Whereupon Andy proved himself a real friend and an unselfish one.  He felt as if getting up out of bed was the final, supreme torture under which a man may live; but he got up, for there was something in Luck’s voice that thrilled him even through the clogging sleep-hunger.  Presently he was sitting in his trousers and socks and shirt, sleepy-eyed beside Luck.

“Shoot it outa your system,” he mumbled, and began feeling stupidly for his cigarette papers. “E—­a-ough!” he yawned, if so inarticulate a sound may be spelled.  “I knew you’d have to work your story over,” he said, more normal of tone after the yawn.  And he added bluntly, “Rosemary’s one grand little woman—­but she couldn’t act if you trained her a thousand years.  What’s your next best bet?”

“No next best; it’s the picture this time. The Phantom Herd.  Get that as a title?”

“Gee!” Andy softly paid tribute.  Then he grinned.  “By gracious, they sure didn’t act to me like any phantom herd when we first headed ’em into that wind!”

“Them babies are going to march us up to a pile of real money, though,” Luck asserted eagerly.

“Listen.  Here’s the story—­the part I’ve changed; all the first part is the same—­the trail-herd and all.  You’re old Dave’s son, and you’re wild.  You quarrel, and he turns you out, thinking he’ll let you rustle for yourself awhile, and maybe tame down and come back more like he wants you to be.  But you don’t tame that way.  You throw in with Miguel, and you two turn rustlers.  You hold a grudge against your dad, and you rustle from him mostly, on the plea that by rights what’s his is yours—­you know.  Annie is Mig’s sweetheart, and she’s a kind of go-between—­keeps you posted on what’s taking place on the outside, and all that.  I haven’t,” he explained hastily, “doped out the details yet.  I’m giving you the main points I want to bring out.  Well, here’s the big stuff; you get a big herd together.  You’re holding ’em in a box canyon,—­I know the spot, all right,—­waiting for a chance to drive them outa the country; see?  This blizzard hits, and you take advantage of it to drive the herd out under cover of the storm.  But the blizzard beats you.  You trail ’em along, but there’s only two of you, and you can’t keep ’em from swinging away from the wind.  You try to hold the herd into the storm,—­that’s where I’ll get my big storm effects,—­but they swing off in spite of you.  Your horses get tired; all you can do is follow the herd.  Lord!  I wish that stuff I took to-day wasn’t spoiled!  I sure would have had some big stuff there.  Well, Mig’s horse goes down in a drifted wash.  You’re trying to point the herd then, and the storm’s so thick you don’t miss him at first, we’ll say.

“Anyway, as I’ve doped it out, Mig loses his life.  You find him dead—­whether then or later I don’t know yet.  The punch is this:  You have been getting pretty sick of the life, and wishing you had behaved yourself and stayed with your dad.  But you’ve been afraid of Mig.  You couldn’t see any chance of taking the back trail as long as he was alive to tell on you.  Now he’s dead.  I guess maybe you better find him right there in the blizzard—­hurt maybe—­anyway, just about all in.  You try to save him, sabe?  You can’t, though.”