Bissell posed with the embarrassed air of a schoolboy saying his first piece, and after that Skidmore was busy arranging his subjects long after it was too dark to make an impression on the plates. Finally, affecting utter weariness, he asked for food, and the best in the camp was laid before him.
“Can’t do any more to-night,” he said when he had finished. “But to-morrow I can take a few; I have about half-a-dozen plates left.” 275
“I may not look as tidy to-morrow morning as I do now,” remarked one puncher suggestively. “Too bad yuh can’t take pictures at night as well as in the daytime.”
“I can,” announced Skidmore, quite complacently.
“Well, didn’t yuh just tell me,” demanded an irate cowboy who vainly undertook to grasp the science of photography, “that the light actin’ on the plate made the pitcher?”
“Yes.”
“Well, how in the road to hell can yuh take ’em when it’s dark?”
“He rents a star, yuh fool!” volunteered another.
“I make my own light,” explained Skidmore.
“How? With a wood-fire?” asked the curious puncher.