luck now; thought I'd try the California studios, because I wanted to
learn the camera, and I figured on getting a look at the Fair. I stalled
around out there till my money gave out, and then I started back to God's
country." He shrugged his shoulders cynically. "This is about as far as
I'm likely to get, unless I can learn to do without eating and a few
other little luxuries," he summed up the situation grimly.
"Well, it won't hurt you to skip a lesson and have dinner with me," Luck
suggested in the offhand way that robbed the invitation of the sting of
charity. "I always did hate to eat alone."
The upshot of the meeting was that, when Luck gathered up the lines, next
day, and popped the short lash of Applehead's home-made whip over the
backs of the little bay team, and told them to "Get outa town!" in a tone
that had in it a boyish note of exultation, the thin youth hung to the
seat of the bouncing buckboard and wondered if Luck really could drive,
or if he was half "stewed" and only imagined he could. The thin youth had
much to learn besides the science of photography and some of it he
learned during that fifteen-mile drive. For one thing, he learned that
really Luck could drive. Luck proved that by covering the fifteen miles
in considerably less than an hour and a half without losing any of his
precious load of boxed negative and coiled garden hose and assistant
camera-man,--since that was what he intended to make of the thin youth.
CHAPTER TWELVE
"I THINK YOU NEED INDIAN GIRL FOR PICTURE"
Still it did not snow, though the wind blew from the storm quarter, and
Applehead sniffed it and made predictions, and Compadre went with his
remnant of tail ruffed like a feather boa. Immediately after supper Luck
attached his new hose to the tank faucet and developed the corral scenes
which he had taken, with the thin youth taking his first lesson in the
dark room. The thin youth, who said his name was Bill Holmes, did not
have very much to say, but he seemed very quick to grasp all that Luck
told him. That kept Luck whistling softly between sentences, while they
wound the negative around the roped half barrel that had not so much as a
six penny nail in it this time, so thoroughly did Andy do his work.
The whistling ceased abruptly when Luck examined his film by the light of
the ruby lamp, however, for every scene was over-exposed and worthless.
Luck realized when he looked at it that the light was much stronger than
any he had ever before photographed by, and that he would have to "stop
down" hereafter; the problem was, how much. His light tests, he
remembered, had been made rather late in the afternoon, when the light
was getting yellow, and he had blundered in forgetting that the forenoon
light was not the same.
He went ahead and put the film through the fixing bath and afterwards
washed it carefully, more for the practice and to show Bill Holmes how to
handle the negative than for any value the film would have. He discovered
that Andy had not unpacked the rewinding outfit, but since he would not
need it until his negative was dry, he made no comment on the subject.
Bill Holmes kept at his heels, helping when he knew what to do, asking a
question now and then, but silent for the most part. Luck felt extremely
optimistic about Bill Holmes, but for all that he was depressed by his
second failure to produce good film. A camera-man, he felt in his heart,
might be the determining factor for success; but he was too stubborn to
admit it openly or even to consider sending for one, even if he could
have managed to pay the seventy-five dollars a week salary for the time
it would take to produce the Big Picture. He could easier afford to waste
a few hundred feet of negative now, he argued to himself.
"Come on down, and I'll show you what I can about the camera," he said to
Bill Holmes. "The light's too tricky to-day to work by, but I'll give you
a few pointers that you'll have to keep in mind when I'm too busy to
think about telling you. Once I get to directing a scene, I'm liable to
be busy as a one-armed prospector fighting a she-bear with cubs. I'm
counting on you to remember what all I'va told you, in case I forget to
tell you again. You see, I've ruined a hundred and fifty feet of negative
already, just by overlooking a couple of bets. You're here to help keep
that from happening again. _Sabe_?"
"Well, there's one or two things I don't have to learn," Bill Holmes told
him by way of encouragement. "You get the camera set and ready, and I can
turn it any speed you want. I'll guarantee that much. I learned that all
right in projection."
"That's exactly why I brought you out here, brother," Luck assured him.
"That's why--"
"Oh, Luck Lindsay!" came Rosemary's voice excitedly. "Mr. Forrman wants
you right away quick! Somebody's coming that he doesn't know, and he says
it's up to you!"
"What's up to me?" Luck came hurrying down the ladder backwards. "Has
Applehead gone as crazy as his cat? I've nothing to do with strangers
coming to the ranch."
"Yes," said Rosemary, twinkling her brown eyes at him, "but this is a
woman. Mr. Forrman refuses to take any responsibility--"
"So do I. I don't know of any woman that's liable to come trailing me up.
Where is she?"
From the doorway Rosemary pointed dramatically, and Luck went up and
stood beside her, rolling down his sleeves while he stared at the trail.
Down the slope, head bent to the whooping wind, a woman came walking with
a free, purposeful stride that spoke eloquently of accustomedness to the
open land. Her skirts flapped but could not impede her movements. She
seemed to be carrying some bright-hued burden upon her shoulders, and she
was, without doubt, coming straight down to the ranch as to a
much-desired goal.
"You can search me," he said emphatically in answer to Applehead's
question. "Must be some _señora_ away off the trail. I never saw her
before in my life."
"We-ell, now, that there lady don't act like she's lost," Applehead
declared, watching her intently as she came on. "Aims to git whar she's
goin', if I'm any jedge of actions. An' she shore is hittin' fur here.
Ain't been ary woman on this ranch in ten year, till Mrs. Green come
t'other day."
"She's none of my funeral; I don't know her from Adam," Luck disclaimed,
and went back into the dark room as though be had urgent business there,
which he had not. In the back of his mind was an uneasy feeling that the
newcomer was "some of his funeral," and yet he could not tell how or why
she should be. In her walk there was a teasing sense of familiarity; he
did not know who she was, but he felt uncomfortably that he ought to
know. He fumbled among the litter on the shelf, putting things in order;
and all the while his ears were sharpened to the sounds that came muffled
through the closed door.
"Oh, Luck Lindsay!" came Rosemary's voice at last, with what Luck fancied
was a malicious note in it. "You're wanted out here!"
Luck fumbled for a minute longer while he racked his brain for some clue
to this woman's identity. For a man who has lived the varied life Luck
had lived, his conscience was remarkably clean; but no one enjoys having
mystery stalk unawares up to one's door. However, he opened the door and
went out, feeling sensitively the curious expectancy of the Happy Family,
and faced the woman who stood just beyond the doorway. One look, and he
stopped dead still in the middle of the room. "Well, I'll be darned!" he
said in a hushed tone of blank amazement.
The woman's black eyes lighted as though flames had darted up behind
them. "How, _Cola_?" she greeted him in the soft, cooing tones of the
younger Indians whose voices have not yet grown shrill and harsh.
"Wagalexa Conka!" It was the tribal name given him in great honor by his
Indians of Pine Ridge Agency.
Through his astonishment, Luck's face glowed at the words. He went up and
put out his hand, impelled by the hospitality which is an unwritten law
of the old West, and is not to be broken save for good cause.
"How! How!" he answered her greeting. "You long ways from home,
Annie-Many-Ponies!"
Annie-Many-Ponies smiled in a way to make Happy Jack gulp with a sudden
emotion he would have denied. She flashed a quick glance around at the
curious faces that regarded her so intently, and she eased her
shawl-wrapped burden to the ground with the air of one who has reached
her journey's end.
"Yes, I plenty long ways," she assented placidly. "I don't stay by
reservation no more. Too lonesome. One night I beat it. I work for you
now."
"How you know you work for me?" Luck felt nine pairs of eyes trying to
read his face. "That's bad, you run away. You better go back,
Annie-Many-Ponies. Your father--"
"Nah!" Annie-Many-Ponies cried in swift rebellion. "I work for you all
time, I no want monies. I got plenty wardrobe; you give me plenty grub; I
work for you. I think you need him Indian girl in picture. I think you
plenty sorry all Indians go by reservation. You no like for Indians go
home," she stated with soft sympathy. "I sabe you not got monies for pay
all thems Indians. I come be Indian girl for you; I not want monies. You
let me stay--Wagalexa Conka!"
"You come in and eat, Annie-Many-Ponies," Luck commanded with more
gentleness than he was accustomed to show. The girl must have followed
him all the way from Los Angeles, and she must have walked all the way
out from Albuquerque. All this she seemed to take for granted, a mere
detail of no importance beside her certainty that although he had no
money to pay the Indians, he must surely need an Indian girl in his
pictures. Loyalty always touched Luck deeply. He had brought the little
black dog back with him and hidden it in the stable, just because the dog
had followed him all around town and had seemed so pleased when Luck was
loading the buckboards for the return trip. He could not logically
repulse the manifest friendliness of Annie-Many-Ponies.
He introduced her formally to Rosemary, and was pleased when Rosemary
smiled and shook hands without the slightest hesitation. The Happy Family
he lumped together in one sentence. "All these my company," he told her.
"You eat now. By and by I think you better go home."
Annie-Many-Ponies looked at him with smoldering eyes, standing in the
middle of the kitchen, refusing to sit down to the table until the main
question was settled.
"Why you say that?" she demanded, drawing her brows down sullenly. "You
got plenty more Indian girls?"
Luck shook his head.
"You think me not good-looking any more?" With her two slim brown hands
she pushed back the shawl from her hair and challenged criticism of her
beauty. She was beautiful,--there was no gain saying that; she was so
beautiful that the sight of her, standing there like an indignant young
Minnehaha, tingled the blood of more than one of the Happy Family. "You
think I so homely I spoil your picture?"
"I think you must not run away from the reservation," Luck parried,
refusing to be cajoled by her anger or her beauty. "You always were a
good girl, Annie-Many-Ponies. Long time ago, when you were little girl
with the Buffalo Bill show, you were good. You mind what Wagalexa
Conka say?"
Annie-Many-Ponies bent her head. "I mind you now, Wagalexa Conka," she
told him quickly. "You tell me ride down that big hill," she threw one
hand out toward the bluff that sheltered the house. "I sure ride down
like hell. I care not for break my neck, when you want big 'punch' in
picture. You tell me be homely old squaw like Mrs. Ghost-Dog, I be homely
so dogs yell to look on me. I mind you plenty--but I do not go by
reservation no more."
"Yow father be mad--I let you stay, he maybe shoot me," Luck argued,
secretly flattered by her persistence.
Annie-Many-Ponies smiled,--a slow, sphinx-like smile, mysteriously sweet
and lingering. "Nah! Not shoot you. I write one letters, say I go work
for you. Now you write one letter by Agent, say you let me stay, say I
work for you, say I good girl, say I be Indian girl for your picture. I
mind you plenty, Wagalexa Conka!" She smiled again coaxingly, like a
child. "I like you," she stated simply. "You good man. You need Indian
girl, I think. I work for you. My father not be mad; my father know you
good man for Indians."
Luck turned from her and gave the Happy Family a pathetic,
what's-a-fellow-going-to-do look that made Andy Green snort unexpectedly
and go outside. One by one the others followed him, grinning shamelessly
at Luck's helplessness. In a moment he overtook them, wanting the support
of their judgment.
"The worst of it is," he confessed, after he had explained how he had
known the girl since she was a barefooted papoose with the "Bill" show,
and he was Indian Agent there; "the worst of it is, she's a humdinger in
pictures. She gets over big in foreground stuff. Rides like a whirlwind,
and as for dramatic work, she can put it over half the leading women in
the business--that is, in her line of Pocohontas stuff."
"Well, why don't you let her stay?" Weary demanded. "She will
anyway--mama! We're not what you can call over-run with women on
this job."
"Why don't you make a squaw-man outa Dave?" Pink suggested boldly, "and
let her be his daughter instead of Rosemary?"
"Say, what does that there walka-some-darn-thing mean, that she
calls yuh?" Big Medicine wanted to know. "By cripes, I hate talk I
don't savey."
"Wagalexa Conka?" Luck smiled shamefacedly. "Oh, that's just a name the
Indians gave me. Means Big Turkey, in plain English. Her father, old
Chief Big Turkey, adopted me into the tribe, and they call me by his
name. Annie-Many-Ponies has heard it used ever since she was a kid. By
tribal law I'm her brother. Well, what's the word, boys? Shall we let
her stay or not? We could use her, all right, and put a dash of
old-plains' color in the picture that I haven't got, as it stands. It's
up to you to decide."
"You're wrong," Pink grinned. "She's decided that, herself. Gee,
she's pretty!"
"Certainly she is; but get this, boys: She isn't going to stay just
because she's pretty, and if I had a different bunch than you fellows,
she'd have to go for that reason. I'm responsible for her--_sabe?_ Bill
Holmes, you get this; I saw you eyeing her pretty strong. That girl is
the daughter of an influential chief, and she comes pretty near being the
pride of the reservation. There can't be any romantic stuff, if they let
her stay. Her father and the Agent will consent, if they do consent, on
the strength of the confidence they have in me. They're going to keep
that confidence. Get that, and get it strong, because I sure mean what
I'm telling you." He eased the tenseness with a laugh. "I don't mean to
offend anybody," he said, "and that's why I'm putting it straight before
the play comes up. Annie-Many-Ponies has got a heart-twisting smile, but
she's a squaw just the same. She's got the ways of the Injun to the
marrow of her bones, and I'll bet right now if you were to shake her hard
enough, you'd jingle a knife out of her clothes." He stopped and lighted
the cigarette he had been carefully rolling. "Well," he finished after
the pause, "does she stay or go?"
The Happy Family answered him with, various phrases, the meaning of which
was that he could suit himself about that; as far as they were concerned,
she could stay and welcome.
So she stayed, and Rosemary hung up a calico curtain across the one
bedroom, so that Annie-Many-Ponies might have a corner to call her own.
She stayed; and Luck rewrote two reels of his scenario so that there
should be a place in it for a beautiful Indian girl who rode like a
whirlwind and did not know the meaning of fear, and who had a mind of her
own, and who was just exactly as harmless in that camp as half a quart of
nitroglycerine, and added thereby a good bit to the load of
responsibility which Luck was shouldering.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
"PAM. BLEAK MESA--CATTLE DRIFTING BEFORE WIND--"
"Pam. bleak mesa--snow--cattle drifting before wind. Dale and Johnny dis.
riding to foreground. Reg. cold--horses leg-weary--boys all in--"
Out toward Bear Canyon, where the land to the north rose brokenly to the
mountains, Luck found the bleak stretches of which he had dreamed that
night on the observation platform of a train speeding through the night
in North Dakota,--a great white wilderness unsheltered by friendly
forests, uninhabited save by wild things that moved stealthily across its
windswept ridges. Beyond, the mountains rose barrenly, more bleak than
the land that lay at their feet.
"Pam. bleak mesa--snow--" With the camera set halfway up a gentle slope
commanding a steeper hill beyond, down which the boys would send the
cattle in a slow, uneasy march before the storm, Luck focused his
telephoto lens upon bleakness enough to satisfy even his voracious
appetite for realism. Bill Holmes, his tan pumps wrapped in gunny sacks
for protection against the snow that was a foot deep on the level and
still falling, thrashed his body with his arms, like a windmill whose
paddles have suddenly gone limp in a high wind. When he was ready, Luck
stopped long enough to blow on his fingers and to turn and watch for the
signal from Annie-Many-Ponies, stationed on a higher ridge to the right
of him,--the signal that the cattle were coming.
Through the drive of the snowstorm he saw her tall, straight figure as
through a thin, shifting, white veil. The little black dog, for whom she
had conceived a fierce affection in defiance of Rosemary's tacit
opposition, was lying with its tail curled tight around its feet and its
nose, hunting warmth in the shelter of her flapping garments.
Annie-Many-Ponies was staring away to the north, shielding her keen eyes
from the snow with one slim, brown hand, while she watched for the coming
of the herd.
Luck looked at her, silhouetted against the sky. He had no scene written
in his script to match the picture she made; he had no negative to waste.
But he swung his camera around and, using the telephoto lens he had
adjusted for his cattle scenes, he called to her to hold that pose, and
indulged his artistic sense in a ten-or-twelve foot scene which showed
Annie-Many-Ponies wholly absorbed in gazing upon farther bleakness.
Annie-Many-Ponies was so keenly conscious of her duty to the camera that
she dared not break her pose, even to give the signal, until he had
yelled, "All right, Annie!" and swung the camera back with its recording
eye fixed upon that narrow depression between two blunt ears of hilltop,
through which the herd was to be sent down to the ridge and on past the
camera to the flat, where other scenes were to be taken later on, when
the cattle were hungry enough to browse miserably upon the bosquet of
young cotton woods.
"Cows come!" she called out, because Luck had his back to her at the
moment and did not see the wave of hand she had been told to give him.
Luck, squinting into the view-finder, caught the swaying vanguard of the
herd and swore. He had meant to "pan. bleak mesa" for half a minute
before those swaying heads and horns appeared over the brow of the
ridge. Now, even though he began to turn the crank the instant he
glimpsed them, he would not have quite the effect which he had meant to
have. He would be compelled to make two scenes of it, and pan. his bleak
mesa afterwards and trust to a "cut-in scene" to cover the break. He did
not trust Bill Holmes to turn the crank on that slow, plodding march of
misery. With his diaphragm of the camera wide open to get all the light
possible, because the air was filled with falling snow, he followed the
herd, as it wound snakelike down the easiest descents, making for the
more sheltered small canyons that opened out upon the flat. "Cattle
drifting before the wind," read the script; and now Luck saw them
coming, their snow-whitened backs humped to the driving storm, heads
lowered and swaying weakly from side to side with the shambling motion
of their feet. They were drifting before the wind, just as he had
planned that they should do. That they shuffled wearily down that hill
with poor cows and unweaned calves straggling miserably behind the main
body in "the drag herd," proved how well the boys had done the work
which he had sent them out at daylight to do.
The boys had gone out, under the leadership of Applehead, who knew that
range as he knew his own dooryard, just when daylight began to break
coldly upon the storm that had come with the sunset. Luck had already
ridden out with them and had chosen his location for the blizzard scenes.
He had gone with them over every foot of that drive, and had told them
just where the main body of riders was to fall back behind the ridge that
would hide them from the camera, leaving Andy Green and the Native
Son--since these were the two whom he always visualized in the scene--to
come on alone in the wake of the herd. Under the leadership of old
Applehead, they had combed every draw that sheltered so much as a lone
cow and calf.
Luck had told them to bring in every hoof they could spot and get
over that ridge by ten o'clock. He had a nervous dread of the storm
breaking before noon, and his heart was set on getting that
never-to-be-successfully-faked blizzard scene. Realism ruled him
absolutely, now that he was actually producing some of the big scenes of
this picture. He had told them just where to watch for Annie-Many-Ponies
and the flag she would wave,--a black flag, so that the boys could not
fail to see it in the vague whiteness of the storm. He had located the
jutting ledge behind which Happy Jack was to sneak, that he might watch
for the signal as an extra precaution against an unseasonable appearance
of the two riders over the ridge.
When the herd straggled down in what seemed an endless stream of
storm-driven animals, Luck knew that the boys had done their work well.
He knew cattle as he knew pictures; he knew that a full two thousand came
over that ridge through a shallow pass he had chosen, "'Every hoof' is
right," he remarked to Bill Holmes with a dry approval. "I'd hate to go
hunting meat where that bunch was gathered from. Looks like they'd combed
the country for fifty miles around." He sent a quick glance to the
pinnacle where Annie-Many-Ponies stood waiting to give the signal. He
wished that she had realized the importance of these cattle scenes keenly
enough to have given him the signal at the cost of breaking her pose. But
he had only himself to blame. He should not have taken the risk, even
though he had believed that the cattle would not arrive for another half
hour. He should have been ready; he had told the boys to send them right
over the ridge when they came up to it, because he wanted to preserve
unbroken that indescribable atmosphere of a long, weary journey.
Still they came; a good twenty-five hundred, he was ready to wager, when
the last few stragglers, so weak that they wobbled when they hesitated
before descending a particularly steep place, came down the slope. It
surely did eat up film to take the full magnitude of that march, but Luck
turned and turned and gloated in the bigness of it all.
"All right, Annie," he called out when he had taken the last of the herd
as they filed out of sight into the narrow gully that would lead them to
the flat half a mile below, where he meant to get other scenes. "Wave
flag now for boys to come!"
Annie-Many-Ponies lifted high the black flag and waved it in slow,
sweeping half circles above her head. "Boys, come," she called, a
moment after.
Luck, still not trusting the camera to Bill Holmes, swung back slowly
to the pass and made a panorama of the desolate hillside and the
chill, forbidding mountains behind. At the pass he stopped. "How
close?" he shouted to Annie. "Come now," she called down to him, and
Luck began to turn the crank again, watching like a hawk for the first
bobbing black specks which would show that the boys were nearing the
crest of the ridge.