Part 21 (1/2)
At five minutes to eight that evening all of the cattlemen and a few favored, influential citizens of El Paso whom Luck had invited personally sat waiting before the blank screen. Up in the operator's cramped quarters Luck was having a nervous chill and trying his best not to show it, and he was telling the operator to give it time enough, for the Lord's sake, and to be sure he had everything ready before he started in, and so forth, until the operator was almost as nervous as Luck himself.
”Now, look here,” he cried exasperatedly at last. ”You know your business, and I know mine. You're going to have me named in your write-ups as the movie-man that run this show for the convention, ain't you? And I'm going to open up a picture house next week in this town, ain't I? And I ain't going to advertise myself as a b.u.m operator, am I?
Now you _vamos_ outa here and get down there in the audience, if you don't want me to get the fidgets and spoil something. Go on--beat it!”
Luck must have been in a strange condition, for he beat it promptly and without any retort, and slid furtively into a chair between two old range-men just as the operator's boy-usher switched off the lights.
Luck's heart began to pound so that he half expected his neighbors to tell him to close his m.u.f.fler,--only they were of the saddle-horse fraternity and would not have known what the phrase meant.
_The Phantom Herd_ flashed suddenly upon the screen and joggled there dizzily, away over to one side. Luck clapped his hand to his perspiring forehead and murmured ”Oh, my Gawd!” like a prayer, and shut his eyes to hide from them the desecration. He opened them to find that the caste was just flicking off and the first scene dissolving in.
The man at his left gave a long sigh and crossed his knees, and leaned back and began to chew tobacco rapidly between his worn old molars.
_”Oh, a ten dollar hoss and a forty dollar saddle, I'm goin' to punchin' Texas cattle.”_
The sub-t.i.tle dissolved slowly into a scene showing a cow-puncher (who was Weary) swinging on to his rangy cow-Horse and galloping away after the chuck-wagon just disappearing in the wake of the dust-flinging _remuda_. Back somewhere in the dusk of the audience, a man began to hum the tune that went with the words, and the heart of Luck Lindsay gave an exultant bound. He had used lines from ”The Old Chisholm Trail” and other old-time range songs for his sub-t.i.tles, to keep the range atmosphere complete, and that cracked voice humming unconsciously told how it appealed to these men of the range.
Luck did not slide down in his seat so that his head rested on the chair-back while _The Phantom Herd_ was being shown. Instead, he sat leaning forward, with his face white and strained, and watched for weak points and for bad photography and scenes that could have been bettered.
He saw the big trail-herd go winding away across the level, with Weary riding ”point” and Happy Jack bringing up the ”drag,” and the others scattered along between; riding slouched in their saddles, hatbrims pulled low over eyes smarting with the dust that showed in a thin film at the head of the herd and grew thicker toward the drag, until riders and animals were seen dimly through a haze.
”My--I can just feel that dust in m' throat!” muttered the man at his right, and coughed.
Luck saw the storm come muttering up just as the cattle were bedding down for the night. He saw the lightning, and he knew that those who watched with him were straining forward. He heard some one say involuntarily: ”They'll break and run, sure as h.e.l.l!” and he knew that he had done that part of his work well.
He saw the night scenes he had taken in town. He almost forgot that all this was his work, so smoothly did the story steal across his senses and beguile him into half believing it was true and not a fabric which he had built with careful planning and much toil. He saw the round-up scenes; the day-herd, the cutting-out and the branding, the beef-herd driven to the s.h.i.+pping cars. True, those steers were not exactly prime beef,--he had caught the culls only, late in the season for these scenes--but they pa.s.sed, with one audible comment that this was a poor season for beef!
”We rounded 'em up and we put 'em in the cars--”
The sub-t.i.tle sang itself familiarly into the minds of the range men.
More than one voice was heard to begin a surrept.i.tious humming of the old tune, and to cease abruptly with the sudden self-consciousness of the singer.
But there was the story, growing insensibly out of the range work. Luck, more at ease now in his mind, studied it critically. There was the quarrel between old Dave and Andy, his son. He saw the old man out with his men, standing his s.h.i.+ft of night-guard, stubbornly resisting the creeping years and his load of trouble; riding around the sleeping herd with his head sunk on his chest, meeting the younger guard twice on each complete circle, and yet never seeming to see him at all.
”Sing low to your cattle, sing low to your steers--”
The words and the scene opened wide the door of memory and let whole troops of ghosts come drifting in out of the past. The hall, Luck roused himself to notice, was very, very still; so still that the sizzling sound of the machine at the rear was distinct and oppressive.
There was the blizzard, terrible in its biting realism. There was the old cow and calf, separated from the herd, fighting in the primal instinct to preserve themselves alive,--fighting and losing. There was that other, more terrible fight for existence, the fight of the Native Son against the snow and the cold. Men drew their breath sharply when he fell and did not rise again. They s.h.i.+vered when the snow began to drift against his quiet body, to lodge and s.h.i.+ft and settle, and grow higher and higher until the bank was even with his shoulders, to drift over him and make of him a white mound--And then, when Andy staggered up through the swirl, leading his horse and shouting; when he stumbled against Miguel and tried to raise him and rouse him, a sound like a groan went through the crowd.
”Close a call as I ever had was in a blizzard like that,” the old man at Luck's left whispered agitatedly to Luck behind his palm, when the lights snapped on while the operator was changing for the last reel.
There was Andy, haunted and haggard, at home again with his father. There were those dissolve scenes of the ”phantom herd” drifting always across the skyline whenever Andy looked out into the night or rose startled from uneasy sleep. Weird, it was,--weird and real and very terrible. And, at last, there was that wonderful camp-fire scene of the Indian girl who prayed to her G.o.ds before she went to meet her lover who was dead and could not keep the tryst. There were heart-breaking scenes where the Indian girl wandered in wild places, looking, hoping, despairing--Luck had planned every little detail of those scenes, and yet they thrilled him as though he had come to them unawares.
He did not wait after the last scene faded out slowly. He slipped quietly into the aisle and went away, while the hands of the old-timers were stinging with applause. Halfway down the block he heard it still, and his steps quickened unconsciously. They were calling his name, back there in the hall. They were all talking at once and clapping their hands and, as an interlude, shouting the name of Luck Lindsay. But Luck did not heed.
He wanted to get away by himself. He did not feel as though he could say anything at all to any one, just then. He had seen his Big Picture, and he had seen that it was as big and as perfect, almost, as he had dreamed it. To Luck, at that moment, words would have cheapened it,--even the words of the old cattlemen.
He went to his hotel and straight up to his room, regardless of the fact that it would have been to his advantage to mingle with his guests and to listen to their praise. He went to bed and lay there in the dark, reliving the scenes of his story. Then, after awhile, he drifted off into sleep, his first dreamless, untroubled slumber in many a night.
By the time the Convention was a.s.sembled the next day, however, he had recovered his old spirit of driving energy. The chairman had invited him by telephone to attend the afternoon meeting, and Luck went--to be greeted by a rousing applause when he walked down the aisle to the platform where the chairman was waiting for him.