The Phantom Herd | Page 4

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