ture," Andy dissented. "There wasn't any bunk
about that, old-timer. That was some driving!"

"Some driving, yes. Sure, it was. It was darned good driving, but the
same old story doctored up a little. Same old shipment of gold, same old
bandits lying in wait, same old hero doing stunts. I ought to know," he
added with a grin. "I wrote the story and did the stunts myself."

"Well, they were some stunts!" admired Andy with unusual sincerity.

Luck waved aside the compliment and went back to his hobby. "Yes, but the
West isn't just a setting for stunts. I've got my story--here," and he
tapped his forehead, which was broad and full and not too high. "I'm
going to fire my camera man and get a better one, and I'm going to round
me up a bunch of real boys that can get into the story and live it so
well they won't need to do any acting,--boys that can stand a panoram on
their work in the saddle. I've been getting by with a bunch of freaks
that think they're real riders if they can lope a horse up-grade without
falling off backwards. Most of my direction of those actorines has been
knowing to a hair how much footage to give 'em without showing how raw
their work is.

"They say the public demands a certain grade of rottenness in Western
films, but I never believed that, down deep in my heart. I believe the
public stands for that stuff because they don't see any better. This
four-reeler I've got in mind will sure open the eyes of some
producers--or I'll buy me a five-acre tract in Burbank and raise string
beans for a living."

"I've got a patch of string beans," sighed the Native Son, "that I've
been sitting up nights with. I don't know what ails the cussed things.
Some kind of little green bug chews on them soon as my back is turned.
They ought to be ripe by now--and they aren't through blossoming. Don't
go into beans, _amigo_."

Luck looked at him and laughed. The Native Son, in black and white Angora
chaps and cream-colored shirt and silver-filigreed hatband as ornamental
touches to his attire, did not look like a man who was greatly worried
over his crop of string beans while he rode with a negligent grace away
from a glowing sunset. But in these days the West is full of
incongruities.

"Oh, shut up about them beans!" implored Andy Green with a bored air.
"It's water they want; and a touch of the hoe now and then. You leave 'em
for a month at a time and then go back and wonder why you can't pick a
hatful off 'em. Same