complications, I should think. But I'd boil it down to two reels, Luck,
if I were you. There's a lot of atmosphere you couldn't get, anyway--"

"I can get every foot of that atmosphere," Luck put in crisply.

"Oh, I suppose--but you don't want that much. Too expensive, where it
doesn't carry the action along. I'd put in some dance-hall scenes; you
haven't enough interiors. Make your lead a victim of card sharps, why
don't you, and have his sister come there after him? You could get some
great dramatic action--have her meet the heavy there--"

"After the tried-and-tested recipe. Sure, Mart! We can take the middle
out of that _Her-Brother's-Honor_ film and use that; and if you're afraid
the public may recognize it, we'll run it backwards. Or we can mix it
with some _Western-Girl's-Romance_ film, or take--"

"Now, Luck, wait a minute. Wait-a-minute!" Martinson's hand went up in
the approved gesture of stopping another's speech. "You can give it an
original twist. You know you can; you always have."

Luck swore, accustomed though he was to the makeshifts of the business.
The street cars had stopped running the night before, while he was still
hammering that scenario out on the typewriter; the street cars had
stopped running, and the steam heat had been turned off in the hotel
where he lived, and he had finished with an old Mexican _serape_ draped
about his person for warmth. But his enthusiasm had not cooled, though
his room grew chill. He had gone to bed when the typing was done, and had
dreamed scene after scene vividly while he slept. Still glowing with the
pride of creation, he had read the script while his breakfast coffee had
cooled, and he had been the first man in the office, so eager was he to