Annie called gently to the little dog, and came striding down through the snow to fall in docilely three paces behind her adored “brother,” Wagalexa Conka after the submissive manner of squaws toward the human male in authority over them.

“Coffee!” Weary murmured ecstatically.  “Plenty fire, plenty coffee—­oh, mama!”

Down in the flat where the bushes grew sparsely along the tiny arroyo now gone dry, the herd had stopped from sheer exhaustion, and were already nibbling desultorily upon the tenderest twigs.  This was what Luck wanted in his scene, though the cattle must be moved into the location he had chosen where was just the background effect he wanted to get, with the bare mesa showing in the far distance.  There was a dreary interval of riding and shouting and urging the cattle up over a low spur of the bluff and down the other side, and the placing of them to Luck’s satisfaction.  I fear that more than one of the boys wondered why that first bit of the flat would not do, and why Luck insisted that they should bring the herd to one particular point and no other, and why they must wear out their horses, and themselves just fussing around among the cattle, scattering one bunch, bringing others closer together, and driving certain animals up to foreground, when they very much objected to going there.

Luck had concealed his camera behind the rocks so that he could get a “close shot” without registering the fact that the cattle were watching him.  His commands to “Edge that black steer over about even with that white bank!” and later, “Put that cow and calf out this way and drive the others back a little, so she will have the immediate foreground to herself,” were easier given than obeyed.  The cow and calf, for instance, were much inclined to shamble back with the others, and did not show any appreciation for the foreground, wherein they were vastly unlike any other “extras” ever brought before a camera.  Still, in spite of all these drawbacks, the moment arrived when Luck began to turn the crank with his eyes keen for every detail of that bunch of forlorn, hungry, range cattle huddled under the scant shelter of a ten-foot bank, while the snows fell steadily in great flakes which Luck knew would give a grand storm-effect on the screen.  The Happy Family, free for the moment, crowded close to the fire of dead sagebrush which Annie-Many-Ponies had lighted in the lee of a high rock, and sniffed longingly at the smell which came steaming up from the dented two-gallon coffee-boiler blackened from many a camp fire.

Luck was turning the crank and watching his “foreground stuff” so that he did not at first see the two riders who came loping down the hill which he was using for background.  Whether he would or no, he had got them in several feet of good scene before he saw them and stopped his camera.  He shouted, but they came on headlong, slipping and sliding in the loose snow.  There could be no doubt that they were headed straight for the group and felt that their business was urgent, so Luck stepped out from behind the rocks and started toward them, motioning for them to keep out, away from the cattle.