B. M. BOWER: Historical Novels, Westerns & Old West Sagas (Illustrated Edition). B. M. Bower
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