"Well, no. I don"t think about that part. All I am afraid of is that I may get out of range of the camera. You see I"m not very old at this business."
"Just how did you come to get into it?" asked Alice.
"Why, it was a sort of accident. I was on a boat one day, leaning over the rail looking at the water, when a gentleman came up, begged my pardon for speaking without being introduced, and asked me if I had ever been in the movies.
"I hadn"t, though I had often thought I would like to be, and I told him so. He asked me to call at his studio, and I did. They gave me a "try out," found I photographed well, and they cast me for small parts. Then they found out I could ride and they let me do some outdoor stuff. From then on I did very well, and when I heard your company was going to make a big war play, I applied to Mr. Pertell. He took me, I"m glad to say."
"And we"re glad you"re here," e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed Alice.
"We"ll go out and watch you jump; it fascinates me, though it makes me afraid," Ruth declared. "My sister and I did some riding while we were at Rocky Ranch, but it was nothing to what you do."
"Oh, it takes practice, that"s all," answered Estelle.
There were some animated scenes previous to the one in which Estelle took part. There was a fight over the possession of a bridge, and the Confederates, having driven off their enemies, prepared to blow it up to prevent the Union army from using it.
Estelle was to try to reach the bridge before it was destroyed, but, failing in that, she was to ride her horse to a narrow part of the stream and leap over.
All went well, and the time came for her to take her swift ride to try to reach the bridge. On and on she galloped, until she was met by a colored man who warned her of the fact that in another moment the bridge would be destroyed.
"She"s going pretty close!" murmured Mr. Pertell, as he stood near Russ, who was filming the scene. "Some of those timbers may fall pretty near her."
But Estelle seemed to know no fear. She rode straight for the bridge, and she was only a short distance away when it blew up, the planks and rails flying high into the air.
Then she turned her horse to reach, ahead of her pursuers, the place she was to jump the stream. So near was she to the bridge that she had to swerve her horse quickly to avoid being struck by a fragment of the falling wood.
"Plucky girl, that!" murmured Mr. DeVere.
While Estelle was being filmed down by the stream, one of the a.s.sistant camera men, a new hand, prepared to take a scene where a Southern farmer rides up to warn the Confederate cavalry of Estelle"s escape, so they may take after her. Maurice Whitlow was the farmer.
"Here, you!" cried Mr. Pertell to Whitlow, "ride down there and deliver the message--that"s your part in this scene."
There was a small automobile which Mr. Pertell had been using standing near, and Maurice leaped into this and started across the field toward a detachment of the Southern cavalry.
Away rattled Maurice in the car, and the camera man ground away, showing the farmer on his way to give the warning. Suddenly Mr. Pertell turned and saw what was going on.
"For the love of gasoline, stop!" he cried. "The whole scene is spoiled.
There"ll have to be a retake! Of all the stupid pieces of work this is the worst! Stop that camera!"
CHAPTER XVII
ESTELLE"S STORY
"What"s the matter?" cried Russ Dalwood, running back from the stream where he had been to see that an a.s.sistant was successfully getting the scene after Estelle had leaped to the other bank.
"Matter! Look!" cried the director, and he pointed to Maurice, speeding to carry his message in the small runabout.
"Good-night!" gasped Russ, who understood at once.
"Why, what"s wrong with it?" asked Paul. "Isn"t he running the machine all right?"
"Oh, he"s running it all right," said Mr. Pertell in tones of disgust.
"And that"s just the trouble! I told him to jump on a horse with that dispatch, and he goes in the auto!"
"I suppose he thought it was quicker," commented Paul.
"Quicker! Yes, I should say it was! But I"ll get him out of there quicker than he can shake a stick at a dead mule. The idea of riding in an auto to carry a message in Civil War days. Why, there wasn"t a real auto in the whole world then. How would it look in a film to see an up-to-date runabout b.u.t.ting in on a scene of sixty-three. Get him back here and make him start over again on a horse as he ought to," went on the director. "An auto in sixty-three! Next he"ll be sending wireless telephone messages about fifty years before they were ever dreamed of!"
Fortunately, not much of the film had been reeled off, and the scene was one that could easily be made over. Estelle"s leap was not spoiled, nor was the blowing up of the bridge.
"Huh! I didn"t think anything about there not being autos in those days," said Maurice, when he had been brought back and mounted on a horse.
"That"s just it," commented Mr. Pertell. "You"ve got to think in these days of moving pictures. The audiences are more critical than you would suppose. Even the children now laugh at fake scenes and incongruities.
And as for using a dummy in danger scenes, it"s getting harder and harder every day to get by with it. You stick to horses or to Shank"s mules, young man, when it comes to transportation in this war film. No autos where they are going to show in the film."
That was only one of the many details the director and his a.s.sistants had to look after. If eternal vigilance is the price of liberty, it is much more so the price of good films. The camera sees everything in a pitiless light. It exaggerates faults and it refuses to shut its eye to anything at which it is pointed. The absolute truth is told every time.
Of course, there are trick films, but even then the camera tells the truth fearlessly. It is only the on-lookers" eyes that are deceived. The camera can not be fooled. And though a man may be seen to be shaking hands with himself or cutting off his own head, it is done by double exposure, and could not be accomplished were it not for the fact that the camera and the film are so fearlessly honest and truth-telling.
"What"s the matter, Estelle?" asked Alice of the rider that afternoon, when they were in Ruth"s room resting after the work of the day. "You seem to be in pain."
"I am. I strained my side a little in that water jump. Petro slipped a bit on the muddy bank."
"Did you do much jumping out West?" asked Ruth, while Alice was getting a bottle of liniment.
"In the West? I don"t know that I ever jumped there. I can"t remember----"
Estelle paused, and pa.s.sed her hand across her eyes as though to shut out some vision.
"Are you faint?" asked Ruth.
"No--no, it isn"t that. It--it is just that I--that I---- Oh, I wonder if I can tell you?" and Estelle seemed in such distress that the two sisters hastened to her.
"What is it? Tell me, are you badly hurt?" asked Ruth. For she had known of performers who concealed injuries that they might not be laid off, and so lose a day"s work. "What is the matter, Estelle?"
"It is my--my head."
"Did you fall? I didn"t hear them say anything about it!" exclaimed Alice.
"No, it isn"t that," and the girl looked from one sister to the other.
"Oh, I wonder if I dare tell you?"
"If there is anything in which we can help you, tell us, by all means!"
answered Ruth, warmly--sympathetically. "But we don"t want to force ourselves----"
"Oh, no! It isn"t that. I"m only wondering what you will think of me afterward."