gotten gay and planted those beans," he added, "I'd
be feeling fine over it. A girl gave me a handful of pinto beans and
asked me to plant them--I did hoe them," he defended tardily to Andy. "I
hoed them the day before the Fourth. You know I did. Same time you hoed
those lemon-colored spuds of yours."

Luck let them wrangle humorously over their agricultural deficiencies,
and drifted off into open-eyed dreaming. Into his picture he began to fit
these two speculatively, with a purely tentative adjustment of their
personalities to his requirements. They were arguing about which of the
two was the worst farmer; but Luck, riding alongside them, was seeing
them slouched in their saddles and riding, bone-tired, with a shuffling
trail-herd hurrying to the next watering place. He was seeing them
galloping hard on the flanks of a storm-lashed stampede, with cunningly
placed radium flares lighting the scene brilliantly now and then. He was
seeing these two plodding, heads bent, into the teeth of a blizzard. He
was seeing...

"I'll have to ride home to the missus now," Andy announced the second
time before Luck heard him.

"Mig will take you on down to the home ranch, and after supper I'll ride
over. So long."

He swung away from them upon a faintly beaten trail, looked back once to
grin and wave his hand, and touched his horse with the spurs. Luck stared
after him thoughtfully, but he did not put his thoughts into words. He
had been trained in the hard school of pictures. He had learned to hold
his tongue upon certain matters, such as his opinion of a man's personal
attributes, or criticism of his appearance, or anything which might be
repeated, maliciously or otherwise, to that man. He did not say to Miguel
Rapponi, for instance, what he thought of Andy Green as a man or a rider.
He did not mention him at all. He had learned in bitterness how idle
gossip may eat away the efficiency of a whole company.

For that reason, and also because his mind was busy with his plans and
the best means of carrying them out, the two rode almost in silence to
the hill that shut the Flying U coulee away from the world. Luck gave a
long sigh and muttered "Great!" when the whole coulee lay spread before
them. Then his quick glances took in various details of the ranch and he
sighed again, from a different emotion.

"It must have been a great place twenty years ago," he amended his first
unqualified enthusiasm.

"Why twenty years ago?" The Native Son gave him a quick,
half-resentful glance.

"Twenty years ago there wasn't so much barb-wire trimming," Luck
explained from the viewpoint of the trained producer of Western pictures.
"You couldn't place a camera anywhere now for a long shot across the
coulee without bringing a fence into the scene. And the log stables are
too old, and the new ones too new." He pulled up and stared long at the
sweep of hills beyond, and the wide spread of the meadow and the big
field farther up stream, and at the lazy meandering of Flying U creek
with its willow fringe just turning yellow with the first touch of
autumn. He looked at the buildings sprawled out below him.

"When that log house was headquarters for the ranch, and the round-pole
corrals were the only fences on the place," he said; "when those old
sheds held the saddle horses on cold nights, and the wagons were out from
green grass to snowfall, and the boys laid around all winter, just
reportin' regular at grub-pile and catching up on sleep they'd lost in
the summer--Lor-dee, what a place it must have been!"

There was something in his tone that brought the Native Son for an
instant face to face with the Flying U in the old days when all the range
was free. So, with faces sober, because the old days were gone and would
never any more return, they rode down the grade and up to the new stable
that was a monument to the dead past, even though it might also be a
sign-post pointing to present prosperity. And in this wise came Luck
Lindsay to the Flying U and was made welcome.




CHAPTER FOUR

THE LITTLE DOCTOR PROTESTS


The Little Doctor stepped out upon the porch with the faint tracing of a
frown upon her smooth forehead, and with that slight tightening of the
lips which to her family meant determination; disapproval sometimes,
tense moments always.

She stood for a minute looking down toward the stables, and the wind that
blew down the coulee seized upon the scant folds of her skirt, and
flapped them impishly against the silken-clad ankles that were
exceedingly good to look upon,--since fashion has now made it quite
permissible to look upon ankles. Her lips did not relax with the waiting.
Her frown grew a trifle more pronounced.

"Mr. Lindsay?" with a rising inflection.

Luck turned his head, saw her standing there, waved his hand to show that
he heard, and started toward her with that brisk, purposeful swing to his
walk that goes with an energetic disposition. The Little Doctor waited,
and watched him, and did not relax a muscle from her determined attitude.
Poor little Luck Lindsay hurried, so as not to keep her standing there in
the wind, and, not knowing just what was before him, he smiled his smile
as he came up to her.

I should have said, poor Little Doctor. She tried to keep her frown and
the fixed idea that went with it, but she was foolish enough to look down
into Luck's face and into his eyes with their sunny friendliness, and at
the smile, where the friendliness was repeated and emphasized. Before she
quite knew what she was doing, the Little Doctor smiled back. Still, she
owned a fine quality of firmness.

"Come in here. I want to have it out with you, and be done," she said,
and turned to open the door.

"Sounds bad, but I'm yours to command," Luck retorted cheerfully, and
went up the steps still smiling. He liked the Little Doctor. She was his
kind of woman. He felt that she would make a good pal, and he knew how
few women are qualified for open comradeship. He cast a side glance at
the kitchen window where the Kid stood with a large slice of bread and
chokecherry jam balanced on his palm, and on his face a look of mental
distress bordered with more jam. Luck nodded and waved his hand, and went
in where the Little Doctor stood waiting for him with a certain ominous
quiet in her manner. Luck shook back his heavy mane of hair that was
graying prematurely, squared his shoulders, and then held out his hand
meekly, palm upward. Boys learn that pose in school, you know.

"Oh, for pity's sake! If you go and make me laugh--and I am mad enough at
you, Luck Lindsay, to--to blister that palm! If you weren't any bigger
than Claude, I'd shake you and stand you in a corner on one foot."

"Listen. Shake me, anyway. I believe I'd kinda like it. And while I'm
standing in the corner--on one foot--you can tell me all you're mad
at me for."

The Little Doctor looked at him, bit her lip, and then found that her
eyes were blurred so that his face seemed to waver and grow dim. And Luck
Lindsay, because he saw the tears, laid a hand on her shoulder, and
pushed her ever so gently into a chair.

"Tell me what's worrying you. If it's anything that I have done, I'll
have one of the boys take me out and shoot me; it's what I would deserve.
But I certainly can't think of anything--"

"Do you know that you have filled little Claude's mind up with stories
about moving pictures till he's just crazy? He told me just now that he's
going with you when you go back, and act in your company. And if I won't
let him go, he said, he'd run away and 'hit a freight-train outa Dry
Lake,' and get to California, anyway. And--he'd do it, too! He's
perfectly awful when he gets an idea in his head. I know he's
spoiled--all the boys pet him so--"

"Wait. Let's get this thing straight. Do you think for one minute, Mrs.
Bennett, that I'd coax the Kid away? Say, that hurts--to have you believe
that of me." There was no smile anywhere on Luck's face now. His eyes
were as pained as his voice sounded.

Once more the Little Doctor weakened before him. She believed what he
said, though five minutes before she had believed exactly the opposite.
In her mind she had accused him of coaxing the Kid. She had fully
intended accusing him of it to his face.

"I don't mean coax, perhaps. But--"

"Listen. If the Kid has got that notion, I'm more sorry than you can
guess. Of course, I think pictures and I talk pictures; I admit I make
them in my sleep. And the boys are interested. Those that are going back
with me and those that are not are always sicking me at the subject. I
admit that I sick easy," he added with a whimsical lightening of the
eyes. "And the Kid and I are pals. I like him, Mrs. Bennett. He's got the
stuff in him to make a real man--and I wouldn't call him spoiled,
exactly. He's always been with grown-ups, and his mind has developed away
ahead of the calendar; you see what I mean? He's nine, he tells me--"

"Only eight. He always tries to make himself older than he is," the
Little Doctor corrected quickly.

"Well, he's some boy! And kids somehow take to me; I guess it's because
I'm always chumming with them. He's been taking in everything that has
been said; I could see that. But I surely never talked to him in the way
you mean."

The Little Doctor looked at him and hesitated; but she was a frank young
woman, and she could not help speaking her mind. "You mustn't take it
personally at all," she said, "if I tell you that I am disappointed in
the boys; in Andy and Rosemary especially, because they ought to
appreciate the little home they have made, and stay with it. One sort of
expects Pink and Big Medicine and Weary to do outlandish things. They
haven't really grown up, and they never will. But I am disappointed, just
the same, that they should want to go performing around and shooting
blank cartridges and making clowns of themselves for moving pictures.
Still, that's their own business, of course, if they want to be silly
enough to do it. But now little Claude has taken the fever--and I wish,
Mr. Lindsay, you could do something to--" She stopped, but not because
what she said was hurting Luck's feelings. She did not know that she hurt
him at all.

"It seems to be worse, in your estimation, than exposing the Kid to
yellow fever," Luck observed quietly.

"Well, of course you can understand that I should not want a boy of
mine to--to be all taken up with the idea of acting cowboy parts for a
moving picture."

"Still, there are some fairly decent people in the business," Luck
pointed out still more quietly, and got upon his feet. He had no smile
now for the Little Doctor, though he was still gentle in his manner. "I
see what you mean, Mrs. Bennett. I understand you perfectly. I shall do
what I can to repair the damage to the Kid's character and ideals, and I
want to thank