!"

CHAPTER NINETEEN

WHEREIN LUCK MAKES A SPEECH

Luck stood on the platform of the Texas Cattlemen's Convention and looked
down upon the work-lined, brown faces of the men whose lives had for the
most part been spent out of doors. Their sober attentiveness confused him
for a minute so that he forgot what he wanted to say--he, Luck Lindsay,
who had faced the great audiences of Madison Square Garden and had smiled
his endearing smile and made his bow with perfect poise and an eye for
pretty faces; who had without a quiver faced the camera, many's the time,
in difficult scenes; who had faced death more times than he could count,
and what was to him worse than death,--blank failure. But these old
range-men with the wind-and-sun wrinkles around their eyes, and their
ready-to-wear suits, and their judicial air of sober attention,--these
were to him the jury that would weigh his work and say whether it was
worthy. These men--

And then one of them suddenly cleared his throat with a rasping sound
like old Dave Wiswell, his dried little cowman of the picture, and
embarrassment dropped from Luck like a cloak flung aside. He was here to
put his work to the test; to let these men say whether _The Phantom Herd_
was worthy to be called a great picture, one of which the West could be
proud. So he pushed back his mop of hair--grayer than the hair of many
here old enough to be his father--with the fiat of his palm, and looked
straight into the faces of these men and said what he had to say:

"Mr. Chairman, and gentlemen of this Convention, I consider it a great
privilege to be able to stand here and speak to you--a greater privilege
than any of you realize, perhaps. For my heart has always been in the
range-land, my people have been the people of the plains. I have to-day
been honored by the hand-grip of old-timers who were riding circle,
trailing long-horns, and working cattle when I was a boy in short pants.

"I have trailed herds on the pay roll of one man who remembers me here
to-day, and of others who have crossed the Big Divide. I have seen the
open range shrink before the coming of barbed wire and settlers. I have
watched the 'long shadow' fall across God's own cattle country.

"Since I entered the motion-picture business, my one great aim and my one
great dream has been to produce one real Western picture. One picture
that I could present with pride to such a convention as this, and have
men who have spent their