Steve Yeager | Page 5

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