Luck, glancing hurriedly to right and left, slid down and rested the nape of his neck on the back of his chair, slipped a fresh stick of gum between his teeth, hung his hat on his knee, and prepared to view his work with critical mind and impartial, and with his conscience like his body at ease.  The thing had certainly started off with zip enough, since zip was what Mart claimed the Public demanded.

The next scene was a continuation of the one before,—­the camera man having evidently recovered himself and gotten to work again.  The Happy Family, still surging and still shooting two guns apiece at the pale moon, were shown entering the saloon door four abreast and with the rest crowding for place.  Still there was zip; all kinds of zip.  The Happy Family nudged and grinned in the dusk and were very much pleased with themselves as XY cowboys seeking mild entertainment in town.

Some one behind remarked upon the surging and the shooting, and Big Medicine turned his head quickly and sent a hoarse stage whisper in the general direction of the mumble.

“Ah-h, that there ain’t anything!  Luck never let us turn ourselves loose there a-tall.  You wait, by cripes, till yuh see us where we git warmed up and strung out proper!  You wait!  Honest to gran’—­” It was Luck’s elbow that stopped him by the simple expedient of cutting off his wind.  Big Medicine gave a grunt and said no more.

Thereafter, the Happy Family discovered that there was a certain continuity in the barbaric performances in which Luck had grinningly encouraged them to indulge themselves.  They beheld themselves engaged in various questionable enterprises, and they laughed in naive enjoyment as certain bloodcurdling traits in their characters were depicted with startling vividness.  Accented by make-up and magnified on the screen, the goggling, frog-like ugliness of Big Medicine became like unto ogres of childish memory; his smile was a thing to make one’s back hair stand up with a cold, prickling sensation.  Happy Jack stared at himself and his exaggerated awkwardness incredulously, with a sheepish grin of appreciation.  The rest of them watched and missed no slightest gesture.

So they saw the plot of Bently Brown unfold, scene by scene; unfold in violence and malevolent intrigue and zip and much fighting.  Also unfolded something of which Bently Brown had never dreamed; something which the audience, though greeting it with laughter, failed at first to recognize for what it was worth, because every one knew all about the Bently-Brown Western dramas, and every one believed that they were to be made after the usual recipe more elaborately stirred.  So every one had been chortling through several scenes before the significance of their laughter occurred to them.