The Phantom Herd

by B. M. Bower

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  "PAM. BLEAK MESA--CATTLE DRIFTING BEFORE WIND--"

  "Pam. bleak mesa--snow--cattle drifting before wind. Dale and Johnny dis.riding to foreground. Reg. cold--horses leg-weary--boys all in--"

  Out toward Bear Canyon, where the land to the north rose brokenly to themountains, Luck found the bleak stretches of which he had dreamed thatnight on the observation platform of a train speeding through the nightin North Dakota,--a great white wilderness unsheltered by friendlyforests, uninhabited save by wild things that moved stealthily across itswindswept ridges. Beyond, the mountains rose barrenly, more bleak thanthe land that lay at their feet.

  "Pam. bleak mesa--snow--" With the camera set halfway up a gentle slopecommanding a steeper hill beyond, down which the boys would send thecattle in a slow, uneasy march before the storm, Luck focused histelephoto lens upon bleakness enough to satisfy even his voraciousappetite for realism. Bill Holmes, his tan pumps wrapped in gunny sacksfor protection against the snow that was a foot deep on the level andstill falling, thrashed his body with his arms, like a windmill whosepaddles have suddenly gone limp in a high wind. When he was ready, Luckstopped long enough to blow on his fingers and to turn and watch for thesignal from Annie-Many-Ponies, stationed on a higher ridge to the rightof him,--the signal that the cattle were coming.

  Through the drive of the snowstorm he saw her tall, straight figure asthrough a thin, shifting, white veil. The little black dog, for whom shehad conceived a fierce affection in defiance of Rosemary's tacitopposition, was lying with its tail curled tight around its feet and itsnose, hunting warmth in the shelter of her flapping garments.Annie-Many-Ponies was staring away to the north, shielding her keen eyesfrom the snow with one slim, brown hand, while she watched for the comingof the herd.

  Luck looked at her, silhouetted against the sky. He had no scene writtenin his script to match the picture she made; he had no negative to waste.But he swung his camera around and, using the telephoto lens he hadadjusted for his cattle scenes, he called to her to hold that pose, andindulged his artistic sense in a ten-or-twelve foot scene which showedAnnie-Many-Ponies wholly absorbed in gazing upon farther bleakness.

  Annie-Many-Ponies was so keenly conscious of her duty to the camera thatshe dared not break her pose, even to give the signal, until he hadyelled, "All right, Annie!" and swung the camera back with its recordingeye fixed upon that narrow depression between two blunt ears of hilltop,through which the herd was to be sent down to the ridge and on past thecamera to the flat, where other scenes were to be taken later on, whenthe cattle were hungry enough to browse miserably upon the bosquet ofyoung cotton woods.

  "Cows come!" she called out, because Luck had his back to her at themoment and did not see the wave of hand she had been told to give him.

  Luck, squinting into the view-finder, caught the swaying vanguard of theherd and swore. He had meant to "pan. bleak mesa" for half a minutebefore those swaying heads and horns appeared over the brow of theridge. Now, even though he began to turn the crank the instant heglimpsed them, he would not have quite the effect which he had meant tohave. He would be compelled to make two scenes of it, and pan. his bleakmesa afterwards and trust to a "cut-in scene" to cover the break. He didnot trust Bill Holmes to turn the crank on that slow, plodding march ofmisery. With his diaphragm of the camera wide open to get all the lightpossible, because the air was filled with falling snow, he followed theherd, as it wound snakelike down the easiest descents, making for themore sheltered small canyons that opened out upon the flat. "Cattledrifting before the wind," read the script; and now Luck saw themcoming, their snow-whitened backs humped to the driving storm, headslowered and swaying weakly from side to side with the shambling motionof their feet. They were drifting before the wind, just as he hadplanned that they should do. That they shuffled wearily down that hillwith poor cows and unweaned calves straggling miserably behind the mainbody in "the drag herd," proved how well the boys had done the workwhich he had sent them out at daylight to do.

  The boys had gone out, under the leadership of Applehead, who knew thatrange as he knew his own dooryard, just when daylight began to breakcoldly upon the storm that had come with the sunset. Luck had alreadyridden out with them and had chosen his location for the blizzard scenes.

  He had gone with them over every foot of that drive, and had told themjust where the main body of riders was to fall back behind the ridge thatwould hide them from the camera, leaving Andy Green and the NativeSon--since these were the two whom he always visualized in the scene--tocome on alone in the wake of the herd. Under the leadership of oldApplehead, they had combed every draw that sheltered so much as a lonecow and calf.

  Luck had told them to bring in every hoof they could spot and getover that ridge by ten o'clock. He had a nervous dread of the stormbreaking before noon, and his heart was set on getting thatnever-to-be-successfully-faked blizzard scene. Realism ruled himabsolutely, now that he was actually producing some of the big scenes ofthis picture. He had told them just where to watch for Annie-Many-Poniesand the flag she would wave,--a black flag, so that the boys could notfail to see it in the vague whiteness of the storm. He had located thejutting ledge behind which Happy Jack was to sneak, that he might watchfor the signal as an extra precaution against an unseasonable appearanceof the two riders over the ridge.

  When the herd straggled down in what seemed an endless stream ofstorm-driven animals, Luck knew that the boys had done their work well.He knew cattle as he knew pictures; he knew that a full two thousand cameover that ridge through a shallow pass he had chosen, "'Every hoof' isright," he remarked to Bill Holmes with a dry approval. "I'd hate to gohunting meat where that bunch was gathered from. Looks like they'd combedthe country for fifty miles around." He sent a quick glance to thepinnacle where Annie-Many-Ponies stood waiting to give the signal. Hewished that she had realized the importance of these cattle scenes keenlyenough to have given him the signal at the cost of breaking her pose. Buthe had only himself to blame. He should not have taken the risk, eventhough he had believed that the cattle would not arrive for another halfhour. He should have been ready; he had told the boys to send them rightover the ridge when they came up to it, because he wanted to preserveunbroken that indescribable atmosphere of a long, weary journey.

  Still they came; a good twenty-five hundred, he was ready to wager, whenthe last few stragglers, so weak that they wobbled when they hesitatedbefore descending a particularly steep place, came down the slope. Itsurely did eat up film to take the full magnitude of that march, but Luckturned and turned and gloated in the bigness of it all.

  "All right, Annie," he called out when he had taken the last of the herdas they filed out of sight into the narrow gully that would lead them tothe flat half a mile below, where he meant to get other scenes. "Waveflag now for boys to come!"

  Annie-Many-Ponies lifted high the black flag and waved it in slow,sweeping half circles above her head. "Boys, come," she called, amoment after.

  Luck, still not trusting the camera to Bill Holmes, swung back slowlyto the pass and made a panorama of the desolate hillside and thechill, forbidding mountains behind. At the pass he stopped. "Howclose?" he shouted to Annie. "Come now," she called down to him, andLuck began to turn the crank again, watching like a hawk for the firstbobbing black specks which would show that the boys were nearing thecrest of the ridge.

  They came, on the very instant that he would have chosen for theircoming. Side by side they rode, drooping of shoulders, and yet with theirbodies braced backward for the descent which at the top was rather steep."Register cold--horses leg-weary--boys all in--" read the script whichLuck knew by heart. It was cold enough, and the camera must haveregistered it in the way the snow was heaped upon their hatbrims, driftedupon their shoulders, packed in the wrinkles of their clothing and in themanes and tails of the horses. And the horses certainly were leg-weary;so weary that Luck knew how the boys must have ridden to gather thecattle and to put their mounts in that condition of
realistic exhaustion.In the story they were supposed to have ridden nearly all night,--thenight-guard who had been on duty when the storm struck and the cattlebegan to drift, and who had stuck to their posts even though they couldnot turn the herd.

  That might be stretching the probabilities just a shade, but Luck feltthat the effects he wanted to get justified the slight license he hadused in his plot. The effects were there, in generous measure. Heturned the crank on the whole of their descent and got them riding upinto the foreground pinched with cold, miserable as men may be. Theydid not look at him--they dared not until he had given the word thatthe scene was ended.

  "Ride on past, down into that gully where the cattle went," he directedthem sharply. "I'll holler when you're outa sight. You can turn aroundand come back then; the scene ends where your hat-crowns bob outa sight.And listen! You're liable to lose your cattle if you don't spur up alittle, so try and get a little speed into them cayuses of yours!"

  Obediently Andy's quirt rose and descended on the flank of his horse. Itstarted, broke into a shuffling trot, and slowed again to a walk. Therewas no speed to be gotten out of those cayuses,--which was what Luckmeant to show on the screen; for this, you must know, was the painting ofone grim phase of the range-man's life. The Native Son spurred his horseand got a lunge or two that settled presently to the same plodding walk.Luck pammed them out of sight, bethought him of the rest of the boys, andcommanded Annie-Many-Ponies to call them in.

  They came, half frozen, half starved, and so tired they did not knowwhich discomfort irked them most. They found Luck; his nose purple withcold marking the footage on his working script with numbed fingers. Hebarely glanced at them, and turned away to tell Bill Holmes to take thecamera on down the draw to where that huddle of rocks stood up on thehillside. Andy and Miguel came back and met the others halfway.

  "Say, boss, when do we eat?" Big Medicine inquired anxiously. "By cripes,I'm holler plumb down to my toes,--and them's froze stiff."

  "Eat? We eat when we get these storm scenes taken," Luck told himheartlessly. "I'm afraid it'll clear up."

  "Afraid it'll clear up!" Pink burrowed his chin deeper into hisbreath-frosted collar and shivered.

  "Oh, quit kicking," the Native Son advised ironically. "We're only livingsome of Luck's big minutes he used to tell about."

  Luck looked around at them and grinned a little. "Part of the business,boys," he said. "Think of the picture stuff there is in this storm!"

  "Why, sure!" Weary responded with exaggerated cheerfulness. "I've beenfreezing artistically ever since daylight. Darn me for leaving my oldsourdough coat at home when I hit for the land of orange blossoms andsinging birds and sunshine."

  "Aw, gwan! I never was warm a minute in Los Angeles except when I got hotat the Acme. Montana never seen the day it was as cold as here."

  "Come on, boys, let's get these dissolve scenes of cattle perishing in ablizzard. After that--hey, Annie! You come, make plenty fire, plentycoffee. I show you location."

  Annie called gently to the little dog, and came striding down through thesnow to fall in docilely three paces behind her adored "brother,"Wagalexa Conka after the submissive manner of squaws toward the humanmale in authority over them.

  "Coffee!" Weary murmured ecstatically. "Plenty fire, plentycoffee--oh, mama!"

  Down in the flat where the bushes grew sparsely along the tiny arroyo nowgone dry, the herd had stopped from sheer exhaustion, and were alreadynibbling desultorily upon the tenderest twigs. This was what Luck wantedin his scene, though the cattle must be moved into the location he hadchosen where was just the background effect he wanted to get, with thebare mesa showing in the far distance. There was a dreary interval ofriding and shouting and urging the cattle up over a low spur of the bluffand down the other side, and the placing of them to Luck's satisfaction.I fear that more than one of the boys wondered why that first bit of theflat would not do, and why Luck insisted that they should bring the herdto one particular point and no other, and why they must wear out theirhorses, and themselves just fussing around among the cattle, scatteringone bunch, bringing others closer together, and driving certain animalsup to foreground, when they very much objected to going there.

  Luck had concealed his camera behind the rocks so that he could get a"close shot" without registering the fact that the cattle were watchinghim. His commands to "Edge that black steer over about even with thatwhite bank!" and later, "Put that cow and calf out this way and drive theothers back a little, so she will have the immediate foreground toherself," were easier given than obeyed. The cow and calf, for instance,were much inclined to shamble back with the others, and did not show anyappreciation for the foreground, wherein they were vastly unlike anyother "extras" ever brought before a camera. Still, in spite of all thesedrawbacks, the moment arrived when Luck began to turn the crank with hiseyes keen for every detail of that bunch of forlorn, hungry, range cattlehuddled under the scant shelter of a ten-foot bank, while the snows fellsteadily in great flakes which Luck knew would give a grand storm-effecton the screen. The Happy Family, free for the moment, crowded close tothe fire of dead sagebrush which Annie-Many-Ponies had lighted in the leeof a high rock, and sniffed longingly at the smell which came steaming upfrom the dented two-gallon coffee-boiler blackened from many a camp fire.

  Luck was turning the crank and watching his "foreground stuff" so that hedid not at first see the two riders who came loping down the hill whichhe was using for background. Whether he would or no, he had got them inseveral feet of good scene before he saw them and stopped his camera. Heshouted, but they came on headlong, slipping and sliding in the loosesnow. There could be no doubt that they were headed straight for thegroup and felt that their business was urgent, so Luck stepped out frombehind the rocks and started toward them, motioning for them to keep out,away from the cattle.

  "Better let me git in the lead right now," Applehead advised hastily, andjumped in front of Luck as the two came lunging up. "I know these here_hombres_, to my sorrer, too, now I'm tellin' yuh!"

  But Luck, feeling that his leadership might as well be established thenas any time, pushed the old man back.

  "What you want?" he demanded of the foremost who rode up. "Didn't youhear me tell you to keep out around the cattle?"

  "_Adonde va V con mi vaca_?" snapped the first rider in high-keyedSpanish.

  "My brother say where you go with our cattle?" interrupted the other one,evidently proud of his English.

  "I know what he said," Luck snubbed this one bluntly. "I don't know thatthey are your cattle. I don't care. We're using them to make motionpictures. Get outa the way so we can go on with our work." Had he notspoiled several feet of film because of their coming he might have beenmore inclined to placate them. As it was, he did not welcome theirinterference, he did not like their looks, and their tones were to histemper as tow would be to a fire. Their half Mexican, half American dressirritated him; the interruption exasperated him. He was hungry and coldand keyed to a high nervous tension in his anxiety to make the most ofhis present big opportunity; he knew too well that he might not haveanother chance all winter, with the snow falling as if under hisdirection.

  "Get over there outa range of the camera!" he commanded them sharply,"then you can spout Mex. till you're black in the face, for all I care.I'm busy." To make himself absolutely understood he repeated the gist ofhis remarks in Spanish before he turned his back on them to finish hisinterrupted scene.

  Whereupon one swore in Spanish and the other in English, and they bothdeclared that they would take their cattle right now, and reined theirhorses toward the shifting herd.

  "Hold on thar, Ramone Chavez!" shouted Applehead, striding forward."Didn't you hear the boss tell ye to git outa the way, both of yuh? Yuhbetter do it, now I'm tellin' yuh, 'cause if yuh don't, they's goin' tobe right smart of a runction around here! A good big share uh them tharcattle belongs to me. Don't ye go messin' in there amongst 'em; you jestride back outa the way uh that thar camery. Git!"

 
At Applehead's command they "got," at least as far as the camp fire,where the bright shawl of Annie-Many-Ponies caught and held theirinterest. Annie-Many-Ponies, being a woman who had both youth andbeauty and sensed instinctively the value of both, sent a slant-eyedglance and a half smile toward Ramone, who possessed more good looksand more English than his brother. The Happy Family eyed them with atolerant indifference and moved aside with reluctant hospitality whenRamone dismounted shiveringly and came forward to warm his fingers overthe blaze.

  "She's cold day, you bet," Ramone remarked ingratiatingly.

  "She ain't what you could call hot," Big Medicine conceded drily, sinceno one else showed any disposition to reply.

  "We don't get much snow like this. You live in Albuquerque, perhaps?"

  There was really no excuse for snubbing these two, who had been wellwithin their rights in making an investigation of this unheralded andunauthorized gathering of all the cattle on this range. Andy told Ramonewhere they were staying and where they came from, and let it go at that.The less Americanized brother dismounted and joined the group with a nodof greeting.

  "My brother Tomas," announced Ramone, with a flash of white teeth, hiseyes shifting unobtrusively toward Annie-Many-Ponies, who wore a secret,half-smiling air of provocative interest in him. "Not spik much English,my brother. Always stay too much at home. Me, I travel all over--Denver,Los Angeles, San Francisco. I ride in all contests--Pueblo, SanAntonio--all over. Tomas, he go not so often. His head, all forbusiness--making money--get rich some day. Me, I spend. My hand wide openalways. Money slip fast."

  "There's plenty of us marked that way," Weary made good-natured comment,turning so that his back might feel the heat of the fire.

  "Shunka Chistala!" murmured Annie-Many-Ponies in her soft contralto tothe little black dog, and moved away to the mountain wagon, with the dogfollowing close to her moccasined heels.

  Ramone looked after her with frank surprise at the strange words. "NotSpanish, then?" he ventured.

  "Indian," the Native Son explained briefly, and added, perhaps forreasons of his own, "Sioux squaw."

  Ramone very wisely let his curiosity rest there. He had a good excuse,for Luck, having finished work for the time being, came tramping over tothe fire. At him Ramone glanced apologetically.

  "We borrow comfort from your fire, _senor_," he said indifferently."She's bad day for riding."

  Luck nodded, already ashamed of having lost his temper, yet not at thepoint of yielding openly to any overtures for peace. "Soon as we eat," hesaid to Weary and those others who stood nearest, "I'll have you cut outthat poor cow and calf and drive 'em down the flat here, so I can getthat other scene I was telling you about."

  "Wagalexa Conka, here is plenty hot coffee," came a soft voice at hiselbow, and Luck turned with a smile to take the steaming cup from thehand of Annie-Many-Ponies.

  The Native Son poured a cup and offered it to Tomas Chavez. "_Quirecafe_?" he asked.

  "_Si, senor; Gracias_." Tomas smiled, and took the cup and bowed.Annie-Many-Ponies herself, with a sidelong glance at Luck to see if shemight dare, carried the biggest cup of coffee to Ramone, and smileddemurely when he took it and looked into her eyes and thanked her.

  In this fashion did the social sky clear, even though the snow continuedto drive against those who broke bread together out there in the drearywastes, with the snow halfway to their knees. The Native Son, being halfSpanish and knowing well the language of his father, talked a little withTomas. Ramone made himself friendly with any one who would give him anyattention. But Applehead scowled over his boiled-beef sandwich and hiscoffee, and kept his back turned upon the Chavez brothers, and would nottalk at all. He eyed them sourly when they still loitered after the mealwas over and the remains packed away in the box by Annie-Many-Ponies, andLuck had gone to work again with Bill Holmes at his heels and the boyshelping to place the cattle to Luck's liking.

  When the Chavez brothers finally did show symptoms of intending to leave,Luck beckoned to Tomas, whom he judged to be the leader. "Here," he saidin Spanish, when Tomas had come close to him. "I will pay you for usingyour cattle. When I am through, my boys will drive them back to the mesaagain. For my picture I may need them again, _senor_. I promise you theywill not be harmed." And he charged in his expense book the sum, "to useof locations."

  "_Gracias_," said Tomas, and took the five dollars which Luck could illafford to give, but which he felt would smooth materially the trail totheir future work. Cattle he must have for his picture; cattle he wouldhave at any cost,--but it would be well to have them with the consent oftheir owners. So the Chavez brothers rode away with smiles for theirneighbors instead of threats, and with five dollars which had come tothem like a gift.

  "Yuh might better uh kicked 'em outa here without no softsoapin' aboutit, now I'm tellin' yuh!" Applehead grumbled when they were out ofearshot. "You may know your business better'n what I do, but by thunder Iwouldn't uh give 'em no five dollars--ner five cents. 'S like feedin' astray dog; yuh won't never git rid of 'em now. They'll be hangin' aroundunder yer feet--"

  "At that, I might have use for them," Luck retorted unmoved. "They'refine types."

  "Types!" old Applehead exploded indignantly. "Types! They'resneak-thieves and cutthroats 't I wouldn't trust fur's I could throw abull by the tail. That's what they be. Types,--my granny!"