fine if you are cut out for that kind of work, and have got to be working
for somebody else to get your start. But remember, pard, I am working and
scheming and planning to get just what you've got already. You, a kid
eight years old, stand right where I'd give all I've got to stand. You'll
own your own ranch and your own home. You've got folks that love you--not
because you hand out the pay envelope on a certain day of the week, but
because you belong to them, and they belong to you. Kid, I'm thirty-two
years old--and I've never known what that felt like. I have never known
what it was like to have some one plan for me and with me, unless they
were paid for it."
The Kid stood very still. "You could live here," he lifted his head to
say gravely after a little silence that was full of thought. "This can be
your home. You can be one of the Happy Family. We'd like to have you."
There was something queer in Luck's voice when he murmured a reply. There
was something in his face which no one but the Kid had ever seen. The
Kid's arm crept around Luck's neck, and tightened there and stayed.
Luck's hand went up to the curls and hovered there caressingly. And they
talked, in tones lowered to the cadence of deep-hidden hopes and longings
revealed in sacred confidence.
The Little Doctor, shamelessly eavesdropping because she was a mother
fighting for her fledgling, tiptoed away from the corner of the stack,
and went back to the house, wiping her eyes frequently with the corner of
her handkerchief that was not embroidered. She went into her room and
stayed there a long while, and before she came out she had recourse to
rosewater and talcum and other first aids to swollen eyelids.
Whatever she may have thought, whatever she may have overheard beyond
what has been recorded, her manner toward Luck was so unobtrusively
tender that Chip looked at her once or twice with a puzzled, husbandly
frown. Also, the Kid felt something special in his Doctor Dell's
good-night kiss; something he did not understand at all, since he had not
yet told her that he was going to be a good boy and stay at home and take
care of her and the ranch.
CHAPTER FIVE
A BUNCH OF ONE-REELERS FROM BENTLY BROWN
The Manager of the Acme Film Company cleared his throat with a rasping
noise that sounded very loud, coming as it did after fifteen minutes of
complete silence. Luck, smoking a cigarette absent-mindedly by the window
while he stared out across two vacant lots to a tawdry apartment
house,--and saw a sage-covered plain instead of what was before his
eyes,--started from his daydream and glanced at Martinson inquiringly.
"Well, what do you think of it?" he asked.
Martinson cleared his throat again, and shuffled the typed sheets in his
hands. "Seems to lack action, don't it?" he hazarded reluctantly. "Of
course, this is a rough draft; I realize that. I suppose you'll
strengthen up the plot, later on. Chance for some good cattle-stealing
complications, I should think. But I'd boil it down to two reels, Luck,
if I were you. There's a lot of atmosphere you couldn't get, anyway--"
"I can get every foot of that atmosphere," Luck put in crisply.
"Oh, I suppose--but you don't want that much. Too expensive, where it
doesn't carry the action along. I'd put in some dance-hall scenes; you
haven't enough interiors. Make your lead a victim of card sharps, why
don't you, and have his sister come there after him? You could get some
great dramatic action--have her meet the heavy there--"
"After the tried-and-tested recipe. Sure, Mart! We can take the middle
out of that _Her-Brother's-Honor_ film and use that; and if you're afraid
the public may recognize it, we'll run it backwards. Or we can mix it
with some _Western-Girl's-Romance_ film, or take--"
"Now, Luck, wait a minute. Wait-a-minute!" Martinson's hand went up in
the approved gesture of stopping another's speech. "You can give it an
original twist. You know you can; you always have."
Luck swore, accustomed though he was to the makeshifts of the business.
The street cars had stopped running the night before, while he was still
hammering that scenario out on the typewriter; the street cars had
stopped running, and the steam heat had been turned off in the hotel
where he lived, and he had finished with an old Mexican _serape_ draped
about his person for warmth. But his enthusiasm had not cooled, though
his room grew chill. He had gone to bed when the typing was done, and had
dreamed scene after scene vividly while he slept. Still glowing with the
pride of creation, he had read the script while his breakfast coffee had
cooled, and he had been the first man in the office, so eager was he to
share his secret and see Martinson's eyes gleam with impatience to have
the story filmed.
Knowing this, you will know also why he swore. Martinson thrust out his
under lip at the oath, and tossed the script neatly into the clear space
on the desk. "Oh, if that's the way you feel about it!" His tone was
trenchant. "Sorry I offered any suggestions. There are some good bits, if
they're worked up right, and I naturally supposed you wanted my opinion."
"I did. I never saw you square up to anything but the same old dime-novel
West before. I wanted to see how it would hit you."
"Well, it don't." Martinson waited a minute while that sunk in. When he
spoke again, his manner was that of a man who has dismissed a
disagreeable subject, and has taken up important business.
"We've made quite a haul since you left. A bunch of one-reelers from
Bently Brown. You'll eat 'em up, Luck,--all those stories of his
featuring the adventures of the XY cowboys. You've read 'em; everybody
has, according to him. They'll be cheap to put on, because the same sets
and the same locations will do for the lot. Same cast, too. He blew in
here temporarily hard up and wanting to unload, and we got the whole
series for next to nothing." He opened a desk drawer, and took out a
bundle of folded scripts tied with a dingy blue tape. Martinson was a
matter-of-fact man; he really did not understand just how much Luck's new
story meant to its author. If he had, he surely would not have been quite
so brisk and so frankly elated over that untidy lot of Bently Brown
scenarios.
"I had all the synopses numbered and put on top here," he went on, "so
you can run them over and see what they're like. A small company will do,
Luck. That's one point that struck me. Two or three die, on an average,
in the first four hundred feet of every story; so you can double a lot.
I've had Clements go over them and start the carpenters on the street set
where most of the exterior action takes place; we're behind on releases,
you know, and these ought to be rushed. You'd better go over and see how
he's making out; you may want to make some changes."
Luck hesitated so long that Martinson was on the edge of withdrawing the
proffered scripts. But he took them finally, and ran his eye
disparagingly over the titles. "Bently Brown!" he said, as though he were
naming something disagreeable. "I'm to film Bently Brown's
blood-and-battle stuff, am I?" He grinned, with the corners of his mouth
tipped downward so that you never would have suspected it of ever
producing Luck's famous smile. "I might turn them into comedy," he
suggested. "I expect I could get a punch by burlesquing--"
"Punch!" Martinson pushed his chair back impetuously. "Punch? Why, my
godfrey, man, that stuff's all punch!"
Luck curved a palm over his too-expressive mouth while he skimmed the
central idea from two or three synopses. Martinson watched him uneasily.
Martinson claimed to keep one finger pressed firmly upon the public
pulse--wherever that may be found--and to be ever alert for its warning
flutterings. Martinson claimed to know a great deal about what the public
liked in the way of moving pictures. He believed in Luck's knowledge of
the West, but he did not believe that the public would stand for the real
West at all; the public, he maintained, wanted its West served hot and
strong and reeking with the smoke of black powder. So--
"Well, the market demands that sort of thing," he declared, arguing
against that curved palm and the telltale wrinkles around Luck's eyes.
"It's all tommyrot, of course. I don't say it's good; I say it's the
stuff that goes. We're here to make what the public will pay to look
at." Martinson, besides keeping his finger on the public pulse and
attending to the marketing of the Acme wares and watching that expenses
did not run too high, found a little time in which to be human. "I know,
Luck," the human side of him observed sympathetically; "it's just
made-to-order melodrama, but business is simply rotten, old man. We've
just got to release films the market calls for. There's no
art-for-art's-sake in the movie business, and you know it. Now,
personally, I like that scenario of yours--"
"Forget it!" said Luck crisply, warning him off the subject. To make the
warning keener-edged, he lifted the typed sheets over which he had worked
so late the night before, glanced at the top one, gave a snort, and tore
them twice down the length of them with vicious twists of his fingers. He
did not mean to be spectacular; he simply felt that way at that
particular moment, and he indulged the impulse to destroy something. He
dropped the fragments into Martinson's waste basket, picked up the bundle
of scripts and his hat, and went out with his mouth pulled down at the
corners and with his neck pretty stiff.
He went swinging across the studio yard and on past the great stage where
the carpenters halted their work while they greeted him, and looked after
him and spoke of him when he had passed. Early idlers--extras with high
hopes and empty pockets--sent him wistful glances which he did not see at
all; though he did see Andy Green and his wife (who had been Rosemary
Allen). These two stood hesitating just within the half-open, high board
gate fifty yards away. Luck waved his hand and swerved toward them.
"Howdy! Where's the rest of the bunch?" he called out as they hurried up
to him. Whereupon the group of extras were sharp bitten by the envy of
these two strangers, spoken to so familiarly by Luck Lindsay.
"Do you know, I feel sure the boys are being held in the lost-child place
at the police station!" Rosemary Green, twinkled her brown eyes at him
from between strands of crinkly brown hair. "I had tags all fixed, with
name, age, owner's address and all that, and I was going to hang them
around the boys' necks with pale blue ribbon--pale blue would be so
becoming! But do you know, I couldn't find them! I feel worried. I should
hate to waste thirty-nine cents worth of pale blue ribbon. I can't wear
it myself; it makes me look positively swarthy." Rosemary Green had a
most captivating way of saying swarthy.
The corners of Luck's mouth came up instantly. "We'll have to send out
scouting parties. I need that bunch of desperadoes. Let's look over by
the corrals. I've got to go over and see what kind of a street set
they're knocking together, anyway.
"Hello! I have sure-enough crying need for all you strays," he exclaimed
five minutes later, when they came upon the Flying TJ boys standing
disconsolately at the head of the street "set" upon which carpenters were
hammering and sawing and painters were daubing. Luck's eyes chilled as he
took in the stereotyped "Western" crudeness of the set.
"Well, we sure need you--and need you bad," Pink retorted. "We want to
know what town was peeled so they could set the rind up like that and
call it a street? Between you and me, Luck, it don't look good to me,
back or front. You walk into what claims to be a saloon, and come out on
a view of the hills. They tell me the bar of that imitation saloon is
away over there on that platform, and they say the bottles are all full
of tea. That right?"
Luck nodded gloomily. "Soon as they get the set up, it's going to be your
privilege to come boiling out of that saloon, shooting two guns, Pink,"
he prophesied. "You'll have the fun of killing half a dozen boys that
come down from this end shooting as they ride." He put his cigarette
between his lips and began to untie the dingy blue tape that bound the
scenarios together.
"Ever read any of Bently Brown's stories? They wished a bunch of them on
to me while I was gone and couldn't defend myself," he said, as one who
breaks bad news. "I'm certainly sorry about this, boys. It's a long way
from what I brought you out here to do; and if you want to, you can call
the deal off and go home. Rip-snorting, rotten melodrama--cheap as ice in
Alaska. Stuff I hate--because it's the stuff that cheapens the West in
pictures."
"What about our range picture?" Andy Green began anxiously.
Luck choked back an oath because of Andy's wife. "Ah--they're married to
the idea that this rot is what sells best. They don't know what a _real_
Western picture is: they never saw one. And they're afraid to take a
chance. I was in hopes--but Mart's the big chief, you know. He'd gone and
loaded up with this trash, and so he couldn't see my story at all. I get
his viewpoint, all right; he's keen to pry off some real money, and he's
afraid to experiment with new tools. But it does seem pretty raw to put
you boys working on this cheap studio stuff after getting you out here to
do something worth while."
"We're to stay right here, then?" Weary spoke the question that was in
the minds of all of them.
"That's the present outlook," Luck confessed with bitterness. "I don't
need real country for this junk. I was all primed to show him where I'd
have to take my company to New Mexico, but I didn't say anything about it
when he sprung this Bently Brown business. This will all be made right
here at the studio and out in Griffith Park."
Down deep in Luck's heart there was a hurt he would not reveal to any
one. It was built partly of disappointment and an honest dislike for
doing unworthy work; it had in it also some personal chagrin at being
compelled to put the Happy Family at work in the very class of pictures
he had often ridiculed in his talk with them, after bringing them all the
way from Montana so that he might produce his big range picture. He stood
looking somberly at the set which Clements had planned to save time--and
therefore dollars--for the Acme Company. He thought of his range story,
as it had first grown out of the night away up there in the plains
country; he thought of how he had hurried so that he might the sooner
make the vision a reality; how he had talked of it confidently to these
men who had listened with growing enthusiasm and interest, until his
vision had become their vision, his hopes their hopes.
They had left the Flying U and come with him to help make that big
picture of the range. By their eager talk they had helped him to
strengthen certain scenes; they had even suggested new, original material
as they told of this adventure and that accident, and argued--as was
their habit--ever scenes and situations. That was why Andy had spoken of
it as _their_ picture. That was why they were here; that was what had
brought them early to the studio. And in his hand he held a half dozen or
more of those cheap, lurid stories he had always despised; they must let
the public see their faces in these impossible, illogical situations, or
they must go back and call Luck Lindsay names to salve their
disappointment.
The dried little man--whose name was Dave Wiswell--came walking curiously
up the fresh-made "street," his sharp eyes taking in the falsity of the
whole row of shack-houses that had no backs; bald behind as board fences,
save where two-by-fours braced them from falling. He saw the group
standing before a wall that purported to be the front of a bank (which
would be robbed with much bloodshed in the second scenario) and he
hurried a little. Luck scowled at him preoccupiedly, nodded a good
morning, and turned abruptly to the others.
"Listen. If you boys are game for this melodrama, I'd like to use you,
all right. You'll get experience in the business, anyway, so maybe it
won't do you any harm. And if the weather holds good, we'll just make a
long hard drive of this bunch of drivel; we'll rush 'em through--sabe?
And I'll make it my business to see that Mart doesn't unload any more of
the same. You may even get some fun out of it, seeing you're not fed up
on this said Western drama, the way I am. Anyway, what's the word? Shall
I hop into the machine and go down and buy you fellows a bunch of return
tickets, or shall I assign you your parts and wade into this blood and
bullets business?"
Weary folded his arms and grinned down at Luck. "I'm all for the blood
and bullets, myself," he said promptly. "I'm just crazy to come shooting
and yelling down this little imitation street and do things that are
bold and bad."
"I should think," interjected Rosemary Green, with a pretty viciousness,
"that you'd be ashamed, Luck Lindsay! Do you think we are a bunch of
quitters? Give me a part--and a gun--and I'll stand on a ladder behind
that hotel window and shoot 'em as fast as they can turn the corner down
there." Her brown eyes twinkled hearteningly at him. "I'll pull my hair
down, and yell and shoot and wring my hands--Pink, you keep still! I'm
positive I can shoot and wring my hands at the same time in a Bently
Brown story, can't I, Luck?"
"You certainly can," Luck told her grimly. "You can do worse than that
and get by. Well, all right, folks. You prowl around and kill time while
I get ready to start. There won't be anything doing till after lunch, at
the earliest, so make yourselves at home. I'd introduce you to some of
these folks if it was worth while, but it ain't. You'll know them soon
enough--most of them to your sorrow, at that." He turned on his heel with
a hasty "See yuh later," and plunged into the work before him just as
energetically as though his heart were in it.
CHAPTER SIX
VILLAINS ALL AND PROUD OF IT
"Day's work, boys!" called Luck through his little megaphone at three
o'clock one day, and doubled up his working script that was much crumpled
and scribbled with hasty pencil marks. "No use spoiling good film," he
remarked to his assistant, glancing up at the sweeping fog bank, off to
the west. "By the time we rehearse the next scene, she'll be too dark to
shoot. You go and order these cavalry costumes, Beckitt; and, say! You
tell them down there that if they're shy on the number, they better set
down and make enough, because they won't see a cent of our money if
there's so much as a canteen lacking. And tell 'em to send army guns.
That last assortment of junk they sent out was pathetic. I want equipment
for fifty U.S. Cavalry, time of the early eighties. That don't mean
forty-nine--get me? You're inclined to let those fellows have it their
own way too much. I want this cavalry--"
"There ain't any close-ups of cavalry, are there?" Beckitt demurred. "I
told them last time I thought those guns would do, because I knew the
detail wouldn't--"
"Listen." Luck's tone was deliberately tolerant. "That's maybe the reason
you've been searching your soul for all along--the reason why you can't
get past the assistant-director stage. I want those fifty cavalrymen
equipped! Do you get that?" While his eyes held Beckitt uncomfortably
with their stern steadfastness, Luck thrust the script into his coat
pocket that had a permanent, motion-picture-director sag to it. "If I
meant that any old gun would do, I'd give my orders that way. Now,
remember, there isn't going to be any waiting around while you go back
and argue, nor any makeshifts, nor anything but fifty cavalrymen fully
equipped. Here's the list complete for to-morrow's order. You see that
it's filled!"
Beckitt took the list which he should have made himself, since that was
what he was paid for doing, and went off in the sulks and the company
machine. Luck pulled a solacing cigar from an inner pocket and licked
down the roughened outer leaves, and scowled thoughtfully across the
studio yard. The camera man was figuring up footage or something, and his
assistant was hurrying to get the tripod folded and put away. There was a
new briskness in the movements of every one save Luck himself, after he
spoke that last sentence through the megaphone.
The Happy Family--or that part of it which had thrown away pitchforks and
taken to the pictures--came clanking across the stage toward Luck. You
would never have known the Happy Family, unless it were the Native Son
who wore his usual regalia in exaggerated form. The Happy Family had
wide, flapping chaps that made them drag their feet they were so heavy
and so long, and great Mexican spurs whose rowels dug tiny trenches in
the ground when they walked. They wore the biggest Stetsons that famous
hat brand ever was stamped upon. They had huge bandanas draped
picturesquely over their chests, and their sleeves were rolled to the
elbows and their eyes rimmed with deep pencil shadings. At their hips
swung six-shooters of violent pattern and portent. Around their middles
sagged belts filled with blank cartridges. A sack of tobacco was making
the rounds as they came on, and Luck watched them through speculatively
narrowed lids.
"Say, by cripes, that there saloon is the driest poison-palace I ever
surged out of with two guns spittin' death and dumnation!" Big Medicine
complained, coming up with the plain intention of lighting his cigarette
from Luck's cigar. "How'd we stack up this time, boss? Bein' soused on
cold tea, I couldn't rightly pass judgment. How many was it I murdered in
cold blood, in that there scene where I laid 'em out with black powder?
Four, or five? Pink, here, claims I killed him twicet, whereas he oughta
be left alive enough to jump on his horse and ride three hundred and
fifty miles to fall dead in his best girl's arms. He claims he made that
ride day before yesterday, and done some pitiful weaving around in the
saddle, out there in the hills, and that he died in that blond lady's
arms first thing this morning, and I hadn't no right to kill him twicet
afterwards in the saloon fight. Now I leave it to you, boss. How about
this here killin' Pink off every oncet in a while?"
Deep in his throat Luck chuckled. "Well, Pink certainly does die
pathetic," he soothed the perturbed murderer, dropping his professional
brusqueness for frank comradeship. "He's about the best little close-up
dier I ever worked with. He can get a sob anytime he rolls his eyes and
gasps and falls backward." He clapped his hand down on Pink's shoulder
and gave it a little shake.
"That's all right," drawled the Native Son, taking off his sombrero to
deepen the crease and the dents, because three girls were coming across
the lot. "But I've got a complaint of my own to make. When you holler for
Bud to start the rough stuff, he just goes powder crazy. He shot me up
four times in that scene! Twice he held the gun so close my scalp's all
powder-marked, and by rights he should have blowed the top of my head
plumb into the street. He gets so taken up with this slaughter-house
business that he'll wind up by shooting himself a few times if you don't
watch him."
"One thing," Weary put in mildly, "I want to speak about, Luck. We need
more blood for those murders. I didn't have half enough for all the
mortal wounds Bud gave me. By rights that saloon should be plumb reeking
with gore when we're all killed off--the way Bud flies at it with those
two six-shooters. No bullets hit the walls anywhere, so it stands to
reason they all land in a soft spot on our persons. I needed a large
bucket of blood--and I had about a half teacupful." He grinned. "Mamma!
That was sure some slaughter, though!"
"Where's Tracy Gray Joyce?" Luck inquired irrelevantly, with a hasty
glance around them. "To-morrow, he'll have to come into that same
slaughter pen and seize the murderer and subdue him by the steely glint
of his eye and by his unflinching demeanor." He pulled the corners of his
mouth down expressively. "That's the way the scenario reads," he added
defensively.