“I still don’t see no phantom herd,” observed Andy, wriggling his toes luxuriously in the warmth of the fire.

“Well, listen.  You’ll see it in a minute.  You go back home after your pard’s dead.  You have a close squeak yourself, see?  And the thing works on your mind.  Cutting out the frills, you see things.  You see a herd drifting before a storm, maybe,—­a blizzard like yesterday, with your pal riding point.  You try to come up with it—­no herd there.  You come to yourself and go back home.  Then maybe some black night you’re brooding before a fire like this—­I can get a great firelight effect on your face, sitting like this”—­Luck, actor that he was, made Andy see just how the scenes would look—­“have a flare in the fire to throw the light back on you; see what I mean?  And outside a thunderstorm is rolling up.  A bright flash of lightning startles you.  You go to the door and open it; you see the herd drifting past with Mig trailing along on his horse—­black shadows, and then standing out clear in the lightning—­”

“How the deuce—­”

“I’ll do that with ‘lap dissolves’ and double exposures.  Lots of work that will be, and careful work, but the result will be—­why, Lord!  It will be immense!  That herd and the lone rider haunt you till you’re on the edge of being crazy.  Then I’ll bring out somehow that it’s a nervous condition, which of course it is.  And I’ll bring old Dave in strong; he follows you some night, and he finds out what you’re after.  You tell him—­make a clean breast of your rustling, see?  Just unburden your mind to your dad.  He’s big enough to see that he isn’t altogether clear of guilt himself, for sending you off the way he did.  Anyway, that pulls you out of it.  The phantom herd and rider pass over the sky line some night—­Lord, I can see what a picture I can get out of that!—­and out of your life.”

“Unh-hunh—­that’s a heap better than your first story, Luck.”

“Andy, are you boys going to talk all night?” the voice of Rosemary came plaintively from the next room.

“Here.  You go back to bed,” Luck generously commanded.  “I just wanted to get your idea of what it sounds like.  I’ll block it out before I turn in.  Go on, now.”

So Luck wrote his new story of The Phantom Herd that night.  He had a midnight supper of warmed-over coffee and cold bean sandwiches, but he did not have any sleep.  When he had finished with a last big, artistic scene that made his pulse beat faster in the writing of it, the white world outside was growing faintly pink under the rising sun.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

A LETTER FROM CHIEF BIG TURKEY

Annie-Many-Ponies, keen of eye when her heart directed her glances, saw the Kyle postmark on a letter while Applehead was sorting Luck’s mail from the weekly batch he had just brought.  Luck also spied the Kyle postmark and the familiar handwriting of George-Low-Cedar, who was a cousin of Annie-Many-Ponies and the most favored scribe of Big Turkey’s numerous family.  There was no mistaking those self-conscious shadings on the downward strokes of the pen, or the twice-curled tails of all the capitals.  The capital M, for instance, very much resembled a dandelion stem split and curled by the tongue of a little girl.