his
imagination so full of color.

"Pam. bleak mesa--snow--cattle drifting before wind. Dale and Johnny dis.
riding to foreground. Reg. cold--horses leg-weary--boys all in--"

To Luck, sitting there in his pajamas as close as he could get to a
slow-warming steam radiator, those curtailed sentences projected his
mental self into a land of cold and snow and biting wind, where the
cattle drifted dismally before the storm. Andy Green and Miguel Rapponi
were riding slowly toward him on shuffling horses as bone-weary as their
masters. Snow was packed in the wrinkles of the boys' clothing. Snow was
packed in the manes and tails of the horses that moved with their heads
drooping in utter dejection. "Boys all in," said the script laconically.
Luck, staring at the little thread of escaping steam from the radiator
valve, saw Andy and the Native Son drooping in the saddles, swaying
stiffly with the movements of their mounts. He saw them to the last
little detail,--to the drift of snow on their hatbrims and the tiny
icicles clinging to the high collars of their sourdough coats, where
their breath had frozen.

If he could get a company to let him put that on, he would not care, he
told himself, if he never made another picture in his life. If he could
get a company to send him and the boys where that stuff could be found--

Well, it was only eight o'clock in the morning, a rainy morning at that,
when all good movie people would lie late in bed for the pure luxury of
taking their ease. But Luck, besides acting upon strong convictions and
then paying the price without whimpering, never let an impulse grow stale
from want of use. He reached for the fat telephone directory and searched
out the numbers of those motion-picture companies which he did not
remember readily. Then, beginning at the first number on his hastily
compiled list, he woke five different managers out of their precious
eight-o'clock sleep to answer his questions.

Whatever they may have thought of Luck Lindsay just then, they replied
politely, and did not tell him offhand that there was no possible opening
for him in their companies. Three of them made appointments with him at
their offices. One promised to call him up just as soon as he "had a line
on anything." One said that, with the rainy weather coming on, they were
cutting down to straight studio stuff, but that he would keep Luck in
mind if anything turned up.

Then I suppose the whole five called him name