Before breakfast he had selected a site for his stage, on the sunny
side of the hill back of the house, where it would be partially
sheltered from the sweeping winds of New Mexico. All day he would have
the sun behind him while he worked, and he considered the situation an
ideal one. He had the lumber hauled up there and unloaded, while
Rosemary and Applehead were cooking breakfast for ten hungry people. He
laid out his foundation and explained to the boys just how it should be
built, and even sacrificed his appetite to his impatience by going a
quarter of a mile to where he remembered seeing some old barbed wire
strung along a fence to keep it off the ground so that stock could not
tangle in it. He got the wire and brought it back with him to guy out
the uprights for the diffusers. So on the whole he began the day as
well as even he could desire.
Then little hindrances began to creep in to delay him. For one thing, the
Happy Family had only a comedy acquaintance with grease paint, and their
make-up reminded Luck unpleasantly of Bently Brown's stories. As they
appeared one by one, with their comically crooked eyebrows and their
rouge-widened lips and staring, deep-shadowed eyes, Luck sent them back
to take it all off and start over again under his supervision. The
outcome was that he gave a full hour to making up the faces of his
characters and telling them how to do it themselves. Even Rosemary made
her brows too heavy and her lips too red, and her cheeks were flushed
unevenly. Luck was a busy man that morning, but he was not taking scenes
by nine o'clock, for all his haste.
With a kindly regard for Rosemary's nervousness lest she fail him, he set
up his camera and told her to walk down part way to the corral,
looking--supposedly--to see if her dad had come home. She must stand
there irresolutely, then turn and walk back toward the camera,
registering the fact that she was worried. That sounds simple enough,
doesn't it?
What Luck most wanted was to satisfy himself as to whether Rosemary could
possibly play the part of old Dave's daughter. If she could, he would
sleep sounder that night; if she could not,--Luck was not at all clear as
to what he should do if she failed. He told her just where to walk into
the "scene," which is the range of the camera. He went down part way to
the corral and drew a line with his toe, and told her to stop when she
reached that line and to look away up the trail which wound down among
the rocks and sage. When he called to her she was to turn and walk back,
trying to imagine that she was much worried and disappointed.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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