nt. A little later
he looked up from his full plate with a worried air. "How's a storm
goin' to hit ye, Luck?" he asked. "Kinda put a stop to the pitcher
business, won't it?"

"Not if it snows, it won't," Luck answered calmly, helping himself to the
brown beans boiled with bacon. "We'll round up a bunch of cattle, and
I'll shoot my blizzard stuff. I'll need more negative, though, for that.
If I knew for sure it's going to storm--"

"I'm tellin' yuh it is, ain't I?" Applehead blew into his saucer of
coffee,--his table manners not being the nicest in the world. "I kin
smell snow two days off, and that there wind comin' up the canyon has got
snow behind it, now I'm tellin' ye. 'Nother thing, I kin tell by the way
Compadre walks, liftin' his feet high and bushin' up what's left of his
tail. That there cat's smarter'n some humans, and he shore kin smell snow
comin', same's I do. He hates snow worse'n pizen." Applehead drank his
coffee in great gulps. "I'll bet he's huntin' a warm corner somewheres,
right now."

"No, he ain't, by cripes!" Big Medicine corrected him. "That there
Come-Paddy cat of yourn has got worse troubles than snow! Dog's got him
treed up the windmill. I seen--"

Applehead did not wait to hear what Big Medicine had seen. He drank the
remainder of his coffee in one great, scalding gulp, and went out to
rescue his cat and to put the fear of death into the little black dog.
When he returned, puffing a little, to his interrupted meal and had told
them a few of the things he meant to do to that dog if it refused to
mend its ways, he declared again that he could "shore smell snow behind
that wind."

"I wish it would hold off till that raw stock gets here," Luck observed
anxiously. "I wired the order in, but at that I'm afraid it won't get
here before the end of the week. I'll have one of you boys pack me some
water into the dark room so I can develop negatives right after dinner. I
want to see how she's coming out before I take any more."

"I thought Andy'd fixed a hose fer that dark room," Happy Jack said
forebodingly. If there was water to be carried, Happy was pessimistically
certain that he would have to carry it.

"I turned that hose over to the missus for a colander," Andy explained
soberly. "By gracious, I couldn't figure out anything else it could be
used for."

"Did you get the barrels fixed like I said?"

"I sure did. Applehead must have had a Dutch picnic or two out here,
from the number of