e been stalling along and keeping the
best of the bucks in the foreground, and letting these said riders lope
in and out of scenes and pile off and go to shooting soon as the camera
picks them up, but with the Injuns gone, the whites won't get by.

"Maybe you have noticed that when there was any real riding, I've had the
Injuns do it. And do you think I've been driving that stagecoach
hell-bent from here to beyond because I'd no other way to kill time?
Wasn't another darned man in the outfit I'd trust, that's why. If I take
the Indians back, I've got to have some real boys." Luck's voice was
plaintive, and a little bit desperate.

"Well, dammit, _have_ your real boys! I never said you shouldn't. Weed
out the company to suit yourself. You'll have to take the Injuns back;
nobody else can handle the touch-me-not devils. You can lay off the
company if you want to, and while you're up there pick up a bunch of
cowboys to suit you. You're making good, Luck; don't take it that I'm
criticizing anything you've done or the way you did it. You've been
turning out the best Western stuff that goes on the screen; anybody knows
that. That isn't the point. We just simply can't afford to keep those
Indians any longer without retrenching on something else that's a lot
more vital. You know what they cost as well as I do; you know what
present conditions are. Figure it out for yourself."

"I don't have to," Luck retorted in a worried tone. "I know what we're up
against. I know we ought to give them up--but I sure hate to do it!
Lor-_dee_, but I can do things with that bunch! Remember Red Brother?"
Luck was off on his hobby, the making of Indian pictures. "Remember the
panoram effect I got on that massacre of the wagon train? Remember the
council-of-war scene, and the close-up of Young-Dog-Howls-At-The-Moon
making his plea for the lives of the prisoners? And the war dance with
radium flares in the camp fires to give the light-effect? That film's in
big demand yet, they tell me. I'll never be able to put over stuff like
that with made-up actors, Martinson. You know I can't."

"I don't know; you're only just beginning to hit your gait, Luck," the
manager soothed. "You have turned out some big stuff,--some awful big
stuff; but at that you're just beginning to find yourself. Now, listen.
You can have your 'real boys' you're always crying for. I can see what
you mean when you pan these fellows you call Main Street cowboys. What
you better do i