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