The Phantom Herd | Page 3

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,