The Phantom Herd Part 21

At five minutes to eight that evening all of the cattlemen and a few favored, influential citizens of El Paso whom Luck had invited personally sat waiting before the blank screen. Up in the operator's cramped quarters Luck was having a nervous chill and trying his best not to show it, and he was telling the operator to give it time enough, for the Lord's sake, and to be sure he had everything ready before he started in, and so forth, until the operator was almost as nervous as Luck himself.

"Now, look here," he cried exasperatedly at last. "You know your business, and I know mine. You're going to have me named in your write-ups as the movie-man that run this show for the convention, ain't you? And I'm going to open up a picture house next week in this town, ain't I? And I ain't going to advertise myself as a b.u.m operator, am I?

Now you _vamos_ outa here and get down there in the audience, if you don't want me to get the fidgets and spoil something. Go on--beat it!"

Luck must have been in a strange condition, for he beat it promptly and without any retort, and slid furtively into a chair between two old range-men just as the operator's boy-usher switched off the lights.

Luck's heart began to pound so that he half expected his neighbors to tell him to close his m.u.f.fler,--only they were of the saddle-horse fraternity and would not have known what the phrase meant.

_The Phantom Herd_ flashed suddenly upon the screen and joggled there dizzily, away over to one side. Luck clapped his hand to his perspiring forehead and murmured "Oh, my Gawd!" like a prayer, and shut his eyes to hide from them the desecration. He opened them to find that the caste was just flicking off and the first scene dissolving in.

The man at his left gave a long sigh and crossed his knees, and leaned back and began to chew tobacco rapidly between his worn old molars.

_"Oh, a ten dollar hoss and a forty dollar saddle, I'm goin' to punchin' Texas cattle."_

The sub-t.i.tle dissolved slowly into a scene showing a cow-puncher (who was Weary) swinging on to his rangy cow-Horse and galloping away after the chuck-wagon just disappearing in the wake of the dust-flinging _remuda_. Back somewhere in the dusk of the audience, a man began to hum the tune that went with the words, and the heart of Luck Lindsay gave an exultant bound. He had used lines from "The Old Chisholm Trail" and other old-time range songs for his sub-t.i.tles, to keep the range atmosphere complete, and that cracked voice humming unconsciously told how it appealed to these men of the range.

Luck did not slide down in his seat so that his head rested on the chair-back while _The Phantom Herd_ was being shown. Instead, he sat leaning forward, with his face white and strained, and watched for weak points and for bad photography and scenes that could have been bettered.

He saw the big trail-herd go winding away across the level, with Weary riding "point" and Happy Jack bringing up the "drag," and the others scattered along between; riding slouched in their saddles, hatbrims pulled low over eyes smarting with the dust that showed in a thin film at the head of the herd and grew thicker toward the drag, until riders and animals were seen dimly through a haze.

"My--I can just feel that dust in m' throat!" muttered the man at his right, and coughed.

Luck saw the storm come muttering up just as the cattle were bedding down for the night. He saw the lightning, and he knew that those who watched with him were straining forward. He heard some one say involuntarily: "They'll break and run, sure as h.e.l.l!" and he knew that he had done that part of his work well.

He saw the night scenes he had taken in town. He almost forgot that all this was his work, so smoothly did the story steal across his senses and beguile him into half believing it was true and not a fabric which he had built with careful planning and much toil. He saw the round-up scenes; the day-herd, the cutting-out and the branding, the beef-herd driven to the shipping cars. True, those steers were not exactly prime beef,--he had caught the culls only, late in the season for these scenes--but they pa.s.sed, with one audible comment that this was a poor season for beef!

"We rounded 'em up and we put 'em in the cars--"

The sub-t.i.tle sang itself familiarly into the minds of the range men.

More than one voice was heard to begin a surrept.i.tious humming of the old tune, and to cease abruptly with the sudden self-consciousness of the singer.

But there was the story, growing insensibly out of the range work. Luck, more at ease now in his mind, studied it critically. There was the quarrel between old Dave and Andy, his son. He saw the old man out with his men, standing his shift of night-guard, stubbornly resisting the creeping years and his load of trouble; riding around the sleeping herd with his head sunk on his chest, meeting the younger guard twice on each complete circle, and yet never seeming to see him at all.

"Sing low to your cattle, sing low to your steers--"

The words and the scene opened wide the door of memory and let whole troops of ghosts come drifting in out of the past. The hall, Luck roused himself to notice, was very, very still; so still that the sizzling sound of the machine at the rear was distinct and oppressive.

There was the blizzard, terrible in its biting realism. There was the old cow and calf, separated from the herd, fighting in the primal instinct to preserve themselves alive,--fighting and losing. There was that other, more terrible fight for existence, the fight of the Native Son against the snow and the cold. Men drew their breath sharply when he fell and did not rise again. They shivered when the snow began to drift against his quiet body, to lodge and shift and settle, and grow higher and higher until the bank was even with his shoulders, to drift over him and make of him a white mound--And then, when Andy staggered up through the swirl, leading his horse and shouting; when he stumbled against Miguel and tried to raise him and rouse him, a sound like a groan went through the crowd.

"Close a call as I ever had was in a blizzard like that," the old man at Luck's left whispered agitatedly to Luck behind his palm, when the lights snapped on while the operator was changing for the last reel.

There was Andy, haunted and haggard, at home again with his father. There were those dissolve scenes of the "phantom herd" drifting always across the skyline whenever Andy looked out into the night or rose startled from uneasy sleep. Weird, it was,--weird and real and very terrible. And, at last, there was that wonderful camp-fire scene of the Indian girl who prayed to her G.o.ds before she went to meet her lover who was dead and could not keep the tryst. There were heart-breaking scenes where the Indian girl wandered in wild places, looking, hoping, despairing--Luck had planned every little detail of those scenes, and yet they thrilled him as though he had come to them unawares.

He did not wait after the last scene faded out slowly. He slipped quietly into the aisle and went away, while the hands of the old-timers were stinging with applause. Halfway down the block he heard it still, and his steps quickened unconsciously. They were calling his name, back there in the hall. They were all talking at once and clapping their hands and, as an interlude, shouting the name of Luck Lindsay. But Luck did not heed.

He wanted to get away by himself. He did not feel as though he could say anything at all to any one, just then. He had seen his Big Picture, and he had seen that it was as big and as perfect, almost, as he had dreamed it. To Luck, at that moment, words would have cheapened it,--even the words of the old cattlemen.

He went to his hotel and straight up to his room, regardless of the fact that it would have been to his advantage to mingle with his guests and to listen to their praise. He went to bed and lay there in the dark, reliving the scenes of his story. Then, after awhile, he drifted off into sleep, his first dreamless, untroubled slumber in many a night.

By the time the Convention was a.s.sembled the next day, however, he had recovered his old spirit of driving energy. The chairman had invited him by telephone to attend the afternoon meeting, and Luck went--to be greeted by a rousing applause when he walked down the aisle to the platform where the chairman was waiting for him.

Resolutions had already been pa.s.sed, the Convention as a body thanking Luck Lindsay for the privilege of seeing what was in their judgment the greatest Western picture that had ever been produced. The chairman made a little speech about the pleasure and the privilege, and presented Luck with a letter of endors.e.m.e.nt and signed with due formality by chairman and secretary and sealed with the official seal. Attached to the letter was a copy of the vote of thanks, and you may imagine how Luck smiled when he saw that!

He stayed a little while, and during the recess which presently was called he shook hands with many an old-timer whose name stood for a good deal in the great State of Texas. Then he left them, still smiling over what he called his good luck, and wired a copy of the letter of endors.e.m.e.nt to all the trade journals, to be incorporated in his full-page advertising. By another stroke of luck he caught most of the trade journals before their forms closed for the next issue, so that _The Phantom Herd_ was speedily heralded throughout the profession as the first really authentic Western drama ever produced. By still another stroke of what he called luck, an a.s.sociated Press man found him out, and was pleased to ask him many questions and to make a few notes; and Luck, wise to the value of publicity, answered the questions and saw to it that the notes recorded interesting facts.

That evening Luck, feeling that he had reached the last mile-post on the road to success, hunted up a few old-timers who appealed to him most as true types of the range, and gave them a dinner in a certain place which he knew was run by an old round-up cook. There was nothing about that dinner which would have appealed to a cabaret crowd. They talked of the old days when Luck was a lad, those old-timers; they talked of trail-herds and of droughts and of floods and blizzards and range wars and the market prices of beef "on the hoof." They called in the old round-up cook and cursed him companionably as one of themselves, and remembered that more than one of them had run when he pounded the bottom of a frying pan and hollered "Come and get it!" They ate and they smoked and they talked and talked and talked, until Luck had to indulge himself in a taxi if he would not miss the eleven o'clock train north. His only regret, in spite of the fact that he was practically and familiarly broke again, was that circ.u.mstances did not permit the Happy Family to sit with him at that table. Especially did he regret not having old Applehead and the dried little man with him that night to make his gathering complete.

CHAPTER TWENTY

"SHE'S SHAPING UP LIKE A BANK ROLL"

"Well," said Luck to the Happy Family, "we've come this far along the trail, and now I'm stuck again. Bank won't loan any more on the camera, and I've got a dollar and six bits to market _The Phantom Herd_ with!

Everything's fine so far; she's advertised,--or will be when the magazines come out,--and she's got some good press notices to back her up; but she ain't outa the woods yet. I've got to raise some money somehow. I hate to ask poor old Applehead--"

"Pore old Applehead, my granny!" bawled Big Medicine, laughing his big _haw-haw._ "Pore ole Applehead's sure steppin' high these days. He'd mortgage his ranch and feel like a millionaire, by cripes! His ole Come-Paddy cat jest natcherally walloped the tar outa Shunky Cheestely, and Applehead seen him doin' it. Come-Paddy, he's hangin' out in the house now, by cripes, 'cept when he takes a sashay down to the stable lookin' fer more. And Shunky, he's bedded down under the Ketch-all, when he ain't hittin' fer the tall timber with his tail clamped down between his legs. Honest to grandma, Luck, you couldn't hit Applehead at a better time. He'll borry money er do anything yuh care to ask, except shut up that there cat uh hisn."

"Well, luck may come my way; I'll just sit tight a few days and see,"

said Luck. "When that positive film comes, I'll have to rustle money somewhere to get it outa the express office, so we can make more prints. And--"

"And grind our daylights out again on that there drum that never does git wound up?" groaned Big Medicine, and felt his biceps tenderly.

"We won't rush the next job quite so hard," Luck soothed, perfectly amiable and easy to live with, now that the worst was over. "We made a darn good set of prints, just the same; boys, you oughta seen that picture! I've a good mind to get some house here in town to run it; say, I might raise some money that way, if I can't do it any other." And then his enthusiasm cooled. "Town isn't big enough for a long-enough run," he considered disgustedly. "I'm past the two-bit stage of the game now."

"Well, you ask Applehead to raise the money," advised Weary. "Or one of us will write to Chip for some. Mamma! The world's full of money! Seems like it ought to be easy to get hold of some."

"It is--but it ain't," Luck stated somewhat ambiguously, and turned the talk to his meeting with the old-timers, and prepared to "sit tight" and wait for his G.o.d Good Luck to smile upon him.

The smile arrived at noon the next day, in the form of a wire from Philadelphia. Luck read it and gave a whoop of joy quite at variance with his usual surface calm.

Can Offer You Fifteen Hundred Dollars for Pennsylvania Rights The Phantom Herd Usual Ten Cents Per Foot Positive Prints if Accepted Wire at Once and Ship to This Point

RJ Crittenden

"I hollered too soon," groaned Luck, when he had read it the second time, pushing back his hair distractedly. "How the devil am I going to send him any positive prints at ten cents a foot or ten cents an inch or any other price? Till I get that shipment of positive, I can't fill any orders at all! And until I begin to fill orders, I can't realize on the film. Can you beat that? I'll have to wire him to wait, and that's two thousand dollars tied up!"

"Aw, gwan!" Happy Jack croaked argumentatively. "Why don't you send him what you took to the Convention?"

Luck stared at Happy stupefied before he said a word. "Say, Miguel, you saddle your ridge-runner while I get ready to take this wire hack to town and send it off," he snapped, preparing to write. "Sure, I'll send that set of prints! Happy, you can go to the head of the cla.s.s. Now it's only a case of sit tight till the money comes. The prints are packed and in the bank vault, so I'll just get them out and send them C.O.D. to Mr. Crittenden, along with the states rights contract. How's that for luck, boys?"

"Pretty good--for Luck," grinned Andy meaningly. "Fly at it, you coming millionaire!"

"Just a case of sit tight, boys. _Adios!"_ cried Luck jubilantly as he hurried away.

Once start along a smooth trail, and everything seems to conspire toward a pleasant trip. To prove it, Luck found another telegram waiting for him in Albuquerque. This was from Martinson, and might be interpreted as an apology more or less abject. Certainly it was an urgent request that he return immediately to Los Angeles and to his old place at the Acme, and produce Western pictures under no supervision whatever.

Luck gave a little chuckle when he pocketed that message, but he did not send any answer. He meant to wait and talk it over with the boys first.

"Better proposition than before," Martinson said. Well, perhaps it would be best to look into it; Luck was too experienced to believe that one success means permanent success; there are too many risks for the free lance to run when a single failure means financial annihilation. If the Acme would come to his terms, it might be to his advantage to take his boys back and accept this peace-offering. At any rate, he appreciated to the full the triumph they had scored.