d recourse to
rosewater and talcum and other first aids to swollen eyelids.

Whatever she may have thought, whatever she may have overheard beyond
what has been recorded, her manner toward Luck was so unobtrusively
tender that Chip looked at her once or twice with a puzzled, husbandly
frown. Also, the Kid felt something special in his Doctor Dell's
good-night kiss; something he did not understand at all, since he had not
yet told her that he was going to be a good boy and stay at home and take
care of her and the ranch.

CHAPTER FIVE

A BUNCH OF ONE-REELERS FROM BENTLY BROWN

The Manager of the Acme Film Company cleared his throat with a rasping
noise that sounded very loud, coming as it did after fifteen minutes of
complete silence. Luck, smoking a cigarette absent-mindedly by the window
while he stared out across two vacant lots to a tawdry apartment
house,--and saw a sage-covered plain instead of what was before his
eyes,--started from his daydream and glanced at Martinson inquiringly.
"Well, what do you think of it?" he asked.

Martinson cleared his throat again, and shuffled the typed sheets in his
hands. "Seems to lack action, don't it?" he hazarded reluctantly. "Of
course, this is a rough draft; I realize that. I suppose you'll
strengthen up the plot, later on. Chance for some good cattle-stealing
complications, I should think. But I'd boil it down to two reels, Luck,
if I were you. There's a lot of atmosphere you couldn't get, anyway--"

"I can get every foot of that atmosphere," Luck put in crisply.

"Oh, I suppose--but you don't want that much. Too expensive, where it
doesn't carry the action along. I'd put in some dance-hall scenes; you
haven't enough interiors. Make your lead a victim of card sharps, why
don't you, and have his sister come there after him? You could get some
great dramatic action--have her meet the heavy there--"

"After the tried-and-tested recipe. Sure, Mart! We can take the middle
out of that _Her-Brother's-Honor_ film and use that; and if you're afraid
the public may recognize it, we'll run it backwards. Or we can mix it
with some _Western-Girl's-Romance_ film, or take--"

"Now, Luck, wait a minute. Wait-a-minute!" Martinson's hand went up in
the approved gesture of stopping another's speech. "You can give it an
original twist. You know you can; you always have."

Luck swore, accustomed though he was to the makeshifts of the business.
The street cars had stopped runnin