There should have been a broad sea of ripening wheat rolling upward along a hillside slope to a broken stone wall. Gillespie, usually a stickler for the lesser verities, was compelled to forego the ripening wheat because, while outdoor stagecraft has gone far in these later times and studio stagecraft has gone still farther, you cannot, in California in the fall of the year, months after the standing crop has been cut, artificially produce a plausible semblance of many acres of nodding grain all ready for the reaper. So he contented himself with a stubble field, and privately hoped no caption observer would record the error. But the traditional stone fence, which is so famous in song and story, was there. And thither the Captain was presently escorted. "Now, here's the layout," specified Herzog, who actively was in charge of this phase of the undertaking. "You're supposed to be the only civilian"--Herzog pronounced it _civil-an_--"the only civilian in the whole town that didn't beat it when the enemy came along. All the rest of 'em took it on the run to the woods but you stuck because you ain't scared of nobody. You're one of these game old patr'ots, see? So you just loaded up your old rifle and you declared yourself in. So that makes you the hero of the whole outfit, for the time being. Get me?... Good! Well, then--now follow me clos't, because this is where the real action starts--the very next morning you happen to be out here on the edge of the town and right over yonder is where the big doings bust out. The book that the chief got the notion for these shots out of don't say how you got here in the first place but we're taking it for granted, me and Gillespie are, that you're just fiddling around looking for trouble on your own hook. The book does say, though--it's a poetry book--that your gang get a slant at you when you show up and they start in making funny cracks and asking you where you got them funny clothes you got on and asking you what you think you're going to do anyhow with that there big old musket you're lugging with you. "But I figure that would kind of slow up the action, so I've changed it around some from the way the book's got it. The way it's going to be is the battle gets going good before you join in. One gang--one army, I mean--is behind that fence and the other army comes running up towards 'em from down at the foot of that hill yonder, whooping and yelling and shooting and all. And with that, you cut in right between 'em, all by your lonesome, and take a hand. That brings you out prominent because you're the only guy in sight that's dressed different from everybody else. All the rest of these guys are in soldier's clothes. So this gives you your chance to hog the picture for a w'ile. It's good and fat for you along here.