“Ever try syrup on ’em?” old Dave Wiswell looked up from his plate to inquire.  “Once you git to likin’ ’em that way, they go pretty good for a change.”

Pink, anxious for variety in the monotonous menu, but doubtful of the experiment, poured a teaspoon of syrup over a teaspoon of beans, conveyed the mixture to his mouth, and made a hurried trip to the door.  “Say! was that a joke?” he demanded, when he returned grimacing to his place.

“Joke?  No, ain’t no joke about that,” the dried little man testified earnestly.  “Once you git to likin’ ’em that way—­”

Pink scowled suspiciously.  “I’ll take mine straight,” he said, and sent a resentful glance at Annie-Many-Ponies who was tittering behind her palm.

“I calc’late I better beef another critter,” Applehead suggested pacifically.  “Worst of it is, the cattle’s all so danged pore they ain’t much pickin’ left on their bones after the hide’s skun off.  If that blizzard ever does come, Luck’s shore goin’ to have all the pore-cow atmosphere he wants!”

To Luck their talk, good-humored though it was, hurt him like a blow upon bruised flesh.  For their faith in him they were eating beans three times a day with laughter and jest to sweeten the fare.  For their faith in him they were riding early and late, enduring hardships and laughing at them.  If he failed, he knew that they would hide their disappointment under some humorous phase of the failure;—­if they could find one.  He could not tell them how close he was to failure.  He could not tell them in plain words how much hung upon the coming of that storm in time for him to reach the cowmen at their convention.  Their ignorance of the profession kept them from worrying much about it; their absolute confidence in his knowledge let them laugh at difficulties which held him awake when they were sleeping.

But for all that he went doggedly ahead, trusting in luck theoretically while he overlooked nothing that would make for success.  While Applehead sniffed the air and shook his head, Luck was doing everything he could think of to keep things going steadily along to a completion of the production.

He made all of his “close-ups,” his inserts, and sub-titles.  He cut negative by his continuity sheet at night after the others were all in bed, and pigeon-holed the scenes ready for joining.  He ordered what “positive” he would need, and he arranged for his advertising matter.  All his interior scenes, save the double-exposure “vision” scenes, were done by the fifteenth of March,—­March which had not come in like a roaring lion, as Rosemary had predicted with easy optimism, but which had been nerve-wrackingly lamblike to the very middle of the month.

With a dogged persistence in getting ready for the fulfilment of his hopes, he ordered tanks and printer for the final work of getting his stuff ready for the market.  He had at best a crudely primitive outfit, though he saw his bank balance dwindle and dwindle to a most despairingly small sum.  And still it did not snow nor show any faint promise of snow.