siding. Luck wasted neither glances nor thought upon the scene. Dry Lake
was like many, many other outworn "cow towns" through which he had
passed; changed without being bettered; all of the old life taken out of
it in the process of its taming.

He threw his grip into the waiting, three-seated spring wagon that served
as a hotel bus, climbed briskly after it, and glanced ahead to where he
saw the age-blackened boards of the stockyards. Cattle--and then came the
sheep. So runs the epitaph of the range, and it was written plainly
across Dry Lake and its surroundings.

They went up a dusty trail and past the yawning wings of the stockyards
where a bunch of sheep blatted now in the thirst of mid-afternoon. They
stopped before the hotel where, in the old days, many a town-hungry
puncher had set his horse upon its haunches that he might dismount in a
style to match his eagerness. Luck climbed out and stood for a minute
looking up and down the sandy street that slept in the sun and dreamed,
it may be, of rich, unforgotten moments when the cow-punchers had come
in off the range and stirred the sluggish town to a full, brief life
with their rollicking. Across the street was Rusty Brown's place, with
its narrow porch deserted of loafers and its windows blinking at the
street with a blankness that belied the things they had looked upon in
bygone times.

A less experienced man than Luck would have been convinced by now that
here was no place to go seeking "real boys." But Luck had been a range
man himself before he took to making motion pictures; he knew range towns
as he knew men,--which was very well indeed. He looked, as he stood
there, not disgusted but mildly speculative. Two horses were tied to the
hitching rail before Rusty Brown's place. These horses bore saddles and