s this: Close down the company for two weeks, say. Keep on
the ones you want, and let the rest out. And take these Injuns home, and
then get out after your riders. Numbers and salaries we'll leave to you.
Go as far as you like; it's a cinch you'll get what you want if you're
allowed to go after it."

So here was Luck, arriving in due time at the railroad. He said good-by
to Young-Dog-Howls-At-The-Moon who had ridden with him, and whose kingly
bearing and clean-cut features and impressive pantomime made him a
popular screen-Indian, and sat down upon a baggage truck to smoke a
cigarette while he waited for the westbound train.

Young-Dog-Howls-At-The-Moon he watched meditatively until that young man
had bobbed out of sight over a low hill, the pony Luck had ridden
trailing after at the end of the lead-rope. Luck's face was sober, his
eyes tired and unsmiling. He had done that much of his task: he had
returned the Indians, and automatically wiped a very large item of
expense from the accounts of the Acme Film Company. He did not like to
dwell, however, on the cost to his own pride in his work.

The next job, now that he was actually face to face with it, looked not
so simple. He was in a country where, a few years before, his quest for
"real boys"--as he affectionately termed the type nearest his
heart--would have been easy enough. But before the marching ranks of
fence posts and barbed wire, the real boys had scattered. A more or less
beneficent government had not gathered them together, and held them apart
from the changing conditions, as it had done with the Indians. The real
boys had either left the country, or had sold their riding outfits and
gone into business in the little towns scattered hereabouts, or else they
had taken to farming the land where the big herds had grazed while the
real boys loafed on guard.

Luck admitted to himself that in the past two years, even, conditions had
changed amazingly. Land was fenced that had been free. Even the
reservation was changed a little. He threw away that cigarette and
lighted another, and turned aggrievedly upon a dried little man who came
up with the open expectation of using the truck upon which Luck was
sitting uncomfortably. There was the squint of long looking against sun
and wind at a far skyline in the dried little man's face. There was a
certain bow in his legs, and there were various other signs which Luck
read instinctively as he got up. He smiled his smile,