William MacLeod Raine

“ He opened up another line of attack. “Up at your ranch you are a great lady, but with the Achilles you'll be only the latest extra. They will call you Gauntier—no prefix, no title. How'll you like that?”
“I'm not expecting to be your leading woman. I've got a little sense,” she told him.
The director had to have the ranch. He gave way abruptly. “All right. You get a try-out, Miss Gauntier,” he told her a little grimly. “Hope you enjoy it. But remember, you proposed this. If you don't like it, don't blame me. Have you had any experience? What can you do?” ”

“ This sounds like the black art. Are you a necromancer?” she murmured incredulously.
“At my magic wand cities rise and fall, villains commit crime and are punished, romances blossom and fade, the world laughs and weeps and rejoices,” he boasted calmly. ”

“ The tiger pursues you. As you run you fall down into a little draw and the tiger leaps right over you.”
“Sounds interesting,” laughed the girl.
“Do we get a holiday, too, Mr. McRobert?” asked one of the other women.
“Yes. All but Mrs. Benson. I don't want any unnecessary people about when we do the tiger stuff. The brute has been starved for a couple of days so that he'll follow trail. He'll be in a bad temper.”
Billie did not look at Miss Gauntier as he announced this comforting fact, but he would have gained nothing by it if he had. ”

“ McRobert groaned in spirit. Was there a woman under thirty in all California who did not want to work in motion pictures?
“Certainly,” he evaded. “I'll have a film run off showing you in your rose garden and on the porch an—”
“You know that isn't what I want,” she broke in imperiously. “I want to get in a real play, to take part in it just like any actress does.”
The director leaned forward and beat the palm of his plump hand with a forefinger. “You think you do, but you don't, Miss Gauntier. My company works. I keep it on the jump. ”

“ OF THE TIGER
By William MacLeod Raine
THE old man wanted results. Billie McRobert got them. That was one of several reasons why he considered “Mac” his most efficient director. Billie was a plump, pink little dynamo of energy. He never let difficulties stump him. The word impossible was not in his large and sometimes vitriolic vocabulary.
When one of the scenarios in the big serial, “For Life and Love,” called for East Indian sets and blown-in-the-bottle Hindus and a few jungle man-eaters for good measure, Billie did not throw up his hands and quit. ”

“ But that is all in the day's work for a motion picture actress.
“Where now, Mac?” asked Cameron, checking off scene 44 on his scenario carbon.
“Back to the big ditch for the village scene. Shoot the girls down in the big car, Don. I'll take Marie and Pete and Max with me. Beat it, everybody.”
The camera man, walking beside McRobert to the car, grinned at his chief. He was an Irish youth and took the liberties of his race.
“You're certainly putting Gauntier through a course of sprouts, Mac. Beats the band how she sticks it out. ”

“ Now, then, Miss Gauntier. You run along here and stumble over this root. See! Like this. You fall full length in that little hollow.... That's the idea. Just like that.... Camera, Pete! Come in, Miss Gauntier, on the run. Down you go.... Fine.”
“That's scene 83, ain't it, Mac?” asked Cameron.
“Yep. We've done 84. Now, 85. All you've got to do is to lie still, Miss Gauntier, in that hollow. Don't move, whatever you do. All we need is a flash of Rex jumping across your body. Bring on that chicken, Jim. Let Rex get a good smell of it. Now put it over there just beyond Miss Gauntier. ”

“ He motored down to the Imperial Valley with Pete Murray, his camera man, gave it the once-over on his way to El Centro, and wired orders to Don Cameron, assistant director of the Achilles Company, to bring on the outfit, plus one jungle in a freight car and one scheduled bill of live goods from the Lunar Zoo as per instructions previously given.
Meanwhile Mac burned up the roads of the Imperial Valley on a search for locations. He decided on the Gauntier ranch for the principal sets. ”

“ Billie, rebuffed, felt a good deal of a fool.
Miss Gauntier did a splendid fall. She ignored the instructions of the director and brought her pony forward fast. McRobert held his breath when the horse shied sideways and the rider pitched to the ground. She lay there for a second in a little crumpled heap, then got to her feet, glanced fearfully at the spot where the tiger was supposed to be, and ran barelegged out of the picture with the supple grace of a fawn.
IV
nO tiger is a safe plaything. ”