Book: The Phantom Herd

B >> B. M. Bower >> The Phantom Herd



THE PHANTOM HERD

BY B. M. BOWER

Author of Chip of the Flying-U, The Flying-U's Last Stand,
The Gringos, etc.

1916







FOREWORD

For the accuracy of certain parts of this story which deal most
intimately with the business of making motion pictures, I am indebted to
Buck Connor. whose name is a sufficient guarantee that all technical
points are correct. His criticism, advice and other assistance have been
invaluable, and I take this opportunity of expressing my appreciation and
thanks for the help he has given me.

B.M.BOWER.




CONTENTS

CHAPTER


I THE INDIANS MUST GO

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

III AND THEY SIGH FOR THE DAYS THAT ARE GONE

IV THE LITTLE DOCTOR PROTESTS

V A BUNCH OF ONE-REELERS FROM BENTLY BROWN

VI VILLAINS ALL AND PROUD OF IT

VII BENTLY BROWN DOES NOT APPRECIATE COMEDY

VIII "THERE'S GOT TO BE A LINE DRAWN SOMEWHERES"

IX LEAVE IT TO THE BUNCH

X UNEXPECTED GUESTS FOR APPLEHEAD

XI JUST A FEW UNFORESEEN OBSTACLES

XII "I THINK YOU NEED INDIAN GIRL FOR PICTURE"

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

XIV "PLUMB SPOILED, D'YUH MEAN?"

XV A LETTER FROM CHIEF BIG TURKEY

XVI "THE CHANCES IS SLIM AND GITTIN' SLIMMER"

XVII THE STORM

XVIII A FEW OF THE MINOR DIFFICULTIES

XIX WHEREIN LUCK MAKES A SPEECH

XX "SHE'S SHAPING UP LIKE A BANK ROLL"





CHAPTER ONE

THE INDIANS MUST GO


Luck Lindsay had convoyed his thirty-five actor-Indians to their
reservation at Pine Ridge, and had turned them over to the agent in good
condition and a fine humor and nice new hair hatbands and other fixings;
while their pockets were heavy with dollars that you may be sure would
not he spent very wisely. He had shaken hands with the braves, and had
promised to let them know when there was another job in sight, and to
speak a good word for them to other motion-picture companies who might
want to hire real Indians. He had smiled at the fat old squaws who had
waddled docilely in and out of the scenes and teetered tirelessly round
and round in their queer native dances in the hot sun at his behest, when
Luck wanted several rehearsals of "atmosphere" scenes before turning the
camera on them.

They hated to go back to the tame life of the reservation and to
stringing beads and sewing buckskin with sinew, and to gossiping among
themselves of things their heavy-lidded black eyes had looked upon with
such seeming apathy. They had given Luck an elaborately beaded buckskin
vest that would photograph beautifully, and three pairs of heavy, beaded
moccasins which he most solemnly assured them he would wear in his next
picture. The smoke-smell of their tepee fires and perfumes still clung
heavily to the Indian-tanned buckskin, so that Luck carried away with
him an aroma indescribable and unmistakable to any one who has ever
smelled it.

Just when he was leaving, a shy, big-eyed girl of ten had slid out from
the shelter of her mother's poppy-patterned skirt, had proffered three
strings of beads, and had fled. Luck had smiled his smile again--a smile
of white, even teeth and so much good will that you immediately felt that
he was your friend--and called her back to him. Luck was chief; and his
commands were to be obeyed, instantly and implicitly; that much he had
impressed deeply upon the least of these. While the squaws grinned and
murmured Indian words to one another, the big-eye girl returned
reluctantly; and Luck, dropping a hand to his coat pocket while he smiled
reassurance, emptied that pocket of gum for her. His smile had lingered
after he turned away; for like flies to an open syrup can the papooses
had gathered around the girl.

Well, that job was done, and done well. Every one was satisfied save Luck
himself. He swung up to the back of the Indian pony that would carry him
through the Bad Lands to the railroad, and turned for a last look. The
bucks stood hip-shot and with their arms folded, watching him gravely.
The squaws pushed straggling locks from their eyes that they might watch
him also. The papooses were chewing gum and staring at him solemnly. Old
Mrs. Ghost-Dog, she of the ponderous form and plaid blanket that Luck had
used with such good effect in the foreground of his atmosphere scenes,
lifted up her voice suddenly, and wailed after him in high-keyed lament
that she would see his face no more; and Luck felt a sudden contraction
of the throat while he waved his hand to them and rode away.

Well, now he must go on to the next job, which he hoped would be more
pleasant than this one had been. Luck hated to give up those Indians. He
liked them, and they liked him,--though that was not the point. He had
done good work with them. When he directed the scenes, those Indians did
just what he wanted, and just the way he wanted it done; Luck was too old
a director not to know the full value of such workers.

But the Acme Film Company, caught with the rest of the world in the
pressure of hard times, wanted to economize. The manager had pointed out
to Luck, during the course of an evening's discussion, that these Indians
were luxuries in the making of pictures, and must be taken off the
payroll for the good of the dividends. The manager had contended that
white men and women, properly made up, could play the part of Indians
where Indians were needed; whereas Indians could never be made to play
the part of white men and women. Therefore, since white men and women
were absolutely necessary. Why keep a bunch of Indians around eating up
profits? The manager had sense on his side, of course. Other companies
were making Indian pictures occasionally with not a real Indian within
miles of the camera, but Luck Lindsay groaned inwardly, and cursed the
necessity of economizing. For Luck had one idol, and that idol was
realism. When the scenario called for twenty or thirty Indians, Luck
wanted _Indians_,--real, smoke-tanned, blanketed bucks and squaws and
papooses; not made-up whites who looked like animated signs for cigar
stores and acted like,--well, never mind what Luck said they acted like.

"I can take the Injuns back," he conceded, "and worry along somehow
without them. But if you want me to put on any more Western stuff, you'll
have to let me weed out some of these Main Street cowboys that Clements
wished on to me, and go out in the sagebrush and round up some that
ain't all hair hatbands and high-heeled boots and bluff. I've got to have
some whites to fill the foreground, if I give up the Injuns; or else I
quit Western stuff altogether. I've been stalling along and keeping the
best of the bucks in the foreground, and letting these said riders lope
in and out of scenes and pile off and go to shooting soon as the camera
picks them up, but with the Injuns gone, the whites won't get by.

"Maybe you have noticed that when there was any real riding, I've had the
Injuns do it. And do you think I've been driving that stagecoach
hell-bent from here to beyond because I'd no other way to kill time?
Wasn't another darned man in the outfit I'd trust, that's why. If I take
the Indians back, I've got to have some real boys." Luck's voice was
plaintive, and a little bit desperate.

"Well, dammit, _have_ your real boys! I never said you shouldn't. Weed
out the company to suit yourself. You'll have to take the Injuns back;
nobody else can handle the touch-me-not devils. You can lay off the
company if you want to, and while you're up there pick up a bunch of
cowboys to suit you. You're making good, Luck; don't take it that I'm
criticizing anything you've done or the way you did it. You've been
turning out the best Western stuff that goes on the screen; anybody knows
that. That isn't the point. We just simply can't afford to keep those
Indians any longer without retrenching on something else that's a lot
more vital. You know what they cost as well as I do; you know what
present conditions are. Figure it out for yourself."

"I don't have to," Luck retorted in a worried tone. "I know what we're up
against. I know we ought to give them up--but I sure hate to do it!
Lor-_dee_, but I can do things with that bunch! Remember Red Brother?"
Luck was off on his hobby, the making of Indian pictures. "Remember the
panoram effect I got on that massacre of the wagon train? Remember the
council-of-war scene, and the close-up of Young-Dog-Howls-At-The-Moon
making his plea for the lives of the prisoners? And the war dance with
radium flares in the camp fires to give the light-effect? That film's in
big demand yet, they tell me. I'll never be able to put over stuff like
that with made-up actors, Martinson. You know I can't."

"I don't know; you're only just beginning to hit your gait, Luck," the
manager soothed. "You have turned out some big stuff,--some awful big
stuff; but at that you're just beginning to find yourself. Now, listen.
You can have your 'real boys' you're always crying for. I can see what
you mean when you pan these fellows you call Main Street cowboys. What
you better do is this: Close down the company for two weeks, say. Keep on
the ones you want, and let the rest out. And take these Injuns home, and
then get out after your riders. Numbers and salaries we'll leave to you.
Go as far as you like; it's a cinch you'll get what you want if you're
allowed to go after it."

So here was Luck, arriving in due time at the railroad. He said good-by
to Young-Dog-Howls-At-The-Moon who had ridden with him, and whose kingly
bearing and clean-cut features and impressive pantomime made him a
popular screen-Indian, and sat down upon a baggage truck to smoke a
cigarette while he waited for the westbound train.

Young-Dog-Howls-At-The-Moon he watched meditatively until that young man
had bobbed out of sight over a low hill, the pony Luck had ridden
trailing after at the end of the lead-rope. Luck's face was sober, his
eyes tired and unsmiling. He had done that much of his task: he had
returned the Indians, and automatically wiped a very large item of
expense from the accounts of the Acme Film Company. He did not like to
dwell, however, on the cost to his own pride in his work.

The next job, now that he was actually face to face with it, looked not
so simple. He was in a country where, a few years before, his quest for
"real boys"--as he affectionately termed the type nearest his
heart--would have been easy enough. But before the marching ranks of
fence posts and barbed wire, the real boys had scattered. A more or less
beneficent government had not gathered them together, and held them apart
from the changing conditions, as it had done with the Indians. The real
boys had either left the country, or had sold their riding outfits and
gone into business in the little towns scattered hereabouts, or else they
had taken to farming the land where the big herds had grazed while the
real boys loafed on guard.

Luck admitted to himself that in the past two years, even, conditions had
changed amazingly. Land was fenced that had been free. Even the
reservation was changed a little. He threw away that cigarette and
lighted another, and turned aggrievedly upon a dried little man who came
up with the open expectation of using the truck upon which Luck was
sitting uncomfortably. There was the squint of long looking against sun
and wind at a far skyline in the dried little man's face. There was a
certain bow in his legs, and there were various other signs which Luck
read instinctively as he got up. He smiled his smile, and the dried
little man grinned back companionably.

"Say, old-timer, what's gone with all the cattle and all the punchers?"
Luck demanded with a mild querulousness.

The dried little man straightened from the truck handles and regarded
Luck strangely.

"My gorry, son, plumb hazed off'n this section the earth, I reckon.
Farmers and punchers, they don't mix no better'n sheep and cattle. Why, I
mind the time when--"

The train was late, anyway, and the dried little man sat down on the
truck, and fumbled his cigarette book, and began to talk. Luck sat down
beside him and listened, leaning forward with his elbows on his knees and
a cold cigarette in his fingers. It was not of this part of the country
that the dried little man talked, but of Montana, over there to the west.
Of northern Montana in the days when it was cowman's paradise; the days
when round-up wagons started out with the grass greening the hilltops,
and swung from the Rockies to the Bear Paws and beyond in the wide arc
that would cover their range; of the days of the Cross L and the Rocking
R and the Lazy Eight,--every one of them brand names to glisten the eyes
of old-time Montanans.

"Where would you go to find them boys now?" the dried little man
questioned mournfully. "The Rocking R's gone into sheep, and the old boys
have all left. The Cross L moved up into Canada, Lord knows how they're
making out; I don't. Only outfit in northern Montana I know that has hung
together at all is the Flying U. Old man Whitmore, he's hangin' on by his
eyewinkers to what little range he can, and is going in for
thoroughbreds. Most of his boys is with him yet, they tell me--"

"What they doing? Still riding?" Luck let out a long breath and lighted
his cigarette. A little flare of hope had come into his eyes.

"Riding--yes, what little there is to do. Ranching a little too, and
kicking about changed times, same as I'm doing. Last time I saw that
outfit they was riding, you bet!" The dried little man chuckled, "That
was in Great Falls, some time back. They was all in a contest, and
pulling down the money, too. I was talking to old man Whitmore all one
evening. He was telling me--"

From away out yonder behind a hill came the throaty call of the coming
train. The dried little man jumped up, mumbled that it did beat all how
time went when yuh got to talking over old days, and hustled two trunks
out of the baggage room. Luck got his grip out of the office, settled
himself into his coat, and took a last, long pull at the cigarette stub
before he threw it away. It was not much of a clue that he had fallen
upon by chance, but Luck was not one to wait until he was slapped in the
face with a fact. He had intended swinging back through Arizona, where in
certain parts cattle still were wild enough to bunch up at sight of a man
afoot. His questioning of the dried little man had not been born of any
concrete purpose, but of the range man's plaint in the abstract. Still--

"Say, brother, what's the Flying U's home town?" he called after the
dried little man with his amiable, Southern drawl.

"Huh? Dry Lake. Yuh taking this train?"

"So long--taking it for a ways, yes." Luck hurried down to where a
kinky-haired porter stood apathetically beside the steps of his coach.
Dry Lake? He had never heard of the place, but he could find out from the
railroad map or the conductor. He swung his grip into the waiting hand of
the porter and went up the steps hurriedly. He meant to find out where
Dry Lake was, and whether this train would take him there.




CHAPTER TWO

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


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

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

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

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

After that he saw the coming of the cattle, driven up from the south by
wind-browned, saddle-weary cowboys who sang endless chanteys to pass the
time as they rode with their herds up the long trail. He saw the cattle
humped and drifting before the wind in the first blizzards of winter,
while gray wolves slunk watchfully here and there, their shaggy coats
ruffled 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 knife
that turned to water what it touched, and laying bare the brown grass
beneath. He saw the riders go out with the wagons to gather the
lank-bodied, big-kneed calves and set upon them the searing mark of their
owner's iron.

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

What a picture it all would make--the story of those old days as they
had 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 that
bigger 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 of
that story which should breathe of the real range land as it once had
been. 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. With
the trail-herd going north that picture should open--the trail-herd
toiling over big, unpeopled plains, with the riders slouched in their
saddles, hat brims pulled low over eyes that ached with the glare of the
sun and the sweep of wind, their throats parched in the dust cloud flung
upward from the marching, cloven hoofs. Months it would take in the
making,--but sitting there with the green tail-lights switching through
cuts 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 the
heavens were split with lightning, and the rain came down in
white-lighted streamers of water. Visioned the cattle humped in the snow,
tails to the biting wind, and the riders plodding with muffled heads bent
to the drive of the blizzard, the fine snow packing full the wrinkles in
their sourdough coats.

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

He grew chilled as the night advanced, but he did not know that he was
cold. He was wondering, as a man always wonders in the face of an
intellectual birth, why this picture had not come to him before; why he
had gone on through these months and years of turning out reel upon reel
of Western pictures, with never once a glimmering of this great epic of
the range land; why he had clung to his Indians and his one-reel Indian
pictures with now and then a three-reel feature to give him the elation
of having achieved something; why he had left them feeling depressedly
that his best work was in the past; why he had looked upon real range-men
as 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 humiliated
before his blindness. The picture he saw as he stared out across the
moonlit plain was so clean-cut, so vivid, that he marvelled because he
had never seen it until this night. Perhaps, if the dried little man had
not 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 Old
Man who owned this herd that should trail north and on through scene
after scene of the picture! No make-up needed there to stamp the sense of
reality upon the screen. Luck looked with the eye of his imagination and
saw the dried little man climbing, with a stiffness that could not hide
his accustomedness, into the saddle. He saw him ride out with his men,
scattering his riders for the round-up; the old cowman making sharper the
contrast of the younger men, fixing indelibly upon the consciousness of
those who watched that this same dried little man had grown old in the
saddle; fixing indelibly the fact that not in a day did the free ranging
of 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 car
while he took a long, last look at the moon-bathed plain where had been
born his great, beautiful picture. He stretched his arms as does one who
has slept heavily, and went inside and down to the beginning of the
narrow aisle where were kept telegraph forms in their wooden-barred
niches in the wall. He went into the smoking compartment and wrote, with
a sureness that knew no crossed-out words, a night letter to the dried
little man who had sat on the baggage truck and talked of the range. And
this is what went speeding back presently to the dried little man who
slept in a cabin near the track and dreamed, perhaps, of following the
big herds:


Baggage man,
Sioux, N.D.

Report at once to me at Dry Lake. Can offer you good position Acme Film
Company, good salary working in big Western picture. Small part, some
riding among real boys who know range life. Want you bad as type of
cowman owning cattle in picture. Salary and expenses begin when you show
up. 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 the
flat rate on night letters, but he would have over-run the limit by
eighty words just as quickly if he had wanted to say so much. That was
Luck's way. Be it a telegram, instructions to his company, or a quarrel
with some one who crossed him, Luck said what he wanted to say--and paid
the price without blinking.

I don't know what the dried little man thought when the operator
handed him that message the next morning; but I can tell you in a few
words 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 pushed
up as high as it would go, and stared out at the tamed plain, and
perfected the details of his Big Picture. Into the spell of the range he
wove a story of human love and human hate and danger and trouble. So it
must be, to carry his message to the world who would look and marvel at
what he would show them in the drama of silence. He had not named his
picture yet. The name would come in its own good time, just as the
picture had come when the time for its making was ripe.

Copyright (c) 2007. knowncrafts.net. All rights reserved.