Before breakfast he had selected a site for his stage, on the sunny side of the hill back of the house, where it would be partially sheltered from the sweeping winds of New Mexico.  All day he would have the sun behind him while he worked, and he considered the situation an ideal one.  He had the lumber hauled up there and unloaded, while Rosemary and Applehead were cooking breakfast for ten hungry people.  He laid out his foundation and explained to the boys just how it should be built, and even sacrificed his appetite to his impatience by going a quarter of a mile to where he remembered seeing some old barbed wire strung along a fence to keep it off the ground so that stock could not tangle in it.  He got the wire and brought it back with him to guy out the uprights for the diffusers.  So on the whole he began the day as well as even he could desire.

Then little hindrances began to creep in to delay him.  For one thing, the Happy Family had only a comedy acquaintance with grease paint, and their make-up reminded Luck unpleasantly of Bently Brown’s stories.  As they appeared one by one, with their comically crooked eyebrows and their rouge-widened lips and staring, deep-shadowed eyes, Luck sent them back to take it all off and start over again under his supervision.  The outcome was that he gave a full hour to making up the faces of his characters and telling them how to do it themselves.  Even Rosemary made her brows too heavy and her lips too red, and her cheeks were flushed unevenly.  Luck was a busy man that morning, but he was not taking scenes by nine o’clock, for all his haste.

With a kindly regard for Rosemary’s nervousness lest she fail him, he set up his camera and told her to walk down part way to the corral, looking—­supposedly—­to see if her dad had come home.  She must stand there irresolutely, then turn and walk back toward the camera, registering the fact that she was worried.  That sounds simple enough, doesn’t it?

What Luck most wanted was to satisfy himself as to whether Rosemary could possibly play the part of old Dave’s daughter.  If she could, he would sleep sounder that night; if she could not,—­Luck was not at all clear as to what he should do if she failed.  He told her just where to walk into the “scene,” which is the range of the camera.  He went down part way to the corral and drew a line with his toe, and told her to stop when she reached that line and to look away up the trail which wound down among the rocks and sage.  When he called to her she was to turn and walk back, trying to imagine that she was much worried and disappointed.

“Your dad was to have come last night,” Luck suggested.  “You tried to keep him from going in the first place, and now we’ve got to establish the fact that he is away behind time getting home.  You know, this is where his horse falls with him, and he lies out all night, and Big Medicine brings him in next day.  You kind of have a hunch that something is wrong, and you keep looking for him.  Sabe.”  He fussed with the camera, adjusting it to what seemed to him the right focus.  “Want to rehearse it first?” he added considerately.