"
"That the cattle were not as free as the hills?" The
quiet voice of Jean searched out the tenderest places
in the self-esteem of Robert Grant Burns. She tossed
the blank-loaded gun back upon the ground and turned
to her horse. "It does seem hard to impress it upon
city people that we savages do have a few rights in this
country. We should have policemen stationed on every
hilltop, I suppose, and `No Trespassing' signs planted
along every cow-trail. Even then I doubt whether we
could convince some people that we are perfectly human
and that we actually do own property here."
While she drawled the last biting sentences, she stuck
her toe in the stirrup and went up into the saddle as
easily as any cowpuncher in the country could have
done. Robert Grant Burns stood with his hands at his
hips and watched her with the critical eye of the expert
who sees in every gesture a picture, effective or
ineffective, good, bad, or merely so--so. Robert Grant
Burns had never, in all his experience in directing
Western pictures, seen a girl mount a horse with such
unconscious ease of every movement.
Jean twitched the reins and turned towards him,
looking down at the little group with unfriendly eyes.
"I don't want to seem inhospitable or unaccommodating,
Mr. Burns," she told him, "but I fear that I must
take these cattle back home with me. You probably
will not want to use them any longer."
Mr. Burns did not say whether she was right or
wrong in her conjecture. As a matter of fact, he did
want to use them for several more scenes; but he stood
silent while Jean, with a chilly bow to the four of them,
sent Pard up the rough bank of the little gulley.
Rather, he made no reply to Jean, but he waved his
three rustlers back, retreating himself to where the
bank stopped them. And he turned toward the bushes
that had at first hidden him from Jean, waved his hand
in an imperativegesture, and called guardedly through
cupped palms. "Take that! All you can get of it!"
Which goes far to show why he was considered one of
the best directors the Great Western Film Company
had in its employ.
So Jean unconsciously made a picture which caused
the eyes of Robert Grant Burns to glisten while he
watched. She ignored the men who had so fooled her,
and took down her rope that she might swing the loop
of it toward the cattle and drive them back across the
gulley and up the coulee toward home. Cattle are
stubborn things at best, and this little bunch seemed
determined to seek the higher slopes. Put upon her
mettle because of that little audience down below,--
a mildly jeering audience at that, she imagined,--Jean
had need of her skill and her fifteen years or so of
experience in handling stock.
She swung her rope and shouted, weaving back and
forth across the gulley, with little lunging rushes now
and then to head off an animal that tried to bolt past
her up the hill. She would not have glanced toward
Robert Grant Burns to save her life, and she did not
hear him saying:
"Great! Great stuff! Get it all, Pete. By
George, you can't beat the real thing, can you? 'J get
that up-hill dash? Good! Now panoram the drive
up the gulley--get it ALL, Pete--turn as long as you
can see the top of her hat. My Lord! You wouldn't
get stuff like that in ten years. I wish Gay could
handle herself like that in the saddle, but there ain't a
leading woman in the business to-day that could put that
over the way she's doing it. By George! Say, Gil,
you get on your horse and ride after her, and find out
where she lives. We can't work any more now, anyway;
she's gone off with the cattle. And, say! You
don't want to let her get a sight of you, or she might
take a shot at you. And if she can shoot the way she
rides--good night!"
CHAPTER VI
AND THE VILLAIN PURSUED HER
The young man called Gil,--to avoid wasting
time in saying Gilbert James Huntley,--
mounted in haste and rode warily up the coulee some
distance behind Jean. At that time and in that
locality he was quite anxious that she should not discover
him. Gil was not such a bad fellow, even though he
did play "heavies" in all the pictures which Robert
Grant Burns directed. A villain he was on the screen,
and a bad one. Many's the man he had killed as cold-
bloodedly as the Board of Censorship would permit.
Many's the girlish, Western heart he had broken, and
many's the time he had paid the penalty to brother,
father, or sweetheart as the scenario of the play might
"Believe me, I could kill the three of you if I
wanted to, before you could turn around," she informed
them calmly, "so you had better stand still till
I tell you to move." She frowned down at the rustler's
gun in her hand. There was something queer about
that gun.
"Hey, Burns," called the man in the middle, without
venturing to turn his head, "come out of there and
explain to the lady. This ain't in the scene!"
"Oh, yes, it is!" a voice retorted chucklingly.
"You bet your life this is in the scene! Lowry's
been pamming it all in; don't you worry about that!"
Jean was startled, but she did not lower her gun
from its steady aiming at the three of them. It was
just some trick, very likely, meant to throw her off her
guard. There were more than the three, and the fourth
man probably had her covered with a gun. But she
would not turn her head toward his voice, for all that.
"The gentleman called Burns may walk out into the
open and explain, if he can," she announced sharply,
her eyes upon the three whom she had captured so
easily.
She heard the throaty chuckle again, from somewhere
to the left of her. She saw the three men in front of
her look at each other with sickly grins. She felt that
the whole situation was swinging against her,--that
she had somehow blundered and made herself ridiculous.
It never occurred to her that she was in any
particular danger; men did not shoot down women in
that country, unless they were drunk or crazy, and the
man called Burns had sounded extremely sane, humorous
even. She heard a rattle of bushes and the soft
crunching of footsteps coming toward her. Still she
would not turn her head, nor would she lower the gun;
if it was a trick, they should not say that it had been
successful.
"It's all right, sister," said the chuckling voice presently,
almost at her elbow. "This isn't any real,
honest-to-John bandit party. We're just movie people, and
we're making pictures. That's all." He stopped, but
Jean did not move or make any reply whatever, so he
went on. "I must say I appreciate the compliment you
paid us in taking it for the real dope, sister--"
"Don't call me sister again." Jean flashed him a
sidelong glance of resentment. "You've already done
it twice too often. Come around in front where I can
see you, if you're what you claim to be."
"Well, don't shoot, and I will," soothed the chuckling
voice. "My, my, it certainly is a treat to see a
real, live Prairie Queen once. Beats making them to
order--"
"We'll omit the superfluouschatter, please." Jean
looked him over and tagged him mentally with one
glance. He did not look like a rustler,--with his fat
good-nature and his town-bred personality, and his gray
tweed suit and pigskin puttees, and the big cameo ring
on his manicured little finger, and his fresh-shaven
face as round as the sun above his head and almost as
cheerful. Perfectly harmless, but Jean would not
yield to the extent of softening her glance or her
manner one hundredth of a degree. The more harmless
these people, the more ridiculous she had made herself
appear.
The chuckly one grinned and removed his soft gray
hat, held it against his generousequator, and bowed so
low as to set him puffing a little afterward. His eyes,
however, appraised her shrewdly.
"Omitting all superfluouschatter, as you suggest,
I am Robert Grant Burns, of the Great Western Film
Company. These men are also members of that company.
We are here for the purpose of making Western
pictures, and this little bit of unlawful branding
of stock which you were flattering enough to mistake
for the real thing, is merely a scene which we were
making." He was about to indulge in what he would
have termed a little "kidding" of the girl, but wisely
refrained after another shrewdreading of her face.
Jean looked at the three men, who had taken it for
granted that they might leave their intimate study of
the clay bank and were coming toward her. She looked
at the gun she had picked up from the ground,--being
loaded with blank cartridges was what had made it look
so queer!--and at Robert Grant Burns of the Great
Western Film Company, who had put on his hat again
and was studying her the way he was wont to study
applicants for a position in his company.
"Did you get permission to haze our cattle around
like this?" she asked abruptly, to hide how humiliated
she really felt.
"Why--no. Just for a few scenes, I did not consider
it necessary." Plainly, the chuckly Mr. Burns
was taken at a disadvantage.
"But it is necessary. Don't make the mistake, Mr.
Burns, of thinking this country and all it contains is
at the disposal of any chance stranger, just because we
do not keep it under lock and key. You are making
rather free with another man's personal property, when
you use my uncle's cattle for your rustling scenes."
"Your uncle? Well, I shall be very glad to make
some arrangement with your uncle, if that is customary."
"Why the doubt? Are you in the habit of walking
into a man's house, for instance, and using his kitchen
to make pictures without permission? Has it been
your custom to lead a man's horses out of his stable
whenever you chose, and use them for race pictures?"
"No, no--nothing like that. Sorry to have
infringed upon your property-rights, I am sure." Mr.
Burns did not sound so chuckly now; but that may have
been because the three picture-rustlers were quite
openly pleased at the predicament of their director.
"It never occurred to me that--"
"That the cattle were not as free as the hills?" The
quiet voice of Jean searched out the tenderest places
in the self-esteem of Robert Grant Burns. She tossed
the blank-loaded gun back upon the ground and turned
to her horse. "It does seem hard to impress it upon
city people that we savages do have a few rights in this
country. We should have policemen stationed on every
hilltop, I suppose, and `No Trespassing' signs planted
along every cow-trail. Even then I doubt whether we
could convince some people that we are perfectly human
and that we actually do own property here."
While she drawled the last biting sentences, she stuck
her toe in the stirrup and went up into the saddle as
easily as any cowpuncher in the country could have
done. Robert Grant Burns stood with his hands at his
hips and watched her with the critical eye of the expert
who sees in every gesture a picture, effective or
ineffective, good, bad, or merely so--so. Robert Grant
Burns had never, in all his experience in directing
Western pictures, seen a girl mount a horse with such
unconscious ease of every movement.
Jean twitched the reins and turned towards him,
looking down at the little group with unfriendly eyes.
"I don't want to seem inhospitable or unaccommodating,
Mr. Burns," she told him, "but I fear that I must
take these cattle back home with me. You probably
will not want to use them any longer."
Mr. Burns did not say whether she was right or
wrong in her conjecture. As a matter of fact, he did
want to use them for several more scenes; but he stood
silent while Jean, with a chilly bow to the four of them,
sent Pard up the rough bank of the little gulley.
Rather, he made no reply to Jean, but he waved his
three rustlers back, retreating himself to where the
bank stopped them. And he turned toward the bushes
that had at first hidden him from Jean, waved his hand
in an imperativegesture, and called guardedly through
cupped palms. "Take that! All you can get of it!"
Which goes far to show why he was considered one of
the best directors the Great Western Film Company
had in its employ.
So Jean unconsciously made a picture which caused
the eyes of Robert Grant Burns to glisten while he
watched. She ignored the men who had so fooled her,
and took down her rope that she might swing the loop
of it toward the cattle and drive them back across the
gulley and up the coulee toward home. Cattle are
stubborn things at best, and this little bunch seemed
determined to seek the higher slopes. Put upon her
mettle because of that little audience down below,--
a mildly jeering audience at that, she imagined,--Jean
had need of her skill and her fifteen years or so of
experience in handling stock.
She swung her rope and shouted, weaving back and
forth across the gulley, with little lunging rushes now
and then to head off an animal that tried to bolt past
her up the hill. She would not have glanced toward
Robert Grant Burns to save her life, and she did not
hear him saying:
"Great! Great stuff! Get it all, Pete. By
George, you can't beat the real thing, can you? 'J get
that up-hill dash? Good! Now panoram the drive
up the gulley--get it ALL, Pete--turn as long as you
can see the top of her hat. My Lord! You wouldn't
get stuff like that in ten years. I wish Gay could
handle herself like that in the saddle, but there ain't a
leading woman in the business to-day that could put that
over the way she's doing it. By George! Say, Gil,
you get on your horse and ride after her, and find out
where she lives. We can't work any more now, anyway;
she's gone off with the cattle. And, say! You
don't want to let her get a sight of you, or she might
take a shot at you. And if she can shoot the way she
rides--good night!"
CHAPTER VI
AND THE VILLAIN PURSUED HER
The young man called Gil,--to avoid wasting
time in saying Gilbert James Huntley,--
mounted in haste and rode warily up the coulee some
distance behind Jean. At that time and in that
locality he was quite anxious that she should not discover
him. Gil was not such a bad fellow, even though he
did play "heavies" in all the pictures which Robert
Grant Burns directed. A villain he was on the screen,
and a bad one. Many's the man he had killed as cold-
bloodedly as the Board of Censorship would permit.
Many's the girlish, Western heart he had broken, and
many's the time he had paid the penalty to brother,
father, or sweetheart as the scenario of the play might
- calmly [´kɑ:mli]
ad.平静地；无风浪地 (初中英语单词) - extremely [ik´stri:mli] ad.极端地；非常地 (初中英语单词)
- rattle [´rætl] n.嘎吱声 (初中英语单词)
- whatever [wɔt´evə] pron.&a.无论什么 (初中英语单词)
- appreciate [ə´pri:ʃieit] v.评价；珍惜；感激 (初中英语单词)
- prairie [´preəri] n.大草原 (初中英语单词)
- chatter [´tʃætə] vi.&n.饶舌；闲聊 (初中英语单词)
- personality [,pə:sə´næliti] n.人；个性；人品；人物 (初中英语单词)
- extent [ik´stent] n.长度；程度；范围 (初中英语单词)
- generous [´dʒenərəs] a.慷慨的；丰盛的 (初中英语单词)
- western [´westən] a.西的；西方的 (初中英语单词)
- reading [´ri:diŋ] n.(阅)读；朗读；读物 (初中英语单词)
- intimate [´intimit] a.亲密的 n.知己 (初中英语单词)
- permission [pə´miʃən] n.允许；同意；许可 (初中英语单词)
- abruptly [ə´brʌptli] ad.突然地；粗鲁地 (初中英语单词)
- plainly [´pleinli] ad.平坦地；简单地 (初中英语单词)
- arrangement [ə´reindʒmənt] n.整理；排列；筹备 (初中英语单词)
- instance [´instəns] n.例子，实例，例证 (初中英语单词)
- impress [im´pres, ´impres] v.铭刻 n.印记；特征 (初中英语单词)
- convince [kən´vins] vt.使确信；使认识错误 (初中英语单词)
- actually [´æktʃuəli] ad.事实上；实际上 (初中英语单词)
- saddle [´sædl] n.鞍子 v.装鞍(于) (初中英语单词)
- gesture [´dʒestʃə] n.手势 v.打手势 (初中英语单词)
- effective [i´fektiv] a.有效的；有力的 (初中英语单词)
- chilly [´tʃili] a.凉飕飕的 (初中英语单词)
- hidden [´hid(ə)n] hide 的过去分词 (初中英语单词)
- audience [´ɔ:diəns] n.听众；观众；接见 (初中英语单词)
- anxious [´æŋkʃəs] a.担忧的；渴望的 (初中英语单词)
- chuckle [´tʃʌkl] vi.&n.轻声笑；暗自笑 (高中英语单词)
- compliment [´kɔmplimənt] n.敬意 vt.赞美；祝贺 (高中英语单词)
- resentment [ri´zentmənt] n.不满；怨恨；忿恨 (高中英语单词)
- perfectly [´pə:fiktli] ad.理想地；完美地 (高中英语单词)
- harmless [´hɑ:mləs] a.无害的，无恶意的 (高中英语单词)
- ridiculous [ri´dikjuləs] a.荒谬的；可笑的 (高中英语单词)
- flattering [´flætəriŋ] a.谄媚的；奉承的 (高中英语单词)
- indulge [in´dʌldʒ] v.(使)沉迷；沉溺；放任 (高中英语单词)
- shrewd [ʃru:d] a.精明的；狡猾的 (高中英语单词)
- disposal [di´spəuzəl] n.处理；支配 (高中英语单词)
- critical [´kritikəl] a.批评的；关键性的 (高中英语单词)
- glisten [´glisən] vi.&n.闪烁，闪闪发光 (高中英语单词)
- saying [´seiŋ, ´sei-iŋ] n.言语；言论；格言 (高中英语单词)
- penalty [´penlti] n.刑罚；惩罚；障碍 (高中英语单词)
- sweetheart [´swi:thɑ:t] n.爱人；情人 (高中英语单词)
- sickly [´sikli] a.多病的；病态的 (英语四级单词)
- bandit [´bændit] n.土匪，强盗 (英语四级单词)
- superfluous [su:´pə:fluəs, sju:-] a.过剩的，多余的 (英语四级单词)
- equator [i´kweitə] n.赤道 (英语四级单词)
- stirrup [´stirəp] n.马蹬；镫形具 (英语四级单词)
- conjecture [kən´dʒektʃə] n.&v.猜测(想)；设想 (英语四级单词)
- imperative [im´perətiv] a.紧急的 n.命令式 (英语四级单词)
- unconsciously [ʌn´kɔʃəsli] ad.无意识地；不觉察地 (英语四级单词)
- mildly [´maildli] ad.温和地；适度地 (英语四级单词)
- villain [´vilən] n.坏人；恶棍；反面角色 (英语四级单词)
- taking [´teikiŋ] a.迷人的 n.捕获物 (英语六级单词)
- hundredth [´hʌndridθ] num.第一百(个) (英语六级单词)
- biting [´baitiŋ] a.刺痛的；尖利的 (英语六级单词)
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章节正文
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