fine as silk," he volunteered
companionably, "and then when I'd passed camera and was outa the scene,
by thunder, I tangled up with a deep chuck-hole that was grown over with
weeds, and like to have broken my fool neck. How's that for luck?" He
took the cigar from his lips and smiled again with half-closed, measuring
eyes. "Yes, sir, I just plumb spoiled one perfectly good Concord coach,
and would have been playing leading corpse at a funeral, believe me, if I
hadn't strapped myself to the seat for that drive off the grade. As it
was, I hung head down and cussed till one of the boys cut me loose. Where
did you see the picture?"

"Me? Up in the Falls. Say, I'm glad to meet you. Luck Lindsay's your
name, ain't it? I remember you were called that in the picture. Mine's
Green, Andy Green,--when folks don't call me something worse. And this is
Miguel Rapponi, a whole lot whiter than he sounds. What, for Lordy sake,
you wasting time on this little old hasbeen burg for? Take it from me,
there ain't anything left here but dents in the road and a brimstone
smell. We're all plumb halter-broke and so tame we--"

"You look all right to me, brother," Luck told him in that convincing
tone he had.

"Well, same to you," Andy retorted with a frank heartiness he was not in
the habit of bestowing upon strangers. "I feel as if I'd worked with you.
Pink was with me when we saw that picture, and we both hollered 'Go to
it!' right out loud, when you gathered up the ribbons and yanked off the
brake and went off hell-popping and smiling back over your shoulder at
us. It was your size and that smile of yours that made me remember you.
You looked like a kid when you mounted to the boot; and you drove down
off smiling, and you had one helanall of a trip, and you drove off that
grade looking like you was trying to commit suicide and was smiling still
when you pulled up at the post-office. By gracious, I--"

Luck gave a little chuckle deep in his throat. "I did all that smiling
the day before I drove off the grade," he confessed, looking from one
to the other. "I don't guess I'd have smiled quite so sweet, maybe, if
I'd waited."

"Is that the way you make moving pictures, hind-side-foremost?" Andy, his
back to the table, lifted himself over the rim to a comfortable seat and
began to make himself a cigarette.

"Yes, or both ways from the middle, just as it happens." Luck was always
ready to talk pictures. "In that stage-driver picture I made al