before.  Applehead was not, and never would be by his own efforts, more than comfortably secure from having to get out and work for wages.  He had cattle, but he let them run the range in season and out, and it was only in good years that he had fair beef to ship.  He hated a gang of men hanging around the ranch and eating their fool heads off, he frequently declared.  So he and Compadre had lived in unprosperous peace, with a little garden and a little grape arbor and a horse for Applehead in the corral, and teams in the pasture where they could feed and water themselves, and a month’s supply of “grub” always in the house.  Applehead called that comfort, and could not see the advantage of burdening himself with men and responsibilities that he might pile up money in the bank.  You can easily see where the coming of Luck and his outfit might strain the financial resources of Applehead, even though Luck tried to bear all extra expense for him.  No, thought Luck, Applehead would have to mortgage something if he were to attempt raising money then.  And Luck would have taken a pack-outfit and made the trip to El Paso on horseback before he would see Applehead go in debt for him.  As it was, he was seriously considering that pack-horse proposition as a last resort, and trying to invent some way of shaving his work down so that he would have time for the trip.  But certain grim facts could not be twisted to meet his needs.  He simply had to print his positive for projection on the screen.  And that positive simply had to go through certain processes that took a certain amount of time; and it simply had to be dry and polished before he could wind it on his reels.  Reels?  Lord-ee!  He didn’t have any reels to wind it on!

“What’s the matter?  Spoil something?” Bill Holmes asked indifferently, pausing to look at Luck before he took up the next strip of celluloid ribbon with its perforated edges and its little squares of shadowlike pictures that to the unpractised eye looked all alike.

“No.  What reel is that you’re on now?  We want to be in town before dark with this stuff, so as to start the printer going to-night.”  By printing, that night, and by hard riding, he might be able to make it, he was thinking.

“Think we’ll be through in time?”

“Certainly, we’ll be through in time.”  Luck held up another strip to see where to cut it.  “We’ve got to be through!”

“I’m liable to be joining this junk by the sides instead of the ends, before long,” Bill hinted.

“No, you won’t do anything like that.”  Luck’s voice had a disturbing note of absolute finality.

Bill looked at him sidelong.  “A fellow can’t work forever without sleep.  My head’s splitting right now.  I can hardly see—­”

“Yes, you can see well enough to do your work—­and do it right!  Get that?”