A sparrow hawk swooped down quite close to Jean and then shot upward with a little brown bird in its claws,and startled her out of her castle building.She felt a hot anger against the hawk,which was like the sudden grasp of misfortune;and a quick sympathy with the bird,which was like herself and dad,caught unawares and held helpless.But she did not move,and the hawk circled and came back on his way to the nesting-place in the trees along the creek below.He came quite close,and Jean shot him as he lifted his wings for a higher flight.The hawk dropped head foremost to the grass and lay there crumpled and quiet.
Jean put back her gun in its holster and went over to where the hawk lay.The little brown bird fluttered terrifiedly and gave a piteous,small chirp when her hand closed over it,and then lay quite still in her cupped palms and blinked up at her.
Jean cuddled it up against her cheek,and talked to it and pitied it and promised it much in the way of fat little bugs and a warm nest and her tender regard.
For the hawk she had no pity,nor a thought beyond the one investigative glance she gave its body to make sure that she had hit it where she meant to hit it.Lite had taught her to shoot like that,--straight and quick.
Lite was a man who trimmed life down to the essentials,and he had long ago impressed it upon her that if she could not shoot quickly,and hit where she aimed,there was not much use in her attempting to shoot at all.Jean proved by her scant interest in the hawk how well she had learned the lesson,and how sure she was of hitting where she aimed.
The little brown bird had been gashed in the breast by a sharp talon.Jean was much concerned over the wound,even though it did not reach any vital organ.
She was afraid of septic poisoning,she told the bird;but added comfortingly:"There--you needn't worry one minute over that.I'm almost sure there's a bottle of peroxide down at the house,that isn't spoiled.
We'll go and put some on it right away;and then we'll go bug-hunting.I believe I know where there's the fattest,juiciest bugs!"She cuddled the bird against her cheek,and started back across the wide point of the benchland to where the trail led down the bluff to the house.
She was wholly absorbed in the trouble of the little brown bird;and the trail,following a crevice through the rocks and later winding along behind some scant bushes,partially concealed the buildings and the house yard from view until one was well down into the coulee.
So it was not until she was at the spring,looking at the moist earth there for fat bugs for the bird,that she had any inkling of visitors.Then she heard voices and went quickly around the corner of the house toward the sound.
It seemed to her that she was lately fated to come plump into the middle of that fat Mr.Burns'unauthorized picture-making.The first thing she saw when she rounded the corner was the camera perched high upon its tripod and staring at her with its one round eye;and the humorous-eyed Pete Lowry turning a crank at the side and counting in a whisper.Close beside her the two women were standing in animated argument which they carried on in undertones with many gestures to point their meaning.
"Hey,you're in the scene!"called Pete Lowry,and abruptly stopped counting and turning the crank.
"You're in the scene,sister.Step over here to one side,will you?"The fat director waved his pink-cameoed hand impatiently.
An old bench had been placed beside the house,under a window.Jean backed a step and sat down upon the bench,and looked from one to the other.The two women glanced at her wide-eyed and moved away with mutual embracings.Jean lifted her hands and looked at the soft little crest and beady eyes of the bird,to make sure that it was not disturbed by these strangers,before she gave her attention to the expostulating Mr.
Burns.
"Did I spoil something?"she inquired casually,and watched curiously the pulling of many feet of narrow film from the camera.
"About fifteen feet of good scene,"Pete Lowry told her dryly,but with that queer,half smile twisting his lips.
Jean looked at him and decided that,save for the company he kept,which made of him a latent enemy,she might like that lean man in the red sweater who wore a pencil over one ear and was always smiling to himself about something.But what she did was to cross her feet and murmur a sympathetic sentence to the little brown bird.Inwardly she resented deeply this bold trespass of Robert Grant Burns;but she meant to guard against making herself ridiculous again.
She meant to be sure of her ground before she ordered them off.The memory of her humiliation before the supposed rustlers was too vivid to risk a repetition of the experience.
"When you're thoroughly rested,"said Robert Grant Burns,in the tone that would have shriveled the soul of one of his actors,"we'd like to make that scene over.""Thank you.I am pretty tired,"she said in that soft,drawly voice that could hide so effectually her meaning.She leaned her head against the wall and gave a luxurious sigh,and crossed her feet the other way.She believed that she knew why Robert Grant Burns was growing so red in the face and stepping about so uneasily,and why the women were looking at her like that.Very likely they expected her to prove herself crude and uncivilized,but she meant to disappoint them even while she made them all the trouble she could.
She pushed back her hat until its crown rested against the rough boards,and cuddled the little brown bird against her cheek again,and talked to it caressingly.Though she seemed unconscious of his presence,she heard every word that Robert Grant Burns was muttering to himself.Some of the words were plain,man-sized swearing,if she were any judge of language.It occurred to her that she really ought to go and find that peroxide,but she could not forego the pleasure of irritating this man.
