starting on her second round with the coffee boiler. "I saw it from
behind the camera, and Luck had you sitting so the light was shining on
your faces; honestly, you looked _beautiful_!"
"Aw, gwan!" gurgled Happy Jack, reddening uncomfortably.
"It's late," Luck broke in, emptying his cup the second time. "But I'm
going to make that firelight scene of you, Annie. The wind happens to be
just right for the flame effect I want. Did you make up, as I told you?"
For answer, Annie-Many-Ponies threw back her shrouding red shawl and
stepped proudly out before him in the firelight. Her brown arms were bare
and banded with bracelets of some dull metal. Her fringed dress of
deerskin was heavily embroidered with stained porcupine quills. Her slim
feet were clothed in beaded moccasins. It was the gala dress of the
daughter of a chief, and as the daughter of a chief she stood straight
and slender and haughty before him. The Happy Family stared at her,
astonished. They had not even known that she possessed such a costume.
Ordinarily the Happy Family would have taken immediate advantage of their
freedom and would have gone to bed and to the sleep for which their tired
bodies hungered the more as the food and hot coffee filled them with a
sense of well-being. But not even Rosemary wanted to go and miss any of
that wonderful scene where Annie-Many-Ponies, young savage that she was,
stood in the light of her flaming camp fire and prayed to her gods before
she went to meet her lover. She rehearsed it once before Luck lighted the
radium flares. Then, in the searing heat of that white-hot flame, which
will melt rock as a candle melts, Annie-Many-Ponies crossed herself, and
then lifted her young face and bare arms to the heavens and prayed as the
priest in the mission school had taught her,--a real prayer in her own
Indian tongue, while Luck turned the crank and gloated professionally in
her beauty.
The Happy Family, watching her, remembered that it was Christmas morning;
remembered oddly, in the midst of their work, the old, old story of the
three Wise Men and the Star, and of the Wonder-Child in the manger.
Something there was in the voice and the face of Annie-Many-Ponies that
suggested it. Something there was of adoration in her upturned glance, as
if she too were looking for the Star.
They did not talk much after that, and when they did, their voices were
lower than usual. They banked the fire with sand, and Bill Holmes
shouldered the camera with its precious store of scenes. As they trooped
silently down to the house and to their beds, they felt something of the
magnitude of life, something of the mystery. Behind them, treading
noiselessly in her beaded deerskin moccasins, Annie-Many-Ponies followed
like a houseless wraith of the plains, the little black dog at her heels.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
"THE CHANCES IS SLIM AND GITTIN' SLIMMER"
"Must be going to snow," Weary observed with a sly twinkle, "'cause Paddy
cat has got his tail brustled up bigger than a trapped coon."
"Aw, that's because Shunky Cheestely chased him all the way up from the
corral a minute ago," Happy Jack explained the phenomenon. "I betcher he
swaps ends some uh these times and gives that dog the s'prise of his
life. He come purty near makin' a stand t'night."
"We-ell, when he does turn on that thar mongrel purp, they's goin' to be
some dawg scattered around over the premises--now I'm tellin' yuh!"
Applehead cocked his eye toward Annie-Many-Ponies and nodded his head in
solemn warning. "He's takin' a mighty long chance, every time he turns
that thar trick uh chasin' Compadre all over the place; and them that
thinks anything uh that thar dawg--"
"I betcher it's goin' to snow, all right," Happy Jack interrupted the
warning. "Chickydees was swarmin' all over the place, t'day."
"We-ell, now, yuh don't want to go too much on them chickydees,"
Applehead dissented. "Change uh wind'll set them flockin' and chirpin'.
Ain't ary flake uh snow in the wind t'day, fur's I kin smell--and I
calc'late I kin smell snow fur's the next one."
"Oh, let's not talk about snow; that's getting to be a painful subject on
this ranch," Rosemary pleaded, while she placed twelve pairs of steel
knives and forks on the long, white-oilcloth-covered table.
"'Painful subject' is right," Luck stated grimly, glancing up from the
endless figuring and scribbling which seemed to occupy all his time
indoors that was not actually given over to eating and sleeping. "If
you don't begin to smell snow pretty quick, Applehead, I can see where
_The Phantom Herd_ don't have any phantom herd." The corners of his
mouth quirked upward, though his smile was becoming almost a stranger
to his face.
"We-ell, I dunno's you can blame me because it don't snow. I can't make
it snow if it takes a notion not to snow--"
"Oh, come and eat, and never mind the snow," called Rosemary impatiently.
"We've got to mind the snow--or we don't eat much longer!" Luck laid
aside his papers with the tired gesture which betrays heavy anxiety. "The
whole punch of the picture depends on that blizzard and what it leads up
to. It's getting close to March,--this is the twentieth of February,--and
the Texas Cattleman's Convention meets the first of April. I've got to
have the picture done by then, so as to show it and get their endorsement
as a body, in order to boost the sales up where they belong."
"Mamma!" Weary looked up at him, open-eyed. "How long have you had that
notion in your head,--showing the picture to the Cattlemen's Convention?
I never heard of it."
"I might say quite a few things you haven't heard me say before," Luck
retorted, so harassed that he never knew how sharp a snub he had given.
"I've had that in mind from the start; ever since I read when and where
the convention would meet this spring. We've got to have that blizzard,
and we've got to have it before many more days."
"Oh, well, we'll have it," Rosemary soothed, as she would have comforted
a child. "I just know March will come in like a roaring lion! Have some
beans. They're different, to-night. I cooked them with plain salt pork
instead of bacon. You can't imagine what a difference it makes!"
Luck was on the point of snapping out something that would have hurt her
feelings. He did not want baby-soothing. It did not comfort him in the
least to have her assure him that it would snow, when he knew she had
absolutely no foundation for such an assurance. But just before he spoke,
he remembered how bravely she had been smiling at hardships that would
have broken the spirit of most women, so he took the beans and smiled at
her, and did not speak at all.
Trouble, that month, was riding Luck hard. The blizzard that was
absolutely vital to his picture-plot seemed as remote as in June. Other
storms had come to delay his work without giving him the benefit of any
spectacular effect. There had been days of whooping wind, when even the
saddle strings popped in the air like whiplashes, and he could not
"shoot" interior scenes because he could not shelter his stage from the
wind, and everything blew about in a most maddening manner to one who is
trying, for instance, to portray the calmness of a ranch-house kitchen at
supper time.
There had been days of lowering clouds which brought nothing but
exasperating little flurries of what Applehead called "spit
snow,"--flurries that passed before Luck could get ready for a scene.
There had been one terrific sand storm which had nearly caught them in
the open. But Applehead had warned them, and Luck, fortunately for them
all, had heeded the warning. They had reached shelter just before the
full force of the storm had struck them, and for six hours the air was a
hell of sand in violent flight through the air. For six hours they could
not see as far as the stable, and the rooms were filled with an
impalpable haze of dust which filtered through minute crevices under the
roof and around the doors and windows.
Luck, when that storm broke, was worried over his negative drying in the
garret, until he had hurried up the ladder to see what might be done. He
had found the film practically dry, and had carried it down in much
relief to his dark room which, being light-proof, was also practically
dust-proof.
There had been other vexations, but there had been fine, clear days as
well. Luck had used those fine days to their full capacity for yielding
him picture-light. Could he have been certain of getting his "blizzard
stuff" now, he would have left but his one load of financial worry. That
was a heavy one, but he felt he could carry it with a better grace if
only he could be sure that his picture would be completed in time.
"Pass the beans, Luck," Pink broke into his abstraction. "Seems like I've
had beans before, this week, but I'll try them another whirl, anyway."
"Ever try syrup on 'em?" old Dave Wiswell looked up from his plate to
inquire. "Once you git to likin' 'em that way, they go pretty good for
a change."
Pink, anxious for variety in the monotonous menu, but doubtful of the
experiment, poured a teaspoon of syrup over a teaspoon of beans, conveyed
the mixture to his mouth, and made a hurried trip to the door. "Say! was
that a joke?" he demanded, when he returned grimacing to his place.
"Joke? No, ain't no joke about that," the dried little man testified
earnestly. "Once you git to likin' 'em that way--"
Pink scowled suspiciously. "I'll take mine straight," he said, and sent a
resentful glance at Annie-Many-Ponies who was tittering behind her palm.
"I calc'late I better beef another critter," Applehead suggested
pacifically. "Worst of it is, the cattle's all so danged pore they ain't
much pickin' left on their bones after the hide's skun off. If that
blizzard ever does come, Luck's shore goin' to have all the pore-cow
atmosphere he wants!"
To Luck their talk, good-humored though it was, hurt him like a blow upon
bruised flesh. For their faith in him they were eating beans three times
a day with laughter and jest to sweeten the fare. For their faith in him
they were riding early and late, enduring hardships and laughing at them.
If he failed, he knew that they would hide their disappointment under
some humorous phase of the failure;--if they could find one. He could not
tell them how close he was to failure. He could not tell them in plain
words how much hung upon the coming of that storm in time for him to
reach the cowmen at their convention. Their ignorance of the profession
kept them from worrying much about it; their absolute confidence in his
knowledge let them laugh at difficulties which held him awake when they
were sleeping.
But for all that he went doggedly ahead, trusting in luck theoretically
while he overlooked nothing that would make for success. While Applehead
sniffed the air and shook his head, Luck was doing everything he could
think of to keep things going steadily along to a completion of the
production.
He made all of his "close-ups," his inserts, and sub-titles. He cut
negative by his continuity sheet at night after the others were all in
bed, and pigeon-holed the scenes ready for joining. He ordered what
"positive" he would need, and he arranged for his advertising matter. All
his interior scenes, save the double-exposure "vision" scenes, were done
by the fifteenth of March,--March which had not come in like a roaring
lion, as Rosemary had predicted with easy optimism, but which had been
nerve-wrackingly lamblike to the very middle of the month.
With a dogged persistence in getting ready for the fulfilment of his
hopes, he ordered tanks and printer for the final work of getting his
stuff ready for the market. He had at best a crudely primitive outfit,
though he saw his bank balance dwindle and dwindle to a most despairingly
small sum. And still it did not snow nor show any faint promise of snow.
"Well," he remarked grimly one morning, when the boys asked him at
breakfast about his plans, "you can go back to bed, for all I care. I've
done everything I can do--till we get that snowstorm. All we can do now
is sit tight and trust to luck."
"What day uh the month is this?" Applehead wanted to know. His face was
solemn with his responsibility as a weather prophet.
"The twentieth day of March," Luck replied, with the air of one who has
the date branded deep on his consciousness.
"Twentieth uh March--hm-mm? We-ell, now, I have knowed it to storm, and
storm hard, after this time uh year. But comin' the way she did last
fall, 'n' all this here wind 'n' bluster 'n' snowin' on the Zandias and
never comin' no further down, I calc'late the chances is slim, boy--'n'
gittin' slimmer every day, now I'm tellin' yuh!"
"Well, say! Ain't yuh got a purty fair pitcher the way she stands?" Big
Medicine inquired aggressively. "Seems t' me we've done enough ridin'
and actin', by cripes, t' make half a dozen pitchers better'n what I've
ever saw."
"That isn't the point." Luck's voice was lifeless, with a certain dogged
combativeness that had come into it during the last two months. "We've
got to have that storm. This isn't going to be any make-shift affair.
We've got some good film, yes. But it's like starting a funny story and
being choked off before you get to the laugh in it. We've got to have
that storm, I tell you!" His eyes challenged them harshly to dispute his
statement.
"Well, darn it, have your storm, then. I'm willin'," Big Medicine
bellowed with ill-timed facetiousness. "Pink, you run and git Luck a
storm; git him a good big one, guaranteed to last 'im four days or money
refunded. You git one--"
"Listen, Bud." Luck stood suddenly before Big Medicine, quivering with
nervous rage. "Don't joke about this. There's no joke in this at all. No
one with any brains can see anything funny in having failure stare him in
the face. Twelve of us have put every ounce of our best work and our best
patience and every dollar we possess in the world into this venture. I've
worked day and night on this picture. I've worked you boys in weather
that wasn't fit for a dog to be out in. I've seen Rosemary Green slaving
in this dark little hole of a kitchen because we can't afford a cook for
the outfit. You've all been dead game--I'll hand it to you for
that--every white chip has gone into the pot. If we fail we'll have to
borrow carfare to get outa here. And here's Applehead. We've used his
ranch, we've used his house and his horses and himself; we've killed his
cattle for beef, by ----! And we've got just that one chance--the chance
of a storm--for winning out. One chance, and that chance getting slimmer
every day, as he says. No--there's no joke in this; or if there is, I've
lost my appetite for comedy. I can't laugh." He stopped as suddenly as he
had begun his rapid speech, caught up his hat, and went out alone into
the soft morning sunlight. He left silence behind him,--a stunned silence
that was awkward to break.
"It's a perfect shame!" Rosemary said at last, and her lips were
trembling. "He's just about crazy--and I know he hasn't slept a wink,
lately, just from worrying."
"I calc'late that's about the how of it," Applehead agreed, rubbing his
chin nervously. "He lays awful still, last few weeks, and that thar's a
bad sign fer him. And I ain't heerd 'im talkin' in his sleep lately,
either. Up till lately he made more pitchers asleep than he done awake.
Take it when things was movin' right along, Mis' Green, 'n' Luck was
shore talkative, now I'm tellin' yuh!"
"My father, he got one oncle," Annie-Many-Ponies spoke up unexpectedly
from her favorite corner. "Big Medicine man. Maybe I write one letter,
maybe Noisy-Owl he come, make plenty storm. Noisy-Owl, he got awful
strong medicine for make storm come."
"Well, by cripes, yuh better send for 'im then!" Big Medicine advised
gruffly, and went out.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
THE STORM
_The Phantom Herd_, as the days slipped nearer and nearer to April, might
almost have been christened _The Forlorn Hope_. On the twenty-first the
sun was so hot that Luck rode in his shirt sleeves to Albuquerque,
stubbornly intending to order more "positive" for his prints in the final
work of putting his Big Picture into marketable form. He did not have the
slightest idea of where the money to pay for the stuff was coming from,
but he sent the letter ordering the stock sent C.O.D. He was playing for
big results, and he had no intention of being balked at the last minute
because of his timidity in assuming an ultimate success which was
beginning to look extremely doubtful.
On the twenty-second, a lark flew impudently past his head and perched
upon a bush near by and sang straight at him. As a general thing Luck
loved to hear bird songs when he rode abroad on a fine morning; but he
came very near taking a shot at that particular lark, as if it were
personally responsible for the sunny days that had brought it out
scouting ahead of its kind.
On the twenty-third the sky was a brassy blue, and Applehead won Luck's
fierce enmity by remarking that he "calc'lated he'd better get his garden
in." Luck went away off somewhere on the snuffy little bay, that day, and
did not return until after dark.
On the twenty-fourth he took the boys away back on the mesa, where the
mountains shoulder the plain, and scattered them on a wide circle,
rounding up the cattle that had been permitted to drift where they would
in their famished search for the scant grass-growth. Bill Holmes and the
camera followed him in the buckboard with the lunch, and Luck, when the
boys had met with their gleanings, "shot" two or three short scenes of
poor cows and their early calves, which would go to help along his range
"atmosphere." To the Happy Family it seemed a waste of horseflesh to comb
a twenty-mile radius of mesa to get a cow and calf which might have been
duplicated within a mile of the ranch. The Happy Family knew that Luck
was wading chin deep in the slough of despond, and they decided that he
kept them riding all day just for pure cussedness.
I suppose they thought that his orders to range-herd the cattle they had
gathered came from the same mood, but they did not seem to mind. They
did whatever he told them to do, and they did it cheerfully,--which, in
the circumstances, is saying a good deal for the Happy Family. So with
the sun warm as early May, and the new grass showing tiny green
blade-tips in the sheltered places, they began range-herding two
thousand head of cattle that needed all the territory they could cover
for their feeding grounds.
The twenty-fifth day of March brought no faintest promise of anything
that looked like snow. Applehead sharpened his hoe and went pecking at
the soil around the roots of his grape-vine arbor, thereby irritating
Luck to the point of distraction. He had reached a nervous tension where
he could not eat, and he could not sleep, and life looked a nightmare of
hard work and disappointments, of hopes luring deceitfully only to crush
one at the moment of fulfilment.
It was because he could not sleep, but spent the nights stretched upon
his side with his wide-open eyes boring into vacancy and a drab future,
that he heard the wind whine over the ridgepole of the squat bunk-house
and knew that it had risen from a dead calm since bedtime. The languor of
nervous exhaustion was pulling his eyelids down over his tired eyes, and
he knew that it must be nearly morning; for sleep never came to him now
until after Applehead's brown rooster had crowed for two o'clock.
He closed his eyes and dreamed that he was "shooting" blizzard scenes
with the snow to his armpits. He was chilled to the middle of his bones,
and his hand went down unconsciously and groped for the blankets he had
pushed off in his restlessness. In his sleep he was yelling to the
Cattlemen's Convention to wait,--not to adjourn yet, because he had
something to show them.
"Well, show'em, dang it, an' shut up!" muttered Applehead crossly, and
turned over on his good ear so that he could sleep undisturbed.
Luck, half awakened by the movement, curled up with his knees close to
his chin and went on with his dream. With the wind still mooing
lonesomely around the corners of the house, he slept more soundly than he
had slept for weeks, impelled, I suppose, by a subconscious easement from
his greatest anxiety.
A slow tap-tap-tapping on the closed door near his head woke him just
before dawn. The lightest sleeper of them all, Luck lifted his head with
a start, and opened his sleep-blurred eyes upon blackness. He called out,
and it was the voice of Annie-Many-Ponies that answered.
"Wagalexa Conka! You come quick. Plenty snow come. You be awful glad
when you see. Soon day comes. You hurry. I make plenty breakfast,
Wagalexa Conka."
As a soldier springs from sleep when calls the bugle, Luck jumped out
into the icy darkness of the room. With one jerk he had the door open and
stood glorying in the wild gust of snow that broke over him like a wave.
In his bare feet he stood there, and felt the snow beat in his face, and
said never a word, since big emotions never quite reached the surface of
Luck's manner.
"Day come quick, Wagalexa Conka!" The voice of Annie-Many-Ponies urged
him from without, like the voice of Opportunity calling from the storm.
"All right. You run now and have breakfast ready. We come quick." He held
the door open another half minute, and he heard Annie-Many-Ponies laugh
as she fought her way back to the house through the blinding blizzard. He
saw a faint glow through the snow-whirl when she opened the kitchen door,
and he shut out the storm with a certain vague reluctance, as though he
half feared it might somehow escape into a warm, sunny morning and prove
itself no more than a maddeningly vivid dream.
"Hey! Wake up!" he shouted while he groped for a match and the lamp.
"Roll into your sourdoughs, you sons-uh-guns--"
"Say, Applehead," came a plaintive voice from Pink's hunk, "make
Luck turn over on the other side, can't yuh? Darn a man that talks
in his sleep!"
"By cripes, Luck's got to sleep in the hay loft--er I will," Big Medicine
growled, making the boards of his bunk squeak with the flop of his
disturbed body.
Then Luck found the lamp and struck a match, and it was seen that he was
very wide awake, and that his face had the look of a man intent upon
accomplishment.
The Native Son sat up in one of the top bunks and looked down at Luck
with a queer solemnity in his eyes. "What is this, _amigo_?" he asked
with a stifled yawn. "Another one of your Big Minutes?"
"_Quien sabe_?" Luck retorted, reaching for his clothes as his small
ebullition subsided to a misleading composure. "Storm's here at last, and
we'll have to be moving. Roll out and saddle your ridge-runners; Annie's
got breakfast all ready for us."
"Aw, gwan!" grumbled Happy Jack from sheer force of habit, and made haste
to hit the floor with his feet before Luck replied to that apparent doubt
of his authority.
"Dress warm as you can, boys," Luck advised curtly, lacing his own heavy
buckskin moccasins over thick German socks, which formed his cold-weather
footgear. "She's worse than that other one, if anything."
"Mamma!" Weary murmured, in a tone of thanksgiving. "She didn't come any
too soon, did she?"
Luck did not reply. He pulled his hat down low over his forehead, opened
the door and went out, and it was as though the wind and snow and
darkness swallowed him bodily. The horses must first be fed, and he
fought his way to the stables, where Applehead's precious hay was
dwindling rapidly under Luck's system of keeping mounts and a four-horse
team up and ready for just such an emergency. He labored through the
darkness to the stable door, lighted the lantern which hung just inside,
and went into the first stall. The manger was full, and the feed-box
still moist from the lapping tongue of the gray horse that stood there
munching industriously. Annie-Many-Ponies had evidently fed the horses
before she called Luck, and he felt a warm glow of gratitude for her
thoughtfulness.
He stopped at the bunk-house to tell the boys that they had nothing to do
but eat breakfast before they saddled, and found them putting on
overcoats and gloves and wrangling over the probable location of the herd
that would have drifted in the night. So they ploughed in a straggling
group to the house, where Annie-Many-Ponies was already pouring the
coffee when they trooped in.