belated storm and up on the mesa where they had left the cattle scattered
and feeding more or less contentedly at sundown. They had not gone a mile
until their bodies began to shrink under the unaccustomed cold. Bill
Holmes, town-bred and awkward in the open, thankfully resigned to the
Indian girl the dignity of driving the mountain wagon with its four-horse
team, and huddled under blankets, while Annie-Many-Ponies piloted them
calmly straight across country in the wake of the riders whom her beloved
Wagalexa Conka was leading on the snuffy bay. Save for the difference in
his clothes, Annie-Many-Ponies thought that he much resembled that great
little war-chief of the white people who rode ahead of his column in a
picture hanging on the wall of the mission school. Napoleon was the great
little war-chief's name, and her heart swelled with pride as she drove
steadily through the storm and thought what a great war-chief her brother
Wagalexa Conka might have made, were these but the days of much fighting.
There was to be no trouble with "static" this time, if Luck could help
it. To be doubly safe from blurred film, he had brought his ray filter
along, for the flakes of snow were large and falling fast. He had chosen
a different location, because of the direction of the wind and the
difficulty the boys would have had in driving the cattle back in the face
of it to the side hill where he had first taken the scenes of the
drifting herd.
To-day he "shot" them first as they were filing reluctantly out through a
narrow pass which was supposed to be the entrance to the box canyon where
the two rustlers, Andy and Miguel, had kept them hidden away.
Artistically speaking, the cattle were in perfect condition for such a
scene, every rib showing as they trooped past the clicking camera
cleverly concealed in a clump of bushes; hip bones standing up, lean legs
shambling slowly through the snow that was already a foot deep. Cattle
hidden for days and days in a box canyon would not come out fat and sleek
and stepping briskly, and Luck was well pleased with the realism of his
picture, even while he pitied the poor beasts.
Later he took the drifting of the herd, and he knew in his heart that the
scenes were better than those he had lost. He took tragic scenes of the
Native Son in his struggle to keep up and to keep going. He took him as
he fell and lay prone in the snow beside his fallen horse while the
blizzard whooped over him, and the snow fell upon his still face. In his
zeal he nearly froze the Native Son, who must lie there during two or
three "cut-back" scenes, and while Andy was coming up in search of him.
When Andy lifted him and found him actually limp in his arms, the anxiety
which a "close-up" revealed in his face was not all art. However, he did
not say anything until Luck's voracious scene-appetite had been at least
partially satisfied.
"By gracious, I believe the son-of-a-gun is about froze," he snapped out
then; Luck grinned mirthlessly and called to Annie for the precious
thermos bottle, and poured a cup of strong black coffee, added a generous
dash of the apricot brandy which he spoke of familiarly as his
"cure-all," and had the Native Son very much alive and tramping around to
restore the circulation to his chilled limbs before Bill Holmes had
carried the camera to the location of the next scene.
"By rights I should have left you the way you were till I got this last
death scene where Andy buries you under the rock ledge so he can get home
alive himself," Luck told Miguel heartlessly, when they were ready for
work again. "You were in proper condition, brother. But I'm human. So
you'll have to do a little more acting, from now on."
With his mats placed with careful precision, he took his dissolve
"vision stuff" of the blizzard and the death of Miguel,--scenes which
were to torment the conscience of Andy the rustler into full repentance
and confession to his father. While the boys huddled around Annie's camp
fire and guzzled hot coffee and ate chilled sandwiches, Luck took some
fine scenes of the phantom herd marching eerily along the skyline of a
little slope.
He "shot" every effective blizzard scene he had dreamed of so
despairingly when the weather was fine. Some scenes of especial
importance to his picture he took twice, so as to have the
"choice-of-action" so much prized by producers. This, you must know, was
a luxury in which Luck had not often permitted himself to indulge. With
raw negative at nearly four cents a foot, he had made it a point to shoot
only such scenes as gave every promise of being exactly what he wanted.
But with this precious blizzard that numbed his fingers most
realistically while he worked, but never once worried him for fear the
sun was going to shine before he had finished, he was as lavish of
negative as though he had a million-dollar corporation at his back.
That evening, when they were luxuriating before the fireplace heaped with
dry wood which the flames were licking greedily, Luck became, for the
first time in months, the old Luck Lindsay who had fascinated them at the
Flying U. He told them stories of his days with the "Bill show," and
called upon the giggling Annie-Many-Ponies for proof of their truth;
whereat Annie-Many-Ponies would nod her head vigorously and declare that
it was "No lie. I see him plenty times do them thing. I know." He
disputed energetically with Big Medicine over the hardships of the day's
work; and as a demonstration of the fact that he was perfectly able to go
out right then and shoot another seven hundred feet of film, he seized
upon the _tom-tom_ which Annie-Many-Ponies had made from a green calf
hide and an old cheese box, and in his moccasins he danced the Sioux
Buffalo Dance and several other dances in which Annie-Many-Ponies finally
joined and teetered around in the circle which the Happy Family
enthusiastically widened for the performers.
Work there was yet to do, and plenty of it. Even if the weather came
clear on the morrow as he desired, he must make every minute count, if he
would take his picture to the Cattlemen's Convention. Work there was, and
problems there were to be solved. But he had his big blizzard stuff, and
he had his scenes of the phantom herd. So for an hour or two, on this
evening of triumph, Luck Lindsay threw care into a far corner, and danced
and sang as the Happy Family had never known he could do.
"Here, Annie, take the drum; it's 'call the dog and put out the fire and
all go home.' If my luck stays with me, and the sun shines to-morrow,
we'll take these interiors of the double-exposure stuff. And then we'll
be eating on the run and sleeping as we ride, till that picture pops out
on the screen for the old cattlemen to see. Good night, folks; I'm going
to sleep to-night!"
He went out whistling like a schoolboy going fishing. For luck was with
him once more, and his _Phantom Herd_ was almost a reality as a picture.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
A FEW OF THE MINOR DIFFICULTIES
However obliging fate may desire to be, certain of nature's laws must
be observed. Whether luck was disposed to stay with Luck Lindsay or
not, a storm such as the fates had conjured for his needs could not
well blow itself out as suddenly as it had blown itself in; so Luck did
not get all of his interior double-exposure stuff done the next day,
nor his remaining single-exposure stuff either. When his own reason and
Applehead's earnest assurances convinced him that the day after the
real blizzard day was going to be unfit for camera work, Luck took
Weary, Pink, and the Native Son to Albuquerque, rented a little house
he had discovered to be vacant, and set them to work building a drying
drum for his prints, according to the specifications he furnished them.
He hauled his tanks from the depot and showed the boys how to install
them so as to have the benefit of the running water, and got his
printer set up and ready to work; for he knew that he would have to
make his first prints himself, with the help of the Happy Family, the
photographer having neither the room nor the time for the work, and
Luck having no more than barely money enough to pay house rent and the
charges on his tanks and printer.
Then, being an obliging young man when the fates permitted him to indulge
his natural tendencies, Luck made a hurried trip to a certain little shop
that had dusty mandolins and watches and guns and a cheap kodak in the
dingy window. He went in with his watch in his pocket ticking cheerfully
the minutes and hours that were so full of work and worry. When he came
out, the watch was ticking just as cheerfully in a drawer and the chain
was looped prosperously across his vest from buttonhole to empty pocket.
He went straight across to a grocery store and bought some salt pork and
coffee and cornmeal and matches which Rosemary had timidly asked him if
he could get. She explained apologetically that she was beginning to run
out of things, and that she had no idea they were going to have such
awful appetites, and that of course there were two extra people to feed,
and that they certainly could dispose of their share three times a
day,--meaning, of course, Annie-Many-Ponies and Bill Holmes.
Even while his brain was doing swift mental gymnastics in addition and
subtraction, Luck had told her he would get whatever she wanted. His
watch brought enough to buy everything she asked for except a can of
syrup; and that, he told her, the groceryman must have overlooked, for he
certainly had ordered it. He called the groceryman names enough to
convince Rosemary that her list had not been too long for his purse, and
that Luck's occasional statement that he was broke must be taken
figuratively; Luck breathed a sigh of relief that Rosemary, at least, was
once more spared the knowledge that all was not yet plain sailing to a
smooth harbor.
The next day being sunny, Luck finished the actual camera work on _The
Phantom Herd_. That night he and Bill Holmes developed every foot of
negative he had exposed since the storm began, and they finished just as
Rosemary rapped on the darkroom door and called that breakfast was
ready. Bill took it for granted that he could sleep, then, while the
negative was drying; but Luck was merciless; that Cattlemen's Convention
was only two days off,--counting that day which was already begun,--and
there was also a twelve-hour train trip, more or less, between his
picture and El Paso.
Bill Holmes had learned to join film in movie theaters, and Luck set him
to work at it as soon as he had finished his breakfast. When Bill
grumbled that there wasn't any film cement, Luck very calmly went to his
trunk and brought some, thereby winning from Rosemary the admiring
statement that she didn't believe Luck Lindsay ever forgot a single,
solitary thing in his life! So Bill Holmes assembled the film, scene by
scene, without even the comfort of cigarettes to keep awake. At his elbow
Luck also joined film until the negative in the garret was dry enough to
handle, when he began cutting it according to the continuity sheet, ready
for Bill to assemble.
Luck's mood was changeable that day. He would glow with the pride of
achievement when he held a yard or so of certain scenes to the light and
knew that he had done something which no other producer had ever done,
and that he had created a film story that would stand up like a lone peak
above the level of all other Western pictures. When those night scenes
were tinted--and that scene which had for its sub-title _Opening
Exercises_, and which showed the Happy Family mounting Applehead's
snakiest bronks and riding away from camp into what would be an orange
sunrise after the positive had been through its dye bath--
And then discouragement would seize him, and he would wonder how he was
going to get hold of money enough to take him to El Paso and the
Convention. And how, in the name of destitution, was he going to pay for
that stock of "positive" when it came? Applehead was dead willing to help
him,--that went without saying; but Applehead was broke. That last load
of horse-feed had cleaned his pockets, as he had cheerfully informed Luck
over three weeks before. Applehead was not, and never would be by his own
efforts, more than comfortably secure from having to get out and work for
wages. He had cattle, but he let them run the range in season and out,
and it was only in good years that he had fair beef to ship. He hated a
gang of men hanging around the ranch and eating their fool heads off, he
frequently declared. So he and Compadre had lived in unprosperous peace,
with a little garden and a little grape arbor and a horse for Applehead
in the corral, and teams in the pasture where they could feed and water
themselves, and a month's supply of "grub" always in the house. Applehead
called that comfort, and could not see the advantage of burdening himself
with men and responsibilities that he might pile up money in the bank.
You can easily see where the coming of Luck and his outfit might strain
the financial resources of Applehead, even though Luck tried to bear all
extra expense for him. No, thought Luck, Applehead would have to mortgage
something if he were to attempt raising money then. And Luck would have
taken a pack-outfit and made the trip to El Paso on horseback before he
would see Applehead go in debt for him. As it was, he was seriously
considering that pack-horse proposition as a last resort, and trying to
invent some way of shaving his work down so that he would have time for
the trip. But certain grim facts could not be twisted to meet his needs.
He simply had to print his positive for projection on the screen. And
that positive simply had to go through certain processes that took a
certain amount of time; and it simply had to be dry and polished before
he could wind it on his reels. Reels? Lord-ee! He didn't have any reels
to
wind it on!
"What's the matter? Spoil something?" Bill Holmes asked indifferently,
pausing to look at Luck before he took up the next strip of celluloid
ribbon with its perforated edges and its little squares of shadowlike
pictures that to the unpractised eye looked all alike.
"No. What reel is that you're on now? We want to be in town before dark
with this stuff, so as to start the printer going to-night." By
printing, that night, and by hard riding, he might be able to make it,
he was thinking.
"Think we'll be through in time?"
"Certainly, we'll be through in time." Luck held up another strip to see
where to cut it. "We've got to be through!"
"I'm liable to be joining this junk by the sides instead of the ends,
before long," Bill hinted.
"No, you won't do anything like that." Luck's voice had a disturbing note
of absolute finality.
Bill looked at him sidelong. "A fellow can't work forever without sleep.
My head's splitting right now. I can hardly see--"
"Yes, you can see well enough to do your work--and do it right!
Get that?"
Bill grunted. Evidently he got it, for he said no more about his head, or
about sleep. He did glance frequently out of the tail of his eye at
Luck's absorbed face with his jaw set at a determined angle and his great
mop of iron-gray hair looking like a heavy field of grain after a
thunderstorm, standing out as it did in every direction. Now and then
Luck pushed it back impatiently with the flat of his palm, but he showed
no other sign of being conscious of anything at all save the picture;
though he could have told you offhand just how many times Bill turned
his eyes upon him.
At noon they were not through, and to Bill the attempt to finish that day
seemed hopeless, not to say insane. But by four o'clock they were done
with the cutting and joining, and had their film carefully packed and in
the mountain wagon, and were ready to drive through the slushy mud which
was the aftermath of the blizzard to the little house in Albuquerque
which the boys had turned into a crude but efficient laboratory.
There Luck continued to be merciless in his driving energy. He canvassed
the moving-picture theaters of the town and borrowed reels on which to
wind his film when it was once ready for winding. He went back to the
little house and set every one within it to work and kept them at it. He
printed his positive, dissolved his aniline dye, which was to be
firelight effect, in the bathtub,--and I should like to know what the
landlord thought when next he viewed that tub! He made an orange bath for
sunrise effects in one of the stationary tubs, and his light blue for
night tints in the other. He buzzed around in that little house like a
disturbed blue-bottle fly that cannot find an open window. He had his
sleeves rolled to his shoulders and his hair more tousled than ever; he
had blue circles under his eyes and dabs of dye distributed here and
there on his face and his arms; he had in his eyes the glitter of a man
who means to be obeyed instantly and implicitly, whatever his command may
be,--and if you want to know, he was obeyed in just that manner.
Happy Jack and Big Medicine took turns at the crank of the big drying
drum, around which Andy and Weary had carefully wound the wet film. Being
a crude, home-made affair, the crank that kept that drum turning over and
over did not work with the ease of ball-bearings. But Happy Jack, rolling
his eyes up at Luck when he hurried past to attend to something
somewhere, did not venture his opinion of the task. Nor did Big Medicine
bellow any facetious remarks whatever, but turned and sweated, and used
the other hand awhile, and turned and turned, and goggled at Luck
whenever Luck came within his range of vision, and changed off to the
other hand and turned and turned, and still said nothing at all.
Bill Holmes went to sleep about midnight and came near ruining a batch of
firelight scenes in the analine bath, and after that Luck did all the
technical part of the work himself. The Happy Family did what they could
and wished they were not so ignorant and could do more. They could not,
for instance, help Luck in the final assembling of the polished film and
the putting in of the sub-titles and inserts. But they could polish that
film, after he showed them how; so Pink and Weary did that. And at
daylight Luck shook Bill Holmes awake and set him to work again.
Just to show that Luck was human, even though he was obsessed by a frenzy
of work, he sent the boys outside, whenever one of them could be spared,
for the smoke they craved and could not have among that five thousand
feet of precious but highly inflammable film. But he did not treat
himself to the luxury of a cigarette.
Luck had not yet solved the problem of meeting the expense of the trip
to El Paso. Riding down with a pack-horse would take him too long; the
best he could do would not be quick enough; for the Convention would be
over before he got there, and his trip therefore useless. He worked
just as fast, however, as though he had only to buy his ticket and take
the train.
And then, when the last drumful was drying, he got his idea, and took
Andy by the shoulder and led him out into the little front hall. "Boy,"
he said, "you hook up the team and drive like hell out to the ranch and
get the camera and all the lenses. And right under the lid of my trunk
you'll find a letter file marked Receipts. In the C pocket you'll find
the sales slips of camera and so on; you bring them along. And bring my
bag and any clean socks and handkerchiefs you can find, and my gray suit
and some collars and ties. Oh, and my shoes. Make it back here by two
o'clock if you can; before three at the latest."
"You bet yuh," assented Andy just as cheerfully as though he saw some
sense in the order. Luck's clothes were a reasonable request, but Andy
could not, for the life of him, figure any use for the camera and lenses;
and as for the receipts, that sounded to him like plain delirium. Andy's
brain, at that time, seemed to be revolving slowly round and round like
the big drying drum, and his thoughts were tangled in exasperating
visions of long, narrow strips of wet film.
However, at two-thirty he drove smartly up to the little house with the
camera and Luck's brown leather bag packed with the small necessities of
highly civilized journeying, and a large flat package wrapped in old
newspapers. He had not set the brake that signalled the sweating horses
to stop, before Luck was in the doorway with his hat on his head and the
air of one whose business is both urgent and of large issues.
"Got the receipts? All right! Where are the things? This the lenses? All
right! Put the team in the stable and go get yourself some rest."
"Where's your rest coming in at?" Andy flung back over his shoulder, as
Luck turned away with the camera on his shoulder and the small case in
his hands.
"Mine will come when I get through. I've got the last reel wound and
packed, though. You bed down somewhere and sleep. I'll be back in a
little. I'm going to catch that four o'clock train."
When you consider that Luck made that statement with about fifteen cents
in his pocket and no ticket, you will understand why Andy gave him that
queer look as he drove off to the stable. Luck might have climbed up
beside Andy and ridden part of the way, but he was too preoccupied with
larger matters to think of it until he found himself picking his footing
around the mud through which Andy had splashed in comfort.
At the bank, Luck went in at the side door which gave easy access to the
office behind; and without any ceremony whatever he tapped on a certain
glass-paneled door with a name printed across. He waited a second, and
then turned the knob and walked briskly in, carrying camera, tripod, and
the case of small attachments, and smiling his smile of white teeth and
perfect assurance and much good will.
Now, the cashier whom he faced was a tall man worn thin with the worries
of his position and the care of a family. He lived in a large white
house, and his wife never seemed able to find a cook who could cook; so
the cashier was troubled with indigestion that made his manner one of
passive irritation with life. His children were for some reason forever
"coming down" with colds or whooping-cough or measles or something (you
have seen children like that), so his eyes were always tired with wakeful
nights. It needed a Luck Lindsay smile to bring any answering light into
the harassed face of that cashier, but it got there after the first
surprised glance.
Luck stood his camera--screwed to its tripod--against the wall by the
door. "I'm Luck Lindsay, Mr. White," he announced in his easy, Texas
drawl. "I'm in a hurry, so I'll omit my full autobiography, if you don't
mind, and let you draw your own conclusions about my reputation and
character. I've a five-reel feature film called _The Phantom Herd_ just
completed, and I want to take it down to El Paso and show it before the
Texas Cattlemen's Convention which meets there to-day. I want their
endorsement of it as a Western film which really portrays the West, to
incorporate in my advertisements in all the trade journals. But the
production of the film took my last cent, and I've got to raise money on
my camera for the trip down there. You see what I mean. I'm broke, and
I've got to catch that four o'clock train or the whole thing stops right
here. This camera cost me close to fifteen hundred dollars. Here are the
receipted sales slips to prove it. In Los Angeles I could easily get--"
He caught the beginning of a denial in Mr. White's sidewise movement of
the head--"ten times as much money on it as you can give me. You probably
don't know anything at all about motion-picture cameras, but you can read
these slips and find out how prices run."
Mr. White had in a measure recovered from the effects of Luck's smile. He
picked up the slips and glanced at them indifferently. "There's a
pawn-shop just down the street, I believe," he said. "Why--"
"I want to leave this camera here with you, anyway," Luck interrupted.
"It's valuable--too valuable to take any risk of fire or burglary. I
want to leave it in your vault. You've handled a good deal of my money,
and you know who I am, and what my standing is, or else you aren't the
right man for the position you occupy. It's your business to know these
things. Now, I'm not asking you for any big loan. All I want is expense
money for that trip. If you'll advance me seventy-five or a hundred
dollars on my note, with this camera as security, I'll thank you and
romp down to El Paso and get that endorsement before the convention
adjourns till next year."