Chapter 3 - Page 2

said so. We've got to do it, Vic. I expect we'd better start as soon as the insurance is paid, and that ought to be next week. Malpais is the name of the darned place. Inez Garcia says Malpais means bad country. I asked her when she was here yesterday. I expect it does, though you can't tell about Inez. She's tricky about translating stuff; she thinks it's funny to fake the meaning of things. But I expect it's true; it sounds like that."

"I should worry," Vic yawned, with the bland triteness of a boy who speaks mostly in current catch phrases. "I've got a good chance for a juvenile part in that big five-reeler Walt's going to put on. Fat chance anybody's got putting me to herding goats! That New Mexico dope got my number the first time dad sprung it. Not for mine!"

Helen May sat down on the arm of a Mission chair, wrapped her kimono around her thin figure, and looked at Vic from under her lashes. Besides raising goats and living out in the open, she was to make a man of Vic. She did not know which duty appalled her most, or which animal seemed to her the more intractable.

"We've got to do it," she said simply. "I don't like it either, but that doesn't matter. Dad planned that way for us."

Vic sat up crossly, groping for the top button of his pajama coat. His long hair was tousled in front and stood straight up at the back, and his lids were heavy yet with sleep. He looked very young and very unruly, and as though several years of grace were still left to Helen May before she need trouble herself about his manhood.

"Not for mine," he repeated stubbornly. "You can go if you want to, but I'm going to stay in pictures." No film star in the city could have surpassed Vic's tone of careless assurance. "Listen! Dad was queer along towards the last. You know that yourself. And just because he had a nutty idea of a ranch somewhere, is no reason why we should drop everything--"

"We've got to do it, and you needn't fuss, because you've got to go along. I expect we can study up--on goats." Her voice shook a little, for she was close to tears.

"Well, I'm darned if you ain't as nutty as dad was! Of course, he was old and sick, and there was plenty of excuse for him to slop down along towards the last. Now, listen! My idea is to get a nifty bungalow out there handy to the studios, and both of us to go into pictures. We can get a car; what I want is a speedy, sassy little boat that can travel. Well, and listen. We'll have plenty to live on till we both land in stock. I've got a good chance right now to work into a comedy company; they say my grin screens like a million dollars, and when it comes to making a comedy getaway I'm just geared right, somehow, to pull a laugh. That college picture we made got me a lot of notice in the projection room, and I was only doing mob stuff, at that. But I stood