Luck was unpacking his camera and swearing softly to himself while he set
it up, and wishing that his experience as assistant camera-man was not
quite so far in the past. He foresaw difficulties with that camera until
he got in practice, but he did not say anything about it to the others.
He got it together finally, put in the two-hundred-foot magazine of
negative that he had brought with him to use while waiting for his big
order to arrive, made a few light tests, and went up to the house to see
if Andy had the dark room dark enough.
He found Andy defending himself as best he could from a small domestic
storm. In his anxiety to have that dark room fixed just the way Luck
wanted it, Andy had purloined a shelf which Rosemary needed, and which
she meant to have, if words could restore it to its place behind the
kitchen stove. Andy had the shelf down and was taking out bent nails with
a new hammer when Luck came to the door with his arms full of packages of
chemicals and a ruby lamp.
"What can a fellow do?" Andy was inquiring plaintively. "There ain't
another board on the place that's the right width. I looked. Luck's got
to have a shelf; you don't expect him to keep all his junk on the floor,
do you? I'm sorry, but I've just got to have it, girl."
"You've just got to put that shelf back, Andy. Where do you expect me to
put things? There isn't a pantry on the place, and only that one dinky
little cupboard over there. I can't keep my dishes on the floor, and
cooking is going to be pretty important, itself, around this camp!"
"Soon as the lumber gets here, I'll have Andy build you a cupboard," Luck
soothed her. "You haven't got many conveniences here, and that's a fact.
But we'll get things straightened out, _pronto_. Got any bones or scraps
left, Mrs. Andy? That little black dog that followed us out is here yet.
He didn't go back with the boys. I found him curled up in the wagon shed
just now; poor little devil looks about starved. His ribs stand out worse
than a cow that's wintered on a sheep range."
With Rosemary's attention diverted to the little black dog, Andy got the
shelf nailed firmly upon the wall of the dark room. And immediately Luck
proceeded to use it to its fullest capacity and announced that he needed
another one, whereat Andy groaned.
"Say, I'm a brave man, all right, but I don't dare to swipe any more
shelves," he protested. "Not from my wife, anyway. Timber must sure be
scarce in this man's country. I never did see a place so shy of boards as
this ranch is."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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