al for quick action, and
took off his coat.

"Happy, I wish you and Bud would carry me some water," he said. "I'll
show you where to put it; I'm going to need a lot. Will you help me wind
the film on my patent rack, Andy? And I'll want that little team hitched
to the buckboard so I can go to town after I'm through. I've got some
hopes of my negative being there."

"Want the rest of us to work on that stage, don't you, boss?" Weary
asked, pausing in the doorway to roll a smoke. "And please may I wipe off
my eyebrows?"

"Why, sure!--to both questions," answered Luck, going over to his camera.
"I can't do much more till I get more negative, even with the light
right, which it isn't. You go ahead and finish the stage this afternoon.
And be sure the uprights are guyed for a high wind; she sure can blow, in
this man's country."

"You're danged right, she can blow!" Applehead testified emphatically.
"She can blow, and she's goin' to blow. You want to take your overshoes
and mittens, boy, when you start out fer town. You know how cold she can
get on that mesa. Chances are you'll come back facin' a blizzard. And,
say! I wisht you'd take that there dog back with yuh, Luck, 'cause if yuh
don't, him and me's shore goin' to tangle, now I'm tellin' yuh! Mighty
funny note when a cat dassent walk acrost his own dooryard in broad
daylight, no more! Poor ole Compadre was shakin' like a leaf when I clumb
up and got him down of'n the windmill. Way the wind was whistlin' up
there, the chances are he's done ketched cold in 'is tail, and if he has,
yuh better see to it that thar dog ain't within gunshot uh me, now I'm
tellin' yuh!"

Luck did not hear half the tirade. He had gone into the dark room and was
dissolving hypo for the fixing bath, while the boys tramped in with full
water buckets and began to fill the barrels he had placed in a row along
the wall. He was impatient to see how his work of the forenoon would come
out of the developer, and he was quite as impatient to be on his way to
town. Whether he admitted it or not, he had a good deal of faith in
Applehead's weather forecasts; he remembered how often the old fellow had
predicted storms in the past when Luck spent a long winter with him here
in this same adobe dwelling. If it did snow, he must have plenty of
negative for his winter scenes; for snow never laid long on the level
here, and he had a full reel of winter stuff to make.

He called Andy to come and help him wind his