Luck threw out his hands despairingly, and then laughed.  Applehead’s tender solicitude for his cat was a fixed characteristic of the man, and Luck knew there was no profit in argument upon the subject.  He began unloading the lighter pieces of baggage while the boys fed the livery teams.  The others came straggling down from the house, lighting their after-dinner cigarettes and glancing curiously at the adobe out-buildings which were so different from anything in Montana.  The sagebrush slopes wore a comfortable air of familiarity, even though the boys were more accustomed to bunch grass; but an adobe stable was a novelty.

Fast as they came near him, Luck put them to work.  There was plenty to do before they could even begin work on the Big Picture, but Luck seemed to have thought out all the details of camp-setting with the same attention to trifles which he had shown in the making of a picture.  In half an hour he had every one busy, including old Applehead, who, having located Compadre in the stable loft and left the chicken wing at the top of the ladder, had saddled his horse and gone off into a far pasture to bring in all the horses down there, so that Luck could choose whatever animals he wished to use.  Dave Wiswell, the dried little man, was helping Rosemary wash the dishes and put away the food supplies they had brought out with them, as fast as Happy Jack could carry them up from the wagon.  Andy Green was ruthlessly emptying the only closet—­a roomy one, fortunately—­in the house, and tacking up black paper which Luck had brought, so that it might serve as a dark room.  Big Medicine and Pink were clearing out the one-roomed adobe cabin which Applehead called the “ketch-all,” so that the boys could sleep there until the bunk-house was repaired.

Luck was unpacking his camera and swearing softly to himself while he set it up, and wishing that his experience as assistant camera-man was not quite so far in the past.  He foresaw difficulties with that camera until he got in practice, but he did not say anything about it to the others.  He got it together finally, put in the two-hundred-foot magazine of negative that he had brought with him to use while waiting for his big order to arrive, made a few light tests, and went up to the house to see if Andy had the dark room dark enough.

He found Andy defending himself as best he could from a small domestic storm.  In his anxiety to have that dark room fixed just the way Luck wanted it, Andy had purloined a shelf which Rosemary needed, and which she meant to have, if words could restore it to its place behind the kitchen stove.  Andy had the shelf down and was taking out bent nails with a new hammer when Luck came to the door with his arms full of packages of chemicals and a ruby lamp.

“What can a fellow do?” Andy was inquiring plaintively.  “There ain’t another board on the place that’s the right width.  I looked.  Luck’s got to have a shelf; you don’t expect him to keep all his junk on the floor, do you?  I’m sorry, but I’ve just got to have it, girl.”