“No,” Rosemary gasped, “I don’t.  I know how to walk, and how to turn around and come back.  I’ve been doing those things for twenty-two years or so, but Luck Lindsay, if you don’t let me do it right away quick, I just know I’ll stub my toe and fall down, or something!” The worst of it was, she meant what she said.  Rosemary, I am sorry to say, was so scared that her teeth chattered.

“All right, you go on and do it now,” Luck permitted, and began to turn the crank at seventeen in order to hold her action slow, while he watched her.  Groaning inwardly, he continued to turn, while Rosemary went primly down the winding trail, stood with her toes on the line Luck had marked for her, gazed stiffly off to the right, and then, when he called to her, turned and came back, staring fixedly over his head.  You have seen little girls with an agonized self-consciousness walk up an aisle to a platform where they must bow to their fathers and mothers and their critical schoolmates and “speak a piece.”  Rosemary resembled the most bashful little girl that you can recall.

“All right,” said Luck tonelessly, and placed his palm over the lens while he gave the crank another turn.  “We’ll try it again to-morrow.  Don’t worry.  You’ll get the hang of it all right.”

His very smile, meant to encourage her, brought swift tears that rolled down and streaked the powder and rouge on her cheeks.  She had made a mess of it all; she knew that just as well as Luck knew it.  He gave her shoulder a reassuring pat as she went by, and that finished Rosemary.  She retreated into the gloomy, one-windowed bedroom with its litter of half-unpacked suitcases and an overflowing trunk, and she cried heartbrokenly because she knew she would never in this world be able to forget that terrible, winking eye and the clicking whirr of Luck’s camera.  Just to think of facing it gave her a “goose-flesh” chill,—­and she did so want to help Luck!

With the Happy Family and old Dave, Luck fared better.  They, fortunately for him, were already what he called camera-broke.  They could forget all about the camera while they caught and saddled their horses.  They could mount and ride away unconcernedly without even thinking of trying to act.  Luck’s spirits rose a little while he turned the crank, and just for pure relief at the perfect naturalness of it, he gave that scene an extra ten feet of footage.

With Applehead he had some difficulty.  Applehead looked the part of sheriff, all right.  He wore his trousers tucked inside his boots because he always wore them so, especially when he rode.  He wore his big six-shooter buckled snugly about his middle instead of dangling far down his thigh, because he had always worn it that way.  He wore his sheriffs badge pinned on his vest and his coat unbuttoned, so that the wind blew it open now and then and revealed the star.  Altogether he looked exactly as he had looked when he was serving one of his four terms of office.  But when he faced the camera, he was inclined to strut, and Luck had no negative to waste.  He resorted to strategy, which consisted of a little wholesome sarcasm.