lains who must stand before her and who could
never quite grasp the fact that Jean knew exactly where those bullets
were going to land.

She would sit in her room at the Lazy A, when the sun and the big,
black automobile and the painted workers were gone, and write
feverishly of ghosts and Indians and the fair maiden who endured so
much and the brave hero who dared so much and loved so well. Lee
Milligan she visualized as the human wolf who looked with desire upon
Lillian. Gil Huntley became the hero as the story unfolded; and while
I have told you absolutely nothing about Jean's growing acquaintance
with these two, you may draw your own conclusions from the place she
made for them in her book that she was writing. And you may also form
some idea of what Lite Avery was living through, during those days when
his work and his pride held him apart, and Jean did "stunts" to her
heart's content with these others.

A letter from the higher-ups in the Great Western Company, written just
after a trial run of the first picture wherein Jean had worked, had
served to stimulate Burns' appetite for the spectacular, so that the
stunts became more and more the features of his pictures. Muriel Gay
was likely to become the most famous photo-play actress in the West, he
believed. That is, she would if Jean continued to double for her in
everything save the straight dramatic work.

Jean did not care just at that time how much glory Muriel Gay was
collecting for work that Jean herself had done. Jean was experiencing
the first thrills of seeing her name written upon the face of fat,
weekly checks that promised the fulfillment of her hopes, and she would
not listen to Lite when he ventured a remonstrance against some of the
things she told him about doing. Jean was seeing the Lazy A restored
to its old-time home-like prosperity. She was seeing her dad there,
going tranquilly about the everyday business of the ranch, holding his
head well up, and looking every man straight in the eye. She could not
and she would not let even Lite persuade her to give up risking her
neck for the money the risk would bring her.

If she could change these dreams to reality by dashing madly about on
Pard while Pete Lowry wound yards and yards of narrow gray film around
something on the inside of his camera, and watched her with that
little, secret smile on his face; and while Robert Grant Burns waddled
here and there with his hands on his hips, and wat