LITMIR.BIZ

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left on their bones after the hide’s skun off. If that blizzard ever does come, Luck’s shore goin’ to have all the pore-cow atmosphere he wants!”

      To Luck their talk, good-humored though it was, hurt him like a blow upon bruised flesh. For their faith in him they were eating beans three times a day with laughter and jest to sweeten the fare. For their faith in him they were riding early and late, enduring hardships and laughing at them. If he failed, he knew that they would hide their disappointment under some humorous phase of the failure;—if they could find one. He could not tell them how close he was to failure. He could not tell them in plain words how much hung upon the coming of that storm in time for him to reach the cowmen at their convention. Their ignorance of the profession kept them from worrying much about it; their absolute confidence in his knowledge let them laugh at difficulties which held him awake when they were sleeping.

      But for all that he went doggedly ahead, trusting in luck theoretically while he overlooked nothing that would make for success. While Applehead sniffed the air and shook his head, Luck was doing everything he could think of to keep things going steadily along to a completion of the production.

      He made all of his “close-ups,” his inserts, and sub-titles. He cut negative by his continuity sheet at night after the others were all in bed, and pigeon-holed the scenes ready for joining. He ordered what “positive” he would need, and he arranged for his advertising matter. All his interior scenes, save the double-exposure “vision” scenes, were done by the fifteenth of March,—March which had not come in like a roaring lion, as Rosemary had predicted with easy optimism, but which had been nerve-wrackingly lamblike to the very middle of the month.

      With a dogged persistence in getting ready for the fulfilment of his hopes, he ordered tanks and printer for the final work of getting his stuff ready for the market. He had at best a crudely primitive outfit, though he saw his bank balance dwindle and dwindle to a most despairingly small sum. And still it did not snow nor show any faint promise of snow.

      “Well,” he remarked grimly one morning, when the boys asked him at breakfast about his plans, “you can go back to bed, for all I care. I’ve done everything I can do—till we get that snowstorm. All we can do now is sit tight and trust to luck.”

      “What day uh the month is this?” Applehead wanted to know. His face was solemn with his responsibility as a weather prophet.

      “The twentieth day of March,” Luck replied, with the air of one who has the date branded deep on his consciousness.

      “Twentieth uh March—hm-mm? We-ell, now, I have knowed it to storm, and storm hard, after this time uh year. But comin’ the way she did last fall, ‘n’ all this here wind ‘n’ bluster ‘n’ snowin’ on the Zandias and never comin’ no further down, I calc’late the chances is slim, boy—‘n’ gittin’ slimmer every day, now I’m tellin’ yuh!”

      “Well, say! Ain’t yuh got a purty fair pitcher the way she stands?” Big Medicine inquired aggressively. “Seems t’ me we’ve done enough ridin’ and actin’, by cripes, t’ make half a dozen pitchers better’n what I’ve ever saw.”

      “That isn’t the point.” Luck’s voice was lifeless, with a certain dogged combativeness that had come into it during the last two months. “We’ve got to have that storm. This isn’t going to be any make-shift affair. We’ve got some good film, yes. But it’s like starting a funny story and being choked off before you get to the laugh in it. We’ve got to have that storm, I tell you!” His eyes challenged them harshly to dispute his statement.

      “Well, darn it, have your storm, then. I’m willin’,” Big Medicine bellowed with ill-timed facetiousness. “Pink, you run and git Luck a storm; git him a good big one, guaranteed to last ‘im four days or money refunded. You git one—”

      “Listen, Bud.” Luck stood suddenly before Big Medicine, quivering with nervous rage. “Don’t joke about this. There’s no joke in this at all. No one with any brains can see anything funny in having failure stare him in the face. Twelve of us have put every ounce of our best work and our best patience and every dollar we possess in the world into this venture. I’ve worked day and night on this picture. I’ve worked you boys in weather that wasn’t fit for a dog to be out in. I’ve seen Rosemary Green slaving in this dark little hole of a kitchen because we can’t afford a cook for the outfit. You’ve all been dead game—I’ll hand it to you for that—every white chip has gone into the pot. If we fail we’ll have to borrow carfare to get outa here. And here’s Applehead. We’ve used his ranch, we’ve used his house and his horses and himself; we’ve killed his cattle for beef, by ——! And we’ve got just that one chance—the chance of a storm—for winning out. One chance, and that chance getting slimmer every day, as he says. No—there’s no joke in this; or if there is, I’ve lost my appetite for comedy. I can’t laugh.” He stopped as suddenly as he had begun his rapid speech, caught up his hat, and went out alone into the soft morning sunlight. He left silence behind him,—a stunned silence that was awkward to break.

      “It’s a perfect shame!” Rosemary said at last, and her lips were trembling. “He’s just about crazy—and I know he hasn’t slept a wink, lately, just from worrying.”

      “I calc’late that’s about the how of it,” Applehead agreed, rubbing his chin nervously. “He lays awful still, last few weeks, and that thar’s a bad sign fer him. And I ain’t heerd ‘im talkin’ in his sleep lately, either. Up till lately he made more pitchers asleep than he done awake. Take it when things was movin’ right along, Mis’ Green, ‘n’ Luck was shore talkative, now I’m tellin’ yuh!”

      “My father, he got one oncle,” Annie-Many-Ponies spoke up unexpectedly from her favorite corner. “Big Medicine man. Maybe I write one letter, maybe Noisy-Owl he come, make plenty storm. Noisy-Owl, he got awful strong medicine for make storm come.”

      “Well, by cripes, yuh better send for ‘im then!” Big Medicine advised gruffly, and went out.

Chapter Seventeen. The Storm

       Table of Contents

      The Phantom Herd, as the days slipped nearer and nearer to April, might almost have been christened The Forlorn Hope. On the twenty-first the sun was so hot that Luck rode in his shirt sleeves to Albuquerque, stubbornly intending to order more “positive” for his prints in the final work of putting his Big Picture into marketable form. He did not have the slightest idea of where the money to pay for the stuff was coming from, but he sent the letter ordering the stock sent C.O.D. He was playing for big results, and he had no intention of being balked at the last minute because of his timidity in assuming an ultimate success which was beginning to look extremely doubtful.

      On the twenty-second, a lark flew impudently past his head and perched upon a bush near by and sang straight at him. As a general thing Luck loved to hear bird songs when he rode abroad on a fine morning; but he came very near taking a shot at that particular lark, as if it were personally responsible for the sunny days that had brought it out scouting ahead of its kind.

      On the twenty-third the sky was a brassy blue, and Applehead won Luck’s fierce enmity by remarking that he “calc’lated he’d better get his garden in.” Luck went away off somewhere on the snuffy little bay, that day, and did not return until after dark.

      On the twenty-fourth he took the boys away back on the mesa, where the mountains shoulder the plain, and scattered them on a wide circle, rounding up the cattle that had been permitted to drift where they would in their famished search for the scant grass-growth. Bill Holmes and the camera followed him in the buckboard with the lunch, and Luck, when the boys had met with their gleanings, “shot” two or three short scenes of poor cows and their early calves, which would go to help along his range “atmosphere.” To the Happy Family it seemed a waste of horseflesh to comb a twenty-mile radius of mesa to get a cow and calf which might have been duplicated within a mile of the ranch. The Happy Family knew that Luck was wading chin deep in the slough of despond, and they

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