sks with enthusiasm. She had let herself down over a nasty bit of
the rim-rock whose broken line extended half around the coulee bluff,
with only her rope between herself and broken bones, and with her blond
wig properly tousled and her face turned always towards the rock wall,
lest the camera should reveal the fact that she was not Muriel Gay.
She had climbed that same rock-rim, with the aid of that same rope, and
with her face hidden as usual from the camera. She had been bound and
gagged and flung across Gil Huntley's saddle and carried away at a
sharp gallop, and she had afterwards freed herself from her bonds in
the semi-darkness of a hut that half concealed her features, and had
stolen the knife from Gil Huntley's belt while he slept, and crept away
to where the horses were picketed. In the revealing light of a very
fine moon-effect, which was a triumph of Pete's skill, she slashed a
rope that held a high-strung "mustang" (so called in the scenario), and
had leaped upon his bare back and gone hurtling out of that scene and
into another, where she was riding furiously over dangerously rough
ground, the whole outlaw band in pursuit and silhouetted against the
skyline and the moon (which was another photographic triumph of Pete
Lowry).

Gil Huntley had also done many things that were risky. Jean had shot
at him with real bullets so many times that her nervousness on this
particular day was rather unaccountable to him. Jean had lassoed him
and dragged him behind Pard through brush. She had pulled him from a
quicksand bed,--made of cement that showed a strong tendency to "set"
about his form before she could rescue him,--and she had fought with
him on the edge of a cliff and had thrown him over; and his director,
anxious for the "punch" that was his fetish, had insisted on a panorama
of the fall, so that there was no chance for Gil to save himself the
bruises he got. Gil Huntley's part it was always to die a violent
death, or to be captured spectacularly, because he was the villain
whose horrible example must bear a moral to youthful brains.

Since Jean had become one of the company, he nearly always died at her
hands or was captured by her. This left Muriel Gay unruffled and
unhurt, so that she could weep and accept the love of Lee Milligan in
the artistic ending of which Robert Grant Burns was so fond.

Jean had never before considered it necessary to warn Gil and implore
him not to be nervous, and Gil took