Luck reached into the water tank and splashed a little water on his film to check it while he looked. "Now, what in the name of--" He scowled perplexedly down at the streaked strips. "What do you suppose streaked it like that?" He lifted worried, gray eyes to Andy's apprehensive frown, and looked again disgustedly at the negative before he dropped it back with a splash into the developer. "No good; she's ruined," he said in the flat tone of a great disappointment. "Eighty feet of film gone to granny. Well, that's luck for you!" Andy reached gingerly into the barrel and brought up the keg so that he could take another look. He had owned a kodak for years and had done enough amateur developing to know that something had gone very wrong here. "What ails the darned thing?" he asked fretfully, turning to Luck, who was scowling abstractedly into his barrels of "soup." "You can search me," Luck replied dully. "Looks like I'd been stung with a bunch of bum chemicals. Either that, or something's wrong with our tanks here." He reached down and pulled up the keg by its hooped top, glimpsed a stain on his finger and thumb and let the keg slip hastily over into the pure water so that he could examine the stains. "Iron! Iron, sure as thunder!" he exclaimed suddenly. "Those iron hoops are what did it." He rubbed his hand vexedly. "I knew better than that, too. I don't see why I didn't think about those hoops. Of all the idiotic, fool--" "What kinda brain do you think you've got in your head, anyway?" Andy broke in spiritedly. "Way you've been working it lately, engineering every blamed detail yourself, you oughtn't to wonder if one little thing gets by you." "Well, it's done now," Luck dismissed the accident stoically. "Lucky I started in on those costume and make-up tests of all you fellows, and that scene of your wife's. And if I'd used the other half barrel instead of this five-gallon keg for a start-off, I'd have spoiled the whole bunch. I'll have to throw out all that developer. Blast the luck! Well, let's get busy." He pulled out the keg and held it up for another disgusted look. "I won't bother fixing that at all. Call Happy and Bud back, will you, and have them roll this barrel of developer out and ditch it? And then take those two half barrels you were going to fix, and wrap them with clothesline,--that cotton line on one of the trunks,--and knock off all the hoops. I'm going to beat it to 'Querque and see if that stuff's there. We'll try developing the rest this evening, after I get back. Darn such luck!"