The Phantom Herd, Page 2

  CHAPTER TWO

  "WHERE THE CATTLE ROAMED IN THOUSANDS, A-MANY A HERD AND BRAND ..."--_OldRange Song_.

  If you are at all curious over the name to which Luck Lindsay answeredunhesitatingly,--his very acceptance of it proving his willingness to beso identified,--I can easily explain. Some nicknames have their origin inmystery; there was no mystery at all surrounding the name men hadbestowed upon Lucas Justin Lindsay. In the first place, his legalcognomen being a mere pandering to the vanity of two grandfathers who hadno love for each other and so must both be mollified, never had appealedto Luck or to any of his friends. Luck would have been grateful for anynickname that would have wiped Lucas Justin from the minds of men. Butthe real reason was a quirk in Luck's philosophy of life. Anything thathe greatly desired to see accomplished, he professed to leave to chance.He would smile his smile, and lift his shoulders in the Spanish way hehad learned in Mexico and the Philippines, and say: "That's as luck willhave it. _Quien sabe_?" Then he would straightway go about bringing thething to pass by his own dogged efforts. Men fell into the habit ofcalling him Luck, and they forgot that he had any other name; so thereyou have it, straight and easily understandable.

  As luck would have it, then,--and no pun intended, please,--he foundhimself en route to Dry Lake without any trouble at all; a mere matter ofone change of trains and very close connections, the conductor told him.So Luck went out and found a chair on the observation platform, and gavehimself up to his cigar and to contemplation of the country they weregliding through. What he would find at Dry Lake to make the stop worthhis while did not worry him; he left that to the future and to the godChance whom he professed to serve. He was doing his part; he was goingthere to find out what the place held for him. If it held nothing but ahalf dozen ex-cow-punchers hopelessly tamed and turned farmers, why,there would probably be a train to carry him further in his quest. Hewould drop down into Wyoming and Arizona and New Mexico,--just keep goingtill he did find the men he wanted. That was Luck's way.

  The shadows grew long and spread over the land until the whole vastcountry lay darkling under the coming night. Luck went in and ate hisdinner, and came back again to smoke and stare and dream. There was amoon now that silvered the slopes and set wide expanses shimmering.

  Luck, always more or less a dreamer, began to people the plain with thethings that had been but were no more: with buffalo and with Indians whocamped on the trail of the big herds. He saw their villages, the tepeessmoke-grimed and painted with symbols, some of them, huddled upon a knollout there near the timber line. He heard the tom-toms and he saw therhythmic leaping and treading, the posing and gesturing of the braves whodanced in the firelight the tribal Buffalo Dance.

  After that he saw the coming of the cattle, driven up from the south bywind-browned, saddle-weary cowboys who sang endless chanteys to pass thetime as they rode with their herds up the long trail. He saw the cattlehumped and drifting before the wind in the first blizzards of winter,while gray wolves slunk watchfully here and there, their shaggy coatsruffled by the biting wind. He saw them when came the chinook, a howling,warm wind from out the southwest, cutting the snowbanks as with a knifethat turned to water what it touched, and laying bare the brown grassbeneath. He saw the riders go out with the wagons to gather thelank-bodied, big-kneed calves and set upon them the searing mark of theirowner's iron.

  Urged by the spell of the dried little man's plaintive monologue, the oldrange lived again for Luck, out there under the moon, while the traincarried him on and on through the night.

  What a picture it all would make--the story of those old days as theyhad been lived by men now growing old and bent. With all the cheap,stagy melodrama thrown to one side to make room for the march of thatbigger drama, an epic of the range land that would be at once history,poetry, realism!

  Luck's cigar went out while he sat there and wove scene after scene ofthat story which should breathe of the real range land as it once hadbeen. It could be done--that picture. Months it would take in the making,for it would swing through summer and fall and winter and spring. Withthe trail-herd going north that picture should open--the trail-herdtoiling over big, unpeopled plains, with the riders slouched in theirsaddles, hat brims pulled low over eyes that ached with the glare of thesun and the sweep of wind, their throats parched in the dust cloud flungupward from the marching, cloven hoofs. Months it would take in themaking,--but sitting there with the green tail-lights switching throughcuts and around low hills and out over the level, Luck visioned it all,scene by scene. Visioned the herd huddled together in the night while theheavens were split with lightning, and the rain came down inwhite-lighted streamers of water. Visioned the cattle humped in the snow,tails to the biting wind, and the riders plodding with muffled heads bentto the drive of the blizzard, the fine snow packing full the wrinkles intheir sourdough coats.

  It could be done. He, Luck Lindsay, could do it; in his heart he knewthat he could. In his heart he felt that all of these months--yes, andyears--of picture-making had been but a preparation for this greatpicture of the range. All these one-reel pioneer pictures had been merelythe feeble efforts of an apprentice learning to handle the tools of hiscraft, the mental gropings of his mind while waiting for this, his bigidea. His work with the Indians was the mere testing and trying ofcertain photographic effects, certain camera limitations. He felt like anathlete taught and trained and tempered and just stepping out now for thebig physical achievement of his life.

  He grew chilled as the night advanced, but he did not know that he wascold. He was wondering, as a man always wonders in the face of anintellectual birth, why this picture had not come to him before; why hehad gone on through these months and years of turning out reel upon reelof Western pictures, with never once a glimmering of this great epic ofthe range land; why he had clung to his Indians and his one-reel Indianpictures with now and then a three-reel feature to give him the elationof having achieved something; why he had left them feeling depressedlythat his best work was in the past; why he had looked upon real range-menas a substitute only for those lean-bodied bucks and those fat,stupid-eyed squaws and dirty papooses.

  With the spell of his vision deep upon his soul, Luck sat humiliatedbefore his blindness. The picture he saw as he stared out across themoonlit plain was so clean-cut, so vivid, that he marvelled because hehad never seen it until this night. Perhaps, if the dried little man hadnot talked of the old range--

  Luck took a long breath and flung his cigar out over the platform rail.The dried little man? Why, just as he stood he was a type! He was the OldMan who owned this herd that should trail north and on through sceneafter scene of the picture! No make-up needed there to stamp the sense ofreality upon the screen. Luck looked with the eye of his imagination andsaw the dried little man climbing, with a stiffness that could not hidehis accustomedness, into the saddle. He saw him ride out with his men,scattering his riders for the round-up; the old cowman making sharper thecontrast of the younger men, fixing indelibly upon the consciousness ofthose who watched that this same dried little man had grown old in thesaddle; fixing indelibly the fact that not in a day did the free rangingof cattle grow to be one of the nation's great industries.

  Of a sudden Luck got up and stood swaying easily to the motion of the carwhile he took a long, last look at the moon-bathed plain where had beenborn his great, beautiful picture. He stretched his arms as does one whohas slept heavily, and went inside and down to the beginning of thenarrow aisle where were kept telegraph forms in their wooden-barredniches in the wall. He went into the smoking compartment and wrote, witha sureness that knew no crossed-out words, a night letter to the driedlittle man who had sat on the baggage truck and talked of the range. Andthis is what went speeding back presently to the dried little man whoslept in a cabin near the track and dreamed, perhaps, of following thebig herds:

  Baggage man,Sioux, N.D.

  Report at once to me at Dry Lake. Can offer you good position Acme FilmCompany, good salary working in big Western picture.
Small part, someriding among real boys who know range life. Want you bad as type ofcowman owning cattle in picture. Salary and expenses begin when you showup. For references see Indian Agent.

  LUCK LINDSAY,Dry Lake, Mont.

  If you count, you will see that he ran eight words over the limit of theflat rate on night letters, but he would have over-run the limit byeighty words just as quickly if he had wanted to say so much. That wasLuck's way. Be it a telegram, instructions to his company, or a quarrelwith some one who crossed him, Luck said what he wanted to say--and paidthe price without blinking.

  I don't know what the dried little man thought when the operatorhanded him that message the next morning; but I can tell you in a fewwords what he did: He arrived in Dry Lake just two trains behind Luck.

  Luck did not sleep that night. He lay in his berth with the shade pushedup as high as it would go, and stared out at the tamed plain, andperfected the details of his Big Picture. Into the spell of the range hewove a story of human love and human hate and danger and trouble. So itmust be, to carry his message to the world who would look and marvel atwhat he would show them in the drama of silence. He had not named hispicture yet. The name would come in its own good time, just as thepicture had come when the time for its making was ripe.

  The next day he did not talk with the men whose elbows he touched in thepassing intimacy of travel; though Luck was a companionable soul who wasmuch given to talking and to seeing his listeners grow to anaudience,--an appreciative audience that laughed much while they listenedand frowned upon interruption. Instead, he sat silent in his seat, sinceon this train there was no observation car, and he stared out of thewindow without seeing much of what passed before his eyes, and made notesnow and then, and covered all the margins of his time-table with figuresthat had to do with film. Once, I know, he blackened his two front teethwith pencil tappings while he visualized a stampede and the probableamount of footage it would require, and debated whether it should be"shot" with two cameras or three to get scenes from different angles. Astampede it should be,--a real stampede of fear-frenzied range cattle inthe mad flight of terror; not a bunch of galloping tame cows urged toforeground by shouting and rock-throwing from beyond the side lines ofthe scene. It would be hard to get, and it could not be rehearsed beforethe camera was turned on it. Luck decided that it should be shot fromthree angles, at least, and if he could manage it he would have a"panoram" of the whole thing from a height.

  The porter came apologetically with his big whisk broom and told Luckthat they would all presently be gazing at Dry Lake, or words whichcarried that meaning. So Luck permitted himself to be whisked from a halfdollar while his thoughts were "in the field" with his camera men andcompany, shooting a real stampede from various angles and trying tomanage so that the dust should not obscure the scene. After a rain--ofcourse! Just after a soaking rain, he thought, while he gathered up histime-table and a magazine that held his precious figures, and followedthe porter out to the vestibule while the train slowed.

  It was in this mood that Luck descended to the Dry Lake depot platformand looked about him. He had no high expectation of finding here what hesought. He was simply making sure, before he left the country behind him,that he had not "overlooked any bets." His mind was open to convictioneven while it was prepared against disappointment; therefore his eyeswere as clear of any prejudice as they were of any glamour. He saw thingsas they were.

  On the side track, then, stood a string of cars loaded with wool, as hisnose told him promptly. Farms there were none, but that was because thesoil was yellow and pebbly and barren where it showed in great bald spotshere and there; you would not expect to raise cabbages where a prairiedog had to forage far for a living. Behind the depot, the prairie humpeda huge, broad shoulder of bluff wrinkled along the forward slope of itlike the folds of a full fashioned skirt. There, too, the soil wasbare,--clipped to the very grass roots by hundreds upon hundreds ofhungry sheep whose wool, very likely, was crowding those cars upon thesiding. Luck wasted neither glances nor thought upon the scene. Dry Lakewas like many, many other outworn "cow towns" through which he hadpassed; changed without being bettered; all of the old life taken out ofit in the process of its taming.

  He threw his grip into the waiting, three-seated spring wagon that servedas a hotel bus, climbed briskly after it, and glanced ahead to where hesaw the age-blackened boards of the stockyards. Cattle--and then came thesheep. So runs the epitaph of the range, and it was written plainlyacross Dry Lake and its surroundings.

  They went up a dusty trail and past the yawning wings of the stockyardswhere a bunch of sheep blatted now in the thirst of mid-afternoon. Theystopped before the hotel where, in the old days, many a town-hungrypuncher had set his horse upon its haunches that he might dismount in astyle to match his eagerness. Luck climbed out and stood for a minutelooking up and down the sandy street that slept in the sun and dreamed,it may be, of rich, unforgotten moments when the cow-punchers had comein off the range and stirred the sluggish town to a full, brief lifewith their rollicking. Across the street was Rusty Brown's place, withits narrow porch deserted of loafers and its windows blinking at thestreet with a blankness that belied the things they had looked upon inbygone times.

  A less experienced man than Luck would have been convinced by now thathere was no place to go seeking "real boys." But Luck had been a rangeman himself before he took to making motion pictures; he knew range townsas he knew men,--which was very well indeed. He looked, as he stoodthere, not disgusted but mildly speculative. Two horses were tied to thehitching rail before Rusty Brown's place. These horses bore saddles andbridles, and, if you know the earmarks, you can learn a good deal about arider just by looking at his outfit. Neither saddle was new, but bothgave evidence of a master's pride in his gear. They were well-preservedsaddles. They had the conservative swell of fork that told Luck almost toa year how old they were. One, he judged, was of California make, or atleast came from the extreme southwest of the cattle country. It had agood deal of silver on it, and the tapideros were almost Mexican in theirelaborateness. The bridle on that horse matched the saddle, and theheadstall was beautiful with silver kept white and clean. The rope coiledand tied beside the saddle fork was of rawhide. (Luck did not need tocross the street to be sure of these details; observation was a part ofhis profession.) The other saddle was the kind most favored on thenorthern range. Short, round skirts, open stirrups, narrow and rimmedwith iron. Stamped with a two-inch border of wild rose design, it pleasedLuck by its very simplicity. The rope was a good "grass" rope worn smoothand hard with much use.

  Luck flipped a match stub out into the dust of the street, tilted hissmall Stetson at an angle over his eyes, went over to the horses, andlooked at their brands which had been hidden from him. One was a FlyingU, and the other bore a blurred monogram which he did not trouble todecipher. He turned on his heels and went into Rusty's place.

  On his way to the bar he cast an appraising glance around the room andlocated his men. Here, too, a less experienced man might haveblundered. One, known to his fellows as the Native Son, would scarcelybe mistaken; his dress, too, evidently matched the silver-trimmedsaddle outside. But Andy Green, in blue overalls turned up five inchesat the bottom, and somewhat battered gray hat and gray chambray shirt,might have been almost any type of outdoor man. Certain it is that fewstrangers would have guessed that he was one of the best riders in thatpart of the State.

  Luck bought a couple of good cigars, threw away his cigarette and lightedone, set the knuckles of his left hand upon his hip, and sauntered overto the pool table where the two men he wanted to meet were languidlyplaying out their third string. He watched them for a few minutes, smiledsympathetically when Andy Green made a scratch and swore over it, andbacked out of the way of the Native Son, who sprawled himself over thetable corner and did not seem to know or to care how far the end of hiscue reached behind him.

  Luck did not say a word to either; but Andy, noting the smile ofsympathy, gave him a keenly attentive gla
nce as he came up to that end ofthe table to empty a corner pocket. He fished out the four and the nine,juggled them absently in his hand, and turned and looked at Luck again,straight and close. Luck once more smiled his smile.

  "No, I don't believe you know me, brother," he said, answering Andy'sunspoken thought. "I'd have remembered you if I'd ever met you. You mayhave seen me in a picture somewhere."

  "By gracious, are you the little fellow that drove a stage coach and sixhorses down off a grade--"

  "That's my number, old-timer." Luck's smile widened to a grin. That hadbeen a hair-lifting scene, and Andy Green was not the first stranger towalk up and ask him if he had driven that stage coach and six horses downoff a mountain grade into a wide gulch to avoid being held up and theregulation box of gold stolen. It was probably the most spectacular thingLuck had ever done. "Got down that bank fine as silk," he volunteeredcompanionably, "and then when I'd passed camera and was outa the scene,by thunder, I tangled up with a deep chuck-hole that was grown over withweeds, and like to have broken my fool neck. How's that for luck?" Hetook the cigar from his lips and smiled again with half-closed, measuringeyes. "Yes, sir, I just plumb spoiled one perfectly good Concord coach,and would have been playing leading corpse at a funeral, believe me, if Ihadn't strapped myself to the seat for that drive off the grade. As itwas, I hung head down and cussed till one of the boys cut me loose. Wheredid you see the picture?"

  "Me? Up in the Falls. Say, I'm glad to meet you. Luck Lindsay's yourname, ain't it? I remember you were called that in the picture. Mine'sGreen, Andy Green,--when folks don't call me something worse. And this isMiguel Rapponi, a whole lot whiter than he sounds. What, for Lordy sake,you wasting time on this little old hasbeen burg for? Take it from me,there ain't anything left here but dents in the road and a brimstonesmell. We're all plumb halter-broke and so tame we--"

  "You look all right to me, brother," Luck told him in that convincingtone he had.

  "Well, same to you," Andy retorted with a frank heartiness he was not inthe habit of bestowing upon strangers. "I feel as if I'd worked with you.Pink was with me when we saw that picture, and we both hollered 'Go toit!' right out loud, when you gathered up the ribbons and yanked off thebrake and went off hell-popping and smiling back over your shoulder atus. It was your size and that smile of yours that made me remember you.You looked like a kid when you mounted to the boot; and you drove downoff smiling, and you had one helanall of a trip, and you drove off thatgrade looking like you was trying to commit suicide and was smiling stillwhen you pulled up at the post-office. By gracious, I--"

  Luck gave a little chuckle deep in his throat. "I did all that smilingthe day before I drove off the grade," he confessed, looking from oneto the other. "I don't guess I'd have smiled quite so sweet, maybe, ifI'd waited."

  "Is that the way you make moving pictures, hind-side-foremost?" Andy, hisback to the table, lifted himself over the rim to a comfortable seat andbegan to make himself a cigarette.

  "Yes, or both ways from the middle, just as it happens." Luck was alwaysready to talk pictures. "In that stage-driver picture I made all thescenes before I made that drive,--for two reasons. Biggest one was that Iwanted to be sure of having it all made, in case something went wrong onthat feature drive; get me? Other was plain, human bullheadedness. Someof the four-flushers I was cursed with in the company,--because they werecheap and I had to balance up what I was paying the Injuns,--they kepteyeing that bluff where I said I'd come down with the coach, and bettingI wouldn't, and talking off in corners about me just stalling. I just let'em sweat. I made the start, and I made the finish. I drove right towhere I looked down off the pinnacle--remember?--and saw the outlaw gangat the foot of the grade; I made all the 'dissolves,' and where I wentback and captured 'em and brought 'em in to camp. But I didn't drive offthe grade into the gulch till last thing, as luck would have it. Goodthing, too. That old coach was sure some busted, and I wasn't doing anymore smiles till I grew some hide."

  Andy Green licked his cigarette and let his honest gray eyes wander fromLuck to the darkly handsome face of the Native Son. "Sounds most asexciting as holding down a homestead, anyway. Don't you think so, Mig?And say! It's sure a pity we can't put off some things in real life tillwe get all set and ready to handle 'em!"

  "That's right." Luck's face sobered as the idea caught his imagination."That's dead right; how well I know it!"

  Andy smoked and swung his feet and regarded Luck with interest. "It'sagainst my religious principles to go poking my nose into the otherfellow's business," he said after a minute, "but I'm wondering if there'sanything in this God-forsaken country to bring a fellow like you heredeliberate. I'm wondering if you meant to stop, or if you just leaned toofar out the car window on your way through town."

  For a half minute Luck looked up at him. He had expected a preparatorywinning of the confidence of the men whom he sought. He had planned tolead up gradually to his mission, in case he found his men. But in thathalf minute he threw aside his plan as a weak, puerile wasting of time,and he answered Andy Green truthfully.

  "No, I didn't fall off the train," he drawled. "I just grabbed my gripand beat it when they told me where I was. I'm out on a still hunt forsome real boys. Some that can ride and shoot and that know cow-science sowell they don't have to glad up in cowboy clothes and tie red bandannabibs on to make folks think they're range broke."

  "And yet you're wasting time in this tame little granger wart on themap!"

  "No, not wasting time," smiled Luck serenely. "A little old trunk-jugglerup the trail told me about the Flying U outfit that is still sendingtheir wagons out when the grass gets green. I stopped off to give thehigh-sign to the boys, and say howdy, and swap yarns, and maybe haze someof 'em gently into camp. I wanted to see if the Flying U has got any realones left."

  Andy Green looked eloquently at the Native Son. "Now, what do you knowabout that, Mig?" he breathed softly behind a mouthful of smoke. "Wantingto rope him out a few from the Flying U bunch. Say! Have you got a realpuncher amongst that outfit of long-haired hayseeds?"

  The Native Son shook his head negligently and gave Luck a velvet-eyedglance of friendly pity.

  "If there is, he's ranging deep in the breaks and never shows up atshipping time," he averred. "I've never seen one myself. They've got onethat--what would you call Big Medicine, if you wanted to name him quickand easy, Andy?"

  Andy frowned. "What I'd call him had best not be named in thisGod-fearing little hamlet," he responded gloomily. "I sure would nevername him in the day I talked about cow-punchers that's ever dug sand outatheir eyes on trail-herd."

  The Native Son, still with the velvet-eyed look of pity, turned to Luck."Andy's right," he sighed. "They've got one that takes spells of talkingdeliriously about when he punched cows in Coconino County; but I guessthere's nothing to it."

  "You say you was told that the Flying U outfit has got some real ones?"Andy eyed Luck curiously and with some of the Native Son's pity. "Just ina general way, what happens to folks that lie to you deliberate, when youmeet 'em again? I'd like," he added, "to know about how sorry to feel forthat baggage humper when you see him--after meeting the Flying U bunch."

  The soul of Luck Lindsay was singing an impromptu doxology, but the faceof him--so well was that face trained to do his bidding--became tingedwith disgust and disappointment. With two "real boys" he was talking; heknew them by the unconscious range vernacular and the perfect candor withwhich they lied to him about themselves. But not so much as a gleam ofthe eye betrayed to them that he knew.

  "So that's why he went off grinning so wide," he mused aloud. "I was surecaught then with my gun at home on the piano. I might have known betterthan to look for the real thing here, though you fellows have a fewlittle marks that haven't worn off yet."

  "Me? Why, I'm a farmer, and I'm married, and I'm in a deuce of a stewbecause my spuds is drying up on me and no way to get water on 'emwithout I carry it to 'em in a jug," disclaimed Andy Green hastily. "AllI know about punchers I lear
ned from seeing picture shows when I go totown. Now, Mig, here--".

  "Oh, don't go and reveal all of my guilty past," protested the NativeSon. "Those three days I spent at a wild-west carnival show have aboutworked outa my system. I'm still trying to wear out the clothes I won offsome of the boys in a crap game," he explained to Luck apologetically,"but my earmarks won't outlast the clothes, believe me."

  Luck thoughtfully flicked the ash collar off his cigar. "It won't be anyuse then to go out to the Flying U, I suppose," he observed tentatively,his eyes keen for their changing expressions. "I may as well take thenext train out, I reckon, and drift on down into Arizona and New Mexico.I know about where some real punchers range--but I thought there was noharm in looking up the pedigree of this Flying U outfit. I'm sure someobliged to you boys for heading me off." Back of his eyes there was alaugh, but Andy Green and the Native Son were looking queerly at eachother and did not see it there.

  "Oh, well, now you're this close, you wouldn't be losing anything bygoing on out to the ranch, anyway," Andy recanted guardedly. "Come tothink of it, there's one regular old-time ranger out there. They call himSlim. He's sure a devil on a horse--Slim is. I'd forgot about him when Ispoke. He's a ranger, all right."

  Luck knew very well that Andy Green had used the word "ranger" with thedeliberate attempt to appear ignorant of the terminology of the range. Acow-puncher comes a long way from being a ranger, as every one knows. Aranger is a man of another profession entirely.

  "It used to be a real cattle ranch, they tell me," added the Native Sonartfully. "We live out near there, and if you wanted to ride out--"

  Luck appeared undecided. He sucked at his cigar, and he blew out thesmoke thoughtfully, and contemplated the toe of one neat, tan shoe. Justplain acting, it was; just a playing of his part in the little game theyhad started. Better than if they had boasted of their range knowledge andtheir prowess in the saddle did Luck know that the dried little man hadtold him the truth. He knew that at the Flying U he would find a remnantof the old order of things. He would find some real boys, if these twowere a fair sample of the bunch. That they lied to him about themselvesand their fellows was but a sign that they accepted him as one of theirbreed. He looked them over with gladdened eyes. He listened to theunconscious tang of the range that was in their talk. These two farmers?He could have laughed aloud at the idea.

  "Well, I might get some atmosphere ideas," he said at last. "If you don'tmind having me trail along--"

  "Glad to have yuh!" came an instant duet.

  "And if I can scare up a horse--"

  "Oh, we'll look after that. You can come right on out with us. Theboys'll be plumb tickled to death to meet you."

  "Are they all farmers, same as you--these boys you mention?" Luck lookedup into Andy's eyes when he asked the question.

  Andy grinned. "Farmers, yes--same as us!" he said ambiguously and pickedup his gloves as he turned to lead the way out.