gave an
exultant bound. He had used lines from "The Old Chisholm Trail" and other
old-time range songs for his sub-titles, to keep the range atmosphere
complete, and that cracked voice humming unconsciously told how it
appealed to these men of the range.

Luck did not slide down in his seat so that his head rested on the
chair-back while _The Phantom Herd_ was being shown. Instead, he sat
leaning forward, with his face white and strained, and watched for weak
points and for bad photography and scenes that could have been bettered.

He saw the big trail-herd go winding away across the level, with Weary
riding "point" and Happy Jack bringing up the "drag," and the others
scattered along between; riding slouched in their saddles, hatbrims
pulled low over eyes smarting with the dust that showed in a thin film at
the head of the herd and grew thicker toward the drag, until riders and
animals were seen dimly through a haze.

"My--I can just feel that dust in m' throat!" muttered the man at his
right, and coughed.

Luck saw the storm come muttering up just as the cattle were bedding down
for the night. He saw the lightning, and he knew that those who watched
with him were straining forward. He heard some one say involuntarily:
"They'll break and run, sure as hell!" and he knew that he had done that
part of his work well.

He saw the night scenes he had taken in town. He almost forgot that all
this was his work, so smoothly did the story steal across his senses and
beguile him into half believing it was true and not a fabric which he had
built with careful planning and much toil. He saw the round-up scenes;
the day-herd, the cutting-out and the branding, the beef-herd driven to
the shipping cars. True, those steers were not exactly prime beef,--he
had caught the culls only, late in the season for these scenes--but they
passed, with one audible comment that this was a poor season for beef!

"We rounded 'em up and we put 'em in the cars--"

The sub-title sang itself familiarly into the minds of the range men.
More than one voice was heard to begin a surreptitious humming of the
old tune, and to cease abruptly with the sudden self-consciousness of
the singer.

But there was the story, growing insensibly out of the range work. Luck,
more at ease now in his mind, studied it critically. There was the
quarrel between old Dave and Andy, his son. He saw the old man out with
his men, standing his shift of night-guard, stubbornl