The Greatest Works of B. M. Bower - 51 Titles in One Volume (Illustrated Edition). B. M. Bower
but I’ve throwed my feet under the table fer less and was thankful to git it, now I’m a-tellin’ yuh!”
Big Medicine bethought him of the remains of the train lunch which they had frugally saved. He brought that and added it to Applehead’s impromptu meal. The sandwiches were mashed flat, and the pickles were limp, and the cake much inclined to crumble, but Applehead gave one look and took off his hat.
“I’ve et, but I can shore eat again when I git my eyes on cake,” he declared exuberantly, and pulled an empty box up to the table for a seat. “I wisht Compadre could git a smell uh that there fried chicken; it would put new life into him, which he needs after tangling with that there coyote ‘tother night.”
“We ought to unhitch and give the horses a feed,” Luck suggested. “Any particular place?”
“Well, you know where to put them cayuses as well as I do,” Applehead mumbled, with his mouth full of cake. “I don’t care what yuh do around the danged place. Go along and don’t bother me, boy; I’m busy.”
“Didn’t I tell you how it would be?” Luck reminded Andy and Weary when they were outside. “That old boy is tickled to death to have us here. He sure is a type, too. I’ll be using him in the picture. And just tale a look at that corral down there! We’ll set up camp this afternoon and round up some horses,—Applehead always keeps a bunch running back here on the mesa,—and to-morrow morning we’ll get to work. A couple of you will have to take these teams back this afternoon, too. I’ll let you drive the four-horse in, Weary, and lead the other behind. And I’ll send the Native Son in with Applehead’s team and wagon, so you can haul out a thousand feet of lumber for a stage. Get it surfaced one side,—fourteen-foot boards, sabe? And about twenty-five pounds of eight-penny nails. We’ve got the tools in our outfit. I wonder which pasture Applehead’s team is running in. I’ll have one of the boys get them up, unless—”
“Luck Lindsay!” came Rosemary’s high, clear treble. “Aren’t you boys going to eat any dinner?”
“We’ll eat when we have more time!” Luck shouted back. “Send Applehead out here, will you?”
Presently Applehead appeared with a large piece of cake in one hand and a well-picked chicken wing in the other. “What yuh want?” he inquired lazily, in the tone that implies extreme physical comfort.
“I want your big team to haul some lumber out from town. Where are they? If you don’t mind catching them up while I help get this stuff unloaded, we’ll have things moving around here directly.”
“Shore I’ll ketch ‘em up fur ye, soon as I find Compadre and give him this here bone. He’s been kinda off his feed since that coyote clumb his frame. He was under the house, but I reckon so many strange voices kinda got his goat. There ain’t ary yowl to be got outa that hole no more. Come, kitty-kitty-kitty!”
Luck threw out his hands despairingly, and then laughed. Applehead’s tender solicitude for his cat was a fixed characteristic of the man, and Luck knew there was no profit in argument upon the subject. He began unloading the lighter pieces of baggage while the boys fed the livery teams. The others came straggling down from the house, lighting their after-dinner cigarettes and glancing curiously at the adobe out-buildings which were so different from anything in Montana. The sagebrush slopes wore a comfortable air of familiarity, even though the boys were more accustomed to bunch grass; but an adobe stable was a novelty.
Fast as they came near him, Luck put them to work. There was plenty to do before they could even begin work on the Big Picture, but Luck seemed to have thought out all the details of camp-setting with the same attention to trifles which he had shown in the making of a picture. In half an hour he had every one busy, including old Applehead, who, having located Compadre in the stable loft and left the chicken wing at the top of the ladder, had saddled his horse and gone off into a far pasture to bring in all the horses down there, so that Luck could choose whatever animals he wished to use. Dave Wiswell, the dried little man, was helping Rosemary wash the dishes and put away the food supplies they had brought out with them, as fast as Happy Jack could carry them up from the wagon. Andy Green was ruthlessly emptying the only closet—a roomy one, fortunately—in the house, and tacking up black paper which Luck had brought, so that it might serve as a dark room. Big Medicine and Pink were clearing out the one-roomed adobe cabin which Applehead called the “ketch-all,” so that the boys could sleep there until the bunk-house was repaired.
Luck was unpacking his camera and swearing softly to himself while he set it up, and wishing that his experience as assistant camera-man was not quite so far in the past. He foresaw difficulties with that camera until he got in practice, but he did not say anything about it to the others. He got it together finally, put in the two-hundred-foot magazine of negative that he had brought with him to use while waiting for his big order to arrive, made a few light tests, and went up to the house to see if Andy had the dark room dark enough.
He found Andy defending himself as best he could from a small domestic storm. In his anxiety to have that dark room fixed just the way Luck wanted it, Andy had purloined a shelf which Rosemary needed, and which she meant to have, if words could restore it to its place behind the kitchen stove. Andy had the shelf down and was taking out bent nails with a new hammer when Luck came to the door with his arms full of packages of chemicals and a ruby lamp.
“What can a fellow do?” Andy was inquiring plaintively. “There ain’t another board on the place that’s the right width. I looked. Luck’s got to have a shelf; you don’t expect him to keep all his junk on the floor, do you? I’m sorry, but I’ve just got to have it, girl.”
“You’ve just got to put that shelf back, Andy. Where do you expect me to put things? There isn’t a pantry on the place, and only that one dinky little cupboard over there. I can’t keep my dishes on the floor, and cooking is going to be pretty important, itself, around this camp!”
“Soon as the lumber gets here, I’ll have Andy build you a cupboard,” Luck soothed her. “You haven’t got many conveniences here, and that’s a fact. But we’ll get things straightened out, pronto. Got any bones or scraps left, Mrs. Andy? That little black dog that followed us out is here yet. He didn’t go back with the boys. I found him curled up in the wagon shed just now; poor little devil looks about starved. His ribs stand out worse than a cow that’s wintered on a sheep range.”
With Rosemary’s attention diverted to the little black dog, Andy got the shelf nailed firmly upon the wall of the dark room. And immediately Luck proceeded to use it to its fullest capacity and announced that he needed another one, whereat Andy groaned.
“Say, I’m a brave man, all right, but I don’t dare to swipe any more shelves,” he protested. “Not from my wife, anyway. Timber must sure be scarce in this man’s country. I never did see a place so shy of boards as this ranch is.”
“Well, let’s see if there are any barrels,” said Luck. “I’ve been studying on how to rig up some way to develop my film. If we can find some half barrels and knock the heads out, I can wind the negative around them with the emulsion side out, and dip it in the bigger barrels of developer; see how I mean? Believe me, this laboratory problem is going to be a big one till I can see my way to getting tanks and film racks out here. But I believe barrels will work all right. And, say! There’s some old hose I saw out by the windmill tank; you get that, and see if you can’t run it under the house and up through a hole in the floor. I expect it leaks in forty places, but maybe you can mend it. And we ought to have some way to run the water out in a trough or something. You see what you can do about that, Andy, while I go and unpack the rest of my camera outfit. There’s a garret up over the ceiling, here, and you’ll have to see what shape it’s in for drying film. Stop all the cracks so dust can’t blow in. I want to start taking scenes to-morrow morning, you know. I’ve got two hundred feet of raw stock to work with till the other gets here. I’ve got to develop my tests before to-morrow so I’ll know what I’m doing. I can’t afford to spoil any film.”
“Well, hardly,” Andy agreed. “By gracious, I hope you’re making the rest of the bunch hump themselves, too. Honest, I’d die if I saw anybody