ell, you don't seem crazy about it. What's the matter?" Robert Grant
Burns stood in his favorite attitude with his hands on his hips and his
feet far apart, and looked down at Jean with a secret anxiety in his
eyes. Without realizing it in the least, Jean's opinion had come to
have a certain weight with Robert Grant Burns. "What's wrong with
that?" Burns, having sat up until two o'clock to finish that particular
scenario to his liking, plainly resented the expression on Jean's face
while she read it.

"Oh, nothing, only I'm getting awfully sick of these kidnap-and-rescue,
and kiss-in-the-last-scene pictures, and Wild West stuff without a real
Western man in the whole thing. I'd like to do something real for a
change."

Robert Grant Burns grunted and reached for his slighted brain-child.
"What you want? Mother on, knitting. Girl washing dishes. Lover
arrives; they sit on front steps and spoon. Become engaged. Lover
hitches up team, girl climbs into wagon, they drive to town. Ten
scenes of driving to town. Lover gets out, ties team in front of
courthouse. Goes in and gets license. Three scenes of license
business. Goes out. Two scenes of driving to minister and hitching
team to gate. One scene of getting to door. One scene getting inside
the house. One scene preacher calling his wife and hired girl. One
scene 'Do you take this woman,' one scene 'I do.' Fifteen scenes
getting team untied and driving back to ranch. That's about as much
pep as there is in real life in the far West, these days. Something
like that would suit you, maybe. It don't suit the people who pay good
nickels and dimes to get a thrill, though."

"Neither does this sort of junk, if they've got any sense. Think of
paying nickel after nickel to see Lee Milligan rush to the girl's door,
knock, learn the fatal news, stagger back and clap his hand to his brow
and say 'Great Heaven! GONE!'" Jean, stirred to combat by the sarcasm
of Robert Grant Burns, did the stagger and the hand-to-brow and
great-heaven scene with a realism that made Pete Lowry turn his back
suddenly. "They've seen Gil abduct me or Muriel seven times in a
perfectly impossible manner, and they--oh, why don't you give them
something REAL? Things that are thrilling and dangerous and terrible
do happen out here, Mr. Burns. Real adventures and real tragedies--"
She stopped, and Burns turned his eyes involuntarily toward the
kitchen. He had heard all about the history