He must make his story a man’s story, with the full interest centered about the man’s hopes, his temptations, his achievements.  The woman—­Annie, as he saw the woman now—­must be of secondary interest.  He laid his head against the chair back in his favorite attitude for uninterrupted thought, and stared into the fire.  In this way he had stared out into the night of the Dakota prairie; at first brooding in discontent because things were not as he would have them, then drifting into dreams of what he would like; then weaving his dreams together and creating a something complete in itself.  So had he created his Big Picture,—­the picture which was already beginning to live in the narrow strips of negative.  A few hundred feet of that negative were even dry and filed away ready for cutting; unimportant scenes, to be sure, with all of his “big stuff” yet to be produced.  His mind went methodically over the completed scenes, judging each one separately, seeking some change of plot that would yet permit these scenes to be used.  From there his thought drifted to the day’s work in the blizzard,—­the day’s work that had been lost because of atmospheric conditions.  Blizzard stuff he must have, he told himself stubbornly.  Not only was that a phase of the range which he must portray if his picture were to be complete; he must have it to lead the story up to that tragic, pitifully eloquent scene which had come out clear and photographically perfect,—­the scene of the old cow’s struggle against the storm and of her final surrender, too weak to match her puny strength against the furies of wind and snow and cold.  That scene would live long in the minds of those who saw it; that scene alone would lift his picture above the dead level of mediocrity.  But he must have another blizzard....

His eyelids drooped low over his tired eyes; through their narrowing opening he stared at the yellow glow of the fire.  Only half awake, he dreamed of the herd drifting down that bleak hillside, with Andy and the Native Son riding doggedly after them.  Only half awake, his story changed, grew indistinct, clarified in stray scenes, held aloof from him, grew and changed, and was another story.  And always in the background of his mind went that drifting herd.  Sometimes snow-whitened, their backs humped in the wind, their heads lowered and swaying weakly from side to side, the cattle marched and marched before him, sometimes obscured by the blackness of night, a vague procession of moving shadows; sometimes revealed suddenly when the lightning split the blackness.  Like a phantom herd—­

“The phantom herd!” Aloud he cried the words. “The Phantom Herd!” He sat up straight in his chair.  Here was his title, for which his mind had groped so long and could not grasp.  His title—­

“What—­that you, Luck?” Andy Green’s voice came sleepily from the next room.  “What yuh want?”

“I’ve got my title!” Luck called back, his voice exultant.  “And I’ve got my story, too!  Get up, Andy, and let me tell you the plot!”