"What you doing now?"Robert Grant Burns came around the corner of the house looking for her,half an hour later,and found her sitting on the doorstep with the old atlas on her knees and her hat far back on her head,scribbling away for dear life.
Jean smiled abstractedly up at him."Why,I'm--why-y,I'm becoming a famous scenario writer!Do you want me to go and plaster my face with grease-paint,and become a mere common leading lady again?""No,I don't."Robert Grant Burns chuckled fatly and held out his hand with a big,pink cameo on his little finger."Let's see what a famous scenario looks like.What is it,--that plot you were telling me awhile ago?""Why,yes.I'm putting on the meat."There was a slight hesitation before Jean handed him the pages she had done."I expect it's awfully crude,"she apologized,with one of her diffident spells."I'm afraid you'll laugh at me."Robert Grant Burns was reading rapidly,mentally photographing the scenes as he went along.He held out his hand again without looking toward her.
"Lemme take your pencil a minute.I believe I'd have a panoram of the coulee,--a long shot from out there in the meadow.And show the brother and you leaving the house and riding toward the camera;at the gate,you separate.You're going to town,say.He rides on toward the hills.That fixes you both as belonging here at the ranch,identifies you two and the home ranch both in thirty feet or so of the film,with a leader that tells you're brother and sister.See what I mean?"He scribbled a couple of lines,crossed out a couple,and went on reading to where he had interrupted Jean in the middle of a sentence.
"I see you're writing in a part for that Lite Avery;how do you know he'd do it?Or can put it over if he tries?He don't look to me like an actor.""Lite,"declared Jean with a positiveness that would have thrilled Lite,had he heard her,"can put over anything he tries to put over.And he'll do it,if I tell him he must!"Which showed what were Jean's ideas,at least on the subject of which was the master.
"What you going to call it a The Perils of the Prairie,say?"Burns abandoned further argument on the subject of Lite's ability.
"Oh,no!That's awfully cheap.That would stamp it as a melodrama before any of the picture appeared on the screen."Robert Grant Burns had not been serious;he had been testing Jean's originality."Well,what will we call it,then?""Oh,we'll call it--"Jean nibbled the rubber on her pencil and looked at him with that unseeing,introspective gaze which was a trick of hers."We'll call it--does it hurt if we use real names that we've a right to?"She got a head-shake for answer."Well,we'll call it,--let's just call it--Jean,of the Lazy A.
Would that sound as if--"
"Great!Girl,you're a winner!Jean,of the Lazy A!Say,that title alone will jump the releases ten per cent.if I know the game.Featuring Jean herself;pictures made right at the Lazy A Ranch.Say,the dope I can give our publicity man--"Thereupon Jean,remembering Gil Huntley's lecture on the commercial side of the proposition,startled his enthusiasm with one naive question.
"How much will the Great Western Film Company pay me extra for furnishing the story I play in?""How much?"Robert Grant Burns blurted the words automatically.
"Yes.How much?If it will jump your releases ten per cent.they ought to pay me quite a lot more than they're paying me now.""You're doing pretty well as it is,"Burns reminded her,with a visible dampening of his eagerness.
"For keeping your cut-and-dried stories from falling flat,yes.But for writing the kind of play that will have just as many `punches'and still be true to life,and then for acting it all out and putting in those punches,--that's a different matter,Mr.Burns.And you'll have to pay Lite a decent salary,or I'll quit right here.I'm thinking up stunts for us two that are awfully risky.You'll have to pay for that.But it will be worth while.You wait till you see Lite in action!"Gil would have been exuberant over the literal manner in which Jean was taking his advice and putting it to the test,had he overheard her driving her bargain with Robert Grant Burns.He would have been exuberant,but he would never have dared to say the things that Jean said,or to have taken the stand that she took.Robert Grant Burns found himself very much in the position which Lite had occupied for three years.
He had well-defined ideas upon the subject before them,and he had the outer semblance of authority;but his ideas and his authority had no weight whatever with Jean,since she had made up her mind.
Before Jean left the subject of salary,Robert Grant Burns found himself committed to a promise of an increase,provided that Jean really "delivered the goods"in the shape of a scenario serial,and did the stunts which she declared she could and would do.
Before she settled down to the actual planning of scenes,Robert Grant Burns had also yielded to her demands for Lite Avery,though you may think that he thereby showed himself culpably weak,unless you realize what sort of a person Jean was in argument.Without having more than a good-morning acquaintance with Lite,Burns agreed to put him on "in stock"and to pay him the salary Jean demanded for him,provided that,in the try-out of the first picture,Lite should prove he could deliver the goods.Burns was always extremely firm in the matter of having the "goods"delivered;that was why he was the Great Western's leading director.
Mere dollars he would yield,if driven into a corner and kept there long enough,but he must have results.
These things being settled,they spent about two hours on the doorstep of Jean's room,writing the first reel of the story;which is to say that Jean wrote,and Burns took each sheet from her hands as it was finished,and read and made certain technical revisions now and then.
Several times he grunted words of approbation,and several times he let his fat,black cigar go out,while he visualized the scenes which Jean's flying pencil portrayed.