"'S that what you call all that ridin' and shootin' we done, that you said was by moonlight?" Pink inquired pugnaciously—for a young man who had died the death four different times that day.
"That's what it's called," Luck averred with firmness.
"Aw—where does Soul of Littlefoot Law come in at?" Happy Jack scoffed.
"It doesn't, so far as I know."
"Aw, there ain't no sense in such a name as that. Is that where I got shot off'n my horse, and Bud, here, done his best to run over me?"
"That's the one. My Lord, boys, how long does it take you fellows to get your make-up off? They'll have the film run and passed and released and out on the five-cent circuit on its fifteenth round before you—" Luck, director though he was, found it wise to pass out quickly and hold the door shut behind him for a minute. "Honest, boys, you want to hurry," he called through the closed door. He waited until the sounds within indicated that they were hurrying quite violently, and then he went his way; and he still had the look in his eyes of one who bears in his soul a secret guilt of which he is inclined to be proud.
When the Acme people gathered resignedly in the private projection room, however, Luck's wicked little twinkle had turned a shade anxious. He excused himself from the chair between Martinson and Mollie Ryan, the stenographer, and went over to confer with the Happy Family and the dried little man who kept clannishly together as usual, and he forgot to return to his place.
The Acme people, personally and individually, were sick and tired of all motion pictures that did not portray with vividness the beauty or the talents of themselves, or the faults of their acquaintances. No Acme people, save Lenore Honiwell and Tracy Gray Joyce and a phlegmatic character woman, were in this picture at all. The camera man who took it did not think highly of it and considered the wonderful photography as good as wasted, and he had said as much—and more—to his intimates. Beckitt, Luck's assistant, had privately announced it as the rottenest piece of cheese he had ever seen under a Wild-West label, and disclaimed all responsibility. They of the cutting and trimming clan had not said anything at all. Martinson, having heard the rumors, felt that they confirmed his own suspicion that Luck had made a big blunder in bringing those cowboys into the company. They were not actors. They did not pretend to be actors.
You will see that it was a critical audience indeed that gathered there in the projection room that rainy afternoon to see the trial run of The Soul of the Littlefoot Law. It would take a good deal to win any approbation from that bunch.
And then they were looking at the first scene, which Was a night in Whoopalong, the fake town over there beyond the big stage. The Happy Family, all disguised as cowboys, came surging out of the darkness. H-m-m. That was the bunch that Luck Lindsay had done so much bragging about, and called "real boys," was it? silently commented the audience. No different from any other cowboys, as far as any one could see.