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.

Comedy--that was it. Comedy, that had slipped in with cap and bells
just when the door was flung open for black-robed Tragedy. But it was
too late to stop laughing when they discovered the trick. They saw it
now, in the very sub-titles which Luck had twisted impishly into sly
humor that pointed to the laugh, in the deeds of blood that followed.
They saw it in the goggling ferocity of Big Medicine; in the
innocent-eyed, dimpled fiendishness of Pink; in the lank awkwardness of
Happy Jack. They saw it in the sentimental mannerisms of Lenore
Honiwell, whose sickish emotionalism slipped pat into the burlesque.
They rocked in their seats at the heroics of Tracy Gray Joyce, who
could never again be taken seriously, since Luck had tagged him
mercilessly as an unconscious comedian.

Oh, yes, there was zip to the picture! But there was no explanation