The Phantom Herd

by B. M. Bower

  CHAPTER SIX

  VILLAINS ALL AND PROUD OF IT

  "Day's work, boys!" called Luck through his little megaphone at threeo'clock one day, and doubled up his working script that was much crumpledand scribbled with hasty pencil marks. "No use spoiling good film," heremarked to his assistant, glancing up at the sweeping fog bank, off tothe west. "By the time we rehearse the next scene, she'll be too dark toshoot. You go and order these cavalry costumes, Beckitt; and, say! Youtell them down there that if they're shy on the number, they better setdown and make enough, because they won't see a cent of our money ifthere's so much as a canteen lacking. And tell 'em to send army guns.That last assortment of junk they sent out was pathetic. I want equipmentfor fifty U.S. Cavalry, time of the early eighties. That don't meanforty-nine--get me? You're inclined to let those fellows have it theirown way too much. I want this cavalry--"

  "There ain't any close-ups of cavalry, are there?" Beckitt demurred. "Itold them last time I thought those guns would do, because I knew thedetail wouldn't--"

  "Listen." Luck's tone was deliberately tolerant. "That's maybe the reasonyou've been searching your soul for all along--the reason why you can'tget past the assistant-director stage. I want those fifty cavalrymenequipped! Do you get that?" While his eyes held Beckitt uncomfortablywith their stern steadfastness, Luck thrust the script into his coatpocket that had a permanent, motion-picture-director sag to it. "If Imeant that any old gun would do, I'd give my orders that way. Now,remember, there isn't going to be any waiting around while you go backand argue, nor any makeshifts, nor anything but fifty cavalrymen fullyequipped. Here's the list complete for to-morrow's order. You see thatit's filled!"

  Beckitt took the list which he should have made himself, since that waswhat he was paid for doing, and went off in the sulks and the companymachine. Luck pulled a solacing cigar from an inner pocket and lickeddown the roughened outer leaves, and scowled thoughtfully across thestudio yard. The camera man was figuring up footage or something, and hisassistant was hurrying to get the tripod folded and put away. There was anew briskness in the movements of every one save Luck himself, after hespoke that last sentence through the megaphone.

  The Happy Family--or that part of it which had thrown away pitchforks andtaken to the pictures--came clanking across the stage toward Luck. Youwould never have known the Happy Family, unless it were the Native Sonwho wore his usual regalia in exaggerated form. The Happy Family hadwide, flapping chaps that made them drag their feet they were so heavyand so long, and great Mexican spurs whose rowels dug tiny trenches inthe ground when they walked. They wore the biggest Stetsons that famoushat brand ever was stamped upon. They had huge bandanas drapedpicturesquely over their chests, and their sleeves were rolled to theelbows and their eyes rimmed with deep pencil shadings. At their hipsswung six-shooters of violent pattern and portent. Around their middlessagged belts filled with blank cartridges. A sack of tobacco was makingthe rounds as they came on, and Luck watched them through speculativelynarrowed lids.

  "Say, by cripes, that there saloon is the driest poison-palace I eversurged out of with two guns spittin' death and dumnation!" Big Medicinecomplained, coming up with the plain intention of lighting his cigarettefrom Luck's cigar. "How'd we stack up this time, boss? Bein' soused oncold tea, I couldn't rightly pass judgment. How many was it I murdered incold blood, in that there scene where I laid 'em out with black powder?Four, or five? Pink, here, claims I killed him twicet, whereas he oughtabe left alive enough to jump on his horse and ride three hundred andfifty miles to fall dead in his best girl's arms. He claims he made thatride day before yesterday, and done some pitiful weaving around in thesaddle, out there in the hills, and that he died in that blond lady'sarms first thing this morning, and I hadn't no right to kill him twicetafterwards in the saloon fight. Now I leave it to you, boss. How aboutthis here killin' Pink off every oncet in a while?"

  Deep in his throat Luck chuckled. "Well, Pink certainly does diepathetic," he soothed the perturbed murderer, dropping his professionalbrusqueness for frank comradeship. "He's about the best little close-updier I ever worked with. He can get a sob anytime he rolls his eyes andgasps and falls backward." He clapped his hand down on Pink's shoulderand gave it a little shake.

  "That's all right," drawled the Native Son, taking off his sombrero todeepen the crease and the dents, because three girls were coming acrossthe lot. "But I've got a complaint of my own to make. When you holler forBud to start the rough stuff, he just goes powder crazy. He shot me upfour times in that scene! Twice he held the gun so close my scalp's allpowder-marked, and by rights he should have blowed the top of my headplumb into the street. He gets so taken up with this slaughter-housebusiness that he'll wind up by shooting himself a few times if you don'twatch him."

  "One thing," Weary put in mildly, "I want to speak about, Luck. We needmore blood for those murders. I didn't have half enough for all themortal wounds Bud gave me. By rights that saloon should be plumb reekingwith gore when we're all killed off--the way Bud flies at it with thosetwo six-shooters. No bullets hit the walls anywhere, so it stands toreason they all land in a soft spot on our persons. I needed a largebucket of blood--and I had about a half teacupful." He grinned. "Mamma!That was sure some slaughter, though!"

  "Where's Tracy Gray Joyce?" Luck inquired irrelevantly, with a hastyglance around them. "To-morrow, he'll have to come into that sameslaughter pen and seize the murderer and subdue him by the steely glintof his eye and by his unflinching demeanor." He pulled the corners of hismouth down expressively. "That's the way the scenario reads," he addeddefensively.

  "Well, say, by cripes, he better amble down to the city and buy him somemore glint!" Big Medicine bawled, and laughed afterwards with his big_haw-haw-haw_. "And I'll gamble there ain't enough unflinchin' demeanoron the Coast to put that boy through the scene. Honest-to-gran'-ma, Luck,that there Tracy Gray Joyce gits pale, and his Adam's apple pumps up anddown when I come up and smile at him! What color do yuh reckon he'll turnto when he stands up to me right after me slaying all these innocentboys--and me a-foamin' at the mouth and gloatin' over the foul deed I'vejust did? Say? How's he going to keep that there Adam's apple fromshootin' clean up through his hair, and his knees from wobblin'? How--"

  "He won't," said Luck suddenly, with a brightening of his eyes. "Hewon't. I hope they do wobble. You go ahead, Bud, and foam at the mouth.You--you _look_ at Tracy Gray Joyce. Not in the rehearsing, understand;leave out the foam and the gloating till we turn the camera on the scene.Sabe? On the quiet, boys."

  "Sure," came the guarded chorus. It was remarkable what a completeunderstanding there was between Luck and the Happy Family. It was thatcomplete understanding which had kept Luck's spirits up during hisunloved task of producing Bently Brown stuff in film.

  "Well, say!" Big Medicine leaned close and throttled his voice down to ahoarse whisper. "What kinda hee-ro will your Tracy Gray Joyce look like,when I start up foamin' and gloatin' at him?"

  Luck smiled. "That," he said calmly, "is for the camera to find out." Hewas going to say something more on the subject, but some one called tohim anxiously from over toward the office. So he told them _adios_hurriedly and went his busy way, and left the Happy Family discussing himgravely among themselves.

  The Happy Family were so interested in this new work that they were readyto see the bright side even of these weird performances which purportedto be Western drama. If you did not take it seriously, all this violenceof dress and behavior was fun. The Happy Family was slipping into arivalry of violence; and the strange part of it was that Luck Lindsay,stickler for realism, self-confessed enthusiast on the uplifting ofmotion pictures to a fine art, permitted their violence,--which was notas the violence of other, better trained Western actors. The HappyFamily, after their first self-conscious tendency to duck behindsomething or somebody, had come to forget the merciless, recording eye ofthe camera. They had come to look upon their work as a game, played forthe amusement of Luck Lindsay, who watched them always, and f
or the openridicule of Bently Brown, writer of these tales of blood and heroics.

  And Luck not only permitted but encouraged them in this exaggeration,--tothe amazement of the camera man who had turned the crank on more Westerndramas than he could remember. Scenes of violence--such as the saloon rowin which Big Medicine had forgotten that Pink was to be left alive, andso had killed him twice--made the camera man and the assistant laugh whenthey should have shuddered; and to wonder why Luck Lindsay, wholly biasedthough he was in favor of the Happy Family, did not seem to realize thatthey were not getting the right punch into the pictures.

  Luck was not behaving at all in his usual manner with his company.Evenings, instead of holding himself aloof from his subordinates, hewould head straight for the furnished bungalow which the Flying U boyshad taken possession of, with Rosemary Green to give the home atmospherewhich saved the place from becoming a mere bunk-house de luxe. If hecould possibly manage it, Luck would reach headquarters in time fordinner--the Happy Family blandly called it supper, of course--and wouldproceed to forget the day's irritations while he ate what he ambiguouslycalled "real cookin'."

  There was a fireplace in that bungalow, and a fairly large living-roomsurrounding the fireplace. The Happy Family extravagantly indulgedthemselves in wood, even at the unbelievable price they must pay for it;and after supper they would light the fire and hunt up chairs enough, androll cigarettes, and talk themselves quite away from the present and intothe past of glowing memory.

  The horses they rode--before that fireplace--would have made anyFrontier Day celebration famous enough to be mentioned in the nextencyclopedia published. The herds they took through hard winters andsummer droughts would have made them millionaires all, if they couldonly have turned them into flesh-and-blood animals. They talked ofblizzards and of high water and of short grass and of thunderstorms.They added little touches to the big range picture Luck had planned tomake. Starting off suddenly in this wise: "Say, Luck, why don't youhave--?" and the fires of enthusiasm would flare again in Luck's eyes,and the talk would grow eager.

  But--and here was the key to the remarkable interpretation which Luckpermitted the Happy Family to give the Bently Brown stories--some timebefore the evening was too old, Luck would swing the talk around to thework they were doing. He would pull a Bently Brown scenario from hispocket and read, with much sarcastic comment, the scenes they were laterto enact. He would incite the Happy Family to poking fun at such luridperformances as Bently Brown described in all seriousness and in detail.He would encourage comment and argument and the play of their causticimaginations upon the action of the story. He would gradually make themsee the whole thing in the light of a huge joke; he would, without sayingmuch himself, bring the Happy Family into the mood of wanting to makeBently Brown appear ridiculous to all beholders.

  Is it any wonder, then, if the camera man and the assistants shouldexchange puzzled glances when Luck put the Happy Family through theirscenes? Exits and entrances, the essential details of the action, Luckdirected painstakingly, as always he had done. Why, then, said camera manto assistants, should he let those fellows go in and ball up the dramaticbusiness and turn whole scenes into farce with their foolery? And why hadhe chosen Tracy Gray Joyce as leading man? And that eye-rolling, limpsentimentalist, Lenore Honiwell, as his leading woman? Luck was known todespise these two, personally and professionally. They could not, to savetheir lives, get through a dramatic scene together without giving theobservers a sickish feeling. To see Tracy Gray Joyce lay his hand uponthe left side of his cravat and cast his eyes upward always made Luckshiver; yet Tracy Gray Joyce would he have for leading man, and noneother. To see Lenore Honiwell throw back her head, close her eyes, andheave one of those terrific motion-picture sighs always made the cameraman snort; yet Luck, who before had considered her scarcely worth a civilbow when he met her, had actually coaxed her away from a director whoreally admired her style of acting.

  And when Luck, who had always gone about his work impervious to curiousonlookers, suddenly changed his method and ordered all interior setsscreened in, and all bystanders away from the immediate vicinity of hisexterior scenes, the Acme people began to call him "swell-headed"--whenthey did not call him worse. Even his excuse that he was working withboys new to the business and did not want them rattled failed to satisfymost of them.

  The Happy Family, in the tiny, bare dressing rooms which they calledbox-stalls in merciless candor, were smearing their faces liberally withcold cream and still arguing among themselves over the doubtful blessingof owning as many lives as a cat, and bewailing the bruises they hadreceived while sacrificing a few of their lives to the blood-lust of BigMedicine and Pink, the two official, Bently-Brown bad men. Outside theirtwo connecting "stalls" a fine drizzle was making the studio yard anempty place of churchyard gloom and incidentally justifying Luck inquitting so early. Big Medicine was swabbing paint from his eyebrows andbellowing his opinion of a man that will keep a-comin', by cripes, afterhe's shot the third time at close range, and then kick because he takesso much killing off. This was aimed at the Native Son, who had evidentlydied hard, and who meant to retaliate as soon as he got that dab of paintout of his eye. But the door opened violently against his person andstartled him into forgetting his next observation.

  This was Luck, and he had the look of a man who owns a guilty secret, andis ready to be rather proud of his guilt,--providing society consents towink at it with him. He was not smiling, exactly; he had a wicked kind oftwinkle in his eyes.

  "Hurry up, boys! My Lord, how you fellows do primp and jangle in here!They're going to run our first picture, _The Soul of Littlefoot Law_.Don't you fel--"

  "The which?" Big Medicine whirled upon him, rubbing his left eye into aterrifying, bloodshot condition while he glared with the other.

  "_The Soul of Littlefoot Law_," Luck repeated distinctly with a perfectneutrality of manner.

  "'S that what you call all that ridin' and shootin' we done, that yousaid was by moonlight?" Pink inquired pugnaciously--for a young man whohad died the death four different times that day.

  "That's what it's called," Luck averred with firmness.

  "Aw--where does Soul of Littlefoot Law come in at?" Happy Jack scoffed.

  "It doesn't, so far as I know."

  "Aw, there ain't no sense in such a name as that. Is that where I gotshot off'n my horse, and Bud, here, done his best to run over me?"

  "That's the one. My Lord, boys, how long does it take you fellows to getyour make-up off? They'll have the film run and passed and released andout on the five-cent circuit on its fifteenth round before you--" Luck,director though he was, found it wise to pass out quickly and hold thedoor shut behind him for a minute. "Honest, boys, you want to hurry," hecalled through the closed door. He waited until the sounds withinindicated that they were hurrying quite violently, and then he went hisway; and he still had the look in his eyes of one who bears in his soul asecret guilt of which he is inclined to be proud.

  When the Acme people gathered resignedly in the private projection room,however, Luck's wicked little twinkle had turned a shade anxious. Heexcused himself from the chair between Martinson and Mollie Ryan, thestenographer, and went over to confer with the Happy Family and the driedlittle man who kept clannishly together as usual, and he forgot to returnto his place.

  The Acme people, personally and individually, were sick and tired of allmotion pictures that did not portray with vividness the beauty or thetalents of themselves, or the faults of their acquaintances. No Acmepeople, save Lenore Honiwell and Tracy Gray Joyce and a phlegmaticcharacter woman, were in this picture at all. The camera man who took itdid not think highly of it and considered the wonderful photography asgood as wasted, and he had said as much--and more--to his intimates.Beckitt, Luck's assistant, had privately announced it as the rottenestpiece of cheese he had ever seen under a Wild-West label, and disclaimedall responsibility. They of the cutting and trimming clan had not saidanything at all. Martinson, having heard the rumors, felt
that theyconfirmed his own suspicion that Luck had made a big blunder in bringingthose cowboys into the company. They were not actors. They did notpretend to be actors.

  You will see that it was a critical audience indeed that gathered therein the projection room that rainy afternoon to see the trial run of _TheSoul of the Littlefoot Law_. It would take a good deal to win anyapprobation from that bunch.

  And then they were looking at the first scene, which Was a night inWhoopalong, the fake town over there beyond the big stage. The HappyFamily, all disguised as cowboys, came surging out of the darkness.H-m-m. That was the bunch that Luck Lindsay had done so much braggingabout, and called "real boys," was it? silently commented the audience.No different from any other cowboys, as far as any one could see.

  True, they used about half the usual amount of film footage in getting toforeground; probably underspeeded the camera,--an old, old trick whichhas helped to put the dash and ginger into many a poor horseman's act.

  But the "XY cowboys" certainly surged up to foreground, and it was seenthat they rode with reins in their teeth, and that each and every manfired two huge six-shooters straight up at the moon every time theirhorses hit the ground with forefeet. The Happy Family leaned forward andcraned around the heads of those in front that they might see all of it.Luck had told them before making this scene to "eat 'em alive," and theHappy Family had very nearly done so. Andy Green nudged his wife,Rosemary, and whispered hurriedly that this was where the camera man hadpulled up his tripod by the roots and beat it, thinking he was going tobe run over; and that was why the scene was cut unexpectedly just whereAndy set his horse on its haunches and posed, a heroic figure of a cowboyrampant, immediately before the lens.

  Luck, glancing hurriedly to right and left, slid down and rested the napeof his neck on the back of his chair, slipped a fresh stick of gumbetween his teeth, hung his hat on his knee, and prepared to view hiswork with critical mind and impartial, and with his conscience like hisbody at ease. The thing had certainly started off with zip enough, sincezip was what Mart claimed the Public demanded.

  The next scene was a continuation of the one before,--the camera manhaving evidently recovered himself and gotten to work again. The HappyFamily, still surging and still shooting two guns apiece at the palemoon, were shown entering the saloon door four abreast and with the restcrowding for place. Still there was zip; all kinds of zip. The HappyFamily nudged and grinned in the dusk and were very much pleased withthemselves as XY cowboys seeking mild entertainment in town.

  Some one behind remarked upon the surging and the shooting, and BigMedicine turned his head quickly and sent a hoarse stage whisper in thegeneral direction of the mumble.

  "Ah-h, that there ain't anything! Luck never let us turn ourselves loosethere a-tall. You wait, by cripes, till yuh see us where we git warmed upand strung out proper! You wait! Honest to gran'--" It was Luck's elbowthat stopped him by the simple expedient of cutting off his wind. BigMedicine gave a grunt and said no more.

  Thereafter, the Happy Family discovered that there was a certaincontinuity in the barbaric performances in which Luck had grinninglyencouraged them to indulge themselves. They beheld themselves engaged invarious questionable enterprises, and they laughed in naive enjoyment ascertain bloodcurdling traits in their characters were depicted withstartling vividness. Accented by make-up and magnified on the screen, thegoggling, frog-like ugliness of Big Medicine became like unto ogres ofchildish memory; his smile was a thing to make one's back hair stand upwith a cold, prickling sensation. Happy Jack stared at himself and hisexaggerated awkwardness incredulously, with a sheepish grin ofappreciation. The rest of them watched and missed no slightest gesture.

  So they saw the plot of Bently Brown unfold, scene by scene; unfold inviolence and malevolent intrigue and zip and much fighting. Also unfoldedsomething of which Bently Brown had never dreamed; something which theaudience, though greeting it with laughter, failed at first to recognizefor what it was worth, because every one knew all about the Bently-BrownWestern dramas, and every one believed that they were to be made afterthe usual recipe more elaborately stirred. So every one had beenchortling through several scenes before the significance of theirlaughter occurred to them.

  Comedy--that was it. Comedy, that had slipped in with cap and bellsjust when the door was flung open for black-robed Tragedy. But it wastoo late to stop laughing when they discovered the trick. They saw itnow, in the very sub-titles which Luck had twisted impishly into slyhumor that pointed to the laugh, in the deeds of blood that followed.They saw it in the goggling ferocity of Big Medicine; in theinnocent-eyed, dimpled fiendishness of Pink; in the lank awkwardness ofHappy Jack. They saw it in the sentimental mannerisms of LenoreHoniwell, whose sickish emotionalism slipped pat into the burlesque.They rocked in their seats at the heroics of Tracy Gray Joyce, whocould never again be taken seriously, since Luck had tagged himmercilessly as an unconscious comedian.

  Oh, yes, there was zip to the picture! But there was no explanation ofthe title. _The Soul of Littlefoot Law_ remained as great a mystery whenthe picture was finished as it had been at the start. Littlefoot Law, bythe way, was Pink. That much the audience discovered, and no more; for asto his soul, he did not seem to own one.

  Luck, still hunched down so that his back hair rubbed against his chairback, was laughing with his jaws wide apart and his fine teeth stillgleaming in the half darkness, when Ted, general errand boy at theoffice, came straddling over intervening laps and laid a compelling handon his shoulder.

  "Say, Luck," he whispered excitedly, "the audience author's with Mart,and they both want t' see you. And, say, I guess you're in Dutch, allright; the author's awful mad, and so is Mart. But say, no matter whatthey do to you, Luck, take it from me, that pit'cher's a humdinger! Ilike to died a-laughing!"