"The directors have to pass on all bank loans," he explained apologetically, "but I can lend you the money out of my personal account. If you will excuse me, I'll get the money before my assistant closes the vault. And shall I put these inside for you?" He rose and started for the inner door with a deprecating smile. "Aren't you going to take a note?" Luck studied the man with sharpened glance. "My check will be a sufficient record of the transaction, I think." And Mr. White, with two or three words scribbled at the bottom, proceeded to make the check a record. "I am glad to be able to stake you, Mr. Lindsay, and I hope your trip will be successful." He got another Luck Lindsay smile for that, and the apology he had coming to him. And then in a very few minutes Luck hurried out and back to the little house on the edge of town. "Where's my bag? So long, boys; I'm going to drift. I'll change clothes on the train--haven't got time now. Here's five dollars, Andy, for the stable bill and so on. Bill, you're the only one of the bunch that shirked, so you can carry this box of reels to the depot for me. _Adios_, boys, I'm sure going to romp all over that Convention, believe me, if they don't swear _The Phantom Herd's_ a winner from the first scene!" CHAPTER NINETEEN WHEREIN LUCK MAKES A SPEECH Luck stood on the platform of the Texas Cattlemen's Convention and looked down upon the work-lined, brown faces of the men whose lives had for the most part been spent out of doors. Their sober attentiveness confused him for a minute so that he forgot what he wanted to say--he, Luck Lindsay, who had faced the great audiences of Madison Square Garden and had smiled his endearing smile and made his bow with perfect poise and an eye for pretty faces; who had without a quiver faced the camera, many's the time, in difficult scenes; who had faced death more times than he could count, and what was to him worse than death,--blank failure. But these old range-men with the wind-and-sun wrinkles around their eyes, and their ready-to-wear suits, and their judicial air of sober attention,--these were to him the jury that would weigh his work and say whether it was worthy. These men-- And then one of them suddenly cleared his throat with a rasping sound like old Dave Wiswell, his dried little cowman of the picture, and embarrassment dropped from Luck like a cloak flung aside. He was here to put his work to the test; to let these men say whether _The Phantom Herd_ was worthy to be called a great picture, one of which the West could be proud. So he pushed back his mop of hair--grayer than the hair of many here old enough to be his father--with the fiat of his palm, and looked straight into the faces of these men and said what he had to say: