cing some of the big scenes of
this picture. He had told them just where to watch for Annie-Many-Ponies
and the flag she would wave,--a black flag, so that the boys could not
fail to see it in the vague whiteness of the storm. He had located the
jutting ledge behind which Happy Jack was to sneak, that he might watch
for the signal as an extra precaution against an unseasonable appearance
of the two riders over the ridge.

When the herd straggled down in what seemed an endless stream of
storm-driven animals, Luck knew that the boys had done their work well.
He knew cattle as he knew pictures; he knew that a full two thousand came
over that ridge through a shallow pass he had chosen, "'Every hoof' is
right," he remarked to Bill Holmes with a dry approval. "I'd hate to go
hunting meat where that bunch was gathered from. Looks like they'd combed
the country for fifty miles around." He sent a quick glance to the
pinnacle where Annie-Many-Ponies stood waiting to give the signal. He
wished that she had realized the importance of these cattle scenes keenly
enough to have given him the signal at the cost of breaking her pose. But
he had only himself to blame. He should not have taken the risk, even
though he had believed that the cattle would not arrive for another half
hour. He should have been ready; he had told the boys to send them right
over the ridge when they came up to it, because he wanted to preserve
unbroken that indescribable atmosphere of a long, weary journey.

Still they came; a good twenty-five hundred, he was ready to wager, when
the last few stragglers, so weak that they wobbled when they hesitated
before descending a particularly steep place, came down the slope. It
surely did eat up film to take the full magnitude of that march, but Luck
turned and turned and gloated in the bigness of it all.

"All right, Annie," he called out when he had taken the last of the herd
as they filed out of sight into the narrow gully that would lead them to
the flat half a mile below, where he meant to get other scenes. "Wave
flag now for boys to come!"

Annie-Many-Ponies lifted high the black flag and waved it in slow,
sweeping half circles above her head. "Boys, come," she called, a
moment after.

Luck, still not trusting the camera to Bill Holmes, swung back slowly
to the pass and made a panorama of the desolate hillside and the
chill, forbidding mountains behind. At the pass he stopped. "How
close?" he shouted to Annie.