coming. Side by side they rode, drooping of shoulders, and yet with their
bodies braced backward for the descent which at the top was rather steep.
"Register cold--horses leg-weary--boys all in--" read the script which
Luck knew by heart. It was cold enough, and the camera must have
registered it in the way the snow was heaped upon their hatbrims, drifted
upon their shoulders, packed in the wrinkles of their clothing and in the
manes and tails of the horses. And the horses certainly were leg-weary;
so weary that Luck knew how the boys must have ridden to gather the
cattle and to put their mounts in that condition of realistic exhaustion.
In the story they were supposed to have ridden nearly all night,--the
night-guard who had been on duty when the storm struck and the cattle
began to drift, and who had stuck to their posts even though they could
not turn the herd.
That might be stretching the probabilities just a shade, but Luck felt
that the effects he wanted to get justified the slight license he had
used in his plot. The effects were there, in generous measure. He
turned the crank on the whole of their descent and got them riding up
into the foreground pinched with cold, miserable as men may be. They
did not look at him--they dared not until he had given the word that
the scene was ended.
"Ride on past, down into that gully where the cattle went," he directed
them sharply. "I'll holler when you're outa sight. You can turn around
and come back then; the scene ends where your hat-crowns bob outa sight.
And listen! You're liable to lose your cattle if you don't spur up a
little, so try and get a little speed into them cayuses of yours!"
Obediently Andy's quirt rose and descended on the flank of his horse. It
started, broke into a shuffling trot, and slowed again to a walk. There
was no speed to be gotten out of those cayuses,--which was what Luck
meant to show on the screen; for this, you must know, was the painting of
one grim phase of the range-man's life. The Native Son spurred his horse
and got a lunge or two that settled presently to the same plodding walk.
Luck pammed them out of sight, bethought him of the rest of the boys, and
commanded Annie-Many-Ponies to call them in.
They came, half frozen, half starved, and so tired they did not know
which discomfort irked them most. They found Luck; his nose purple with
cold marking the footage on his working script with numbed fingers. He
barely glanced at them, and turned away to tell Bill Holmes to take the
camera on down the draw to where that huddle of rocks stood up on the
hillside. Andy and Miguel came back and met the others halfway.
"Say, boss, when do we eat?" Big Medicine inquired anxiously. "By cripes,
I'm holler plumb down to my toes,--and them's froze stiff."
"Eat? We eat when we get these storm scenes taken," Luck told him
heartlessly. "I'm afraid it'll clear up."
"Afraid it'll clear up!" Pink burrowed his chin deeper into his
breath-frosted collar and shivered.
"Oh, quit kicking," the Native Son advised ironically. "We're only living
some of Luck's big minutes he used to tell about."
Luck looked around at them and grinned a little. "Part of the business,
boys," he said. "Think of the picture stuff there is in this storm!"
"Why, sure!" Weary responded with exaggerated cheerfulness. "I've been
freezing artistically ever since daylight. Darn me for leaving my old
sourdough coat at home when I hit for the land of orange blossoms and
singing birds and sunshine."
"Aw, gwan! I never was warm a minute in Los Angeles except when I got hot
at the Acme. Montana never seen the day it was as cold as here."
"Come on, boys, let's get these dissolve scenes of cattle perishing in a
blizzard. After that--hey, Annie! You come, make plenty fire, plenty
coffee. I show you location."
Annie called gently to the little dog, and came striding down through the
snow to fall in docilely three paces behind her adored "brother,"
Wagalexa Conka after the submissive manner of squaws toward the human
male in authority over them.
"Coffee!" Weary murmured ecstatically. "Plenty fire, plenty
coffee--oh, mama!"
Down in the flat where the bushes grew sparsely along the tiny arroyo now
gone dry, the herd had stopped from sheer exhaustion, and were already
nibbling desultorily upon the tenderest twigs. This was what Luck wanted
in his scene, though the cattle must be moved into the location he had
chosen where was just the background effect he wanted to get, with the
bare mesa showing in the far distance. There was a dreary interval of
riding and shouting and urging the cattle up over a low spur of the bluff
and down the other side, and the placing of them to Luck's satisfaction.
I fear that more than one of the boys wondered why that first bit of the
flat would not do, and why Luck insisted that they should bring the herd
to one particular point and no other, and why they must wear out their
horses, and themselves just fussing around among the cattle, scattering
one bunch, bringing others closer together, and driving certain animals
up to foreground, when they very much objected to going there.
Luck had concealed his camera behind the rocks so that he could get a
"close shot" without registering the fact that the cattle were watching
him. His commands to "Edge that black steer over about even with that
white bank!" and later, "Put that cow and calf out this way and drive the
others back a little, so she will have the immediate foreground to
herself," were easier given than obeyed. The cow and calf, for instance,
were much inclined to shamble back with the others, and did not show any
appreciation for the foreground, wherein they were vastly unlike any
other "extras" ever brought before a camera. Still, in spite of all these
drawbacks, the moment arrived when Luck began to turn the crank with his
eyes keen for every detail of that bunch of forlorn, hungry, range cattle
huddled under the scant shelter of a ten-foot bank, while the snows fell
steadily in great flakes which Luck knew would give a grand storm-effect
on the screen. The Happy Family, free for the moment, crowded close to
the fire of dead sagebrush which Annie-Many-Ponies had lighted in the lee
of a high rock, and sniffed longingly at the smell which came steaming up
from the dented two-gallon coffee-boiler blackened from many a camp fire.
Luck was turning the crank and watching his "foreground stuff" so that he
did not at first see the two riders who came loping down the hill which
he was using for background. Whether he would or no, he had got them in
several feet of good scene before he saw them and stopped his camera. He
shouted, but they came on headlong, slipping and sliding in the loose
snow. There could be no doubt that they were headed straight for the
group and felt that their business was urgent, so Luck stepped out from
behind the rocks and started toward them, motioning for them to keep out,
away from the cattle.
"Better let me git in the lead right now," Applehead advised hastily, and
jumped in front of Luck as the two came lunging up. "I know these here
_hombres_, to my sorrer, too, now I'm tellin' yuh!"
But Luck, feeling that his leadership might as well be established then
as any time, pushed the old man back.
"What you want?" he demanded of the foremost who rode up. "Didn't you
hear me tell you to keep out around the cattle?"
"_Adonde va V con mi vaca_?" snapped the first rider in high-keyed
Spanish.
"My brother say where you go with our cattle?" interrupted the other one,
evidently proud of his English.
"I know what he said," Luck snubbed this one bluntly. "I don't know that
they are your cattle. I don't care. We're using them to make motion
pictures. Get outa the way so we can go on with our work." Had he not
spoiled several feet of film because of their coming he might have been
more inclined to placate them. As it was, he did not welcome their
interference, he did not like their looks, and their tones were to his
temper as tow would be to a fire. Their half Mexican, half American dress
irritated him; the interruption exasperated him. He was hungry and cold
and keyed to a high nervous tension in his anxiety to make the most of
his present big opportunity; he knew too well that he might not have
another chance all winter, with the snow falling as if under his
direction.
"Get over there outa range of the camera!" he commanded them sharply,
"then you can spout Mex. till you're black in the face, for all I care.
I'm busy." To make himself absolutely understood he repeated the gist of
his remarks in Spanish before he turned his back on them to finish his
interrupted scene.
Whereupon one swore in Spanish and the other in English, and they both
declared that they would take their cattle right now, and reined their
horses toward the shifting herd.
"Hold on thar, Ramone Chavez!" shouted Applehead, striding forward.
"Didn't you hear the boss tell ye to git outa the way, both of yuh? Yuh
better do it, now I'm tellin' yuh, 'cause if yuh don't, they's goin' to
be right smart of a runction around here! A good big share uh them thar
cattle belongs to me. Don't ye go messin' in there amongst 'em; you jest
ride back outa the way uh that thar camery. Git!"
At Applehead's command they "got," at least as far as the camp fire,
where the bright shawl of Annie-Many-Ponies caught and held their
interest. Annie-Many-Ponies, being a woman who had both youth and
beauty and sensed instinctively the value of both, sent a slant-eyed
glance and a half smile toward Ramone, who possessed more good looks
and more English than his brother. The Happy Family eyed them with a
tolerant indifference and moved aside with reluctant hospitality when
Ramone dismounted shiveringly and came forward to warm his fingers over
the blaze.
"She's cold day, you bet," Ramone remarked ingratiatingly.
"She ain't what you could call hot," Big Medicine conceded drily, since
no one else showed any disposition to reply.
"We don't get much snow like this. You live in Albuquerque, perhaps?"
There was really no excuse for snubbing these two, who had been well
within their rights in making an investigation of this unheralded and
unauthorized gathering of all the cattle on this range. Andy told Ramone
where they were staying and where they came from, and let it go at that.
The less Americanized brother dismounted and joined the group with a nod
of greeting.
"My brother Tomas," announced Ramone, with a flash of white teeth, his
eyes shifting unobtrusively toward Annie-Many-Ponies, who wore a secret,
half-smiling air of provocative interest in him. "Not spik much English,
my brother. Always stay too much at home. Me, I travel all over--Denver,
Los Angeles, San Francisco. I ride in all contests--Pueblo, San
Antonio--all over. Tomas, he go not so often. His head, all for
business--making money--get rich some day. Me, I spend. My hand wide open
always. Money slip fast."
"There's plenty of us marked that way," Weary made good-natured comment,
turning so that his back might feel the heat of the fire.
"Shunka Chistala!" murmured Annie-Many-Ponies in her soft contralto to
the little black dog, and moved away to the mountain wagon, with the dog
following close to her moccasined heels.
Ramone looked after her with frank surprise at the strange words. "Not
Spanish, then?" he ventured.
"Indian," the Native Son explained briefly, and added, perhaps for
reasons of his own, "Sioux squaw."
Ramone very wisely let his curiosity rest there. He had a good excuse,
for Luck, having finished work for the time being, came tramping over to
the fire. At him Ramone glanced apologetically.
"We borrow comfort from your fire, _señor_," he said indifferently.
"She's bad day for riding."
Luck nodded, already ashamed of having lost his temper, yet not at the
point of yielding openly to any overtures for peace. "Soon as we eat," he
said to Weary and those others who stood nearest, "I'll have you cut out
that poor cow and calf and drive 'em down the flat here, so I can get
that other scene I was telling you about."
"Wagalexa Conka, here is plenty hot coffee," came a soft voice at his
elbow, and Luck turned with a smile to take the steaming cup from the
hand of Annie-Many-Ponies.
The Native Son poured a cup and offered it to Tomas Chavez. "_Quire
cafe_?" he asked.
"_Si, señor; Gracias_." Tomas smiled, and took the cup and bowed.
Annie-Many-Ponies herself, with a sidelong glance at Luck to see if she
might dare, carried the biggest cup of coffee to Ramone, and smiled
demurely when he took it and looked into her eyes and thanked her.
In this fashion did the social sky clear, even though the snow continued
to drive against those who broke bread together out there in the dreary
wastes, with the snow halfway to their knees. The Native Son, being half
Spanish and knowing well the language of his father, talked a little with
Tomas. Ramone made himself friendly with any one who would give him any
attention. But Applehead scowled over his boiled-beef sandwich and his
coffee, and kept his back turned upon the Chavez brothers, and would not
talk at all. He eyed them sourly when they still loitered after the meal
was over and the remains packed away in the box by Annie-Many-Ponies, and
Luck had gone to work again with Bill Holmes at his heels and the boys
helping to place the cattle to Luck's liking.
When the Chavez brothers finally did show symptoms of intending to leave,
Luck beckoned to Tomas, whom he judged to be the leader. "Here," he said
in Spanish, when Tomas had come close to him. "I will pay you for using
your cattle. When I am through, my boys will drive them back to the mesa
again. For my picture I may need them again, _señor_. I promise you they
will not be harmed." And he charged in his expense book the sum, "to use
of locations."
"_Gracias_," said Tomas, and took the five dollars which Luck could ill
afford to give, but which he felt would smooth materially the trail to
their future work. Cattle he must have for his picture; cattle he would
have at any cost,--but it would be well to have them with the consent of
their owners. So the Chavez brothers rode away with smiles for their
neighbors instead of threats, and with five dollars which had come to
them like a gift.
"Yuh might better uh kicked 'em outa here without no softsoapin' about
it, now I'm tellin' yuh!" Applehead grumbled when they were out of
earshot. "You may know your business better'n what I do, but by thunder I
wouldn't uh give 'em no five dollars--ner five cents. 'S like feedin' a
stray dog; yuh won't never git rid of 'em now. They'll be hangin' around
under yer feet--"
"At that, I might have use for them," Luck retorted unmoved. "They're
fine types."
"Types!" old Applehead exploded indignantly. "Types! They're
sneak-thieves and cutthroats 't I wouldn't trust fur's I could throw a
bull by the tail. That's what they be. Types,--my granny!"
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
"PLUMB SPOILED, D' YUH MEAN?"
Luck came out of the dark room with the still, frozen, look of a trouble
that has gone too deep for words. Annie-Many-Ponies eyed him aslant and
straightway placed the hottest, juiciest piece of steak on his plate, and
poured his coffee even before she poured for old Dave Wiswell, whom she
favored as being an old acquaintance of the Pine Ridge country.
Once when her father, old chief Big Turkey, had broken his leg and
refused to have a doctor attend him, and had said that he would die if
his "son" did not make his leg well, Luck had looked as he looked now.
Still, he had set chief Big Turkey's leg so well that it grew straight
and strong again. Annie-Many-Ponies might be primitive as to her nature
and untutored as to her mind, but she could read the face of her brother
Wagalexa Conka swiftly and surely. Something was very bad in his heart.
Annie-Many-Ponies searched her soul for guilt, remembered the smile she
had given to Ramone Chavez whom Wagalexa Conka did not like, and
immediately she became humbled before her chief.
Shunka Chistala--which is Sioux for little dog--she banished into the
cold, and hardened her heart, against his whining. It is true that
Wagalexa Conka had not forbidden her to have the little dog in the
house, but in his displeasure he might make the dog an excuse for
scolding her and for taking the part of Rosemary, who hated dogs in the
house, and who was trying, by every ingratiating means known to woman,
to make a friend of Compadre. Rosemary was a white woman and the wife of
Wagalexa Conka's friend; Annie-Many-Ponies was an Indian girl, not even
of the same race as her brother Wagalexa Conka. And although her vanity
might lead her to believe herself and her smile the cause of Luck's
mask-like displeasure, she had no delusions as to which side he would
take in an argument between herself and Shunka Chistala on the one side,
and Rosemary and Compadre on the other; and in the back of her mind
lived always the fear that Wagalexa Conka might refuse to let her stay
and work for him in pictures.
Therefore Annie-Many-Ponies crouched humbly before the rock
fireplace, until Luck missed her at the table and told her to come
and eat; she came as comes a dog who has been beaten, and slid into
her place as noiselessly as a shadow,--humility being the heritage of
her sex and race.
No one talked at all. Even Rosemary seemed depressed and made no attempt
to stir the Happy Family to their wonted cheerfulness. They were worn out
from their long day that had been filled with real hardships as well as
work. In the general silence, Luck's deeper gloom seemed consistent and
only to be expected; for hard as the others had worked, he had worked
harder. His had been the directing brain; his hand had turned the camera
crank, lest Bill Holmes, not yet familiar with his duties, might fail
where failure would be disaster. He had endured the cold and the storm,
tramping back and forth in the snow, planning, directing, doing literally
the work of two men. Annie-Many-Ponies alone knew that exhaustion never
brought just that look into Luck's face. Annie-Many-Ponies knew that
something was very bad in Luck's heart. She knew, and she trembled while
she ate with a precise attention to her table manners lest he chide her
openly before them all.
"How long do you think this storm will last, Applehead?" Luck asked, when
he had walked heavily over to the fireplace for his smoke, and had drawn
a match sharply along the rough face of a rock.
"We-ell, she's showin' some signs uh clearin' up to-night," Applehead
stated with careful judgment, because he felt that Luck's question had
much to do with Luck's plans, and was not a mere conversational bait.
"Wind, she's shiftin', er was, when I come in to supper. She shore come
down like all git-out ever since she started, and I calc'late she's about
stormed out. I look fer sun all day to-morrer, boy." This last in a tone
of such manifest encouragement that Luck snorted. (Back by the table in
the kitchen, Annie-Many-Ponies paused in her piling of plates and
listened breathlessly. She knew that particular sound. Wagalexa Conka
would presently reveal what was bad in his heart.)
"That would be my luck, all right," her chief stated pessimistically.
"What's the matter with the sun, now?" Big Medicine boomed reprovingly.
"Comin' in, you said you had your blizzard stuff, and now if the sun'd
jest come out, by cripes, you'd be singin' songs uh thanksgivin'--er
words to that effect. Honest to gran'ma, there's folks that'd kick if--"
"But I haven't got my blizzard stuff," Luck stated, harshly because of
the effort to speak at all. "All that negative I took to-day is chuck
full of 'static.'"
Annie-Many-Ponies, out in the kitchen, dropped a granite-iron plate, but
the others merely stared at Luck uncomprehendingly.
"Well, say, by cripes! What's statics?" demanded Big Medicine
pugnaciously, as though he meant to ward off from his mind the
realization of some new misfortune.
Luck's lips twitched in the faint impulse toward a smile that would not
come. "Statics," he explained, "is that branch of mechanics that relates
to bodies held at rest by the forces acting on them. In other words, it
is electricity in a stationary charge, the condition being produced by
friction, or induction. In other words--"
"In other words," Big Medicine supplied glumly, "I can shut up and mind
my own business. I get yuh, all right!"
"Nothing like that, Bud," Luck corrected more amiably, warmed a little by
the sympathy he knew would follow close upon the heels of understanding.
"Static is a technical word used a good deal in motion-picture
photography. In this case it was caused, I think, by the difference of
temperature in the metal parts of the camera and negative, and the
weather outside the camera box. I've been keeping it here in the house
where it's warm, and I took it out into the cold and started
work--_sabe_? And the grinding of the bearings, and the action of the
film on the race plate, generated static electricity in tiny flashes
which lighted up the interior of the camera and light-exposed the
negative, as it was passing from one magazine to another. When it's
developed, these flashes show up in contrasty lights, like tiny grape
vines; I can show you that part; I've got about a mile of it, more or
less, there in the dark room."
"Plumb spoiled, d' yuh mean?" Big Medicine asked, his voice hushed before
the catastrophe.
"Plumb spoiled." Luck threw his cigarette stub viciously into the
blaze. "All that drifting herd, all that panoram of Andy and
Miguel--all--everything I took to-day, with the exception of those last
scenes with the cow and calf. The one where the cow is down and the snow
drifting over her, and the calf huddled there by the carcass,--that's
dandy. Camera and negative were cold as the outside air by that time.
That one scene will stand out big; it's got an awful big punch, provided
I had the stuff leading up to it, which I haven't got."
"Hell!" said Andy softly, voicing the dismay of them all.
Presently old Applehead unlimbered himself from his chair and went out
into the cold and darkness. When he came back, ribbing his knuckles
for warmth, he stood before the fireplace and ruminated dispiritedly
before he spoke.
"Ain't ary hope of it blizzardin' to-morrer, boy," he broke his silence
reluctantly, "'less the wind changes, which she don't act to me like
she's got ary notion of doin'; she's shore goin' to blind ye with sun
to-morrer, now I'm tellin' yuh."
"Well, there won't be any more static in my film," Luck declared with
sudden decision, and carried his camera outside. When he returned
Applehead eyed him solicitously.
"We-ell, this ain't but the middle uh November, yuh want to recollect,"
he said. "We're liable to have purtier storms 'n what this here one was,
'fore winter's over. Cattle'll be in worse condition, too,--ribs stickin'
out so'st you kin count 'em a mile off 'n' more. Way winter's startin'
in, wouldn't s'prise me a mite if we had storms all through till spring
opens up."
Luck knew the old man was trying in his crude way to encourage him, but
he made no reply, and Applehead relapsed into drowsy meditation over his
pipe. The boys, yawning sleepily, trailed off to bed in the Ketch-all
cabin. Rosemary and Annie-Many-Ponies, having finished washing the dishes
and tidying the kitchen, came through the room on their way to bed,
Annie-Many-Ponies cunningly hiding the little black dog behind her
skirts. Rosemary frowned at the two and went to the door and called
Compadre; but the blue cat, scenting a dog in the house, meowed his
regrets and would not come.
"I'll take 'im down with me," said Applehead, rising stiffly. "He cain't
take no comfort in the house no more--not till he spunks up and licks
that thar dawg a time er two. Comin', Luck?" he added, waiting at the
door. But Luck was staring into the fire and did not seem to hear him, so
Applehead went off alone to where the Happy Family were already creeping
thankfully into their hard bunks.
The house grew still; so still that Luck could hear the wind whispering
in the chimney, coming from the quarter which meant clearing weather. He
sighed, flung more wood on the coals to drive back the chill of the
night, and got out his scenario and some sheets of blank paper and a
pencil. He had sold his typewriter when he was raising money for this
trip, and he was inclined now to regret it. But he sharpened the pencil,
laid a large-surfaced "movie" magazine across his knees, and prepared to
revise his scenario to meet his present limitations.