by B. M. Bower
CHAPTER THREE
AND THEY SIGH FOR THE DAYS THAT ARE GONE
Just when Luck's new acquaintances first forgot to carry on theirwhimsical pretense of knowing little of range matters, neither of themcould have told afterwards. They left town with the tacit understandingbetween them that they were going to have some fun with the Happy Familyand with this likable little man of the movies. They rode out betweenlong lines of hated barbed wire stretched taut, and they liedsystematically and consistently to Luck Lindsay about themselves andtheir fellows and their particular condition of servitude to fate.
But somewhere along the trail they forgot to carry on the deception; andonly Luck could have told why they forgot, and when they forgot, and howit was that, ten miles or so out from town, the two were telling how theFlying U had fought to save itself from extinction; how the "bunch" hadschemed and worked and had in a measure succeeded in turning aside thetide of immigration from the Flying U range. Big issues they talked of asthey rode three abreast through the warm haze of early fall; and as theytalked, Luck's mind visioned the tale vividly, and his eyes swept thefence-checkered upland with a sympathetic understanding.
"Right here," said Andy at last, when they came up to a gate set acrossthe trail, "right here is where we drawed the line--and held it. Now,half of those shacks you see speckled around are empty. The rest holdnesters too poor to get outa the country. One or two, that had a littlemoney, have stuck and gone into sheep. But from here on to Dry Creekthere's nothing ranging but the Flying U brand. Not much--compared towhat the old range used to be--but still it keeps things going. Wethrowed a dam across the coulee, up there next the hills, and there'ssome fair hay land we're putting water on. We have to winter-feedpractically everything these days. The range just nicely keeps the stockfrom snow to snow. I've got pitchfork callouses on my hands I never willoutgrow if I was to fall heir to a billion dollars and never use my handsagain for fifty years except to feed myself. It takes work, believe me!And if there's anything on earth a puncher hates worse than work, it'ssome other kind of work.
"At the Flying U," he went on, looking at Luck pensively, "you'll see theeffect of too many people moved into the range country. If there'sanything more distressing than a baby left without a mother, it's a bunchof cow-punchers that's outlived their range. Ain't that right?"
"Sure it's right!" Luck's sympathy was absolutely sincere. "How well Iknow it! Barbed wire scraped me outa the saddle in Wyoming--barbed wireand sheep. All there is left for a fellow is to forget it and start abarber shop or a cigar stand, or else make pictures of the old days, theway I've been doing. You can get a little fun out of making pictures ofwhat used to be your everyday life. You can step up on a horse and gowhoopin' over the hills and kinda forget it ain't true." A wistfulnesswas in Luck's tone. "You pick out the big minutes from the old days--thathad a whole lot of dust and sun and thirst and hunger in between, whenall's said--you pick out the big minutes, and you bring them to lifeagain, and sort of push them up close together and leave out most of thehardships. That's why so many of the old boys drift into pictures, Ireckon. They try to forget themselves in the big minutes."
The two who rode with him were silent for a space. Then the NativeSon spoke drily: "About the biggest minutes we get now come aboutmeal times."
"Oh, we can get down in the breaks on round-up time and kinda forget theworld's fenced clear 'way round it with barb-wire," Andy bettered thestatement. "But round-up gets shorter every year."
"My next picture," Luck observed artfully and yet with a genuine desireto unbosom himself a little to these two who would understand, "my nextpicture is going to be different. It's going to have a crackajack storyin it, of course, but it will have something more than a story. I'm goingto start it off with a trail herd coming up from Texas. You know--like itwas when we were kids. I'm going to show those cattle trailing alongtired--and footsore, some of them--and a drag strung out behind for amile. I'm going to show the punchers tired and hungry, and riding halfasleep in the saddle. And with that for a starter, I'm going to show thereal range; the _real_ range--get that, boys? I'm going to cut clean awayfrom regulation moving-picture West; clear out away from posses chasingoutlaws all over a ten-acre location. I'm going to find me a real oldcow-ranch; or if I can't find one, by thunder I'm going to _make_ me one.I'm sick of piling into a machine and driving out into Griffith Park andhunting a location for shooting scrapes to take place in. I know a placewhere I could produce stuff that would make people talk about it for amonth after. Maybe the buildings would need some doctoring, but there'ssure some round-pole corrals that would make your mouth water."
"We used to have some," sighed Andy, "at the Flying U. But they kindawent to pieces, and Chip's been replacing them with plank. By gracious,you don't see many round-pole corrals any more, come to think of it.There's remains, scattered around over the country."
"The West--the real honest-to-goodness, twelve-months-in-the-year West,"Luck went on riding his hobby, "has been mighty little used in films.Ever notice that? It's all gone to shooting, and stealing the fullproduct of all the gold mines in the world, and killing off more bad menthan the Lord ever sent a flood to punish. For film purposes, the Westconsists of one part beautiful maiden in distress, three parts bandit,and two parts hero. Mix these to taste with plenty of swift action andgun-smoke, and serve with bandits all dead or handcuffed and beautifulmaiden and hero in lover's embrace on top. That's your film West,boys--and how well I know it!" Luck stopped to light a cigarette and toheave a sigh. "I've been building film West to order for four years now,and more. Only fun I've had, and the best work I've done, I did with abunch of Indians I've just taken back to their reservation. For the rest,it's mostly bunk."
"Not that stage-driver picture," Andy dissented. "There wasn't any bunkabout that, old-timer. That was some driving!"
"Some driving, yes. Sure, it was. It was darned good driving, but thesame old story doctored up a little. Same old shipment of gold, same oldbandits lying in wait, same old hero doing stunts. I ought to know," headded with a grin. "I wrote the story and did the stunts myself."
"Well, they were some stunts!" admired Andy with unusual sincerity.
Luck waved aside the compliment and went back to his hobby. "Yes, but theWest isn't just a setting for stunts. I've got my story--here," and hetapped his forehead, which was broad and full and not too high. "I'mgoing to fire my camera man and get a better one, and I'm going to roundme up a bunch of real boys that can get into the story and live it sowell they won't need to do any acting,--boys that can stand a panoram ontheir work in the saddle. I've been getting by with a bunch of freaksthat think they're real riders if they can lope a horse up-grade withoutfalling off backwards. Most of my direction of those actorines has beenknowing to a hair how much footage to give 'em without showing how rawtheir work is.
"They say the public demands a certain grade of rottenness in Westernfilms, but I never believed that, down deep in my heart. I believe thepublic stands for that stuff because they don't see any better. Thisfour-reeler I've got in mind will sure open the eyes of someproducers--or I'll buy me a five-acre tract in Burbank and raise stringbeans for a living."
"I've got a patch of string beans," sighed the Native Son, "that I'vebeen sitting up nights with. I don't know what ails the cussed things.Some kind of little green bug chews on them soon as my back is turned.They ought to be ripe by now--and they aren't through blossoming. Don'tgo into beans, _amigo_."
Luck looked at him and laughed. The Native Son, in black and white Angorachaps and cream-colored shirt and silver-filigreed hatband as ornamentaltouches to his attire, did not look like a man who was greatly worriedover his crop of string beans while he rode with a negligent grace awayfrom a glowing sunset. But in these days the West is full ofincongruities.
"Oh, shut up about them beans!" implored Andy Green with a bored air."It's water they want; and a touch of the hoe now and then. You leave 'emfor a month at a time and then go back and wonder why you can't
pick ahatful off 'em. Same as the rest of us have been ranching," he addedruefully, turning to Luck. "With the best intentions in the world, theLord never meant us fellers for farmers, and that's a fact. We'll drop ahoe any time of day or night to get out riding after stock. Of course, wedidn't take up our claims with the idea of settling down and riding a hoehandle the rest of our lives. If we had, I guess maybe we'd have done alittle better at it."
"We did what we started out to do," the Native Son pointed out lazily:"We saved the range--what little there is to save--and we kept a lot ofpoor yaps from starving to death on that land, didn't we?" He smiledslowly. "If I hadn't gotten gay and planted those beans," he added, "I'dbe feeling fine over it. A girl gave me a handful of pinto beans andasked me to plant them--I did hoe them," he defended tardily to Andy. "Ihoed them the day before the Fourth. You know I did. Same time you hoedthose lemon-colored spuds of yours."
Luck let them wrangle humorously over their agricultural deficiencies,and drifted off into open-eyed dreaming. Into his picture he began to fitthese two speculatively, with a purely tentative adjustment of theirpersonalities to his requirements. They were arguing about which of thetwo was the worst farmer; but Luck, riding alongside them, was seeingthem slouched in their saddles and riding, bone-tired, with a shufflingtrail-herd hurrying to the next watering place. He was seeing themgalloping hard on the flanks of a storm-lashed stampede, with cunninglyplaced radium flares lighting the scene brilliantly now and then. He wasseeing these two plodding, heads bent, into the teeth of a blizzard. Hewas seeing...
"I'll have to ride home to the missus now," Andy announced the secondtime before Luck heard him.
"Mig will take you on down to the home ranch, and after supper I'll rideover. So long."
He swung away from them upon a faintly beaten trail, looked back once togrin and wave his hand, and touched his horse with the spurs. Luck staredafter him thoughtfully, but he did not put his thoughts into words. Hehad been trained in the hard school of pictures. He had learned to holdhis tongue upon certain matters, such as his opinion of a man's personalattributes, or criticism of his appearance, or anything which might berepeated, maliciously or otherwise, to that man. He did not say to MiguelRapponi, for instance, what he thought of Andy Green as a man or a rider.He did not mention him at all. He had learned in bitterness how idlegossip may eat away the efficiency of a whole company.
For that reason, and also because his mind was busy with his plans andthe best means of carrying them out, the two rode almost in silence tothe hill that shut the Flying U coulee away from the world. Luck gave along sigh and muttered "Great!" when the whole coulee lay spread beforethem. Then his quick glances took in various details of the ranch and hesighed again, from a different emotion.
"It must have been a great place twenty years ago," he amended his firstunqualified enthusiasm.
"Why twenty years ago?" The Native Son gave him a quick,half-resentful glance.
"Twenty years ago there wasn't so much barb-wire trimming," Luckexplained from the viewpoint of the trained producer of Western pictures."You couldn't place a camera anywhere now for a long shot across thecoulee without bringing a fence into the scene. And the log stables aretoo old, and the new ones too new." He pulled up and stared long at thesweep of hills beyond, and the wide spread of the meadow and the bigfield farther up stream, and at the lazy meandering of Flying U creekwith its willow fringe just turning yellow with the first touch ofautumn. He looked at the buildings sprawled out below him.
"When that log house was headquarters for the ranch, and the round-polecorrals were the only fences on the place," he said; "when those oldsheds held the saddle horses on cold nights, and the wagons were out fromgreen grass to snowfall, and the boys laid around all winter, justreportin' regular at grub-pile and catching up on sleep they'd lost inthe summer--Lor-dee, what a place it must have been!"
There was something in his tone that brought the Native Son for aninstant face to face with the Flying U in the old days when all the rangewas free. So, with faces sober, because the old days were gone and wouldnever any more return, they rode down the grade and up to the new stablethat was a monument to the dead past, even though it might also be asign-post pointing to present prosperity. And in this wise came LuckLindsay to the Flying U and was made welcome.