ched her also; and
while villains pursued or else fled before her, and Lee Milligan
appeared furiously upon the scene in various guises to rescue her,--if
she could win her dad's freedom and the Lazy A's possession by doing
these foolish things, she was perfectly willing to risk her neck and
let Muriel receive the applause.

She did not know that she was doubling the profit on these Western
pictures which Robert Grant Burns was producing. She did not know that
it would have hastened the attainment of her desires had her name
appeared in the cast as the girl who put the "punches" in the plays.
She did not know that she was being cheated of her rightful reward when
her name never appeared anywhere save on the pay-roll and the weekly
checks which seemed to her so magnificently generous. In her ignorance
of what Gil Huntley called the movie game, she was perfectly satisfied
to give the best service of which she was capable, and she never once
questioned the justice of Robert Grant Burns.

Jean started a savings account in the little bank where her father had
opened an account before she was born, and Lite was made to writhe
inwardly with her boasting. Lite, if you please, had long ago started
a savings account at that same bank, and had lately cut out poker, and
even pool, from among his joys, that his account might fatten the
faster. He had the same object which Jean had lately adopted so
zealously, but he did not tell her these things. He listened instead
while Jean read gloatingly her balance, and talked of what she would do
when she had enough saved to buy back the ranch. She had stolen
unwittingly the air castle which Lite had been three years building,
but he did not say a word about it to Jean. Wistful eyed, but smiling
with his lips, he would sit while Jean spoiled whole sheets of
perfectly good story-paper, just figuring and estimating and building
castles with the dollar sign. If Robert Grant Burns persisted in his
mania for "feature-stuff" and "punches" in his pictures, Jean believed
that she would have a fair start toward buying back the Lazy A long
before her book was published and had brought her the thousands and
thousands of dollars she was sure it would bring. Very soon she could
go boldly to a lawyer and ask him to do something about her father's
case. Just what he should do she did not quite know; and Lite did not
seem to be able to tell her, but she thought she ought to find out just
how much