“There ain’t any close-ups of cavalry, are there?” Beckitt demurred.  “I told them last time I thought those guns would do, because I knew the detail wouldn’t—­”

“Listen.”  Luck’s tone was deliberately tolerant.  “That’s maybe the reason you’ve been searching your soul for all along—­the reason why you can’t get past the assistant-director stage.  I want those fifty cavalrymen equipped!  Do you get that?” While his eyes held Beckitt uncomfortably with their stern steadfastness, Luck thrust the script into his coat pocket that had a permanent, motion-picture-director sag to it.  “If I meant that any old gun would do, I’d give my orders that way.  Now, remember, there isn’t going to be any waiting around while you go back and argue, nor any makeshifts, nor anything but fifty cavalrymen fully equipped.  Here’s the list complete for to-morrow’s order.  You see that it’s filled!”

Beckitt took the list which he should have made himself, since that was what he was paid for doing, and went off in the sulks and the company machine.  Luck pulled a solacing cigar from an inner pocket and licked down the roughened outer leaves, and scowled thoughtfully across the studio yard.  The camera man was figuring up footage or something, and his assistant was hurrying to get the tripod folded and put away.  There was a new briskness in the movements of every one save Luck himself, after he spoke that last sentence through the megaphone.

The Happy Family—­or that part of it which had thrown away pitchforks and taken to the pictures—­came clanking across the stage toward Luck.  You would never have known the Happy Family, unless it were the Native Son who wore his usual regalia in exaggerated form.  The Happy Family had wide, flapping chaps that made them drag their feet they were so heavy and so long, and great Mexican spurs whose rowels dug tiny trenches in the ground when they walked.  They wore the biggest Stetsons that famous hat brand ever was stamped upon.  They had huge bandanas draped picturesquely over their chests, and their sleeves were rolled to the elbows and their eyes rimmed with deep pencil shadings.  At their hips swung six-shooters of violent pattern and portent.  Around their middles sagged belts filled with blank cartridges.  A sack of tobacco was making the rounds as they came on, and Luck watched them through speculatively narrowed lids.

“Say, by cripes, that there saloon is the driest poison-palace I ever surged out of with two guns spittin’ death and dumnation!” Big Medicine complained, coming up with the plain intention of lighting his cigarette from Luck’s cigar.  “How’d we stack up this time, boss?  Bein’ soused on cold tea, I couldn’t rightly pass judgment.  How many was it I murdered in cold blood, in that there scene where I laid ’em out with black powder?  Four, or five?  Pink, here, claims I killed him twicet, whereas he oughta be left alive enough to jump on his horse and ride three hundred and fifty