The Phantom Herd Part 20

"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 canva.s.sed 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 a.n.a.line 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 a.s.sembling of the polished film and the putting in of the sub-t.i.tles 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 h.e.l.l 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," a.s.sented 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 gla.s.s-paneled door with a name printed across. He waited a second, and then turned the k.n.o.b and walked briskly in, carrying camera, tripod, and the case of small attachments, and smiling his smile of white teeth and perfect a.s.surance 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 pa.s.sive 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 hara.s.sed 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 endors.e.m.e.nt of it as a Western film which really portrays the West, to incorporate in my advertis.e.m.e.nts 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 p.a.w.n-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 endors.e.m.e.nt before the convention adjourns till next year."

Mr. White looked at the camera strangely, as though he half expected it to explode. "I should have to take it up with the directors--"

"Directors! h.e.l.l, man, that train's due in an hour! What _are_ you around here--a man in authority, or just a dummy made up to look like one? Do you mean to tell me you're afraid to stake me to enough money to make El Paso and return? What, for the Lord's sake, do I look like, anyway,--a crook?"

Mr. White's head was more than six feet in the air when he stood up, and Luck Lindsay in his high-heeled boots lacked a good six inches of that alt.i.tude; but for all that, Luck Lindsay was a bigger man than Mr.

White. He dominated the cashier; he made the cashier conscious of his dyspepsia and his thin hair and his flabby muscles and his lack of enthusiasm with life.

"The directors have to pa.s.s on all bank loans," he explained apologetically, "but I can lend you the money out of my personal account.

If you will excuse me, I'll get the money before my a.s.sistant closes the vault. And shall I put these inside for you?" He rose and started for the inner door with a deprecating smile.

"Aren't you going to take a note?" Luck studied the man with sharpened glance.

"My check will be a sufficient record of the transaction, I think." And Mr. White, with two or three words scribbled at the bottom, proceeded to make the check a record. "I am glad to be able to stake you, Mr. Lindsay, and I hope your trip will be successful."

He got another Luck Lindsay smile for that, and the apology he had coming to him. And then in a very few minutes Luck hurried out and back to the little house on the edge of town.

"Where's my bag? So long, boys; I'm going to drift. I'll change clothes on the train--haven't got time now. Here's five dollars, Andy, for the stable bill and so on. Bill, you're the only one of the bunch that shirked, so you can carry this box of reels to the depot for me. _Adios_, boys, I'm sure going to romp all over that Convention, believe me, if they don't swear _The Phantom Herd's_ a winner from the first scene!"

CHAPTER NINETEEN

WHEREIN LUCK MAKES A SPEECH

Luck stood on the platform of the Texas Cattlemen's Convention and looked down upon the work-lined, brown faces of the men whose lives had for the most part been spent out of doors. Their sober attentiveness confused him for a minute so that he forgot what he wanted to say--he, Luck Lindsay, who had faced the great audiences of Madison Square Garden and had smiled his endearing smile and made his bow with perfect poise and an eye for pretty faces; who had without a quiver faced the camera, many's the time, in difficult scenes; who had faced death more times than he could count, and what was to him worse than death,--blank failure. But these old range-men with the wind-and-sun wrinkles around their eyes, and their ready-to-wear suits, and their judicial air of sober attention,--these were to him the jury that would weigh his work and say whether it was worthy. These men--

And then one of them suddenly cleared his throat with a rasping sound like old Dave Wiswell, his dried little cowman of the picture, and embarra.s.sment dropped from Luck like a cloak flung aside. He was here to put his work to the test; to let these men say whether _The Phantom Herd_ was worthy to be called a great picture, one of which the West could be proud. So he pushed back his mop of hair--grayer than the hair of many here old enough to be his father--with the fiat of his palm, and looked straight into the faces of these men and said what he had to say:

"Mr. Chairman, and gentlemen of this Convention, I consider it a great privilege to be able to stand here and speak to you--a greater privilege than any of you realize, perhaps. For my heart has always been in the range-land, my people have been the people of the plains. I have to-day been honored by the hand-grip of old-timers who were riding circle, trailing long-horns, and working cattle when I was a boy in short pants.

"I have trailed herds on the pay roll of one man who remembers me here to-day, and of others who have crossed the Big Divide. I have seen the open range shrink before the coming of barbed wire and settlers. I have watched the 'long shadow' fall across G.o.d's own cattle country.

"Since I entered the motion-picture business, my one great aim and my one great dream has been to produce one real Western picture. One picture that I could present with pride to such a convention as this, and have men who have spent their lives in the cattle industry give it the stamp of their approval; one picture that would make such men forget the present and relive the old days when they were punchers all and proud of it. Such an opportunity came to me last fall and I made the most of it. I got me a bunch of real boys, and went to work on the picture I have called _The Phantom Herd._ From the trail-herds going north I have tried to weave into my story a glimpse of the whole history of the range critter, from the shivering, new-born calf that hit the range along with a spring blizzard, to the big, four-year-old steer prodded up the chutes into the shipping cars.

"I want you, who know the false from the real, to see _The Phantom Herd_ and say whether I have done my work well. I finished the picture yesterday, and I have brought it down here for the purpose of asking you to honor me by accepting an invitation to a private showing of the picture this evening, here in this hall. I want you to come and bring your wives and your children with you if you can. I want you to see _The Phantom Herd_ before it goes to the public--and to-morrow I shall face you again and accept your verdict. You know the West. You will know a Western picture when you see it. I know you know, and I want you to tell me what you think of it. Your word will be final, as far as I am concerned. Gentlemen, I hope you will all be present here to-night at eight o'clock as my guests. I thank you for your attention."

Luck went away from there feeling, and telling himself emphatically, that he had made a "rotten" talk. He had not said what he had meant to say, or at least he had not said it the way he had meant to say it. But he was too busy to dwell much upon his deficiencies as an orator; he had yet to borrow a projection machine and operator from somewhere--for, as usual, he had issued his invitation before he had definitely arranged for the exhibition, and had trusted to luck and his own efforts to be able to keep his promise.

Luck (or his own efforts) landed him within easy conversational reach of a man who was preparing to open a little theater on a side street. The seats were not in yet, but he had his machine, and he meant to operate it himself, while his wife sold tickets and his boy acted as usher,--a family combination which to Luck seemed likely to be a success. This man, when Luck made known his needs, said he was perfectly willing to "limber up" his machine and himself on _The Phantom Herd_, if Luck would let his wife and boy see the picture, and would pay the slight operating expenses. So that was settled very easily.