They pushed their plates to the table's center to make room for their
gesticulating hands and uneasy elbows while they planned ways and means.
They argued over trivial points and left the big ones for Luck to settle.
They talked of light effects and wholesale grocery lists and ray filters
and smoke pots and railroad fares and the problem of cutting down their
baggage so as to avoid paying excess charges. Luck, once he had taken the
mental plunge into the deep waters of so hazardous an enterprise, began
to exhibit a most amazing knowledge of the details of picture making.

To save money, he told them, he would be his own camera man. He could do
without a "still" camera, because he would enlarge clippings from the
different scenes in the negative instead. They'd have to manage the range
stuff with only one camera, which would mean more work to get the various
effects. But with a telephoto lens and a wide angle lens he could come
pretty near putting it over the way he wanted it. "And there'll be no
more blank ammunition, boys," he told them. "So you want to fit
yourselves out with real shells. I'm not going very strong on this
foreground bullet-effect stuff; we can afford to leave that for the
Western four-flushers that can't do anything else. But she's some wild
down where we'll be located, so we'll not be packing empty guns, at that.

"And there's another thing," he went on, talking and making notes at the
same time. "If we're going to do this, we can't get started any too
soon. We may be able to hit a late round-up and get some scenes, which
will save rounding up stock ourselves for it. And there's all that
winter stuff to make, too; we haven't any more time to throw away than
we have money."

"Well, we're ready to hit the trail any time you are," Andy declared.
"To-morrow, if yuh say so. You go ahead with your end of it, Luck, and