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

the battle unscathed. Applehead had heard the disturbance and had gone out with a rifle and dispersed the coyote, but not until Compadre had lost half of his tail and a good deal of his self-assurance. Since that night, almost a week ago, Compadre had been a changed cat. He had sought dark corners and had yowled when the best friend he had in the world tried to coax him out to his meals. Applehead was very patient and very sympathetic, and hunted small game with which to tempt the invalid's appetite.

On this day he had a fat prairie dog which he had shot, and he was carrying it around by a hind leg looking for Compadre and calling "Kitty, kitty, kitty," in the most seductive tones of which his desert-harshened vocal chords were capable. He looked under the squat adobe cabin which held all the odds and ends that had accumulated about the place, and which he called the "ketch-all." He went over and looked under the water tank where there was shade and coolness. He went to the stable, and from there he returned to the adobe house, squat like the "ketch-all" but larger. There was a hole alongside the fireplace chimney at the end next the hill, and sometimes when Compadre was especially disenchanted with his world, he went into the hole and nursed his grievances in dark seclusion under the house.

Applehead got down upon all fours and called "Kitty, kitty, kitty," with his face close to the hole. It was past noon, and Compadre had not had anything to eat since the night before, when he had lapped up half a saucer of canned milk and had apathetically licked a slice of bacon. Applehead put his ear to the hole and imagined he heard a faint meow from a far corner. He pushed the prairie dog into the aperture and called "Kitty-kitty-kitty" again coaxingly.

He was so absorbed in his anxious quest that he did not hear the chuckle of two wagons coming up through the sand to the corral. He did not even hear the footsteps of men approaching the house. He did not hear anything at all except a dismal yowl now and then from the darkness. He contorted his long person that he might peer into the gloom. He pushed the prairie dog in as far as he could reach. "Come, kitty-kitty-kitty!" he coaxed. "Doggone your onery soul, I'm gitting tired of this kinda performance! You can tromp on me just so fur and no further, now I'm a-tellin' yuh. That there tail of yourn needs a fresh rag tied to it, and some salve. But I ain't the burrowin' kind of animal, and I ain't comin' in under there after yuh. Come, kitty-kitty-kitty! Come on outa there 'fore I send a charge of birdshot in after yuh!" His voice changed to a tremulous chant of rising anger. "You wall-eyed, mangy, rat-eatin' son of a gun, what have I been feedin' yuh fur all these years? You come outa there! If it wasn't for the love uh God I got in my heart, I'll fill yuh so full of holes the coyotes'll have to make soup of ye! I'll sure spread yuh out so thin your hide'll measure up like a mountain lion! Don't yuh yowl at me like that! Come, kitty-kitty-kitty—ni-ice kitty! Come to your old pard what ketched yuh the fattest young dog on the flat for your dinner. Come on, now; you ain't skeered uh me, shorely! Come on, Compadre—ni-ice kitty!"

"Let me try!" cried Rosemary behind him, her voice startling old Applehead so that he knocked his head painfully on the rock foundation as he jerked himself into a more dignified posture. His eyes widened at the size of the audience grouped behind him, but he had faced more amazing sights than that in his eventful career. He got stiffly to his feet and bowed, the prairie dog dangling limply from his hand.

"Howdy! Howdy! Pleased to meet yuh," he greeted them dazedly. Then he spied Luck standing half behind Weary's tall form, and his embarrassed smile changed to a joyful grin. "Well, danged if it ain't Luck! How are yuh, boy? I was jest thinkin' about you right this morning. What wind blowed you into camp? Come right on in, folks. If you're friends of Luck's, yuh don't need no interduction in this camp. Luck and me's et outa the same skillet months on end together. Come on in. I've et, but they's plenty left." His blue eyes twinkled quizzically over the Happy Family and then went to Luck. "What yuh up to this time, boy? 'Nother wild-west show?"

While they were waiting for coffee to boil, Luck told him what he was up to this time. Told him what it was he meant to do in the way of making a Western picture that should be worthy the West. He did not say a word about needing Applehead's assistance; he did not need to say a word about that. Applehead himself saw where he would fit into the scheme, and he seemed to take it for granted that Luck saw it also.

"Got all your stuff out from town?" he asked, while he was hunting cups enough to go around. "If yuh ain't, you can send a couple of the boys in with a four-horse team after dinner. I d'no about beds, unless yuh got your own beddin'-rolls with yuh. The missus, she can have a room, and the rest of yuh will have to knock some bunks together. Mebby we can clean out the 'ketch-all' and turn that into a bunk house. One I had, it burnt down last winter; some darn-fool Mexicans got to fightin' in there and kicked the lamp over. It could have a new roof put on, I reckon; the walls is there yet. You can take a look around after you eat, and see what all there is to do. Well, set up, folks; ain't much, but I've throwed my feet under the table fer less and was thankful to git it, now I'm a-tellin' yuh!"

Big Medicine bethought him of the remains of the train lunch which they had frugally saved. He brought that and added it to Applehead's impromptu meal. The sandwiches were mashed flat, and the pickles were limp, and the cake much inclined to crumble, but Applehead gave one look and took off his hat.

"I've et, but I can shore eat again when I git my eyes on cake," he declared exuberantly, and pulled an empty box up to the table for a seat. "I wisht Compadre could git a smell uh that there fried chicken; it would put new life into him, which he needs after tangling with that there coyote 'tother night."

"We ought to unhitch and give the horses a feed," Luck suggested. "Any particular place?"

"Well, you know where to put them cayuses as well as I do," Applehead mumbled, with his mouth full of cake. "I don't care what yuh do around the danged place. Go along and don't bother me, boy; I'm busy."

"Didn't I tell you how it would be?" Luck reminded Andy and Weary when they were outside. "That old boy is tickled to death to have us here. He sure is a type, too. I'll be using him in the picture. And just tale a look at that corral down there! We'll set up camp this afternoon and round up some horses,—Applehead always keeps a bunch running back here on the mesa,—and to-morrow morning we'll get to work. A couple of you will have to take these teams back this afternoon, too. I'll let you drive the four-horse in, Weary, and lead the other behind. And I'll send the Native Son in with Applehead's team and wagon, so you can haul out a thousand feet of lumber for a stage. Get it surfaced one side,—fourteen-foot boards, sabe? And about twenty-five pounds of eight-penny nails. We've got the tools in our outfit. I wonder which pasture Applehead's team is running in. I'll have one of the boys get them up, unless—"

"Luck Lindsay!" came Rosemary's high, clear treble. "Aren't you boys going to eat any dinner?"

"We'll eat when we have more time!" Luck shouted back. "Send Applehead out here, will you?"

Presently Applehead appeared with a large piece of cake in one hand and a well-picked chicken wing in the other. "What yuh want?" he inquired lazily, in the tone that implies extreme physical comfort.

"I want your big team to haul some lumber out from town. Where are they? If you don't mind catching them up while I help get this stuff unloaded, we'll have things moving around here directly."

"Shore I'll ketch 'em up fur ye, soon as I find Compadre and give him this here bone. He's been kinda off his feed since that coyote clumb his frame. He was under the house, but I reckon so many strange voices kinda got his goat. There ain't ary yowl to be got outa that hole no more. Come, kitty-kitty-kitty!"

Luck threw out his hands despairingly, and then laughed. Applehead's tender solicitude for his cat was a fixed characteristic of the man, and Luck knew there was no profit in argument upon the subject. He began unloading the lighter pieces of baggage while the boys fed the livery teams. The others came straggling down from the house, lighting their after-dinner cigarettes and glancing curiously at the adobe out-buildings which were so different from anything in Montana. The sagebrush slopes wore a comfortable air of familiarity, even though the boys were more accustomed to bunch grass; but an adobe stable was a novelty.

Fast as they came near him, Luck put them to work. There was plenty to do before they could even begin work on the Big Picture, but Luck seemed to have thought out all the details of camp-setting with the same attention to trifles which he had shown in the making of a picture. In half an hour he had every one busy, including old Applehead, who, having located Compadre in the stable loft and left the chicken wing at the top of the ladder, had saddled his horse and gone off into a far pasture to bring in all the horses down there, so that Luck could choose whatever animals he wished to use. Dave Wiswell, the dried little man, was helping Rosemary wash the dishes and put away the food supplies they had brought out with them, as fast as Happy Jack could carry them up from the wagon. Andy Green was ruthlessly emptying the only closet—a roomy one, fortunately—in the house, and tacking up black paper which Luck had brought, so that it might serve as a dark room. Big Medicine and Pink were clearing out the one-roomed adobe cabin which Applehead called the "ketch-all," so that the boys could sleep there until the bunk-house was repaired.

Luck was unpacking his camera and swearing softly to himself while he set it up, and wishing that his experience as assistant camera-man was not quite so far in the past. He foresaw difficulties with that camera until he got in practice, but he did not say anything about it to the others. He got it together finally, put in the two-hundred-foot magazine of negative that he had brought with him to use while waiting for his big order to arrive, made a few light tests, and went up to the house to see if Andy had the dark room dark enough.

He found Andy defending himself as best he could from a small domestic storm. In his anxiety to have that dark room fixed just the way Luck wanted it, Andy had purloined a shelf which Rosemary needed, and which she meant to have, if words could restore it to its place behind the kitchen stove. Andy had the shelf down and was taking out bent nails with a new hammer when Luck came to the door with his arms full of packages of chemicals and a ruby lamp.

"What can a fellow do?" Andy was inquiring plaintively. "There ain't another board on the place that's the right width. I looked. Luck's got to have a shelf; you don't expect him to keep all his junk on the floor, do you? I'm sorry, but I've just got to have it, girl."

"You've just got to put that shelf back, Andy. Where do you expect me to put things? There isn't a pantry on the place, and only that one dinky little cupboard over there. I can't keep my dishes on the floor, and cooking is going to be pretty important, itself, around this camp!"

"Soon as the lumber gets here, I'll have Andy build you a cupboard," Luck soothed her. "You haven't got