terror among photo-players.

Jean went over to where Muriel and her mother were sitting in the
shade, and asked Muriel if she would like to ride Pard out into the
flat beyond the corrals, where she meant to try out the sorrel.

"I'd like to use you, anyway," she added frankly, "to practice on. You
can ride past, you know, and let me rope you. Oh, it won't hurt you;
and there'll be no risk at all," she hastened to assure the other, when
she saw refusal in Muriel's eyes. "I'll not take any turns around the
horn, you know."

"I don't want Muriel taking risks like that," put in Mrs. Gay hastily.
"That's just why Burns is going to have you double for her. A leading
woman can't afford to get hurt. Muriel, you stay here and rest while
you have a chance. Goodness knows it's hard enough, at best, to work
under Burns."

Jean looked at her and turned away. So that was it--a leading woman
could not afford to be hurt! Some one else, who didn't amount to
anything, must take the risks. She had received her first little
lesson in this new business.

She went straight to Burns, interrupted him in coaching his chief
villain for a scene, and asked him if he could spare a man for half an
hour or so. "I want some one to throw a rope over on the run," she
explained naively, "to try out this sorrel."

Burns regarded her somberly; he hated to be interrupted in his work.

"Ain't there anybody else you can rope?" he wanted to know. "Where's
Gay?"

"'A leading woman,'" quoted Jean serenely, "'can't afford to get hurt!'"

Burns chuckled. He knew who was the author of that sentence; he had
heard it before. "Well, if you're as fatal as all that, I can't turn
over my leading man for you to practice on, either," he pointed out to
her. "What's the matter with a calf or something?"

"You won't let me ride out of your sight to round one up," Jean
retorted. "There are no calves handy; that's why I asked for a man."

Whereupon the villains looked at one another queerly, and the chuckle
of their director exploded into a full-lunged laugh.

"I'm going to use all these fellows in a couple of scenes," he told
her. "Can't you practice on a post?"

"_I_ don't have to practice. It's the sorrel I want to try out."
Jean's voice lost a little of its habitual, soft drawl. Really, these
picture-people did seem very dense upon some subjects!

"Well, now look here." Robert Grant Burns caught at the shreds of his
domineering manner.