LITMIR.BIZ

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range. By their eager talk they had helped him to strengthen certain scenes; they had even suggested new, original material as they told of this adventure and that accident, and argued—as was their habit—ever scenes and situations. That was why Andy had spoken of it as their picture. That was why they were here; that was what had brought them early to the studio. And in his hand he held a half dozen or more of those cheap, lurid stories he had always despised; they must let the public see their faces in these impossible, illogical situations, or they must go back and call Luck Lindsay names to salve their disappointment.

      The dried little man—whose name was Dave Wiswell—came walking curiously up the fresh-made “street,” his sharp eyes taking in the falsity of the whole row of shack-houses that had no backs; bald behind as board fences, save where two-by-fours braced them from falling. He saw the group standing before a wall that purported to be the front of a bank (which would be robbed with much bloodshed in the second scenario) and he hurried a little. Luck scowled at him preoccupiedly, nodded a good morning, and turned abruptly to the others.

      “Listen. If you boys are game for this melodrama, I’d like to use you, all right. You’ll get experience in the business, anyway, so maybe it won’t do you any harm. And if the weather holds good, we’ll just make a long hard drive of this bunch of drivel; we’ll rush ‘em through—sabe? And I’ll make it my business to see that Mart doesn’t unload any more of the same. You may even get some fun out of it, seeing you’re not fed up on this said Western drama, the way I am. Anyway, what’s the word? Shall I hop into the machine and go down and buy you fellows a bunch of return tickets, or shall I assign you your parts and wade into this blood and bullets business?”

      Weary folded his arms and grinned down at Luck. “I’m all for the blood and bullets, myself,” he said promptly. “I’m just crazy to come shooting and yelling down this little imitation street and do things that are bold and bad.”

      “I should think,” interjected Rosemary Green, with a pretty viciousness, “that you’d be ashamed, Luck Lindsay! Do you think we are a bunch of quitters? Give me a part—and a gun—and I’ll stand on a ladder behind that hotel window and shoot ‘em as fast as they can turn the corner down there.” Her brown eyes twinkled hearteningly at him. “I’ll pull my hair down, and yell and shoot and wring my hands—Pink, you keep still! I’m positive I can shoot and wring my hands at the same time in a Bently Brown story, can’t I, Luck?”

      “You certainly can,” Luck told her grimly. “You can do worse than that and get by. Well, all right, folks. You prowl around and kill time while I get ready to start. There won’t be anything doing till after lunch, at the earliest, so make yourselves at home. I’d introduce you to some of these folks if it was worth while, but it ain’t. You’ll know them soon enough—most of them to your sorrow, at that.” He turned on his heel with a hasty “See yuh later,” and plunged into the work before him just as energetically as though his heart were in it.

Chapter Six. Villains all and Proud of it

       Table of Contents

      “Day’s work, boys!” called Luck through his little megaphone at three o’clock one day, and doubled up his working script that was much crumpled and scribbled with hasty pencil marks. “No use spoiling good film,” he remarked to his assistant, glancing up at the sweeping fog bank, off to the west. “By the time we rehearse the next scene, she’ll be too dark to shoot. You go and order these cavalry costumes, Beckitt; and, say! You tell them down there that if they’re shy on the number, they better set down and make enough, because they won’t see a cent of our money if there’s so much as a canteen lacking. And tell ‘em to send army guns. That last assortment of junk they sent out was pathetic. I want equipment for fifty U.S. Cavalry, time of the early eighties. That don’t mean forty-nine—get me? You’re inclined to let those fellows have it their own way too much. I want this cavalry—”

      “There ain’t any close-ups of cavalry, are there?” Beckitt demurred. “I told them last time I thought those guns would do, because I knew the detail wouldn’t—”

      “Listen.” Luck’s tone was deliberately tolerant. “That’s maybe the reason you’ve been searching your soul for all along—the reason why you can’t get past the assistant-director stage. I want those fifty cavalrymen equipped! Do you get that?” While his eyes held Beckitt uncomfortably with their stern steadfastness, Luck thrust the script into his coat pocket that had a permanent, motion-picture-director sag to it. “If I meant that any old gun would do, I’d give my orders that way. Now, remember, there isn’t going to be any waiting around while you go back and argue, nor any makeshifts, nor anything but fifty cavalrymen fully equipped. Here’s the list complete for to-morrow’s order. You see that it’s filled!”

      Beckitt took the list which he should have made himself, since that was what he was paid for doing, and went off in the sulks and the company machine. Luck pulled a solacing cigar from an inner pocket and licked down the roughened outer leaves, and scowled thoughtfully across the studio yard. The camera man was figuring up footage or something, and his assistant was hurrying to get the tripod folded and put away. There was a new briskness in the movements of every one save Luck himself, after he spoke that last sentence through the megaphone.

      The Happy Family—or that part of it which had thrown away pitchforks and taken to the pictures—came clanking across the stage toward Luck. You would never have known the Happy Family, unless it were the Native Son who wore his usual regalia in exaggerated form. The Happy Family had wide, flapping chaps that made them drag their feet they were so heavy and so long, and great Mexican spurs whose rowels dug tiny trenches in the ground when they walked. They wore the biggest Stetsons that famous hat brand ever was stamped upon. They had huge bandanas draped picturesquely over their chests, and their sleeves were rolled to the elbows and their eyes rimmed with deep pencil shadings. At their hips swung six-shooters of violent pattern and portent. Around their middles sagged belts filled with blank cartridges. A sack of tobacco was making the rounds as they came on, and Luck watched them through speculatively narrowed lids.

      “Say, by cripes, that there saloon is the driest poison-palace I ever surged out of with two guns spittin’ death and dumnation!” Big Medicine complained, coming up with the plain intention of lighting his cigarette from Luck’s cigar. “How’d we stack up this time, boss? Bein’ soused on cold tea, I couldn’t rightly pass judgment. How many was it I murdered in cold blood, in that there scene where I laid ‘em out with black powder? Four, or five? Pink, here, claims I killed him twicet, whereas he oughta be left alive enough to jump on his horse and ride three hundred and fifty miles to fall dead in his best girl’s arms. He claims he made that ride day before yesterday, and done some pitiful weaving around in the saddle, out there in the hills, and that he died in that blond lady’s arms first thing this morning, and I hadn’t no right to kill him twicet afterwards in the saloon fight. Now I leave it to you, boss. How about this here killin’ Pink off every oncet in a while?”

      Deep in his throat Luck chuckled. “Well, Pink certainly does die pathetic,” he soothed the perturbed murderer, dropping his professional brusqueness for frank comradeship. “He’s about the best little close-up dier I ever worked with. He can get a sob anytime he rolls his eyes and gasps and falls backward.” He clapped his hand down on Pink’s shoulder and gave it a little shake.

      “That’s all right,” drawled the Native Son, taking off his sombrero to deepen the crease and the dents, because three girls were coming across the lot. “But I’ve got a complaint of my own to make. When you holler for Bud to start the rough stuff, he just goes powder crazy. He shot me up four times in that scene! Twice he held the gun so close my scalp’s all powder-marked, and by rights he should have blowed the top of my head plumb into the street. He gets so taken up with this slaughter-house business that he’ll wind up by shooting himself a few times if you don’t watch him.”

      “One thing,” Weary put in mildly, “I want to speak about, Luck. We need more blood for those murders. I didn’t have half enough for all the mortal wounds Bud gave me. By rights that saloon should be plumb

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