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
watched 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 rightfulreward 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 writheinwardly 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 the trial
had cost. And she wished she knew how to get about

setting some one on the trail of Art Osgood.
Jean was sure that Art Osgood knew something about

the murder, and she frequently tried to make Lite agree
with her. Sometimes she was sure that Art Osgood

was the murderer, and would argue and point out her
reasons to Lite. Art had been working for her uncle,

and rode often to the Lazy A. He had not been friendly
with Johnny Croft,--but then, nobody had been very

friendly with Johnny Croft. Still, Art Osgood was
less friendly with Johnny than most of the men in the

country, and just after the murder he had left the
country. Jean laid a good deal of stress upon the

circumstance of Art Osgood's leaving on that particular
afternoon, and she seemed to resent it because no one

had tried to find Art. No one had seemed to think his
going at that time had any significance, or any bearing

upon the murder, because he had been planning
to leave, and had announced that he would go that

day.
Jean's mind, as her bank account grew steadily to

something approaching dignity, worked back and forth
incessantly over the circumstances surrounding the murder,

in spite of Lite's peculiar attitude toward the subject,
which Jean felt but could not understand, since

he invariablyassured her that he believed her dad was
innocent, when she asked him outright.

Sometimes, in the throes of literarycomposition, she
could not think of the word that she wanted. Her

eyes then would wander around familiar objects in the
shabby little room, and frequently they would come to

rest upon her father's saddle or her father's chaps: the
chaps especially seemed potent reminders of her father,

and drew her thoughts to him and held them there.
The worn leather, stained with years of hard usage and

wrinkled permanently where they had shaped themselves
to his legs in the saddle, brought his big, bluff

presence vividly before her, when she was in a certain
receptive mood. She would forget all about her story,

and the riding and shooting and roping she had done
that day to appease the clamorous, professional appetite

of Robert Grant Burns, and would sit and stare, and
think and think. Always her thoughts traveled in a

wide circle and came back finally to the starting point:
to free her father, and to give him back his home, she

must have money. To have money, she must earn it;
she must work for it. So then she would give a great

sigh of relaxed nervoustension and go back to her heroine
and the Indians and the mysterious footsteps that

marched on moonlight nights up and down a long porch
just outside windows that frequently framed white,

scared faces with wide, horror-stricken eyes which saw
nothing of the marcher, though the steps still went up

and down.
It was very creepy, in spots. It was so creepy that

one evening when Lite had come to smoke a cigarette or
two in her company and to listen to her account of the

day's happenings, Lite noticed that when she read the
creepy passages in her story, she glanced frequently over

her shoulder.