The Happy Family

ow anything at all about our financial storehouses, you know that they are sensitive about being robbed, or even having it appear that they are being subjected to so humiliating a procedu

nd might well be located in the centre of any small range town and hold

windows during the greater part of the afternoon, and hoped that the cashier was a human being and would not object to a fa

fiction writers call red-blooded. He had never had an adventure in his life; but at night, after he had gone to bed and adjusted the electric light at his head, and his green eyeshade, and had put two pillows under the back of his neck, he read-you will scarcely believe it, but it is true-he read about the James boys and Kit. Carson and Pawnee Bill, and he could tell you-only he wouldn't mention it, of course-just how many Tex

ns and queer leggings that looked like joints of whitewashed stove-pipe; while to ride in an automobile out to Isleta, which is a terribly realistic Indian village of adobe hut

d come to ask of the bank. You can, perhaps, imagine how he stood and made little marks on a blotter with his pencil while Luck explained just what he would want; and how he clung to the noncommittal manner which is a c

to make the picture just after the bank's closing time. Obviously the cashier could not permit the bank's patr

course they arranged it after a polite sparring on the part of the cash

ves all atingle and the sun shining in upon him through a side window, while Pete Lowry and Bill Holmes fussed outside with the camera, getting ready for the arrival of those realistic bandits,

they did not wear bright sashes with fringe and striped serapes draped across their shoulders, and the hilts of wicked knives showing somewhere. They did not look like bandits at all-thanks to Luck's sure knowledge and fine sense

e Luck swore at them because they stopped too abruptly at the window and lingered too long there, l

ld that Ramon scraped from the cashier's keeping into his own was not, of course, the real gold which the bandits had seen through the window. Luck, careful o

s papers and as carefully strewn with worthless ones which Luck had brought. A realistically uncomfortable gag had been forced into the mouth

ed it in his imagination and felt that he was at least tasting the full flavor of red-blooded adventure without having to pay the usual price of bitterness and bodily suffering. He wa

like Luck's-thanked him and said that they would not need to retake the interior stuff. What he wanted was to get the approach to the bank the entrance and going back to the cashier. That part of the negative was under-timed, said the voice. And would the cashier make a display of gold behind the wicket, so that the camera could reg

Old Town. I'm just sending my assistant camera man and the two heavies and my scenic artist for this retake. It won't be much-but be sure you have the bank cleared, old man-because it would r

gold and stacking it up in beautiful, high piles where the sun shone on it through the windo

ost intolerable where the sun shone full. He saw a big red machine drive up to the corner and stop, and he saw a man climb out with camera already screwed, to the tripod. He saw the bandits throw away their cigarettes and follow the camera man, and then he hurried back and took up

ccurs in the cashier'

he bank was closed. They climbed into the red automobile, the camera and its operator followed, and the machine went away down the street to the post-office, turned and went purring into the M

became an angry purple. Where the gold had been stacked high in the sunshine the marble glistened whitely, with not so much as a five-dollar piece to give it a touch of color. The window blinds were drawn

the heat and painstakingly directed his scenes, and never dreamed that a likeness of his voice had beguiled t

ul and black, slipped out of this same enclosure upon another street, and turned eastward instead of west. This machine made for the mesa by a somewhat roundabout course, and emerged, by way of a rough trail up a certain draw in the edge of the tableland, to the main road where it turns the corner of the cemetery. From there the driver drove as fast as he dared until he re

the black automobile was returning innocently to town and n