he gulley and up the
coulee toward home. Cattle are stubborn things at best, and this
little bunch seemed determined to seek the higher slopes. Put upon her
mettle because of that little audience down below,--a mildly jeering
audience at that, she imagined,--Jean had need of her skill and her
fifteen years or so of experience in handling stock.

She swung her rope and shouted, weaving back and forth across the
gulley, with little lunging rushes now and then to head off an animal
that tried to bolt past her up the hill. She would not have glanced
toward Robert Grant Burns to save her life, and she did not hear him
saying:

"Great! Great stuff! Get it all, Pete. By George, you can't beat the
real thing, can you? 'J get that up-hill dash? Good! Now panoram the
drive up the gulley--get it ALL, Pete--turn as long as you can see the
top of her hat. My Lord! You wouldn't get stuff like that in ten
years. I wish Gay could handle herself like that in the saddle, but
there ain't a leading woman in the business to-day that could put that
over the way she's doing it. By George! Say, Gil, you get on your
horse and ride after her, and find out where she lives. We can't work
any more now, anyway; she's gone off with the cattle. And, say! You
don't want to let her get a sight of you, or she might take a shot at
you. And if she can shoot the way she rides--good night!"

CHAPTER VI

AND THE VILLAIN PURSUED HER

The young man called Gil,--to avoid wasting time in saying Gilbert
James Huntley,--mounted in haste and rode warily up the coulee some
distance behind Jean. At that time and in that locality he was quite
anxious that she should not discover him. Gil was not such a bad
fellow, even though he did play "heavies" in all the pictures which
Robert Grant Burns directed. A villain he was on the screen, and a bad
one. Many's the man he had killed as cold-bloodedly as the Board of
Censorship would permit. Many's the girlish, Western heart he had
broken, and many's the time he had paid the penalty to brother, father,
or sweetheart as the scenario of the play might decree. Many's the
time he had followed girls and men warily through brush-fringed gullies
and over picturesque ridges, for the entertainment of shop girls and
their escorts sitting in darkened theaters and watching breathlessly
the wicked deeds of Gilbert James Huntley.

But in his everyday life, Gil Huntley was very good-looking, very
good-natur