By the time everything was loaded into the bus, the sun was well down toward the western hills and the ranch was bathed in the soft, warm light of the late afternoon.
Curt Newsom, who had finished superintending the loading of his own horses into his private truck, walked over to join the girls, his spurs jingling as he walked.
“Glad it’s all over?” he asked.
Janet shook her head.
“Hardly. I’ve enjoyed it so much I really didn’t want it to end, but I guess that all good things come to an end.”
“You did a splendid job as leading woman,” smiled Curt. “I wish all of them were like you. Every once in a while the girls they assign to this unit get it into their heads that they are real actresses and they go temperamental on us. But you two worked like real troupers and took all of the bumps as they came.”
“And they came, too,” grinned Helen, rubbing her right leg, for she had slipped and fallen from a horse two days before and her leg was black and blue.
Curt was silent for a few moments, smiling at the efforts of “Skeets” to round up the last members of the company and get them aboard the big bus.
“Are you going to stay with us?” he asked.
“We don’t know,” replied Helen. “Fall’s almost here and that means college time. We’re both awfully young to stay on in pictures.”