He went swinging across the studio yard and on past the great stage where the carpenters halted their work while they greeted him, and looked after him and spoke of him when he had passed.  Early idlers—­extras with high hopes and empty pockets—­sent him wistful glances which he did not see at all; though he did see Andy Green and his wife (who had been Rosemary Allen).  These two stood hesitating just within the half-open, high board gate fifty yards away.  Luck waved his hand and swerved toward them.

“Howdy!  Where’s the rest of the bunch?” he called out as they hurried up to him.  Whereupon the group of extras were sharp bitten by the envy of these two strangers, spoken to so familiarly by Luck Lindsay.

“Do you know, I feel sure the boys are being held in the lost-child place at the police station!” Rosemary Green, twinkled her brown eyes at him from between strands of crinkly brown hair.  “I had tags all fixed, with name, age, owner’s address and all that, and I was going to hang them around the boys’ necks with pale blue ribbon—­pale blue would be so becoming!  But do you know, I couldn’t find them!  I feel worried.  I should hate to waste thirty-nine cents worth of pale blue ribbon.  I can’t wear it myself; it makes me look positively swarthy.”  Rosemary Green had a most captivating way of saying swarthy.

The corners of Luck’s mouth came up instantly.  “We’ll have to send out scouting parties.  I need that bunch of desperadoes.  Let’s look over by the corrals.  I’ve got to go over and see what kind of a street set they’re knocking together, anyway.

“Hello!  I have sure-enough crying need for all you strays,” he exclaimed five minutes later, when they came upon the Flying TJ boys standing disconsolately at the head of the street “set” upon which carpenters were hammering and sawing and painters were daubing.  Luck’s eyes chilled as he took in the stereotyped “Western” crudeness of the set.

“Well, we sure need you—­and need you bad,” Pink retorted.  “We want to know what town was peeled so they could set the rind up like that and call it a street?  Between you and me, Luck, it don’t look good to me, back or front.  You walk into what claims to be a saloon, and come out on a view of the hills.  They tell me the bar of that imitation saloon is away over there on that platform, and they say the bottles are all full of tea.  That right?”

Luck nodded gloomily.  “Soon as they get the set up, it’s going to be your privilege to come boiling out of that saloon, shooting two guns, Pink,” he prophesied.  “You’ll have the fun of killing half a dozen boys that come down from this end shooting as they ride.”  He put his cigarette between his lips and began to untie the dingy blue tape that bound the scenarios together.

“Ever read any of Bently Brown’s stories?  They wished a bunch of them on to me while I was gone and couldn’t defend myself,” he said, as one who breaks bad news.  “I’m certainly sorry about this, boys.  It’s a long way from what I brought you out here to do; and if you want to, you can call the deal off and go home.  Rip-snorting, rotten melodrama—­cheap as ice in Alaska.  Stuff I hate—­because it’s the stuff that cheapens the West in pictures.”