to unbosom himself a little to these two who would understand, "my next
picture is going to be different. It's going to have a crackajack story
in it, of course, but it will have something more than a story. I'm going
to start it off with a trail herd coming up from Texas. You know--like it
was when we were kids. I'm going to show those cattle trailing along
tired--and footsore, some of them--and a drag strung out behind for a
mile. I'm going to show the punchers tired and hungry, and riding half
asleep in the saddle. And with that for a starter, I'm going to show the
real range; the _real_ range--get that, boys? I'm going to cut clean away
from regulation moving-picture West; clear out away from posses chasing
outlaws all over a ten-acre location. I'm going to find me a real old
cow-ranch; or if I can't find one, by thunder I'm going to _make_ me one.
I'm sick of piling into a machine and driving out into Griffith Park and
hunting a location for shooting scrapes to take place in. I know a place
where I could produce stuff that would make people talk about it for a
month after. Maybe the buildings would need some doctoring, but there's
sure some round-pole corrals that would make your mouth water."
"We used to have some," sighed Andy, "at the Flying U. But they kinda
went to pieces, and Chip's been replacing them with plank. By gracious,
you don't see many round-pole corrals any more, come to think of it.
There's remains, scattered around over the country."
"The West--the real honest-to-goodness, twelve-months-in-the-year West,"
Luck went on riding his hobby, "has been mighty little used in films.
Ever notice that? It's all gone to shooting, and stealing the full
product of all the gold mines in the world, and killing off more bad men
than the Lord ever sent a flood to punish. For film purposes, the West
consists of one part beautiful maiden in distress, three parts bandit,
and two parts hero. Mix these to taste with plenty of swift action and
gun-smoke, and serve with bandits all dead or handcuffed and beautiful
maiden and hero in lover's embrace on top. That's your film West,
boys--and how well I know it!" Luck stopped to light a cigarette and to
heave a sigh. "I've been building film West to order for four years now,
and more. Only fun I've had, and the best work I've done, I did with a
bunch of Indians I've just taken back to their reservation. For the rest,
it's mostly bunk."
"Not that stage-driver picture," Andy dissented. "There wasn't any bunk
about that, old-timer. That was some driving!"
"Some driving, yes. Sure, it was. It was darned good driving, but the
same old story doctored up a little. Same old shipment of gold, same old
bandits lying in wait, same old hero doing stunts. I ought to know," he
added with a grin. "I wrote the story and did the stunts myself."
"Well, they were some stunts!" admired Andy with unusual sincerity.
Luck waved aside the compliment and went back to his hobby. "Yes, but the
West isn't just a setting for stunts. I've got my story--here," and he
tapped his forehead, which was broad and full and not too high. "I'm
going to fire my camera man and get a better one, and I'm going to round
me up a bunch of real boys that can get into the story and live it so
well they won't need to do any acting,--boys that can stand a panoram on
their work in the saddle. I've been getting by with a bunch of freaks
that think they're real riders if they can lope a horse up-grade without
falling off backwards. Most of my direction of those actorines has been
knowing to a hair how much footage to give 'em without showing how raw
their work is.
"They say the public demands a certain grade of rottenness in Western
films, but I never believed that, down deep in my heart. I believe the
public stands for that stuff because they don't see any better. This
four-reeler I've got in mind will sure open the eyes of some
producers--or I'll buy me a five-acre tract in Burbank and raise string
beans for a living."
"I've got a patch of string beans," sighed the Native Son, "that I've
been sitting up nights with. I don't know what ails the cussed things.
Some kind of little green bug chews on them soon as my back is turned.
They ought to be ripe by now--and they aren't through blossoming. Don't
go into beans, _amigo_."
Luck looked at him and laughed. The Native Son, in black and white Angora
chaps and cream-colored shirt and silver-filigreed hatband as ornamental
touches to his attire, did not look like a man who was greatly worried
over his crop of string beans while he rode with a negligent grace away
from a glowing sunset. But in these days the West is full of
incongruities.
"Oh, shut up about them beans!" implored Andy Green with a bored air.
"It's water they want; and a touch of the hoe now and then. You leave 'em
for a month at a time and then go back and wonder why you can't pick a
hatful off 'em. Same as the rest of us have been ranching," he added
ruefully, turning to Luck. "With the best intentions in the world, the
Lord never meant us fellers for farmers, and that's a fact. We'll drop a
hoe any time of day or night to get out riding after stock. Of course, we
didn't take up our claims with the idea of settling down and riding a hoe
handle the rest of our lives. If we had, I guess maybe we'd have done a
little better at it."
"We did what we started out to do," the Native Son pointed out lazily:
"We saved the range--what little there is to save--and we kept a lot of
poor yaps from starving to death on that land, didn't we?" He smiled
slowly. "If I hadn't gotten gay and planted those beans," he added, "I'd
be feeling fine over it. A girl gave me a handful of pinto beans and
asked me to plant them--I did hoe them," he defended tardily to Andy. "I
hoed them the day before the Fourth. You know I did. Same time you hoed
those lemon-colored spuds of yours."
Luck let them wrangle humorously over their agricultural deficiencies,
and drifted off into open-eyed dreaming. Into his picture he began to fit
these two speculatively, with a purely tentative adjustment of their
personalities to his requirements. They were arguing about which of the
two was the worst farmer; but Luck, riding alongside them, was seeing
them slouched in their saddles and riding, bone-tired, with a shuffling
trail-herd hurrying to the next watering place. He was seeing them
galloping hard on the flanks of a storm-lashed stampede, with cunningly
placed radium flares lighting the scene brilliantly now and then. He was
seeing these two plodding, heads bent, into the teeth of a blizzard. He
was seeing...
"I'll have to ride home to the missus now," Andy announced the second
time before Luck heard him.
"Mig will take you on down to the home ranch, and after supper I'll ride
over. So long."
He swung away from them upon a faintly beaten trail, looked back once to
grin and wave his hand, and touched his horse with the spurs. Luck stared
after him thoughtfully, but he did not put his thoughts into words. He
had been trained in the hard school of pictures. He had learned to hold
his tongue upon certain matters, such as his opinion of a man's personal
attributes, or criticism of his appearance, or anything which might be
repeated, maliciously or otherwise, to that man. He did not say to Miguel
Rapponi, for instance, what he thought of Andy Green as a man or a rider.
He did not mention him at all. He had learned in bitterness how idle
gossip may eat away the efficiency of a whole company.
For that reason, and also because his mind was busy with his plans and
the best means of carrying them out, the two rode almost in silence to
the hill that shut the Flying U coulee away from the world. Luck gave a
long sigh and muttered "Great!" when the whole coulee lay spread before
them. Then his quick glances took in various details of the ranch and he
sighed again, from a different emotion.
"It must have been a great place twenty years ago," he amended his first
unqualified enthusiasm.
"Why twenty years ago?" The Native Son gave him a quick,
half-resentful glance.
"Twenty years ago there wasn't so much barb-wire trimming," Luck
explained from the viewpoint of the trained producer of Western pictures.
"You couldn't place a camera anywhere now for a long shot across the
coulee without bringing a fence into the scene. And the log stables are
too old, and the new ones too new." He pulled up and stared long at the
sweep of hills beyond, and the wide spread of the meadow and the big
field farther up stream, and at the lazy meandering of Flying U creek
with its willow fringe just turning yellow with the first touch of
autumn. He looked at the buildings sprawled out below him.
"When that log house was headquarters for the ranch, and the round-pole
corrals were the only fences on the place," he said; "when those old
sheds held the saddle horses on cold nights, and the wagons were out from
green grass to snowfall, and the boys laid around all winter, just
reportin' regular at grub-pile and catching up on sleep they'd lost in
the summer--Lor-dee, what a place it must have been!"
There was something in his tone that brought the Native Son for an
instant face to face with the Flying U in the old days when all the range
was free. So, with faces sober, because the old days were gone and would
never any more return, they rode down the grade and up to the new stable
that was a monument to the dead past, even though it might also be a
sign-post pointing to present prosperity. And in this wise came Luck
Lindsay to the Flying U and was made welcome.
CHAPTER FOUR
THE LITTLE DOCTOR PROTESTS
The Little Doctor stepped out upon the porch with the faint tracing of a
frown upon her smooth forehead, and with that slight tightening of the
lips which to her family meant determination; disapproval sometimes,
tense moments always.
She stood for a minute looking down toward the stables, and the wind that
blew down the coulee seized upon the scant folds of her skirt, and
flapped them impishly against the silken-clad ankles that were
exceedingly good to look upon,--since fashion has now made it quite
permissible to look upon ankles. Her lips did not relax with the waiting.
Her frown grew a trifle more pronounced.
"Mr. Lindsay?" with a rising inflection.
Luck turned his head, saw her standing there, waved his hand to show that
he heard, and started toward her with that brisk, purposeful swing to his
walk that goes with an energetic disposition. The Little Doctor waited,
and watched him, and did not relax a muscle from her determined attitude.
Poor little Luck Lindsay hurried, so as not to keep her standing there in
the wind, and, not knowing just what was before him, he smiled his smile
as he came up to her.
I should have said, poor Little Doctor. She tried to keep her frown and
the fixed idea that went with it, but she was foolish enough to look down
into Luck's face and into his eyes with their sunny friendliness, and at
the smile, where the friendliness was repeated and emphasized. Before she
quite knew what she was doing, the Little Doctor smiled back. Still, she
owned a fine quality of firmness.
"Come in here. I want to have it out with you, and be done," she said,
and turned to open the door.
"Sounds bad, but I'm yours to command," Luck retorted cheerfully, and
went up the steps still smiling. He liked the Little Doctor. She was his
kind of woman. He felt that she would make a good pal, and he knew how
few women are qualified for open comradeship. He cast a side glance at
the kitchen window where the Kid stood with a large slice of bread and
chokecherry jam balanced on his palm, and on his face a look of mental
distress bordered with more jam. Luck nodded and waved his hand, and went
in where the Little Doctor stood waiting for him with a certain ominous
quiet in her manner. Luck shook back his heavy mane of hair that was
graying prematurely, squared his shoulders, and then held out his hand
meekly, palm upward. Boys learn that pose in school, you know.
"Oh, for pity's sake! If you go and make me laugh--and I am mad enough at
you, Luck Lindsay, to--to blister that palm! If you weren't any bigger
than Claude, I'd shake you and stand you in a corner on one foot."
"Listen. Shake me, anyway. I believe I'd kinda like it. And while I'm
standing in the corner--on one foot--you can tell me all you're mad
at me for."
The Little Doctor looked at him, bit her lip, and then found that her
eyes were blurred so that his face seemed to waver and grow dim. And Luck
Lindsay, because he saw the tears, laid a hand on her shoulder, and
pushed her ever so gently into a chair.
"Tell me what's worrying you. If it's anything that I have done, I'll
have one of the boys take me out and shoot me; it's what I would deserve.
But I certainly can't think of anything--"
"Do you know that you have filled little Claude's mind up with stories
about moving pictures till he's just crazy? He told me just now that he's
going with you when you go back, and act in your company. And if I won't
let him go, he said, he'd run away and 'hit a freight-train outa Dry
Lake,' and get to California, anyway. And--he'd do it, too! He's
perfectly awful when he gets an idea in his head. I know he's
spoiled--all the boys pet him so--"
"Wait. Let's get this thing straight. Do you think for one minute, Mrs.
Bennett, that I'd coax the Kid away? Say, that hurts--to have you believe
that of me." There was no smile anywhere on Luck's face now. His eyes
were as pained as his voice sounded.
Once more the Little Doctor weakened before him. She believed what he
said, though five minutes before she had believed exactly the opposite.
In her mind she had accused him of coaxing the Kid. She had fully
intended accusing him of it to his face.
"I don't mean coax, perhaps. But--"
"Listen. If the Kid has got that notion, I'm more sorry than you can
guess. Of course, I think pictures and I talk pictures; I admit I make
them in my sleep. And the boys are interested. Those that are going back
with me and those that are not are always sicking me at the subject. I
admit that I sick easy," he added with a whimsical lightening of the
eyes. "And the Kid and I are pals. I like him, Mrs. Bennett. He's got the
stuff in him to make a real man--and I wouldn't call him spoiled,
exactly. He's always been with grown-ups, and his mind has developed away
ahead of the calendar; you see what I mean? He's nine, he tells me--"
"Only eight. He always tries to make himself older than he is," the
Little Doctor corrected quickly.
"Well, he's some boy! And kids somehow take to me; I guess it's because
I'm always chumming with them. He's been taking in everything that has
been said; I could see that. But I surely never talked to him in the way
you mean."
The Little Doctor looked at him and hesitated; but she was a frank young
woman, and she could not help speaking her mind. "You mustn't take it
personally at all," she said, "if I tell you that I am disappointed in
the boys; in Andy and Rosemary especially, because they ought to
appreciate the little home they have made, and stay with it. One sort of
expects Pink and Big Medicine and Weary to do outlandish things. They
haven't really grown up, and they never will. But I am disappointed, just
the same, that they should want to go performing around and shooting
blank cartridges and making clowns of themselves for moving pictures.
Still, that's their own business, of course, if they want to be silly
enough to do it. But now little Claude has taken the fever--and I wish,
Mr. Lindsay, you could do something to--" She stopped, but not because
what she said was hurting Luck's feelings. She did not know that she hurt
him at all.
"It seems to be worse, in your estimation, than exposing the Kid to
yellow fever," Luck observed quietly.
"Well, of course you can understand that I should not want a boy of
mine to--to be all taken up with the idea of acting cowboy parts for a
moving picture."
"Still, there are some fairly decent people in the business," Luck
pointed out still more quietly, and got upon his feet. He had no smile
now for the Little Doctor, though he was still gentle in his manner. "I
see what you mean, Mrs. Bennett. I understand you perfectly. I shall do
what I can to repair the damage to the Kid's character and ideals, and I
want to thank you for coming to me in this matter. Otherwise I might have
gone against your wishes without knowing that I was doing so." For two
breaths or three he held her glance with something that looked out of his
eyes; the Little Doctor did not know what it was. "You see, Mrs. Bennett,
you don't quite understand what you are talking about," he added. "You
have not had the opportunity to understand, of course. But I agree with
you that the Kid's place is at home, and I shall certainly have a talk
with him."
He moved to the door, laid a fine, well-kept hand upon the knob, and
looked at her with a faint smile that had behind it a good deal that
puzzled the Little Doctor. "Don't worry one minute," he said, dropping
his punctilious politeness of the minute before, and becoming again the
intensely human Luck Lindsay. "I 'heap sabe.' I've certainly corrupted
the morals and ambitions of some of the boys--looking at it the way you
do--but I promise to check the devastation right where it's at, and save
your only son." He turned then and went out.
The Little Doctor paid him the tribute of hurrying to the window where
she could watch him go down the path. In his walk, in the set of his
head, there was still something that puzzled her. She hoped that he was
not offended, and she thankfully remembered a good deal that she had left
unsaid. She saw him turn and beckon, and then wait until the Kid had
joined him from the kitchen. She saw the greeting he gave the Kid, and
the adoration on the Kid's face when he looked up at Luck. The two went
away together, and the Little Doctor watched them dubiously. What if the
Kid should run away? He had done it once, and it was well within the
probabilities that he might do it again, if this present obsession of his
were not handled just right. The Kid, she had long ago discovered, could
not be driven,--and there were times when he could not be coaxed.
Luck had been just three days at the Flying U. In those three days he had
fitted himself into the place so well that even old Patsy, the cook,
called him "Look" as easily as though he had been doing it for years; and
Patsy, you must know, was fast acquiring the querulousness of an old age
that does not sweeten with the passing years. Patsy had discovered that
Luck liked his eggs fried on both sides, and thereafter he painstakingly
turned three eggs bottomside up in the frying pan every morning; three
and no more, though Cal Emmett remarked pointedly that he had always
liked his eggs fried and flopped.
Three days, and the Old Man frequently left his big, soft-cushioned
chair, and went slowly down to the bunk-house whence came much laughter,
and listened to the stories that Luck told so well,--with one arm around
the unashamed Kid, very likely, while he talked.
True, they had ranches of their own, those boys of the Flying U. But if
you wanted to find them in a hurry, it were wise to ride first into
Flying U coulee. That was headquarters, and that was home and always
would be; even Andy Green, who was happily married, brought his wife and
stayed there days at a time, with small excuse for the coming.
In three days, then, Luck had chosen his men from among the Happy Family,
and had convinced them that their future welfare and happiness depended
upon their going back with him to Los Angeles. In three days he had
accomplished a good deal; but then, Luck was in the habit of crowding his
days with achievement of one sort or another. As a matter of fact, the
third day he had looked upon as one given solely to the pleasure of
staying at the Flying U while the boys completed their arrangements for
leaving with him. He had done all that he had planned to do, and he was
in a very good humor with the world, or he had been until the Little
Doctor had made his pride writhe under her innocent belittlement of his
vocation. To have her boy work in pictures would be a calamity in her
eyes; in Luck's eyes it would be an honor, provided he did the right kind
of work in the right kind of pictures.
Luck's own personal opinion, however, did not weigh in this case. He had
promised the Little Doctor that he would erase the impression he had made
upon the Kid's too vivid imagination; so he led him to a retired place
where they would be sheltered from the wind by a great stack of alfalfa
hay, and he began in this wise:
"Old-timer, you're the luckiest boy I've seen in all my travels,--growing
up here on the Flying U, with a mother like you've got, and a dad like
Chip, and a ranch like this to get the swing of while you're growing; so
that in another five years I expect you'll be running it yourself, and
your folks will be larking around having the good time they've earned
while they were raising you. I'll bet--"
"So Doctor Dell went and got around you, did she? I knew that was why she
called you into the sett'n room. Forget it, Luck." The Kid spat manfully
into the trodden hay, and pushed his small-size Stetson back so that his
curls showed, and set his feet as far apart as was comfortable. "I knew
she would," he added with weary wisdom in his tone. "Doctor Dell can get
around anybody when she takes a notion."
Luck held his face from smiling. He looked surprised, and disappointed in
the Kid, and sorry for the Kid's parents. At least, he made the Kid feel
that he was thinking all these things, which proves how well one may
master the art of facial expression. He did not say a word; therefore he
put the Kid upon the defensive and set his young wits to devising
arguments in his favor.
"A woman never knows when a fellow begins to grow up. Doctor Dell is the
nicest girl in the world, but she needn't think I'm a baby yet. I can
ride a buckin' horse, and I went on round-up last spring--and made a
hand, too! I can swing a rope as good as any of the bunch; you seen me
whirl a loop and jump through it, and there's more stunts than that I
can do--it was dinner time, so I had to quit before I showed you." The
Kid paused. He had not yet produced any effect whatever upon that
surprised, pitying, disappointed look in Luck's face, and the Kid began
to feel worried.
"Well, I was just bluffing when I said I'd run away--if she told you
that." He stopped; the look was still there, only it now seemed to have
contempt added to it. "I don't say I know more'n anybody on the ranch,
and I don't say I'm boss of the ranch yet. I do what they tell me, even
when I know there ain't any sense in it. I humor Doctor Dell a whole
lot!" Could he never get that look off Luck's face? The Kid searched his
soul anxiously. You couldn't go on arguing with that kind of a look; it
made you feel like you'd been stealing sheep. "Oh, well, if you won't
talk to a feller--" The Kid did not turn away quite soon enough to hide
the quiver of his lips. Luck reached out and took a small, grimy hand
and pulled the Kid nearer; near enough so that his arm could go around
the Kid's quivering body. He held him close, and the Kid did not
struggle. He dropped his face against Luck's shoulder, and began to
fight back his tears.
"Listen, pardner," said Luck softly, one hand caressing the Kid's cheek.
"You and I ought to sabe each other better than most folks, because we're
pals. Now, I want you to go with me a heap more than you want to go; just
tuck that away in your mind where you won't lose it. I want you, but I
wouldn't have you without Doctor Dell's free and willing consent. I need
you for my pal; and I could teach you a lot that would be useful to you.
But they need you a whole lot worse than I do. They've been taking care
of you and loving you and planning for you all these eight years, just
watching you grow, and being proud of you because you're what they want
you to be: husky and healthy and good all the way through. You couldn't
go off and leave them now; it wouldn't be right. And, pard, you need them
even worse than they need you. I know,--because I had to grow up without
any one to love me and look after me; and believe me, old pal, it isn't
any cinch. It's just pure luck that I didn't get killed off or go bad.
Now, I'd be good to you, if I had you with me, and so would the boys; but
we couldn't take the place of Doctor Dell and Daddy Chip.
"I've talked pictures too much to you. I didn't know how it was hitting
you, or how much you wanted to go. But listen. If I had the chance you've
got here,--if I had a ranch like this, and cattle, and horses, and a
father and mother and uncle like you've got,--I never would look a camera
in the eye again as long as I live. That's straight, old-timer. Why, I'm
working my head off trying to get enough ahead so that I can have a ranch
of my own! So I can slap a saddle on a horse that carries my brand, and
ride out after my cattle, and haze them into my corral; so I can have a
home that is mine. I never did have one, pardner,--not since I was a heap
smaller than you are now,--and a home of his own is what every man wants
most, down deep in his heart.