Gary

“ Faith was a methodical cat and a self-reliant cat. She loved her milk breakfast and her little talk with Gary afterward. Then she would head straight for the creek, cross it and go bounding away up the bluff. She always took the same direction, and Gary had sometimes wondered why. Of course, she hunted birds and kangaroo rats and mice; she was an expert huntress. Gary thought she must keep a private game preserve up on the bluff somewhere. However that might be, Faith was off for her daily prowl on the bluff and would not show up again at the cabin until noon or later. ”

“ The day before he had managed to crack off a piece of rock twice the width of his hand; and though it had broken too far inside the crosscut to accomplish much in the way of enlarging the opening, Gary was nevertheless vastly encouraged. He could now thrust out his hand to the elbow. He could feel the sun shine hot upon it at midday. He could feel the warm wind in his face when he held it pressed close against the open space. He could even smooth Faith’s sleek head when she scrambled upon the bowlder and peered in at him round-eyed and anxious. The world that day had seemed very close. ”

“ It began to look as if Faith meant to climb to the top of the butte. She made her way around the lower edge of a slide, went out of sight into a narrow gulch which Gary, with all his prospecting had never noticed before—or at least had never entered—and reappeared farther up, just under the rim rock where many slides had evidently had their birth. For the first time since he had left the cabin, the cat looked back at Gary, gave an amiable mew and waited a minute before she started on. ”

“ Now that the cañon held a potential fortune, Gary could appreciate its picturesque setting and could contemplate with pleasure the prospect of spending long summers there with Patricia. He would locate sufficient claims to protect the cañon from an influx of strangers, and they would have it for their own special little corner of the world. It is astonishing how prosperity will change a man’s point of view.
Six feet into the crosscut, Gary’s round of holes shot unexpectedly through hard rock into a close-packed mass of broken malapi. ”

“ Gary picked himself up, took off his war bonnet and laid it on a rock, reached into his wampum belt and produced a sack of Bull Durham and a book of papers. The director came over and sat down beside him, accepting the cigarette Gary had just rolled.
“Great scene, Gary. By gosh, that ought to get over big. When you get back, call me up right away, will you? I ought to know something definite next week, at the latest. Try and be here when Cohen gets here; I want you to meet him. By gosh, it’s a crime not to give you a feature company. ”

“ While Patricia slept exhaustedly in the cabin below, Gary babbled of many things in the crosscut. He awoke, believing he had dreamed that an automobile drove into the cañon the evening before. Nevertheless he decided that, since there was no hope of cutting away the granite wall with his knife, or of lifting the bowlder, Atlas-like, on his shoulders and heaving it out of the incline shaft, he might as well use what strength and breath he had in shouting.
“About one chance in ten thousand that anybody would hear me,” he told himself. “But getting out alone is a darned sight longer shot. ”

“ Gary got Gray by the elbow: "Reggie, it's this way. We flip up for cuckoo. Whoever gets stuck takes a shot apiece from our automatics in the legs—eh, what?"
"It's perfectly agreeable to me," assented Gray, in the mincing, elaborate voice characteristic of him when drunk.
Flint wagged his head. "It's a sportin' game. I'm in," he said.
Gary looked at Carfax. "A shot in the dark at a man's legs. And if he gets his—it will be Blighty in exchange for hell." ”

“ Among all the children of Gary’s circle he was received as an equal by that inner free-masonry which takes no heed of age. The irrepressible humor in the man bubbled up through sorrow, through reverses, through loneliness, and everywhere the youth in the world recognized and met it. The joke in the present situation appealed to him hugely. That he should teach Virginia to play—Virginia, of all women, Virginia with her long, white throat and her chilly fingers and her stately tread. ”

“ Gary at that wheeled partly round, and stroked his chin and moustache with the most comical expression of doubt and confusion.
"I declare I don't know, Daisy! I think it means a person who is too good for this world, and therefore isn't allowed to live here. They all go off in flames of some sort may look like glory, but is very uncomfortable and there is a peculiar odour about them. Doctor, what is that odour called?" ”

“ Gary.
"Daisy's birthday entertainment."
"Daisy invited all the gardeners and hay-makers to take supper and strawberries with her, Aunt Gary," said Ransom.
"What is that?" said Mrs. Gary, looking to her sister.
"Ransom has stated the matter correctly."
"Gardeners and hay-makers! What was that for, Daisy?"
"I thought it would give them pleasure, aunt Gary,—" said Daisy.
"Give them pleasure! of course, I suppose it would; but are we to give everybody pleasure that we can? At that rate, why not invite our footmen and chambermaids too? Why stop?" ”

“ Womanlike, Patricia began in a somewhat roundabout fashion and in a tone not far from cajolery.
“Gary! You do know all about ranch life and raising cattle and hay and horses and so on, don’t you?”
Gary was lighting a cigarette. If he had learned the “picture value” of holding a pose, he was at least unconscious of his deliberation in waving out the match flame before he replied. His was a profile very effective in close-ups against the firelight. Holding a pose comes to be second nature to an actor who has to do those things for a living.
“Dad would rather feature the so-on stuff. ”

“ Patricia, however, was not to be convinced. For every argument of Gary’s she found another to combat it. She repeated more than once the old range slogan that you simply can’t lose money in cattle. She told Gary that here was an opportunity, sent by a watchful Providence, for him to make good in a really worth-while business; and urged upon him the theory that pioneering brings out the best qualities in a man.
She attacked furiously Gary’s ambition to become a screen star, reminding him how cheap and paltry is that success which is based only upon a man’s good looks ”

“ Gray laughed too, disagreeably, stretching his facial muscles, but no sound issued.
"We're all going crazy together up here; that's my idea," he said. "I don't know which I can stand most comfortably, your voices or your silence. Both make me sick."
"Some day a salamander will nip you; then you'll go loco," observed Gary, balancing another tennis ball in his right hand. "Give me a shot at you?" he added. "I feel as though I could throw it clean through you. You look soft as a pudding to me."
Far, clear, from infinite depths, the elf-like hail of the cuckoo came floating up to the window. ”

“ I am very much obliged to you for thinking of Gary. Put me down seven shillings (wasn't it?) in your books, and I set you down for more in my good ones. One Copy will go down to immortality now, the more lasting as the less its leaves are disturbed. ”

“ Gary’s nostrils quivered, his eyebrows drew together. Then he reached again for the cat.
“I’m hearing things again—and this time I can’t kid myself I’m asleep and dreaming. Faith, it’s up to you. Either you go rustle me some grub like you did yesterday—only, for heck’s sake, make it a rabbit this time—or I’ll just have to eat you! A man’s got to live as long as he can make one breath pull the next one after it. That’s the game, Faith——”
“Gary! Oh, Gary!” Patricia’s voice was closer now ”

“ Yet there was a difference. Exuberant young fellows from the city seldom have just that look in the eyes, or those lines at the corners of the mouth. Monty unconsciously adopted a faintly solicitous tone.
“How yuh-all been making it, anyway?” he asked, watching Gary roll a cigarette.
“Finest ever!” Gary declared cheerfully, lighting a match with his thumb nail, a trick he had learned from an old range man because it lent an effective touch sometimes to his acting.
“A couple of Piutes happened along the other day, and I had them run in the horses for me. ”

“ PATRICIA TAKES HER STAND
A young man of intelligence may absorb a great many psychological truths while helping to build in pictures mock dramas more or less similar to real, human problems. Gary wore a brain under his mop of brown hair, and he had that quality of stubbornness which will adopt strategy—guile, even—for the sake of winning a fight. ”

“ Having removed the collar, Gary gave the horse a slap on the shoulder that sent it off seeking a soft spot on which to roll.
“Well, for God’s sake, kill that cat! By gosh, it’s enough to drive a fellow crazy. It’s wrong in the head and—and yuh know it might have hydrophoby.”
Gary laughed. “Why, I couldn’t keep house without the pinto cat! That’s great business. Furnishes atmosphere and—er—entertainment.”
It was perfectly apparent that Gary had some secret reason for staying. Something which he would not tell Monty Girard, although the two had become rather good friends. Monty’s face clouded ”

“ He had filled the feed box for the chickens, had given the cat a farewell talk, and locked his pyjamas into his suit case. The rest of the day he spent in waiting.
One bit of movie training helped him now. By the time an actor has reached stardom, he knows how to sit and wait; doing nothing, thinking nothing in particular, gossiping a little, perhaps, but waiting always. Gary had many a time sat around killing time for hours at a stretch, that he might work for fifteen minutes on a scene. Waiting for Monty, then, was not such a hardship that second day. ”

“ Wherefore Gary reached out a long arm and slapped James Blaine Hawkins stingingly on the ear. When the head of James Blaine Hawkins snapped over to his right shoulder, Gary reached his other long arm and slapped the head upright. James Blaine Hawkins backed up and felt his ear; both ears, to be exact.
“I didn’t come here to have no trouble,” James Blaine Hawkins protested indignantly. “A man of brains can always settle things with his brains. I don’t want to fight, and I ain’t goin’ to fight. ”

“ Patricia snuffled a bit while she scraped chicken gravy off a plate. Gary’s plate. “Let him sulk. He’ll come back when he cools off. And he’ll have to give in and go to Nevada. He’ll never see me lose five thousand dollars. And those nasty little movie queens can find somebody else to roll up their eyes at. Oh, darn!”
CHAPTER FOUR
GARY GOES ON THE WARPATH
One thing which a motion-picture actor may not do and retain the tolerance of any one who knows him is to stop work in the middle of a picture. If there is an unforgivable sin in the movie world, that is it. ”

“ He shall not be spoiled—if I have to quarrel with him every day! There’s something more to him than that mop of wavy brown hair that won’t behave, and those straight eyebrows that won’t behave either, but actually talk at you—and those eyes—— That darned leading girl can’t make me believe it’s all acting, when she rolls her eyes up at him and snuggles against his shoulder. That’s my shoulder! And Gary says selling your profile is like selling your fingers! It might be—if the boss bought my fingers to kiss! ”

“ Gary and that when he thus gets his family so they can be comfortable that he can attend to his work better, spending more hours in labouring among the people, than if he were to move from circuit to circuit leaveing his children without school, family without comfortable quarters exposed as they must be in the Country at present. There is a force in these reasons which you cannot feel so powerfully as myself. I know of no better plan than to urge the principle that every man to live in and about his work and then if exceptions occur, why, endure them as best you can. ”

“ How many people are in this Observatory beside ourselves?"
"Why, scores, Gary. The laboratory men and the observers, upstairs, the students below—it was they who helped us fight the fire, you know."
"Yes. But—" Gary turned suddenly to Dr. Anjers. "Doctor—where were you when this fire was started?"
Anjers blinked at Gary mildly. "Me, my friend? Why, with Dr. Bryant in his study, of course. But, why? Surely you don't think I—?"
"I don't know what to think," groaned Gary. "While I didn't see the intruder very well, as nearly as I could judge he was just about your height and build. Dr. ”

“ Who was scared?” fleered James Blaine Hawkins. “Not me, anyway. I seen right away there was some kind of frame-up agin me here and I didn’t want no trouble. Any fool can go head down into trouble, but a man uh brains’ll side-step till he knows what he’s up against.”
“Well,” smiled Gary, “do you know what you’re up against?” ”

“ Flint ignored the order.
"If there was anything sportin' to do——"
"Oh, shut up," muttered Carfax. "Do you expect sport on a hog-back?"
Gray picked up a tennis ball and began to play it against the whitewashed stone wall, using the palm of his hand. Flint joined him presently; Gary went over to the telephone, set the receiver to his ear and spoke to some officer in the distant valley on the French side, continuing a spiritless conversation while watching the handball play. ”

“ Newton to Larry. “Hurry back, and as soon as you can get to a telephone tell Mr. Emberg all that you have seen and about the failure of the ram to work. I’d go, only if I leave the other men will notice it and they’ll try the same trick.”
Slipping through the crowd, Larry started back. He was not noticed amid the excitement. He could hear the blows which the laborers were beginning to rain on the brick wall and the thud of them sounded like thunder in the tunnel. Down the sloping planks he went until he found himself on the floor of the tube. ”