When the Acme people gathered resignedly in the private projection room, however, Luck’s wicked little twinkle had turned a shade anxious.  He excused himself from the chair between Martinson and Mollie Ryan, the stenographer, and went over to confer with the Happy Family and the dried little man who kept clannishly together as usual, and he forgot to return to his place.

The Acme people, personally and individually, were sick and tired of all motion pictures that did not portray with vividness the beauty or the talents of themselves, or the faults of their acquaintances.  No Acme people, save Lenore Honiwell and Tracy Gray Joyce and a phlegmatic character woman, were in this picture at all.  The camera man who took it did not think highly of it and considered the wonderful photography as good as wasted, and he had said as much—­and more—­to his intimates.  Beckitt, Luck’s assistant, had privately announced it as the rottenest piece of cheese he had ever seen under a Wild-West label, and disclaimed all responsibility.  They of the cutting and trimming clan had not said anything at all.  Martinson, having heard the rumors, felt that they confirmed his own suspicion that Luck had made a big blunder in bringing those cowboys into the company.  They were not actors.  They did not pretend to be actors.

You will see that it was a critical audience indeed that gathered there in the projection room that rainy afternoon to see the trial run of The Soul of the Littlefoot Law.  It would take a good deal to win any approbation from that bunch.

And then they were looking at the first scene, which Was a night in Whoopalong, the fake town over there beyond the big stage.  The Happy Family, all disguised as cowboys, came surging out of the darkness.  H-m-m.  That was the bunch that Luck Lindsay had done so much bragging about, and called “real boys,” was it? silently commented the audience.  No different from any other cowboys, as far as any one could see.

True, they used about half the usual amount of film footage in getting to foreground; probably underspeeded the camera,—­an old, old trick which has helped to put the dash and ginger into many a poor horseman’s act.

But the “XY cowboys” certainly surged up to foreground, and it was seen that they rode with reins in their teeth, and that each and every man fired two huge six-shooters straight up at the moon every time their horses hit the ground with forefeet.  The Happy Family leaned forward and craned around the heads of those in front that they might see all of it.  Luck had told them before making this scene to “eat ’em alive,” and the Happy Family had very nearly done so.  Andy Green nudged his wife, Rosemary, and whispered hurriedly that this was where the camera man had pulled up his tripod by the roots and beat it, thinking he was going to be run over; and that was why the scene was cut unexpectedly just where Andy set his horse on its haunches and posed, a heroic figure of a cowboy rampant, immediately before the lens.