Well, now he must go on to the next job, which he hoped would be more pleasant than this one had been.  Luck hated to give up those Indians.  He liked them, and they liked him,—­though that was not the point.  He had done good work with them.  When he directed the scenes, those Indians did just what he wanted, and just the way he wanted it done; Luck was too old a director not to know the full value of such workers.

But the Acme Film Company, caught with the rest of the world in the pressure of hard times, wanted to economize.  The manager had pointed out to Luck, during the course of an evening’s discussion, that these Indians were luxuries in the making of pictures, and must be taken off the payroll for the good of the dividends.  The manager had contended that white men and women, properly made up, could play the part of Indians where Indians were needed; whereas Indians could never be made to play the part of white men and women.  Therefore, since white men and women were absolutely necessary.  Why keep a bunch of Indians around eating up profits?  The manager had sense on his side, of course.  Other companies were making Indian pictures occasionally with not a real Indian within miles of the camera, but Luck Lindsay groaned inwardly, and cursed the necessity of economizing.  For Luck had one idol, and that idol was realism.  When the scenario called for twenty or thirty Indians, Luck wanted Indians,—­real, smoke-tanned, blanketed bucks and squaws and papooses; not made-up whites who looked like animated signs for cigar stores and acted like,—­well, never mind what Luck said they acted like.

“I can take the Injuns back,” he conceded, “and worry along somehow without them.  But if you want me to put on any more Western stuff, you’ll have to let me weed out some of these Main Street cowboys that Clements wished on to me, and go out in the sagebrush and round up some that ain’t all hair hatbands and high-heeled boots and bluff.  I’ve got to have some whites to fill the foreground, if I give up the Injuns; or else I quit Western stuff altogether.  I’ve been stalling along and keeping the best of the bucks in the foreground, and letting these said riders lope in and out of scenes and pile off and go to shooting soon as the camera picks them up, but with the Injuns gone, the whites won’t get by.

“Maybe you have noticed that when there was any real riding, I’ve had the Injuns do it.  And do you think I’ve been driving that stagecoach hell-bent from here to beyond because I’d no other way to kill time?  Wasn’t another darned man in the outfit I’d trust, that’s why.  If I take the Indians back, I’ve got to have some real boys.”  Luck’s voice was plaintive, and a little bit desperate.