I don't know what the dried little man thought when the operator
handed him that message the next morning; but I can tell you in a few
words what he did: He arrived in Dry Lake just two trains behind Luck.

Luck did not sleep that night. He lay in his berth with the shade pushed
up as high as it would go, and stared out at the tamed plain, and
perfected the details of his Big Picture. Into the spell of the range he
wove a story of human love and human hate and danger and trouble. So it
must be, to carry his message to the world who would look and marvel at
what he would show them in the drama of silence. He had not named his
picture yet. The name would come in its own good time, just as the
picture had come when the time for its making was ripe.

The next day he did not talk with the men whose elbows he touched in the
passing intimacy of travel; though Luck was a companionable soul who was
much given to talking and to seeing his listeners grow to an
audience,--an appreciative audience that laughed much while they listened
and frowned upon interruption. Instead, he sat silent in his seat, since
on this train there was no observation car, and he stared out of the
window without seeing much of what passed before his eyes, and made notes
now and then, and covered all the margins of his time-table with figures
that had to do with film. Once, I know, he blackened his two front teeth
with pencil tappings while he visualized a stampede and the probable
amount of footage it would require, and debated whether it should be
"shot" with two cameras or three to get scenes from different angles. A
stampede it should be,--a real stampede of fear-frenzied range cattle in
the mad flight of terror; not a bunch of galloping tame cows urged to
foreground by shouting and rock-throwing from beyond the side lines of
the scene. It would be hard to get, and it could not be rehearsed before
the camera was turned on it. Luck decided that it should be shot from