ng and rock-throwing from beyond the side lines of
the scene. It would be hard to get, and it could not be rehearsed before
the camera was turned on it. Luck decided that it should be shot from
three angles, at least, and if he could manage it he would have a
"panoram" of the whole thing from a height.

The porter came apologetically with his big whisk broom and told Luck
that they would all presently be gazing at Dry Lake, or words which
carried that meaning. So Luck permitted himself to be whisked from a half
dollar while his thoughts were "in the field" with his camera men and
company, shooting a real stampede from various angles and trying to
manage so that the dust should not obscure the scene. After a rain--of
course! Just after a soaking rain, he thought, while he gathered up his
time-table and a magazine that held his precious figures, and followed
the porter out to the vestibule while the train slowed.

It was in this mood that Luck descended to the Dry Lake depot platform
and looked about him. He had no high expectation of finding here what he
sought. He was simply making sure, before he left the country behind him,
that he had not "overlooked any bets." His mind was open to conviction
even while it was prepared against disappointment; therefore his eyes
were as clear of any prejudice as they were of any glamour. He saw things
as they were.

On the side track, then, stood a string of cars loaded with wool, as his
nose told him promptly. Farms there were none, but that was because the
soil was yellow and pebbly and barren where it showed in great bald spots
here and there; you would not expect to raise cabbages where a prairie
dog had to forage far for a living. Behind the depot, the prairie humped
a huge, broad shoulder of bluff wrinkled along the forward slope of it
like the folds of a full fashioned skirt. There, too, the soil was
bare,--clipped to the very grass roots by hundreds upon hundreds of
hungry sheep whose wool, very likely, was crowding those cars upon the
siding. Luck wasted neither glances nor thought upon the scene. Dry Lake
was like many, many other outworn "cow towns" through which he had
passed; changed without being bettered; all of the old life taken out of
it in the process of its taming.

He threw his grip into the waiting, three-seated spring wagon that served
as a hotel bus, climbed briskly after it, and glanced ahead to where he
saw the age-blackened boards of the stockyards. Cattl