Chapter 2. "Enough's A-Plenty"

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_ CHAPTER II. "ENOUGH'S A-PLENTY"

While driving his car back to Los Robles, Billie Threewit, producing director at the border studio of the Lunar Film Manufacturers, indulged in caustic comment on his own idiocy.

"Now, what in hell did I take on this Yeager rube for? He had just finished crabbing one scene. Wasn't that enough without me paying him good money to spoil more? Harrison's sore on him too. There's going to be trouble there. He ain't going to stand for that roughhouse stuff a little bit."

Frank Farrar, the camera man, took a more cheerful view of the situation.

"He's a find, if you ask me--the real thing in cowpunchers. And I don't know as this outfit has to be run to please Harrison. The big bully has got us all stepping sideways and tiptoeing so as not to offend him. I'm about fed up with the brute. Wish this rube would mop the earth up with him when Harrison gets gay."

"No chance. Harrison's a bully all right, but he's one grand little fighter too. You saw him clean up that bunch of greasers. He's there with both feet on the Marquis of Q. business, and don't you forget it. I put up with more from him than I ever did from a dozen other actors because he's so mean when he's sulky."

"Here too," agreed Farrar. "It's take your hat off when you speak to Mr. Chad Harrison. I can't yell at him that he's getting out of the picture; I've got to pull the Alphonse line of talk.--'Mr. Harrison, if you'd be so kind as to get that left hind hoof of yours six inches more to the right.' He makes me good and weary."

"He gets his stuff across good. Wasn't for that I wouldn't stand for him a minute. But we're down here, son, to get this three-reel Mexican war dope. As long as Harrison delivers the goods we'll have to put up with him."

"Well, I'm going to give this Yeager lad a tip what he's up against. Then if he wants to he can light out before Harrison gets to him."

Farrar was as good as his word. As soon as he reached the hotel he dropped around to the room where the new extra was staying. His knock brought no answer, but as the door was ajar the camera man stepped across the threshold.

Steve lay on the bed asleep, his lithe, compact figure stretched at negligent ease. The flannel shirt was open at the throat, the strong muscles of which sloped beautifully into the splendid shoulders. There was strength in the clean-cut jaw of the brown face. It was an easy guess that he had wandered by paths crooked as well as straight, that he had taken the loose pleasures of his kind joyously. But when he had followed forbidden trails it had been from the sheer youthful exuberance of life in him and not from weakness. Farrar judged that the heart of the young vagabond was sound, that the desert winds and suns had kept his head washed clean of shameful thoughts.

The cowpuncher opened his eyes. He looked at his visitor without speaking.

"Didn't expect to find you asleep," apologized the camera man.

Yeager got up and stretched his supple body in a yawn. "That's all right. Just making up the sleep I lost last night on the road. No matter a-tall."

He was in blue overalls, the worn shiny chaps tossed across the back of a chair. On the table lay the dusty, pinched-in hat, through the disreputable crown of which Farrar had lately seen a lock of his brindle hair rising like an aigrette.

"Glad to have you join us. We need riders like you. Say, it was worth five dollars to me to see the way you laid out Harrison."

The cowpuncher's boyish face clouded.

"I'm right sorry about that. It ce'tainly was a fool play. I don't blame Harrison for getting sore."

"He's sore all right. That's what I came to see you about. He's a rowdy, Harrison is. And he'll make you trouble."

"Most generally I don't pack a gun," Yeager observed casually.

"It won't be a gun play; not to start with, anyhow. He used to be a prizefighter. He'll beat you up."

"Well, it don't hurt a man's system to absorb a licking once in a blue moon."

The cowpuncher said it smilingly, with a manner of negligent competence that came from an experience of many dangers faced, of many perilous ways safely trodden.

Farrar had not yet quite discharged his mind. "There's nothing to prevent you from slipping round to the stable and pulling your freight quietly."

"Except that I don't want to," added the new extra. "No, sir. I've got a job and I'm staying with it. I'll sit here like a horned toad till the boss gives me my time."

The camera man beamed. To meet so debonair and care-free a specimen of humanity warmed the cockles of his heart.

"I'll bet you're some scrapper yourself," he suggested.

"Oh, no. He'll lick me, I reckon. Say, what do they hold you up for at this hacienda?"

The lank camera man supplied information, adding that he knew of a good cheap boarding-place where one or two of the company put up.

"If you say so, I'll take you right round there."

Yeager reached promptly for his hat. "You talk like a dollar's worth of nickels rattling out of a slot machine--right straight to the point."

They walked together down the white, dusty street, crossed the outskirts of the old Mexican adobe town, and came to a suburb of bungalows. In front of one of these Farrar stopped. He unlatched the gate.

"Here we are."

There was an old-fashioned garden of roses and mignonettes and hollyhocks, with crimson ramblers rioting over the wire trellis in front of the broad porch. A girl with soft, thick, blue-black hair was bending over a rosebush. She was snipping dead shoots with a pair of scissors. At the sound of their feet crunching the gravel of the walk, her slender figure straightened and she turned to them. The ripe lips parted above pearly teeth in a smile of welcome to the camera man.

"I've come begging again, Miss Ruth," explained Farrar. "This is Mr. Yeager, a new member of our company. He wants to find a good boarding-place, so of course I thought of your mother. Don't tell me that you can't take him."

A little frown of doubt furrowed her forehead. "I don't know, Mr. Farrar. Our tables are about full. I'll ask mother."

The eyes of the girl rested for an instant on the brown-faced youth whose application the camera man was backing. He had taken off his hat, and the sun-pour was on his tawny hair, on the lean, bronzed face and broad, muscular shoulders. In his torn, discolored hat, his stained and travel-worn clothes, he looked a very prince of tramps. But in his quiet, steady gaze was the dynamic spark of self-respect that forebade her to judge him by his garb.

A faint flush burned in the dusky cheeks to which the long lashes drooped because of a touch of embarrassment. He had seemed to read her hesitation with an inner amusement that found expression in his gray-blue eyes.

"Tell her I'll be much obliged if she'll take me," Yeager said in his gentle drawl.

Considering his request, she stripped the gauntlet without purpose from one of her little brown hands. A solitaire sparkled on the third finger. Again she murmured, "I'll ask mother"; then turned and flashed up the steps, her slender limbs carrying with fluent grace the pliant young body.

Presently appeared on the porch a plump, matronly woman of a wholesome cleanness without and within. Judging by fugitive dabs of flour which decorated her temple and her forehead, she had been making bread or pies at the time she had been called by her daughter. Much of her life she had lived in the Southwest, and one glance at Yeager was enough to satisfy her. Through the dust and tarnished clothes of him youth shone resplendent. The sun was still in his brindle hair, in his gay eyes. She had a boy of her own, and the heart of her warmed to him.

In five sentences they had come to an arrangement. The barn behind the house had been remodeled so that it contained several bedrooms. Into one of these Yeager was to move his scant effects at once.

He and Farrar walked back to the hotel together. Harrison was waiting for them on the porch. As soon as he caught sight of the cowpuncher he strode forward. The straight line of his set mouth looked like a gash in a melon.

"Will you have it here or back of the garage?" he demanded, getting straight to business.

"Any place that suits you," agreed Steve affably. "Won't the bulls pinch us if we do a roughhouse here?"

Harrison turned with triumphant malice to Farrar.

"Get your camera. You say you don't like phony stuff. Good enough. I'll pull off the real goods for you in licking a rube. There's plenty of room back of the garage."

The camera man protested. "See here, Harrison. Yeager ain't looking for trouble. He told you he was sorry. It was an accident. What's the use of bearing a grudge?"

The heavy glared at him. "You in this, Mr. Farrar? You're liable to have a heluvatime if you butt into my business without an invite. Shack--and git that camera."

Yeager nodded to his new friend. "Go ahead and get it. We'll be waiting back of the garage."

Farrar hesitated, the professional instinct in him awake and active.

"If you're dead keen on a mix-up, Harrison, why not come over to the studio where I can get the best light? We'll make an indoor set of it."

"Go you," promptly agreed Harrison. His vanity craved a picture of him thrashing the extra, a good one that the public could see and that he could afterwards gloat over himself.

Yeager laughed in his slow way. "I'm to be massa-creed to make a Roman holiday, am I? All right. Might as well begin earning that two-fifty per I've been promised."

The news spread, as if on the wings of the wind. Before Farrar had a stage arranged to suit him and his camera ready, a dozen members of the company drifted in with a casual manner of having arrived accidentally. Fleming Lennox, leading man, appeared with Cliff Manderson, chief comedian for the Lunar border company. Baldy Cummings, the property man, strolled leisurely in to look over some costumes. But Steve observed that he was panting rapidly.

As he sat on a soap box waiting for Farrar to finish his preparations, Yeager became aware that Lennox was watching him closely. He did not know that the leading man would cheerfully have sacrificed a week's salary to see Harrison get the trimming he needed. The handsome young film actor was an athlete, a trained boxer, but the ex-prizefighter had given him the thrashing of his life two months before. He simply had lacked the physical stamina to weather the blows that came from those long, gorilla-like arms with the weight of the heavy, rounded shoulders back of them. The fight had not lasted five minutes.

"Shapes well," murmured Manderson, nodding toward the new extra.

The leading man agreed without much hope. He conceded the boyish cowpuncher a beautiful trim figure, with breadth of shoulder, grace of poise, and long, flowing muscles that rippled under the healthy skin like those of a panther in motion. But these would serve him little unless he was an experienced boxer. Harrison had tremendous strength and power; moreover, he knew the game from years of battle in the ring.

"He'll lose--won't be able to stand the gaff," Lennox replied gloomily, his eyes fixed on Yeager as the young fellow rose lightly and moved forward to meet his opponent.

The extra was as tall as Harrison, but he looked like a boy beside him, so large and massive did the heavy bulk. The contrast between them was so great that Yeager was scarcely conceded a fighting chance. Steve himself knew quite well that he was in for a licking at the hands of this wall-eyed Hercules with the leathery brown face.

He got it, efficiently and scientifically, but not before Harrison had found out he was in a fight. The big man disdained any defense except that which went naturally with his crouch. He had a tremendously long reach and knew how to get the weight of his shoulders behind his punishing blows. Usually Harrison did all the fighting. The other man was at the receiving end.

It was a little different this time. Yeager met his first rush with a straight left that got home and jarred the prizefighter to his heels. To see the look on the face of the heavy, compound of blank astonishment and chagrin, was worth the price of admission.

Lennox sang out encouragement. "Good boy. Go to him."

Harrison put his head down and rushed. His arms worked like flails. They beat upon Steve's body and face as a hammer does upon an anvil. Only by his catlike agility and the toughness born of many clean years in the saddle did the cowpuncher weather for the time the hurricane that lashed at him. He dodged and ducked and parried by instinct, smothering what blows he could, evading those he might, absorbing the ones he must. Out of that first melee he came reeling and dizzy, quartering round and round before the panting professional.

The bully enraged was not a sight pleasant to see. He was too near akin to the primeval brute. He glared savagely at his victim, who grinned back at him with an indomitable jauntiness.

"This is the life," the cowpuncher assured his foe cheerfully after dodging a blow that was like the kick of a mule.

Harrison rocked him with a short stiff uppercut. "Glad you like it," he jeered.

Yeager crossed with his right, catching him flush on the cheek. "Here's your receipt for the same," he beamed.

Like a wild bull the prizefighter was at him again. He beat down the cowpuncher's defense and mauled him savagely with all the punishing skill of his craft. Steve was a man of his hands. He had held his own in many a rough-and-tumble bout. But he had no science except that which nature had given him. As long as a man could, he stood up to Harrison's trained skill. When at last he was battered to the ground it was because the strength had all oozed out of him.

Harrison stood over him, swaggering. "Had enough?"

Where he had been flung, against one of the studio walls, Steve sat dizzily, his head reeling. He saw things through a mist in a queer jerky way. But still a smile beamed on his disfigured face.

"Surest thing you know."

"Don't want some more of the same?" jeered the victor.

"Didn't hear me ask for more, did you? No, an' you won't either. Me, I love a scrap, but I don't yearn for no encore after I've been clawed by a panther and chewed up by a threshing-machine and kicked by an able-bodied mule into the middle o' next week. Enough's a-plenty, as old Jim Butts said when his second wife died."

The prizefighter looked vindictively down at him. He was not satisfied, though he had given the range-rider such a whaling as few men could stand up and take. For the conviction was sifting home to him that he had not beaten the man at all. His pile-driver blows had hammered down his body, but the spirit of him shone dauntless out of the gay, unconquerable eyes.

With a sullen oath Harrison turned away. His sulky glance fell upon Lennox, who was clapping his hands softly.

"You'd be one grand little fighter, Yeager, if you only knew how," the leading man said with enthusiasm.

"Mebbe you'd like to teach him, Mr. Lennox," sneered Harrison.

The star flushed. "Maybe I would, Mr. Harrison."

"Or perhaps you'd rather show him how it's done."

Lennox looked, straight at him. "Nothing doing. And I serve notice right here that I'll have no more trouble with you. If it's got to come to that either you or I will quit the company."

The bully's eyes narrowed. "Which one of us?"

"It'll be up to Threewit to pass on that."

Harrison put on his coat and slouched sulkily out of the building. He knew quite well that if it came to a choice between him and Lennox the director would sacrifice him without a moment's consideration.

Farrar, who had been grinding out pictures since the beginning of hostilities, came forward to greet Yeager with a little whoop of joy.

"Say, you sure go some, Cactus Center. I never did see a fellow eat up such a licking and come up smiling. You're certainly one Mellin's Food baby. I'm for you--strong."

One of Steve's eyes was closing rapidly, but the other had not lost its twinkle.

"Does a fellow's system good to assimilate a tanning oncet in a while--sort o' corrects any mistaken notions he's liable to collect. Gentlemen, hush! Ain't Harrison the boss eat-em-alive white hope that ever turkey-trotted down the pike?"

The melancholy Manderson smiled. "You make a hit with me, Arizona. If I were in your place I'd be waiting for the undertaker. You look like you'd out come of a railroad wreck, two fires, and a cattle stampede over your carcass. Here, boys, hustle along first aid to our friend the punching-bag."

They got him water and towels and a sponge. Steve, protesting humorously, submitted to their ministrations. He was grateful for the friendliness that prompted their kindness. The atmosphere had subtly changed. During the afternoon he had sensed a little aloofness, an intention on the part of the company members to stand off until they knew him better. Now the ice was melted. They had taken him into the family. He had passed with honors his preliminary examination. _

Read next: Chapter 3. Chad Harrison

Read previous: Chapter 1. Steve Makes A Mistake

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