Reel Life (1916-1917)

where Helen is visiting. In this game Little Bear is play¬ ing. He makes a hero of himself and wins the adulation of the spectators. Helen signals him into the grandstand as the game finishes and tells him of the situation in the con¬ struction camp. She appeals to him to get one hundred workmen to take the places of those who have quit the con¬ struction force to follow the false news of the gold strike. Little Bear responds to Helen’s appeal by recruiting from the crowd in the grandstand one hundred men — his state¬ ment to them of the situation stirs their sporting blood. They board a special train for the place where the con¬ struction force has been working. An employment agent, in the pay of Holmes, witnesses all this and phones the lumber king, who gets his foreman, Behrens, on the wire and causes him to hire a bunch of dissolute cowboys to hold up the train and prevent the football crowd from taking up the work laid down by the men who deserted to go to the alleged gold field. The cowboy spectacle in this chapter is one of the most excitable scenes imaginable. A train holdup need not neces¬ sarily be a novelty but this one is. The cowmen come swing¬ ing round the bend on their cayuses with quirts swinging and spurs digging — a really exciting rush. When the band turns loose its artillery there is nothing left to be desired by those who love vivid action and the clash of combat. After the fight is over there are wounded men scattered all over the landscape. What the football men did to the cowboys is also worth seeing. The special train is ready and the recruits are aboard, but there is no engineer. In this emergency Helen springs into the engine cab and throws wide the throttle. The train moves out. Just then one of Holmes’ cowboys races alongside the cab, lassoes Helen, and jerks her out of the engine onto his saddle. She fights with him, braces herself against the horse and makes a flying leap back into the cab, where she resumes control of the throttle. The closing of the chapter on the screen shows construc¬ tion work under way by the football recruits. HELEN HOLMES does one of her most spectacular screen “stunts” in Chapter X of “A Lass of the Lumberlands,” the Sig¬ nal-made photodrama being released in fifteen chapters through the Mutual Film Corporation. Helen is at ^he throttle of a freight engine. A cowboy, hired by “Dollar” Holmes, rides along¬ side the cab, lassoes her and drags her onto his saddle. She braces herself and makes a flying leap back into the cab, regaining control of the throttle. Holmes has given his note for $27,000 for the building of his lumber railroad past the station called Shady Creek. The note is payable the 16th of the month, by which time the extension must be finished. He cannot meet the note by that date, and it is his plan to not complete the extension of his road because to do so would give his timber rivals access to the mills and ruin the market for himself. So Holmes conspires with his crooked foreman, “Big Bill” Behrens, to engineer a strike of the workmen building the extension. Behrens pays a mining prospector to come into the con¬ struction camp with bogus news of a gold strike some miles distant, and he stampedes the men. They become crazed with the “news” and desert their work to get to the place the prospector tells them of. It is a crucial situation for the small timber holders, but Helen, with the help of Little Bear, her half-breed Indian friend, saves the day for them. It happens that a football game is on in Capital City, where the executive offices of Holmes’ lumber trust are and REEL LIFE— Page Six