nt some dramatic acting, I reckon, and he could do
that. But I'd want one puncher who can ride and shoot and handle a
rope. For that, to help me do the real work in the picture, I want
Lite Avery. There are things I can do that you have never had me do,
for the simple reason that you don't know the life well enough ever to
think of them. Real stunts, not these made-to-order,
shoot-the-villain-and-run-to-the-arms-of-the-hero stuff. I'd have to
have Lite Avery; I wouldn't start without him."

"Well, go on." Robert Grant Burns still tried to sound non-committal,
but he was plainly eager to hear all that she had to say.

"Well, that's the idea. They're trying to drive us out of the country,
without really hurting me. And I've got my mind set on staying. Not
only that, but I believe they killed my brother, and I'm going to hunt
them down and break up their gang or die in the attempt. There's your
plot. It needn't be overdone in the least, to have thrills enough.
And there would be all kinds of chance for real range-stuff, like the
handling of cattle and all that.

"We can use this ranch just as it is, and have the outlaws down next
the river. I'm glad you haven't taken any scenes that show the ranch
as a whole. You've stuck to your close-up, great-heaven scenes so
much," she went on with merciless frankness, "that you've really not
cheapened the place by showing more than a little bit at a time.

"You might start by making Lee up for my brother, and kill him in the
first reel; show the outlaws when they shoot him and run off with a
bunch of stock they're after. Lite can find him and bring him home.
Lite would know just how to do that sort of thing, and make people see
it's real stuff. I believe he'd show he was a real cow-puncher, even
to the people who never saw one. There's an awful lot of difference
between the real thing and your actors." She was so perfectly sincere
and so matter-of-fact that the men she criticised could do no more than
grin.

"You might, for the sake of complications, put a traitor and spy on the
ranch. Oh, I tell you! Have Hepsibah be the mother of one of the
outlaws. She wouldn't need to do any acting; you could show her
sneaking out in the dark to meet her son and tell him what she has
overheard. And show her listening, perhaps, through the crack in a
door. Mrs. Gay would have to be the mother. Gil says that Hepsibah
has the figure of a comedy cook and what he calls a charac