The Phantom Herd by B. M. Bower (online e book reader .TXT) 📗

not call him worse. Even his excuse that he was working with boys new to the business and did not want them rattled failed to satisfy most of them.

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

This was Luck, and he had the look of a man who owns a guilty secret, and is ready to be rather proud of his guilt,—providing society consents to wink at it with him. He was not smiling, exactly; he had a wicked kind of twinkle 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 a terrifying, bloodshot condition while he glared with the other.

"The Soul of Littlefoot Law," Luck repeated distinctly with a perfect neutrality of manner.

"'S that what you call all that ridin' and shootin' we done, that you said was by moonlight?" Pink inquired pugnaciously—for a young man who had 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 got shot 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 get your make-up off? They'll have the film run and passed and released and out 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 the door shut behind him for a minute. "Honest, boys, you want to hurry," he called through the closed door. He waited until the sounds within indicated that they were hurrying quite violently, and then he went his way; and he still had the look in his eyes of one who bears in his soul a secret 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. He excused himself from the chair between Martinson and Mollie Ryan, the stenographer, and went over to confer with the Happy Family and the dried little man who kept clannishly together as usual, and he forgot to return to his place.

The Acme people, personally and individually, were sick and tired of all motion pictures that did not portray with vividness the beauty or the talents of themselves, or the faults of their acquaintances. No Acme people, save Lenore Honiwell and Tracy Gray Joyce and a phlegmatic character woman, were in this picture at all. The camera man who took it did not think highly of it and considered the wonderful photography as good as wasted, and he had said as much—and more—to his intimates. Beckitt, Luck's assistant, had privately announced it as the rottenest piece of cheese he had ever seen under a Wild-West label, and disclaimed all responsibility. They of the cutting and trimming clan had not said anything at all. Martinson, having heard the rumors, felt that they confirmed his own suspicion that Luck had made a big blunder in bringing those cowboys into the company. They were not actors. They did not pretend to be actors.

You will see that it was a critical audience indeed that gathered there in the projection room that rainy afternoon to see the trial run of The Soul of the Littlefoot Law. It would take a good deal to win any approbation from that bunch.

And then they were looking at the first scene, which Was a night in
Whoopalong, the fake town over there beyond the big stage. The Happy
Family, all disguised as cowboys, came surging out of the darkness.
H-m-m. That was the bunch that Luck Lindsay had done so much bragging
about, 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 to foreground; probably underspeeded the camera,—an old, old trick which has 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 seen that they rode with reins in their teeth, and that each and every man fired two huge six-shooters straight up at the moon every time their horses hit the ground with forefeet. The Happy Family leaned forward and craned 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 the Happy Family had very nearly done so. Andy Green nudged his wife, Rosemary, and whispered hurriedly that this was where the camera man had pulled up his tripod by the roots and beat it, thinking he was going to be run over; and that was why the scene was cut unexpectedly just where Andy set his horse on its haunches and posed, a heroic figure of a cowboy rampant, immediately before the lens.

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

The next scene was a continuation of the one before,—the camera man having evidently recovered himself and gotten to work again. The Happy Family, still surging and still shooting two guns apiece at the pale moon, were shown entering the saloon door four abreast and with the rest crowding for place. Still there was zip; all kinds of zip. The Happy Family nudged and grinned in the dusk and were very much pleased with themselves as XY cowboys seeking mild entertainment in town.

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

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

Thereafter, the Happy Family discovered that there was a certain continuity in the barbaric performances in which Luck had grinningly encouraged them to indulge themselves. They beheld themselves engaged in various questionable enterprises, and they laughed in naïve enjoyment as certain bloodcurdling traits in their characters were depicted with startling vividness. Accented by make-up and magnified on the screen, the goggling, frog-like ugliness of Big Medicine became like unto ogres of childish memory; his smile was a thing to make one's back hair stand up with a cold, prickling sensation. Happy Jack stared at himself and his exaggerated awkwardness incredulously, with a sheepish grin of appreciation. The rest of them watched and missed no slightest gesture.

So they saw the plot of Bently Brown unfold, scene by scene; unfold in violence and malevolent intrigue and zip and much fighting. Also unfolded something of which Bently Brown had never dreamed; something which the audience, though greeting it with laughter, failed at first to recognize for what it was worth, because every one knew all about the Bently-Brown Western dramas, and every one believed that they were to be made after the usual recipe more elaborately stirred. So every one had been chortling through several scenes before the significance of their laughter occurred to them.

Comedy—that was it. Comedy, that had slipped in with cap and bells just when the door was flung open for black-robed Tragedy. But it was too late to stop laughing when they discovered the trick. They saw it now, in the very sub-titles which Luck had twisted impishly into sly humor that pointed to the laugh, in the deeds of blood that followed. They saw it in the goggling ferocity of Big Medicine; in the innocent-eyed, dimpled fiendishness of Pink; in the lank awkwardness of Happy Jack. They saw it in the sentimental mannerisms of Lenore Honiwell, whose sickish emotionalism slipped pat into the burlesque. They rocked in their seats at the heroics of Tracy Gray Joyce, who could never again be taken seriously, since Luck had tagged him mercilessly as an unconscious comedian.

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

Luck, still hunched down so that his back hair rubbed against his chair back, was laughing with his jaws wide apart and his fine teeth still gleaming in the half darkness, when Ted, general errand boy at the office, came straddling over intervening laps and laid a compelling hand on 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, all right; the author's awful mad, and so is Mart. But say, no matter what they do to you, Luck, take it from me, that pit'cher's a humdinger! I like to died a-laughing!"

CHAPTER SEVEN BENTLY BROWN DOES NOT APPRECIATE COMEDY

Luck unhooked his hat from his knee, brought his laughing jaws together with that eloquent, downward tilt to the corners of his mouth, sat up straight, considered swiftly the possibilities of the next half hour, and paid tribute in one expressive word of four letters before he went crawling over half a dozen pairs of knees to do battle for his picture. His picture, you understand. For since he had made it irresistible comedy instead of very mediocre drama, he felt all the pride of creation in his work. That was his picture that had set the Acme people laughing,—they who had come to carp and to talk knowingly of continuity and of technique and dramatic values, and to criticize everything from the sets to the photography. It was his picture; he had made it what it was. So he went as a champion rather than as a culprit to face the powers above him.

Martinson and Bently Brown were waiting for him near the door. They were not going to stay and see the next picture run, and that, in Luck's opinion, was a bad-weather sign. But he came up to them cheerfully, turning his hat in his fingers to find the front of it before he set it on his head. (These limp, wool, knockabout hats are always more or less confusing, and Luck was fastidious about his apparel.)

"Ah—Mr. Brown, this is Mr. Lindsay, ah—director who is producing your stories." Martinson's tone was as neutral as he could make it.

Luck said that he was glad to meet Mr. Brown, which was a lie. At the same instant he found the stitched-down bow on his hat, and from there felt his way to the front. At the same time he decided that there was going to be something doing presently, if