If you count, you will see that he ran eight words over the

E-text prepared by Suzanne Shell, Project Gutenberg Beginners Projects,

Mary Meehan, and the Project Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team

THE PHANTOM HERD

BY B. M. BOWER

Author of Chip of the Flying-U, The Flying-U's Last Stand,

The Gringos, etc.

1916

FOREWORD

For the accuracy of certain parts of this story which deal most

intimately with the business of making motion pictures, I am indebted to

Buck Connor. whose name is a sufficient guarantee that all technical

points are correct. His criticism, advice and other assistance have been

invaluable, and I take this opportunity of expressing my appreciation and

thanks for the help he has given me.

B.M.BOWER.

CONTENTS

CHAPTER

I THE INDIANS MUST GO

II "WHERE THE CATTLE ROAMED IN THOUSANDS, A-MANY A HERD AND

BRAND..."

III AND THEY SIGH FOR THE DAYS THAT ARE GONE

IV THE LITTLE DOCTOR PROTESTS

V A BUNCH OF ONE-REELERS FROM BENTLY BROWN

VI VILLAINS ALL AND PROUD OF IT

VII BENTLY BROWN DOES NOT APPRECIATE COMEDY

VIII "THERE'S GOT TO BE A LINE DRAWN SOMEWHERES"

IX LEAVE IT TO THE BUNCH

X UNEXPECTED GUESTS FOR APPLEHEAD

XI JUST A FEW UNFORESEEN OBSTACLES

XII "I THINK YOU NEED INDIAN GIRL FOR PICTURE"

XIII "PAM. BLEAK MESA--CATTLE DRIFTING BEFORE WIND--"

XIV "PLUMB SPOILED, D'YUH MEAN?"

XV A LETTER FROM CHIEF BIG TURKEY

XVI "THE CHANCES IS SLIM AND GITTIN' SLIMMER"

XVII THE STORM

XVIII A FEW OF THE MINOR DIFFICULTIES

XIX WHEREIN LUCK MAKES A SPEECH

XX "SHE'S SHAPING UP LIKE A BANK ROLL"

CHAPTER ONE

THE INDIANS MUST GO

Luck Lindsay had convoyed his thirty-five actor-Indians to their

reservation at Pine Ridge, and had turned them over to the agent in good

condition and a fine humor and nice new hair hatbands and other fixings;

while their pockets were heavy with dollars that you may be sure would

not he spent very wisely. He had shaken hands with the braves, and had

promised to let them know when there was another job in sight, and to

speak a good word for them to other motion-picture companies who might

want to hire real Indians. He had smiled at the fat old squaws who had

waddled docilely in and out of the scenes and teetered tirelessly round

and round in their queer native dances in the hot sun at his behest, when

Luck wanted several rehearsals of "atmosphere" scenes before turning the

camera on them.

They hated to go back to the tame life of the reservation and to

stringing beads and sewing buckskin with sinew, and to gossiping among

themselves of things their heavy-lidded black eyes had looked upon with

such seeming apathy. They had given Luck an elaborately beaded buckskin

vest that would photograph beautifully, and three pairs of heavy, beaded

moccasins which he most solemnly assured them he would wear in his next

picture. The smoke-smell of their tepee fires and perfumes still clung

heavily to the Indian-tanned buckskin, so that Luck carried away with

him an aroma indescribable and unmistakable to any one who has ever

smelled it.

Just when he was leaving, a shy, big-eyed girl of ten had slid out from

the shelter of her mother's poppy-patterned skirt, had proffered three

strings of beads, and had fled. Luck had smiled his smile again--a smile

of white, even teeth and so much good will that you immediately felt that

he was your friend--and called her back to him. Luck was chief; and his

commands were to be obeyed, instantly and implicitly; that much he had

impressed deeply upon the least of these. While the squaws grinned and

murmured Indian words to one another, the big-eye girl returned

reluctantly; and Luck, dropping a hand to his coat pocket while he smiled

reassurance, emptied that pocket of gum for her. His smile had lingered

after he turned away; for like flies to an open syrup can the papooses

had gathered around the girl.

Well, that job was done, and done well. Every one was satisfied save Luck

himself. He swung up to the back of the Indian pony that would carry him

through the Bad Lands to the railroad, and turned for a last look. The

bucks stood hip-shot and with their arms folded, watching him gravely.

The squaws pushed straggling locks from their eyes that they might watch

him also. The papooses were chewing gum and staring at him solemnly. Old

Mrs. Ghost-Dog, she of the ponderous form and plaid blanket that Luck had

used with such good effect in the foreground of his atmosphere scenes,

lifted up her voice suddenly, and wailed after him in high-keyed lament

that she would see his face no more; and Luck felt a sudden contraction

of the throat while he waved his hand to them and rode away.

Well, now he must go on to the next job, which he hoped would be more

pleasant than this one had been. Luck hated to give up those Indians. He

liked them, and they liked him,--though that was not the point. He had

done good work with them. When he directed the scenes, those Indians did

just what he wanted, and just the way he wanted it done; Luck was too old

a director not to know the full value of such workers.

But the Acme Film Company, caught with the rest of the world in the

pressure of hard times, wanted to economize. The manager had pointed out

to Luck, during the course of an evening's discussion, that these Indians

were luxuries in the making of pictures, and must be taken off the

payroll for the good of the dividends. The manager had contended that

white men and women, properly made up, could play the part of Indians

where Indians were needed; whereas Indians could never be made to play

the part of white men and women. Therefore, since white men and women

were absolutely necessary. Why keep a bunch of Indians around eating up

profits? The manager had sense on his side, of course. Other companies

were making Indian pictures occasionally with not a real Indian within

miles of the camera, but Luck Lindsay groaned inwardly, and cursed the

necessity of economizing. For Luck had one idol, and that idol was

realism. When the scenario called for twenty or thirty Indians, Luck

wanted _Indians_,--real, smoke-tanned, blanketed bucks and squaws and

papooses; not made-up whites who looked like animated signs for cigar

stores and acted like,--well, never mind what Luck said they acted like.

"I can take the Injuns back," he conceded, "and worry along somehow

without them. But if you want me to put on any more Western stuff, you'll

have to let me weed out some of these Main Street cowboys that Clements

wished on to me, and go out in the sagebrush and round up some that

ain't all hair hatbands and high-heeled boots and bluff. I've got to have

some whites to fill the foreground, if I give up the Injuns; or else I

quit Western stuff altogether. I've been stalling along and keeping the

best of the bucks in the foreground, and letting these said riders lope

in and out of scenes and pile off and go to shooting soon as the camera

picks them up, but with the Injuns gone, the whites won't get by.

"Maybe you have noticed that when there was any real riding, I've had the

Injuns do it. And do you think I've been driving that stagecoach

hell-bent from here to beyond because I'd no other way to kill time?

Wasn't another darned man in the outfit I'd trust, that's why. If I take

the Indians back, I've got to have some real boys." Luck's voice was

plaintive, and a little bit desperate.

"Well, dammit, _have_ your real boys! I never said you shouldn't. Weed

out the company to suit yourself. You'll have to take the Injuns back;

nobody else can handle the touch-me-not devils. You can lay off the

company if you want to, and while you're up there pick up a bunch of

cowboys to suit you. You're making good, Luck; don't take it that I'm

criticizing anything you've done or the way you did it. You've been

turning out the best Western stuff that goes on the screen; anybody knows

that. That isn't the point. We just simply can't afford to keep those

Indians any longer without retrenching on something else that's a lot

more vital. You know what they cost as well as I do; you know what

present conditions are. Figure it out for yourself."

"I don't have to," Luck retorted in a worried tone. "I know what we're up

against. I know we ought to give them up--but I sure hate to do it!

Lor-_dee_, but I can do things with that bunch! Remember Red Brother?"

Luck was off on his hobby, the making of Indian pictures. "Remember the

panoram effect I got on that massacre of the wagon train? Remember the

council-of-war scene, and the close-up of Young-Dog-Howls-At-The-Moon

making his plea for the lives of the prisoners? And the war dance with

radium flares in the camp fires to give the light-effect? That film's in

big demand yet, they tell me. I'll never be able to put over stuff like

that with made-up actors, Martinson. You know I can't."

"I don't know; you're only just beginning to hit your gait, Luck," the

manager soothed. "You have turned out some big stuff,--some awful big

stuff; but at that you're just beginning to find yourself. Now, listen.

You can have your 'real boys' you're always crying for. I can see what

you mean when you pan these fellows you call Main Street cowboys. What

you better do is this: Close down the company for two weeks, say. Keep on

the ones you want, and let the rest out. And take these Injuns home, and

then get out after your riders. Numbers and salaries we'll leave to you.

Go as far as you like; it's a cinch you'll get what you want if you're

allowed to go after it."

So here was Luck, arriving in due time at the railroad. He said good-by

to Young-Dog-Howls-At-The-Moon who had ridden with him, and whose kingly

bearing and clean-cut features and impressive pantomime made him a

popular screen-Indian, and sat down upon a baggage truck to smoke a

cigarette while he waited for the westbound train.

Young-Dog-Howls-At-The-Moon he watched meditatively until that young man

had bobbed out of sight over a low hill, the pony Luck had ridden

trailing after at the end of the lead-rope. Luck's face was sober, his

eyes tired and unsmiling. He had done that much of his task: he had

returned the Indians, and automatically wiped a very large item of

expense from the accounts of the Acme Film Company. He did not like to

dwell, however, on the cost to his own pride in his work.

The next job, now that he was actually face to face with it, looked not

so simple. He was in a country where, a few years before, his quest for

"real boys"--as he affectionately termed the type nearest his

heart--would have been easy enough. But before the marching ranks of

fence posts and barbed wire, the real boys had scattered. A more or less

beneficent government had not gathered them together, and held them apart

from the changing conditions, as it had done with the Indians. The real

boys had either left the country, or had sold their riding outfits and

gone into business in the little towns scattered hereabouts, or else they

had taken to farming the land where the big herds had grazed while the

real boys loafed on guard.

Luck admitted to himself that in the past two years, even, conditions had

changed amazingly. Land was fenced that had been free. Even the

reservation was changed a little. He threw away that cigarette and

lighted another, and turned aggrievedly upon a dried little man who came

up with the open expectation of using the truck upon which Luck was

sitting uncomfortably. There was the squint of long looking against sun

and wind at a far skyline in the dried little man's face. There was a

certain bow in his legs, and there were various other signs which Luck

read instinctively as he got up. He smiled his smile, and the dried

little man grinned back companionably.

"Say, old-timer, what's gone with all the cattle and all the punchers?"

Luck demanded with a mild querulousness.

The dried little man straightened from the truck handles and regarded

Luck strangely.

"My gorry, son, plumb hazed off'n this section the earth, I reckon.

Farmers and punchers, they don't mix no better'n sheep and cattle. Why, I

mind the time when--"

The train was late, anyway, and the dried little man sat down on the

truck, and fumbled his cigarette book, and began to talk. Luck sat down

beside him and listened, leaning forward with his elbows on his knees and

a cold cigarette in his fingers. It was not of this part of the country

that the dried little man talked, but of Montana, over there to the west.

Of northern Montana in the days when it was cowman's paradise; the days

when round-up wagons started out with the grass greening the hilltops,

and swung from the Rockies to the Bear Paws and beyond in the wide arc

that would cover their range; of the days of the Cross L and the Rocking

R and the Lazy Eight,--every one of them brand names to glisten the eyes

of old-time Montanans.

"Where would you go to find them boys now?" the dried little man

questioned mournfully. "The Rocking R's gone into sheep, and the old boys

have all left. The Cross L moved up into Canada, Lord knows how they're

making out; I don't. Only outfit in northern Montana I know that has hung

together at all is the Flying U. Old man Whitmore, he's hangin' on by his

eyewinkers to what little range he can, and is going in for

thoroughbreds. Most of his boys is with him yet, they tell me--"

"What they doing? Still riding?" Luck let out a long breath and lighted

his cigarette. A little flare of hope had come into his eyes.

"Riding--yes, what little there is to do. Ranching a little too, and

kicking about changed times, same as I'm doing. Last time I saw that

outfit they was riding, you bet!" The dried little man chuckled, "That

was in Great Falls, some time back. They was all in a contest, and

pulling down the money, too. I was talking to old man Whitmore all one

evening. He was telling me--"

From away out yonder behind a hill came the throaty call of the coming

train. The dried little man jumped up, mumbled that it did beat all how

time went when yuh got to talking over old days, and hustled two trunks

out of the baggage room. Luck got his grip out of the office, settled

himself into his coat, and took a last, long pull at the cigarette stub

before he threw it away. It was not much of a clue that he had fallen

upon by chance, but Luck was not one to wait until he was slapped in the

face with a fact. He had intended swinging back through Arizona, where in

certain parts cattle still were wild enough to bunch up at sight of a man

afoot. His questioning of the dried little man had not been born of any

concrete purpose, but of the range man's plaint in the abstract. Still--

"Say, brother, what's the Flying U's home town?" he called after the

dried little man with his amiable, Southern drawl.

"Huh? Dry Lake. Yuh taking this train?"

"So long--taking it for a ways, yes." Luck hurried down to where a

kinky-haired porter stood apathetically beside the steps of his coach.

Dry Lake? He had never heard of the place, but he could find out from the

railroad map or the conductor. He swung his grip into the waiting hand of

the porter and went up the steps hurriedly. He meant to find out where

Dry Lake was, and whether this train would take him there.

CHAPTER TWO

"WHERE THE CATTLE ROAMED IN THOUSANDS, A-MANY A HERD AND BRAND ..."--_Old

Range Song_.

If you are at all curious over the name to which Luck Lindsay answered

unhesitatingly,--his very acceptance of it proving his willingness to be

so identified,--I can easily explain. Some nicknames have their origin in

mystery; there was no mystery at all surrounding the name men had

bestowed upon Lucas Justin Lindsay. In the first place, his legal

cognomen being a mere pandering to the vanity of two grandfathers who had

no love for each other and so must both be mollified, never had appealed

to Luck or to any of his friends. Luck would have been grateful for any

nickname that would have wiped Lucas Justin from the minds of men. But

the real reason was a quirk in Luck's philosophy of life. Anything that

he greatly desired to see accomplished, he professed to leave to chance.

He would smile his smile, and lift his shoulders in the Spanish way he

had learned in Mexico and the Philippines, and say: "That's as luck will

have it. _Quien sabe_?" Then he would straightway go about bringing the

thing to pass by his own dogged efforts. Men fell into the habit of

calling him Luck, and they forgot that he had any other name; so there

you have it, straight and easily understandable.

As luck would have it, then,--and no pun intended, please,--he found

himself en route to Dry Lake without any trouble at all; a mere matter of

one change of trains and very close connections, the conductor told him.

So Luck went out and found a chair on the observation platform, and gave

himself up to his cigar and to contemplation of the country they were

gliding through. What he would find at Dry Lake to make the stop worth

his while did not worry him; he left that to the future and to the god

Chance whom he professed to serve. He was doing his part; he was going

there to find out what the place held for him. If it held nothing but a

half dozen ex-cow-punchers hopelessly tamed and turned farmers, why,

there would probably be a train to carry him further in his quest. He

would drop down into Wyoming and Arizona and New Mexico,--just keep going

till he did find the men he wanted. That was Luck's way.

The shadows grew long and spread over the land until the whole vast

country lay darkling under the coming night. Luck went in and ate his

dinner, and came back again to smoke and stare and dream. There was a

moon now that silvered the slopes and set wide expanses shimmering.

Luck, always more or less a dreamer, began to people the plain with the

things that had been but were no more: with buffalo and with Indians who

camped on the trail of the big herds. He saw their villages, the tepees

smoke-grimed and painted with symbols, some of them, huddled upon a knoll

out there near the timber line. He heard the tom-toms and he saw the

rhythmic leaping and treading, the posing and gesturing of the braves who

danced in the firelight the tribal Buffalo Dance.

After that he saw the coming of the cattle, driven up from the south by

wind-browned, saddle-weary cowboys who sang endless chanteys to pass the

time as they rode with their herds up the long trail. He saw the cattle

humped and drifting before the wind in the first blizzards of winter,

while gray wolves slunk watchfully here and there, their shaggy coats

ruffled by the biting wind. He saw them when came the chinook, a howling,

warm wind from out the southwest, cutting the snowbanks as with a knife

that turned to water what it touched, and laying bare the brown grass

beneath. He saw the riders go out with the wagons to gather the

lank-bodied, big-kneed calves and set upon them the searing mark of their

owner's iron.

Urged by the spell of the dried little man's plaintive monologue, the old

range lived again for Luck, out there under the moon, while the train

carried him on and on through the night.

What a picture it all would make--the story of those old days as they

had been lived by men now growing old and bent. With all the cheap,

stagy melodrama thrown to one side to make room for the march of that

bigger drama, an epic of the range land that would be at once history,

poetry, realism!

Luck's cigar went out while he sat there and wove scene after scene of

that story which should breathe of the real range land as it once had

been. It could be done--that picture. Months it would take in the making,

for it would swing through summer and fall and winter and spring. With

the trail-herd going north that picture should open--the trail-herd

toiling over big, unpeopled plains, with the riders slouched in their

saddles, hat brims pulled low over eyes that ached with the glare of the

sun and the sweep of wind, their throats parched in the dust cloud flung

upward from the marching, cloven hoofs. Months it would take in the

making,--but sitting there with the green tail-lights switching through

cuts and around low hills and out over the level, Luck visioned it all,

scene by scene. Visioned the herd huddled together in the night while the

heavens were split with lightning, and the rain came down in

white-lighted streamers of water. Visioned the cattle humped in the snow,

tails to the biting wind, and the riders plodding with muffled heads bent

to the drive of the blizzard, the fine snow packing full the wrinkles in

their sourdough coats.

It could be done. He, Luck Lindsay, could do it; in his heart he knew

that he could. In his heart he felt that all of these months--yes, and

years--of picture-making had been but a preparation for this great

picture of the range. All these one-reel pioneer pictures had been merely

the feeble efforts of an apprentice learning to handle the tools of his

craft, the mental gropings of his mind while waiting for this, his big

idea. His work with the Indians was the mere testing and trying of

certain photographic effects, certain camera limitations. He felt like an

athlete taught and trained and tempered and just stepping out now for the

big physical achievement of his life.

He grew chilled as the night advanced, but he did not know that he was

cold. He was wondering, as a man always wonders in the face of an

intellectual birth, why this picture had not come to him before; why he

had gone on through these months and years of turning out reel upon reel

of Western pictures, with never once a glimmering of this great epic of

the range land; why he had clung to his Indians and his one-reel Indian

pictures with now and then a three-reel feature to give him the elation

of having achieved something; why he had left them feeling depressedly

that his best work was in the past; why he had looked upon real range-men

as a substitute only for those lean-bodied bucks and those fat,

stupid-eyed squaws and dirty papooses.

With the spell of his vision deep upon his soul, Luck sat humiliated

before his blindness. The picture he saw as he stared out across the

moonlit plain was so clean-cut, so vivid, that he marvelled because he

had never seen it until this night. Perhaps, if the dried little man had

not talked of the old range--

Luck took a long breath and flung his cigar out over the platform rail.

The dried little man? Why, just as he stood he was a type! He was the Old

Man who owned this herd that should trail north and on through scene

after scene of the picture! No make-up needed there to stamp the sense of

reality upon the screen. Luck looked with the eye of his imagination and

saw the dried little man climbing, with a stiffness that could not hide

his accustomedness, into the saddle. He saw him ride out with his men,

scattering his riders for the round-up; the old cowman making sharper the

contrast of the younger men, fixing indelibly upon the consciousness of

those who watched that this same dried little man had grown old in the

saddle; fixing indelibly the fact that not in a day did the free ranging

of cattle grow to be one of the nation's great industries.

Of a sudden Luck got up and stood swaying easily to the motion of the car

while he took a long, last look at the moon-bathed plain where had been

born his great, beautiful picture. He stretched his arms as does one who

has slept heavily, and went inside and down to the beginning of the

narrow aisle where were kept telegraph forms in their wooden-barred

niches in the wall. He went into the smoking compartment and wrote, with

a sureness that knew no crossed-out words, a night letter to the dried

little man who had sat on the baggage truck and talked of the range. And

this is what went speeding back presently to the dried little man who

slept in a cabin near the track and dreamed, perhaps, of following the

big herds:

Baggage man,

Sioux, N.D.

Report at once to me at Dry Lake. Can offer you good position Acme Film

Company, good salary working in big Western picture. Small part, some

riding among real boys who know range life. Want you bad as type of

cowman owning cattle in picture. Salary and expenses begin when you show

up. For references see Indian Agent.

LUCK LINDSAY,

Dry Lake, Mont.

If you count, you will see that he ran eight words over the limit of the

flat rate on night letters, but he would have over-run the limit by

eighty words just as quickly if he had wanted to say so much. That was

Luck's way. Be it a telegram, instructions to his company, or a quarrel

with some one who crossed him, Luck said what he wanted to say--and paid

the price without blinking.

I don't know what the dried little man thought when the operator

handed him that message the next morning; but I can tell you in a few

words what he did: He arrived in Dry Lake just two trains behind Luck.

Luck did not sleep that night. He lay in his berth with the shade pushed

up as high as it would go, and stared out at the tamed plain, and

perfected the details of his Big Picture. Into the spell of the range he

wove a story of human love and human hate and danger and trouble. So it

must be, to carry his message to the world who would look and marvel at

what he would show them in the drama of silence. He had not named his

picture yet. The name would come in its own good time, just as the

picture had come when the time for its making was ripe.

The next day he did not talk with the men whose elbows he touched in the

passing intimacy of travel; though Luck was a companionable soul who was

much given to talking and to seeing his listeners grow to an

audience,--an appreciative audience that laughed much while they listened

and frowned upon interruption. Instead, he sat silent in his seat, since

on this train there was no observation car, and he stared out of the

window without seeing much of what passed before his eyes, and made notes

now and then, and covered all the margins of his time-table with figures

that had to do with film. Once, I know, he blackened his two front teeth

with pencil tappings while he visualized a stampede and the probable

amount of footage it would require, and debated whether it should be

"shot" with two cameras or three to get scenes from different angles. A

stampede it should be,--a real stampede of fear-frenzied range cattle in

the mad flight of terror; not a bunch of galloping tame cows urged to

foreground by shouting and rock-throwing from beyond the side lines of

the scene. It would be hard to get, and it could not be rehearsed before

the camera was turned on it. Luck decided that it should be shot from

three angles, at least, and if he could manage it he would have a

"panoram" of the whole thing from a height.

The porter came apologetically with his big whisk broom and told Luck

that they would all presently be gazing at Dry Lake, or words which

carried that meaning. So Luck permitted himself to be whisked from a half

dollar while his thoughts were "in the field" with his camera men and

company, shooting a real stampede from various angles and trying to

manage so that the dust should not obscure the scene. After a rain--of

course! Just after a soaking rain, he thought, while he gathered up his

time-table and a magazine that held his precious figures, and followed

the porter out to the vestibule while the train slowed.

It was in this mood that Luck descended to the Dry Lake depot platform

and looked about him. He had no high expectation of finding here what he

sought. He was simply making sure, before he left the country behind him,

that he had not "overlooked any bets." His mind was open to conviction

even while it was prepared against disappointment; therefore his eyes

were as clear of any prejudice as they were of any glamour. He saw things

as they were.

On the side track, then, stood a string of cars loaded with wool, as his

nose told him promptly. Farms there were none, but that was because the

soil was yellow and pebbly and barren where it showed in great bald spots

here and there; you would not expect to raise cabbages where a prairie

dog had to forage far for a living. Behind the depot, the prairie humped

a huge, broad shoulder of bluff wrinkled along the forward slope of it

like the folds of a full fashioned skirt. There, too, the soil was

bare,--clipped to the very grass roots by hundreds upon hundreds of

hungry sheep whose wool, very likely, was crowding those cars upon the

siding. Luck wasted neither glances nor thought upon the scene. Dry Lake

was like many, many other outworn "cow towns" through which he had

passed; changed without being bettered; all of the old life taken out of

it in the process of its taming.

He threw his grip into the waiting, three-seated spring wagon that served

as a hotel bus, climbed briskly after it, and glanced ahead to where he

saw the age-blackened boards of the stockyards. Cattle--and then came the

sheep. So runs the epitaph of the range, and it was written plainly

across Dry Lake and its surroundings.

They went up a dusty trail and past the yawning wings of the stockyards

where a bunch of sheep blatted now in the thirst of mid-afternoon. They

stopped before the hotel where, in the old days, many a town-hungry

puncher had set his horse upon its haunches that he might dismount in a

style to match his eagerness. Luck climbed out and stood for a minute

looking up and down the sandy street that slept in the sun and dreamed,

it may be, of rich, unforgotten moments when the cow-punchers had come

in off the range and stirred the sluggish town to a full, brief life

with their rollicking. Across the street was Rusty Brown's place, with

its narrow porch deserted of loafers and its windows blinking at the

street with a blankness that belied the things they had looked upon in

bygone times.

A less experienced man than Luck would have been convinced by now that

here was no place to go seeking "real boys." But Luck had been a range

man himself before he took to making motion pictures; he knew range towns

as he knew men,--which was very well indeed. He looked, as he stood

there, not disgusted but mildly speculative. Two horses were tied to the

hitching rail before Rusty Brown's place. These horses bore saddles and

bridles, and, if you know the earmarks, you can learn a good deal about a

rider just by looking at his outfit. Neither saddle was new, but both

gave evidence of a master's pride in his gear. They were well-preserved

saddles. They had the conservative swell of fork that told Luck almost to

a year how old they were. One, he judged, was of California make, or at

least came from the extreme southwest of the cattle country. It had a

good deal of silver on it, and the tapideros were almost Mexican in their

elaborateness. The bridle on that horse matched the saddle, and the

headstall was beautiful with silver kept white and clean. The rope coiled

and tied beside the saddle fork was of rawhide. (Luck did not need to

cross the street to be sure of these details; observation was a part of

his profession.) The other saddle was the kind most favored on the

northern range. Short, round skirts, open stirrups, narrow and rimmed

with iron. Stamped with a two-inch border of wild rose design, it pleased

Luck by its very simplicity. The rope was a good "grass" rope worn smooth

and hard with much use.

Luck flipped a match stub out into the dust of the street, tilted his

small Stetson at an angle over his eyes, went over to the horses, and

looked at their brands which had been hidden from him. One was a Flying

U, and the other bore a blurred monogram which he did not trouble to

decipher. He turned on his heels and went into Rusty's place.

On his way to the bar he cast an appraising glance around the room and

located his men. Here, too, a less experienced man might have

blundered. One, known to his fellows as the Native Son, would scarcely

be mistaken; his dress, too, evidently matched the silver-trimmed

saddle outside. But Andy Green, in blue overalls turned up five inches

at the bottom, and somewhat battered gray hat and gray chambray shirt,

might have been almost any type of outdoor man. Certain it is that few

strangers would have guessed that he was one of the best riders in that

part of the State.

Luck bought a couple of good cigars, threw away his cigarette and lighted

one, set the knuckles of his left hand upon his hip, and sauntered over

to the pool table where the two men he wanted to meet were languidly

playing out their third string. He watched them for a few minutes, smiled

sympathetically when Andy Green made a scratch and swore over it, and

backed out of the way of the Native Son, who sprawled himself over the

table corner and did not seem to know or to care how far the end of his

cue reached behind him.

Luck did not say a word to either; but Andy, noting the smile of

sympathy, gave him a keenly attentive glance as he came up to that end of

the table to empty a corner pocket. He fished out the four and the nine,

juggled them absently in his hand, and turned and looked at Luck again,

straight and close. Luck once more smiled his smile.

"No, I don't believe you know me, brother," he said, answering Andy's

unspoken thought. "I'd have remembered you if I'd ever met you. You may

have seen me in a picture somewhere."

"By gracious, are you the little fellow that drove a stage coach and six

horses down off a grade--"

"That's my number, old-timer." Luck's smile widened to a grin. That had

been a hair-lifting scene, and Andy Green was not the first stranger to

walk up and ask him if he had driven that stage coach and six horses down

off a mountain grade into a wide gulch to avoid being held up and the

regulation box of gold stolen. It was probably the most spectacular thing

Luck had ever done. "Got down that bank fine as silk," he volunteered

companionably, "and then when I'd passed camera and was outa the scene,

by thunder, I tangled up with a deep chuck-hole that was grown over with

weeds, and like to have broken my fool neck. How's that for luck?" He

took the cigar from his lips and smiled again with half-closed, measuring

eyes. "Yes, sir, I just plumb spoiled one perfectly good Concord coach,

and would have been playing leading corpse at a funeral, believe me, if I

hadn't strapped myself to the seat for that drive off the grade. As it

was, I hung head down and cussed till one of the boys cut me loose. Where

did you see the picture?"

"Me? Up in the Falls. Say, I'm glad to meet you. Luck Lindsay's your

name, ain't it? I remember you were called that in the picture. Mine's

Green, Andy Green,--when folks don't call me something worse. And this is

Miguel Rapponi, a whole lot whiter than he sounds. What, for Lordy sake,

you wasting time on this little old hasbeen burg for? Take it from me,

there ain't anything left here but dents in the road and a brimstone

smell. We're all plumb halter-broke and so tame we--"

"You look all right to me, brother," Luck told him in that convincing

tone he had.

"Well, same to you," Andy retorted with a frank heartiness he was not in

the habit of bestowing upon strangers. "I feel as if I'd worked with you.

Pink was with me when we saw that picture, and we both hollered 'Go to

it!' right out loud, when you gathered up the ribbons and yanked off the

brake and went off hell-popping and smiling back over your shoulder at

us. It was your size and that smile of yours that made me remember you.

You looked like a kid when you mounted to the boot; and you drove down

off smiling, and you had one helanall of a trip, and you drove off that

grade looking like you was trying to commit suicide and was smiling still

when you pulled up at the post-office. By gracious, I--"

Luck gave a little chuckle deep in his throat. "I did all that smiling

the day before I drove off the grade," he confessed, looking from one

to the other. "I don't guess I'd have smiled quite so sweet, maybe, if

I'd waited."

"Is that the way you make moving pictures, hind-side-foremost?" Andy, his

back to the table, lifted himself over the rim to a comfortable seat and

began to make himself a cigarette.

"Yes, or both ways from the middle, just as it happens." Luck was always

ready to talk pictures. "In that stage-driver picture I made all the

scenes before I made that drive,--for two reasons. Biggest one was that I

wanted to be sure of having it all made, in case something went wrong on

that feature drive; get me? Other was plain, human bullheadedness. Some

of the four-flushers I was cursed with in the company,--because they were

cheap and I had to balance up what I was paying the Injuns,--they kept

eyeing that bluff where I said I'd come down with the coach, and betting

I wouldn't, and talking off in corners about me just stalling. I just let

'em sweat. I made the start, and I made the finish. I drove right to

where I looked down off the pinnacle--remember?--and saw the outlaw gang

at the foot of the grade; I made all the 'dissolves,' and where I went

back and captured 'em and brought 'em in to camp. But I didn't drive off

the grade into the gulch till last thing, as luck would have it. Good

thing, too. That old coach was sure some busted, and I wasn't doing any

more smiles till I grew some hide."

Andy Green licked his cigarette and let his honest gray eyes wander from

Luck to the darkly handsome face of the Native Son. "Sounds most as

exciting as holding down a homestead, anyway. Don't you think so, Mig?

And say! It's sure a pity we can't put off some things in real life till

we get all set and ready to handle 'em!"

"That's right." Luck's face sobered as the idea caught his imagination.

"That's dead right; how well I know it!"

Andy smoked and swung his feet and regarded Luck with interest. "It's

against my religious principles to go poking my nose into the other

fellow's business," he said after a minute, "but I'm wondering if there's

anything in this God-forsaken country to bring a fellow like you here

deliberate. I'm wondering if you meant to stop, or if you just leaned too

far out the car window on your way through town."

For a half minute Luck looked up at him. He had expected a preparatory

winning of the confidence of the men whom he sought. He had planned to

lead up gradually to his mission, in case he found his men. But in that

half minute he threw aside his plan as a weak, puerile wasting of time,

and he answered Andy Green truthfully.

"No, I didn't fall off the train," he drawled. "I just grabbed my grip

and beat it when they told me where I was. I'm out on a still hunt for

some real boys. Some that can ride and shoot and that know cow-science so

well they don't have to glad up in cowboy clothes and tie red bandanna

bibs on to make folks think they're range broke."

"And yet you're wasting time in this tame little granger wart on the

map!"

"No, not wasting time," smiled Luck serenely. "A little old trunk-juggler

up the trail told me about the Flying U outfit that is still sending

their wagons out when the grass gets green. I stopped off to give the

high-sign to the boys, and say howdy, and swap yarns, and maybe haze some

of 'em gently into camp. I wanted to see if the Flying U has got any real

ones left."

Andy Green looked eloquently at the Native Son. "Now, what do you know

about that, Mig?" he breathed softly behind a mouthful of smoke. "Wanting

to rope him out a few from the Flying U bunch. Say! Have you got a real

puncher amongst that outfit of long-haired hayseeds?"

The Native Son shook his head negligently and gave Luck a velvet-eyed

glance of friendly pity.

"If there is, he's ranging deep in the breaks and never shows up at

shipping time," he averred. "I've never seen one myself. They've got one

that--what would you call Big Medicine, if you wanted to name him quick

and easy, Andy?"

Andy frowned. "What I'd call him had best not be named in this

God-fearing little hamlet," he responded gloomily. "I sure would never

name him in the day I talked about cow-punchers that's ever dug sand outa

their eyes on trail-herd."

The Native Son, still with the velvet-eyed look of pity, turned to Luck.

"Andy's right," he sighed. "They've got one that takes spells of talking

deliriously about when he punched cows in Coconino County; but I guess

there's nothing to it."

"You say you was told that the Flying U outfit has got some real ones?"

Andy eyed Luck curiously and with some of the Native Son's pity. "Just in

a general way, what happens to folks that lie to you deliberate, when you

meet 'em again? I'd like," he added, "to know about how sorry to feel for

that baggage humper when you see him--after meeting the Flying U bunch."

The soul of Luck Lindsay was singing an impromptu doxology, but the face

of him--so well was that face trained to do his bidding--became tinged

with disgust and disappointment. With two "real boys" he was talking; he

knew them by the unconscious range vernacular and the perfect candor with

which they lied to him about themselves. But not so much as a gleam of

the eye betrayed to them that he knew.

"So that's why he went off grinning so wide," he mused aloud. "I was sure

caught then with my gun at home on the piano. I might have known better

than to look for the real thing here, though you fellows have a few

little marks that haven't worn off yet."

"Me? Why, I'm a farmer, and I'm married, and I'm in a deuce of a stew

because my spuds is drying up on me and no way to get water on 'em

without I carry it to 'em in a jug," disclaimed Andy Green hastily. "All

I know about punchers I learned from seeing picture shows when I go to

town. Now, Mig, here--".

"Oh, don't go and reveal all of my guilty past," protested the Native

Son. "Those three days I spent at a wild-west carnival show have about

worked outa my system. I'm still trying to wear out the clothes I won off

some of the boys in a crap game," he explained to Luck apologetically,

"but my earmarks won't outlast the clothes, believe me."

Luck thoughtfully flicked the ash collar off his cigar. "It won't be any

use then to go out to the Flying U, I suppose," he observed tentatively,

his eyes keen for their changing expressions. "I may as well take the

next train out, I reckon, and drift on down into Arizona and New Mexico.

I know about where some real punchers range--but I thought there was no

harm in looking up the pedigree of this Flying U outfit. I'm sure some

obliged to you boys for heading me off." Back of his eyes there was a

laugh, but Andy Green and the Native Son were looking queerly at each

other and did not see it there.

"Oh, well, now you're this close, you wouldn't be losing anything by

going on out to the ranch, anyway," Andy recanted guardedly. "Come to

think of it, there's one regular old-time ranger out there. They call him

Slim. He's sure a devil on a horse--Slim is. I'd forgot about him when I

spoke. He's a ranger, all right."

Luck knew very well that Andy Green had used the word "ranger" with the

deliberate attempt to appear ignorant of the terminology of the range. A

cow-puncher comes a long way from being a ranger, as every one knows. A

ranger is a man of another profession entirely.

"It used to be a real cattle ranch, they tell me," added the Native Son

artfully. "We live out near there, and if you wanted to ride out--"

Luck appeared undecided. He sucked at his cigar, and he blew out the

smoke thoughtfully, and contemplated the toe of one neat, tan shoe. Just

plain acting, it was; just a playing of his part in the little game they

had started. Better than if they had boasted of their range knowledge and

their prowess in the saddle did Luck know that the dried little man had

told him the truth. He knew that at the Flying U he would find a remnant

of the old order of things. He would find some real boys, if these two

were a fair sample of the bunch. That they lied to him about themselves

and their fellows was but a sign that they accepted him as one of their

breed. He looked them over with gladdened eyes. He listened to the

unconscious tang of the range that was in their talk. These two farmers?

He could have laughed aloud at the idea.

"Well, I might get some atmosphere ideas," he said at last. "If you don't

mind having me trail along--"

"Glad to have yuh!" came an instant duet.

"And if I can scare up a horse--"

"Oh, we'll look after that. You can come right on out with us. The

boys'll be plumb tickled to death to meet you."

"Are they all farmers, same as you--these boys you mention?" Luck looked

up into Andy's eyes when he asked the question.

Andy grinned. "Farmers, yes--same as us!" he said ambiguously and picked

up his gloves as he turned to lead the way out.

CHAPTER THREE

AND THEY SIGH FOR THE DAYS THAT ARE GONE

Just when Luck's new acquaintances first forgot to carry on their

whimsical pretense of knowing little of range matters, neither of them

could have told afterwards. They left town with the tacit understanding

between them that they were going to have some fun with the Happy Family

and with this likable little man of the movies. They rode out between

long lines of hated barbed wire stretched taut, and they lied

systematically and consistently to Luck Lindsay about themselves and

their fellows and their particular condition of servitude to fate.

But somewhere along the trail they forgot to carry on the deception; and

only Luck could have told why they forgot, and when they forgot, and how

it was that, ten miles or so out from town, the two were telling how the

Flying U had fought to save itself from extinction; how the "bunch" had

schemed and worked and had in a measure succeeded in turning aside the

tide of immigration from the Flying U range. Big issues they talked of as

they rode three abreast through the warm haze of early fall; and as they

talked, Luck's mind visioned the tale vividly, and his eyes swept the

fence-checkered upland with a sympathetic understanding.

"Right here," said Andy at last, when they came up to a gate set across

the trail, "right here is where we drawed the line--and held it. Now,

half of those shacks you see speckled around are empty. The rest hold

nesters too poor to get outa the country. One or two, that had a little

money, have stuck and gone into sheep. But from here on to Dry Creek

there's nothing ranging but the Flying U brand. Not much--compared to

what the old range used to be--but still it keeps things going. We

throwed a dam across the coulee, up there next the hills, and there's

some fair hay land we're putting water on. We have to winter-feed

practically everything these days. The range just nicely keeps the stock

from snow to snow. I've got pitchfork callouses on my hands I never will

outgrow if I was to fall heir to a billion dollars and never use my hands

again for fifty years except to feed myself. It takes work, believe me!

And if there's anything on earth a puncher hates worse than work, it's

some other kind of work.

"At the Flying U," he went on, looking at Luck pensively, "you'll see the

effect of too many people moved into the range country. If there's

anything more distressing than a baby left without a mother, it's a bunch

of cow-punchers that's outlived their range. Ain't that right?"

"Sure it's right!" Luck's sympathy was absolutely sincere. "How well I

know it! Barbed wire scraped me outa the saddle in Wyoming--barbed wire

and sheep. All there is left for a fellow is to forget it and start a

barber shop or a cigar stand, or else make pictures of the old days, the

way I've been doing. You can get a little fun out of making pictures of

what used to be your everyday life. You can step up on a horse and go

whoopin' over the hills and kinda forget it ain't true." A wistfulness

was in Luck's tone. "You pick out the big minutes from the old days--that

had a whole lot of dust and sun and thirst and hunger in between, when

all's said--you pick out the big minutes, and you bring them to life

again, and sort of push them up close together and leave out most of the

hardships. That's why so many of the old boys drift into pictures, I

reckon. They try to forget themselves in the big minutes."

The two who rode with him were silent for a space. Then the Native

Son spoke drily: "About the biggest minutes we get now come about

meal times."

"Oh, we can get down in the breaks on round-up time and kinda forget the

world's fenced clear 'way round it with barb-wire," Andy bettered the

statement. "But round-up gets shorter every year."