The long-eared Chinaman, the three-bladed knife, the hearse and the two black horses, Rutledge Tavern, even the laundry bag checked in the little hotel were for the moment crowded out of her life.
And then came the marvelous news that they were to board a special car and speed away to the real mountains.
So weary was Jeanne, by the time she reached that car, that she crept beneath the blankets in her berth and did not awaken until the morning sun and the green hills of Kentucky greeted her eyes.
At noon of that same day Jeanne found herself seated on a great rock at the foot of Big Black Mountain. She was dressed in boys’ unionalls. Her feet were bare. On her head, slouched down about her ears, she wore an old straw hat. Gripped in both hands was a fishing rod made from the branch of a chestnut tree. She was fishing, fishing joyously for “green perch.” What mattered it that a movie camera was clicking across the stream, or that the villain of the movie tried in vain to talk to her of love? All this was but play stuff. The fishing was real.
When the fishing was over she dived, clothes and all, into that deep, limpid pool to enjoy a glorious swim while the camera clicked on, and from time to time Ted Hunter, the director, shouted “Cut! Cut!”
“This,” Jeanne whispered to Jensie when the day was over and they stood before a spring dashing handfuls of clear, cool water over their faces, “This is not work! It is play.”
And so it seemed to them all. Catching the spirit of the mountains, of the easy-going, beauty-loving, loyal people of the Cumberlands, they dreamed the hours away. Only Ted Hunter’s sharp “No! No! Not that!” and “Yes! Yes! That’s it!” made them realize that they were making a moving picture.
As for the members of the company, in this mellow atmosphere Jeanne came to love them all. Anthony Hope, the droll, handsome youth who in the first and last scenes of the movie made bashful love to her; Scott Ramsey, the aged character actor; Pietro, the young Italian; and even the chubby villain came to have a safe little spot in Jeanne’s generous heart.
There were hours off. And what could be more delightful than to don those boys’ overalls once more and with Pietro as guard against bears, to climb far up the side of Big Black Mountain?
Having climbed and climbed until they had lost their breath, they came at last upon a lovely spot where the sunlight, sifting through the leafy bower above, wove strange patterns in the moss.