wouldn't work with this kind of an
outfit; they'd demand all the laboratory conveniences, and that would run
into money. Ever notice that when you can't get anything but the crudest
kind of tools to work with, you generally have to use them yourself? But
it will take more than--oh, _hell_!"

"What's wrong?" Andy Green bent his brown head anxiously down beside
Luck's fast graying mop of hair, and peered at the images coming out of
the yellowish veil that had hidden them. "Ain't they good?"

Luck reached into the water tank and splashed a little water on his film
to check it while he looked. "Now, what in the name of--" He scowled
perplexedly down at the streaked strips. "What do you suppose streaked it
like that?" He lifted worried, gray eyes to Andy's apprehensive frown,
and looked again disgustedly at the negative before he dropped it back
with a splash into the developer.

"No good; she's ruined," he said in the flat tone of a great
disappointment. "Eighty feet of film gone to granny. Well, that's
luck for you!"

Andy reached gingerly into the barrel and brought up the keg so that
he could take another look. He had owned a kodak for years and had
done enough amateur developing to know that something had gone very
wrong here.

"What ails the darned thing?" he asked fretfully, turning to Luck, who
was scowling abstractedly into his barrels of "soup."

"You can search me," Luck replied dully. "Looks like I'd been stung with
a bunch of bum chemicals. Either that, or something's wrong with our
tanks here." He reached down and pulled up the keg by its hooped top,
glimpsed a stain on his finger and thumb and let the keg slip hastily
over into the pure water so that he could examine the stains.

"Iron! Iron, sure as thunder!" he exclaimed suddenly. "Those iron hoops
are what did it." He rubbed his hand vexedly. "I knew better than that,
too. I don't see why I didn't think about those hoops. Of all the
idiotic, fool--"

"What kinda brain do you think you've got in your head, anyway?" Andy
broke in spiritedly. "Way you've been working it lately, engineering
every blamed detail yourself, you oughtn't to wonder if one little thing
gets by you."

"Well, it's done now," Luck dismissed the accident stoically. "Lucky I
started in on those costume and make-up tests of all you fellows, and
that scene of your wife's. And if I'd used the other half barrel instead
of this five-gallon keg for a start-off, I'd have spoiled the whole
bunch. I'll have to throw out all that developer. Blast the luck! Well,
let's get busy." He pulled out the keg and held it up for another
disgusted look. "I won't bother fixing that at all. Call Happy and Bud
back, will you, and have them roll this barrel of developer out and ditch
it? And then take those two half barrels you were going to fix, and wrap
them with clothesline,--that cotton line on one of the trunks,--and knock
off all the hoops. I'm going to beat it to 'Querque and see if that
stuff's there. We'll try developing the rest this evening, after I get
back. Darn such luck!"

The five thousand feet of negative had not arrived, but there was a
letter from the company saying that they had shipped it. Luck, bone-tired
and cold from his fifteen-mile drive across the unsheltered mesa, turned
away from the express office, debating whether to wait for the film or go
back to the ranch. It would be a pretty cold drive back, in the edge of
the evening and facing that raw wind; he decided that he would save time
by waiting here in town, since he could not go on with his picture
without more negative. He turned back impulsively, put his head in at the
door of the express office, and called to the clerk:

"When do you get your next express from the East, brother? I'll wait for
that negative if you think it's likely to come by to-morrow noon or
there-abouts."

"Might come in on the eight o'clock train to-night, or to-morrow morning.
You say it was shipped the sixteenth? Ought to be here by morning, sure."

"I'll take a chance," Luck said half to himself, and closed the door.

A round-shouldered, shivering youth, who had been leaning apathetically
against the side of the building, moved hesitatingly up to him. "Say,
do I get it right that you're in the movies?" he inquired anxiously.
"Heard you mention looking for negative. Haven't got a job for a
fellow, have you?"

Luck wheeled and looked him over, from his frowsy, soft green beaver hat
with the bow at the back, to his tan pumps that a prosperous young man
would have thrown back in the closet six weeks before, as being out of
season. The young man grinned his understanding of the appraisement, and
Luck saw that his teeth were well-kept, and that his nails were clean and
trimmed carefully. He made a quick mental guess and hit very close to the
fellow's proper station in life and his present predicament.

"What end of the business do you know?" he asked, turning his face toward
the warmth of the hotel.

"Operator. Worked two years at the Bijou in Cleveland. I'm down on my
luck now; thought I'd try the California studios, because I wanted to
learn the camera, and I figured on getting a look at the Fair. I stalled
around out there till my money gave out, and then I started back to God's
country." He shrugged his shoulders cynically. "This is about as far as
I'm likely to get, unless I can learn to do without eating and a few
other little luxuries," he summed up the situation grimly.

"Well, it won't hurt you to skip a lesson and have dinner with me," Luck
suggested in the offhand way that robbed the invitation of the sting of
charity. "I always did hate to eat alone."

The upshot of the meeting was that, when Luck gathered up the lines, next
day, and popped the short lash of Applehead's home-made whip over the
backs of the little bay team, and told them to "Get outa town!" in a tone
that had in it a boyish note of exultation, the thin youth hung to the
seat of the bouncing buckboard and wondered if Luck really could drive,
or if he was half "stewed" and only imagined he could. The thin youth had
much to learn besides the science of photography and some of it he
learned during that fifteen-mile drive. For one thing, he learned that
really Luck could drive. Luck proved that by covering the fifteen miles
in considerably less than an hour and a half without losing any of his
precious load of boxed negative and coiled garden hose and assistant
camera-man,--since that was what he intended to make of the thin youth.




CHAPTER TWELVE

"I THINK YOU NEED INDIAN GIRL FOR PICTURE"


Still it did not snow, though the wind blew from the storm quarter, and
Applehead sniffed it and made predictions, and Compadre went with his
remnant of tail ruffed like a feather boa. Immediately after supper Luck
attached his new hose to the tank faucet and developed the corral scenes
which he had taken, with the thin youth taking his first lesson in the
dark room. The thin youth, who said his name was Bill Holmes, did not
have very much to say, but he seemed very quick to grasp all that Luck
told him. That kept Luck whistling softly between sentences, while they
wound the negative around the roped half barrel that had not so much as a
six penny nail in it this time, so thoroughly did Andy do his work.

The whistling ceased abruptly when Luck examined his film by the light of
the ruby lamp, however, for every scene was over-exposed and worthless.
Luck realized when he looked at it that the light was much stronger than
any he had ever before photographed by, and that he would have to "stop
down" hereafter; the problem was, how much. His light tests, he
remembered, had been made rather late in the afternoon, when the light
was getting yellow, and he had blundered in forgetting that the forenoon
light was not the same.

He went ahead and put the film through the fixing bath and afterwards
washed it carefully, more for the practice and to show Bill Holmes how to
handle the negative than for any value the film would have. He discovered
that Andy had not unpacked the rewinding outfit, but since he would not
need it until his negative was dry, he made no comment on the subject.
Bill Holmes kept at his heels, helping when he knew what to do, asking a
question now and then, but silent for the most part. Luck felt extremely
optimistic about Bill Holmes, but for all that he was depressed by his
second failure to produce good film. A camera-man, he felt in his heart,
might be the determining factor for success; but he was too stubborn to
admit it openly or even to consider sending for one, even if he could
have managed to pay the seventy-five dollars a week salary for the time
it would take to produce the Big Picture. He could easier afford to waste
a few hundred feet of negative now, he argued to himself.

"Come on down, and I'll show you what I can about the camera," he said to
Bill Holmes. "The light's too tricky to-day to work by, but I'll give you
a few pointers that you'll have to keep in mind when I'm too busy to
think about telling you. Once I get to directing a scene, I'm liable to
be busy as a one-armed prospector fighting a she-bear with cubs. I'm
counting on you to remember what all I'va told you, in case I forget to
tell you again. You see, I've ruined a hundred and fifty feet of negative
already, just by overlooking a couple of bets. You're here to help keep
that from happening again. _Sabe_?"

"Well, there's one or two things I don't have to learn," Bill Holmes told
him by way of encouragement. "You get the camera set and ready, and I can
turn it any speed you want. I'll guarantee that much. I learned that all
right in projection."

"That's exactly why I brought you out here, brother," Luck assured him.
"That's why--"

"Oh, Luck Lindsay!" came Rosemary's voice excitedly. "Mr. Forrman wants
you right away quick! Somebody's coming that he doesn't know, and he says
it's up to you!"

"What's up to me?" Luck came hurrying down the ladder backwards. "Has
Applehead gone as crazy as his cat? I've nothing to do with strangers
coming to the ranch."

"Yes," said Rosemary, twinkling her brown eyes at him, "but this is a
woman. Mr. Forrman refuses to take any responsibility--"

"So do I. I don't know of any woman that's liable to come trailing me up.
Where is she?"

From the doorway Rosemary pointed dramatically, and Luck went up and
stood beside her, rolling down his sleeves while he stared at the trail.
Down the slope, head bent to the whooping wind, a woman came walking with
a free, purposeful stride that spoke eloquently of accustomedness to the
open land. Her skirts flapped but could not impede her movements. She
seemed to be carrying some bright-hued burden upon her shoulders, and she
was, without doubt, coming straight down to the ranch as to a
much-desired goal.

"You