Presently Applehead appeared with a large piece of cake in one hand and a
well-picked chicken wing in the other. "What yuh want?" he inquired
lazily, in the tone that implies extreme physical comfort.
"I want your big team to haul some lumber out from town. Where are they?
If you don't mind catching them up while I help get this stuff unloaded,
we'll have things moving around here directly."
"Shore I'll ketch 'em up fur ye, soon as I find Compadre and give him
this here bone. He's been kinda off his feed since that coyote clumb his
frame. He was under the house, but I reckon so many strange voices kinda
got his goat. There ain't ary yowl to be got outa that hole no more.
Come, kitty-kitty-kitty!"
Luck threw out his hands despairingly, and then laughed. Applehead's
tender solicitude for his cat was a fixed characteristic of the man, and
Luck knew there was no profit in argument upon the subject. He began
unloading the lighter pieces of baggage while the boys fed the livery
teams. The others came straggling down from the house, lighting their
after-dinner cigarettes and glancing curiously at the adobe out-buildings
which were so different from anything in Montana. The sagebrush slopes
wore a comfortable air of familiarity, even though the boys were more
accustomed to bunch grass; but an adobe stable was a novelty.
Fast as they came near him, Luck put them to work. There was plenty to
do before they could even begin work on the Big Picture, but Luck seemed
to have thought out all the details of camp-setting with the same
attention to trifles which he had shown in the making of a picture. In
half an hour he had every one busy, including old Applehead, who, having
located Compadre in the stable loft and left the chicken wing at the top
of the ladder, had saddled his horse and gone off into a far pasture to
bring in all the horses down there, so that Luck could choose whatever
animals he wished to use. Dave Wiswell, the dried little man, was
helping Rosemary wash the dishes and put away the food supplies they had
brought out with them, as fast as Happy Jack could carry them up from
the wagon. Andy Green was ruthlessly emptying the only closet--a roomy
one, fortunately--in the house, and tacking up black paper which Luck
had brought, so that it might serve as a dark room. Big Medicine and
Pink were clearing out the one-roomed adobe cabin which Applehead called
the "ketch-all," so that the boys could sleep there until the bunk-house
was repaired.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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