"And—how long do these spasms usually last?" Jean's head tilted toward Robert Grant Burns as impersonally as if she were indicating a horse with colic.
But the camera man had gone as far as was wise, if he cared to continue working for Burns, and he made no reply whatever. So Jean turned her attention to the man whose bulk shaded her from the sun, and whose remarks would have been wholly unforgivable had she not chosen to ignore them.
"If you really are anxious to go on making pictures, why don't you stop all that ranting and be sensible about it?" she asked him. "You can't bully me into being afraid of you, you know. And really, you are making an awful spectacle of yourself, going on like that."
"Listen here! Are you going to get off that bench and out of the scene?" By a tremendous effort Robert Grant Burns spoke that sentence with a husky kind of calm.
"That all depends upon yourself, Mr. Burns. First, I want to know by what right you come here with your picture-making. You haven't explained that yet, you know."
The highest paid director of the Great Western Film Company looked at her long. With her head tilted back, Jean returned the look.
"Oh, all right—all right," he surrendered finally. "Read that paper. That ought to satisfy you that we ain't trespassing here or anywhere else. And if you'd kindly,"—and Mr. Burns emphasized the word "kindly,"—"remove yourself to some other spot that is just as comfortable—"
Jean did not even hear him, once she had the paper in her hands and had begun to read it. So Robert Grant Burns folded his arms across his heaving chest and watched her and studied her and measured her with his mind while she read. He saw the pulling together of her eyebrows, and the pinching of her under-lip between her teeth. He saw how she unconsciously sheltered the little brown bird under her left hand in her lap because she must hold the paper with the other, and he quite forgot his anger against her.
Sitting so, she made a picture that appealed to him. Had you asked him why, he would have said that she was the type that would photograph well, and that she had a screen personality; which would have been high praise indeed, coming from him.
Jean read the brief statement that in consideration of a certain sum paid to him that day by Robert G. Burns, her uncle, Carl Douglas, thereby gave the said Robert G. Burns permission to use the Lazy A ranch and anything upon it or in any manner pertaining to it, for the purpose of making motion pictures. It was plainly set forth that Robert G. Burns should be held responsible for any destruction of or damage to the property, and that he might, for the sum named, use any cattle bearing the Lazy A or Bar O brands for the making of pictures, so long as he did them no injury and returned them in good condition to the range from which he had gathered them.