LITMIR.BIZ

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gave him a queer look, but Luck had turned his attention to another letter, and she did not say what was in her mind. Annie-Many-Ponies, speaking theoretically, was good to have around to help Rosemary. In actual practice, however, Rosemary found her not so good. Personally Annie was fastidiously tidy, which Rosemary ungenerously set down to youthful vanity rather than to innate cleanliness. When it came to washing dishes, however, Annie-Many-Ponies left much to be desired. She was prone to disappear about the time she reached the biscuit-basin and the frying-pan stage of the thrice-daily performance. She was prone to fancy she heard Wagalexa Conka calling her, or Shunka Chistala barking in pursuit of the cat, or a hen cackling out in the weeds; whatever the sound, it invariably became a summons which Annie-Many-Ponies must instantly obey. Then she forgot to come back within the next two or three hours, and Rosemary must finish the dishes herself. But all this, as Rosemary well knew, was an unimportant detail of the general scheme of work going on at Applehead’s ranch.

      To her it seemed wonderful, the way Luck was pushing his picture to completion against long odds sometimes, fighting some difficulty always. Much as she secretly resented certain Indian traits in Annie-Many-Ponies, and pleased as she would secretly have been if the girl had been recalled to the reservation, she was generously relieved because Luck could now go ahead with his round-up and trail-herd scenes while the weather was mild and sunny, and need not hurry the Indian-girl scenes at all.

      In the ten days since the blizzard, Luck had worked hard. Some night scenes in a cow-town he had already taken, driving late in the afternoon into Albuquerque with his radium flares and his full company. Rosemary’s memory cherished those nights as rare and precious experiences. First there were the old-time scenes, half Mexican in their atmosphere, when the dried little man was young, and the trail-herd started north. For these scenes Luck himself played the part of Dave Wiswell, turning the camera work over to Bill Holmes. Then there were the scenes of a later period,—scenes of carousal which depicted her beloved Andy as a very wild young man who spent his nights riotously. One full day of sunshine had also been spent at the stockyards there, taking shipping scenes.

      On this day the two women had stayed at home, and Rosemary had nearly quarreled with Annie-Many-Ponies because Annie would not mend her stockings, but had spent the whole afternoon teaching Shunka Chistala to chase prairie dogs, the game being to try and frighten them away from their holes and then catch them. Annie-Many-Ponies attended to the strategic direction of the enterprise and let Shunka Chistala do most of the running. The high, clear laughter of the girl and her unintelligible cries to the little black dog had irritated Rosemary to the point of tears.

      There had been no more days wasted because of spoiled film,—Luck was carefully guarding against that,—and it seemed to Rosemary that there were miles of it developed and dried and pigeon-holed, ready for assembling. That part of the work she was especially interested in, because it was done in the house.

      To her it might seem that miles of film had been made, but to Luck it seemed as though the work crawled with maddening deliberation. Delays fretted him. The mounting expense account worried him, though as a matter of fact it mounted slowly, considering the work he was doing and the size of the company he was maintaining. When he took film clippings to a town photographer to have enlargements made for “stills,”—the pictures which must accompany each set of prints as advertising matter,—the cost of the work gave him the blues for the rest of that day. Then there were the Chavez boys, whom he had found it expedient to use occasionally in his big range scenes and in his “cow-town stuff.” They had no conception of regular rates as extras, but Luck had a conscience, and he had also established a precedent. Whenever he used them in pictures, he gave Tomas five dollars and left it to Tomas to divide with Ramone. And five dollars, added to other fives and tens and twenty-fives, soon amounts to an amazing whole when anxiety holds the pencil.

      As his story had changed and developed into The Phantom Herd plot, it had lengthened appreciably, because he could not and would not sacrifice his big range stuff. And double exposures meant double work, of course. He found himself with a five-reel picture in the making instead of the four-reeler he had started to produce. Thus he was compelled to send for more “raw stock.” Also, he soon ran out of lumber for his interior sets and must buy more. As the possibilities of his production grew plainer to him, Luck knew that he could not slight a single scene nor skimp it in the making. He could go hungry if it came to that, but he could not cheapen his story by using make-shift settings.

      Thanksgiving came, and they scarcely knew it, for the weather was fine, and they spent the day far afield and came in after dark, too tired to be thankful for anything save the opportunity to sleep.

      Christmas came so suddenly that they wondered where the month had gone. Christmas Eve the Happy Family spent in arranging a round-up camp out behind the house where the hill rose picturesquely, and in singeing themselves heroically in the heat of radium flares, while Luck took his camp-fire scenes that were triumphs of lighting-effects and photography,—scenes which he would later tone red with aniline dyes.

      Annie-Many-Ponies and Rosemary brought out the two-gallon coffee boiler and a can of cream and a small lard pail of sugar, with cups and tin spoons and a pan of boiled-beef and cold-bean sandwiches. Rosemary called “Merry Christmas!” when the dying radium flares betrayed her approach, and the Happy Family jumped up and shouted “Merry Christmas!” to her and one another, just as exuberantly as though they had been celebrating instead of adding six hours or so to a hard day’s work.

      “That was beautiful, Luck Lindsay,” Rosemary declared, giving him a bean sandwich for which he declared himself “strong,” and holding the sugar bucket steady while he dipped into it three times.

      “We were watching from the house; and the boys’ faces, the way you had them placed, looked—oh, I don’t know, but it just sent shivers all over me, it was so beautiful. I just hope it comes out that way in the picture!”

      “Better,” mumbled Luck, taking great, satisfying bites into the sandwich. “Wait till you see it—after it’s colored—with the chuck-box end of the wagon showing, and the night horses standing back there in the shadows; she will sure look like a million dollars!”

      “She’ll shore depict me cookin’ and the smoke bilin’ up,” poor old Applehead remarked lugubriously. “Last five minutes er so I could hear grease a-fryin’ on my shins, now I’m tellin’ yuh!”

      “Well, they don’t use radium flares in cold-storage plants,” Luck admitted reflectively.

      “I know, by cripes, I’m goin’ to mend my ways,” Big Medicine declared meaningly. “I never realized b’fore how fire ‘n brimstone’s goin’ to feel!”

      “Well, I’ve got to hand it to you, boys,” Luck praised them with a smile. “You sat tight, and when I said ‘Hold,’ you sure held the pose. You dissolved perfectly—you’ll see.”

      “Aw, gwan!” contradicted Happy Jack with his mouth full. “I never dissolved; I plumb melted!”

      “If you boys could just see how beautiful you looked,” Rosemary reproved, starting on her second round with the coffee boiler. “I saw it from behind the camera, and Luck had you sitting so the light was shining on your faces; honestly, you looked beautiful!”

      “Aw, gwan!” gurgled Happy Jack, reddening uncomfortably.

      “It’s late,” Luck broke in, emptying his cup the second time. “But I’m going to make that firelight scene of you, Annie. The wind happens to be just right for the flame effect I want. Did you make up, as I told you?”

      For answer, Annie-Many-Ponies threw back her shrouding red shawl and stepped proudly out before him in the firelight. Her brown arms were bare and banded with bracelets of some dull metal. Her fringed dress of deerskin was heavily embroidered with stained porcupine quills. Her slim feet were clothed in beaded moccasins. It was the gala dress of the daughter of a chief, and as the daughter of a chief she stood straight and slender and haughty before him. The Happy Family stared at her, astonished. They had not even known that she possessed such a costume.

      Ordinarily the Happy Family would have taken immediate advantage of their freedom

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