The Phantom Herd

by Bower, B M

  "Your dad was to have come last night," Luck suggested. "You tried to keep him from going in the first place, and now we've got to establish the fact that he is away behind time getting home. You know, this is where his horse falls with him, and he lies out all night, and Big Medicine brings him in next day. You kind of have a hunch that something is wrong, and you keep looking for him. Sabe." He fussed with the camera, adjusting it to what seemed to him the right focus. "Want to rehearse it first?" he added considerately.

  "No," Rosemary gasped, "I don't. I know how to walk, and how to turn around and come back. I've been doing those things for twenty-two years or so, but Luck Lindsay, if you don't let me do it right away quick, I just know I'll stub my toe and fall down, or something!" The worst of it was, she meant what she said. Rosemary, I am sorry to say, was so scared that her teeth chattered.

  "All right, you go on and do it now," Luck permitted, and began to turn the crank at seventeen in order to hold her action slow, while he watched her. Groaning inwardly, he continued to turn, while Rosemary went primly down the winding trail, stood with her toes on the line Luck had marked for her, gazed stiffly off to the right, and then, when he called to her, turned and came back, staring fixedly over his head. You have seen little girls with an agonized self-consciousness walk up an aisle to a platform where they must bow to their fathers and mothers and their critical schoolmates and "speak a piece." Rosemary resembled the most bashful little girl that you can recall.

  "All right," said Luck tonelessly, and placed his palm over the lens while he gave the crank another turn. "We'll try it again to-morrow. Don't worry. You'll get the hang of it all right."

  His very smile, meant to encourage her, brought swift tears that rolled down and streaked the powder and rouge on her cheeks. She had made a mess of it all; she knew that just as well as Luck knew it. He gave her shoulder a reassuring pat as she went by, and that finished Rosemary. She retreated into the gloomy, one-windowed bedroom with its litter of half-unpacked suitcases and an overflowing trunk, and she cried heartbrokenly because she knew she would never in this world be able to forget that terrible, winking eye and the clicking whirr of Luck's camera. Just to think of facing it gave her a "goose-flesh" chill,-and she did so want to help Luck!

  With the Happy Family and old Dave, Luck fared better. They, fortunately for him, were already what he called camera-broke. They could forget all about the camera while they caught and saddled their horses. They could mount and ride away unconcernedly without even thinking of trying to act. Luck's spirits rose a little while he turned the crank, and just for pure relief at the perfect naturalness of it, he gave that scene an extra ten feet of footage.

  With Applehead he had some difficulty. Applehead looked the part of sheriff, all right. He wore his trousers tucked inside his boots because he always wore them so, especially when he rode. He wore his big six-shooter buckled snugly about his middle instead of dangling far down his thigh, because he had always worn it that way. He wore his sheriffs badge pinned on his vest and his coat unbuttoned, so that the wind blew it open now and then and revealed the star. Altogether he looked exactly as he had looked when he was serving one of his four terms of office. But when he faced the camera, he was inclined to strut, and Luck had no negative to waste. He resorted to strategy, which consisted of a little wholesome sarcasm.

  "Listen, Applehead! the public is going to get the idea that you sure hate yourself!" he remarked, standing with his hands on his hips while Applehead came strutting into the foreground. "You'll never make any one believe you were ever a real, honest-to-God sheriff. They'll put you down as an extra picked up through a free employment agency and feeling like you owned the plant because you're earning a couple of dollars. Go back down there to your horse and wait till some of that importance evaporates!"

  Applehead went off swearing to himself, and Luck got a fifteen-foot scene of the departure of a very indignant sheriff who is with difficulty holding his anger subordinate to his official dignity. Before he had time to recover his usual good humor, Luck with further disparaging comment called him back. Applehead, smarting under the sarcasm, came ready for war, and Luck turned the crank until the sheriff was almost within reach of him.

  "Gol darn you, Luck, I'll take that there camery and bust it over your danged head!" he spluttered. "I'll show ye! Call me a bum that's wearin' a shurf's star fer the first time in his life, will ye! Why, I'll jest about wear ye out if-"

  "All right, pard; I was just aiming to make you come up looking mad. You did fine." Luck stopped to roll a smoke as though nothing had occurred but tiresome routine.

  Applehead looked down at him uncertainly. He looked at the Happy Family, saw them grinning, and gave a mollified chuckle. "We-ell, you was takin' a danged long chance, now I'm tellin' yuh, boy!" he warned. "I was all set to tangle with yuh; and if I had, I reckon I'd a spiled something 'fore I got through."

  It was noon by the sun, and a film of haze was spreading across the sky. Luck shot another scene or two and shouldered his precious camera reluctantly, when Rosemary, red-lidded but elaborately cheerful in her manner, called them in to dinner.

  "She's goin' to storm, shore's you live," Applehead predicted, sniffing into the wind like a dog confronted by a strange scent. A little later he looked up from his full plate with a worried air. "How's a storm goin' to hit ye, Luck?" he asked. "Kinda put a stop to the pitcher business, won't it?"

  "Not if it snows, it won't," Luck answered calmly, helping himself to the brown beans boiled with bacon. "We'll round up a bunch of cattle, and I'll shoot my blizzard stuff. I'll need more negative, though, for that. If I knew for sure it's going to storm-"

  "I'm tellin' yuh it is, ain't I?" Applehead blew into his saucer of coffee,-his table manners not being the nicest in the world. "I kin smell snow two days off, and that there wind comin' up the canyon has got snow behind it, now I'm tellin' ye. 'Nother thing, I kin tell by the way Compadre walks, liftin' his feet high and bushin' up what's left of his tail. That there cat's smarter'n some humans, and he shore kin smell snow comin', same's I do. He hates snow worse'n pizen." Applehead drank his coffee in great gulps. "I'll bet he's huntin' a warm corner somewheres, right now."

  "No, he ain't, by cripes!" Big Medicine corrected him. "That there Come-Paddy cat of yourn has got worse troubles than snow! Dog's got him treed up the windmill. I seen-"

  Applehead did not wait to hear what Big Medicine had seen. He drank the remainder of his coffee in one great, scalding gulp, and went out to rescue his cat and to put the fear of death into the little black dog. When he returned, puffing a little, to his interrupted meal and had told them a few of the things he meant to do to that dog if it refused to mend its ways, he declared again that he could "shore smell snow behind that wind."

  "I wish it would hold off till that raw stock gets here," Luck observed anxiously. "I wired the order in, but at that I'm afraid it won't get here before the end of the week. I'll have one of you boys pack me some water into the dark room so I can develop negatives right after dinner. I want to see how she's coming out before I take any more."

  "I thought Andy'd fixed a hose fer that dark room," Happy Jack said forebodingly. If there was water to be carried, Happy was pessimistically certain that he would have to carry it.

  "I turned that hose over to the missus for a colander," Andy explained soberly. "By gracious, I couldn't figure out anything else it could be used for."

  "Did you get the barrels fixed like I said?"

  "I sure did. Applehead must have had a Dutch picnic or two out here, from the number of beer kegs scattered all over the place. And a couple of big whisky-"

  "Them there whisky bar'ls I bought and used fer water bar'ls till I got my well bored. Luck kin mind the time when we hauled water on a sled outa the arroyo down below." Applehead's eyes turned anxiously to Rosemary, toward whom he was beginning to show a timidly worshipful attitude.

  "You bet I can. Do you remember the time we hitched that big bronk up with
old Wall-eye, to haul water? Got back here a little ways beyond the stable with two barrels sloshing over the top, and the cat-not this one, but a black-and-white cat, that was-the cat jumped out from behind a buck brush.Hot dog! That bronk went straight in the air! Remember that time?" Luck leaned back in his chair to laugh.

  "I shore do," Applehead chuckled. "Luck, here, he was walkin' behind the sled and drivin',-and he wasn't as big as he is now, even. That was soon after he come out here to fatten up like. Little bit of a peaked-why, I bet he didn't weigh over a hundred pounds after a full meal! He was ridin' the lines an' steadyin' the bar'ls, busy as a dog at a badger hole, when the cat jumped out, an' that there bronk r'ared back and swung off short and hit fur the mesa; and Luck here a-hangin' and hollerin', an' me a-leggin' it to ketch up, and bar'ls teeterin' and-Mind how you was bound you'd kill that cat uh mine?" he asked Luck, tears of laughter dimming his eyes. "That was ole Leather Lungs. He tuk sick an' died, year after that. Luck shore was mad enough to eat that thar cat, now I'm tellin' yuh!"

  The Happy Family laughed together over the picture Applehead had crudely painted for them. But Luck, although he had started the story, already was slipping away from the present and was trying to peer into the future. He did not even hear what Applehead was saying to keep the boys in a roar of mirth. He was mentally reckoning the number of days since he had wired his order for a C.O.D. shipment of negative to be rushed to Albuquerque. Two days in Los Angeles, getting ready for the venture; two days on the way to Applehead's ranch, one day here,-five days altogether. He had told them to rush the order. If they did, there was a chance that it might have arrived. He decided suddenly to make the trip and see; but first he would develop the exposed negative of the forenoon's work. He got up with that businesslike air which the Happy Family had already begun to recognize as a signal for quick action, and took off his coat.

  "Happy, I wish you and Bud would carry me some water," he said. "I'll show you where to put it; I'm going to need a lot. Will you help me wind the film on my patent rack, Andy? And I'll want that little team hitched to the buckboard so I can go to town after I'm through. I've got some hopes of my negative being there."

  "Want the rest of us to work on that stage, don't you, boss?" Weary asked, pausing in the doorway to roll a smoke. "And please may I wipe off my eyebrows?"

  "Why, sure!-to both questions," answered Luck, going over to his camera. "I can't do much more till I get more negative, even with the light right, which it isn't. You go ahead and finish the stage this afternoon. And be sure the uprights are guyed for a high wind; she sure can blow, in this man's country."

  "You're danged right, she can blow!" Applehead testified emphatically. "She can blow, and she's goin' to blow. You want to take your overshoes and mittens, boy, when you start out fer town. You know how cold she can get on that mesa. Chances are you'll come back facin' a blizzard. And, say! I wisht you'd take that there dog back with yuh, Luck, 'cause if yuh don't, him and me's shore goin' to tangle, now I'm tellin' yuh! Mighty funny note when a cat dassent walk acrost his own dooryard in broad daylight, no more! Poor ole Compadre was shakin' like a leaf when I clumb up and got him down of'n the windmill. Way the wind was whistlin' up there, the chances are he's done ketched cold in 'is tail, and if he has, yuh better see to it that thar dog ain't within gunshot uh me, now I'm tellin' yuh!"

  Luck did not hear half the tirade. He had gone into the dark room and was dissolving hypo for the fixing bath, while the boys tramped in with full water buckets and began to fill the barrels he had placed in a row along the wall. He was impatient to see how his work of the forenoon would come out of the developer, and he was quite as impatient to be on his way to town. Whether he admitted it or not, he had a good deal of faith in Applehead's weather forecasts; he remembered how often the old fellow had predicted storms in the past when Luck spent a long winter with him here in this same adobe dwelling. If it did snow, he must have plenty of negative for his winter scenes; for snow never laid long on the level here, and he had a full reel of winter stuff to make.

  He called Andy to come and help him wind his exposed film on the crude, improvised film racks that had lately been beer kegs, and closed the dark room door upon the last empty bucket that had been carried in full. In the dull light of the ruby lamp he carefully wound his long strip of exposed negative, emulsion side out, around the keg which Andy held for him. His developer bath was ready, and he immersed the film-jacketed keg slowly, with due regard for bubbles of air.

  "You may not know it, but right here in this dark room is where I look for the real test of success or failure," he confided to Andy, while he rocked the keg gently in the barrel. "I wish I could afford a good camera-man; but then, the most of them wouldn't work with this kind of an outfit; they'd demand all the laboratory conveniences, and that would run into money. Ever notice that when you can't get anything but the crudest kind of tools to work with, you generally have to use them yourself? But it will take more than-oh,hell !"

  "What's wrong?" Andy Green bent his brown head anxiously down beside Luck's fast graying mop of hair, and peered at the images coming out of the yellowish veil that had hidden them. "Ain't they good?"

  Luck reached into the water tank and splashed a little water on his film to check it while he looked. "Now, what in the name of-" He scowled perplexedly down at the streaked strips. "What do you suppose streaked it like that?" He lifted worried, gray eyes to Andy's apprehensive frown, and looked again disgustedly at the negative before he dropped it back with a splash into the developer.

  "No good; she's ruined," he said in the flat tone of a great disappointment. "Eighty feet of film gone to granny. Well, that's luck for you!"

  Andy reached gingerly into the barrel and brought up the keg so that he could take another look. He had owned a kodak for years and had done enough amateur developing to know that something had gone very wrong here.

  "What ails the darned thing?" he asked fretfully, turning to Luck, who was scowling abstractedly into his barrels of "soup."

  "You can search me," Luck replied dully. "Looks like I'd been stung with a bunch of bum chemicals. Either that, or something's wrong with our tanks here." He reached down and pulled up the keg by its hooped top, glimpsed a stain on his finger and thumb and let the keg slip hastily over into the pure water so that he could examine the stains.

  "Iron! Iron, sure as thunder!" he exclaimed suddenly. "Those iron hoops are what did it." He rubbed his hand vexedly. "I knew better than that, too. I don't see why I didn't think about those hoops. Of all the idiotic, fool-"

  "What kinda brain do you think you've got in your head, anyway?" Andy broke in spiritedly. "Way you've been working it lately, engineering every blamed detail yourself, you oughtn't to wonder if one little thing gets by you."

  "Well, it's done now," Luck dismissed the accident stoically. "Lucky I started in on those costume and make-up tests of all you fellows, and that scene of your wife's. And if I'd used the other half barrel instead of this five-gallon keg for a start-off, I'd have spoiled the whole bunch. I'll have to throw out all that developer. Blast the luck! Well, let's get busy." He pulled out the keg and held it up for another disgusted look. "I won't bother fixing that at all. Call Happy and Bud back, will you, and have them roll this barrel of developer out and ditch it? And then take those two half barrels you were going to fix, and wrap them with clothesline,-that cotton line on one of the trunks,-and knock off all the hoops. I'm going to beat it to 'Querque and see if that stuff's there. We'll try developing the rest this evening, after I get back. Darn such luck!"

  The five thousand feet of negative had not arrived, but there was a letter from the company saying that they had shipped it. Luck, bone-tired and cold from his fifteen-mile drive across the unsheltered mesa, turned away from the express office, debating whether to wait for the film or go back to the ranch. It would be a pretty cold drive back, in the edge of the evening and facing that raw wind; he decided that he would save time by waiting here in town, sin
ce he could not go on with his picture without more negative. He turned back impulsively, put his head in at the door of the express office, and called to the clerk:

  "When do you get your next express from the East, brother? I'll wait for that negative if you think it's likely to come by to-morrow noon or there-abouts."

  "Might come in on the eight o'clock train to-night, or to-morrow morning. You say it was shipped the sixteenth? Ought to be here by morning, sure."

  "I'll take a chance," Luck said half to himself, and closed the door.

  A round-shouldered, shivering youth, who had been leaning apathetically against the side of the building, moved hesitatingly up to him. "Say, do I get it right that you're in the movies?" he inquired anxiously. "Heard you mention looking for negative. Haven't got a job for a fellow, have you?"

  Luck wheeled and looked him over, from his frowsy, soft green beaver hat with the bow at the back, to his tan pumps that a prosperous young man would have thrown back in the closet six weeks before, as being out of season. The young man grinned his understanding of the appraisement, and Luck saw that his teeth were well-kept, and that his nails were clean and trimmed carefully. He made a quick mental guess and hit very close to the fellow's proper station in life and his present predicament.

  "What end of the business do you know?" he asked, turning his face toward the warmth of the hotel.

  "Operator. Worked two years at the Bijou in Cleveland. I'm down on my luck now; thought I'd try the California studios, because I wanted to learn the camera, and I figured on getting a look at the Fair. I stalled around out there till my money gave out, and then I started back to God's country." He shrugged his shoulders cynically. "This is about as far as I'm likely to get, unless I can learn to do without eating and a few other little luxuries," he summed up the situation grimly.