LITMIR.BIZ

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and the last dollar they possessed. He was sorely tempted to try it, but for their sakes he knew he must not let their enthusiasm sweep away his sober judgment. Had they owned but half his experience it would be different; but their very ignorance of the game hampered his decision.

      “Well, boss, how about it?” Andy urged. “Are yuh game to try her a whirl? We haven’t got much, but what we’ve got is yours if you want to tackle it. We’ll be right with you—till hell’s no bigger than a bullet ladle.”

      “That’s just what holds me back. I’d certainly hate to lead you up against a losing proposition, boys. And if I went into it, I’d go in over my eyebrows; if I didn’t make good I wouldn’t have the price of a tag on a ten-cent sack of Bull Durham when I quit; so I couldn’t pay you back—”

      “Aw, thunder! Think we never set into a poker game in our lives? Think we’re in the habit of hollerin’ for our chips back when we lose? What’s the matter with yuh, anyway?” cried Big Medicine wrathfully.

      “Why, of course we share the risk of losing!” Rosemary scowled at him indignantly. “We’ll go in over our eyebrows, too,—and stand on our toes long as we can, to keep our scalp locks showing above water!” Her brown eyes twinkled a swift glance around the table. “If you think these boys are quitters, Luck Lindsay, you just ought to have been around when they were hanging on to their homesteads! I could tell you things—”

      “You say buying a camera is just a starter. How much do you figure it would cost to make our Big Picture? Cutting out salaries and all such little luxuries, what would the actual expenses be—making a rough guess?” Weary leaned forward over his plate and forgot all about his tempting wedge of shortcake.

      Luck pushed back his plate and smiled his smile. “For the Big Picture,” he began, while the Happy Family leaned to listen, “there’d be the camera and outfit,—I could pick up some things second hand,—we’ll call that fourteen hundred and fifty. Then there would be at least five thousand feet of film: perforated raw stock I could get for about three and three quarter cents a foot. Say a couple, of hundred dollars for that. We’d need at least three dozen radium flares for our night scenes; they cost close around twenty dollars a dozen. And one or two light diffusers,—that’s just to get us started with an outfit, remember. Then there’d be our transportation to Albuquerque, New Mexico. I know that country, and I know what I can do there. I’d hit straight for a ranch I know between Bear Canyon and Rincon Arroyo—belongs to an old fellow that sure is a character, too, in his way. Old bachelor, he is; got some cattle and horses, and round-pole corrals and the like of that. I know old Applehead Forrman like I know my right hand; we’d make Applehead’s place our headquarters—see? Exterior stuff we’d have right there, ready to shoot without any expense. As for interiors,—say! any of you fellows handy with hammer and saw?”

      “By gracious, we all are!” Andy declared quickly. “We learned our little lessons when we were building claim shacks for ourselves.”

      “Good enough! You boys could be stage mechanics as well as leading men,” Luck grinned. “Add hammers and saws to the outfit. We’d have to build a few interior sets.”

      Rosemary had her eyebrows tied in little knots, she was thinking so fast. “I’ll write the Little Doctor that she can have my silver teaset,” she informed Andy impulsively. “She offered me fifty dollars for it, you know. That would buy lots of beans!”

      Luck looked at her, but he did not say what was in his mind. Instead he reached into an inner pocket and drew out his passbook, “I’ve got eighteen hundred and ninety-five dollars in the bank,” he announced, reading the figures aloud. “And my car ought to bring three or four thousand,—if I can find the man that tried to buy it a month or so before I took the Injuns back. She’s a pippin, boys!—”

      “Oh, your lovely, big, white machine!” wailed Rosemary. “Would you have to sell it, Luck? Couldn’t we squeak along without that?”

      “Aw, you don’t want to sell your car!” Pink protested. “I know where I can borrow two or three hundred. Maybe the Old Man—”

      “We’ll put this thing through alone, if we do it at all,” Luck told him bluntly. “Can’t afford to work with borrowed capital; the risk is too great. Sure, I’ll sell the car. I was thinking of it, anyway,” he testified falsely but reassuringly. “We’ll need every cent I can raise. There’s chemicals and Lord knows what all; and when we come to making our prints and marketing, why—” he threw out both hands expressively. “If we land in Albuquerque with five thousand dollars and our outfit, we won’t have a cent to throw away. At that, we’ll have to squeeze every nickel till it hollers, before we’re through. Believe me, boys, this is going to be some undertaking!”

      “Nice, comfortable way you’ve got of painting things cheerful,” the Native Son drawled ironically.

      “That’s all right. I want you to realize what it’s going to be like before you get in so far you can’t back out.”

      “Aw, who’s said anything about backing out?” Happy Jack grumbled.

      “Let’s get right down to brass tacks and see how strong we can go on money,” Andy suggested, pulling a pencil out of an inner pocket. “Here, girl, you do the bookkeeping while we call off the size of our pile. Put ‘er down in this book till you can get another one. You can set me down for two seventy-five—or make it three hundred. I can scrape it up, all right. How about you, Pink? This is hard-boiled figures, now, and no guess work.”

      Pink blew a mouthful of smoke while he did a little mental calculation. Then he took his twisted-leather purse and emptied it into his saucer. He investigated all his pockets and added eighty-five cents in small change. Then he gravely began to count, not disdaining three pennies in the pile. “I’ve got seventy-five dollars in the bank,” he said. “Add ninety dollars salary, and you have a hundred and sixty-five. Add six dollars and eighty-seven cents, and you have—my pile.”

      Rosemary twisted her lips and wrote the figures opposite Pink’s name. Next came Weary, then Miguel and Big Medicine and the dried little man who chewed violently upon a wooden toothpick and said he was good for eight hundred, and mebby a little mite more.

      They pushed their plates to the table’s center to make room for their gesticulating hands and uneasy elbows while they planned ways and means. They argued over trivial points and left the big ones for Luck to settle. They talked of light effects and wholesale grocery lists and ray filters and smoke pots and railroad fares and the problem of cutting down their baggage so as to avoid paying excess charges. Luck, once he had taken the mental plunge into the deep waters of so hazardous an enterprise, began to exhibit a most amazing knowledge of the details of picture making.

      To save money, he told them, he would be his own camera man. He could do without a “still” camera, because he would enlarge clippings from the different scenes in the negative instead. They’d have to manage the range stuff with only one camera, which would mean more work to get the various effects. But with a telephoto lens and a wide angle lens he could come pretty near putting it over the way he wanted it. “And there’ll be no more blank ammunition, boys,” he told them. “So you want to fit yourselves out with real shells. I’m not going very strong on this foreground bullet-effect stuff; we can afford to leave that for the Western four-flushers that can’t do anything else. But she’s some wild down where we’ll be located, so we’ll not be packing empty guns, at that.

      “And there’s another thing,” he went on, talking and making notes at the same time. “If we’re going to do this, we can’t get started any too soon. We may be able to hit a late round-up and get some scenes, which will save rounding up stock ourselves for it. And there’s all that winter stuff to make, too; we haven’t any more time to throw away than we have money.”

      “Well, we’re ready to hit the trail any time you are,” Andy declared. “To-morrow, if yuh say so. You go ahead with your end of it, Luck, and I’ll be straw boss here in camp and get the outfit packed and ready to ship outa here on an hour’s notice. I can do it, too—believe me!”

      “Do

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