The Phantom Herd Part 17

Annie-Many-Ponies, keen of eye when her heart directed her glances, saw the Kyle postmark on a letter while Applehead was sorting Luck's mail from the weekly batch he had just brought. Luck also spied the Kyle postmark and the familiar handwriting of George-Low-Cedar, who was a cousin of Annie-Many-Ponies and the most favored scribe of Big Turkey's numerous family. There was no mistaking those self-conscious shadings on the downward strokes of the pen, or the twice-curled tails of all the capitals. The capital M, for instance, very much resembled a dandelion stem split and curled by the tongue of a little girl.

George-Low-Cedar and none other had written that letter, and Big Turkey himself had probably composed it in great deliberation over his pipe, while the smoke of his _tepee_ fire curled over his head, and his squaw crouched in the shadow listening stolidly while her heart ached with longing for the girl-child who had gone a-wandering. Annie-Many-Ponies slid un.o.btrusively to the door and flattened her back against the wall beside it, ready to slip out into the dusk if she read in Wagalexa Conka's face that the letter was unpleasant.

Luck did not say a word while he held the letter up and looked at it; he did not say a word, but Annie-Many-Ponies knew, as well as though he had spoken, that he too feared what the contents might be. So she stood flat against the wall and watched his face, and saw how his fingers fumbled at the flap of the envelope, and how slowly he drew out the cheap, heavily ruled, glazed paper that is sold alongside plug tobacco and pearl b.u.t.tons and safety pins in the Indian traders' stores. Staring from under her straight brows at that folded letter, Annie-Many-Ponies had a swift, clear vision of the little store set down in the midst of barrenness and dust, and of the squaws sitting wrapped in bright shawls upon the platform while their lords gravely purchased small luxuries within. As a slim, barefooted papoose, proud of her shapeless red calico slip b.u.t.toned unevenly up the back with huge white b.u.t.tons, and of her hair braided in two sleek braids and tied with strips of the same red calico, she had stood flattened against the wall of the store while her father, Big Turkey, bought tobacco. She had hoped that the fates might be kind and send her a five-cent bag of red-and-white gum drops. Instead, Big Turkey had brought her a doll,--a pink-cheeked doll of the white people. In her cheap suitcase which she had carried wrapped in her shawl on her back to the ranch, Annie-Many-Ponies still had that doll. So with her eyes fixed upon the letter, her mind stared trance-like at the vision of that long-ago day which had been to her so wonderful.

Then Wagalexa Conka looked at her and smiled, and the vision of the store and the slim, barefooted papoose with her doll vanished. The smile meant that all was well, that she might stay with Wagalexa Conka and be his Indian girl in the picture of _The Phantom Herd_. Annie-Many-Ponies smiled back at him,--the slow, sweet, sphinx-like smile which Luck called "heart-twisting,"--and slipped out into the night with her heart beating fast in a strange mixture of joy that she might stay, and of homesickness for the little store set down in the midst of barrenness and dust, and for that long-ago day that had been so wonderful.

"Read this," said Luck, still smiling, and gave the letter into the flour-dusted hands of Rosemary. "Ever see a real, dyed-in-the-wool, Indian letter? Sure takes a load off my mind, too; you never can tell how an idea is going to hit an Indian. Pa.s.s it on to the boys."

So Rosemary read, with the whole Happy Family crowding close to look over her shoulder:

Kyle, P. Office Pine Ridge, So. D Monday, Nov.

Luck Lindsay at Motion Pictures ranch, Albequrqe, New M.

Friend son,

I this day gets letter from agent at agency who tell my girl you sisters are now at New mexicos with you pictures. shes go way one days at night times and to-morrow mornings i no find him. i am glad she sees you. you Take care same as with shows them Buffalo bill. all indians have hard times for cold and much hays and fires of prairies loses much. them indians shake you hands with good hearts they have with you. send me blue silks ribbon send Me pictures so i can see you. Again i shake you by hand with good heart same as I see you. Speak one Letters quick again.

you father, BIG TURKEY.

"Pretty good spelling, for an Indian letter," Rosemary commented suspiciously. "Are you sure an Indian wrote it, Luck Lindsay?"

"Why, certainly, I'm sure!" Luck was shuffling his other letters with the air of a man whose mind has for the moment lost its load of trouble.

"George-Low-Cedar wrote it. I know his writing. He's Annie's cousin, and he thinks he's highly educated. Indians have great memories, and once they learn to spell a word, they never seem to forget it. They learn to spell in school. What they don't learn is how to put the words together the way we do. Cousin George is also shaky on capitals, you notice. Now to-morrow we can go ahead with that big cattle-stuff. I can take my time about making Annie's scenes; I was afraid I might have to rush them all through first thing, so as to send her back. I'm sure glad she can stay; she's good to have around, to help in the house."

Rosemary screwed up her lips and gave him a queer look, but Luck had turned his attention to another letter, and she did not say what was in her mind. Annie-Many-Ponies, speaking theoretically, was good to have around to help Rosemary. In actual practice, however, Rosemary found her not so good. Personally Annie was fastidiously tidy, which Rosemary ungenerously set down to youthful vanity rather than to innate cleanliness. When it came to washing dishes, however, Annie-Many-Ponies left much to be desired. She was p.r.o.ne to disappear about the time she reached the biscuit-basin and the frying-pan stage of the thrice-daily performance. She was p.r.o.ne to fancy she heard Wagalexa Conka calling her, or Shunka Chistala barking in pursuit of the cat, or a hen cackling out in the weeds; whatever the sound, it invariably became a summons which Annie-Many-Ponies must instantly obey. Then she forgot to come back within the next two or three hours, and Rosemary must finish the dishes herself. But all this, as Rosemary well knew, was an unimportant detail of the general scheme of work going on at Applehead's ranch.

To her it seemed wonderful, the way Luck was pushing his picture to completion against long odds sometimes, fighting some difficulty always.

Much as she secretly resented certain Indian traits in Annie-Many-Ponies, and pleased as she would secretly have been if the girl had been recalled to the reservation, she was generously relieved because Luck could now go ahead with his round-up and trail-herd scenes while the weather was mild and sunny, and need not hurry the Indian-girl scenes at all.

In the ten days since the blizzard, Luck had worked hard. Some night scenes in a cow-town he had already taken, driving late in the afternoon into Albuquerque with his radium flares and his full company. Rosemary's memory cherished those nights as rare and precious experiences. First there were the old-time scenes, half Mexican in their atmosphere, when the dried little man was young, and the trail-herd started north. For these scenes Luck himself played the part of Dave Wiswell, turning the camera work over to Bill Holmes. Then there were the scenes of a later period,--scenes of carousal which depicted her beloved Andy as a very wild young man who spent his nights riotously. One full day of sunshine had also been spent at the stockyards there, taking shipping scenes.

On this day the two women had stayed at home, and Rosemary had nearly quarreled with Annie-Many-Ponies because Annie would not mend her stockings, but had spent the whole afternoon teaching Shunka Chistala to chase prairie dogs, the game being to try and frighten them away from their holes and then catch them. Annie-Many-Ponies attended to the strategic direction of the enterprise and let Shunka Chistala do most of the running. The high, clear laughter of the girl and her unintelligible cries to the little black dog had irritated Rosemary to the point of tears.

There had been no more days wasted because of spoiled film,--Luck was carefully guarding against that,--and it seemed to Rosemary that there were miles of it developed and dried and pigeon-holed, ready for a.s.sembling. That part of the work she was especially interested in, because it was done in the house.

To her it might seem that miles of film had been made, but to Luck it seemed as though the work crawled with maddening deliberation. Delays fretted him. The mounting expense account worried him, though as a matter of fact it mounted slowly, considering the work he was doing and the size of the company he was maintaining. When he took film clippings to a town photographer to have enlargements made for "stills,"--the pictures which must accompany each set of prints as advertising matter,--the cost of the work gave him the blues for the rest of that day. Then there were the Chavez boys, whom he had found it expedient to use occasionally in his big range scenes and in his "cow-town stuff." They had no conception of regular rates as extras, but Luck had a conscience, and he had also established a precedent. Whenever he used them in pictures, he gave Tomas five dollars and left it to Tomas to divide with Ramone. And five dollars, added to other fives and tens and twenty-fives, soon amounts to an amazing whole when anxiety holds the pencil.

As his story had changed and developed into _The Phantom Herd_ plot, it had lengthened appreciably, because he could not and would not sacrifice his big range stuff. And double exposures meant double work, of course.

He found himself with a five-reel picture in the making instead of the four-reeler he had started to produce. Thus he was compelled to send for more "raw stock." Also, he soon ran out of lumber for his interior sets and must buy more. As the possibilities of his production grew plainer to him, Luck knew that he could not slight a single scene nor skimp it in the making. He could go hungry if it came to that, but he could not cheapen his story by using make-shift settings.

Thanksgiving came, and they scarcely knew it, for the weather was fine, and they spent the day far afield and came in after dark, too tired to be thankful for anything save the opportunity to sleep.

Christmas came so suddenly that they wondered where the month had gone.

Christmas Eve the Happy Family spent in arranging a round-up camp out behind the house where the hill rose picturesquely, and in singeing themselves heroically in the heat of radium flares, while Luck took his camp-fire scenes that were triumphs of lighting-effects and photography,--scenes which he would later tone red with aniline dyes.

Annie-Many-Ponies and Rosemary brought out the two-gallon coffee boiler and a can of cream and a small lard pail of sugar, with cups and tin spoons and a pan of boiled-beef and cold-bean sandwiches. Rosemary called "Merry Christmas!" when the dying radium flares betrayed her approach, and the Happy Family jumped up and shouted "Merry Christmas!" to her and one another, just as exuberantly as though they had been celebrating instead of adding six hours or so to a hard day's work.

"That was beautiful, Luck Lindsay," Rosemary declared, giving him a bean sandwich for which he declared himself "strong," and holding the sugar bucket steady while he dipped into it three times.

"We were watching from the house; and the boys' faces, the way you had them placed, looked--oh, I don't know, but it just sent shivers all over me, it was so beautiful. I just hope it comes out that way in the picture!"

"Better," mumbled Luck, taking great, satisfying bites into the sandwich.

"Wait till you see it--after it's colored--with the chuck-box end of the wagon showing, and the night horses standing back there in the shadows; she will sure look like a million dollars!"

"She'll sh.o.r.e depict me cookin' and the smoke bilin' up," poor old Applehead remarked lugubriously. "Last five minutes er so I could hear grease a-fryin' on my shins, now I'm tellin' yuh!"

"Well, they don't use radium flares in cold-storage plants," Luck admitted reflectively.

"I know, by cripes, I'm goin' to mend my ways," Big Medicine declared meaningly. "I never realized b'fore how fire 'n brimstone's goin' to feel!"

"Well, I've got to hand it to you, boys," Luck praised them with a smile.

"You sat tight, and when I said 'Hold,' you sure held the pose. You dissolved perfectly--you'll see."

"Aw, gwan!" contradicted Happy Jack with his mouth full. "I never dissolved; I plumb melted!"

"If you boys could just see how beautiful you looked," Rosemary reproved, 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 G.o.ds before she went to meet her lover. She rehea.r.s.ed 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 c.o.o.n."

"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 c.o.c.ked 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--"