Chapter IX. Riders in the Background

Luck, as explained elsewhere, was sweating and swearing at the heat in Bear Canon. The sun had crept around so that it shone full into a certain bowlder-strewn defile, and up this sunbaked gash old Applehead was toiling, leading the scrawniest burro which Luck had been able to find in the country. The burro was packed with a prospector's outfit startlingly real in its pathetic meagerness. Old Applehead was picking his way among rocks so hot that he could hardly bear to lay his bare hand upon them, tough as that hand was with years of exposure to heat and cold alike. Beads of perspiration were standing on his face, which was a deep, apoplectic crimson, and little trickles of sweat were dropping off his lower jaw.

He was muttering as he climbed, but the camera fortunately failed to record the language that he used. Now and then he turned and yanked savagely at the lead rope; whereupon the burro would sit down upon its haunches and allow Applehead to stretch its neck as far as bone and tough hide and tougher sinew would permit Someone among the group roosting in the shade across the defile and well out of camera range would laugh, and Luck, standing on a ledge just behind and above the camera, would shout directions or criticism of the "business."

"Come on back, Applehead," Luck yelled when the "prospectorp" had turned a corner of rock and disappeared from sight of the camera. "We'll do that scene over once more before the sun gets too far around."

"Do it over, will ye?" Applehead snarled as he came toiling obediently back down the gulch. "Well, now, I ain't so danged shore about that there doin' over--'nless yuh want to wait and do it after sundown. Ain't nobody but a danged fool It would go trailin' up that there gulch this kinda' day. Them rocks up there is hot enough to brile a lizard--now, I'm tellin' ye!"

Luck covered a smile with his moist palm. He could not afford to be merciful at the expense of good "picture-stuff," however, so he called down grimly:

"Now you're just about fagged enough for that close-up I want of you, Applehead. You went up that gulch a shade too brisk for a fellow that's all in from traveling, and starved into the bargain. Come back down here by this sand bank, and start up towards camera. Back up a little, Pete, so you can 'pam' his approach. I want to get him pulling his burro up past that bank--sabe? And the close-up of his face with all those sweat-streaks will prove how far he's come--and then I want the detail of that burro and his pack which you'll get as they go by. You see what I mean. Let's see. Will it swing you too far into the sun, Pete, if you pick him up down there in that dry channel?"

"Not if you let me make it right away," Pete replied after a squint or two through the viewfinder. "Sun's getting pretty far over--"

"Ought to