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CASEY RYAN 



15* $* 



Gooo INDIAN 

LONESOME LAND 

THB UPHILL 

THB GRINGOS 

THB RANCH AT THB WOLVERINE 

THB FLYING IPs LAST STAND 

JEAN OF THE LAZY A 

THE PHANTOM HERD 

THE HERITAGE OF THE Sioux 

STARR, OF THE DESERT 

THE LOOKOUT MAN 

CABIN FEVER 

SKYRIDEH 

THE THUNDER BIRD 

RIM o' THE WORLD 

THE QUIRT 

COW-COUNTRY 

CASEY RYAN 




Casey reached for his pocket, and the white man also 
reached for his. FRONTISPIECE. See page 237. 



CASEY RYAN 



BY 



{fi. M. BOWER, 

(Muz.,zLij) 



WITH FRONTISPIECE BY 
FRANK TENNEY JOHNSON 



NON^REFE 




BOSTON 

LITTLE, BROWN, AND COMPANY 
1921 



Copyright, 1921, 
BY LITTLE, BROWN, AND COMPANY 



All rights reserved 
Published August, 1921 



CASEY RYAN 



CASEY RYAN 



CHAPTER I 

From Denver to Spokane, from El Paso to Fort 
Bent on, men talk of Casey Ryan and smile when 
they speak his name. Old men with the flat tone of 
coming senility in their voices will suck at their pipes 
and cackle reminiscently while they tell you of 
Casey's tumultuous youth when he drove the six 
fastest horses in Colorado on the stage out from 
Cripple Creek, and whooped past would-be holdups 
with a grin of derision on his face and bullets whin 
ing after him and passengers praying disjointed 
prayers and clinging white-knuckled to the seats. 

They say that once a flat, lanky man climbed 
bareheaded out at the stage station below the moun 
tain and met Casey coming springily off the box 
with whip and six reins in his hand. The lanky 
man was still pale from his ride, and he spluttered 
when he spoke: 

" Sa-ay ! N-next time you're held up and I'm 
r-ridin' with yuh, b-by gosh, you s-stop. I-I'd 
ruther be shot t-than p-pitched off into a c-canyon 
s-somewhere a-and busted up ! " 

Casey is a little man. When he was young he 
was slim, but he always has owned a pale blue, un- 



2 CASEY RYAN 

winking squint which he uses with effect. He 
halted where he was and squinted up at the man, 
and spat fluid tobacco and grinned. 

" You're here, and you're able to kick about my 
drivin'. That's purty good luck, I'd say. You 
ain't shot, an' you ain't layin' busted in no canyon. 
Any time a man gits shot outa Casey Ryan's stage, 
he'll have to jump out an' wait for the bullet to 
ketch up. And there ain't any passengers offn' this 
stage layin' busted in no canyon, neither. I bring 
in what I start out with." 

The other man snorted and reached under his 
coat tail for the solacing plug of chewing tobacco. 
Opposition and ridicule had brought a little color 
into his face. 

" Why, hell, man ! You you come around 
that ha-hairpin turn up there on two wheels! It's 
a miracle we wasn't " 

" Miracles is what happens once and lets it go at 
that. Say! Casey Ryan always saves wear on a 
coupla wheels, on that turn. I've made it on one; 
but the leaders wasn't runnin' right to-day. That 
nigh one's cast a shoe. I gotta have that looked 
after." He gave up the reins to the waiting hostler 
and went off, heading straight for the station porch 
where waited a red-haired girl with freckles and a 
warm smile for Casey. 

That was Casey's youth; part of it. The rest 
was made up of fighting, gambling, drinking hilari 
ously with the crowd and always with his temper 
on hair trigger. Along the years behind him he 
left a straggling procession of men, women and 



CASEY RYAN 3 

events. The men and women would always know 
the color of his eyes and would recognize the Casey 
laugh in a crowd, years after they had last heard it; 
the events were full of the true Casey flavor, and 
as I say, when men told of them and mentioned 
Casey, they laughed. 

From the time when his daily drives were likely 
to be interrupted by holdups, and once by a grizzly 
that reared up in the road fairly under the nose of 
his leaders and sent the stage off at an acute angle, 
blazing a trail by itself amongst the timber, Casey 
drifted from mountain to desert, from desert to plain 
and back again, blithely meeting hard luck face to 
face and giving it good day as if it were a friend. 
For Casey was born an optimist, and misfortune 
never quite got him down and kept him there, 
though it tried hard and often, as you will presently 
see. Some called him gritty. Some said he hadn't- 
the sense to know when he was licked. Either way, 
it made a rare little Irishman of Casey Ryan, and 
kept his name from becoming blurred in the mem 
ories of those who once knew him. 

So in time it happened that Casey was driving a 
stage of his own from Pinnacle down to Lund, in 
Nevada, and making boast that his four horses could 
beat the record the month's record, mind of 
any dog-gone auty-wo-bile that ever infested the 
trail. Infest is a word that Casey would have used 
often had he known its dictionary reputation. Hav 
ing been deprived of close acquaintance with diction 
aries, but having a facile imagination and some cre 
ative ability, Casey kept pace with progress and in- 



4 CASEY RYAN 

vented words of his own which he applied lavishly 
to all automobiles ; but particularly and emphatically 
he applied the spiciest, most colorful ones to Fords. 

Put yourself in Casey's place, and you will un 
derstand. Imagine yourself with a thirty-mile trip 
to make down a twisty, rough mountain road built 
in the days when men hauled ore down the mountain 
on wagons built to bump over rocks without dam 
age to anything but human bones. You are Casey 
Ryan, remember ; you never stopped for stage rob 
bers or grizzlies in the past, and you have your 
record to maintain as the hardest driver in the West. 
You are proud of that record, because you know how 
you have driven to earn it. 

You pop the lash over the ears of your leaders 
and go whooping down a long, straight bit of road 
where you count on making time. When you are 
about halfway down and the four horses are run 
ning even and tugging pleasantly at the reins, and 
you are happy enough to sing your favorite song, 
which begins, 

"Hey, ole Bill! Can-n yuh play the fiddle-o? 
Yes, by gosh! I I kin play a liddle-o " 

and never gets beyond that one flat statement, 
around the turn below you comes a Ford, rattling 
all its joints trying to make the hill on " high." The 
driver honks wildly at you to give him the road 
you, Casey Ryan ! Wouldn't you writhe and invent 
words and apply them viciously to all Fords and 
the man who invented them ? But the driver comes 
at you honking, squawking, and you turn out. 



CASEY RYAN 5 

You have to, unless the Ford does ; and Fords don't. 
A Ford will send a twin-six swerving sharply to the 
edge of a ditch, and even Casey Ryan must swing 
his leaders to the right in obedience to that raucous 
command. 

Once Casey didn't. He had the patience of the 
good-natured, and for awhile he had contented him 
self with his vocabulary and his reputation as a 
driver and a fighter, and the record he held of mak 
ing the thirty miles from Pinnacle to Lund in an 
hour and thirty-five minutes, twenty-six days in the 
month. (He did not publish his running expenses, 
by the way, nor did he mention the fact that his 
passengers were mostly strangers picked up at the 
railway station at Lund because they liked the look 
of the picturesque four-horses-and-Casey stage 
coach.) 

Once Casey refused to turn out. That morning 
he had been compelled to wait and whip a heavy 
man who berated Casey because the heavy man's 
wife had ridden from Pinnacle to Lund the day be 
fore and had fainted at the last sharp turn in the 
road and had not revived in time to board the train 
for Salt Lake which she had been anxious to catch. 
Casey had known she was anxious to catch the train, 
and he had made the trip in an hour and twenty-nine 
minutes in spite of the fact that he had driven the 
last mile with a completely unconscious lady leaning 
heavily against his left shoulder. She made much 
better time with Casey than she would have made 
on the narrow-gauge train which carried ore and 
passengers and mail to Lund, arriving when most 



6 CASEY RYAN 

convenient to the train crew. That it took half an 
hour to restore her to consciousness was not Casey's 
fault. 

Casey had succeeded in whipping the heavy man 
till he hollered, but the effort had been noticeable. 
Casey wondered uneasily whether by any chance he, 
Casey Ryan, was growing old with the rest of the 
world. That possibility had never before occurred 
to him, and the thought was disquieting. Casey 
Ryan too old to lick any man who gave him cause, 
too old to hold the fickle esteem of those who met 
him in the road? Casey squinted belligerently at 
the Old-man-with-the-scythe and snorted. " I 
licked him good. You ask anybody. And he's 
twice as big as I am. I guess they's a good many 
years left in Casey Ryan yet ! Giddap, you thus- 
and-so! We're ten minutes late and we got our 
record!" 

At that moment a Ford touring car popped around 
the turn below him and squawked presumptuously 
for a clear passage ahead. Casey pulled his lash 
off the nigh leader, yelled and charged straight down 
the road. Did they think they could honk him off 
the road? Hunh! Casey Ryan was still Casey 
Ryan. Never again would he turn out for man or 
devil. 

Wherefore Casey was presently extricating his 
leaders from the harness of his wheelers ten feet 
below the grade. On the road above him the driver 
of the Ford inspected bent parts and a smashed head 
light and cranked and cranked ineffectively, and 
swore down at Casey Ryan, who squinted unblink- 



CASEY RYAN 7 

ingly up under his hatbrim at the man he likewise 
cussed. 

They were a long while there exchanging disagree 
able opinions of one another, and Casey was even 
obliged to climb the steep bank and whip the driver 
of the Ford because he had applied a word to Casey 
which had never failed as automatic prelude to a 
Casey Ryan combat. Casey was frankly winded 
when he finally mounted one of his horses and led 
the other three, and so proceeded to Lund as mad as 
he had ever been in his life. 

" That there settles it final," he snorted, when the 
town came into view in the flat below. " They've 
pushed Casey off'n the grade for the first time and 
the last time. What pushin' and crowdin' and 
squawkin' is done from now on, it'll be Casey Ryan 
doin' it! Faint! I'll learn 'em something to faint 
about. If it's Fords goin' to run horses off'n the 
trail, you watch how Casey Ryan'll drive the livin' 
tar outa one. Dog-gone 'em, there ain't no Ford 
livin' that can drive Casey off'n the road. I'll drive 
'em till their tongues hang out. I'll make 'em bawl 
like a calf, and I'll pound 'em on the back and 
make 'em fan it faster." 

So talking to himself and his team he rode into 
town and up to one of those ubiquitous Ford agen 
cies that write their curly-tailed blue lettering across 
the continent from the high nose of Maine to the 
shoulder of Cape Flattery. 

" Gimme one of them dog-goned blankety bing- 
bing Ford auty-mo-biles," he commanded the garage 
owner who came to meet Casey amiably in his shirt 



8 CASEY RYAN 

sleeves. " Here's four horses I'll trade yuh, with 
what's left of the harness. And up at the third 
turn you'll find a good wheel off'n the stage." He 
slid down from the sweaty back of his nigh leader 
and stood slightly bow-legged and very determined 
before the garage owner, Bill Masters. 

" Wel-1 there ain't much sale for horses, Casey. 
I ain't got any place to keep 'em, nor any feed. I'll 
sell yuh a Ford on time, and " 

Casey glanced over his shoulder to make sure the 
horses were standing quiet, dropped the reins and 
advanced upon Bill. 

" You trade" he stated flatly. 

Bill backed a little. " Oh, all right, if that's the 
way yuh feel. What yuh askin' for the four just 
as they stand? " 

" Me ? A Ford auty-wo-bile. I told yuh that, 
Bill. And I want you to put on the biggest horn 
that's made; one that can be heard from here to 
Pinnacle and back when I turn 'er loose. And run 
the damn thing out here right away and show me 
how it works, and how often you gotta wind it and 
when. Lucky I didn't bring no passengers down 
I was runnin' empty. But I gotta take back a 
load of Bohunks to the Bluebird this afternoon, and 
my stage, she's a total wreck. I'll sign papers to 
night if you got any to sign." 



CHAPTER II 

Thus was the trade effected with much speed and 
few preliminaries, because Bill knew Casey Ryan 
very intimately and had seen him in action when his 
temper was up. Bill adjusted an extra horn which 
he happened to have in stock. One of those terrific 
things that go far toward making the life of a 
pedestrian a nerve-racking succession of startles. 
Casey tried it out on himself before he would ac 
cept it. He walked several doors down the street 
with the understanding that Bill would honk at him 
when he was some little distance away. Bill waited 
until Casey's attention was drawn to a lady with 
thick ankles who was crossing the street in a hurry 
and a stiff breeze. Bill came down on the metal 
plunger of the horn with all his might, and Casey 
jumped perceptibly and came back grinning. 

" She'll do. What'll put a crimp in Casey Ryan's 
spine is good enough for anybody. Bring her out 
here and show me how yuh work the damn thing. 
Guess she'll hold six Bohunks, won't she with 
sideboards on? I'll run 'er around a coupla times 
b'fore I start out and that's all I will do." 

Naturally the garage man was somewhat per 
turbed at this nonchalant manner of getting ac 
quainted with a Ford. He knew the road from 
Lund to Pinnacle. He had driven it himself, with 



io CASEY RYAN 

a conscious sigh of relief when he had safely nego 
tiated the last hair-pin curve; and Bill was counted 
a good driver. He suggested an insurance policy to 
Casey, not half so jokingly as he tried to sound. 

Casey turned and gave him a pale blue, unwink 
ing stare. " Say ! Never you mind gettin' out in 
surance on this auty-mo-bile. What you wanta do 
is insure the cars that's liable to meet up with me in 
the trail." 

Bill saw the sense of that, too, and said no more 
about insuring Casey. He drove down the canyon 
where the road is walled in on both sides by cliffs, 
and proceeded to give Casey a lesson in driving. 
Casey did not think that he needed to be taught how 
to drive. All he wanted to know, he said, was how 
to stop 'er and how to start 'er. Bill needn't worry 
about the rest of it. 

" She's darn tender-bitted," he commented, after 
two round trips over the straight half-mile stretch, 
and fourteen narrow escapes. " And the man 
that made 'er sure oughta known better than to 
make 'er neck rein in harness. And I don't like this 
windin' 'er up every time you wanta start. But she 
can sure go and that's what Casey Ryan's after 
every day in the week. 

" All right, Bill. I'll go gather up the Bohunks 
and start. You better 'phone up to Pinnacle that 
Casey's on the road and tell 'em he says it's his 
road's long's he's on it They'll know what I 
mean." 

Pinnacle did know, and waited on the sidewalk 
that afforded a view of the long hill where the road 



CASEY RYAN n 

curled down around the head of the gulch and into 
town. Much sooner than his most optimistic back 
ers had a right to expect for there were bets 
laid on the outcome there in Pinnacle on the brow 
of the hill a swirl of red dust grew rapidly to a 
cloud. Like a desert whirlwind it swept down the 
road, crossed the narrow bridge over the deep cut 
at the head of the gulch where the famous Youbet 
mine belched black smoke, and rolled on down the 
steep, narrow little street. 

Out of the whirlwind poked the pugnacious little 
brass-rimmed nose of a new Ford, and behind the 
windshield Casey Ryan grinned widely as he swung 
up to the postoffice and stopped as he had always 
stopped his four-horse stage, with a flourish. 
Stopping with a flourish is fine and spectacular when 
you are driving horses accustomed to that method 
and on the lookout for it. Horses have a way of 
stiffening their forelegs and sliding their hind feet 
and giving a lot of dramatic finish to the perform 
ance. But there is no dramatic sense at all in the 
tin brain of a Ford. It just stopped. And the 
insecure fourth Bohunk in the tonneau went hurtling 
forward into the front seat straight on his way 
through the windshield. Casey threw up an elbow 
instinctively and caught him in the collar button and 
so avoided breakage and blood spattered around. 
Three other foreigners were scrambling to get out 
[when Casey stopped them with a yell that froze them 
quiet where they were. 

" Hey ! You stay right where y'are ! I gotta 
deliver yuh up to the Bluebird in a minute." 



12 CASEY RYAN 

There were chatterings and gesticulations in th 
tonneau. Out of the gabble a shrill voice rose be 
seechingly in English. " We will walk, meester ! 
If you pleese, meester! We are 'fraid for ride wit* 
dees may chine, meester ! " 

Casey was nettled by the cackling and the thigh- 
slapping of the audience on the sidewalk. He 
reached for his stage whip, and missing it used his 
ready Irish fists. So the Bohunks crawled unhap 
pily back into the car and subsided shivering and 
with tears in their eyes. 

" Dammit, when I take on passengers to ride, 
they're goin' to ride till they git there. You shut up, 
back there ! " 

A friend of Casey's stepped forward and cranked 
the machine, and Casey pulled down the gas lever 
until the motor howled, turned in the shortest possi 
ble radius and went lunging up the crooked steep 
trail to the Bluebird mine on top of the hill, his 
engine racing and screaming in low. 

Thereafter Pinnacle and Lund had a new stand 
ard by which to measure the courage of a man. 
Had he made the trip with Casey Ryan and his new 
Ford? He had"? By golly, he sure had nerve. 
One man passed the peak for sheer bravery and rode 
twice with Casey, but certain others were inclined 
to disparage the feat, on the ground that on the 
second trip he was drunk. 

Casey did not like that. He admitted that he 
was a hard driver ; he had always been proud be 
cause men called him the hardest driver in the West. 
But he argued that he was also a safe driver, and 



CASEY RYAN 13 

that they had no business to make such a fuss over 
riding with him. Didn't he ride after his own driv 
ing every day of his life? Had he ever got killed? 
Had he ever killed anybody else? Well! What 
were they all yawping about, then? Pinnacle and 
Lund made him tired. 

"If you fellers think I can't bounce that there 
tin can down the road fast as any man in the coun 
try, why don't yuh pass me on the road? You're 
welcome. Just try it." 

No one cared to try, however. Meeting him was 
sufficiently hazardous. There were those who 
secretly timed their traveling so that they would not 
see Casey Ryan at all, and I don't think you can 
really call them cowards, either. A good many 
had families, you know. 

Casey had an accident now and then ; and his tire 
expense was such as to keep him up nights playing 
poker for money to support his Ford. You simply 
can't whirl into town at a thirty-mile gait I am 
speaking now of Pinnacle, whose street was a 
gravelly creek bed quite dry and ridgy between 
rains and stop in twice the car's length without 
scouring more rubber off your tires than a capacity 
load of passengers will pay for. Besides, you run 
short of passengers if you persist in doing it. Even 
the strangers who came in on the Salt Lake line were 
quite likely to look once at the cute little narrow- 
gauge train with its cunning little day coach hitched 
behind a string of ore cars, glance at Casey's Ford 
stage with indifference and climb into the cunning 
day coach for the trip to Pinnacle. The psychology 



14 CASEY RYAN 

of it passed quite over Casey's head, but his pocket 
felt the change. 

In two weeks perhaps it was less, though I 
want to be perfectly just Casey was back, afoot 
and standing bow-legged in the doorway of Bill 
Master's garage at Lund. 

" Gimme another one of them Ford auty-wo- 
biles," he requested, grinning a little. " I guess 
mebby I oughta take two or three but I'm a little 
short right now, Bill. I ain't been gitting any good 
luck at poker, lately." 

Bill asked a question or two while he led Casey 
to the latest model of Fords, just in from the fac 
tory. 

Casey took a chew of tobacco and explained. 
" Well, I had a bet up, y'see. That red-headed bar 
tender in Pinnacle bet me a hundred dollars I 
couldn't beat my own record ten minutes on the trip 
down. I knowed I could, so I took him up on it. 
A man would be a fool if he didn't grab any easy 
money like that. And so I pounded 'er on the tail, 
coming down. And I had eight minutes peeled off 
my best time, and then Jim Black he had to go git in 
the road on that last turn up there. We rammed 
our noses together and I pushed him on ahead of 
me for fifty rods, Bill and him yelling at me to 
quit but something busted in the insides of my 
car, I guess. She give a grunt and quit. All right, 
I'll take this one. Grease her up, Bill. I'll eat a 
bite before I take her up." 

You've no doubt suspected before now that not 
even poker, played industriously o' nights, could 



CASEY RYAN 15 

keep Casey's head above the financial waters that 
threatened to drown him and his Ford and his repu 
tation. Casey did not mind repair bills, so long as 
he achieved the speed he wanted. But he did mind 
not being able to pay the repair bills when they were 
presented to him. Whatever else were his faults, 
Casey Ryan had always gone cheerfully into his 
pocket and paid what he owed. Now he was 
haunted by a growing fear that an unlucky game or 
two would send him under, and that he might not 
come up again. 

He began to think seriously of selling his car and 
going back to horses which, in spite of the high cost 
of feeding them, had paid their way and his, and 
left him a pleasant jingle in his pockets. But then 
he bumped hard into one of those queer little psy 
chological facts which men never take into account 
until it is too late. Casey Ryan, who had driven 
horses since he could stand on his toes and fling 
harness on their backs, could not go back to driving 
horses. The speed fiend of progress had him by 
the neck. Horses were too slow for Casey. More 
over, when he began to think about it, he knew that 
the thirty-mile stretch between Pinnacle and Lund 
had become too tame for him, too monotonous. He 
knew in the dark every twist in the road, every sharp 
turn, and he could tell you offhand what every 
sharp turn had cost him in the past month, either in 
repairs to his own car or to the car that had un 
luckily met him without warning. For Casey, I 
must tell you, habitually forgot all about that ear- 
splitting klaxon at his left elbow. He was always 



i6 CASEY RYAN 

in too much of a hurry to blow it; and anyway, by 
the time he reached a turn, he was around it; there 
either was no car in the road or Casey had scraped 
paint off it or worse and gone on. So why honk? 

Far distances called Casey. In one day, he medi 
tated, he could cover more desert with his Ford than 
horses could travel in a week. An old, half-buried 
passion stirred, lifted its head and smiled at him 
seductively, a dream he had dreamed of finding 
some of that wealth which Nature holds so miser- 
like in her hills. A gold mine, or perhaps silver or 
copper, what matter which mineral he found, so 
long as it spelled wealth for him? Then he would 
buy a bigger car and a faster car, and he would bore 
farther and farther into yonder. In his past were 
tucked away months on end of tramping across 
deserts and up mountain defiles with a packed burro 
nipping patiently along in front of him and this 
same, seductive dream beckoning him over the next 
horizon. Burros had been slow. While he hurtled 
down the road from Pinnacle to Lund, Casey pic 
tured himself plodding through sand and sage and 
over malapai and up dry canyons, hazing a burro 
before him. 

" No, sir, the time for that is gone by. I could 
do in a week now what it took me a month to do 
then. I could get into country a man'd hate to 
tackle afoot, not knowing the water holes. I'll git 
me a radiator that don't boil like a teakettle over a 
pitch fire, and load up with water and grub and gas, 
and I'll find the Injun Jim mine, mebby. Or some 
other darn mine that'll put me in the clear the rest 



CASEY RYAN 17 

of my life. Couldn't before, because I had to travel 
too slow. But shucks! A Ford can go anywhere 
a mountain goat can go. You ask anybody." 

So Casey sold his stage line and the hypothetical 
good will that went with it, and Pinnacle and Lund 
breathed long and deep and planned trips they had 
refrained from taking heretofore, and wished Casey 
luck Bill Masters laid a friendly hand on his shoul 
der and made a suggestion so wise that not even 
Casey could shut his mind against it. 

" You're starting out where there won't be no Bill 
handy to fix what you bust," he pointed out. " You 
wait over a day or two, Casey, and let me show yuh 
a few things about that car. If you bust down on 
the desert you'll want to know what's wrong, and 
how to fix it. It's easy, but you got to know where 
to look for the trouble." 

"Me? Say, Bill, I never had to go lookin' for 
trouble," Casey grinned. " What do I need to learn 
how for?" 

Nevertheless he remained all of that day with 
Bill and crammed on mechanics. He was amazed 
to discover how many and how different were the 
ailments that might afflict a Ford. That he had 
boldly albeit unconsciously driven a thing filled 
with timers, high-tension plugs that may become 
fouled and fail to " spark," carburetors that could 
get out of adjustment (whatever that was) spark 
plugs that burned out and had to be replaced, a 
transmission that absolutely must have grease or 
something happened, bearings that were prone to 
burn out if they went dry of oil, and a multitude of 



i8 CASEY RYAN 

other mishaps that could happen and did happen if 
one did not watch out, would have filled Casey with 
foreboding if that were possible. Being an opti 
mist to the middle of his bones, he merely felt a 
growing pride in himself. He had actually driven 
all this aggregation of potential internal grief! 
Whenever anything had happened to his Ford auty- 
mo-bile between Pinnacle and Lund, Casey never 
failed to trace the direct cause, which had always 
been external rather than internal, save that time 
when he had walked in and bought a new car with 
out probing into the vitals of the other. 

" I'd ruther have a horse down with glanders," 
he sighed, when Bill finally washed the grease off 
his hands and forearms and rolled down his sleeves. 
" But Casey Ryan's game to try anything once, and 
most things the second and third time. You ask 
anybody. Gimme all the hootin'-annies that's liable 
to wear out, Bill, and a load uh tires and patches, 
and Casey'll come back and hand yuh a diamond 
big as your fist, some day. Ole Lady Trouble's al 
ways try in' to take a fall outa me, but she's never 
got me down so't I had to holler 'nough. You ask 
anybody. Casey Ryan's goin' out to see what he 
can see. If he meets up with Miss Fortune, he'll 
tame her, Bill. And this little Ford auty-wp-bile is 
goin' to eat outa my hand. I don't give a cuss if 
she does git sore and ram her spark plugs into her 
carburetor now and agin. She'll know who's boss, 
Bill. I learnt it to the burros, and what you can 
learn a burro you can learn a Foid, take time 
enough." 



CASEY RYAN 19 

Taking that point of view and keeping it, Casey 
managed very well. Whenever anything went 
wrong that his vocabulary and a monkey wrench 
could not mend, Casey sat down on the shadiest 
running board and conned the Instruction Book 
which Bill handed him at the last minute. Other 
times he treated the Ford exactly as he would treat a 
burro, with satisfactory results. 



CHAPTER III 

Away out on the high mesas that are much like 
the desert below, except that the nights are cool and 
the wind is not fanned out of a furnace, Casey 
fought sand and brush and rocks and found a trail 
now and then which he followed thankfully, and so 
came at last to a short range of mountains whose 
name matched well their inhospitable stare. The 
Starvation Mountains had always been reputed rich 
in mineral and malevolent in their attitude toward 
man and beast. Even the Joshua trees stood afar 
off and lifted grotesque arms defensively against 
them. But Casey was not easily daunted, and eerie 
places held for him no meaning save the purely 
material one. If he could find water and the rich 
vein of ore some one had told him was there, then 
Casey would be happy in spite of snakes, tarantulas 
and sinister stories of the place. 

Water he found, not too far up a gulch. So he 
pitched his tent within carrying distance from the 
spring, thanked the god of mechanics that an auto 
mobile neither eats nor drinks when it does not work, 
and set out to find his fortune. 

Casey knew there was a mining camp on the high 
slope of Barren Butte. He knew the name of the 
camp, which was Lucky Lode, and he knew the fore 
man there knew him from long ago in the days 



CASEY RYAN 21 

when Casey was what he himself confessed to be 
wild. In reaching Starvation Mountains, Casey 
had driven for fifteen miles within plain sight of 
Lucky Lode. But gas is precious when you are a 
hundred miles from a garage, and since business did 
not take him there Casey did not drive up the five- 
mile hill to the Lucky Lode just to shake hands with 
the foreman and swap a yarn or two. Instead, he 
headed down on to the bleached, bleak oval of Fur 
nace Lake and forged across it as straight as h 
could drive toward Starvation Mountains. 

But the next time Casey made the trip needing 
supplies, powder, fuse, caps and so on Fate took 
him by the ear and led him to a lady. This is how 
Fate did it, and I will say it was an original idea : 

Casey had a gallon syrup can in the car which he 
used for extra oil for the engine. Having an appe 
tite for sour-dough biscuits and syrup, he had also 
a gallon can of syrup in the car. It was a terrifi 
cally hot day, and the wind that blew full against 
Casey's left cheek as he drove burned even his leather 
skin where it struck. Casey was afraid he was 
running short of water, and a Ford's comfort comes 
first, as every man knows; so that Casey was 
parched pretty thoroughly, inside and out. Within 
a mile of Furnace Lake he stopped, took an unsatis 
fying sip from his big canteen and emptied the rest 
of the water into the radiator. Then he replenished 
the oil in the motor generously, cranked and went 
bumping along down the trail worn rough with the 
trucks from Lucky Lode. 

For a little way he jounced along the trail; then 



S2 CASEY RYAN 

the motor began to labor ; and although Casey pulled 
the gas lever down as far as it would go, the car 
slowed and stopped dead in the road. After an 
hour of fruitless monkey-wrenching and swearing 1 
and sweating, Casey began to suspect something. 
He examined both cans, " hefted " them, smelt and 
even tasted the one half -empty, and decided that 
Ford auty-mo-biles do not require two quarts of 
syrup at one dose. He thought that a little syrup 
ought not to make much difference, but half a gallon 
was probably too much. 

He put in more oil on top of the syrup, but he 
could not even move the crank, much less " turn 'er 
over." So long as a man can wind the crank of a 
Ford he seems able to keep alive his hopes. Casey 
could not crank, wherefore he knew himself beaten 
even while he heaved and lifted and swore, and 
strained every muscle in his back lifting again. He 
got so desperately wrathful that he lifted the car 
perceptibly off its right front wheel with every heave, 
but he felt as if he were trying to lift a boulder. 

It was past supper time at Lucky Lode when 
Casey arrived, staggering a little with exhaustion, 
both mental and physical. His eyes were bloodshot 
with the hot wind, his face was purple from the 
same wind, his lips were dry and rough. I cannot 
blame the men at Lucky Lode for a sudden thirst 
when they saw him coming, and a hope that he still 
had a little left. And when he told them that he 
had filled his engine with syrup instead of oil, what 
would any one think ? 

Their unjust suspicions would not have worried 



CASEY RYAN 23 

Casey in the least, had Lucky Lode not possessed a 
lady cook who was a lady. She was a widow with 
two children, and she had the children with her and 
held herself aloof from the men in a manner befit 
ting a lady. Casey was hungry and thirsty and 
tired, and, as much as was possible to his nature, 
disgusted with life in general. The widow gave 
him a smile of sympathy which went straight to his 
heart, and hot biscuits and coffee and beans cooked 
the way he liked them best. These went straight 
to ease the gnawing emptiness of his stomach, and 
being a man who took his emotions at their face 
value, he jumped to the conclusion that it was the 
lady whose presence gave him the glow. 

Casey stayed that night and the next day and the 
next at Lucky Lode. The foreman helped him tow 
the syruppy car up the hill to the machine shop 
where he could get at it, and Casey worked until 
night trying to remove the dingbats from the hootin'- 
annies, otherwise, the pistons from the cylinders. 
The foreman showed him what to do, and Casey did 
it, using a " double-jack " and a lot of energy. 

Before he left the Lucky Lode, Casey knew ex 
actly what syrup will do to a Ford if applied inter 
nally, and the widow had promised to marry him if 
he would stop drinking and smoking and swearing. 
Since Casey had not been drunk in ten years on ac 
count of having seen a big yellow snake with a green 
head on the occasion of his last carouse, he took the 
drinking pledge quite cheerfully for her sake. He 
promised to stop smoking, glad that the widow 
neglected to mention chewing tobacco, which was his 



24 CASEY RYAN 

everyday comfort. As for the swearing, he told 
her he would do his best under the circumstances, 
and that he would taste the oil hereafter, and try 
and think up some new names for the Ford. 

" But Casey, if you leave whisky alone, you won't 
need to taste the oil," the widow told him. Whereat 
Casey grinned feebly and explained for the tenth 
time that he had not been drinking. She did not 
contradict him. She seemed a wise woman, after 
a fashion. 

Casey drove back to his camp at Starvation 
Mountain happy and a little scared. Why, after 
all these years of careless freedom, he should pre 
cipitate himself into matrimony with a woman he 
had known casually for two days puzzled him a 
little. 

" Well, a man gits to feelin' like he wants to 
settle down when he's crowdin' fifty," he explained 
his recklessness to the Ford as it hummed away over 
Furnace Lake which was flat as a floor and dry as 
a bleached bone, and much the same color. " Any 
man feels the want of a home as he gits older. 
And Casey's the man that will try anything once. 
You ask anybody." He took out his pipe, looked 
at it, bethought himself of his promise and put it 
away again, substituting a chew of tobacco as large 
as his cheek would hold without prying his mouth 
open. " G'long, there can't you? You got your 
belly full of oil shake a wheel and show you're 
alive." 

After that, Casey spent every Sunday at Lucky 
Lode. He liked the widow better and better. Es- 



CASEY RYAN 25 

pecially after dinner, with the delicious flavor of pie 
still caressing his palate. Only he wished she would 
take it for granted that when Casey Ryan made a 
promise, Casey Ryan would keep it. 

"I've got so now I can bark a knuckle with 
m' single- jack when I'm puttin' down a hole, and 
say, * Oh, dear! ' and let it go at that," he boasted 
to her on the second Sunday. " I'll bet there ain't 
another man in the state of Nevada could do 
that." 

" Yes. But Casey dear, if only you will never 
touch another drop of liquor. You'll keep your 
promise, won't you, dear boy? " 

" Hell, yes! " Casey assured her headily. It had 
been close to twenty years since he had been called 
dear boy, at least to his face. He kissed the widow 
full on the lips before he saw that a frown sat upon 
her forehead like a section of that ridgy cardboard 
they wrap bottles in. 

" Casey, you swore ! " 

"Swore? Me?" 

" I only hope," sighed the widow, " that your 
other promise won't be broken as easily as that one. 
Remember, Casey, I cannot and I will not marry a 
drinking man ! " 

Casey looked at her dubiously. "If you mean 
that syrup " 

" Oh, I've heard awful tales of you, Casey dear ! 
The boys talk at the table, and they seem to think 
it's awful funny to tell about your fighting and 
drinking and playing cards for money. But I think 
it's perfectly awful. You must stop drinking, 



26 CASEY RYAN 

Casey dear. I could never forgive myself if I set 
before my innocent little ones the example of a hus 
band who drank." 

" You won't," said Casey. " Not if you marry 
me, you won't." Then he changed the subject, be 
ginning to talk of his prospect over on Starvation. 
The widow liked to hear him tell about finding a 
pocket of ore that went seventy ounces in silver and 
one and seven tenths ounces in gold, and how he ex 
pected any day to get down into the main body of 
ore and find it a " contact " vein. It all sounded 
very convincing and as if Casey Ryan were in a 
fair way to become a rich man. 

The next time Casey saw the widow he was on 
his way to town for more powder, his whole box of 
" giant " having gone off with a tremendous bang 
the night before in one of those abrupt hailstorms 
that come so unexpectedly in the mountain country. 
Casey had worked until dark, and was dog-tired and 
had left the box standing uncovered beside the dug 
out where he kept it. He suspected that a hailstone 
had played a joke on him, but his chief emotion 
was one of self -congratulation because he had pru 
dently stored the dynamite around a shoulder of 
the canyon from where he camped. 

When he told the widow about it as one relates 
the details of a narrow escape, and pointed out how 
lucky he was, she looked very grave. It was a 
very careless thing to do, she said. Casey admitted 
it was. A man who handled dynamite ought to 
shun liquor above all things, she went on ; and Casey 
agreed restively. He had not felt any inclination to 



CASEY RYAN 27 

imbibe until that minute, when the Irish rose up 
hotly within him. 

" Casey dear, are you swre you have nothing in 
camp? " 

Casey assured her solemnly that he had not and 
drove off down the hill, vaguely aware that he was 
not so content with life as he had been. 

" Damn that syrup ! " he exploded once, quite as 
abruptly as had the giant powder. After that he 
chewed tobacco and drove in broody silence. 



CHAPTER IV 

Being Casey Ryan, tough as hickory and wont to 
drive headlong to his destination, Casey did not re 
main in town to loiter a half a day and sleep a night 
and drive back the next day, as most desert dwellers 
did. He hurried through with his business, filled 
up with gas and oil, loaded on an extra can of each, 
strapped his box of dynamite upon the seat beside 
him where he could keep an eye on it just as if 
that would do any good if the tricky stuff meant to 
blow up! and started back at three in the after 
noon. He would be half the night getting to camp, 
even though he was Casey Ryan and drove a mean 
Ford. But he would be there, ready to start work 
at sunrise. A man who is going to marry a widow 
with two children had best hurry up and strike every 
streak of rich ore he has in his claim, thought Casey. 

All that afternoon, though the wind blew hot in 
his face, Casey drilled across the desert, meeting 
never a living thing, overtaking none. All that af 
ternoon a yellow dust cloud swirled rapidly along 
the rough desert road, vainly trying to keep up with 
Casey who made it. In Yucca Pass he had to stop 
and fill motor and radiator with oil and water, and 
just as he topped the summit a front tire popped like 
a pistol. 

Casey killed the engine and got out a bit stiffly, 



CASEY RYAN 29 

pried off a chew of tobacco and gazed pensively at 
Barren Butte that held Lucky Lode, where the 
widow was cooking supper at that moment. Casey 
wished practically that he was there and could sit 
down to some of her culinary achievements. 

" I sure would like to flop m' lip over one of her 
biscuits right now," he said aloud. " If I do strike 
it, I wonder will she git too high-toned to cook ? " 

His eyes went to Furnace Lake, lying smooth and 
pale yellow in the saucerlike basin between Barren 
Butte and the foothills of Starvation. In the soft 
light of the afterglow it seemed to smile at him with 
a glint of malice, like the treacherous thing it was. 
For Furnace Lake is treacherous. The Big Earth 
quake (America knows only one Big Earthquake, 
that which rocked San Francisco so disastrously) 
had split Furnace Lake halfway across, leaving an 
ugly crevice ten feet wide at the narrowest point 
and eighty feet deep, men said. Time and passing 
storms had partly filled the gash, but it was there, 
ugly, ominous, a warning to all men to trust the 
lake not at all. Little cnacks radiated from the big 
gash here and there, and the cattle men rode often 
that way, though not often enough to save their 
cattle from falling in. 

By day the lake shimmered deceptively with 
mirages that painted it blue with the likeness of 
water, Then a lone clump of grease wood stood up 
tall and proclaimed itself a ship lying idle on a glassy 
expanse of water so blue, so cool, so clear, one could 
not wonder that thirsty travelers went mad some 
times with the false lure of it. 



30 CASEY RYAN 

Just now the lake looked exactly like any lake at 
dusk, with the far shore line reflected along its 
edge; and Casey's thought went beyond, to his claim 
on Starvation. Being tired and hungry, he pictured 
wistfully a cabin there, and a light in the window 
when he went chuckling up the long mesa in the 
dark, and the widow inside with hot coffee and 
supper waiting for him. Just as soon as he struck 
" shipping values " that picture would be real, said 
Casey to himself; and he opened his tool box and 
set to work changing the tire. 

By the time he had finished it was dark, and Casey 
had yet a long forty miles between himself and his 
sour-dough can. He cranked the engine, switched 
on the electric headlights, and went tearing down 
the fifteen-mile incline to the lake. 

" She c'n see the lights, and she'll know I ain't 
hangin' out in town lappin' up whisky," he told 
himself as he drove. " She'll know it's Casey Ryan 
comin' home know it the way them lights are 
slippin' over the country. Ain't another man on 
the desert can put a car over the trail like this! 
You ask anybody." 

Pleased with himself and his reputation, urged 
by hunger and the desire to make good on his claim 
so that he might have the little home he instinctively 
craved, Casey pulled the gas lever down another 
eighth of an inch when he was already using 
more than he should and nearly bounced his dyna 
mite off the seat when he lurched over a sandy 
hummock and down on to the smooth floor of the 
lake. 



CASEY RYAN 31 

It was five miles across that lake from rim to rim 
and taking a straight line, as Casey did, well above 
the crevice. In all that distance there is not a stick, 
or a stone, or a bush to mark the way. Not even a 
trail, since Casey was the only man who traveled 
it, and Casey never made tracks twice in the same 
place, but drove down upon it, picked himself a 
landmark on the opposite side and steered for it 
exactly as one steers a boat. The marks he left be 
hind him were no more than pencil marks drawn 
upon a sheet of buff wrapping paper. Unless the 
lake was wet with one of those sporadic desert rains, 
you couldn't make any impression on the cement- 
like surface. 

And when the lake was wet, you stuck where you 
were until wind and sun dried it for you. Where 
fore Casey plunged out upon five miles of blank, 
baked clay with neither road, chart nor compass 
to guide him. It was the first time he had ever 
crossed at night, and a blanket of thin, high clouds 
hid the stars. 

Casey thought nothing much of that, being 
Casey Ryan. He had before him the dim very 
dim outline of Starvation, and being perfectly 
sober, he steered a straight course, and made sure he 
was well away from the upper end of the crevice, 
and pulled the gas lever down another notch. 

The little handful of engine roared beautifully 
and shook the car with the vibration. Casey heaved 
a sigh of weariness mingled with content that the 
way was smooth and he need not look for chuck 
holes for a few minutes, at any rate. He settled 



32 CASEY RYAN 

back, and his fingers relaxed on the wheel. I think 
he dozed, though Casey swears he did not. 

Suddenly he leaned forward, stared hard, leaned 
out and stared, listened with an ear cocked toward 
the engine. He turned and looked behind, then 
stared ahead again. 

" By gosh, I bet both hubs is busted! " he ejacu 
lated under his breath, Furnace Lake subdues one 
somehow. " She's runnin' like a wolf but she 
ain't goin' ! " 

He waited for a minute longer, trifling with the 
gas, staring and listening. The car was shaking 
with the throb of the motor, but Casey could feel no 
forward motion. " Settin' here burnin' gas like a 
'lection bonfire she sure would think I'm drunk 
if she knowed it," Casey muttered, and straddled 
over the side of the car to the running board. 

" I wish to hell I hadn't promised her not 
to cuss ! " he gritted, and with one hand still on 
the wheel, Casey shut off the gas and stepped 
down. 

He stepped down upon a surface sliding beneath 
him at the rate of close to forty miles an hour. 
The Ford went on, spinning away from him in a 
wide circle, since Casey had unconsciously turned 
the wheel to the left as he let go. The blow of 
meeting the hard clay stunned him just at first, and 
he had rolled over a couple of times before he began 
to regain his senses. 

He lifted himself groggily to his knees and looked 
for the car, saw it bearing down upon him from the 
direction whence he had come. Before he had time 



CASEY RYAN 33 

to wonder much at the phenomenon, it was upon 
him, over with a lurch, and gone again. 

Casey was tough, and he never knew when he 
was whipped. He crawled up to his knees again, 
saw the same Ford coming at him with dimming 
headlights from the same direction it had taken be 
fore, made a wild grab for it, was knocked down 
and run over again. You may not believe that, but 
Casey had the bruises to prove it. 

On the third round the Ford had slowed to a 
walk, figuratively speaking. Casey was pretty 
dizzy, and he thought his back was broken, but he 
was mad clear through. He caught the Ford by its 
fender, hung on, clutching frantically for a better 
hold, was dragged a little distance so and then, as 
its speed slackened to a gentle forward roll, he made 
shift to get aboard and give the engine gas before 
it had quite stopped. Which he told himself was 
lucky, because he couldn't have cranked the thing to 
save his life. 

By sheer, dogged nerve he drove to camp, drank 
cold coffee left from his early breakfast, and de 
cided that the bite of a Ford, while it is poisonous, 
is not necessarily fatal unless it attacks one in a 
vital spot. 

Casey could not drill a hole, he could not swing a 
pick ; for two days he limped groaning around camp 
and confined his activities to cooking his meals. 
Frequently he would look at the Ford and shake his 
head. There was something uncanny about it. 

" She sure has got it in for me," he mused. 
" You can't blame her for runnin' off when I 



34 CASEY RYAN 

dropped the reins and stepped out. But that don't 
account for the way she come at me, and the way she 
got me every circle she made. That's human. It's 
dog-gone human! I've cussed her a lot, and I've 
done things to her like that syrup I poured into 
her and dog-gone her, she's been layin' low and 
watchin' her chance all this while. Fords, I be 
lieve, arc about as human as horses, and I've knowed 
horses I believe coulda talked if their tongues was 
split. Ask anybody.. That there car knowed! " 

The third day after the attack Casey was still too 
sore to work, but he managed to crank the Ford 
eyeing it curiously the while, and with respect, too 
and started down the mesa and up over the ridge 
and on down to the lake. He was still studying the 
matter incredulously, still wondering if Fords can 
think. He wanted to tell the widow about it and 
get her opinion. The widow was a smart woman. 
A little touchy on the liquor question, maybe, but 
smart. You ask anybody. 

Lucky Lode greeted him with dropped jaws and 
wide staring eyes, which puzzled Casey until the 
foreman, grasping his shoulder which made 
Casey wince and break a promise explained their 
astonishment. They had, as Casey expected, seen 
his lights when he came off the summit from Yucca 
Pass. By the speed they traveled, Lucky Lode 
knew that Casey and no other was at the steering 
wheel, even before he took to the lake. 

" And then," said the foreman, " we saw your 
lights go round and round in a circle, and disap 
pear " 



CASEY RYAN 35 

" They didn't," Casey cut in trenchantly. " They 
went dim because I was taking her slow, being about 
all in." 

The foreman grinned. " We. thought you'd 
drove into the crevice, and we went down with lan 
terns and hunted the full length of it. We never 
found a sign of you or the car " 

" 'Cause I was over in camp, or thereabouts," in 
terpolated Casey drily. " I wish you'd of come on 
over. I sure needed help." 

" We figured you was pretty well lit up, to circle 
around like that. I've been down since, by day 
light, and so have some of the boys, looking into 
that crevice. But we gave it up, finally." 

Then Casey, because he liked a joke even when it 
was on himself, told the foreman and his men what 
had happened to him. He did not exaggerate the 
mishap; the truth was sufficiently wild. 

They whooped with glee. Every one laughs at 
the unusual misfortunes of others, and this was un 
usual. They stood around the Ford and talked to 
it, and whooped again. " You sure must have had 
so-ome jag, Casey," they told him exuberantly. 

" I was sober," Casey testified earnestly. " I'll 
swear I hadn't a drop of anything worse than lemon 
soda, and that was before I left town." Where 
upon they whooped the louder, bent double, some of 
them with mirth. 

"Say! If I was drunk that night, I'd say so," 
Casey exploded finally. " What the hell what's 
the matter with you rabbits ? You think Casey Ryan 
has got to the point where he's scared to tell what he 



36 CASEY RYAN 

done and all he done? Lemme tell yuh, anything 
Casey does he ain't afraid to tell about! Lyin' is 
something I never was scared bad enough to do. 
You ask anybody." 

" There's the widow," said the foreman, wiping 
his eyes. 

Casey turned and looked, but the widow was not 
in sight. The foreman, he judged, was speaking 
figuratively. He swung back glaring. 

" You think I'm scared to tell her what happened ? 
She'll know I was sober if I say I was sober. She 
ain't as big a fool " He did not want to fight, 
although he was aching to lick every man of them. 
But for one thing, he was too sore and lame, and 
then, the widow would not like it. 

With his neck very stiff, Casey limped down to 
the house and tried to tell the widow. But the 
widow was a woman, and she was hurt because 
Casey, since he was alive and not in the crevice, 
had not come straight to comfort her, but had lin 
gered up there talking and laughing with the men. 
The widow had taken Casey's part when the others 
said he must have been drunk. She had maintained, 
red-lidded and trembly of voice, that something had 
gone wrong with Casey's car so that he couldn't 
steer it. Such things happened, she knew. 

Well, Casey told the widow the truth, and the 
widow's face hardened while she listened. She had 
permitted him to kiss her when he came in, but now 
she moved away from him. She did not call him 
dear boy, nor even Casey dear. She waited until 
he had reached the point that puzzled him, the point 



CASEY RYAN 37 

of a Ford's degree of intelligence. Then her lips 
thinned before she opened them. 

" And what," she asked coldly, " had you been 
drinking, Mr. Ryan? " 

"Me? One bottle of lemon soda before I left 
town, and I left town at three o'clock in the after 
noon. I swear " 

" You need not swear, Mr. Ryan." The widow 
folded her hands and regarded him sternly, though 
her voice was still politely soft. " After I had told 
you repeatedly that my little ones should ever be 
guarded from a drinking father; after you had sol 
emnly promised me that you would never again put 
glass to your lips, or swallow a drop of whisky; 
after that very morning renewing your pledge " 

" Well, I kept it," Casey said, his face a shade 
paler under its usual frank red. " I swear to Gawd 
I was sober." 

" You need not lie," said the widow, " and add to 
your misdeeds. You were drunk. No man in his 
senses would imagine what you imagine, or do what 
you did. I wish you to understand, Mr. Ryan, that 
I shall not marry you. I could not trust you out 
of my sight." 

"I was sober! " cried Casey, measuring his 
words. Very nearly shouting them, in fact. 

The widow turned pointedly away and began to 
stir something on the stove, and did not look at him. 

Casey went out, climbed the hill to his Ford, 
cranked it and went larruping down the hill, out on 
the lake and, when he had traversed half its length, 
turned and steered a straight course across it. 



38 CASEY RYAN 

Where tracings of wheels described a wide circle he 
stopped and regarded them intently. Then he be 
gan to swear, at nothing in particular, but with a 
hearty enjoyment of the phrases he intoned. 

" Casey, you sure as hell have had one close call," 
he remarked, when he could think of nothing new 
and devilish to say. " You mighta run along, and 
run along, till you got married to her. Whadda I 
want a wife for, anyway? Sour-dough biscuits 
tastes pretty good, and Casey sure can make 'em! " 
He got out his pipe, filled it and crammed down the 
tobacco, found a match and leaned back, smoking 
with relish, one leg thrown over the wheel. 

" A man's best friend is his Ford," he exclaimed. 
" You can ask anybody." He grinned, and blew a 
lot of smoke, and gave the wheel an affectionate 
little twist. 



CHAPTER V 

Some months later Casey waved good-by to the 
men from Tonopah, squinted up at the sun and got 
a coal-oil can of water, with which he filled the 
radiator of his Ford. He rolled his bed in the tarp 
and tied it securely, put flour, bacon, coffee, salt and 
various other small necessities of life into a box, in 
spected his sour-dough can, and decided to empty it 
and start over again if hard fate drove him to sour 
dough. 

" Might bust down and have to sleep out," he 
meditated. " Then, agin, I ain't liable to ; and if I 
do, I'll be goin' so fast I'll git somewhere before she 
stops. I'm sure goin' to go ! " 

He cranked the battered car, straddled in over the 
edge on the driver's side and set his feet against 
the pedals with the air of a man who had urgent 
business elsewhere. The men from Tonopah were 
not yet out of sight around the butte scarred with 
rhyolite ledges before Casey was under way, rattling 
down the rough trail from Starvation Mountain 
and bouncing clear of the seat as the car lurched 
over certain rough spots. 

Pinned with a safety pin to the inside pocket of 
the vest he wore only when he felt need of a safe 
and secret pocket, Casey Ryan carried a check for 
twenty-five thousand dollars, made payable to him- 



40 CASEY RYAN 

self. A check for twenty-five thousand dollars in 
Casey's pocket was like a wildcat clawing at his 
imagination and spitting at every moment's delay. 
Casey had endured solitude and some hardship while 
he coaxed Starvation Mountain to reveal a little of 
its secret treasure. Now he wanted action, light, 
life and plenty of it. While he drove he dreamed, 
and his dreams beckoned, urged him faster and 
faster. 

Up over the summit of the ridge that lay between 
Starvation and Furnace Lake he surged, with radia 
tor bubbling. Down the long slope to the lake, 
lying there smiling sardonically at a world it loved 
to trick with its moods, Casey drove as if he were 
winning a bet. Across that five miles of baked, 
yellow-white clay he raced, his Ford a-creak in every 
joint. 

"Go it, you tin lizard!" chortled Casey. "I'll 
have me a real wagon when I git to Los. She'll 
be white, with red stripes along her sides and red 
wheels, and she'll lay 'er belly to the ground and 
eat up the road and lick her chops for more. Sixty 
miles under her belt every time the clock strikes, or 
she ain't good enough f er Casey ! Mebby they think 
they got some drivers in Calif orny. Mebby they 
think they have. They ain't, though, because Casey 
Ryan ain't there yet. I'll catch that night train. 
Oughta be in by morning, and then you keep your 
eye on Casey. There's goin' to be a stir around 
Los, about to-morrow noon. I'll have to buy some 
clothes, I guess. And I'll git acquainted with some 
nice girl with yella hair that likes pleasure, and take 



CASEY RYAN 41 

her out ridin'. Yeah, I'll have to git me a swell 
outfit uh clothes. I'll look the part, all right " 

Up a long, winding trail and over another summit 
to Yucca Pass Casey dreamed, while the stark, 
scarred buttes on either side regarded him with enig 
matic calm. Since the first wagon train had wor 
ried over the rough deserts on their way to Cali 
fornia, the bleak hills of Nevada had listened while 
prospectors dreamed aloud and cackled over their 
dreaming; had listened, too, while they raved in 
thirst and heat and madness. Inscrutably they 
watched Casey as he hurried by with his twenty-five 
thousand dollars and his pleasant pictures of soft 
ease. 

At a dim fork in the trail Casey slowed and 
stopped. A boiling radiator will not forever brook 
neglect, and Casey brought his mind down to prac 
tical things for a space. " I can just as well take 
the train from Lund," he mused, while he poured in 
more water. " Then I can leave this bleatin' burro 
with Bill. He oughta give me a coupla hundred for 
her, anyway. No use wasting money just because 
you happen to have a few thousand in your pants." 
He filled his pipe at that sensible idea and turned 
the nose of his Ford down the dim trail to Lund. 

Eighty miles more or less straight away across 
the mountainous waste lay Lund, halfway up a can 
yon that led to higher reaches in the hills, rich in 
silver, lead, copper, gold. Silver it was that Casey 
had found and sold to the men from Tonopah, and 
it was a freak of luck, he thought whimsically, that 
had led him and his Ford away over to Starvation 



42 CASEY RYAN 

Mountains to find their stake when they had prob 
ably been driving over millions every day that they 
made the stage trip from Pinnacle down to Lund. 

The trail was rutted in places where the sluicing 
rains had driven hard across the hills; soft with 
sand in places where the fierce winds had swept the 
open. For awhile the thin, wobbly track of a wagon 
meandered along ahead of him, then turned off up 
a flat-bottomed draw and was lost in the sagebrush. 
Some prospector not so lucky as he, thought Casey, 
with swift, soon forgotten sympathy. A coyote 
ran up a slope toward him, halted with forefeet 
planted on a rock, and stared at him, ears perked 
like an inquisitive dog. Casey stopped, eased his 
rifle out of the crease in the back of the seat cushion, 
chanced a shot, and his luck held. He climbed 
out, picked up the limp gray animal, threw it into 
the tonneau and went on. Even with twenty-five 
thousand dollars in his pocket, Casey told himself 
that coyote hides are not to be scorned. He had 
seen the time when the price of a good hide meant 
flour and bacon and tobacco to him. He would 
skin it when he stopped to eat. 

Eighty miles with never a soul to call good day 
to Casey. Nor shack nor shelter made for man, 
and only one place where there was water to wet his 
lips if they cracked with thirst, unless, perchance, 
one of those swift desert downpours came riding on 
the wind, lashing the clouds with lightning. 

Far ahead of Casey such a storm rolled in off the 
barren hills to the south. " She's a-wettin' up that 
red lake a-plenty," observed Casey, squinting 



CASEY RYAN 43 

through the dirty windshield. " No trail around, 
either, on account of the lava beds. But I guess I 
can pull acrost, all right." Doubt was in his voice, 
however, and he was half minded to turn back and 
take the straight road to Vegas, which had been his 
first objective. But he discarded the idea. 

" No, sir, Casey Ryan never back-trailed yet. 
Poor time to commence, now when I got the world 
by the tail and a downhill pull. We'll make out, 
all right can't be so terrible boggy with a short 
rain like that there. I bet," he continued optimisti 
cally to the Ford, which was the nearest he had to 
human companionship, " I bet we make it in a long 
lope. Git along, there ! Shake a wheel 's the last 
time you haul Casey around. Casey's goin' to step 
high, wide and handsome. Sixty miles an hour, or 
he'll ask for his money back. They can't step too 
fast for Casey! Blue if I get me a lady friend 
with yella hair, mebby she'll show up better in a blue 
car than she will in a white-and-red. This here 
turnout has got to be tasty and have class. If she 
was dark " He shook his head at that. " No, 
sir, black hair grows too plenty on squaws an' chili 
queens. Yella goes with Casey. Clingin' kinda 
girl with blue eyes that's the stuff ! An' I'll sure 
show her some drivin' ! " 

He wondered whether he should try and find the 
girl first and buy the car to match her beauty, or 
buy the car first and with that lure the lady of his 
dreams. It was a nice question and it required 
thought. It was pleasant to ponder the problem, 
and Casey became so lost in meditation that he for- 



44 CASEY RYAN 

got to eat when the sun flirted with the scurrying 
clouds over his wind-torn automobile top. 

So he came bouncing and swaying down the last 
mesa to the place called Red Lake. Casey had heard 
it spoken of with opprobrious epithets by men who 
had crossed it in wet weather. In dry weather it 
was red clay caked and checked by the sun, and 
wheels or hoofs stirred clouds of red dust that fol 
lowed and choked the traveler. 

Casey was not thinking at all of the lake when he 
drove down to it. He was seeing visions, though 
you would not think it to look at him; a stocky, 
middle-aged man who needed a shave and a hair-cut, 
wearing cheap, dirt-stained overalls and a blue shirt 
and square-toed shoes studded thickly on the soles 
with hobnails worn shiny; driving a desert-scarred 
Ford with most of the paint gone and a front fender 
cocked up and flapping crazily, and tires worn down 
to the fabric in places. But his eyes were very 
keen and steady, and there was a humorous twist 
to his mouth. If he dreamed incongruously of big, 
luxurious cars gorgeous in paint and nickel trim, 
and of slim young women with yellow hair and blue 
eyes, well, stranger dreams have been hidden 
away behind exteriors more unsightly than was the 
shell which holds the soul of Casey Ryan. 

Presently the practical, everyday side of his na 
ture nudged him into taking note of his immediate 
surroundings. Red Lake had received a wetting. 
The dark, shiny surface betrayed that fact, and it 
was surprising how real water, when you did see it 
on a lake subject to mirage, was so unmistakably 



CASEY RYAN 45 

real. It is like putting flakes of real gold beside 
flakes of mica; you are ready to swear that the mica 
is gold, until you see the real gold beside it. So 
Casey knew at a glance that half of Red Lake was 
wet, and that the shiny patches here and there were 
not mirage pictures but shallow pools of water. 
Moreover, out in the reddest, wettest part of it an 
automobile stood with its back to him, and pigmy 
figures were moving slowly upon either side. 



CHAPTER VI 

" Stuck," diagnosed Casey in one word, as he 
caught sight of the group ahead. He tucked his 
dream into the back of his mind while he pulled 
down the gas lever a couple of notches and lunged 
along the muddy ruts that led straight away from 
the safe line of sagebrush and out upon the platter- 
like red expanse. 

The Ford grunted and lugged down to a steady 
pull, but Casey drove as he had driven his six horses 
on a steep grade in the old days, coaxing every ounce 
of power into action. He juggled with spark and 
gas and somehow kept her going, and finally stopped 
with nice judgment on a small island of harder clay 
within shouting distance of the car ahead. He 
killed the engine then and stepped down, and went 
picking his way carefully out to it, his heavy shoes 
speedily collecting great pancakes of mud that clung 
like glue. 

" Stuck, hey ? You oughta kept in the ruts, no 
matter if they are water-logged. You never want 
to turn outa the road on one of these lake beds, hunt- 
in' dry ground. If it's wet in the road, you can 
bank on sinkin' in to the hocks the minute you turn 
out." He carefully removed the mud pancakes 
from his shoes by scraping them across the hub of 
the stalled car and edged back to stand with his arms 



CASEY RYAN 47 

on his hips while he surveyed the full plight of them. 

" She sure is bogged down a-plenty," he observed, 
grinning sympathetically. 

" Could you hitch on your car, Mister, and pull us 
out?" This was a woman's voice, and it thrilled 
Casey, woman hungry as he was. 

Casey put up a hand to his mouth and surrepti 
tiously removed a chew of tobacco almost fresh. 
With some effort he pulled his feet closer together, 
and he lifted his old Stetson and reset it at a con 
sciously rakish angle. He glanced at the car, behind 
it and in front, coming back to the depressed male 
individual before him. " Yes, ma'am, I'll get you 
out, all right. Sure, I will." 

" We've been stalled here for an hour or more," 
volunteered the depressed one. " We was right be 
hind the storm. Looked a sorry chance that any 
body would come along for the next week or so." 

" Mister, you're a godsend, if ever there was one. 
I'd write your name on the roster of saints in my 
prayer book, if I ever said prayers and had a prayer 
book and a pencil and knew what name to write." 

" Casey Ryan. Don't you worry, ma'am. We'll 
get you outa here in no time." Casey grinned and 
craned his neck. Looking lower this time, he saw 
a pair of feet which did not seem to belong to that 
voice, though they were undoubtedly feminine. 
Still, red mud will work miracles of disfigurement, 
and Casey was an optimist by nature. 

" My wife is trying out a new comedy line," the 
man observed unemotionally. " Trouble is it never 
gets over, out front. If she ever did get it across 



48 CASEY RYAN 

the footlights, I could raise the price of admission 
and get away with it. How far is it to Rhyolite? " 

" Rhyolite ? Twenty or twenty-five miles, meb- 
by." Casey gave him an inquiring look. 

" Can we get there in time to paper the town and 
hire a hall to show in, Mister?" Casey saw the 
mud-caked feet move laboriously toward the rear 
of the car. 

" Yes, ma'am, I guess you can. There ain't any 
town, though, and it ain't got any hall in it, nor 
anybody to go to a show." 

The woman laughed. " That's like my prayer 
book. Well, Jack, you certainly have got a power 
ful eye, but you've been trying to Svengali this out 
fit out of the mud for an hour, and I haven't seen 
it move an inch, so fan Let's just try something 
else." 

" A prayer outa your prayer book, maybe," her 
husband retorted, not troubling to move or turn his 
head. 

Casey blinked and looked again. The woman 
who appeared from the farther side of the car might 
have been the creature of his dream, so far as her 
face, her hair and her voice went. Her hair was 
yellow, unmistakably yellow. Her eyes were bluer 
than Casey's own, and she had nice teeth and showed 
them in a red-lipped smile. A more sophisticated 
man would have known that the powder on her nose 
was freshly applied, and that her reason for remain 
ing so long hidden from his sight while she talked 
to him was revealed in the moist color on her lips 
and the fresh bloom on her cheeks. Casey was not 



CASEY RYAN 49 

sophisticated. He thought she was a beautiful 
woman and asked no questions of her make-up box. 

" Mister, you certainly are a godsend ! " she 
gushed again when she faced him. " I'd call you a 
direct answer to prayer, only I haven't been pray 
ing. I've been trying to tell Jack that the shovel is 
not packed under the banjos, as he thinks it was, but 
was left back at our last camp where he was trying to 
dig water out of a wet spot. Jack, dear, perhaps 
the gentleman has got a shovel in his car. Ain't 
it a real gag, Mister, us being stuck out here in a 
dry lake?" 

Casey touched his hat and grinned and tried not 
to look at her too long. Husbands of beautiful 
young women are frequently jealous, and Casey 
knew his place and meant to keep it. 

All the way back to his car Casey studied the 
peculiar features of the meeting. He had been 
thinking about yellow-haired women well! But 
of course, she was married, and therefore not to be 
thought of save as a coincidence ; still, Casey rather 
regretted the existence of Jack dear, and began to 
wonder why good-looking women always picked 
such dried-up little runts for husbands. " Show 
actors by the talk," he mused. " I wonder now if 
she don't sing, mebby? " 

He started the car and forged out to them, making 
the last few rods in low gear and knowing how 
risky it was to stop. They were rather helpless, he 
had to admit, and did all the standing around while 
Casey did all the work. But he shoveled the rear 
wheels out, waded back to the tiny island of solid 



50 CASEY RYAN 

ground and gathered an armful of brush, which he 
crowded in front of the wheels, covering himself 
with mud thereby; then he tied the tow rope he car 
ried for emergencies like this, waded to the Ford, 
cranked and trusted the rest to luck. The Ford 
moved slowly ahead until the rope between the two 
cars tightened, then spun her wheels and proceeded 
to dig herself in where she stood. The other car, 
shaking with the tremor of its own engine, ruth 
lessly ground the sagebrush into the mud and stood 
upon it roaring and spluttering furiously. 

" Nothing like sticking together, Mister," called 
the lady cheerfully, and he heard her laughter above 
the churn of their motors. 

"Say, ain't your carburetor all off?" Casey 
leaned out to call back to the husband. " You're 
smokin' back there like wet wood." 

The man immediately stopped the motor and 
looked behind him. 

Casey muttered something under his breath when 
he climbed out. He looked at his own car standing 
hub deep in red mud and reached for the solacing 
plug of chewing tobacco. Then he thought of the 
lady and withdrew his hand empty. 

" We're certainly going to stick together, Mister," 
she repeated her witticism, and Casey grinned fool 
ishly. 

" She'll dry up in a few hours, with this hot sun," 
he observed hearteningly. " We'll have to pile 
brush in, I guess." His glance went back to the 
tiny island and to his double row of tracks. He 
looked at the man. 



CASEY RYAN 51 

" Jack, dear, you might go help the gentleman 
get some brush," the lady suggested sweetly. 

" This ain't my act/' Jack dear objected. " I just 
about broke my spine trying to heave the car outa 
the mud when we first stuck. Say, I wish there 
was a beanery of some kind in walking distance. 
Honest, I'll be dead of starvation in another hour. 
What's the chance of a bite, Hon?" 

Contempt surged through Casey. Deep in his 
soul he pitied her for being tied to such an insect. 
Immediately he was glad that she had spirit enough 
to put the little runt in his place. 

" You would wait to buy supplies in Rhyolite, re 
member," she reminded her husband calmly. " I 
guess you'll have to wait till you get there. I've got 
one piece of bread saved for Junior. You and I go 
hungry and cheer up, old dear; you're used to 
it!" 

" I've got grub," Casey volunteered hospitably. 
"Didn't stop to eat yet. I'll pack the stuff back 
there to dry ground and boil some coffee and fry 
some bacon." He looked at the woman and was 
rewarded by a smile so brilliant that Casey was 
dazzled. 

" You certainly are a godsend," she called after 
him, as he turned away to his own car. " It just 
happens that we're out of everything. It's so hard 
to keep anything on hand when you're traveling in 
this country, with towns so far apart. You just 
run short before you know it." 

Casey thought that the very scarcity of towns 
compelled one to avoid running short of food, but 



52 CASEY RYAN 

he did not say anything. He waded back to the 
island with a full load of provisions and cooking 
utensils, and in three minutes he was squinting 
against the smoke of a camp-fire while he poured 
water from a canteen into his blackened coffee pot. 

" Coffee ! Jack, dear, can you believe your 
nose ! " chirped the woman presently behind Casey. 
" Junior, darling, just smell the bacon ! Isn't he a 
nice gentleman? Go give him a kiss like a little 
man." 

Casey didn't want any kiss at least from 
Junior. Junior was six years old, and his face was 
dirty and his eyes were old, old eyes, but brown like 
his father's. He had the pinched, hungry look 
which Casey had seen only amongst starving In 
dians, and after he had kissed Casey perfunctorily 
he snatched the piece of raw bacon which Casey had 
just sliced off, and tore at it with his teeth like a 
hungry pup. 

Casey affected not to notice, and busied himself 
with the fire while the woman reproved Junior half 
heartedly in an undertone, and laughed stagily and 
remarked upon the number of hours since they had 
breakfasted. 

Casey tried not to watch them eat, but in spite of 
himself he thought of a prospector whom he had 
rescued last summer after a five-day fast. These 
people ate more than the prospector had eaten, and 
their eyes followed greedily every mouthful which 
Casey took, as if they grudged him the food. 
Wherefore Casey did not take as many mouthfuls 
as he would have liked. 



CASEY RYAN 53 

" This desert air certainly does put an edge on 
one's appetite," the woman smiled, while she blew 
across her fourth cup of coffee to cool it, and be 
tween breaths bit into a huge bacon sandwich, which 
Casey could not help knowing was her third. 
"Jack, dear, isn't this coffee delicious! " 

" Mah-ma. ! Do we have to p-pay that there 
g-godsend ? C-can you p^pay for more b-bacon for 
me, mah-ma ? " Junior licked his fingers and 
twitched a fold of his mother's soiled skirt. 

" Sure, give him more bacon ! All he wants. 
I'll fry another skillet full," Casey spoke hurriedly, 
getting out the piece which he had packed away in 
the bag. 

" He's used to these hold-up joints where they 
charge you forty cents for a greasy plate/' the man 
explained, speaking with his mouth full. " Eat all 
yuh want, Junior. This is a barbecue and no collec 
tion took up to pay the speaker of the day." 

" We certainly appreciate your kindness, Mister," 
the woman put in graciously, holding out her cup. 
" What we'd have done, stuck here in the mud with 
no provisions and no town within miles, heaven 
only knows. Was you kidding us," she added, with 
a betrayal of more real anxiety than she intended, 
" when you said Rhyolite is a dead one ? We looked 
it up on the map, and it was marked like a town. 
We're making all the little towns that the road shows 
mostly miss. We give a fine show, Mister. It's 
been played on all the best time in the country 
we took it abroad before the war and made real good 
money with it. But we just wanted to see the coun- 



54 CASEY RYAN 

try, you know after doing the cont'nent and all 
the like of that. So we thought we'd travel inde 
pendent and make all the small towns " 

" The movie trust is what put vodeville on the 
bum," the man interrupted. " We used to play the 
best time only. We got a first-class act. One that 
ought to draw down good money anywhere, and 
would draw down good money, if the movie 
trust " 

" And then we like to be independent, and go 
where we like and get off the railroad for a spell. 
Freedom is the breath of life to he and I. We'd 
rather have it kinda rough now and then to be free 
and independent " 

" I've g-got a b-bunny, a-and it f-fell in the 
g-grease box a-and we c-can't wash it off, a-and 
h-he's asleep now. C-can I g-give my b-bunny some 
b-bacon, Mister G-godsend ? " 

The woman laughed, and Jack dear laughed, and 
Casey himself grinned sheepishly. Casey did not 
want to be called a godsend, and he hated the term 
" Mister " when applied to himself. All his life he 
had been plain Casey Ryan and proud of it, and his 
face was very red when he confessed that there was 
no more bacon. He had not expected to feed a 
family when he left camp that morning, but had 
taken rations for himself only. 

Junior whined and insisted that he wanted b-bacon 
for his b-bunny, and the man hushed him querul 
ously and asked Casey what the chances were for 
getting under way. Casey repacked a lightened bag, 
emptied the coffee grounds, shouldered his canteen 



CASEY RYAN 55 

and waded back to the cars and to the problem of 
red mud with an unbelievable quality of tenacity. 

The man followed and asked him if he happened 
to have any smoking tobacco, afterwards he begged 
a cigarette paper, and then a match. " The dog 
gone helpless, starved bunch ! " Casey muttered, 
while he dug out the wheels of his Ford, and knew 
that his own haste must wait upon the need of these 
three human beings whom he had never seen until 
an hour ago, of whose very existence he had been 
in ignorance, and who would probably contribute 
nothing whatever to his own welfare or happiness, 
however much he might contribute to theirs. 

I do not say that Casey soliloquised in this man 
ner while he was sweating there in the mud under 
hot midday. He did think that now he would no 
doubt miss the night train to Los Angeles, and that 
he would not, after all, be purchasing glad raiment 
and a luxurious car on the morrow. He regretted 
that, but he did not see how he could help it. He 
was Casey Ryan, and his heart was soft to suffering 
even though a little of the spell cast by the woman's 
blue eyes and her golden hair had dimmed for him. 

He still thought her a beautiful woman who was 
terribly mismated, but he felt vaguely that women 
with beautiful golden hair should not drink their 
coffee aloud, or calmly turn up the bottom of their 
skirts that they might use the underside of the hem 
for a napkin after eating bacon. I do not like to 
mention this; Casey did not like to think of it, 
either. It was with reluctance that he reflected upon 
the different standard imposed by sex. A man, for 



56 CASEY RYAN 

instance, might wipe his fingers on his pants and 
look the world straight in the eye, but dog-gone it, 
when a lady's a lady, she ought to be a lady. 

Later Casey forgot for a time the incident of the 
luncheon on Red Lake. With infinite labor and 
much patience he finally extricated himself and the 
show people, with no assistance from them save en 
couragement. He towed them to dry land, untied 
and put away his rope and then discovered that he 
had not the heart to drive on at his usual hurtling 
pace and leave them to follow. There was an omin 
ous stutter in their motor, for one thing, and Casey 
knew of a stiffish hill a few miles this side of Rhyo- 
lite, so he forced himself to set a slow pace which 
they could easily follow. 



CHAPTER VII 

It was full sundown when they reached Rhyolite, 
which was not a town but a camp beside a spring, 
usually deserted. Three years before, a mine had 
built the camp for the accommodation of the truck 
drivers who hauled ore to Lund and were some 
times unable to make the trip in one day. Casey, 
having adapted his speed to that of the decrepit 
car of the show people, was thankful that they ar 
rived at all. He still had a little flour and coffee 
and salt, and he hoped there was enough grease left 
on the bacon paper to grease the skillet so that ban 
nocks would not stick to the pan. He also hoped 
that his flour wouM hold out under the onslaught 
of their appetites. 

But Casey was lucky. A half dozen cowboys 
were camped there with a pack outfit, meaning to 
ride the canyons next day for cattle. They were 
cooking supper, and they had " beefed a critter " 
that had broken a leg that afternoon running among 
rocks. Casey shuffled his responsibility and 
watched, in complete content, while the show people 
gorged on broiled yearling steaks. (I dislike to use 
the word gorge where a lady's appetite is involved, 
but that is the word which Casey thought of first.) 

Later, the show people very amiably consented to 
entertain their hosts. It was then that Casey was 



58 CASEY RYAN 

once more blinded by the brilliance of the lady and 
forgot certain little blemishes that had seemed to 
him quite pronounced. The cowboys obligingly 
built a bonfire before the tent, into which the couple 
retired to set their stage and tune their instruments. 
Casey lay back on a cowboy's rolled bed with his 
knees crossed, his hands clasped behind his thinning 
hair, and smoked and watched the first pale stars 
come out while he listened to the pleasant twang of 
banjos in the tuning. 

It was great. The sale of his silver claim to the 
men from Tonopah, the check safely pinned in his 
pocket, the future which he had planned for him 
self swam hazily through his mind. He was fed to 
repletion, he was rich, he had been kind to those in 
need. He was a man to be envied, and he told him 
self so. 

Then the tent flaps were lifted and a dazzling, 
golden-haired creature in a filmy white evening 
gown to which the firelight was kind stood there 
smiling, a banjo in her hands. Casey gave a grunt 
and sat up, blinking. She sang, looking at him fre 
quently. At the encore, which was livened by a 
clog danced to hidden music, she surely blew a kiss 
in the direction of Casey, who gulped and looked 
around at the others self-consciously, and blushed 
hotly. 

In truth, it was a very good show which the two 
gave there in the tent ; much better than the easiest 
going optimist would expect. When it was over to 
the last twang of a banjo string, Casey took off his 
hat, emptied into it what silver he had in his pockets 



CASEY RYAN 59 

and set the hat in the fireglow. Without a word the 
cowboys followed his example, turning pockets in 
side out to prove they could give no more. 

Casey spread his bed apart from the others that 
night, and lay for a long while smoking and looking 
up at the stars and dreaming again his dream ; only 
now the golden-haired creature who leaned back 
upon the deep cushions of his speedy blue car was 
not a vague bloodless vision, but a real person with 
nice teeth and a red-lipped smile, who called him 
Mister in a tone he thought like music. Now his 
dream lady sang to him, talked to him, I consider 
it rather pathetic that Casey's dream always halted 
just short of meal time, and that he never pictured 
her sitting across the table from him in some ex 
pensive cafe, although Casey was rather fond of 
cafe lights and music and service and food. 

Next morning the glamor remained, although the 
lady was once more the unkempt woman of yester 
day. The three seemed to look upon Casey still as 
a godsend. They had talked with some of the men 
and had decided to turn back to Vegas, which was a 
bigg"er town than Lund and therefore likely to pro 
duce better crowds. They even contemplated a 
three-night stand, which would make possible some 
very urgent repairs to their car. Casey demurred, 
although he could not deny the necessity for repairs. 
It was a longer trail to Vegas and a rougher trail. 
Moreover, he himself was on his way to Lund. 

" You go to Lund," he urged, " and you can stay 
there four nights if you want to, and give shows. 
And I'll take yuh on up to Pinnacle in my car while 



60 CASEY RYAN 

yours is gettin' fixed, and you can give a show there. 
lYou'd draw a big crowd. I'd make it a point to 
tell folks you give a fine show. And I'll git yuh 
good rates at the garage where I do business. You 
don't want nothin' of Vegas. Lund's the place yoti 
Want to hit fer." 

" There's a lot to that," the foreman of the cow 
boys agreed. "If Casey's willin' to back you up, 
you better hit straight for Lund. Everybody there 
knows Casey Ryan. He drove stage from Pinnacle 
to Lund for two years and never killed anybody, 
though he did come close to it now and again. I've 
saw strong men that rode with Casey and said they 
never felt right afterwards. Casey, he's a dog-gone 
good driver, but he used to be kinda hard on passen 
gers. He done more to promote heart failure in 
them two towns than all the altitude they can pile 
up. But nobody's going to hold that against a good 
show that comes there. I heard there ain't been 
a show stop off in Lund for over a year. You'll 
have to beat 'em away from the door, I bet." 
Wherefore the Barrymores that was the name 
they called themselves, though I am inclined to doubt 
their legal right to it the Barrymores altered 
their booking and went with Casey to Lund. 

They were not fools, by the way. Their car was 
much more disreputable than you would believe a 
car could be and turn a wheel, and the Barrymores 
recognized the handicap of its appearance. They 
camped well out of sight of town, therefore, and let 
Casey drive in alone. 

Casey found that the westbound train had already 



CASEY RYAN 61 

gone, which gave him a full twenty-four hours in 
Lund, even though he discounted his promise to see 
the Barrymores through. There was a train, to be 
sure, that passed through Lund in the middle of the 
night; but that was the De Luxe, standard and 
drawing-room sleepers, and disdained stopping to 
pick up plebeian local passengers. 

So Casey must spend twenty-four hours in Lund, 
there to greet men who hailed him joyously at the 
top of their voices while they were yet afar off, and 
thumped him painfully upon the shoulders when 
they came within reach of him. You may not grasp 
the full significance of this, unless you have known 
old and popular stage drivers, soft of heart and 
hard of fist. Then remember that Casey had spent 
months on end alone in the wilderness, working like 
a lashed slave from sunrise to dark, trying to wrest 
a fortune from a certain mountain side. Remember 
how an enforced isolation, coupled with rough fare 
and hard work, will breed a craving for lights and 
laughter and the speech of friends. Remember that, 
and don't overlook the twenty-five thousand dol 
lar check that Casey had pinned safe within his 
pocket. 

Casey had unthinkingly tossed his last dime into 
his hat for the show people at Rhyolite. He had 
not even skinned the coyote, whose hide would have! 
been worth ten or fifteen dollars, as hides go. In 
the stress of pulling out of the mud at Red Lake, 
he had forgot all about the dead animal in his ton- 
neau until his nose reminded him next morning that 
it was there. Then he had hauled it out by the tail 



62 CASEY RYAN 

and thrown it away. He was broke, except that he 
-had that check in his pocket. 

Of course it was easy enough for Casey to get 
money. He went to the store that sold everything 
from mining tools to green perfume bottles tied 
with narrow pink ribbon. The man who owned 
that store also owned the bank next door, and a 
little place down the street which was called laconi 
cally The Club. One way or another, Dwyer man 
aged to feel the money of every man who came into 
X,und and stopped there for a space. He was an 
honest man, too, or as honest as is practicable for 
a man in business. 

Dwyer was tickled to see Casey again. Casey 
was a good fellow, and he never needed his memory 
jogged when he owed a man. He paid before he 
was asked to pay, and that was enough to make any 
merchant love him. He watched Casey unpin his 
vest pocket and remove the check, and he was not 
too eager to inspect it. 

. " Good ? Surest thing you know. Want it 
cashed, or applied to your old checking account? 
It's open yet, with a dollar and sixty-seven cents to 
your credit, I believe. I'll take care of it, though 
it's after banking hours." 

Casey was foolish. " I'll take a couple of hun 
dred, if it's handy, and a check book. I guess you 
can fix it so I can get what money I want in Los. 
I'm goin' to have one hell of a time when I git 
there. I've earned it." 

Dwyer laughed while he inked a pen for Casey's 
endorsement. " Hop to it, Casey. Glad you made 



CASEY RYAN 63 

good. But you'd better let me put part of that in a 
savings account, so you can't check it out. You 
know, Casey remember your weak point." 

" Aw that's all right ! Don't you worry none 
about Casey Ryan! Casey'll take care of himself 
he's had too many jolts to want another one. 
Say, gimme a pair of them socks before you go in 
the bank. I'll pay yuh," he grinned, " when yuh 
come back with some money. Ain't got a cent on 
me, Dwyer. Give it all away. Twelve dollars and 
something. Down to twenty-five thousand dollars 
and my Ford auty-mo-bile and Bill's goin' to buy- 
that off me as soon as he looks her over to see what's 
busted and what ain't." 

Dwyer laughed again as he unlocked the door be 
hind the overalls and jumpers and disappeared into 
his bank. Presently he returned with a receipted 
duplicate deposit slip for twenty-four thousand eight 
hundred dollars, a little, flat check book and two 
hundred dollars in worn bank notes. " You ought 
to be independent for the rest of your life, Casey. 
This is a fine start for any man," he said. 

Casey paid for the socks and slid the change for 
a ten-dollar bill into his overalls pocket, put the 
check book and the bank notes away where he had 
carried the check, and walked out with his hat very 
much tilted over his right eye and his shoulders 
swaggering a little. You can't blame him for that, 
can you? 

As he stepped from the store he met an old ac 
quaintance from Pinnacle. There was only one 
thing to do in a case like that, and Casey did it quite 



64 CASEY RYAN 

naturally. They came out of The Club wiping their 
lips, and the swagger in Casey's shoulders was more 
pronounced. 

Face to face Casey met the show lady, which was 
what he called her in his mind. She had her arms 
clasped around a large paper sack full of lumpy 
things, and her eyes had a strained, anxious look. 

" Oh, Mister ! I've been looking all over for you. 
They say we can't show in this town. The license 
for road shows is fifty dollars, to begin with, and 
I've been all over and can't find a single place where 
we could show, even if we could pay the license. 
Ain't that the last word in hard luck? Now what 
to do beats me, Mister. We've just got to have the 
old car tinkered up so it'll carry us on to the next 
place, wherever that is. Jack says he must have a 
new tire by some means or other, and he was count 
ing on what we'd make here. And up at that other 
place you've mentioned the mumps have broke out 
and they wouldn't let us show for love or money. 
A man in the drug store told me, Mister. We cer 
tainly are in a hole now, for sure ! If we could give 
a benefit for something or somebody. Those men 
back there said you're so popular in this town, I 
believe I've got an idea. Mister, couldn't you have 
bad luck, or be sick or something, so we could give 
a benefit for you ? People certainly would turn out 
good for a man that's liked the way they say you 
are. I'd just love to put on a show for you. 
Couldn't we fix it up some way ? " 

Casey looked up and down the street and found 
it practically empty. Lund was dining at that hour. 



CASEY RYAN 65 

And while Casey expected later the loud greetings 
and the handshakes and all, as a matter of fact he 
had thus far talked with Bill, the garage man, with 
Dwyer, the storekeeper and banker, and with the 
man from Pinnacle, who was already making ready 
to crank his car and go home. Lund, as a town, 
was yet unaware of Casey's presence. 

Casey looked at the show lady, found her gazing 
at his face with eyes that said please in four lan 
guages, and hesitated. 

" You could git up a benefit for the Methodist 
.church, mebby," he temporized. " There's a 
church of some kind here I guess it's a Metho 
dist. They most generally are." 

"We'd have to split with them if we did," the 
show lady objected practically. " Oh, we're stuck 
worse than when we was back there in the mud! 
We'd only have to pay five dollars for a six-months' 
theater license, which would let us give all the shows 
we wanted to. It's a new law that I guess you 
didn't know anything about," she added kindly. 
" You certainly wouldn't have insisted on us coming 
if you'd knew about the license." 

" It's a year, almost, since I was here," Casey 
admitted ; " I been put prospecting." 

" Well, we can just work it fine I Can't we go 
somewhere and talk it over? I've got a swell idea, 
Mister, if you'll just listen to it a minute, and it'll 
certainly be a godsend to us to be able to give our 
show. We've got some crutches amongst our stage 
props, and some scar patches, Mister, that would 
certainly make you up fine as a cripple. Wouldn't 



66 CASEY RYAN 

they believe it, Mister, if it was told that you had 
been in an accident and got crippled for life? " 

In spite of his embarrassment, Casey grinned. 
" Yeah, I guess they'd believe it, all right," he ad 
mitted. " They'd likely be tickled to death to see 
me goin' around on crutches." He cast a hasty 
thought back into his past, when he had driven a 
careening stage between Pinnacle and Lund, strew 
ing the steep trail with wreckage not his own. 
" Yeah, it'd tickle 'em to death. Them that's rode 
with me," he concluded. 

" Oh, you certainly are a godsend ! Duck outa 
sight somewhere while I go tell Jack dear that we've 
found a way open for us to show, after all!" 
While Casey was pulling the sag out of his jaw so 
that he could protest, could offer her money, do 
anything save what she wanted, the show lady dis 
appeared. Casey turned and went back into The 
Club, remained five minutes perhaps and then walked 
very circumspectly across the street to Bill's" garage. 
It was there that the Barrymores found him when 
they came seeking with their dilapidated old car, 
their crutches, their grease paint and scar patches, 
to make a cripple of Casey whether he would or no. 

Bill fell uproariously in with the plan, and Dwyer, 
stopping at the garage on his way home to dinner, 
thought it a great joke on Lund and promised to help 
the benefit along. Casey, with three drinks under 
his belt and his stomach otherwise empty, wanted to 
sing, 

"Hey, ole Bill! Can-n yuh play the fiddle-o? 
Yes, by" 



CASEY RYAN 67 

and stuck there because of the show lady. Casey 
wouldn't have recognized Trouble if it had walked 
up and banged him in the eye. He said sure, he'd 
be a cripple for the lady. He'd be anything once, 
and some things several times if they asked him in 
the right way. And then he gave himself into the 
hands of Jack dear. 



CHAPTER VIII 

Casey looked battered and sad when the show 
people were through with him. He had expected 
bandages wound picturesquely around his person, 
but the Barrymores were more artistic than that. 
Casey's right leg was drawn up at the knee so that 
he could not put his foot on the ground when he 
tried, and he did not know how the straps were 
fastened. His left shoulder was higher than his 
right shoulder, and his eyes were sunken in his head 
and a scar ran down along his temple to his left 
cheek bone. When he looked in the glass which 
Bill brought him, Casey actually felt ill. They told 
him that he must not wash his face, and that his 
week's growth of beard was a blessing from heaven. 
The show lady begged him, with dew on her lashes, 
to play the part faithfully, and they departed, very 
happy over their prospects. 

Casey did not know whether he was happy or not. 
With Bill to encourage him and give him a lift over 
the gutters, he crossed the street to a restaurant and 
ordered largely of sirloin steak and French fried 
potatoes. After supper there was a long evening 
to spend quietly on crutches, and The Club was just 
next door. A man can always spend an evening 
very quickly at The Club or he could in the wet 
days if his money held out. Casey had money 



CASEY RYAN 69 

enough, and within an hour he didn't care whether 
he was crippled or not. There were five besides 
himself at that table, and they had unanimously 
agreed to remove the lid. Moreover, there was a 
crowd ten deep around that particular table. For 
the news had gone out that here was Casey Ryan 
back again, a hopeless cripple, playing poker like a 
drunken Rockefeller and losing as if he liked to lose. 

At eight o'clock the next morning Bill came in 
to tell Casey that the show people had brought up 
their car to be fixed, and was the pay good ? Casey 
replied without looking up from his hand, which 
held a pair of queens which interested him. He'd 
stand good, he said, and Bill gave a grunt and went 
Off. 

At noon Casey meant to eat something. But an 
other man had come into the game with a roll of 
money and a 'boastful manner. Casey rubbed his 
cramped leg and hunched down in his chair again 
and called for a stack of blues. Casey, I may as 
well confess, had been calling for stacks of blues 
and reds and whites rather often since midnight. 

At four in the afternoon Casey hobbled into the 
restaurant and ate another steak and drank three 
cups of black coffee. He meant to go across to the 
garage and have Bill hunt up the Barrymores and 
get them to unstrap him for awhile, but just as he 
was lifting his left crutch around the edge of the 
restaurant door, two women of Lund came up and 
began to pity him and ask him how it ever hap 
pened. Casey could not remember, just at the mo 
ment, what story he had already told of his accident. 



70 CASEY RYAN 

He stuttered a strange thing for an Irishman to 
do, by the way and retreated into The Club, 
where they dared not follow. 

" H'lo, Casey! Give yuh a chance to win back 
some of your losin's, if you're game to try it again," 
called a man from the far end of the room. 

Casey swore and hobbled back to him, let him 
self stiffly down into a chair and dropped his 
crutches with a rattle of hard wood. Being a crip 
ple was growing painful, besides being very incon 
venient. The male half of Lund had practically 
suspended business that day to hover around him and 
exchange comments upon his looks. Casey had re 
ceived a lot of sympathy that day, and only the fact 
that he had remained sequestered behind the cur 
tained arch that cut across the rear of The Club 
saved him from receiving a lot more. But of course 
there were mitigations. Since walking was slow 
and awkward, Casey sat. And since he was not a 
man to sit and twiddle thumbs to pass the time, 
Casey played poker. That is how he explained it 
afterwards. He had not intended to play poker for 
twenty-four hours, but tie up a man's leg so he can't 
walk, and he's got to do something. 

Wherefore Casey played, and did not win back 
what he had lost earlier in the day. Daylight grew 
dim, and some one came over and lighted a hanging 
gasoline lamp that threw into tragic relief the 
painted hollows under Casey's eyes, which were be 
ginning to look very bloodshot around the blue of 
them. 

Once, while the bartender was bringing drinks 



CASEY RYAN 71 

you are not to infer that Casey was drunk; he was 
merely a bit hazy over details Casey pulled out 
his dollar watch and looked at it. Eight-thirty 
the show must be pretty well started, by now. He 
thought he might venture to hobble over to Bill's 
and have those dog-gone straps taken off before he 
was crippled for sure. But he did not want to do 
anything to embarrass the show lady. Besides, he 
had lost a great deal of money, and he wanted to win 
some of it back. He still had time to make that 
train, he remembered. It was reported an hour late, 
some one said. 

So Casey rubbed his strapped leg, twisting his 
face at the cramp in his knee and letting his com 
panions believe that his accident had given him a 
heritage of pain. He hitched his lifted shoulder into 
an easier position and picked up another unfortunate 
assortment of five cards. 

At ten o'clock Bill, the garage man, came and 
whispered something to Casey, who growled an oath 
and reached almost unconsciously for his crutches 
before trying to get up; so soon is a habit born in 
a man. 

" What they raisin' thunder about ? " he asked 
apathetically, when Bill had helped him across the 
gutter and into the street. " Didn't the crowd turn 
out like they expected ? " Casey's tone was dismal. 
You simply cannot be a cripple for twenty-four 
hours, and sit up playing unlucky poker all night 
and all day and well into another night, without 
losing some of your animation; not even if you are 
Casey Ryan. " Hell, I missed that train again," 



72 CASEY RYAN 

he added heavily, when he heard it whistle into the 
railroad yard. 

" Too bad. You oughta be on it, Casey," Bill 
said ominously. 

At the garage the Barrymores were waiting for 
him in their stage clothes and make-up. The show 
lady had wept seams down through her rouge, and 
the beads on her lashes had clotted unbecomingly. 

" Mister, you certainly have wished a sorry deal 
on to us," she exclaimed, when Casey came hobbling 
through the doorway. " Fifteen years on the stage 
and this never happened to us before. We've took 
our bad luck with our good luck and lived honest 
and respectable and self-respecting, and here, at last, 
ill fortune has tied the can on to us. I know you 
meant well and all that, Mister, but we certainly 
have had a raw deal handed out to us in this town. 
We certainly have ! " 

" We got till noon to-morrow to be outa the 
county," croaked Jack dear, shifting his Adam's 
apple rapidly. " And that's real comedy, ain't it, 
when your damn county runs clean over to the Utah 
line, and we can't go back the way we come, or 
and we can't go anywhere till this big slob here puts 
our car together. He's got pieces of it strung from 
here around the block. Say, what kinda town is 
this you wished on to us, anyway? Holding night 
court, mind you, so they could can us quicker ! " 

The show lady must have seen how dazed Casey 
looked. " Maybe you ain't heard the horrible deal 
they handed us, Mister. They stopped our show 
before we'd raised the curtain, and it was a sev- 



CASEY RYAN 73 

enty-five dollar house if it was a cent! " she wailed. 
" They had a bill as long as my arm for license 
we couldn't get by with the five-dollar one and for 
lights and hall rent and what-all. There wasn't 
enough money in the house to pay it! And they 
was going to send us to jail ! The sheriff acted any 
thing but a gentleman, Mister, and if you ever lived 
in this town and liked it, I must say I question your 
taste ! " 

" We wouldn't use a town like this for a garbage 
dump, back home," cut in Jack with all the contempt 
he could master. 

" And they hauled us over to their dirty old Jus 
tice of the Peace, and he told us he'd give us thirty 
days in jail if we was in the county to-morrow noon, 
and we don't know how far this county goes, either 
way!" 

" Fifty miles to St. Simon," Bill told them com 
fortingly. " You can make it, all right " 

" We can make it, hey? How're we going to 
make it, with our car layin' around all over your 
garage?" Jack's tone was arrogant past belief. 

Casey was fumbling for strap buckles which he 
could not reach. He was also groping through his 
colorful, stage-driver's vocabulary for words which 
might be pronounced in the presence of a lady, and 
finding mighty few that were of any use to him. 
The combined effort was turning him a fine purple 
when the lady was seized with another brilliant idea. 

" Jack dear, don't be harsh. The gentleman 
meant well and I'll tell you, Mister, what let's 
do! Let's trade cars till the man has our car re- 



74 CASEY RYAN 

paired. Your car goes just fine, and we can load 
our stuff in and get away from this horrible town. 
Why, the preacher was there and made a speech and 
said the meanest things about you, because you was 
having a benefit and at the same identical time you 
was setting in a saloon gambling. He said it was 
an outrage on civilization, Mister, and an insult to 
the honest, hard-working people in Lund. Them 
was his very words." 

"Well, hell!" Casey exploded abruptly. "I'm 
honest and hard-workin' as any damn preacher. 
You can ask anybody ! " 

" Well, that's what he said, anyhow. We cer 
tainly didn't know you was a gambler when we of 
fered to give you a benefit. We certainly never 
dreamed you'd queer us like that. But you'll do 
us the favor to lend us your car, won't you ? You 
wouldn't refuse that, and see me and little Junior 
languishin' in jail when you know in your heart " 

" Aw, take the darn car ! " muttered Casey dis 
tractedly, and hobbled into the garage office where 
he knew Bill kept liniment. 

Five minutes, perhaps, after that, Casey opened 
the office door wide enough to fling out an assort 
ment of straps and two crutches. 

The show lady turned and made a motion which 
Casey mentally called a pounce. " Oh, thank you, 
Mister! We certainly wouldn't want to go off and 
forget these props. Jack dear has to use them in a 
comedy sketch we put on sometimes when we got a 
good house." 

Casey banged the door and said something ex- 



CASEY RYAN 75 

teedingly stage-driverish which a lady should by no 
means overhear. 

Sounds from the rear of the garage indicated that 
Casey's Ford was r'arin' to go, as Casey frequently 
expressed it. Voices were jumbled in the tones of 
suggestions, commands, protest. Casey heard the 
show lady's clear treble berating Jack dear with thin 
politeness. Then the car came snorting forward, 
paused in the wide doorway, and the show lady's 
voice called out clearly, untroubled as the voice of a 
child after it has received that which it cried for. 

" Well, good-by, Mister ! You certainly are a 
godsend to give us the loan of your car! " There 
was a buzz and a splutter, and they were gone 
gone clean out of Casey's life into the unknown 
whence they had come. 

Bill opened the door gently and eased into the 
office, sniffing liniment. The painted hollows under 
Casey's eyes gave him a ghastly look in the lamp 
light when he lifted his face from examining a 
chafed and angry knee. Bill opened his mouth for 
speech, caught a certain look in Casey's eyes and 
did not say what he had intended to say. Instead : 

" You better sleep here in the office, Casey. I've 
got another bed back of the machine shop. I'll lock 
up, and if any one comes and rings the night bell 
well, never mind. I'll plug her so they can't 
ring her." The world needs more men like Bill. 

Even after an avalanche, human nature cannot 
resist digging in the melancholy hope of turning up 
grewsome remains. I know that you are all itching 



76 CASEY RYAN 

to put shovel into the debris of Casey's dreams, and 
to see just what was left of them. 

There was mighty little, let me tell you. I said 
in the beginning that twenty-five thousand dollars 
was like a wildcat in Casey's pocket. You can't 
give a man that much money all in a lump and sud 
denly, after he has been content with dollars enough 
to pay for the food he eats, without seeing him lose 
his sense of proportion. Twenty-five dollars he un 
derstands and can spend more prudently than you, 
perhaps. Twenty-five thousand he simply cannot 
gauge. It seems exhaustless. It is as if you 
plucked from the night all the stars you can see, 
knowing that the Milky Way is still there and un 
numbered other stars invisible, even in the aggregate. 

Casey played poker with an appreciative audience 
and the lid off. Now and then he took a drink 
stronger than root beer. He kept that up for a 
night and a day and well into another night. Very 
well, gather round and look at the remains, and if 
there's a moral, you are welcome, I am sure. 

Casey awoke just before noon, and went out and 
held his head under Bill's garage hydrant, with the 
water running full stream. He looked up and 
found Bill standing there with his hands in his 
pockets, gazing at Casey sorrowfully. Casey 
grinned. You can't down the Irish for very long. 

"How's she comin', Bill?" 

Bill grunted and spat. " She ain't. Not if you 
mean that car them folks wished on to you. Well, 
the tail light's pretty fair, too. And in their hurry 
the lady went off and left a pink silk stockin' in the 



CASEY RYAN 77 

back seat. The toe's out of it though. Casey, i 
you wait till you overhaul 'em with that thing they 
wheeled in here under the name of a car " 

'' Oh, that's all right, Bill," Casey grunted gamely. 
" I was goin' to git me a new car, anyway. Mine 
wasn't so much. They're welcome." 

Bill grunted and spat again, but he did not say 
anything. 

" I'll go see Dwyer and see how much I got left," 
Casey said presently, and his voice, whether you be 
lieve it or not, was cheerful. " I'm going to ketch 
that evenin' train to Los." And he added kindly, 
" Cm on and eat with me, Bill. I'm hungry." 

Bill shook his head and gave another grunt, and 
Casey went off without him. 

After awhile Casey returned. He was grinning, 
but the grin was, to a careful observer, a bit sickish. 
" Say, Bill, talk about poker I'm off it fer life. 
Now look what it done to me, Bill ! I puts twenty- 
five thousand dollars into the bank minus two 
hundred I took in money and I takes a check 
book, and I goes over to The Club and gits into a 
game. I wears the check book down to the stubs. 
I goes back and asks Dwyer how much I got in the 
bank, and he looks me over like I was a sick horse 
he had doubts about being worth doctorin', and as .if 
he thought he mebby might better take me out an' 
shoot me an' put me outa my misery. 

' Jest one dollar an' sixty-seven cents, Casey,' he 
says to me, ' if the checks is all in, which I trust they 
air! ' Casey got out his plug of chewing tobacco 
and pried off a blunted corner. " An' hell, Bill ! I 



78 CASEY RYAN 

had that much in the bank when I started," he 
finished plaintively. 

" Hell ! " repeated Bill in brief, eloquent sympathy. 

Casey set his teeth together and extracted com 
fort from the tobacco. He expectorated rumina- 
tively. 

" Well, anyway, I got me some bran' new socks, 
an' they're paid for, thank God ! " He tilted his old 
Stetson down over his right eye at his favorite, 
Caseyish angle, stuck his hands in his pockets and 
strolled out into the sunshine. 



CHAPTER IX 

"At that," said Bill, grinning a little, "you'll 
know as much as the average garage-man. What 
ain't reformed livery-stable men are second-hand 
blacksmiths, and a feller like you, that has drove 
stage for fifteen year " 

" Twenty," Casey Ryan corrected jealously. 
* Six years at Cripple Creek, and then four in Yel 
lowstone, and I was up in Montana for over five 
years, driving stage from Dry Lake to Claggett and 
from there I come to Nevada " 

" Twenty," Bill conceded without waiting to hear 
more, " knows as much as a man that has kept livery 
stable. Then again you've had two Fords " 

" Oh, I ain't sayin' I can't run a garage," Casey 
interrupted. " I don't back down from runnin' 
anything. But if you'd grubstake me for a year, 
instead of settin' up this here garage at Patmos, I'd 
feel like I had a better chance of makin' us both a 
piece uh money. There's a lost gold mine I been 
wantin' fer years to get out and look for. I believe 
I know now about where to hit for. It ain't lost, 
exactly. There's an old Injun been in the habit of 
packin' in high grade in a lard bucket, and nobody's 
been able to trail him and git back to tell about it. 
He's an old she-bear to do anything with, but I got 
a scheme, Bill " 



8o CASEY RYAN 

" Ferget it," Bill advised. " Now you listen to 
me, Casey, and lay off that prospectin' bug for 
awhile. Here's this long strip of desert from 
Needles to Ludlow, and tourists trailin' through like 
ants on movin' day. And here's this garage that I 
can get at Patmos for about half what the buildin's 
worth. You ain't got any competition, none what 
ever. You've got a cinch. There'll be cars comin' 
in from both ways with their tongues hangin' out, 
outa gas, outa oil, needin' this and needin' that and 
looking on that garage as a godsend " 

" Say, Bill, if I gotta be a godsend I'll go out 
somewheres and holler myself to death. Casey's off 
that godsend stuff for life; you hear me, Bill " 

" Glad to hear it, Casey. If you go down there 
to Patmos to clean up some money for you 'n' me, 
you wanta cut out this soft-hearted stuff. Get the 
money, see? Never mind being kind; you can be 
kind when you've got a stake to be it with. Charge 
'em for everything they git, and see to it that the 
money's good. Don't you take no checks. Don't 
trust nobody for anything whatever. That's your 
weakness, Casey, and you know it. You're too 
dog-gone trusting. You promise me you'll put a 
bell on your tire tester and a log chain and drag on 
your pump and jack say, you wouldn't believe the 
number of honest men that go off for a vacation 
and steal everything, by golly, they can haul away ! 
Pliers, wrenches, oil cans, tire testers say, you 
sure wanta watch 'em when they ask yuh for a 
tester ! You can lose more tire testers in the garage 
business " 



CASEY RYAN 81 

*' Well, now, you watch Casey ! When it comes 
to putting things like that over, they wanta try 
somebody besides Casey Ryan. You ask anybody 
if Casey's easy fooled. But I'd ruther go hunt the 
Injun Jim mine, Bill." 

" Say, Casey, in this one summer you can make 
enough money in Patmos to buy a gold mine. I've 
been reading the papers pretty careful. Why, they 
say tourist travel is the heaviest that ever was 
known, and this is early May and it's only beginning. 
And lemme tell yuh something, Casey. I'd ruther 
have a garage in Patmos than a hotel in Los Angeles, 
and by all they say that's puttin' it strong. Ever 
been over the road west uh Needles, Casey? " 

Casey never had, and Bill proceeded to describe 
it so that any tourist who ever blew out a tire there 
with the sun at a hundred and twenty and running 
in high, would have confessed the limitations of his 
own vocabulary. 

" And there you are, high and dry, with fifteen 
miles of the ungodliest, tire-chewinest road on either 
side of yuh that America can show. About like this 
stretch down here between Rhyolite and Vegas. 
And hills and chucks say, don't talk to me about 
any Injun packin' gold in a lard bucket. Why, 
lemme tell yuh, Casey, if you work it right and don't 
be so dog-gone kind-hearted, you'll want a five-ton 
truck to haul off your profits next fall. I'd go my 
self and let you run this place here, only I got a lot 
of credit trade and you'd never git a cent outa the 
bunch. And then you're wantin' to leave Lund for 
awhile, anyway." 



82 CASEY RYAN 

" You could git somebody else," Casey suggested 
half-heartedly. " I kinda hate to be hobbled to a 
place like a garage, Bill. And if there's anything 
gits my goat, it's patchin' up old tires. I'll run 'em 
flat long as they'll stay on, before I'll git out and 
mend 'em. I'd about as soon go to jail, Bill, as 
patch tires for tourists; I " 

" You don't have to," said Bill, his grin widen 
ing. " You sell 'em new tires, see. There won't 
be one in a dozen you can't talk into a new tire or 
two. Whichever way they're goin', tell 'em the 
road's a heap worse from there on than what it 
was behind 'em. They'll buy new tires you take 
it from me they will. And," he added virtuously, 
"you'll do 'em no harm whatever. If you got a 
car, you need tires, and a new one'll always come in 
handy sometime. You know that yourself, Casey. 

" Now, I'll put in an assortment of tires, and I'll 
trust you to sell 'em. You and the road they got to 
travel. Why, when I was in Ludlow, a feller blew 
in there with a big brute of a car 36-6 tires. 
He'd had a blow-out down the other side of Patmos 
and he was sore because they didn't have no tires 
he could use down there. He bought three tires 
three, mind yuh, and peeled off the bills to pay for 
'em! Sa-ay when yuh figure two hundred cars a 
day rollin' through, and half of 'em comin' to yuh 
with grief of some kind " 

" It's darn little I know about any car but a 
Ford," Casey admitted plaintively. " When yuh 
come to them complicated ones that you can crawl 
behind the wheel and set your boot on a .button and 



CASEY RYAN 83 

holler giddap and she'll start off in a lope, I don't 
know about it. A Ford's like a mule or a burro. 
You take a monkey wrench and work 'em over, and 
cuss, and that's about all there is to it. But you 
take them others, and I got to admit I don't know." 

" Well," said Bill, and spat reflectively, " you roll 
up your sleeves and I'll learn yuh. It'll take time 
for the stuff to be delivered, and you can learn a lot 
in two or three weeks, Casey, if you fergit that pros- 
pectin' idea and put your mind to it." 

Casey rolled a cigarette and smoked half of it, 
his eyes clinging pensively to the barren hills behind 
Lund. He hunched his shoulders, looked at Bill 
and grinned reluctantly. 

" She's a go with me, Bill, if you can't think of no 
other way to spend money. I wisht you took to 
poker more*, or minin', or something that's got ac 
tion. Stakin' Casey Ryan to a garage business looks 
kinda foolish to me. But if you can stand it, Bill, 
I can. It's kinda hard on the tourists, don't yuh 
think?" 

Thus are garages born, too many of them, as 
suffering drivers will testify. Casey Ryan, known 
wherever men of the open travel and spin their 
yarns, famous for his recklessly efficient driving of 
lurching stagecoaches in the old days, and for his 
soft heart and his happy-go-lucky ways; famous too 
as the man who invented ungodly predicaments 
from which he could extricate himself and be pleased 
if he kept his shirt on his back; Casey Ryan as the 
owner of a garage might justly be considered a joke 
pushed to the very limit of plausibility. Yet Casey 



84 CASEY RYAN 

Ryan became just that after two weeks of cramming 
on mechanics and the compiling of a reference book 
which would have made a fortune for himself and 
Bill if they had thought to publish it. 

" A quort of oil becomes lubrecant and is worth 
from five to fifteen cents more per quort when you 
put it into a two-thousand dollar car or over," was 
one valuable bit of information supplied by Bill. 
Also : " Never cuss or fight a man getting work done 
in your place. Shut up and charge him according to 
the way he acts." 

It is safe to assume that Bill would make a for 
tune in the garage business anywhere, given normal 
traffic. 

Patmos consists of a water tank on the railroad, 
a siding where trains can pass each other, a ten-by- 
ten depot, telegraph office and express and freight 
office, six sweltering families, one sunbaked lodging 
place with tent bedrooms so hot that even the soap 
melts, and the Casey Ryan garage. I forgot to men 
tion three trees which stand beside the water tank 
and try to grow enough at night to make up for the 
blistering they get during the day. The highway 
(Coast to Coast and signed at every crossroads in 
red letters on white metal boards with red arrows 
pointing to the far skyline) shies away from the 
railroad at Patmos so that perspiring travelers look 
wistfully across two hundred yards or so of lava 
rock and sand and wish that they might lie under 
those three trees and cool off. They couldn't, you 
know. It is no cooler under the trees than else 
where. It merely looks cooler. 



CASEY RYAN 85 

Even the water tank is a disappointment to the 
uninitiated. You cannot drink the water which the 
pump draws wheezingly up from some deep reser 
voir of bad flavors. It is very clear water and it has 
a sparkle that lures the unwary, but it is common 
knowledge that no man ever drank two swallows of 
it if he could help himself. So the water supply 
of Patmos lies twelve miles away in the edge of the 
hills, where there is a very good spring. One of the 
six male residents of Patmos hauls water in barrels, 
at fifty cents a barrel. He makes a living at it, too. 

One other male resident keeps the lodging place, 
I avoid the term lodging house, because this place 
is not a house. It is a shack with a sign straddling 
out over the hot porch to insult the credulity of 
the passers-by. The sign says that this place is 
" The Oasis," and the nearest trees a long rifle 
shot away, and the coolest water going warm into 
parched mouths ! 

The Oasis stands over by the highway, alongside 
Casey's garage, and the proprietor spends nine 
tenths of his waking hours sitting on the front porch 
and following the strip of shade from the west end to 
the east end, and in watching the trains go by, and 
counting the cars of tourists and remarking upon 
the State license plate. 

" There's an outfit from loway, maw," he will 
call in to his wife. " Wonder where they're headed 
fer?" His wife will come to the door and look 
apathetically at the receding dust cloud, and go back 
somewhere, perhaps to put fresh soap in the 
tents to melt. Toward evening the cars are very 



86 CASEY RYAN 

likely to slow down and stop reluctantly ; sunburned, 
goggled women and men looking the place over 
without enthusiasm. It isn't much of a place, to be 
sure, but any place is better than none in the desert, 
unless you have your own bed and frying pan with 
you, roped in dusty canvas to the back of your car. 

Alongside the Oasis stands the garage, and in the 
garage swelters Casey, during this episode. Just 
at first Bill came down from Lund and helped him 
to arrange and mark prices on his stock of tires and 
" parts " and accessories, and to remember the cata 
logue names for things so that he would recognize 
them when a car owner asked for them. 

Casey, I must explain, had evolved a system of 
his own while driving his Ford wickedly here and 
there to the consternation of his fellow men. What 
ever was not a hootin'-annie was a dingbat, and 
treated accordingly. The hootin'-annie appeared to 
be the thing that went wrong, while the dingbat was 
the thing the hootin'-annie was attached to. It was 
perfectly simple, to Casey and his Ford, but Bill 
thought it was a trifle limited and was apt to con 
fuse customers. So Bill remained three days mop 
ping his face with his handkerchief and explaining 
things to Casey. After that Casey hired a heavy- 
eyed young Mexican to pump tires and fill radiators 
and the like, and settled down to make his fortune. 



CHAPTER X 

Cars came and cars went, in heat and dust and 
some tribulation. In a month Casey had seen the 
color of every State license plate in the Union, and 
some from Canada and Mexico. From Needles 
way they came, searching their souls for words to 
tell Casey what they thought of it as far as they had 
gone. And Casey would squint up at them from 
under the rim of his greasy old Stetson and grin 
his Irish grin. 

" Cheer up, the worst is yet to come," he would 
chant, with never a qualm at the staleness of the 
slogan. " How yuh fixed for water ? Better fill 
up your canteens yuh don't wanta git caught out 
between here and Ludlow with a boilin' radiator and 
not water enough. Got oil enough? Juan, you 
look and see. Can't afford to run low on oil, 
stranger. No, ma'am, there ain't any other road 
and if there was another road it'd be worse than 
what this one is. No, ma'a'm, you ain't liable to git 
off'n the road. You can't. You'd git stuck in the 
sand 'fore you'd went the length of your car." 

He would walk around them and look at their 
tires, his hands on his hips perhaps and his mouth 
clamped shut in deep cogitation. 

" What kinda shape is your extras in ? " he would 
presently inquire. " She's a tough one, from here 
on to the next stop. You got a hind tire here that 



88 CASEY RYAN 

ain't goin' to last yuh five miles up the road." He 
would kick the tire whose character he was blacken 
ing. " Better lay in a supply of blow-out patches, 
unless you're a mind to invest in a new casing." 
Very often he would sell a tire or two, complete with 
new tubes, before the car moved on. 

Casey never did things halfway, and Bill had im 
pressed certain things deep on his mind. He was 
working with Bill's money and he obeyed Bill's 
commands. He never took a check or a promise 
for his pay, and he never once let his Irish temper 
get beyond his teeth or his blackened finger tips. 
Which is doing remarkably well for Casey Ryan, as 
you would admit if you knew him. 

At the last moment, when the driver was settling 
himself behind the wheel, Casey would square his 
conscience for whatever strain the demands of busi 
ness had put upon it. " Wait and take a good drink 
uh cold water before yuh start out," he would say, 
and disappear. He knew that the car would wait. 
The man or woman never lived who refused a drink 
of cold water on the desert in summer. Casey 
would return with a pale green glass water pitcher 
and a pale green glass. He would grin at their ex 
clamations, and pour for them water that was actu 
ally cold and came from the coolest water bag in 
side. Those of you who have never traveled across 
the desert will not really understand the effect this 
would have. Those who have will know exactly 
what was said of Casey as that car moved out once 
more into the glaring sun and the hot wind and the 
choking dust. 



CASEY RYAN 89 

Casey always kept one cold water bag and one in 
process of cooling, and he would charge as much as 
he thought they would pay and be called a fine fellow 
afterwards. He knew that. He had lived in dry, 
hot places before, and he was conscientiously trying 
to please the public and also make money for Bill, 
who had befriended him. You are not to jump to 
the conclusion, however, that Casey systematically 
robbed the public. He did not. He aided the pub 
lic, helped the public across a rather bad stretch of 
country, and saw to it that the public paid for the 
assistance. 

Casey saw all sorts and sizes of cars pass to and 
fro, and most of them stopped at his door, for gas 
or for water or oil, or perhaps merely to inquire 
inanely if they were on the right road to Needles or 
to Los Angeles, as the case might be. Any fool, 
thought Casey, would know without asking, since 
there was no other road, and since the one road was 
signed conscientiously every mile or two. But he 
always grinned good-naturedly and told them what 
they wanted him to tell them, and if they shifted 
money into his palm for any reason whatever he 
brought out his green glass pitcher and his green 
glass tumbler and gave them a drink all around and 
wished them luck. 

There were strip-down Fords that tried to look 
like sixes, and there were six-cylinder cars that 
labored harder than Fords. There were limousines, 
sedans, sport cars, and they all carried suitcases 
and canvas rolls and bundles draped over the hoods, 
on the fenders and piled high on the running boards. 



90 CASEY RYAN 

Sometimes he would find it necessary to remove a 
thousand pounds or so of ill-wrapped bedding from 
the back of a tonneau before he could get at the gas 
tank to fill it, but Casey never grumbled. He 
merely retied the luggage with a packer's hitch that 
would take the greenhorn through his whole vocabu 
lary before he untied it that night, and he would add 
two bits to the price of the gas because his time be 
longed to Bill, and Bill expected Casey's time to be 
paid for by the public. 

One day when it was so hot that even Casey was 
limp and pale from the heat, and the proprietor of 
the Oasis had forsaken the strip of shade on his 
porch and had chased his dog out of the dirt hollow 
it had scratched under the house and had crawled 
under there himself, a party pulled slowly up to the 
garage and stopped. Casey was inside sitting on the 
ground and letting the most recently filled water bag 
drip down the back of his neck. He shouted to 
Juan, but Juan had gone somewhere to find himself 
a cool spot for his siesta, so Casey got slowly to his 
feet and went out to meet Trouble, sopping his wet 
hair against the back of his head with the flat of 
his hand before he put on his hat. He squinted into 
the sunshine and straightway squared himself for; 
business. 

This was a two-ton truck fitted for camping. A. 
tall, lean man whose overalls hung wide from his 
suspenders and did not seem to touch his person 
anywhere, climbed out and stood looking at the bare 
rims of two wheels, as if he had at that moment dis 
covered them. 



CASEY RYAN 91 

" Thinkin' about the price uh tires, stranger?" 
Casey grinned cheerfully. " It's lucky I got your 
size, at that. Fabrics and cords and the differ 
ence in price is more'n made up in wear. Run yer 
car inside outa the sun whilst I change yer grief 
into joy." 

" I been havin' hard luck all along," the man com 
plained listlessly. " Geewhillikens, but it shore does 
cost to travel ! " 

Casey should have been warned by that. Bill 
would have smelled a purse lean as the man himself 
and would have shied a little. But Casey could 
meet Trouble every morning after breakfast and yet 
fail to recognize her until she had him by the collar. 

" You ask anybody if it don't ! " he agreed sympa 
thetically, mentally going over his rack of tires, not 
quite sure that he had four in that size, but hoping 
that he had five and that he could persuade the man 
to invest. He surely needed rubber, thought Casey, 
as he scrutinized the two casings on the car. He 
stood aside while the man backed, turned a wide 
half-circle and drove into the grateful shade of the 
garage. It seemed cool in there after the blistering 
sunlight, unless one glanced at Casey's thermometer 
which declared a hundred and nineteen with its in 
exorable red line. 

" Whatcha got there? Goats?" Casey's eyes 
had left the wheels of the trucks and dwelt upon a 
trailer penned round and filled with uneasy animals. 

" Yeah. Twelve, not countin' the little fellers. 
And m'wife an' six young ones all told. Makes 
quite a drag on the ole boat. Knocks thunder outa 



92 CASEY RYAN 

tires, too. You say you got my size? We-ell, I 
guess I got to have 'em, cost er no cost." 

" Sure you got to have 'em. It's worse ahead 
than what you been over, an' if I was you I'd shoe 
'er all round before I hit that lava stretch up ahead 
here. You could keep them two fer extras in case 
of accident. Might git some wear outa them when 
yuh strike good roads again, but they shore won't 
go far in these rocks. You ask anybody." 

" We-ell I guess mebby I better I don't see 
how I'm goin' to git along any other way, but " 

Casey had gone to find where Juan had cached 
himself and to pluck that apathetic youth from 
slumber and set him to work. Four casings and 
tubes for a two-ton truck run into money, as Casey 
was telling himself complacently. He had not yet 
sold any tires for a two-ton truck, and he had just 
two fabrics and two cords, in trade vernacular. He 
paid no further attention to the man, since there 
would be no bickering. When a man has only two 
badly chewed tires, and four wheels, argument is 
superfluous. 

So Casey mildly kicked Juan awake and after the 
garage jack, and himself wheeled out his four great 
pneumatic tires, and with his jackknife slit the 
wound paper covering, and wondered what it was 
that smelled so unpleasant. A goat bleated plain 
tively to remind him of their presence. Another goat 
carried on the theme, and the chorus swelled quav- 
eringly and held to certain minor notes. Within the 
closed truck a small child whimpered and then be 
gan to cry definitely at the top of its voice. 



CASEY RYAN 93 

Casey looked up from bending over the fourth 
tire wrapping. " Better let your folks git out and 
rest awhile," he invited hospitably. " It's goin' to 
take a little time to put these tires on. I got some 
cold water back there help yourself." 

" Well, I'd kinda like to water them goats," the 
man observed diffidently. " They ain't had a drop 
sence early yest-day mornin'. You got water here, 
ain't yuh? An' they might graze around a mite 
whilst we're here. Travelin' like this, I try to kinda 
give 'em a chanct when we stop along the road. It's 
been an awful trip. We come clear from Wyoming. 
How far is it from here to San Jose, Calif orny? " 

Casey had in the first week learned that it is not 
wise for a garage man to confess that he does not 
know distances. People always asked him how far 
it was to some place of which he had never heard, 
and he had learned to name figures at random very 
convincingly. He named now what seemed to him a 
sufficient number, and the man said " Gosh ! " and 
went back to let down the end gate of the trailer 
and release the goats. " You said you got water 
for 'em? " he asked, his tone putting the question in 
the form of both statement and request. 

When you are selling four thirty-six-sixes, two 
of them cords, to a man, you can't be stingy with a 
barrel of water, even if it does cost fifty cents. 
Casey told Juan to go borrow a tub next door and 
show the man where the water barrel stood. Juan, 
squatted on his heels while he languidly pumped the 
jack handle up and down, and seeming pleased than 
otherwise when the jack slipped and tilted so that 



94 CASEY RYAN 

he must lower it and begin all over again, got lan 
guidly to his bare feet and lounged off obediently. 
According to Juan's simple philosophy, to obey was 
better than to dodge hammers, pliers or monkey 
wrenches, since Casey's aim was direct and there was 
usually considerable force of hard, prospector's 
muscle behind it. 

Juan was gone a long while, long enough to walk 
slowly to the station of Patmos and back again, but 
he returned with the tub, and the incessant bleating 
of the goats stilled intermittently while they drank. 
By this time Casey had forgotten the goats, even 
with the noise of them filling his ears. 

Casey was down on his knees hammering dents 
out of the rim of a front wheel so that the new tire 
could go on. Four of the six offspring crowded 
around him, getting in the way of Casey's hammer 
and asking questions which no man could answer 
and remain normal. Casey had, while he un 
wrapped the casings, made a mental reduction in the 
price. Even Bill would throw off a little, he told 
himself, on a sale like this. Mentally he had de 
ducted twenty-five dollars from the grand total, but 
before he had that rim straightened he said to him 
self that he'd be darned if he discounted more than 
twenty. 

" Humbolt an' Greeley, you git away from there 
an' git out here an' git these goats a-grazin'," the 
lean customer called sharply from the rear of the 
garage. Humbolt and Greeley hastily proceeded to 
git, which left two unkempt young girls standing 
there at Casey's elbow so that he could not expecto- 



CASEY RYAN 95 

rate where he pleased, or swear at all. Wherefore 
Casey was appreciably handicapped in his work, and 
he wished that he were away out in the hills digging 
into the side of a gulch somewhere, sun-blistered, 
broke, more than half starving on short rations and 
with rheumatism in his right shoulder and a bunion 
giving him a limp in the left foot. He could still 
be happy 

"What yuh doin' that for?" the shrillest voice 
repeated three times rapidly, with a sniffle now and 
then by way of punctuation. 

" To make little girls ask questions," grunted 
Casey, glancing around him for the snub-nosed, 
double-headed, four-pound hammer which he called 
affectionately by the name Maud. The biggest girl 
had Maud. She had turned it upright on its handle 
and was sitting on the head of it. When Casey 
reached for it and got it, without apology or warn 
ing, the girl sprawled backward and howled. 

" Porshea, you git up from there ! Shame on 
yuh ! " A shrill woman voice, very much like the 
younger voices except that it was worn rough and 
querulous with age and many hardships, called down 
from the truck. Casey looked up, startled, and tried 
to remember just what he had said before the girls 
appeared to silence him. The woman was very 
large both in height and in bulk, and she was heav 
ing herself out of the truck in a way that reminded 
Casey oddly of a disgruntled hippopotamus he had 
once watched coming out of its tank at a circus. 
Casey moved modestly away and did not look, after 
that first glance. A truck, you will please under- 



96 CASEY RYAN 

stand, is not a touring car, and ladies who have 
passed the two-hundred-pound notch on the 
scales should remain up there and call for a step- 
ladder. 

She descended, and the jack slipped and let the 
car down with a six-inch lurch. Casey is remark 
ably quick in his motions. He turned, jumped three 
feet and caught the lady's full weight in his arms 
as she was falling toward him. Probably he would 
have caught it anyway, but then there would have 
been little left of Casey, and his troubles would have 
been finished instead of being just begun. 

He had just straightened the jack and was begin 
ning to lift the bare wheel off the ground again when 
the fifth offspring descended. Casey thought again 
of the hippopotamus in its infancy. The fifth was 
perhaps fifteen, but she had apparently reached her 
full growth, which was very nearly that of her 
mother. She had also reached the age of self -con 
sciousness, and she simpered at Casey when he as 
sisted her to alight. 

Casey was not bashful, nor was he over-fastidi 
ous; men who have lived long in the wilderness are 
not, as a rule. Still, he had his little whims, and he 
failed to react to the young lady's smile. His pale 
blue eyes were keen to observe details and even 
Casey did not approve of " high-water marks " on 
feminine beauty. 

Well, that brought the whole family to view save 
the youngest who had evidently dropped asleep and 
was left in the truck. Casey went to work on the 
wheel again, after directing mother and daughter 



CASEY RYAN 97 

to the desert water bag which swung suspended 
from ropes in the rear of the garage. 

Ten minutes later a dusty limousine stopped for 
gas and oil, and Casey left his work to wait upon 
them. There was a very good-looking girl driving, 
and the man beside her was undoubtedly only her 
father, and Casey was humanly anxious to be re 
membered pleasantly when they drove on. He 
asked them to wait and have a drink of cold water, 
and was deeply humiliated to find that both water 
bags were empty, the overgrown girl having used 
the last to wash her face. Casey didn't like her any 
the better for that, or for having accentuated the 
high-water mark, or for forcing him to apologize to 
the pretty driver of the limousine. 

He refilled the water bags and remarked pointedly 
that it would take an hour for the water to cool in 
them and that they must be left alone in the mean 
time. He did not look at the girl, but from the tail 
of his eye he saw her pull a contemptuous grimace 
at him when she thought his back safely turned. 

Wherefore Casey finished the putting on of the 
fourth tire pretty well up toward the boiling point 
in temper and in blood. I have not mentioned half 
the disagreeable trifles that nagged at him during 
the interval, his audience, for instance, that hov 
ered so close that he could not get up without collid 
ing with one of them, so full of aimless talk that he 
mislaid tools in his distraction. Juan was a pest and 
Casey thought malevolently how he would kill him 
when the job was finished. Juan went around like 
one in a trance, his heavy-lidded, opaque eyes follow- 



98 CASEY RYAN 

ing every movement of the girl, which kept her 
younger sisters giggling. But even with interrup 
tions and practically no assistance the truck stood at 
last with four good tires on its wheels, and Casey 
wiped a perspiring face and let down the jack, 
thankful that the job was done; thinking, too, that 
ten dollars would be a big reduction on the price. 
"Hf. had to count his time, you see. 

" Well, how much does it come to, mister? " the 
lord of the flock asked dolefully, when Casey called 
him in and told him that he could go at any time 
now. 

Casey told him, and made the price only five dol-" 
lars lower than the full amount, just because he 
hated to see men walk around loose in their pants, 
with their stomachs sagged in as though they never 
were fed a square meal in their lives. 

" It's a pile uh money to pay out for rubber that's 
goin' to be chewed off on these here danged rocks," 
sighed the man. 

Casey grunted and began collecting his tools, 
rescuing the best hammer he had from one of the 
girls. " I wisht it was all profit," he said. " Or 
even a quarter of it. I'm sellin' 'em close as I can 
an' git paid fer my time puttin' 'em on." 

" Oh, I ain't kickin' about the price. I'm satis 
fied with that." Men usually are, you notice, when 
they want credit. " Now I tell yuh. I ain't got 
that much money with me " 

Casey spat and pointed his thumb toward a sign 
which he had nailed up just the day before, thinking 
that it would save both himself and his customers 



CASEY RYAN 99 

some embarrassment. The sign, except that the let 
ters were not even, was like this : 

" CHECKS MUST BE CASHED 

BY THE ONER 
OR THEY. AIN'T CASHED" 

The lean man read and looked at Casey humbly. 
" Well, I ain't never wrote a check in my life. Now 
I tell yuh. I ain't got the money to pay for these 
tires, but I tell yuh what I'll do; I'm goin' on up 
to my brother he's got a prune orchard a little 
ways out from San Jose, an' he's well fixed. Now 
I'll write out an order on my brother, fer him to 
send you the money. He's good fer it, an' he'll do 
it. I'm goin' on up to help him work his place on 
shares, so I c'n straighten up with him when I 
get " 

Casey had picked up the jack again and was re 
gretfully but firmly adjusting it under the front 
axle. " That ain't the first good prospect I ever had 
pinch out on me," he observed, trying to be cheerful 
over it. He could even grin while he squinted up 
at the lean man. 

" Well, now, you can't hardly refuse to trust a 
man in my fix ! " 

" Think I can't ? " Casey was working the jack 
handle rapidly and the words came in jerks. " You 
stand there and watch me." He spun the wheel free 
and reached for his socket wrench. " I wisht you'd 



ioo CASEY RYAN 

spoke your piece before I set these darn nuts so 
tight," he added. 

The lean man turned and looked inquiringly at his 
wife. " Ain't I honest, maw, and don't I pay my 
debts? An' ain't my brother Joe honest, an' don't 
he pay his debts ? Would you think the man lived, 
maw, that would set a man with a fambly afoot 
out on the desert like this ? " 

" Nev' mind, now, paw. Give him time to think 
what it means, an' he won't. He's got a heart." 

The baby awoke and cried then, and Casey's 
heart squirmed in his chest. But he thought of Bill 
and stiffened his business nerve. 

" I got a heart ; sure I've got a heart. You ask 
anybody if Casey's got a heart. But I also got a 
pardner." 

" Your pardner's likely gen'l'man enough to trust 
us, if you ain't," maw said sharply. 

" Yes, ma'am, he is. But he's got these tires to 
pay fer on the first of the month. It ain't a case 
uh not trustin' ; it's a case of git the money or keep 
the tires. I wisht you had the money she shore is 
a good bunch uh rubber I let yuh try on." 

They wrangled with him while he removed the 
tires he had so painstakingly adjusted, but Casey 
was firm. He had to be. There is no heart in the 
rubber trust; merely a business office that employs 
very efficient bookkeepers, who are paid to see that 
others pay. He removed the new tires ; that was his 
duty to Bill. By then it was five o'clock when all 
good mechanics throw down their pliers and begin 
to shed their coveralls. 



CASEY RYAN 101 

Casey was his own man after five o'clock. He 
rolled the tattered tires out into the sunlight, let 
out the air and yanked them from their rims. 
" Come on here and help, and I'll patch up your old 
tires so you c'n go on," he offered good-naturedly, 
in spite of the things the woman had said to him. 
" The tire don't live that Casey can't patch if it 
comes to a showdown." 

Before he was through with them he had donated 
four blow-out patches to the cause, and about five 
hours of hard labor. The Smith family yes, 
they were of the tribe of Smith were camped out 
side and quarreling incessantly. The goats, held in 
spasmodic restraint by Humbolt and Greeley and a 
little spotted dog which Casey had overlooked in his 
first inventory, were blatting inconsequently in the 
sage behind the garage. Casey cooked a belated 
supper and hoped that the outfit would get an early 
start, and that their tires would hold until they 
reached Ludlow, at least. " Though I ain't got 
nothin' against Ludlow," he added to himself while 
he poured his coffee. 

" Maw wants to know if you got any coffee you 
kin lend," the shrill voice of Portia sounded unex 
pectedly at his elbow. Casey jumped, an indica 
tion that his nerves had been unstrung. 

"Lend? Hunh! Tell 'er I give her a cupful." 
Then, because Casey had streaks of wisdom, he 
closed the doors of the garage and locked them from 
the inside. Cars might come and honk as long as 
they liked ; Casey was going to have his sleep. 

Very early he was awakened by the bleating, the 



102 CASEY RYAN 

barking, the crying and the wrangling of the Smiths. 
He pulled his tarp over his ears, hot as it was, to 
shut out the sound. After a long while he heard 
the stutter of the truck motor getting wanned up. 
There was a clamor of voices, a bleating of goats, 
the barking of the spotted dog, and the truck moved 
off. 

" Thank Gawd ! " muttered Casey, and went to 
sleep again. 



CHAPTER XI 

At two o'clock the next afternoon, the Smith out 
fit came back, limping along on three bare rims, 
Casey's jaw dropped a little when he saw them com 
ing, but nature had made him an optimist. Now, 
perhaps, that hungry-looking Smith would dig into 
his pocket and find the price of new tires. It had 
been Casey's experience that a man who protested the 
loudest that he was broke would, if held rigidly to 
the no-credit rule, find the money to pay for what he 
must have. In his heart he believed that Smith had 
money dangling somewhere in close proximity to 
his lank person. 

But if Smith had any money he did not betray the 
fact. He asked quite humbly for the loan of tools, 
and tube cement, and more blow-out patches, and 
set awkwardly to work mending his tattered tires. 
And once more Casey sent Juan to borrow the Oasis 
tub, and watered the goats and picked his way 
amongst the Smith offsprings and pretended to be 
deaf half of the time, and said he didn't know the 
other half. His green glass water pitcher was 
practically useless to travelers, and Juan was worse. 
A goat got away from Humbolt and Greeley and 
went exploring in the corner of the garage where 



104 CASEY RYAN 

Casey lived, and ate three pounds of bacon. You 
know what bacon costs. Maw Smith became ac 
quainted with Casey and followed him about with a 
detailed recital of her family history, which she 
thought would make a real exciting book. What 
Casey thought I must not tell you. 

That night Casey patched tires and tubes. He 
had to, you see, or go crazy. Next morning he lis 
tened to the departure of the Smith family and the 
Smith goats, and prayed that their tires would hold 
out even as far as Bagdad, though I don't see 
why, since there was no garage in Bagdad, or any 
thing else but a flag station. 

That afternoon at three o'clock, they came back 
again ! And Casey neglected to send Juan after the 
tub to water the goats. Wherefore paw sent Hum- 
bolt, and watered the goats himself from Casey's 
barrel and seemed peevish because he must. Maw 
Smith came after coffee again, and helped herself 
with no more formality than a shrill, "I'm berry 
ing some more coffee ! " sent to Casey out in 
front. 

That night Casey patched tires and tubes. 

At six o'clock Smith pounded on the back door 
and called in to Casey that he would have to have 
some gas before he started. So Casey pulled on his 
pants and gave Smith some gas, and paid the garage 
out of his own pocket. He didn't swear, either. 
He was past that. 

That afternoon Casey watched apprehensively the 
road that led west. It was two-thirty when he saw 
them coming. Casey set his jaw and went in and 



CASEY RYAN 105 

hid every blow-out patch he had in stock, and all the 
cement. 

Smith went into camp, sent Greeley after the 
Oasis tub and watered the goats from one of Casey's 
water barrels. Casey went on with his work, wait 
ing upon customers who paid, and tried not to think 
of the Smiths, although most of them were under 
foot or at his elbow. 

" Them tires you mended ain't worth a cuss," 
Smith came around finally to complain. " I didn't 
get ten mile out with 'em before I had another blow 
out. I tell yuh what I'll do. I'll trade yuh goats 
fer tires. I got two milk goats that's worth a hun 
dred dollars apiece, mebby more, the way goats is 
selling on the Coast. I hate to part with 'em, but I 
gotta do somethin'. Er else you'll have to trust me 
till I c'n get to my brother an' git the money. It 
ain't," he added grievedly, " as if I wasn't honest 
enough to pay my debts." 

" Nope," said Casey wearily, " I don't want yer 
goats. I've had more goats a'ready than I want. 
And tires has gotta roll outa this shop paid for. We 
talked that all over, the first night." 

" What am I goin' to do, then ? " Smith inquired 
in exasperation. 

"Hell; I dunno," Casey returned grimly. "I 
quit guessin' day before yesterday." 

Smith went off to confer with maw, and Casey 
overheard some very harsh statements made con 
cerning himself. Maw Smith was so offended that 
she refused to borrow coffee from Casey that night, 
and she called her children out of his garage and 



106 CASEY RYAN 

told them she would warm their ears for them if 
they went near him again. Hearing which Casey's 
features relaxed a little. He could even meet cus 
tomers with his accustomed grin when Smith in his 
anger sent the goats over to the water tank next day, 
refusing to show any friendship for Casey by empty 
ing a water barrel for him. But he had to fire Juan 
for pouring gasoline into the radiator of a big sedan, 
and later he had to stalk that lovesick youth into the 
very camp of the Smiths and lead him back by the 
collar, and search him for stolen tools. He recov 
ered twice as many as you would believe a Mexican's 
few garments could conceal. 

Casey was harassed for two days by the loud 
proximity of the Smiths, but not one of them deigned 
to speak to him or to show any liking for him what 
ever, beyond helping themselves superciliously to the 
contents of his water barrel. On the morning of 
the third day the lean man presented his thin shadow 
and then himself at the front door of the garage, 
with a letter in his hand and a hopeful look on his 
face. 

" Well, mebby I c'n talk business to yuh now an' 
have somethin' to go on," he began abruptly. " I 
went an' sent off a telegraft to my brother in San 
Jose about you, and he's wrote a letter to yuh. My 
brother's a business man. You c'n see that much fer 
yourself. An' mebby you'll see your way clear t' 
help me leave this dod-rotten hole. Here's yer let 
ter." 

Casey held himself neutral while he read the let 
ter. As it happens that I have a copy, here it is : 



CASEY RYAN 107 

(Printed Letterhead) 

VISTA GRANDE RANCHO 

Smith Bros. 

San Jose, Calif. 
Garage Owner, Patmos, Calif. 

DEAR SIR : I am informed that my brother Eld- 
reth William Smith, having suffered the mishap to 
lose his tires at your place or thereabouts, and hav 
ing the misfortune to fall short of immediate funds 
with which to pay cash for replacement, has been 
denied credit at your hands. 

I regret that because of business requirements in 
my own business it is impossible for me to place 
the amount necessary at his immediate disposal. It 
is therefore my advise that you lend to my brother 
Eldreth William Smith such money or moneys as 
will be necessary to purchase railroad tickets for 
himself and family from Patmos to this place, and 

Furthermore that you take as security for said 
loan such motor truck and equipment etc. as he has 
now stored at your place of business. I am aware 
of the fact that a motor truck in any running condi 
tion would amply secure such loans as would pur 
chase tickets from Patmos to San Jose, and I hereby 
enclose note for same, duly made out in blank and 
signed by me, which signature will be backed by the 
signature of my brother. Upon receiving from you 
such money as he may require he will duly deliver 
note and security duly signed and filled with the 
amount. I trust this will be perfectly satisfactory 
to you as amply securing you for the loan of the 
desired amount. 

Thanking you in advance, 

Yours very Truly, 

J. PAUL SMITH. 



io8 CASEY RYAN 

In spite of himself, Casey was impressed. The 
very Spanish name of the prune orchard impressed 
him, and so did the formal business terms used by 
J. Paul Smith ; and that " thanking you in advance " 
seemed to place him under a moral obligation too 
great to shirk. There was the note, too, heavy 
green paper with a stag's head printed on it, and 
looking almost like a check. 

" Well, all right, if it don't cost too much and the 
time don't run too long," surrendered Casey re 
luctantly. " How much " 

" Fare's a little over twenty-five dollars, an' they'll 
be four full fares an' three half. I guess mebby I 
better have a hundred an' seventy-five anyway, so'st 
we kin eat on the way." 

Casey chanced to have almost that much coming 
to him out of the business, so that he would not be 
lending Bill's money. He watched the lean Smith 
fill in the amount and sign the note, identifying the 
truck by its engine and license numbers, and he went 
and borrowed fifteen dollars from the proprietor of 
the Oasis and made up the amount. There was a 
train at noon, and from his garage door he watched 
the Smith family start off across the lava rocks to 
the depot, each one laden with bundles and dis 
reputable grips, the spotted dog trotting optimisti- 
ically ahead of the party with his pink tongue draped 
over the right side of his mouth. Smith turned, 
the baby in his arms, and called back casually to 
Casey : 

" Yuh better tie up them two milk goats when 
yuh milk 'em. They won't stand if yuh don't." 



CASEY RYAN 109 

Casey's jaw sagged. He had not thought of the 
goats. Indeed, the last two days they had not 
troubled him except by their bleating at dawn. 
Humbolt and Greeley had grazed them over by the 
railroad track so that they could watch the trains 
go by. Casey looked and saw that the goats were 
still over there where they had been driven early. 
He took off his hat and rubbed his palm reflectively 
over the back of his head, set the hat on his head 
with a pronounced tilt over one eyebrow, and 
reached for his plug of tobacco. 

"Oh, darn the goats ! Me milkin' goats ! Well, 
now, Casey Ryan never milked no goats, an' he ain't 
goin' to milk no goats! You can ask anybody if 
they think't he will." 

Casey was very busy that day, and he had no dull- 
eyed Juan to do certain menial tasks about the cars 
that stopped before his garage. Nevertheless he 
kept an eye on the station of Patmos until the west 
bound train had come and had departed, and on the 
rough road between the railroad and the garage for 
another half hour, until he was sure that the Smith 
family were not coming back. Then he went more 
cheerfully about his work, now and then glancing, 
perhaps, at the truck which had been driven into the 
rear of the garage where it was very much in his 
way, but was safe from pilfering fingers. It was 
not such a bad truck, give it new tires. Casey had 
already figured the price at which he could probably 
sell it, on an easy payment plan, to the man who 
hauled water for Patmos. It was more than the 
amount of his loan, naturally. By noon he was 



no CASEY RYAN 

rather hoping the " Smith Bros." would fail to take 
up that note. 

Casey, you see, was not counting the goats at all. 
He had a vague idea that, while they were nominally 
a part of the security, they were actually of no im 
portance whatever. They would run loose until 
Smith came after them, he guessed. He did not 
intend to milk any nanny goats, so that settled the 
goat question for Casey. 

Casey simply did not know anything about goats. 
He ought to have used a little logic and not so much 
happy-go-lucky " t'ell with the goats." That is all 
very well, so far as it goes, and we all know that 
everybody says it and thinks it. But it does not 
settle the problem. It never occurred to Casey, for 
instance, that the going of Humbolt and Greeley and 
the little spotted dog would make any difference. 
It really did make a great deal, you see. And it 
never occurred to Casey that goats are domesti 
cated animals after they have been hauled around 
the country for weeks and weeks in a trailer to a 
truck, or that they will come back to the only home 
they know. 

I don't know how long it takes goats to fill up. I 
never kept a goat or goats. And I don't know how 
long they will stand around and blat before they 
start something. I don't know much more about 
goats than Casey, or didn't, at least, until he told 
me. By that time Casey knew a lot more, I suspect, 
than he could put into words. 

Casey says that he heard them blatting around 
outside, but he was busy trying to straighten a 



CASEY RYAN in 

radius rod Casey said he was taking the kinks 
outa that hootin'-annie that goes behind the front 
ex and turns the dingbats when you steer for a 
man who walked back and forth and slapped his 
hands together nervously and kept asking how long 
it was going to take, and how far it was to Barstow, 
and whether the road from there up across the 
Mojave was in good condition, and whether the 
Death Valley road out from Ludlow went clear 
through the valley and was a cut-off north, or 
whether it just went into the valley and stopped. 
Casey says that the only time he ever was in Death 
Valley it was with a couple of burros and that he 
like to have stayed there. He got to telling the man 
about his trip into Death Valley and how he just 
did get out by a scratch. 

So he didn't pay any attention to the goats until 
he went back after some cold water for the white 
little woman in the car, that looked all tuckered out 
and scared. It was then he found the whole corner 
chewed off one water bag and the other water bag 
on the ground and a lot more than the corner gone. 
And the billy was up on his hind feet with his horns 
caught in the fullest barrel, and was snorting and 
snuffling in a drowning condition and tilting the 
barrel perilously. The other goats were acting just 
like plain damn goats, said Casey, and merely look 
ing for trouble without having found any. 

Casey says he had to call the Oasis man to help 
him get Billy out of the barrel, and that even then 
he had to borrow a saw and saw off one horn 
either that, or cave in the barrel with Maud and 



H2 CASEY RYAN 

he needed that barrel worse than the billy goat 
needed two horns; but he told me that if he'd had 
Maud in his two hands just then he sure would have 
caved in the goat. 

At that, the nervous man got away without paying 
Casey, which I think rankled worse than a spoiled 
barrel of water. 

Casey told me that he aged ten years in the next 
two weeks, and lost eighty-nine dollars and a half 
in damages and wages, not counting the two water 
bags he had to replace out of his stock, at nearly four 
dollars wholesale price. When he chased the goats 
out of his back door they went around and came in 
at the front, determined, he supposed, to bed down 
near the truck. 

It was late before that occurred to him, and when 
it did he cranked up and drove the truck a hundred 
yards down the road that led to the spring. The 
goats did not follow as he expected, but stood around 
the trailer and blatted. Casey went back and 
hooked on the trailer and drove again down the road. 
The goats would not follow, and he went back to 
find that Billy had managed to push open the back 
door and had led his flock into Casey's kitchen. 
There was no kitchen left but the little camp stove, 
and that was bent so that it stood skew-gee, Casey 
said, and developed a habit of toppling over just 
when his coffee came to a boil. 

Casey told me that he had to barricade himself in 
his garage that night, and he swore that Billy stood 
on his hind feet and stared at him all night through 
the window in spite of wrenches and pliers hailing 



CASEY RYAN 113 

out upon him. However that may be, Billy couldn't 
have stood there all night, unless Casey got his dates 
mixed. For at six o'clock the Oasis man came over, 
stepping high and swinging his fists, and told Casey 
that them damn goats had et all the bedding out of 
one tent and the soap, towel and one pillow out of 
another, and what was Casey going to do about it ? 

Casey did not know, and he was famous for his 
resourcefulness too. I think he paid for the bedding 
before the thing was settled. 

Casey says that after that it was just one thing 
after another. He told me that he never would 
have believed twelve goats could cover so much 
cussedness in a day. He said he couldn't fill a radia 
tor but some goat would be chewing the baggage tied 
behind the car, or Billy would be rooting suitcases 
off the running board. One party fell in love with 
a baby goat and Casey in a moment of desperation 
told them they could have it. But he was sorry 
afterward, because the mother stood and blatted at 
him reproachfully for four days and nights without 
stopping. 

Casey swears that he picked up and threw two 
tons of rocks every day, and he has no idea how 
many tons the six families of Patmos heaved at and 
after the goats. When they weren't going headfirst 
into barrels of water they were chewing something 
not meant to be chewed. Casey asserts that it is all 
a bluff about goats eating tin cans. They don't. 
He says they never touched a can all the while he 
had them. He says devastated Patmos wished they 
would, and leave the two-dollar lace curtains alone, 



H4 CASEY RYAN 

and clotheslines and water barrels and baggage. 
He says many a party drove off with chewed bed 
ding rolls and didn't know it, and that he didn't tell 
them, either. 

You're thinking about Juan,, I know. Well, 
Casey thought of Juan the first day, and took the 
trouble to hunt him up and hire him to herd the 
goats. But Juan developed a bad case of sleeping 
sickness, Casey says, which unfortunately was not 
contagious to goats. He swears that he never saw 
one of those goats lying down, though he had seen 
pictures of goats lying down and had a vague idea 
that they chewed their cuds. Casey tried to be 
funny, then. He looked at me and grinned, and 
observed, " Hunh! Goats don't chew cuds. That's 
all wrong. They chew duds. You ask anybody in 
Patmos." So Juan slept under sagebushes and 
grease-wood, and the goats did not. 

Casey declares that he stood it for two weeks, and 
that it took all he could make in the garage to pay 
the six families of Patmos for the damage wrought 
by his security. He lost fifteen pounds of flesh and 
every friend he had made in the place except the man 
who hauled water, and he liked it because he was 
getting rich. Once Casey had a bright idea, and 
with much labor and language he loaded the goats 
into the trailer and had the water-hauler take them 
out to the hills. But that didn't work at all. Part 
of the flock came back afoot, from sheer homesick 
ness, and the rest were hauled back because they 
were ruining the spring which was Patmos' sole 
water supply. 



CASEY RYAN 115 

Casey would have shot the goats, but he couldn't 
bring himself to do anything that would offend J. 
Paul Smith of the Vista Grande Rancho. When 
ever he read the letter J. Paul Smith had written him 
he was ashamed to do anything that would lower 
him in the estimation of J. Paul Smith, who trusted 
him and took it for granted that he would do the 
right thing and do it with enthusiasm. 

"If he hadn't wrote so dog-gone polite! " Casey 
complained to me. " And if he hadn't went an' took 
it for granted I'd come through. But a man can't 
turn down a feller that wrote the way he done. 
Look at that letter! A college perfessor couldn't 
uh throwed together no better letter than that. And 
that there ' Thanking you in advance ' a feller 
can't throw a man down when he writes that way. 
You ask anybody." Casey's tone was one of rem 
iniscent injury, as if J. Paul Smith had indeed taken 
a mean advantage of him. 

One day Casey reached the limit of his endur 
ance, or perhaps of the endurance of Patmos. 
There were not enough male residents to form a 
mob strong enough to lynch Casey, but there was 
one woman who had lost a sofa pillow and two lace 
curtains; Casey did not say much about her, but I 
gathered that he would as soon be lynched as re 
monstrated with again by that woman. " Sufferin' 
Sunday! I'd shore hate to be her husband. You 
ask anybody!" sighed Casey when he was telling 
me. 

Casey moralized a little. " Folks used to look at 
the goats that I'd maybe just hazed off into the 



n6 CASEY RYAN 

brush fifty yards or so with a thousand pounds 
mebby of rocks, an' some woman in goggles would 
say, ' Oh, an' you keep goats ! How nice ! ' like as 
if it were something peaceful an' homelike to keep 
goats! Hunh! Lemme tell yuh; never drive past 
a place that looks peaceful, and jump at the idea it 
is peaceful. They may be a woman behind them 
vines poisinin' 'er husband's father. How could 
them darn tourists tell what was goin' on in Patmos ? 
They seen the goats pertendin' to graze, an' keepin' 
an eye peeled till my back was turned, an' they 
thought it was nice to keep goats. Hunh! " 

At last Casey could bear no more. He gathered 
together enough hardwood, three-inch crate slats to 
make twelve crates, and he worked for three nights, 
making them. And Casey is no carpenter. After 
that he worked for three days, with all the men in 
Patmos to help him, getting the goats into the crates 
and loaded on the truck. Then he drove over to 
the station and asked for tags, and addressed the 
crates to J. Paul Smith, Vista Grande Rancho, San 
Jose, Calif. Then he discovered that he could not 
send them except by express, and that he could not 
send them by express unless he prepaid the charges. 
And the charges on goats sent by express, was, as 
Casey put it, a holy fright. 

But he had to do it. Patmos had been led to 
believe that he would send those goats off on the 
train, and Casey did not know what would happen 
if he failed. There were the heads of the six fam 
ilies, and all the children who were of walking age, 
grouped around the crates and Casey expectantly. 



CASEY RYAN 117 

Casey went back to the garage safe and got what 
money he had, borrowed the balance from the male 
citizens of Patmos and prepaid the express. Pat- 
mos helped to load them into the first express car 
going west, and Casey felt, he said, as if some one 
had handed him a million dollars in dimes. 

Casey seemed to think that ended the story, but I 
am like the rest of you. I wanted to know what the 
Smith family did, and J. Paul Smith, and whether 
Casey kept the truck and sold it to the man who 
hauled water. 

"Who? Me? Say! D'you ever know Casey 
Ryan to ever come out anywheres but at the little 
end uh the horn ? Ain't I the bag holder pro tern ? " 
I don't know what he meant by that. I think he 
was mistaken in the meaning of " pro tern." 

" You ask anybody. Say, I got a letter sayin' 
in a gen'ral way that I'm a thief an' a cutthroat an' 
a profiteer an' so on, an' that I would have to pay 
fer the goat that was missin' that there was the 
one I give away an' that the damages to the billy 
goat was worth twenty-five dollars and same would 
be deducted from the amount of the loan. Darn 
these fancy word slingers ! " said Casey. " An' the 
day before the note come due, here comes that shoe 
string in pants with the money to pay the note minus 
the damages, and four new tires fer the truck ! Yes- 
sir, wouldn't buy tires off me, even! Could yuh 
beat that fer gall ? And he wouldn't hardly speak." 

Casey grinned and got his plug of tobacco and 
inspected the corners absently before he bit into it. 
" But I got even with 'im," he added. " I laid off 



n8 CASEY RYAN 

till he got his tires on an' I wouldn't lend him no 
tools to put 'em on with, neither. And then I looked 
up an' down the road an' seen there was no dust 
comin' an' we wouldn't be interrupted, an' I went 
up to the old skunk an' I says, ' I got a bill to colleck 
off you. Thankin' you in advance!' an' then I 
shore collected. You ask anybody in Patmos. 
Say, I bet he drove by-guess-an'-by-gosh to the 
orange belt, anyway, the way his eyes was swellin' 
up when he left ! " 

I mentioned his promise to Bill, that he would not 
fight a customer. Casey spat disgustedly. " Hell ! 
He wasn't no customer! Didn't he ship his rubber 
in by express, ruther'n to buy off me?" He 
grinned retrospectively and looked at his knuckles, 
one of which showed a patch of new skin, pink and 
yet tender. 

" ' Thankin' you in advance ! ' that's just what I 
told Mm. An' I shore got all I thanked 'im for! 
You ask anybody in Patmos. They seen 'im after 
wards." 



CHAPTER XII 

" Look there ! " Casey rose from the ground 
where he had been sitting with his hands clasped 
round his drawn-up knees. He pointed with his 
pipe to a mountain side twelve miles away but look 
ing five, even in the gloom of early dusk. " Look 
at that, will yuh! Whadda yuh say that is, just 
makin' a guess ? A fire, mebby ? " 

" Camp fire. Some prospector boiling coffee in 
a dirty lard bucket, maybe." 

Casey snorted. " It's a darn big fire to boil a 
pot uh coffee! Recollect, it's twelve miles over to 
that mountain. A bonfire a mile off wouldn't look 
any bigger than that. Would it now ? " His tone 
was a challenge to my truthfulness. 

" Wel-1, I guess it wouldn't, come to think of it." 

" Guess ? You know darn well it wouldn't. 
You watch that there fire. I ain't over there 
but if that ain't the devil's lantern, I'll walk on my 
hands from here over there an' find out for yuh." 

" I'd have to go over there myself to discover 
whether you're right or wrong. But if a fellow 
can trust his eyes, Casey " 

" Well, you can't," Casey said grimly, still stand 
ing, his eyes fixed upon the distant light. " Not 
here in this country, you can't. You ask anybody. 
You don't trust your eyes when yuh come to a dry 



120 CASEY RYAN 

lake an' you see water, an' the bushes around the 
shore reflected in the water, an' mebby a boat out 
in the middle. Do yuh? You don't trust your 
eyes when you look at them hills. They look close 
enough to walk over to 'em in half or three quarters 
of an hour. Don't they? An' didn't I take yuh in 
my Ford auty-wo-bile, an' wasn't it twelve? An' 
d'yuh trust your eyes when yuh look up, an' it looks 
like you could knock stars down with a tent pole, 
like yuh knock apples off'n trees? Sure, you can't 
trust your eyes! When yuh hit the desert, ole- 
timer, yuh pack two of the biggest liars on earth 
right under your eyebrows." He chuckled at that. 
" An' most folks pack another one under their noses, 
fer luck. Now lookit over there! Prospector 
nothin'. It's the devil out walkin' an' packin' a 
lantern. He's mebby found some shin bones an' a 
rib or two an' mebby a chewed boot, an' he stopped 
there to have his little laugh. Lemme tell yuh. 
You mark where that fire is. An' t'-morra, if yuh 
like, I'll take yuh over there. If you c'n find a 
track er embers on that slope Gawsh ! " 

We both stood staring; while he talked, the light 
had blinked out like snapping an electric switch. 
And that was strange because camp fires take a little 
time in the dying. I stepped inside the tent, fumbled 
for the field glasses and came out, adjusting the night 
focus. Casey's squat, powerful form stood per 
fectly still where I had left him, his face turned to 
ward the mountain. There was no fire on the slope. 
Beyond, hanging black in the sky, a thunder cloud 
pillowed up toward the peak of the mountain, push- 



CASEY RYAN 121 

ing out now and then to blot a star from the purple. 
Now and then a white, ragged gash cut through, but 
no sound reached up to where we were camped on 
the high mesa that was the lap of Starvation Moun 
tain. I will explain that Casey had come back to 
Starvation to see if there were not another good sil 
ver claim lying loose and needing a location monu 
ment. We faced Tippipah Range twelve miles 
away, and to-night the fire on its slope. 

" Lightning struck a yucca over there and burned 
it, probably," I hazarded, seeking the spot through 
the glasses. 

" Yeah only there ain't no yuccas on that slope. 
That's a limestone ledge formation an' there ain't 
enough soil to cover up a t'rantler. And the storm's 
over back of the Tippipahs anyhow. It ain't on 
'em." 

" It's burning up again " 

" Hit another yucca, mebby ! " 

" It looks " I adjusted the lenses carefully 
" like a fire, all right. There's a reddish cast. I 
ican't see any flames, exactly, but " I suppose I 
gave a gasp, for Casey laughed outright. 

" No, I guess yuh can't. Flames don't travel 
like that huh?" 

The light had moved suddenly, so that it seemed 
to jump clean away from the field of vision em 
braced by the glasses. I had a little trouble in pick 
ing it up again. I had to take down the glasses 
and look; and then I left them down and watched 
the light with my naked, lying eyes. They did lie ; 
they must have. They said that a camp fire had 



122 CASEY RYAN 

abruptly picked itself up bodily and was slipping 
rapidly as a speeding automobile up a bare whit( 
slide of rock so steep that a mountain goat woulc 
give one glance and hunt up an easier trail. All m) 
life I have had intimate acquaintance with camf 
fires ; I have eaten with them, slept with them, coaxec 
them in storm, watched them from afar. I though) 
I knew all their tricks, all their treacheries. I hav( 
seen apparently cold ashes blow red quite unex 
pectedly and fire grass and bushes and go racing 
away, I have fought them then with whatevei 
came to hand. 

I admit that an odd, prickly sensation at the base 
of my scalp annoyed me while I watched this fin 
race up the slope and leave no red trail behind it 
Then it disappeared, blinked out again. I openec 
my mouth to call Casey's attention to it though ] 
felt that he was watching it with that steady, squint 
ing stare of his that never seems to wink or wavei 
for a second but there it was again, come to a 
stop just under the crest of the mountain where the 
white slide was topped by a black rim capped with 
bleak, bare rock like a crude skullcap on Tippipah 
The fire flared, dimmed, burned bright again, as 
though some one had piled on dry brush. I caughl 
up the glasses and watched the light for a full 
minute. They were good glasses, I ought to have 
seen the flicker of flames; but I did not. Just the 
reddish yellow glow and no more. 

" Must be fox fire," I said, feeling impatient be 
cause that did not satisfy me at all, but having no 
other explanation that I could think of handy. " I've 



CASEY RYAN 123 

seen wonderful exhibitions of it in low, swampy 
ground 

Casey spat into the dark. " I never heard of 
lobody hoggin' down, up there on Tippipah." He 
:>ut his cold pipe in his mouth, removed it and ges- 
:ured with it toward the light. " I've seen jack-o'- 
anterns myself. You know darn well that ain't it; 
lot up on them rocks, dry as a bone. A minute 
igo you said it was lightnin' burnin' a yucca. Why 
ion't yuh come out in the open, an' say you don't 
know? Mebby you'll come closer to believin' what 
[ told yuh about that devil's lantern I follered. He's 
.it another one kinda hopin' we'll be fool enough 
to fall for it. You come inside where yuh can't 
watch it. That's what does the damage watchin' 
ind wonderin' and then goin' to see. I bet you 
tvanta strike out right now and see just what it is." 

I didn't admit it, but Casey had guessed exactly 
what was in my mind. I was itching with curiosity 
and trying to ignore the creepiness of it. Casey 
went into the tent and lighted the candle and pro 
ceeded to unlace his high hiking boots. " You come 
on in and go to bed. Don't yuh pay no attention 
to that light that's what the Old Boy plays for 
first, every time; workin' your curiosity up. You 
ask anybody. He played me fer a sucker and I told 
yuh about it, and yuh thought Casey was stringin' 
yuh. Well, I can take a joke from the devil him 
self and never let out a yip but once is enough for 
Casey! I'm goin' to bed. Let him set out there 
and hold his darn lantern and be damned ; he ain't 
going to make nothin' off'n Casey Ryan this time. 



124 CASEY RYAN 

You can ask anybody if Casey Ryan bites twice or 
the same hook." 

He got into bed and turned his face to the wal 
with a finality I could not ignore. I let it go a 
that, but twice I got up and went outside to look 
.There burned the light, diabolically like a signal fir< 
on the peak, where no fire should be. I began t( 
seek explanations, but the best of them were vague 
Electricity playing a prank of some obscure kind, 
that was as close as I could get to it, and even tha 
did not satisfy as it should have done, perhaps be 
cause the high, barren mesas and the mountains o 
bare rocks are in themselves weird and sinister, am 
commonplace explanations of their phenomena seen 
out of place. 

The land is empty of men, emptier still of habita 
tions. There are not many animals, even. A fev 
coyotes, all of them under suspicion of having 
rabies; venomous things such as tarantulas and cen 
tipedes, scorpions, rattlers, hydrophobia skunks 
Not so many of them that they are a constant men 
ace, but occasionally to be reckoned with. Grea 
sprawling dry lakes pminous in their very placidity 
dust dry, with little whirlwinds scurrying over then 
and mirages that lie to you most convincingly, paint 
ing water where there is only clay dust. Watei 
that is hidden deep in forbidding canyons, water tha 
you must hunt for blindly unless you have been tok 
where it comes stealthily out from some crevice ir 
the rocks. Indians know the water holes, and hav< 
told the white men with whom they made friends 
after a fashion for Casey tells me he never kne\\ 



CASEY RYAN 125 

a red man who was essentially noble and these 
have told others; and men have named the springs 
and have indicated their location on maps. Other 
wise the land is dry, parched and deadly and beauti 
ful, and men have died terrible, picturesque deaths 
within its borders. 

I was thinking of that, and it seemed not too in 
congruous that the devil should now and then walk 
abroad with a lantern of his own devising to make 
men shrink from his path. But Casey says, and I 
think he means it, that the light is a lure. He told 
me a weird adventure of his own to back his argu 
ment, but I thought he was inventing most of it as 
he went along. Until I saw that light on Tippipah 
I had determined to let his romancing go in at one 
ear if it must, and stop there without running out 
at the tips of my fingers. Casey has enough un 
godly adventures that are true. I didn't feel called 
upon to repeat his Irish inventions. 

But now I'm going to tell you. If you can't be 
lieve it I shall not blame you ; but Casey swears that 
it is all true. It's worth beginning where Casey 
did, at the beginning. And that goes back to when 
he was driving stage in the Yellowstone. 

Casey was making the trip out, one time, and he 
had just one passenger because it was at the end 
of the season and there had been a week of nasty 
weather that had driven out most of the sightseers 
and no new ones were coming in. This man was a 
peevish, egotistical sort, I imagine; at any rate he 
did a lot of talking about himself and his ill luck, 
and he told Casey of his misfortunes by the hour. 



126 CASEY RYAN 

Casey did not mind that much. He says he didn' 
listen half the time. But finally the fellow begar 
talking of the wealth that is wasted on folks whc 
can't use it properly or even appreciate the good for 
tune. 

To illustrate that point he told a story that se 
Casey's mind to seeing visions. The man told abou 
an old Indian who lived in dirt and a governmen 
blanket and drank bad whisky when he could ge 
it, and whipped his squaw and behaved exactly lik< 
other Indians. Yet that old Indian knew when 
gold lay so thick that he could pick out pieces o: 
crumbly rock all plastered with free gold. He wa: 
too lazy to dig out enough to do him any good. H< 
would come into the nearest town with a rusty ok 
lard bucket full of high grade so rich that th< 
storekeeper once got five hundred dollars from th< 
bucketful. He gave the Indian about twenty dol 
lars' worth of grub and made him a present of tw( 
yards of bright blue ribbon, which tickled the ok 
buck so much that in two weeks he was back witl 
more high grade knotted in the bottom of a gunn] 
sack. 

Casey asked the man why some one didn't trai 
the Injun. Casey knew that an Indian is not per 
mitted to file a claim to mineral land. He could no 
hold it, under the law, if some white man discoverec 
it and located the ground, but Casey thought tha 
some white-hearted fellow might take the claim anc 
pay the buck a certain percentage of the profits. 

The man said that couldn't be done. The ok 
buck Injun Jim, they called him was an ok 



CASEY RYAN 127 

she-bear. All the Indians were afraid of him and 
would hide their faces in their blankets when he 
passed them on his way to the gold, rather than be 
suspected by Injun Jim of any unwarranted interest 
in his destination. Casey knew enough about In 
dians to accept that statement. And white men, it 
would seem, were either not nervy enough or else 
they were not cunning enough. A few had at 
tempted to trail Injun Jim, but no one had ever suc 
ceeded, because that part of Nevada had not had 
any gold stampede, which the man declared would 
have come sure as fate if Injun Jim's mine were ever 
uncovered. 

Casey asked certain questions and learned all that 
the man could tell him, or would tell him. He 
said that Injun Jim lived mostly in the Tippipah 
district. No free gold had ever been discovered 
there, nor much gold of any kind; but Injun Jim 
certainly brought free gold into Round Butte when 
ever he wanted grub. It must have been ungodly 
rich, five hundred dollars' worth in a ten-pound 
lard bucket! 

The tale held Casey's imagination. He dreamed 
nights of trailing Injun Jim, and if he'd had any 
money to outfit for the venture he surely would have 
gone straight to Nevada and to Round Butte. He 
told himself that it would take an outsider to fur 
nish the energy for the search. Men who live in a 
country are the last to see the possibilities lying all 
around them, Casey said. It was true ; he had seen 
it work out even in himself. Hadn't he driven stage 
in Cripple Creek country and carried out gold by 



128 CASEY RYAN 

the hundred-thousand, gold that might have been 
his had he not been content to drive stage? Hadn't 
he lived in gold country all his life, almost, and 
didn't he know mineral formations as well as many 
a school-trained expert? 

But even dreams of gold fluctuate and grow vague 
before the small interests of everyday living. Casey 
hadn't the money just then to quit his job of stage 
driving and go Indian stalking. It would take 
money, .a few hundred at least. Casey at that 
time lacked the price of a ticket to Round Butte. 
So he had to drive and dream, and his first spurt of 
saving grew half-hearted as the weeks passed; and 
then he lost all he had saved in a poker game be 
cause he wanted to win enough in one night to make 
the trip. 

However, he went among men with his ears 
wide open for gossip concerning Injun Jim, and he 
gleaned bits of information that seemed to confirm 
what his passenger up in the Yellowstone had 
told him. He even met a man who knew Injun 
Jim. 

Injun Jim, he was told, had one eye and a bad 
temper. He had lost his right eye in a fight with 
soldiers, in the days when Indian fighting was part 
of a soldier's training. Injun Jim nursed a grudge 
against the whites because of that eye, and while he 
behaved himself nowadays, being old and not very 
popular amongst his own people, it was taken for 
granted that his trigger finger would never be par 
alyzed, and that a white man need only furnish him 
a thin excuse and a fair chance to cover all traces 



CASEY RYAN 129 

of the killing. Injun Jim would attend to. the rest 
with great zeal. 

Stranger still, Casey found that the tale of the 
lard bucket and the gold was true. This man had 
once been in the store when Jim arrived for grub. 
He had taken a piece of the ore in his hands. It 
was free gold, all right, and it must have come from 
a district where free gold was scarce as women. 

" We've got it figured down to a spot about fifty 
miles square," the man told Casey. " That old In 
jun don't travel long trails. He's old. And all 
Injuns are lazy. They won't go hunting mineral 
like a white man. They know mineral when they 
see it and they have good memories and can go to 
the spot afterwards. Injun Jim prob-ly run across 
a pocket somewheres when he was hunting. Can't 
be much of it he'd bring in more at a time if there 
was, and be Injun-rich. He's just figurin' on mak 
ing it hold out long as he lives. 'Tain't worth while 
trying to find it; there's too much mineral laying 
around loose in these hills." 

Casey stored all that gossip away in the back of 
his head and through all the ups and downs of the 
years he never quite forgot it. 



CHAPTER XIII 

Casey earned a good deal of money, but there are 
men who are very good at rinding original ways of 
losing money, too. Casey was one. (You should 
hear Casey unburden himself sometime upon the 
subject of garages and the tourist trade!) He 
saved money enough in Patmos to buy two burros 
and a mule, and what grub and tools the burros 
could carry. There were no poker games in Pat 
mos, and a discouraged prospector happened along 
at the right moment, which accounts for it. 

In this speed-hungry age Casey had not escaped 
the warped viewpoint which others assume toward 
travel. Casey always had craved the sensation of 
swift moving through space. His old stage horses 
could tell you tales of that ! It was a distinct come 
down, buying burros for his venture. That took 
straight, native optimism and the courage to make 
the best of things. But he hadn't the price of a 
Ford, and Casey abhors debt; so he reminded him 
self cheerfully that many a millionaire would still 
be poor if he had turned up his nose at burros, sour 
dough cans and the business end of pick and shovel, 
and made the deal. 

At that, he was better off than most prospectors, 
he told himself on the night of his purchase. He 



CASEY RYAN 131 

had the mule, William, to ride. The prospector had 
assured Casey over and over that William was 
saddle broke. Casey is too happy-go-lucky, I think. 
He took the man's word for it and waited until the 
night before he intended beginning his journey be 
fore he gave William a try-out, down in a sandy 
swale back of the garage. He returned after dark, 
leading William. Casey had a pronounced limp 
and an eyetooth was broken short off, about halfway 
to the gums, and his lip was cut. 

" William's saddle broke, all right," he told his 
neighbor, the proprietor of the Oasis. " I've saw 
horses broke like that; cow-punchers have fun in 
the c'rall with 'em Sundays, seein' which one can 
stay with the saddle three jumps. William don't 
mind the saddle at all. All he hates is anybody in 
it." Then he grinned wryly because of his hurt. 
" No use arguin' with a mule I used to be too 
good a walker." 

Casey therefore traded his riding saddle for an 
other packsaddle, and collected six coal-oil cans 
which he cleaned carefully. William was loaded 
with cans of water, which he seemed to prefer to 
Casey, though they probably weighed more. The 
burros waddled off under their loads of beans, flour, 
bacon, coffee, lard, and a full set of prospector's 
tools. Casey set his course by the stars and fared 
forth across the desert, meaning to pass through the 
lower end of Death Valley by night, on a trail he 
knew, and so plod up toward the Tippipah country. 

He was happy. He owed no man a nickel, he 
had grub enough to last him three months if he 



132 CASEY RYAN 

were careful, he had a body tough as seasoned hick 
ory, and he was headed for that great no-man's- 
land which is the desert. More, he was actually 
upon the trail of his dream that he had dreamed 
years before up in the Yellowstone. An old, secre 
tive Indian was going to find his match when Casey 
Ryan plodded over his horizon and halted beside his 
fire. 

By the way, don't blame me for showing a fond 
ness for gloom and gore when you read the names 
Casey carried in his mind the next few weeks. 
Casey crossed Death Valley and the Funeral Moun 
tains or a spur of them and headed up toward 
Spectre Range, going by way of Deadman's Spring, 
where he filled his water cans. That does not sound 
cheerful, but Casey was still fairly happy, though 
there were moments when he thought seriously of 
killing William with a rock. 

Every morning, without fail, he and William 
fought every minute from breakfast to starting time. 
From his actions you would think that William had 
never seen a pack before, and expected it to bite 
him fatally if he came within twenty feet of it. 
[You could tell Casey's camp by the manner in which 
the sagebrush was trampled and the sand scored 
with small hoof prints in a wide circle around it. 
But once the battle was lost to William for that 
day, and Casey had rested and mopped the perspira 
tion off his face and taken a comforting chew of 
tobacco and relapsed into silence simply because he 
could think of nothing more to say, William became 
a pet dog that hazed the two lazy burros along with 



CASEY RYAN 133 

little nippings on their rumps, and saw to it that 
they did not stray too far from camp. 

Casey strung into Searchlight one evening at dusk 
and camped on a little knoll behind the town hall, 
which was open beyond for grazing, and the village 
dogs were less likely to bother. Searchlight was not 
on his way, but miles off to one side. Casey made 
the detour because he had heard a good deal about 
the place and knew it as a favorite stamping ground 
of miners and prospectors who sought free gold. 
Searchlight is primarily a gold camp, you see. He 
wanted to hear a little more about Injun Jim. 

But there had been a murder in Searchlight a dark 
night or so before his coming, and three suspects 
were being discussed and championed by their 
friends. Searchlight was not in the mood for aim 
less gossip of Indians. Killings had been monoto 
nously frequent, but they usually had daylight and 
an audience to rob them of mystery. A murder 
done on a dark night, in the black shadow of an 
empty dance hall, and accompanied by a piercing 
scream and the sound of running feet was vastly 
different. 

Casey lingered half a day, bought a few more 
pounds of bacon and some matches and ten yards 
of satin ribbon in assorted colors and went his way. 

I mention his stop at Searchlight so that those 
who demand exact geography will understand why 
Casey journeyed on to Vegas, tramped its hot side 
walks for half a day and then went on by way of 
Indian Spring to the Tippipah country and his 
destination. He was following the beaten trail of 



134 CASEY RYAN 

miners, now that he was in Jim's country, and he 
was gleaning a little information from every man 
he met. Not altogether concerning Injun Jim, un 
derstand, but local tidbits that might make him a 
welcome companion to the old buck when he met 
him. Casey says you are not to believe story- 
writers who assume that an Indian is wrapped al 
ways in a blanket and inscrutable dignity. He says 
an Indian is as great a gossip as any old woman, 
once you get him thawed to the talking point. 
So he was filling his bag of tricks as he went 
along. 

From Vegas there is what purports to be an auto 
mobile road across the desert to Round Butte, and 
Casey as he walked cursed his burros and William 
and sighed for his Ford. He was four days travel 
ing to Furnace Lake, which he had made in a matter 
of hours with his Ford when he first came to Starva 
tion. 

He struck Furnace Lake just before dusk one 
night and pushed the burros out upon it, thinking he 
would have cool crossing and would start in the 
morning with the lake behind him, which would be 
something of a load off his mind. In his heart 
Casey hated Furnace Lake, and he had good reason. 
It was a place of ill fortune for him, especially after 
the sun had left it. He wanted it behind him 
where he need think no more about it and the grew- 
some crevice that cut a deep, wide gash two thirds 
of the way across it through the middle. Casey is 
not a coward, and he takes most things as a matter 
of course, but he admits that he has always hated 



CASEY RYAN 135 

and distrusted Furnace Lake beyond all the dry 
lakes in Nevada, and there are many. 

He yelled to William, and William nipped the 
nearest burro into a shambling half trot, and then 
went out upon the lake, Casey heading across at the 
widest part so that he would strike his old trail to 
Starvation Mountain on the other side. From there 
to the summit he could make it by noon on the mor 
row, he planned. Which would be the end of his 
preliminary journey and the beginning of Casey's 
last drive toward his goal; for from the top of the 
divide between Starvation Mountain country and 
that forbidding waste which lies under the calm 
scrutiny of Furnace Peak he could see the far-off 
range of the Tippipahs. 

He was a mile out on the Lake when he first 
glimpsed the light. Casey studied it while he 
walked ahead, leaving no footprints on the hard- 
baked clay. He had not known- that any road fol 
lowed just under the crest of the ridge that hid Crazy 
Woman lake, yet the light was plainly that erf an 
automobile moving with speed across the face of the 
ridge just under the summit. 

Away out in the empty land like that you notice 
little things and think about them and try to under 
stand just what they mean, unless they are per 
fectly familiar to you. One print of a foot on the 
trail may betray the lurking presence of a madman, 
a murderer, a traveling, friendly, desert dweller or 
the wandering of some one who is lost and dying 
of thirst and hunger. You like to know which, and 
you are not satisfied until you do know. 



136 CASEY RYAN 

A light moving swiftly along Crazy Woman ridge 
meant a car, and a car up there meant a road. If 
there were a road it would probably lead Casey by 
a shorter route to the Tippipahs. While he looked 
there came to his ears a roaring, as of some high- 
powered car traveling under full pressure of gas. 
The burros followed him, but William lifted his 
head and brayed tremulously three times in the dark. 
Casey had never heard him bray before, and the 
sudden rasping outcry startled him. 

He went back and stood for a minute looking at 
William, who turned tail and started back toward 
the shore they had left behind them. Casey ran to 
head him off, yelling threats, and William, in spite 
of his six water cans two of them empty broke 
into a lope. Casey glanced over his shoulder as he 
ran and saw dimly that the burros had turned and 
were coming after him, their ears flapping loosely on 
their bobbing heads as they trotted. Beyond him, 
the light still traveled towards the Tippipahs. 

Then, with an abruptness that cannot be pictured, 
everything was blotted out in a great, blinding swirl 
of dust as the wind came whooping down upon 
them. It threw Casey as though some one had 
tripped him. It spun him round and round on his 
back like an overturned beetle, and then scooted him 
across the lake's surface flat as a floor. He thought 
of the Crevice, but there was nothing he could do 
save hold his head off the ground and his two palms 
over his face, shielding his nostrils a little from the 
smother of dust. 

Sometimes he was lifted inches from the surface 



CASEY RYAN 137 

and borne with incredible swiftness. More than 
once he was spun round and round until his senses 
reeled. But all the time he was going somewhere, 
and I suspect that for once in his life Casey Ryan 
went fast enough to satisfy him. At last he felt 
brush sweep past his body, and he knew that he must 
have been swept to the edge of the lake. He 
clutched, scratched his hands bloody on the straggly 
thorns of greasewood, caught in the dark at a more 
friendly sage and gripped it next the roots. The 
wind tore at him, howling. Casey flattened his 
abused body to the hummocky sand and hung on. 

Hours later, by the pale stars that peered out 
breathlessly when the fury of the gale was gone, 
Casey pulled himself painfully to his feet and looked 
for the burros and William. Judging by his own 
experience, they had had a rough time of it and 
would not go far after the wind permitted them to 
stop. But as to guessing how far they had been 
impelled, or in what direction, Casey knew that was 
impossible. Still, he tried. When the air grew 
clearer and the surrounding hills bulked like huge 
shadows against the sky, he saw that he had been 
blown toward the ridge that guards Crazy Woman 
lake. His pack animals should be somewhere ahead 
of him, he thought groggily, and began stumbling 
along through the brush-covered sand dunes that 
bordered Furnace Lake for miles. 

And then he saw again the light, shining up there 
just under the crest of the ridge. He was glad the 
car had escaped, but he reflected that the tricky winds 
of the desert seldom sweep a large area. Their dia- 



138 CASEY RYAN 

bolic fury implies a concentration of force that must 
of necessity weaken as it flows out away from the 
center. Up there on the ridge they may not have 
experienced more than a steady blow. 

He walked slowly because of his bruises, and 
many times he made small detours, thinking that a 
blotch of shadow off to one side might be his pack 
train. But always a greasewood mocked him, wav 
ing stiff arms at him derisively. In the sage-land 
distances deceive. A man may walk unseen before 
your eyes, and a bush afar off may trick you with 
its semblance to man or beast. Casey finally gave 
up the hopeless search and headed straight for the 
light. 

It was standing still, a car facing him with its 
headlights burning, the distance so great that the 
two lights glowed as one. " An' it ain't no Ford," 
Casey decided. " They wouldn't keep the engine 
runnin' all this time, standin' still. Unless it's one 
of them old kind with lamps." 

I don't suppose you realize, many of you, just 
what that would mean to a man in the desert country. 
It is rather hard to define, but the significance would 
be felt, even by Casey in his present plight. You 
see, small cars, of the make too famous to be hurt or 
helped by having its name mentioned in a simple 
yarn like this, have long been recognized as the 
proper car for rough trails and no trails. Those 
who travel the desert most have come to the point 
of counting " Lizzie " almost as necessary as beans. 
Wherefore a larger car is nearly always brought in 
by strangers to the country, who swear solemnly 



CASEY RYAN 139 

never to repeat the imprudence. A large car, driven 
by strangers in the land, means hunters, prospectors 
from the outside brought in by some special tale of 
hidden wealth, or just plain simpletons who only 
want to see what lies over the mountain. There 
aren't many of the last-named variety up in the 
Nevada wastes. Even your nature-loving rovers 
oddly keep pretty much to the beaten trails of other 
nature lovers, where gas stations and new tires may 
be found at regular intervals. The Painted Desert, 
the Petrified Forest, the National Old Trails they 
explore, but not the high, wind-swept mesas of 
Nevada's barren land. 

A fear that was not altogether strange to him 
crept over Casey. It would be just his grinning 
enemy Ill-luck on his trail again, if that light should 
prove to be made by men hunting for Injun Jim 
and his mine. Casey used to feel a sickness in his 
middle when that thought nagged him, and he felt 
a growing anger now when he looked at the twink 
ling glow. He walked a little faster. Now that 
the fear had come to him, Casey wanted to come up 
with the men, talk with them, learn their business 
if they were truthful, or sense their lying if they 
tried to hide their purpose from him. He must 
know. If they were seeking Injun Jim, then he 
must find some way to head them off, circumvent 
their plans with strategy of his own. He had 
dreamed too long and too ardently to submit now to 
interlopers. 

So he walked, limping and cursing a little now 
and then because of his aches. Up a steep slope 



140 CASEY RYAN 

made heavy with loose sand that dragged at his feet ; 
over the crest and down the other side among rocks 
and gravel that made harder walking than the sand. 
Up another steep slope: it was heartbreaking, un 
ending as the toils of a nightmare, but Casey kept 
on. He was not worried over his own plight; not 
yet. He believed that William and his burros were 
somewhere ahead of him, since they could not cling 
to a bush as he had done and so resist the impetus of 
that terrific wind. There was a car standing on the 
ridge toward which he was laboriously making his 
way. It did not occur to Casey that morning 
might show him a rather desperate plight. 

Yet the morning did just that. Hours before 
dawn the light had disappeared abruptly, but Casey 
had no uneasiness over that. It was foolish for 
them to run down their battery burning lights when 
they were standing still, he thought. They had not 
moved off, and he had well in mind the contour of 
the ridge where they were standing. He would 
have bet good money that he could walk straight to 
the car even though darkness hid it from him until 
he came within hailing distance. 

But daylight found him still below the higher 
slope of the ridge, and Casey was very tired. He 
had been walking all day, remember, and he had 
missed his supper because he wanted to eat it with 
the lake behind him. He did not walk in a straight 
line. He was too near exhaustion to forge ahead 
as was his custom. Now he was picking his way 
carefully so as to shun the washes out of which he 
must climb, and the rock patches where he would 



CASEY RYAN 141 

stumble, and the thick brush that would claw at him. 
He would have given five dollars for a drink of 
water, but there would be water at the car, he told 
himself. People were rather particular about carry 
ing plenty of water when they traveled these wastes. 

And then he was on the ridge, and his keen eyes 
were squinted half -shut while he gazed here and 
there, no foot of exposed land surface escaping that 
unwinking stare. He took off his hat and wiped his 
face, and reached mechanically for a chew of tobacco 
which he always took when perplexed, as if it stimu 
lated thought. 

There was no car. There was no road. There 
was not even a burro trail along that ridge. Yet 
there had been the lights of a car, and after the 
lights had been extinguished Casey had listened 
rather anxiously for sound of the motor and had 
heard nothing at all. The most powerful, silent- 
running car on the market would have made some 
noise in traveling through that sand and up and 
down the washes that seamed the mountain side. 
Casey would have heard it he had remarkably 
keen hearing. 

" And that's darn funny," he muttered, when he 
was perfectly sure that there was no car, that there 
could never have been a car on that trackless ridge. 
"That's mighty damn funny! You can ask any 
body." 



CHAPTER XIV 

Other things, however, were not so funny to 
Casey as he stood staring down over the vast empti 
ness. There was no sign of his pack train, and 
without it he would be in sorry case indeed. He 
thought of the manner in which the tornado had 
whirled him round and round. Caught in a dif 
ferent set of gyrations and then borne out from the 
center flung out would come nearer it the 
burros and William might have been carried in any 
direction save his own. Into that gruesome 
Crevice, for instance. They had not been more than 
a mile from the Crevice when the storm struck. 

He glanced across to Barren Butte, rising steeply 
from the farther end of the lake. But he did not 
think of going to the mine up there, except to tell 
himself that he'd rot on the desert before he ever 
asked there for help. He had his reasons, you re 
member. A man like Casey can face humiliation 
from men much easier than he can face a woman 
who had misjudged him and scorned him. Unless, 
of course, he has a million dollars in his pocket and 
knows that she knows it. 

Having discarded Barren Butte from his plans 
rather, having declined to consider it at all he 
knew that he must find his supplies, or he must find 
water somewhere in the Crazy Woman hills. The 



CASEY RYAN 143 

prospect was not bright, for he had never heard any 
one mention water there. 

He rested where he was for awhile and watched 
the slope for the pack animals ; more particularly for 
William and the water cans. He could shoot rab 
bits and live for days, if he had a little water, but he 
had once tried living on rabbit meat broiled without 
salt, and he called it dry eating, even with water to 
wash it down. Without water he would as soon 
fast and let the rabbits live. 

A dark speck moving in the sage far down the 
slope caught his eyes, and he got up and peered that 
way eagerly. He started down to meet it hopefully, 
feeling certain that his present plight would soon 
merge into a mere incident of the trail. Sure 
enough, when he had walked for half an hour he 
saw that it was William, browsing toward him and 
limping when he moved. 

But William was bare as the back of Casey's hand. 
There was no pack, no coal-oil cans of water; only 
the halter and lead rope, that dangled and caught on 
brush and impeded William's limping progress. I 
suppose even miserable mules like company, for 
William permitted Casey to walk up and take him 
by the halter rope. William had a badly skinned 
knee which gave him the limp, and his right ear was 
broken close to his head so that the structure which 
had been his pride dropped over his eye like a wet 
sunbonnet. 

Casey swore a little and started back along Will 
iam's tracks to find the water cans. He followed 
a winding, purposeless trail that never showed the 



144 CASEY RYAN 

track of burros, and after an hour or so he came 
upon the pack and the cans. Evidently the water 
supply had suffered in the wind, for only four cans 
were with the blankets and pack saddle. 

William had felt his pack slipping, Casey sur 
mised, and had proceeded to divest himself of the 
incumbrance in the manner best known to mules. 
Having kicked himself out of it, he had undoubtedly 
discovered a leaking can supposing the cans had 
escaped thus far and had battered them with his 
heels until they were all leaking copiously. William 
had saved what he could. 

Casey read the whole story in the sand. The four 
cans were bent with gaping seams, and their sides 
were scored with the prints of William's hoofs. In 
a corner of one of them Casey found a scant half- 
cup of water, which he drank greedily. It could no 
more than ease for a moment his parched throat; it 
could not satisfy his thirst. 

After that he led William back along the trail 
until the mounting sun warned him that he was 
making no headway on his journey to the Tippipahs, 
and that with no tracks in sight he had small hope 
of tracing the burros. 

It was sundown again before he gave up hope, and 
Casey's thirst was a demon within him. He had 
wasted a day, he told himself grimly. Now it was 
going to be a fight. 

Through the day he had mechanically studied the 
geologic formation of those hills before him, and 
he had decided that the chaace for water there was 
too slight to make a search worth while. He would 



CASEY RYAN 145 

push on toward the Tippipahs. Pah, he knew, 
meant water in the Indian tongue. He did not 
know what Tippi signified, but since Indians lived 
in the Tippipah range he was assured that the water 
was drinkable. So he got stiffly to his feet, studied 
again the darkling skyline, sent a glance up at the 
first stars, and turned his face and William's reso 
lutely toward the Tippipahs. 

He had applied first aid to William's knee in the 
form of chewed tobacco, which if it did no more at 
least discouraged the pestering flies. Now he col 
lected a ride for his pay. He had reasoned that 
William was probably subdued to the point of per 
mitting the liberty, and that he had other things to 
think of more important than protecting his mulish 
dignity. Casey guessed right. William merely 
switched his tail pettishly, as mules will, and went 
on picking his way through brush and rocks along 
tlie ridge. 

It was perhaps nine o'clock when Casey saw the 
light. William also spied it and stopped still, his 
long left ear pointed that way, his broken right ear 
dropping over his eye. William lifted his nose and 
brayed as if he were tearing loose all his vitals and 
the operation hurt like the mischief. Casey kicked 
him in the flanks and urged him on. It must be a 
camp fire, Casey thought. He did not connect it 
with that moving light he had seen the night before ; 
that phantom car was a mystery which he would 
probably never solve, and in Casey's opinion it had 
nothing to do with a camp fire that twinkled upon a 
distant hilltop. 



146 CASEY RYAN 

From the look of it, Casey judged that it was 
perhaps eight miles off, possibly less. But there 
was a rocky canyon or two between them, and Will 
iam was lame and Casey was too exhausted to walk 
more than half a mile before he must lie down and 
own himself whipped. Casey Ryan had never done 
that for a man, and he did not propose to do it for 
Nature. He thought that William ought to have 
enough stamina to make the trip if he were given 
time enough. And at the last, if William gave out, 
then Casey would manage somehow to walk the rest 
of the way. It all depended upon giving William 
time enough. 

You know, mules are the greatest mind readers 
in the world. I have always heard that, and now 
Casey swears that it is so. William immediately 
began taking his time. Casey told me that a turtle 
starting nose to nose with William would have had 
to pull in his feet and wait for him every half mile 
or so. William must have been very thirsty, too. 

The light burned steadily, hearteningly. When 
ever they crawled to high ground where a view was 
possible, Casey saw it there, just under a certain star 
which he had used for a marker at first. And when 
ever William saw the light he brayed and tried to 
swing around and go the other way. But Casey 
would not permit that, naturally. Nor did he won 
der why William acted so queerly. You never 
wonder why a mule does things; you just fight it 
out and are satisfied if you win, and let it go at that. 

Casey does not remember clearly the details of 
that night. He knows that during the long hours 



CASEY RYAN 147 

William balked at a particularly steep climb, and 
that Casey was finally obliged to get off and lead 
the way. It established an unfortunate precedent, 
for William refused to let Casey on again, and Casey 
was too weak to mount in spite of William. They 
compromised at last ; that is, they both walked. 

The light went out. Moreover, Casey's star that 
he had used to mark the spot moved over to the west 
and finally slid out of sight altogether. But Casey 
felt sure of the direction and he kept going doggedly 
toward the point where the light had been. He says 
there wasn't a rod where a snail couldn't have outrun 
him, and when the sky streaked red and orange and 
the sun came up, he stood still and looked for a 
camp,and when he saw nothing at all but bare rock 
and bushes of the kind that love barrenness, he 
crawled under the nearest shade, tied William fast 
to the bush and slept. You don't realize your thirst 
so much when you are asleep, and you are saving 
your strength instead of wearing it out in the hot 
sun. He remained there until the sun was almost 
out of sight behind a high peak. Then he got up, 
untied William, mounted him -without argument 
from either, and went on, keeping to the direction 
in which he had seen the light. 

Even the little brpwn mule was having trouble 
now. He wavered, he picked his footing with great 
care when a declivity dipped before him ; he stopped 
every few yards and rested when he was making a 
climb. As for Casey, he managed to hold himself 
on the narrow back of William, but that was all. 
He understood perfectly that the next twenty-four 



148 CASEY RYAN 

hours would tell the story for him and for William. 
He had a sturdy body however and a sturdy brain 
that had never weakened its hold on facts. So he 
clung to his reason and pushed fear away from him 
and said doggedly that he would go forward as long 
as he could crawl or William could carry him, and 
he would die or he would not die, as Fate decided 
for him. He wondered, too, about the camp whose 
fire he had seen. 

Then he saw the light. This time it burned sud 
denly clear and large and very bright, away off to 
the left of him where he had by daylight noticed a 
bare shale slide. The light seemed to stand in the 
very center of the slide, no more than a mile away. 

William stopped when Casey pulled on the reins 
he had fashioned from the lead rope, and turned 
stiffly so that he faced the light. Casey kicked him 
gently with his heels to urge him forward, for in 
spite of what his reason told him about the shale 
slide his instinct was to go straight to the light. But 
William began to shiver and tremble, and to swing 
slowly away. Casey tried to prevent it, but the 
mule came out in William. He laid his good ear 
flat along his neck as far as it would go, and took 
little, nipping steps until he had turned with his tail 
to the light. Then he thrust his fawn-colored muz 
zle to the stars and brayed and brayed, his good ear 
working like a pump handle as he tore the sounds 
loose from his vitals. 

Casey cursed him in a whisper, having no voice 
left. He kicked William in the flanks, having no 
other means of coercion at hand. But kicking never 



CASEY RYAN 149 

yet altered the determination of a mule, and cursing 
a mule in a whisper is like blowing your breath 
against the sail of a becalmed sloop. William kept 
his tail toward the light, and furthermore he mo 
mentarily drew his tail farther and farther from that 
spot. Now and then he would turn his head and 
glance back, and immediately increase his pace a 
little. He was long past the point where he had 
strength to trot, but he could walk, and he did walk 
and carry Casey on his back, still whispering con 
demnation. 

They did not travel all night. Casey looked at the 
Big Dipper and judged it was midnight when they 
stopped on the brink of a deep canyon, halted there 
in William's sheer despair because the light appeared 
suddenly on the high point of a hill directly ahead 
of them. William's voice was gone like Casey's, 
so that he, too, cursed in a whisper with a spasmodic 
indrawing of ribs and a wheezing in his throat. 

When it was plain that the mule had stopped 
permanently, Casey slid off William's back and lay 
down without knowing or caring much whether he 
would ever get up again. He said he wasn't hungry 
much; but his mouth was too full of tongue, he 
added grimly. 

He lay and watched through half -closed, staring 
eyes the light that mocked him so. His dulling 
senses told him that it was no camp fire, nor any 
light made by human hands. He did not know what 
it was. He didn't care any more. William 
crumpled up and lay down beside him, breathing 
heavily. It was getting close to the end of things. 



ISO CASEY RYAN 

Casey knew it, and he thinks William knew it too. 

The sun found them there and forced Casey to 
move. He sat up painfully, the fight to live not yet 
burned out of him, and gazed dully at the forbidding 
hills that closed around him like great, naked rock 
demons watching to see him die for want of the 
things they withheld. Where he remembered the 
light to have been when last he saw it was bleak, bare 
rock. It was a devil's light and there was nothing 
friendly or human about it. 

He looked down into the canyon which William 
had refused to enter. A faint interest revived with 
in him because of a patch of green. Trees, but 
they might easily be junipers which will grow in dry 
canyons as readily, it would seem, as in any other. 
He kept looking, because green was a great relief 
from the monotonous gray and black and brown of 
the hills. It seemed to him after awhile that he 
saw a small splotch of dead white. 

In the barren lands two things will show white in 
the distance; a white horse and a tent of white can 
vas. Casey shifted his position and squinted long 
at the spot, then got up slowly with the help of a 
bush and took William by the rope. William was 
on his feet, standing with head dropped, apparently 
half asleep. Casey knew that William was simply 
waiting until he could no longer stand. 

Together they wabbled down the sloping canyon 
side and over a grassy bottom to the trees, which 
were indeed juniper trees, but thriftier looking than 
their brethren of the dry places. There was water, 
for William smelled it at last and hurried forward 



CASEY RYAN 151 

with more briskness than Casey could muster, eager 
though he was to reach the tent he saw standing 
there under the biggest juniper. 

Beside the tent was a water bucket of bright, new 
tin. A white granite dipper stood in it. Casey 
drank sparingly and stopped when he would have 
given all he ever possessed in the world to have gone 
on drinking until he could hold no more. But he 
was not yet crazy with the thirst. So he stopped 
drinking, filled a white granite basin and soused his 
head again and again, sighing with sheer ecstasy 
at the drip of water down his back and chest. After 
a little he drank two swallows more, put down the 
dipper and went into the tent. 



CHAPTER XV 

We can all remember certain experiences that fill 
us with incredulity even while we admit that the 
facts could be proved before a jury of twelve men. 
So Casey Ryan, having lost his outfit and come so 
near to death that he could barely keep his feet un 
der him, walked into a tent and stood there thinking 
it couldn't be true. 

A folding camp chair stood near the opening, and 
Casey sat down from sheer weakness while he looked 
about him. The tent was a twelve-by- fourteen, 
which is a bit larger than one usually carries in a 
pack outfit. It had a canvas floor soiled in strips 
where the most walking had been done, but white 
under table and beds, which proved its newness. 
Casey was not accustomed to seeing tents floored 
with canvas, and he stared at it for a full half- 
minute before his eyes went to other things. 

There was a folding camp table of the kind shown, 
in the window display of sporting-goods stores, but 
which seasoned campers find too wobbly for actual 
comfort. The varnish still shone on legs and 
braces, which helped to prove its newness. There 
was a two-burner oil stove with an enamel-rimmed 
oven that was distinctly out of place in that country 
and yet harmonized perfectly with the tent and 
furnishings. The dishes were white enamel or 



CASEY RYAN 153 

aluminum, and there were boxes piled upon boxes, 
the labels proclaiming canned things too expensive 
for ordinary eating. Two spring cots with new 
blankets and white-cased pillows stood against the 
tent wall, and beneath each cot sat two yellow pig 
skin suitcases with straps and brass buckles. They 
would have been perfectly natural in a Pullman 
sleeper, but even in his present stress Casey snorted 
disdainfully at sight of them here. 

Things were tumbled about in the disorder of 
inexperienced campers, but everything was very new 
and clean except an array of dishes on the table, 
which told Casey that one man had eaten at least 
three meals without washing his dishes or putting 
away his surplus of food. Casey had eaten nothing 
at all after that one toasted rabbit which he had 
choked down on the evening when he gave up hope 
of finding the burros. He got up and staggered 
stiffly to the table and picked up a piece of burned 
biscuit, hard as flint. 

While he mumbled a fragment of that he looked 
into various half -filled cans, setting them one by one 
in a compact group on the table corner; which was 
habit rather than conscious thought. Poisonous 
ptomaine lurked in every one of them, which was a 
shame, since he had to discard half a can of pre 
served peaches, half a can of roast beef, half a can 
of asparagus tips, a can of chicken soup scarcely 
touched and two thirds of a can of sweet potatoes. 
He salvaged a can of ripe olives which he thought 
was good, a can of India relish and a can of sweet 
gherkins (both of the fifty-seven varieties). You 



154 CASEY RYAN 

will see what I meant when I spoke of expensive 
camp food. 

There was cold coffee in a nickel percolater, and 
Casey poured himself a cup, knowing well the risk of 
eating much just at first. It was while he was un 
screwing the top of the glass jar that held the sugar 
that he first noticed the paper. It was folded and 
thrust into the sugar jar, and Casey pulled it out and 
held it crumpled in his hand while he sweetened 
and drank the coffee, forcing himself to take it 
slowly. When the cup was empty to the last drop 
he went over and sat down on the edge of a spring 
cot and unfolded the note. What he read surprised 
him a great deal and puzzled him more. I leave it 
to you to judge why. 

" I saw it again last night in a different place. 
The last horse died yesterday down the canyon. 
You can 'have the outfit. I'm going to beat it out of 
here while the going's good. FRED." 

" That's mighty damn funny," Casey muttered 
thickly. " You can ask " He lay back lux 
uriously, with his head on the white pillow and closed 
his eyes. The reaction from struggling to live had 
set in with the assurance of his safety. He slept 
heavily, refreshingly. 

He awoke to the craving for food, and immedi 
ately started a small fire outside and boiled coffee in 
a nice new aluminum pail that held two quarts and 
had an ornamental cover. The oil stove he dis 
missed from his mind with a snort of contempt. 
And because nearly everything he saw was cata- 



CASEY RYAN 155 

logued in his mind as a luxury, he opened cans some 
what extravagantly and dined off strange, delect 
able foods to which his palate was unaccustomed. 
He still thought it was mighty queer, but that diet 
not impair his appetite. 

Afterwards he went out to look after William, 
remembering that horses were said to have died in 
this place. William was almost within kicking dis 
tance of the spring, as if he meant to keep an eye 
upon the water supply even though that involved 
browsing off brush instead of wandering down to 
good grass below the camp. 

Casey knelt stiffly and drank from the spring, 
laving his face and head afterward as if he never 
would get enough of the luxury of being wet and 
cool. He rose and stood looking at William for a 
few minutes, then took the lead rope and tied him 
to a juniper that stood near the spring. The note 
had said that the last horse died down the canyon, 
the implication of mystery lying heavy behind the 
words. 

Casey went back to the tent and read the note 
through again twice, studying each word as if he 
hoped to twist some added information out of it. 
It sounded as though the writer had expected his 
partner back from some trip and had left the note 
for him, since he had not considered it necessary to 
explain what it was that he had seen again in a dif 
ferent place. Casey wondered if it might not have 
been that strange light which he himself had fol 
lowed. Whatever it was, the fellow had not liked 
it. His going had all the earmarks of flight. 



156 CASEY RYAN 

Well, then, why had the last horse died down the 
canyon? Casey decided that he would go and see, 
though he was not hankering for exercise that day. 
He took a long drink of water, somewhat shame 
facedly filled a new canteen that lay on a pile of 
odds and ends near the tent door, and started down 
the canyon. It couldn't be far, but he might want 
a drink before he got back, and Casey had had 
enough of thirst. 

He was not long in finding the horse that had 
died, and in fact all the horses that had died. There 
had been four, and the manner of their death was 
not in the least mysterious. They had been staked 
out to graze in a luxurious patch of loco weed, which 
is reason enough why any horse should die. 

Of course, no man save an unmitigated tender 
foot would picket a horse on loco, which looks very 
much like wild peavine and is known the West over 
as the deadliest weed that grows. A little of it 
mixed with a diet of grass will drive horses and 
cattle insane, and there is no authentic case of re 
covery, that I ever heard, once the infection is com 
plete. A lot of it will kill, and these poor beasts 
had actually been staked out to graze upon it, I sup 
pose because it looked nice and green, and the horses 
liked it. 

The performance matched very well the enamel- 
trimmed oil stove and the tinned dainties and the 
expensive suitcases. Casey went back to camp feel 
ing as though he had stumbled upon a picnic of 
feeble-minded persons. He wondered what in hell 
two men of such a type could be doing out there, a 



CASEY RYAN 157 

hundred miles and more from an ice-cream soda and 
a barber's chair. He wondered too how " Fred " 
had expected to get himself across that hundred 
miles and more of dry desert country. He must 
certainly be afoot, and the camp itself showed no 
sign of an emergency outfit having been assembled 
from its furnishings. 

Casey made sure of that, inspecting first the bed 
ding and food and then the cooking utensils. 
Everything was complete lavishly so for two 
men who loved comfort. Even their sweaters were 
there; and Casey knew they must have discovered 
that the nights can be cool even though the days are 
hot, in that altitude. And there were two canteens 
of the size usually carried by hikers. 

Casey was so worried that he could not properly 
enjoy his supper of pate de foi gras and crackers, 
with pork and beans, plum pudding eaten as cake 
and spiced figs and coffee. That night he turned 
over on his spring-cot bed as often as if he had been 
lying on nettles, and when he did sleep he dreamed 
horribly. 

Next morning he set out with William and an 
emergency camp outfit to trace if he could the miss 
ing men. The great outdoors of Nevada is not 
kind to such as these, and Casey had too lately suf 
fered to think with easy-going optimism that they 
would manage somehow. They would die if they 
were left to shift for themselves, and Casey could 
not pretend that he did not know it. 

But there was a difficulty in rescuing them, just 
as there had been in rescuing the burros. Casey 



158 CASEY RYAN 

could not find their tracks, and so could not follow 
them. He and William hunted the canyon from 
top to bottom and ranged far out on the valley floor 
without discovering anything that could be called the 
track of a man. Which was strange, too, in a coun 
try where footprints are held for a long, long while 
by the soil, as souvenirs of man's passing, per 
haps. 

So it transpired that Casey at length returned to 
the new tent just below the spring in the nameless 
canyon beyond Crazy Woman Lake. Chipmunks 
had invaded the place and feasted upon an opened 
package of sweet crackers, but otherwise the tent 
had been left inviolate. Neither Fred nor his part 
ner had returned. Wherefore Casey opened more 
cans and " made himself to home," as he naively 
put it. 

He was impatient to continue his journey, but 
since he had nothing of his own except William, he 
meant to beg or buy a few things from this camp, 
if either of the owners showed up. Meantime he 
could be comfortable, since it is tacitly understood 
in the open land that a wayfarer may claim hospi 
tality of any man, with or without that man's 
knowledge. He is expected to keep the camp clean, 
to leave firewood and to take nothing away with him 
except what is absolutely necessary to insure his get 
ting safely to the next stopping place. Casey knew 
well the law, and he busied himself in setting the 
camp in order while he waited. 

But when five days and nights had slipped into 
history and he and William were still in sole pos- 



CASEY RYAN 159 

session, Casey began to take another viewpoint. 
Fred might possibly have left in a flying machine. 
The partner might have decamped permanently be 
fore Fred lost his nerve. Several things might have 
happened which would leave this particular camp 
and contents without a claimant. Casey studied 
the matter for awhile and then pulled the four suit 
cases from beneath the cots and proceeded to in 
vestigate. The first one that he opened had a note 
folded and addressed to Fred. Casey read it 
through without the slightest compunction. The 
handwriting was different from that of the first note, 
hurried and scrawly, the words connected with faint 
lines. Here is what Fred's partner had written : 

" DEAR FRED : Don't blame me for leaving you. 
A man that carries the grouch you do don't need 
company. I'm fed up on solitude, and I don't like 
the feel of things here. My staying won't help your 
lung a damn bit and if you want anything you can 
hunt up the men that carry the light. Maybe they 
are the ones that are killing off the horses. Any 
way, you can wash your own dishes from now on. 
It will do you good. If I had of known you were 
the crab you are I'll say I would never have come. 
You are welcome to my share of the outfit. I hope 
some one shoots me and puts me out of my misery 
quick if I ever show symptoms of wanting to camp 
out again. I am going now because if I stayed I'd 
change your map for you so your own looking glass 
wouldn't know you. I'll say you are some nut. 

"ART." 

Casey had to take a fresh chew of tobacco before 



160 CASEY RYAN 

his brain would settle down and he could think 
clearly. Then he observed that it was a damn 
funny combination and you could ask anybody. 
After that he began to realize that he was heir to a 
fine assortment of canned delicacies and an oil stove 
and four suitcases rilled, he hoped, with good clothes. 
Not omitting possession of two spring cots and sev 
eral pairs of high-grade blankets, and two sweaters 
and Lord knows what all. 

Those suitcases were enough to make any man 
sit and bite his nails, wondering if he were crazy. 
Fred and Art had evidently fitted their wardrobe to 
their ideas of a summer camp with dancing pavilion 
and plenty of hammocks in the immediate neighbor 
hood. There were white flannel trousers and white 
canvas shoes and white silk socks, and fine ties and 
handkerchiefs and things. There were striped silk 
shirts which made Casey grin and think how tickled 
Injun Jim would be with them, or one or two of 
them; Casey had no intention of laying them all on 
the altar of diplomacy. There was an assortment 
of apparel in those suitcases that would qualify any 
man as porch hound at Del Monte. And Casey 
Ryan, if you please, had fallen heir to the lot! 

He dressed himself in white flannels with a silk 
shirt of delf blue and pale green stripes, and wished 
that there was a looking-glass in camp large enough 
to reflect all of him at once. Then, because his 
beard stubble did not harmonize, he shaved with one 
of the safety razors he found. 

After that he sorted and packed a careful ward 
robe, and stored strange food into two canvas 



CASEY RYAN 161 

kyacks. And the next evening he tied the tent flaps 
carefully and fared forth with William to find the 
camp of Injun Jim and see if his dream would come 
true. 



CHAPTER XVI 

You may not believe this next incident. I know 
I did not, when Casey told me about it, but now 
I am not so sure. Casey said that the light appeared 
again, that night, moving slowly along the lip of the 
canyon like a man with a large lantern. There was 
a full moon, which had made him decide to travel at 
night on account of the heat while the sun was up. 
But the moon did not reveal the cause of the light, 
though the canyon crest was plainly visible to him. 

William swung away from that light and walked 
rather briskly in the other direction, and Casey did 
not argue with him. So they headed almost due 
west and kept going. It seemed to Casey once or 
twice that the light followed them ; but he could not 
be sure. 

Two full nights he journeyed, and on both nights 
he had the light behind him. Once it came up 
swiftly to within a mile or so of him and William, 
and stopped there for awhile and then disappeared. 
Casey camped rather early and slept, and took the 
trail again in the morning. Night travel was get 
ting on his nerves. 

All that day he walked and toward evening, with 
thunder heads piling high above the Tippipahs, he 
came upon a small herd of Indian ponies feeding out 
from the mouth of a wide gulch. He knew they 



CASEY RYAN 163 

were Indian ponies by their size, their variegated 
colors, and their general unkemptness. They pres 
ently spied him and went galloping off up the gulch, 
and Casey followed until he spied a thin bluish rib 
bon of smoke wavering up toward the slate-black 
clouds. 

He made camp just out of sight around a point 
of rocks from the smoke, stretching the canvas tarp 
which had floored the tent to make shelter between 
boulders. He changed his clothes, dressing himself 
carefully in the white flannel trousers, blue-and- 
green striped silk shirt, tan belt, white shoes and his 
old Stetson tilted over his right eye at the charac 
teristic Casey angle. He was taking it for granted 
that an Indian camp lay under that smoke, and he 
knew Indians. Inquisitiveness would shut them up 
as effectively as poking a stick at a clam; but there 
were ways of coaxing their interest, nevertheless, 
and when an Indian is curious you have the trumps 
in your own hand and it will be your own fault if 
you lose. 

Casey's manner therefore was extremely preoccu 
pied when he led a suddenly limping William up the 
gulch and past a stone hut with a patched tepee 
alongside it. A lean squaw stood erect before the 
tepee and regarded him fixedly from under the shade 
of a mahogany-colored hand, and when Casey came 
closer she stooped and ducked out of sight like a 
prairie dog diving into its burrow. Casey paid no 
attention to that. He knew without being told that 
he was under close scrutiny from eyes unseen; 
which was what he desired and had prepared for. 



164 CASEY RYAN 

The spring, as he had guessed, was above the 
camp. He threw a rock at two yammering curs 
that rushed out at him, and drove them back with 
Caseyish curses. Then he watered William at the 
trampled spring, made himself a smoke, and went 
back down the gulch. Opposite the tepee the squaw 
stood beside the trial. Casey grinned amiably and 
said hello. 

" Yo' ketchum 'bacco ? My man, him heap sick. 
Mebby die. Likeum 'bacco, him." The squaw 
muttered it as if she would rather not speak, but had 
been commanded to beg tobacco from the stranger. 

" Sure, I got tobacco ! " Casey's tone was a bit 
more friendly than before. He pulled a small red 
can from his shirt pocket, hesitated and then tied 
William to a bush. " Too bad your man sick. 
Mebby I can help him. He in here ? " 

The squaw gestured dumbly, and Casey stooped 
and went into the tepee. 

Inside it was so dark that he stood still just within 
the opening to get his bearings. This happened to 
be very good form in Indian society, and we will 
assume that Casey lost nothing by the pause. He 
dimly saw that a few blankets lay untidily against 
the tepee wall and that an old Indian was stretched 
upon them, watching Casey with one black eye, the 
other lid lying in sunken folds across the socket. 
Casey was for once in his life speechless. He had 
not expected to walk straight into the camp of Injun 
Jim. He had thought that of course he would have 
to go on to Round Butte and glean information 
there, perhaps; if he were exceptionally lucky he 



CASEY RYAN 165 

would meet Indians who would tell him what he 
wanted to know. But here was a one-eyed buck, 
and he was old, and he lived in the Tippipahs, 
Injun Jim by all description. 

" Your squaw says you want tobacco." Casey 
advanced and held out the red can. He knew better 
than to waste words, especially in the beginning. 
Indians are peculiar; you must approach them by 
not seeming to approach at all. 

The old fellow grunted and turned the can over 
and over in clawlike hands, and said he wanted a 
match and a paper. Casey went farther ; he rolled a 
cigarette and gave it to him and then rolled one for 
himself. They smoked, there in that unsavory 
tepee, saying nothing at all. Casey had achieved 
the first part of his dream; he was making friends 
with Injun Jim. 

Later he went down to his own camp, leading 
William. It was hard to wait and watch for the 
proper moment to broach the subject that filled his 
mind, and then induce the old Indian to talk. 
Casey was beginning to understand why no one had 
wormed the secret from Jim. When you are hun 
dreds of miles and many months distant from a prob 
lem, it is easy to decide that you will do so and so, 
and handle the matter differently from the bungling 
men you have heard about. To find Injun Jim and 
get him to tell where his gold mine was had seemed 
fairly easy to Casey when he was driving stage else 
where, and could only think about it. But when he 
sat on his haunches in the tepee, smoking with Injun 
Jim and conversing intermittently of such vital 



166 CASEY RYAN 

things as the prospect of rain that night, and the en 
forced delay in his journey because his pack mule 
was lame, speaking of gold mines in a properly 
disinterested and casual manner was not at all 
easy. 

However, Casey ate a very hearty supper and 
went to bed studying the problem of somehow win 
ning the old fellow's gratitude. Morning did not 
bring a solution, as it properly should have done, 
but he ransacked his pack, chose a small glass jar 
of blackberry jam and a little can of maple syrup, 
fortified himself with another red can of tobacco 
and went up to the camp, hoping for a streak of 
good luck. As for medicine, he hadn't a drop, and 
if he had he did not know for certain what ailed 
Injun Jim. He thought it was just old age and 
general cussedness. 

Injun Jim ate the jam, using a deadly looking 
knife and later his fingers, when the jam got low in 
the jar. When he had finished that he opened the 
can and drank the maple syrup just as he would have 
drunk whisky, with a relish. He smoked Casey's 
tobacco in the stone pipe which the squaw brought 
him and appeared fairly well satisfied with life. 
But he did not talk much, and what he did say was of 
no importance whatever. Not once did he mention 
gold mines. 

Casey went back to camp and swore at William 
as he counted his cans of luxuries. He did not re 
alize that he had established a dangerous precedent, 
but when he led William up to water, meaning to 
pass by the camp without stopping, the squaw halted 



CASEY RYAN 167 

him on his way back and told him briefly that her 
man wanted him. 

Injun Jim did not want Casey; he wanted more 
jam. Casey went back to camp and got another 
can, this time of strawberry, and in a spirit of 
peevishness added a small tin of the liver paste that 
had caused him a night's discomfort. He took them 
to the tepee, and Injun Jim ate the complete con 
tents of both cans and seemed disgruntled after 
wards ; so much so that he would not talk at all but 
smoked in brooding silence, staring with his one 
malevolent eye at the stained wall of the tepee. 

An hour later he began to move himself restlessly 
in the blanket and to mutter Piute words, the full 
meaning of which Casey did not grasp. But he 
would not answer when he was spoken to, so Casey 
went back to his camp. And that night Injun Jim 
was very sick. 

Next day however he was sufficiently recovered 
to want more jam. Casey filled his pockets with 
small cans and doled them out one by one and gos- 
sipped artfully while he watched Injun Jim eat 
pickles, India relish and jelly with absolute, in 
scrutable impartiality. Casey felt sympathetic 
qualms in his own stomach just from watching the 
performance, but he was talking for a gold mine 
and he did not stop. 

" You know Willow Pete ? " he asked garrulously. 
" Big, tall man. Drinks whisky all the time. Wil 
low Pete found a gold mine two moons ago. He's 
rich now. Got a big barrel of whisky. Got silk 
shirts like this " he plucked at his own silken 



168 CASEY RYAN 

sleeve " got lots of jam all the time. Every day 
drinks whisky and eats jam." 

"Hunh!" Injun Jim ran his forefinger dex 
terously around the inside of a jelly glass and licked 
the finger with the nonchalance of a two-year-old. 
" Hunh. Got heap big gol' mine, me. No can go 
ketchum two year, mebby. I dunno. Feet no 
damn good for walk. Back no damn good for ride. 
No ketchum gol' long time now." 

Casey took a chew of tobacco. This was getting 
to the point he had been aiming for, and he needed 
his wits working at top speed. 

" Well, if you got a gold mine, you can eat jam 
all the time. Drink whisky, too," he added, hush 
ing his conscience peremptorily. "If you've got a 
white man that's your friend, he might take your 
gold to town and buy whisky and jam." 

Injun Jim considered, his finger searching for 
more jelly. " White man no good for Injun, 
mebby. I dunno. Ketchum gol', mebby no givum. 
Tell all white mans. Heap mans come. White 
man horses eat grass. Drink all water. Shootum 
deer, shootum rabbit, shootum all damn time. 
Make big house. Heap noise all time. No place 
for Injuns no more. No good." 

" White man not all same, Jim. One white man 
maybe good friend. Help get gold, give you half. 
You buy lots of jam, lots of whisky, lots of silk 
shirts, have good time." Casey looked at him 
straight. He could do it, because he meant what 
he said; even the whisky, I regret to say. 

Injun Jim accepted a cigarette and smoked it, 



CASEY RYAN 169 

saying never a word. Casey smoked the mate to 
it and waited, trying to hide how his fingers trem 
bled. Injun Jim turned himself painfully on the 
blankets and regarded Casey steadily with his one 
suspicious eye. Casey met the look squarely. 

" You got more shirt ? " Jim's finger pointed at 
the blue and green stripes. " Yo' got more jam? 
You bringum. Heap sick, me, mebby die. Me no 
takeum gol' me die. No wantum, me die. Yo' 
mebby good man. I dunno. Me ketchum heap 
jam, ketchum heap silk shirt, ketchum heap 'bacco, 
heap whisky, mebby me tellum you where ketchum 
gol' mine. Me die, yo' heap rich " 

He turned suddenly, lifted his right arm and sent 
his knife swishing through the air. It sliced its way 
through the tepee wall and hung there quivering, 
caught by the hilt. Injun Jim called out vicious,. 
Piute words. " Hahnaga ! " he commanded fiercely. 
"Hahnaga!" 

The lean old squaw came meekly, stood just with 
in the tepee while her lord spat words at her. She 
answered apathetically in Piute and backed out. 
Presently she returned, driving before her a young 
squaw whom Casey had not before seen. The 
young squaw was holding a hand upon her other 
arm, and Casey saw blood between her fingers. 
The young squaw was not particularly meek. She 
stood there sullenly while Injun Jim berated her in 
the Indian tongue, and once she muttered a retort 
that made the old man's fingers go groping over 
the blankets for a weapon ; whereat the young squaw 
laughed contemptuously and went out, sending 



170 CASEY RYAN 

Casey a side glance and a fleeting smile as full of 
UMjueliji as ever wtnte woman could employ. 

The mterrnptaon silenced the old bock upon the 
of gold. Casey sat there and chewed to- 
and waited, schoofang his impatience as best 

. *" ' 'j ~* l~- m_IT"rrt"Z in - . _I~r _ 7 . 2. ."."". 

his one eye dosed. But Casey knew that he did not 
sleep ;kis thin fips were drawn too tense for slumber, 
oo be waited. 

Injue Jim opened his eye suddenly, looked all 
around the tepee aoo* then ilarod fixedly at Casey. 
m Youog squaw no good. Heap much white talk. 
Stealum goT mine, mebby. I dunno.* He ges- 
and Casey got it for him. Injun 

I dunno. Yo ketch 
many jam yo f ketch- 
Casey meditated awhile. He had not planned an 
exdosrt~e Jon diet for Injun Jim, therefore his sap- 
ply was gtiiiog low. Bat at the tenderfoot camp 
was OOKO OHJie, r*M7* | 'f'fc to last Injun loo to the 
border of the happ\ hunting grounds,- if he dot 
loiter too long upon the way. There was no 
long Injun Jim would be able to eat 
jam, bat Casey was a good gambler. 

" If I go get a lot more, and get silk shirts 
six, he counted with his fingers, you tefl me where 
yoorgold mine is." 

bnngnm heap jam, bnngnm shirt. Me 
His one eye was bright Y -rrj~. 
Yo* bnngnm shirt Yo T giv enm me. He 




CASEY RYAN 171 



patted the bare dirt beside the blankets, 
that he wanted the jam and shirts there, within reach 
of his hand. He even twisted his crnel old lips rnto 
a smile. " Me teDum, Me shakenm hand." 

He held out his left hand and Case}- clasped it 
soberly, though he wanted to jump up and crack his 
heels together, as he confided afterwards. Injtm 
Jim laid the blade of his knife across the clasped 
hands. 

*Yo' He me, yo' die quick. Injun god bitenm. 
Mebby snake I dtnmo. How long yo' ketchum 
heap jam, heap shirt? " 

Xow that he knew the war, Casey had in mind a 
certain short-cot that would subtract two days from 
the round trip. He held up his hand, fingers spread, 
and got up. Then he thought of the threat and 
added one of his own, 

" FTC got a God myself, Jnn. You lie about 
that gold mine and the jamll choke ynh to death. 
You can ask anybody" 

Casey went out and straightway packed for tbe 
journey. Fate, be told himself, was playing part 
ners with him, I don't suppose Casey, even in his 
most happy-go-lucky mood, had ever been quite so 
content with fife as when be returned to the camr : : 
tbe tenderfeet for a mule load of jam and silk shirts. 
Trading an old muzzle-loading shotgun to an Indian 
chief for the foftnrc Ac of a great dry could not 
have seemed more of a bargain in tbe days of 
forefathers. 



CHAPTER XVII 

He made the trip almost half a day sooner than 
he had promised and went straight up to Injun 
Jim's camp with his load. He was whistling all 
the way up the canyon to the tepee; but then he 
stopped. 

Inside the hut was the sound of wailing. Casey 
tried not to guess what that meant. He tied Will 
iam and went to the door of the tepee. 

The young squaw came from within and stood 
just before the opening, regarding Casey with that 
maddening, Indian immobility so characteristic of 
the race. She did not speak, though Casey waited 
for fully two minutes; nor did she move aside to 
let him go in. Casey grinned disarmingly. 

" Me ketchum heap jam for Injun Jim. Heap 
silk shirts. Me go tellum," he said. 

"Are those they?" the young squaw inquired 
calmly, and pointed to William. Casey jumped. 
Any man would, hearing that impeccable sentence 
issue from the lips of a squaw with a blanket over 
her head. 

" Uh-huh," he gulped. 

" My father is dead. He died yesterday from 
eating too much pickles that you gave him. I should 
like to have what you have brought to give him. I 
should thank you for the silk shirts. I can fix them 



CASEY RYAN 173 

so that I can wear them. I will talk to you pretty 
soon about that gold mine. I know where it is. I 
have helped my father bring the gold away. My 
father would not tell you if you gave him all the jam 
and all the silk in the world. My father was awful 
mean. I thought he would maybe kill you and that 
is why I listened beside the tepee. I wished to pro 
tect you because I know that you are a good man. 
Will you give me the silk shirts and the jam? " 

She smiled then, and Casey saw that she had a 
gold tooth in front, which further demonstrated how 
civilized she was. 

" You will excuse the way I am dressed. I have 
to dress so that I would please my father. He was 
very mean with me all the time. He did not like 
me because I have gone to school and got a fine 
educating. He wanted me to be Indian. But I 
knew that my father is a chief and that makes me 
just what you would say a princess, and I wished 
to learn how to be educate like all white ladies. So 
I took some gold from my father's mine and I spent 
the money for going to school. My name," she 
added impressively, " is Lucy Lily. What is your 
name ? " 

" Mr. Casey Ryan," he stuttered, floundering 
in the mental backwash left by this flood of amazing 
eloquence. 

" I like that name. I think I will have you for 
my friend. Do not talk to my mother, Hahnaga. 
She is crazy. She tells lies all the time about me. 
She does not like me because I have went to school 
and got a fine educating. She is mad all the time 



174 CASEY RYAN 

when she sees that I am not like her. Now you give 
me the silks. I will put on a pretty dress. My 
father is dead now and I can do what I wish to do ; I 
am not afraid of my mother. My mother does not 
know where to find the gold mine. I am the only 
one who knows." 

Casey is a simple soul, too trustful by far. He 
was embarrassed by the arch smile which Lucy Lily 
gave him, and he wished vaguely that she was the 
blanket squaw she looked to be. But it never oc 
curred to Casey that there might be a wily purpose 
behind her words. He unpacked William and gave 
her the things he had brought for Injun Jim, and 
returned with his camp outfit to the spring to think 
things over while he boiled himself a pot of coffee 
and fried bacon. 

Lucy Lily appeared like an unwarranted vision 
before him. Indeed, Casey likened her coming to 
a nightmare. Casey no longer wondered why In 
jun Jim insisted upon Indian dress for Lucy Lily. 

Now she wore a red silk skirt much spotted with 
camp grease. A three-cornered tear in the side had 
been sewed with long stitches and coarse white 
thread, and even Casey was outraged by the un 
workmanlike job. She had on one of the silk shirts, 
which happened to be striped in many shades, none 
of which harmonized with the basic color of the 
skirt. She also wore two cheap necklaces whose 
luster had long since faded, and her hair was coiled 
on top of her head and adorned with three combs 
containing many white glass settings. Her face 
was powdered thickly to the point of her jaws, with 



CASEY RYAN 175 

very red cheekbones and very red lips. She wore 
once-white slippers with French heels much run over 
at the side and dirty white silk stockings with great 
holes in the heels. I must add that the shirt was 
too narrow in the bust, so that her arms bulged and 
there were gaping spaces between the buttons. And 
for a belt she wore a wide blue ribbon very much 
creased and soiled, as if she had used it for a long 
while as a hair bow. 

She sat down upon a rock and watched Casey dis 
tractedly bungle his cooking. She must have had 
a great deal of initiative for a squaw, for she 
plunged straight into the subject which most nearly 
concerned Casey, and she was frank to the point 
of appalling him with her bluntness. Casey is a 
rather case-hardened bachelor, but I suspect that 
Lucy Lily scared him from the beginning. 

" Do you like me when I have pretty dress on ? " 
she inquired, smoothing the red silk complacently 
over her knees. 

Casey swears that he told her it didn't make a darn 
bit of difference to him what she wore. If that is 
the truth, Lucy Lily must have been very stupid or 
very persistent, for she went on blandly stating her 
plans and her dearest wish. 

" That gold mine I am keeping for my husband," 
she announced. " It is a present for a wedding gift 
for my man. I shall not marry an Indian man. I 
am too pretty and I have a gold mine, and I will 
marry a white man. Indians don't know what 
money is good for. I want to live in a town and 
wear silk dresses all the time every day and ride in 



176 CASEY RYAN 

a red automobile and have lots of rings and go to 
shows. Have you got lots of money?" 

I don't know what Casey told her. He says he 
swore he hadn't a nickel to his name. 

" I think you have got lots of money. I think 
perhaps you are rich. I don't see white men walk 
in the desert with silk shirts and have lots of jam 
and pickles if they are not rich. I think you want 
that gold mine awful bad. You gave Jim lots of 
jam so he would tell you. White men want lots 
of more money when they have got lots of money. 
It is like that in shows. If a man is poor he don't 
care. If a man is rich he is hunting all the time for 
more money and killing people. So I think you are 
like them rich mans in shows." 

Casey told her again that he was poor; but she 
couldn't have believed him, not in the face of all 
the silk and sweets he had displayed. 

" I am awful glad Jim is dead. Now you have 
gave me the things. We will go to Tonopah and 
you will buy a red automobile and we will ride in it. 
And you will buy me lots of silk and rings. I shall 
be a lady like a princess in a show." 

" Your mother has got something to say about 
that gold mine," Casey blurted desperately. " It's 
hers by rights. She'd have to go fifty-fifty on it. 
She's got it coming, and I never cheated any 
body yet. I ain't going to commence on an old 
squaw." 

" She is a big fool. What you think Hahnaga 
want of money? The agent he gives her blankets 
and tea and flour. If you give Hahnaga silk, I will 



CASEY RYAN 177 

be awful mad. She is old. She will die pretty 
quick." 

" Well," said Casey, " I dunno as any of us has 
got any cinch on living. And if there's a gold mine 
in the family, she sure has got to have an even 
break. What about old Jim? Buried him yet?" 
" He is in the tepee. I think Hahnaga will dig 
a grave. I don't care. I will go with you, and we 
will find the gold mine. Then you will buy me " 
" I'll buy you nothin' ! " Casey's tone was em 
phatic. 

Lucy Lily looked at him steadily. " Before we 
go for the gold mine we will go to Tonopah and get 
marriage, and you will give me a gold ring on my 
finger. Then I will show you where is gold so 
much you will have money to buy the world full of 
things." She smiled at him, showing her gold 
tooth. " I like you for my man," she said. " I am 
awful pretty. I have lots of fellows. I could 
marry lots of other white mans, but I will marry 
you." 

" Like hell you will ! " snorted Casey, and began 
to wipe out his frying pan and empty his coffeepot 
and make other preparations for instant packing. 
" Like hell you'll marry me ! Think I'd marry a 
squaw ? " 

" Then I will not tell you where is the gold ! 
Then I hate you and I will fix you good ! You want 
that gold mine awful bad. You will have to marry 
me before I tell you." 

Casey straightened and looked at her, his frying 
pan in one hand, his coffeepot in the other. " Say, 



iy8 CASEY RYAN 

I never asked you about the darn mine, did I? I 
done my talkin' to Injun Jim. It's you that butted 
in here on this deal. Seein' he's dead, I'll talk to 
his squaw and make a deal with her, mebby." He 
looked her over measuringly. " Princess hunh ! 
I'll tell yuh in plain American what you are, if yuh 
don't git outa here. I may want a gold mine, all 
right, but I sure don't want it that bad. Git when 
I tell yuh to git ! " 

A squaw with no education would have got forth 
with. But Lucy Lily had learned to be like white 
ladies, or so she said. She screamed at him in 
English, in Piute, and chose words in each that no 
princess should employ to express her emotions. 
Her loud denunciations followed Casey to the tepee, 
where he stopped and offered his services to Hah- 
naga as undertaker. 

She accepted stolidly and together they buried 
Injun Jim, using his best blanket and not much 
ceremony. Casey did not know the Piute customs 
well enough to follow them, and his version of the 
white man's funeral service was simple in the ex 
treme. Hahnaga, however, brought two bottles of 
pickles and one jar of preserves which had out 
lasted Injun Jim's appetite, and put them in the 
grave with him, together with his knife and an old 
rifle and his pipe. 

To dig a grave and afterwards heap the dirt sym 
metrically over a discarded body takes a little time, 
no matter how cursory is the proceeding. Casey 
ceased to hear Lucy Lily's raucous voice and so 
thought that she had settled down. He misjudged 



CASEY RYAN 179 

the red princess. He discovered that when he went 
back to where William had stood. 

He no longer stood there. He was gone, pack 
and all, and once more Casey stood equipped for 
desert journeying with shirt, overalls, shoes and 
socks, and his old Stetson, and with half a plug of 
tobacco, a pipe and a few matches in his pocket. 
On the bush where William had been tied a piece of 
paper was impaled and fluttered in the wind. Casey 
jerked it off and read the even, carefully formed 
script, and swore. 

" Dear Sir: I am going to Tonopah. If you try 
to come I will tell the sherf to coming and see Jim 
and put you in jail. I will tell the judge you killed 
him and the sherf will put you in jail and hung you. 
Those are fine shirts. I will wear them silk. As 
ever your friend, 

Yours truly, 
LUCY LILY." 

Casey sat down on a rock to think it over. The 
squaw was moving about within the hut, collecting 
the pitifully few belongings which Lucy Lily had 
disdained to steal. An Indian does not like to stay 
where one has died. 

Casey could overtake Lucy Lily, if he walked fast 
and did not stop when dark fell, but he did not want 
to overtake her. He was not alarmed at her threat 
of the sheriff, but he did not want to see her again 
or hear her or think of her. 

So Casey tore up the note and went and begged 
a little food from Hahnaga; then he broached the 



i8o CASEY RYAN 

subject of the gold mine. The squaw listened, look 
ing at him with dull black eyes and a face like a 
stamped-leather portrait of an Indian. She shook 
her head and pointed down the gulch. 

" No find gol', bad girl. I think killum my mans. 
I dunno. No fin' gol' Jim he no tellum. No 
tellum me, no tellum Lucy, no tellum nobody. I 
think, all time Jim hide." She made a gesture as 
of one covering something with dirt. " Lucy all 
time try for fin' gol'. Jim he no likeum. Lucy my 
sister girl. Bad. No good. All time heap mean. 
All time tellum heap big lie so Indian no likeum. 
One time take monee, go 'way off. School for 
write. Come back for fin' gol', make Jim tellum. 
Jim sick long time. Jim no tellum. Jim all time 
mad for Lucy. Las' night talk mean mebby 
fight Jim he die quick. Lucy say killum me, I 
tell. 

" Now me go my brother. Walk two day. Give 
you grub no got many grub. You takeum gol' 
you fin'. Me no care. No want.. You don' give 
Lucy. Lucy bad girl all time. No fin' gol' Jim 
he no tellum. I dunno." 

That left Casey exactly where he had been before 
he found Injun Jim. There was no getting around 
it; the squaw repeated her statements twice, which 
Casey thought was probably more talking that she 
had done before in the course of six months. She 
impressed Casey as being truthful. She really did 
not know any more about Injun Jim's mine than 
did Casey. Or perhaps a little more, because she 
knew, poor thing, just how drunk Jim could get 



CASEY RYAN 181 

on the whisky they gave him for the gold. He used 
to beat her terribly when he came to camp drunk. 
Casey learned that much, though it didn't help him 
any. 

Hahnaga did not seem to think that anything 
need be done about the manner of Jim's death. She 
said he was heap sick and would die anyway, or 
words not many to that effect. Casey decided 
to go on and mind his own business. He did not 
see why, he said, the county of Nye should be let 
in for a lot of expense on Injun Jim's account, even 
if Jim had been killed. And as for punishing Lucy 
Lily, he was perfectly willing that it should be done, 
only he did not want to do it. I have always be 
lieved that Casey was afraid she might possibly 
marry him in spite of himself if she were in his 
immediate neighborhood long enough. 

They made themselves each a small pack of food 
and what was more vital, water, and went their dif 
ferent ways. Hahnaga struck off to the west, to 
her brother at the end of Forty-Mile Canyon. At 
least, that was where she said her brother mostly 
camped. Casey retraced his steps for the second 
time to the camp of the tenderfeet. Loco Canyon, 
Casey calls the place, claiming it by right of dis 
covery. 

Now I don't see, and possibly you won't see, 
either, what the devil's lantern had to do with 
Casey's bad luck. Casey maintains rather stub 
bornly that it had a great deal to do with it. First, 
he says, it got him all off the trail following it, and 
was almost the death of him and William. Next, he 



182 CASEY RYAN 

declares that it drove him to Lucy Lily and had 
fully intended that he should be tied up to her. 
Then he suspects that it had something to do with 
Injun Jim's dying just when he did, and he has 
another count or two against the lantern and will 
tell you them, and back them with much argument, 
if you nag him into it. 

It taught him things, he says. And once, after 
we had talked the matter over and had fallen into 
silence, he broke out with a sentence I have never 
forgotten, nor the tone in which he said it, nor the 
way he glared into the fire, his pipe in his hand 
where he always had it when he was extremely in 
earnest. 

" The three darndest, orneriest, damndest things 
on earth," said Casey, as if he were intoning a text, 
" is a Ford, or a goat, or an Injun. You can ask 
anybody yuh like if that ain't so." 



CHAPTER XVIII 

Casey was restless, and his restlessness manifested 
itself in a most unusual pessimism. Twice he 
picked up " float " that showed the clean indigo 
stain of silver bromyrite in spots the size of a split 
pea, and cast the piece from him as if it were so 
much barren limestone, without ever investigating 
to see where it had come from. Little as I know 
about mineral, I am sure that one piece at least was 
rich; high-grade, if ever I saw any. But Casey 
merely grunted when I spoke to him about it. 

" Maybe it is. A coupla hundred ounces, say. 
What's that, even with silver at a dollar an ounce? 
It ain't good enough for Casey, and what I'm 
wastin' my time for, wearing the heels off'n my 
shoes prospectin' Starvation, is somethin' I can't 
tell yuh." He looked at me with his pale-blue, un 
winking stare for a minute. 

" Er I can and I guess the quicker it's out 
the better I'll feel." 

He took out his familiar plug of tobacco, always 
nibbled around the edges, always half the size of his 
four fingers. I never saw Casey with a fresh plug 
in his pocket, and I never saw him down to one 
chew; it is one of the little mysteries in his life 
that I never quite solved. 

" I been thinkin' about that devil's lantern we 



184 CASEY RYAN 

seen the other night," he said, when he had returned 
to his pocket the plug with a corner gone. 
" They's something funny about that the way it 
went over there and stood on the Tippipahs again. 
I ain't sooperstitious. But I can't git things outa my 
head. I want to go hunt fer that mine of Injun 
Jim's. This here is just foolin' around huntin' 
silver. I want to see where that free gold comes 
from that he used to peddle. It's mine by rights. 
He was goin' to tell me where it v/as, you recollect, 
and he woulda if I hadn't overfed him on jam 
or if that damn squaw hadn't took a notion for 
marryin'. I let her stampede me and that's 
where I was wrong. I shoulda stayed." 

I was foolish enough to argue with him. I had 
talked with others about the mine of Injun Jim, 
and one man (who owned cattle and called mines a 
gamble) told me that he doubted the whole story. 
A prospectors' bubble, he called it. Free gold, he 
insisted, did not belong in this particular formation ; 
it ran in porphyry, he said, and then he ran into 
mineralogy too technical for me now. I repeated 
his statement, however, and saw Casey grin toler 
antly. 

" Gold is where yuh find it," he retorted, and spat 
after a hurrying lizard. " They said gold couldn't 
be found in that formation around Goldfield. But 
they found it, didn't they?" 

Casey looked at me steadily for a minute and then 
came out with what was really in his mind. " You 
stake me to grub and a couple of burros an' let me 
go hunt the Injun Jim, and I'll locate yuh in on it 



CASEY RYAN 185 

when I find it. And if I don't find it, I'll pay yuh 
back for the outfit. And, anyway, you're makin' 
money off'n my bad luck right along, ain't yuh? 
Wasn't it me you was writin' up, these last few 
days?" 

" I was er reconsidering that devil's lantern 
yarn you told me, Casey. But the thing doesn't 
work out right. It sounds unfinished, as you told 
it. I don't know that I can do anything with it, 
after all." I was truthful with him; you all re 
member that I was dissatisfied with the way Casey 
ended it. Just walking back across the desert and 
quitting the search, it lacked, somehow, the dra 
matic climax. I could have built one, of course. 
But I wanted to test out my theory that a man like 
Casey will live a complete drama if he is left alone. 
Casey is absolutely natural; he goes out after life 
without waiting for it to come to him, and he will 
forget all about his own interests to help a stranger, 
and above all, he builds his castles hopefully as a 
child and seeks always to make them substantial 
structures afterwards. If any man can prove my 
theory, that man is Casey Ryan. So I led him along 
to say what dream held him now. 

"Unfinished? Sure it's unfinished! I quit, 
didn't I tell yuh? It ain't goin' to be finished till I 
git out and find that mine. I been studyin' things 
over. I never seen one of them lights till I started 
out to find Injun Jim's mine. If I'd a-gone along 
with no bad luck, I wouldn't never a-found that ten 
derfoot camp, would I ? It was keepin' the light at 
my back done that and William not likin' the look 



i86 CASEY RYAN 

of it, either. And you gotta admit it was the light 
mostly that scared them young dudes off and left 
me the things. And if you'd of saw Injun Jim, 
you'd of known same as I that it was the jam and 
the silk shirts that loosened him up. Nothin' in my 
own pack coulda won him over, " 

" It's all right that far," I cut in. " But then he 
died, and you were set afoot and all but married by 
as venomous a creature as I ever heard of, and the 
thing stops right there, Casey, where it shouldn't." 

" And that's what I'm kickin' about ! Casey 
Ryan ain't the man to let it stop there. I been 
thinkin' it over sence that devil's lantern showed up 
again, and went and set over there on Tippipah. 
Mebby I misjudged the dog-gone thing. Mebby it's 
settin' somewheres around that gold mine. Funny 
it never showed up no other time and no other place. 
I been travelin' the desert off'n on all my life, and 
I never seen anything like it before. And I can tell 
yuh this much: I been wanting that mine too darn 
long to give up now. If you don't feel like stakin' 
me for the trip, I'll go back to Lund and have a talk 
with Bill. Bill's a good old scout and he'll stake 
me to an outfit, anyway." 

That was merely Casey's inborn optimism speak 
ing. Bill was a good old scout, all right, but if he 
would grubstake Casey to go hunting the Injun Jim 
mine, then Bill had changed considerably. 

The upshot of it was that we left Starvation the 
next morning, headed for town. And two days 
after that I had pulled myself out of bed at daybreak 
to walk down to his camp under the mesquite grove 



CASEY RYAN 187 

just outside of town. I drank a cup of coffee with 
him and wished him luck. Casey did not talk much. 
His mind was all taken up with the details of his 
starting, whether to trust his" water cans on the 
brown burro or the gray, and whether he had taken 
enough " cold " shoes along for the mule. And he 
set down his cup of coffee to go rummaging in a 
kyack just to make sure that he had the hoof rasp 
and shoeing hammer safe. 

He was packed and moving up the little hill out 
of the grove before the sun had more than painted 
a cloud or two in the east. A dreamer once more 
gone to find the end of his particular rainbow, I told 
myself, as I watched him out of sight. I must 
admit that I hoped, down deep in the heart of me, 
that Casey would fall into some other unheard-of 
experience such as had been his portion in the past. 
I felt much more certain that he would get into some 
scrape than I did that he would find the Injun Jim, 
and I was grinning inside when I went back to town ; 
though there was a bit of envy in the smile, one 
must always envy the man who keeps his dreams 
through all the years and banks on them to the end. 
For myself, I hadn't chased a rainbow for thirty 
years, and I could not call myself the better for it, 
either. 

In September the lower desert does not seem to 
realize that summer is going. The wind blows a 
little harder, perhaps, and frequently a little hotter; 
the nights are not quite so sweltering, and the very 
sheets on one's bed do not feel so freshly baked. 



i88 CASEY RYAN 

But up on the higher mesas there is a heady quality 
to the wind that blows fresh in your face. There is 
an Indian-summery haze like a thin veil over the 
farthest mountain ranges. Summer is with you 
yet; but somehow you feel that winter is coming. 

In a country all gray and dull yellow and brown, 
you find strange, beautiful tints no artist has yet 
prisoned with his paints. You dream in spite of 
yourself, and walk through a world no more than 
half real, a world peopled with your thoughts. 

Casey did, when the burros left him in peace long 
enough. They were misleading, pot-bellied animals 
that Casey hazed before him toward the Tippipahs. 
They never showed more than slits of eyes beneath 
their drooping lids, yet they never missed seeing 
whatever there was to see, and taking advantage of 
every absent-minded moment when Casey was think 
ing of the Injun Jim, perhaps. They were fast- 
walking burros when they were following a beaten 
trail and Casey was hard upon their heels, but when 
his attention wandered they showed a remarkable 
amount of energy in finding blind trails and follow 
ing them into some impracticable wash where Casey 
wasted a good deal of time in extricating them. He 
said he never saw burros that hated so to turn around 
and go back into the road, and he never saw two bur 
ros get out of sight as quickly as they could when 
they thought he wasn't watching. They would 
choose different directions and hide from him sepa 
rately, but once was enough for Casey. He lost 
them both for an hour in the sand pits twelve miles 
out of town, and after that he tied them nose to tail 



CASEY RYAN 189 

and himself held a rope attached to the hindmost, 
and so made fair time with them, after all. 

The mule, Casey said, was just plain damn mule, 
sloughed off from the army, blase beyond words, 
any words at Casey's command, at least. A lop- 
eared buckskin mule with a hanging lower lip and 
a chronic tail-switching, that shacked along hour 
after hour and saved Casey's legs and, more particu 
larly, a bunion that had developed in the past year. 

Casey knew the country better than he had known 
it on his first unprofitable trip into the Tippipahs. 
He avoided Furnace Lake, keeping well around the 
southern rim of it and making straight for Loco 
Canyon and the spring there while his water cans 
still had a pleasant slosh. There he rested his long- 
ears for a day, and disinterred certain tenderfoot 
luxuries which he had cached when he was there 
last time. And when he set out again he went 
straight on to the old stone hut where Injun Jim 
had camped. The tepee was gone, burned down 
according to Indian custom after a death, as he had 
expected. The herd of Indian ponies were nowhere 
in sight. Hahnaga's brother, he guessed, had 
driven them off long ago. 

Casey had worked out a theory, bit by bit, and 
with characteristic optimism he had full faith that 
it would prove a fact later on. He wanted to start 
his search from the point where Injun Jim had 
started, and he had rather a plausible reason for do 
ing so. 

Injun Jim was an Indian of the old school, and 
the old school did a great deal of its talking by signs. 



190 CASEY RYAN 

Casey had watched Jim with that pale, unwinking- 
stare that misses nothing within range, and he had 
read the significance of Jim's unconscious gestures 
while he talked. It had been purely subconscious; 
Casey had expected the exact location of the mine 
in words, and perhaps with a crudely accurate map 
of Jim's making. But now he remembered Jim's 
words, certain motions made by the skinny hands, 
and from them he laid his course. 

" He was layin' right here facin' south," Casey 
told himself, squatting on his heels within the rock 
circle that marked the walls of the tepee. " He 
said, ' Got heap big gol' mine, me ' and he turned 
his hand that way." Casey squinted at the distant 
blue ridge that was an unnamed spur of the Tippi- 
pahs. " It's far enough so an old buck like him 
couldn't make it very well. Fifteen mile, anyway 
mebby twenty or twenty-five. And from the 
sign talk he made whilst he was talkin', I'd guess it's 
nearer twenty than fifteen. There's that two-peak 
butte looks like that would be about right for dis 
tance. And it's dead iin line them old bucks 
don't waggle their hands permiskus when they talk. 
Old Jim woulda laid on his hands if he'd knowed 
what they was tellin' me; but even an ornery old 
devil like him gits careless when they git old. Casey 
hits straight fer Two Peak." 

That's the way he got his bearings ; just remem 
bering the unguarded motion of Injun Jim's grimy 
hand and adding thereto his superficial knowledge 
of the country and his own estimate of what an old 
fellow like Jim could call a long journey. With 



CASEY RYAN 191 

this and the unquestioning faith in his dream that 
was a part of him, Casey threw his favorite " pack 
er's hitch " across the packed burros at dawn next 
morning, boarded his buckskin mule and set off 
hopefully across the barren valley, heading straight 
for the distant butte he called Two Peak. 



CHAPTER XIX 

I don't suppose Casey Ryan ever started out to 
do something for himself something he consid 
ered important to his own personal welfare and hap 
piness without running straight into some other 
fellow's business and stopping to lend a hand. He 
says he can't remember being left alone at any time 
in his life to follow the beckoning finger of his own 
particular destiny. 

Casey had made camp that night in one of several 
deep gulches that ridged the butte with two peaks. 
We had been lucky in our burro buying, and he 
had two of the fastest walking jacks in the country, 
so that he was able to give them a good long noon 
ing and still reach the foot of the butte and make 
camp well before sundown. For the first time since 
he first heard of the Injun Jim gold mine, Casey felt 
that he was really " squared away " to the search. 
As he sat there blowing his unhurried breath upon 
a blue granite cup of coffee to cool it, his memory 
slanted back along the years when he had said that 
some day he would go and hunt for the Injun Jim 
mine that was so rich a ten-pound lard bucket full 
of the ore had been known to yield five hundred dol 
lars' worth of gold. Well, it had been a long time 
since he first said that to himself, but here he was, 
and to-morrow he would begin his search with day- 



CASEY RYAN 193 

light, starting with this gulch he was in and work 
ing methodically over every foot of Two Peak. 

He took two long, satisfying swallows of coffee 
and poised the cup and listened. After a minute 
had gone in that way, he finished the coffee in gulps 
and stood up, dangling the empty cup with a finger 
crooked in the handle. From somewhere not more 
than a long rifle-shot away, a Ford was coughing 
under full pressure of gas and with at least one dirty 
spark plug to give it a spasmodic stutter. While 
Casey stood there listening, the stutter slowed and 
stopped with one wheezy cough. That was all. 

" They'll have to clean up her hootin'-annies be 
fore they git outa here," Casey observed shrewdly, 
having intimate and sometimes unpleasant knowl 
edge of Fords and their peculiar ailments. " And 
I wonder what the sufferin' Chris'mas they're doin' 
here, anyway. If it's huntin' the Injun Jim they're 
after, the quicker they scrape the sut off them ding 
bats and git outa here, the healthier they'll ride. 
You ask anybody if Casey Ryan's liable to back up 
now he's on the ground and squared away ! " 

He stood there uneasily for a minute or two 
longer, caught a whiff of his bacon scorching and 
stooped to its rescue. Then he fried a bannock 
hastily in the bacon grease, folded two slices of 
bacon within it and ate in a hurry, keeping an ear 
cocked for any further sounds from the concealed 
car. 

He finished eating without having heard more 
and piled his dishes without washing them. I don't 
suppose he had used more than ten minutes at the 



194 CASEY RYAN 

longest in eating his supper. That was about the 
limit of Casey's inaction when he smelled a mystery 
or a scrap. This had the elements of both, and he 
started out forthwith to trail down the Ford, wiping 
crumbs from his mouth and getting out his plug of 
tobacco as he went. 

In broken country sounds are deceptive as to 
direction, but Casey was lucky enough to walk 
straight toward the spot, which was over a hump in 
the gulch, a sort of backbone dividing it in two nar 
row branches there at its mouth. He had noticed 
when he rode toward it that it was ridged in the 
middle, and had chosen the left-hand branch for no 
reason at all except that it happened to be a little 
smoother traveling for his animals. 

He topped the ridge and came full upon a camp 
below, almost within calling distance from where he 
first sighted it. There was a stone hut that could 
not possibly contain more than two small rooms, 
and there was a tent pitched not far away. There 
seemed to be a spring just beyond the cabin. Casey 
saw the silver gleam of water there, and a strip of 
green grass, and a juniper bush or two. 

But these details were not important at the mo 
ment. What sent him down the hill in an uneven 
trot was a group of three that stood beside a car. 
From their voices, and the gestures that were being 
made, here was a quarrel building rapidly into a 
fight. To prove it the smallest person in the group 
suddenly whipped out a revolver and pointed it at 
the two. Casey saw the reddening sunlight strike 
upon the barrel with a brief shine, instantly 



CASEY RYAN 195 

quenched when the gun was thrust forward toward 
the other two whom it threatened. 

" You get out of my camp and out of my sight 
just as fast as your legs can take you. This car 
belongs to me, and you're not going to touch it. 
You've got your wages more than your wages, 
you great hulking shirks ! A fine exhibition you're 
making of yourselves, I must say! You thought 
you could bluff me that I'd stand meekly by and 
let you two bullies have your own way about it, did 
you? You even waited until you had gorged your 
selves on food you've never earned, before you 
started your highwaymen performance. You made 
sure of one more good, meal, you you hogs. 
Now go, before I empty this gun into the two of 
you!" 

Casey stopped, puffing a little, I suppose. He is 
not so young as when they called him the Fightin' 
Stagedriver, and he had done his long day of travel. 
The three did not know that he was there, they were 
so busy with their quarrel. The woman's voice was 
sharp with contempt, but it was not loud and there 
was not a tremble in any tone of it. The gun she 
held was steady in her hand, but one man snarled 
at her and one man laughed. It was the kind of 
laugh a woman would hate to hear from a man she 
was defying. 

" Aw, puddown the popgun ! Nobody's scared of 
it er you. It ain't loaded, and if it was loaded 
you couldn't hit nothin'. No need to be scared 
'long's a woman's pointing a gun at yuh. Crank 'er 
up, agin, Ole. Don't worry none about her. She 



196 CASEY RYAN 

can't stop nothin', not even her jawin'. Go awn, 
start the damn Lizzie an' let's go." 

Ole bent to the cranking, then complained that the 
switch must be off. His companion growled that 
it was nothing of the kind and kept his narrowed 
gaze fixed upon the woman. 

She spied Casey standing there, a few rods be 
yond the car. The gun dropped in her hand so 
that its aim was no longer direct. The man who 
faced her jumped and caught her wrist, and the gun 
went off, the bullet singing ten feet above Casey's 
head. 

A little girl with flaxen curls and patched over 
alls on screamed and rushed up to the man, gripping 
him furiously around the legs just above the knees 
and trying her little best to shake him. " You. 
leave my mamma alone ! " she cried shrilly. 

Casey took a hand then, a hand with a rock in 
it, I must explain. He managed to kick Ole harshly 
in the ribs, sending him doubled sidewise and yelp 
ing, as he passed him. He laid the other man out 
senseless with the rock which landed precisely on the 
back of the head just under his hat. 

The woman Casey had mistaken her for a man 
at first, because she wore bib overalls and had her 
hair bobbed and a man's hat on dropped the gun 
and held her wrist that showed angry red finger 
prints. She smiled at Casey exactly as if nothing 
much had happened. 

" Thank you very much indeed. I was begin 
ning to wonder how I was going to manage the sit 
uation. It was growing rather awkward, because 



CASEY RYAN 197 

I should have been compelled to shoot them both, I 
expect, before I was through. And I dreaded a 
mess. Wounded, I should have had them on my 
hands to take care of their great hulks! and 
dead I should have had to bury them, and I detest 
digging in this rocky soil. You really did me a very 
great " 

Her eyes ranged to something behind Casey and 
widened at what they saw. Casey whirled about, 
ducked a hurtling monkey wrench and rushed Ole, 
who was getting up awkwardly, his eyes malevolent. 
He made a very thorough job of thrashing Ole, and 
finished by knocking him belly down over the un- 
hooded engine of the Ford. 

" I hope Jawn doesn't suffer from that," the little 
woman commented whimsically. " Babe, run and 
get that rope over there and take it to the gentleman 
so he can tie Ole's hands together. Then he can't 
be naughty any more. Hurry, Baby Girl." 

Baby Girl hurried, her curls whipping around her 
face as she ran. She brought a coil of cotton 
clothesline to Casey, looking up at him with wide, 
measuring eyes of a tawny shade like sunlight shin 
ing through thin brown silk. " I wish you'd give 
Joe a beating too," she said with grave earnestness. 
" He's a badder man than Ole. He hurt my mam 
ma. Will you give Joe a beating and tie his naughty 
hands jus' like that when he wakes up? " She lifted 
her plump little body on her scuffed toes, her brown, 
dimpled fingers clutching the radiator to hold her 
steady while she watched Casey tie Ole's naughty 
hands behind his back. 



198 CASEY RYAN 

" Now will you tie Joe's naughty hands jus' like 
that? Don't use up all the rope! My mamma 
hasn't got any more rope, and you have to tie " 

"Babe! Come over here and don't bother the 
gentleman. Stand away over there so you can't 
hear the naughty words Ole is saying." The little 
woman smiled, but not much. Casey, glancing up 
from the last efficient knot, felt suddenly sorry that 
he had not first gagged Ole. Casey had not thought 
of it before; mere cussing was natural to him as 
breathing, and he had scarcely been aware of the 
fact that Ole was speaking. Now he cuffed the 
Swede soundly and told him to shut up, and yanked 
him off the car. 

" Joe is regaining consciousness. He'll be nasty 
to handle as a rabid coyote if you wait much longer. 
Just cut the rope. It's my clothesline, but we must 
not balk at trifles in a crisis like this." The little 
woman had recovered her gun and was holding it 
ready for Joe in case the predicted rabidness be 
came manifest. 

Casey tied Joe very thoroughly while conscious 
ness was slowly returning. The situation ceased to 
be menacing ; it became safe and puzzling and even a 
bit mysterious. Casey reached for his plug, remem 
bered his manners and took away his hand. Robbed 
of his customary inspiration he stood undecided, 
scowling at the feebly blinking ruffian called Joe. 

" It's very good of you not to ask what it's all 
about," said the little woman, taking off the man's 
hat and shaking back her hair like a schoolgirl. " I 
have some mining claims here four of them. 



CASEY RYAN 199 

My husband left them to me, and since that's all he 
did leave I have been keeping up the assessment 
work every year. Last year I had enough money 
to buy Jawn." She nodded toward the Ford. " I 
outfitted and came out here with an old fellow I'd 
known for years, kept camp until he'd done the 
assessment work, and paid him off and that was all 
there was to it. 

" This summer the old man is prospecting the 
New Jerusalem, I expect. He died in April. I 
hired these two scoundrels. I was foolish enough 
to pay half their wages in advance, because they 
told me a tale of owing money to a widow for board 
and wanting to pay her. I have," she observed, " a 
weakness for widows. And they have just pre 
tended to be working the claims. I hurt my ankle 
so that I haven't been able to walk far for a month, 
and they took advantage of it and have been pros 
pecting around on their own account, at my ex 
pense, while I religiously marked down their time 
and fed them. They have located four claims ad 
joining mine, and put up their monuments and done 
their location work in the past month, if you please, 
while I supposed they were working for me." 

" D'they locate you in on 'em ? " 

" Locate me in ? You mean, as a partner ? 
They emphatically did not ! I went up to the claims 
to-day, saw that they had not done a thing since the 
last time I was there ; they had even taken away my 
tools. So we tracked them, Baby and I, and found 
their location monuments just over the hill, and saw 
where they had been working. So to-night I asked 



200 CASEY RYAN 

them about it, and they were very defiant and very 
cool and decided that they were through out here 
and would go to town. They were borrowing Jawn 
so they said. I was objecting, naturally. I was 
quite against being left alone out here, afoot, with 
Babe on my hands. It will soon be coming on cold," 
she said. " I'd have been in a fine predicament, 
with supplies for only about a month longer. And I 
must get the assessment work done, too, you know." 

" D'you want 'em to stay and finish your work? " 
Casey reached out with his foot and pushed Joe 
down upon his back again. 

The little woman looked down at Joe and across 
at Ole by the car. " No, thank you. I should un 
doubtedly put strychnine in their coffee if they 
stayed, I should hate the sight of them so. I have 
some that I brought for the pack rats. No, I don't 
want them " 

She had sounded very cool and calm, and she had 
impressed Casey as being quite as fearless as him 
self. But now he caught a trembling in her voice, 
and he distinctly saw her lip quiver. He was so 
disturbed that he went over and slapped Ole again 
and told him to shut up, though Ole was not saying 
a word. 

" Where's their bed-rolls ? " Casey asked, when he 
turned toward her again. She pointed to the tent, 
and Casey went and dragged forth the packed be 
longings of the two. It was perfectly plain that 
they had deliberately planned their desertion, for 
everything was ready to load into the car. 

Casey went staggering to the Ford, dumped the 



CASEY RYAN 201 

canvas rolls in and yanked Ole up by the collar, pro 
pelling him into the tonneau. Then he came after 
Joe. 

"If you can drive, you'll mebby feel better if yuh 
go along," he said to the woman. " I'm goin' to 
haul 'em far enough sos't they won't feel like walkin' 
back to bother yuh, and seein' you don't know me, 
mebby you better do the drivin'. Then you'll know 
I ain't figurin' on stealin' your car and makin' a 
getaway." 

" I can drive, of course," she acquiesced. " Not 
that I'd be afraid to trust Jawn with you, but they're 
treacherous devils, those two, and they might man 
age somehow to make you trouble if you go alone. 
Jawn is a temperamental car, and he demands all 
of one's attention at times." 

She walked over to the car, reached out in the 
gathering dusk and fingered the carburetor adjust 
ment. " When they first revealed their plan of 
making away with Jawn," she drawled, " I came 
up like this and remonstrated. And while I did so 
I reached over and turned the screw and shut off the 
gas feed. Jawn balked with them, of course but 
they never guessed why ! " 

The two in the tonneau muttered something in 
undertones while the little woman smiled at them 
contemptuously. Casey thought that was pretty 
smart to stall the car so they couldn't get away 
with it but he did not tell her so. There was 
something about the little woman which restrained 
him from talking freely and speaking his mind 
.bluntly as was his habit. 



202 CASEY RYAN 

He cranked the car, waited until she had the ad 
justment correct, and then went back and stood on 
the running board, holding with his left hand to a 
brace of the top and keeping his right free in case 
he should need it. The little woman helped the little 
girl into the front seat, slid her own small person 
behind the wheel and glanced round inquiringly, 
with a flattering recognition of his masculine right 
to command. 

"Just head towards town and keep a-going till 
I say when," he told her, and she nodded and sent 
Jawn careening down over the rough tracks which 
Casey had missed by a quarter of a mile or less. 

She could drive, Casey admitted, almost as reck 
lessly as he could. He had all he wanted to do, 
hanging on without being snapped off at some of 
the sharp turns she made. The road wandered 
down the valley for ten miles, crept over a ridge, 
then dove headlong into another wide, shallow val 
ley seamed with washes and deep cuts. The little 
woman never eased her pace except when there was 
imminent danger of turning Jawn bottomside up in 
a wash. So in a comparatively short time they 
were over two summits and facing the distant out 
line of Crazy Woman Hills. They had come, 
Casey judged, about twenty miles, and they had been 
away from camp less than an hour. 

Casey leaned forward and spoke to the woman, 
and she stopped the car obediently. Casey pulled 
open the door and motioned, and the Swede came 
stumbling out, sullenly followed by Joe, who mut 
tered thickly that he was sick and that the back of 



CASEY RYAN 203 

his head was caved in. Casey did not reply, but 
heaved their bedding out after them. With the little 
woman holding her gun at full aim, he untied the 
two and frugally stowed the rope away in the car. 

" Now, you git," he ordered them sternly. 
" There's four of us camped just acrost the ridge 
from this lady's place, and we'll sure keep plenty of 
eyes out. If you got any ideas about taking the 
back trail, you better think agin, both of yuh. 
You'd never git within shootin' distance of this 
lady's camp. I'm Casey Ryan that's speakin' to 
yuh. You ask anybody about me. Git ! " 

Sourly they shouldered their bed-rolls and went 
limping down the trail, and when their forms were 
only blurs beyond the shine of the headlights, the 
little woman churned Jawn around somehow in the 
sand and drove back quite as recklessly as she had 
come. Casey, bouncing alone in the rear seat, did a 
great deal of thinking, but I don't believe he spoke 
once. 

" Casey Ryan, I have never had much reason for 
feeling gratitude toward a man, but I am truly grate 
ful to you. You are a man and a gentleman." The 
little woman had driven close to the stone cabin 
and had turned and rested her arm along the back of 
the front seat, half supporting the sleeping child 
while she looked full at Casey. She had left the 
engine running, probably for sake of the headlights, 
and her eyes shone dark and bright in the crisp 
starlight. 

" 'Tain't worth mentioning" Casey protested awk 
wardly, and got out. 



204 CASEY RYAN 

" I've been wondering if I could get a couple of 
you men to do the work on my claims," she went 
on. " I'm paying four dollars and board, and it 
would be a great nuisance to make the long trip to 
town and find a couple of men I would dare trust. 
In fact, it's going to be pretty hard for me to trust 
any one, after this experience. If you men can 
take the time from your own business " 

" I don't know about the rest," Casey hedged un 
comfortably. " They was figurin' on doing some 
thing else. But I guess I could finish up the work 
for yuh, all right. How deep is your shaft? " 

" It's a tunnel," she corrected. " My husband 
started four years ago to drift in to the contact. 
He'd gone fifty feet when he died. I don't know 
that I'll strike the body of ore when I do reach the 
contact, but it's the only hope. I'm working the 
four claims as a group, and the tunnel is now eighty 
feet. Those two brigands have wasted a month for 
me, or it would be a hundred. One man can man 
age, though of course it's slower and harder. I 
have powder enough, unless they stole it from me. 
They did about five feet all told, and tore down part 
of my wall, I discovered to-day, chasing a stringer 
of fairly rich ore, thinking, I suppose, that it would 
lead to a pocket. The old man I had last year found 
a pocket of high grade that netted me a thousand 
dollars." 

Casey threw up his head. " Gold ? " he asked. 

" Mostly silver. I sent a truck out from town 
after the ore, shipped it by express and still made a 
thousand dollars clear. There wasn't quite a ton 



CASEY RYAN 205 

and a half of it, though. You'll come, then, and 
work for me? I wish you could persuade one of 
your partners to help. It's getting well into Sep 
tember already." 

" I wouldn't depend on 'em," Casey demurred un 
comfortably. " I can do it alone. And I'll board 
m'self, if you'd ruther. I've got grub enough. I 
guess I better be gittin' along back to camp if 
you ain't afraid to stay alone. Them two couldn't 
git back much b'fore daylight, if they run all the 
way ; and by that time I'll be up and on the lookout," 
and Casey swung off without waiting for an answer. 



CHAPTER XX 

Casey was out of his blankets long before day 
light the next morning and sitting behind a bush on 
the ridge just back of the cabin, his rifle across his 
knees. He hoped that his mention of three other 
men would discourage those two from the attempt 
to revenge themselves, much as a lone woman would 
tempt them. But he was not going to take any 
risk whatever. 

At sunrise he went back to his camp which he 
had moved closer to the cabin, by the way, just 
barely keeping it out of sight and cooked a hasty 
breakfast. When he returned the little woman was 
ready to show him her claims, and she seemed to 
have forgotten those two who had been so ignomini- 
ously hauled away and dropped like unwanted cats 
beside the road. She inquired again about Casey's 
partners, and Casey lied once more and said that 
they had gone on over the range, prospecting. 

I don't know why he did not tell the little woman 
that he had lied to Ole and Joe and let it go at that. 
But he seemed to dread having her discover that he 
had lied at all, and so he kept on lying about those 
three imaginary men. Perhaps he had a chivalrous 
instinct that she would feel safer, more at ease, if 
she thought that others were somewhere near. At 
any rate he did not tell her that his only partners 
were two burros and a mule. 



CASEY RYAN 207 

I don't know what the little woman's opinion of 
Casey was, except that in the first enthusiasm of her 
gratitude to him she had called him a man and a 
gentleman. She drove a bargain with him, as she 
supposed. She would pay him so much more per 
day if he preferred to board himself, and having 
named the amount, Casey waited two minutes, as if 
he were meditating upon the matter, and then replied 
that it suited him all right. 

Casey did not think much of her claims, though 
he did not tell her so. In his opinion that tunnel 
should have been driven into the hill at a different 
point, where the indications of mineral were much 
stronger and the distance to the contact much less. 
A light, varying vein had been followed at an in 
cline, and Casey, working alone, was obliged to 
wheel every pound of dirt up a rather steep grade 
to the dump outside. The rock was hard to work 
in, so that it took him a full half a day to put in four 
shots, and then he would be likely to find that they 
had " bootlegged." The tunnel also faced the south, 
from where the wind nearly always blew, so that 
the gas and smoke from his shots would hang in 
there sometimes for a full twenty-four hours, mak 
ing it impossible for him to work. 

The little woman seemed slightly surprised when 
Casey told her, at the end of the first week, to knock 
off three days on account of gas. She and the little 
girl came to his camp next day and brought Casey 
a loaf of light bread and interrupted him in the act 
of shaving. The little woman looked at the two 
burros and at the mule, measured the camp outfit 



208 CASEY RYAN 

with her keen gray eyes, looked at Casey who had 
nicked his chin, and became thoughtful. 

After that she stopped calling him Mr. Ryan and 
addressed him as Casey Ryan instead, with a little 
teasing inflection in her voice. Once Casey hap 
pened to mention Lund, and when he saw her look 
of surprise he explained that he drove a stage out of 
Lund, for awhile. 

" Oh ! So you are that Casey Ryan ! " she said. 
" I might have known it." She laughed to herself, 
but she did not say why, and Casey was afraid to 
ask. He could remember so many incidents in his 
past that he would not want the little woman to 
know about, and he was afraid that it might be one 
of them at which she was laughing. 

She formed the habit of coming up to the tunnel 
every day, with Babe chattering along beside her, 
swinging herself on her mother's hand. At first she 
said whimsically that she had found it best to keep 
an eye on her miners, as if that explained her com 
ing. But she always had something good to eat or 
drink. Once she brought a small bucket of hot 
chocolate, which Casey gulped down heroically and 
smacked his lips afterwards. Casey hated choco 
late, too, so I think you may take it for granted that 
by then he was a goner. 

He used to smoke his pipe and watch the little 
woman and Babe go " high-grading " along the 
tunnel wall. That was what she called it and pre 
tended that she expected to find very rich ore con 
cealed somewhere. It struck him one day, quite 
suddenly, that the Little Woman (I may as well 



CASEY RYAN 209 

begin to use capitals, because Casey always called 
her that in his mind, and the capitals were growing 
bigger every day) the Little Woman never seemed 
to notice his smoking, or to realize that it is a filthy 
habit and immoral and degrading, as that other 
woman had done. 

He began to notice other things, too; that the 
Little Woman helped him a lot, on afternoons when 
help was most likely to be appreciated. She some 
times " put down a hole " all by herself, skinning a 
knuckle now and then with the lightest " single- 
jack " and saying " darn! " quite as a matter of 
course. 

And once, when the rock was particularly hard, 
she happened along and volunteered to turn the drill 
while Casey used the " double-jack ", which I sup 
pose you know is the big hammer that requires two 
hands to pound the drill while another turns it 
slightly after each blow, so that the bitted end will 
chew its way into hard rock. 

You aren't all of you miners, so I will explain 
further that to drill into rock with a double- jack 
and steel drill is not sport for greenhorns exactly. 
The drill-turner needs a lot of faith and a little 
nerve, because one blow of the double-jack may 
break a hand clasped just below the head of the 
drill. And the man with the double-jack needs a 
steady nerve, too, and some experience in swinging 
the big hammer true to the head of the drill, unless 
he enjoys cracking another man's bones. 

Casey Ryan prides himself upon being able to 
Swing a double-jack as well as any man in the coun- 



2io CASEY RYAN 

try. It is his boast that he never yet broke the skin 
on the hand of his drill-turner. So I shall have to 
let you take it for granted that the Little Woman's 
presence and help was more unnerving than a wild 
cat on Casey's back. For, while the first, second 
and third blows fell true on the drill, the fourth went 
wild. Casey owns that he was in a cold sweat for 
fear he might hit her. So he did. She was squat 
ted on her heels, steadying one elbow on her knee. 
The double-jack struck her hand, glanced and landed 
another blow on her knee; one of those terribly pain 
ful blows that take your breath and make you see 
stars without crippling you permanently. 

Casey doesn't like to talk about it, but once he 
growled that he did about every damn- fool thing 
he could with a double-jack, except brain her. The 
Little Woman gave one small scream and went over 
backward in a faint, and Casey was just about ready 
to go off and shoot himself. 

He took her up in his arms and carried her down 
to the cabin before she came to. And when she 
did come to her senses, Babe immediately made mat 
ters worse. She was whimpering beside her mother, 
and when she saw that mamma had waked up, she 
shrilled consolingly : " It's going to be all well in a 
minute. Casey Ryan kissed it des like that! So 
now it'll get all well ! " 

If the Little Woman had wanted to tell Casey 
what she thought of him, she couldn't just then, for 
Casey was halfway to his own camp by the time she 
glanced around the room, looking for him. 

Common humanity drove him back, of course. 



CASEY RYAN 211 

He couldn't let a woman and a child starve to death 
just because he was a damned idiot and had half- 
killed the woman. But if there had been another 
person within calling distance, the Little Woman 
would probably never have seen Casey Ryan again. 

Necessity has a bland way of ignoring such things 
as conventions and the human emotions. Casey 
cooked supper for Babe and the Little Woman, and 
washed the dishes, and wrung out cloths from hot 
vinegar and salt so that the Little Woman could 
bathe her knee she had to do it left-handed, at that 
and unbuttoned Babe's clothes and helped her on 
with her pyjamas and let her kneel on his lap while 
she said her prayers. Because, as Babe painstak 
ingly explained, she always kneeled on a lap so ants 
couldn't run over her toes and tickle her and make 
her laugh, which would make God think she was a 
bad, naughty girl. 

Can you picture Casey Ryan rocking that child 
to sleep ? I can't yes, I cJan too, and there's 
something in the picture that holds back the laugh 
you think will come. 

Before she gave her final wriggle and cheeped 
her last little cheep, Babe had to be carried over and 
held down where she could kiss mamma good night. 
Casey got rather white around the mouth, then. 
But he didn't say a word. Indeed, he had said 
mighty little since that fourth blow of the double- 
jack; just enough to get along intelligently, with 
what he had to do. He hadn't even told the Little 
Woman he was sorry. 

So Babe was asleep and tucked in her bed, and 



212 CASEY RYAN 

Casey turned down the light and asked perfunctorily 
if there was anything else he could do, and had 
started for the door. And then 

" Casey Ryan," called the Little Woman, with the 
teasing note in her voice. " Casey Ryan, come back 
here and listen to me. You are not going off like 
that to swear at yourself all night. Sit down in that 
chair and listen to me! " 

Casey sat down, swallowing hard. All the Casey 
Ryan nonchalance was gone, never had been with 
him, in fact, while he faced that Little Woman. 
Somehow she had struck him humble and dumb 
from the very beginning. I wish I knew how she 
did it ; I'd like to try it sometime myself. 

" Casey Ryan, it's hard for a woman to own her 
self in the wrong, especially to a man," she said, 
when he had begun to squirm and wonder what bit 
ing words she would say. " I've always thought 
that I had as good nerve as any one. I have, usu 
ally. But that double- jack scared the life out of 
me after the first blow, and I thought I wouldn't 
let on. I couldn't admit I was afraid. I was ter 
ribly ashamed. I knew you'd never miss, but I 
was scared, just the same. And like a darn fool 
I pushed the drill away from me just as you struck. 
It was coming down you couldn't change it, man 
alive. You'd aimed true at the drill, and the 
drill wasn't just there at the moment. Serves me 
right. But it's tough on you, old boy having to 
do the cooking for three of us while I'm laid 
up!" 

I'm sure I can't see how Casey Ryan ever got the 



CASEY RYAN 213 

name of being a devil with the ladies. He certainly 
behaved like a yap then, if you get my meaning. 
He gave the Little Woman a quick, unwinking stare, 
looked away from her shamedly, reached for his 
plug of tobacco, took away his hand, swallowed 
twice, shuffled his feet and then grunted I can 
use no other word for it : 

" Aw, I guess I c'n stand it if you can !" 

He made a motion then to rise up and go to his 
own camp where he would undoubtedly think of 
many tender, witty things that he would like to have 
spoken to the Little Woman. But she was watch 
ing him. She saw him move and stopped him with a 
question. 

" Casey Ryan, tell me the truth about that tunnel. 
Do you think it's ever going to strike the ore body 
at all?" 

Start Casey off on the subject of mining and you 
have him anchored and interested for an hour, at 
least. The Little Woman had brains, you must see 
that. 

" Well, I don't want to discourage you, ma'am," 
Casey said reluctantly, the truth crowding against 
his teeth. " But I'd V gone in under that iron 
capping, if I'd been doing it. The outcropping you 
followed in from the surface never has been in 
place, ma'am. It's what I'd call a wild stringer. 
It pinched out forty foot back of where we're dig- 
gin' now. That's just an iron stain we're follow 
ing, and the pocket of high grade don't mean nothin'. 
[You went in on the strength of indications " He 
stopped there and chuckled to himself, in a way that 



214 CASEY RYAN 

I'd come to know as the " indications " of a story, 
which usually followed. 

The Little Woman probably guessed. I suppose 
she was lonely, too, and the pain of her hurts made 
her want entertainment. " What are you laughing 
at, Casey Ryan?" she demanded. "If it's funny, 
tell me." 

Casey blushed, though she couldn't have seen him 
in the dusky light of the cabin. " Aw, it ain't any 
thing much," he protested bashfully. " I just hap 
pened to think about a little ol' Frenchman I knowed 
once, over in Cripple Creek, ma'am." He stopped. 

" Well? Tell me about the little ol' Frenchman. 
It made you laugh, Casey Ryan, and it's about the 
first time I've seen you do that. Tell me." 

" Well, it ain't nothin' very funny to tell about," 
Casey hedged like a bashful boy ; which was mighty 
queer for Casey Ryan, I assure you. For if there 
was anything Casey liked better than a funny story, 
it was some one to listen while he told it. " You 
won't git the kick, mebby. It's knowin' the French 
man makes it seem kinda funny when I think about 
it. He was a good little man and he kept a little 
hotel and was an awful good cook. And he wanted 
a gold mine worse than anybody I ever seen. He 
didn't know a da nothin' at all about minin' 
ma'am, but every ol' soak of a prospector could git 
a meal off him by tellin' him about some wildcat 
bonanza or other. He'd forgit to charge 'em, he'd 
be so busy listenin'. 

" Well, there was two ol' soaks that got around 
him to grubstake 'em. They worked it all one year. 



CASEY RYAN 215 

They'd git a burro load of grub and go out some- 
wheres and peck around till it was all et up, and then 
they'd come back an' tell Frenchy some wild tale 
about runnin' acrost what looked like the richest 
prospect in the country. They'd go on about hav- 
in' all the indications of a big body uh rich ore. 
He'd soak it in, an' they'd hang around town one 
had a sore foot one time, I remember, that lasted 
'em a month of good board at Frenchy 's hotel be 
fore he drove 'em out agin to his mine, as he called 
it 

" They worked that scheme on him for a long 
time and it was the only da scheme they 
wasn't too lazy to work. They'd git money to buy 
powder an' fuse an' caps, ma'am, an' blow it on 
booze, y'see. An' they'd hang in town, boardin' off 
Frenchy, jest as long as they c'ld think of an excuse 
fer stayin'. 

" So somebody tipped Frenchy off that he was 
bein' worked for grub an' booze money, an' Frenchy 
done a lot uh thinkin'. Next time them two come 
in, he was mighty nice to 'em. An' when he finally 
got 'em pried loose an' headed out, he appeared sud 
denly and says he's goin along to take a look at his 
mine. They couldn't do nothin' but take him, uh 
course. So they led him out to an old location hole 
somebody else had dug, an' they showed him iron 
cappin' an' granite contact an' so on just talk- 
in' wild, an' every few minutes comin' in with the 
' strong indications of a rich ore body.' That was 
their trump suit, y'see, ma'am. 

" Frenchy listened, an' his eyes commenced to 



216 CASEY RYAN 

snap, but he never said nothin' for awhile. Then 
all at once he pulled one uh these ol'-style revolvers 
an' points it at 'em, an' yells : ' Indicaziones ! Indi- 
cazionesl T'ell weez your indicaziones! Now you 
show me zee me-tall! ' " Casey stopped, reached 
for his plug and remembered that he mustn't. The 
Little Woman laughed. She didn't seem to need 
the tapering off of the story, as most women de 
mand. 

" And so you think I have plenty of indicaziones, 
but mighty little chance of getting the mt-tall," she 
pointed the moral. " Well, then tell me what to 
do/' 

It was in the telling, I think, that Casey for the 
first time forgot to be shy and became his real, 
Casey Ryan best. The Little Woman saw at once, 
when he pointed it out to her, that she ought to drift 
and cut under the iron capping instead of tunneling 
away from it as they had been doing. 

But she was not altogether engrossed in that tun 
nel. I think her prospecting into the soul of Casey 
Ryan interested her much more ; and being a woman 
she followed the small outcropping of his Irish 
humor and opened up a distinct vein of it before the 
evening was over. Just to convince you, she led 
him on until Casey told her all about feeding his 
Ford syrup instead of oil, and all about how it ran 
over him a few times on the dry lake, Casey was 
secretly made happy because she saw at once how 
easily that could happen, and never once doubted 
that he was sober! He told her about the goats in 
Patmos and made her laugh so hard that Babe woke 



CASEY RYAN 217 

and whimpered a little, and insisted that Casey take 
her up and rock her again in the old homemade chair 
with crooked juniper branches hewn for rockers. 

With Babe in his arms he told her, too, about his 
coming out to hunt the Injun Jim mine. He must 
have felt pretty well acquainted, by then, because 
he regaled her with a painstaking, Caseyish descrip 
tion of Lucy Lily and her educated wardrobe, and 
because she was a murderous kind of squaw and 
entitled to no particular chivalry even repeated 
her manner of proposing to a white man, and her 
avowed reason and all. That was going pretty far, 
I think, for one evening, but we must keep in mind 
the fact that Casey and the Little Woman had met 
almost a month before this, and that Casey had 
merely thrown wide open the little door to his real 
self. 

At any rate it was after ten o'clock by Casey's 
Ingersoll when he tucked Babe into her little bed, 
brought a jelly glass of cold water for the Little 
Woman to drink in the night, and started for the 
door. 

There he stopped for a minute, debated with his 
shyness and turned back. 

" You mebby moved that steel at the wrong time," 
he said abruptly, " I guess you musta, the way it 
happened. But I was so scared I'd hit yuh, my 
teeth was playin' the dance to La Paloma. I was in 
a cold sweat. I never did hit a man with a double- 
jack in my life, and I guess I've put down ten miles 
uh holes, nrx'am, if you placed 'em end to end. I 
always made it my brag I never scraped a knuckle at 



218 CASEY RYAN 

.that game. But them little hands of yours on the 
drill I was shakin' all over for fear 1 might 
hurt yuh. I I never hated anything so bad in 
my life I'd rather kill a dozen men than hurt 
you" 

"Man alive," the Little Woman exclaimed softly 
from her dusky corner, " you'd never have hurt me 
in the world, if I'd had the nerve to trust you." 
And she added softly, " I'll trust you, from now on, 
Casey Ryan. Always/' 

I think Casey was an awful fool to walk out and 
never let her know that he heard that " Always." 



CHAPTER XXI 

" Casey Ryan," the Little Woman began with her 
usual abruptness one evening, when she was able 
to walk as far as the mine and back without feeling 
the effect of the exercise, but was still nursing a 
bandaged right hand ; " Casey Ryan, tell me again 
just what old Injun Jim looked like." 

Casey laughed and shifted Babe to a more secure 
perch on his shoulder, and drew his head to one side 
in an effort to slacken Babe's terrific pull on his 
hair. " Him ? Mean an' ornery as the meanest 
thing you can think of. Sour as a dough can you've 
went off an' left for a coupla weeks in July." 

" Oh, yes ; very explicit, I admit. But just what 
did he look like? Height, weight, age and chief 
characteristics. I have," she explained, " a very 
good reason for wanting a description of him." 

" What yuh want a description of him for? He's 
good an' dead now." You see, Casey had reached 
the point of intimacy where he could argue with 
the Little Woman quite in his everyday Irish spirit 
of contention. 

The Little Woman had spirit of her own, but she 
was surprisingly meek with Casey at times. " It 
struck me quite suddenly, to-day, that I may know 
where that gold mine is; or about where it is," she 
said, with a hidden excitement in her voice. " I've 



220 CASEY RYAN 

been thinking all day about it, and putting two and 
two together. I merely need a fair description now 
of Injun Jim, to feel tolerably certain that I do or 
do not know something about the location of that 
mine." 

" How'd you come to know anything about it? " 
Casey stopped to move Babe to his other shoulder. 
He had put in a long hard day in the tunnel, and 
Babe was a husky youngster for four-and-a-half. 
Also she had developed a burr-like quality toward 
Casey, and she liked so well to be carried home from 
the mine that she would sit flat on the ground and 
rock her small body and weep until she was picked 
up and placed on Casey's shoulder. " Set still, now, 
Babe, or Casey'll have to put yuh down an' make 
yuh walk home. Le'go my ear! Yuh want Casey 
to go around lop-sided, with only one ear?" 

" Yes ! " assented Babe eagerly, kicking Casey in 
the stomach. " Give me your knife, Casey Wyan, 
so I can cut off one ear an' make you lop-sided ! " 

" An' you'd do it, too ! " Casey exclaimed admir 
ingly. 

" Baby Girl, you interrupted mother when mother 
was speaking of something important. You make 
mother very sad." 

Babe's mouth puckered, her eyelids puckered, and 
she give a small wail. " Now Baby's sad ! You 
hurt my feelin's when you speak to me cross ! " 
She shook her yellow curls into her eyes and wept 
against them. 

There was no hope of grown-ups talking about 
anything so foolish as a gold mine when Babe was 



CASEY RYAN 221 

in that mood. So Casey cooked supper, washed 
the dishes and helped Babe into her pyjamas; then 
he let her kneel restively in his lap while she said 
her prayers, and told her a story while he rocked her 
to sleep it was a funny, Caseyish story about a 
bear, but we haven't time for it now before he at 
tempted to ask the Little Woman again what she 
meant by her mysterious curiosity concerning Injun 
Jim. Then, when he had his pipe going and the 
stove filled with pinon wood, he turned to her with 
the question in his eyes. 

The Little Woman laughed. " Now, if that ter 
rible child will kindly consent to sleep for fifteen 
minutes, I'll tell you what I meant," she said. " It 
had slipped my mind altogether, and it was only 
to-day, when Babe was scratching out a snake's 
track so the snake couldn't find the way back 
home, she said that I chanced to remember. Just 
a small thing, you know, that may or may not mean 
something very large and important like a gold 
mine, for instance." 

" I don't have to go to work 'til sunup," Casey 
hinted broadly, " and I've set up many a night when 
I wasn't havin' half as much fun as I git listenin' to 
you talk." 

Again the Little Woman laughed. I think she 
had been rambling along just to bait Casey into 
something like that." 

" Very well, then, I'll come to the point. Though 
it is such a luxury to talk, sometimes! For a 
woman, that is. 

" Three years ago we had two burros to pack 



222 CASEY RYAN 

water from your gulch, where there were too many 
snakes, to this gulch where there never seemed to 
be so many. We hadn't developed this spring then. 
One night something or other frightened the burros 
and they disappeared, and I started out to find them, 
leaving Babe of course with her father at the tunnel. 

" I trailed those burros along the mountain for 
about four miles, I should think. And by that time 
I was wishing I had taken a canteen with me, though 
when I started out from camp I hated the thought of 
being burdened with the weight of it. I thought 
I could find water in some of the gulches, however, 
so I climbed a certain ridge and sat down to rest 
and examine the canyon beneath with that old tele 
scope Babe plays with. It has been dropped so 
many times it's worthless now, but three years ago 
you could see a lizard run across a rock a mile away. 
Don't you believe that ? " she stopped to demand 
sternly. 

" Say ! You couldn't tell me nothin' I wouldn't 
believe ! " Casey retorted, fussing with his pipe to 
hide the grin on his face. 

" This is the truth, as it happens. I merely speak 
of the lizard to convince you that a man's features 
would show very distinctly in the telescope. And 
please observe, Casey Ryan, that I am very serious 
at the moment. This may be important to you, 
remember. 

" I was sitting among a heap of boulders that 
capped the ridge, and it happened that I was pretty 
well concealed from view because I was keeping in 
the shade of a huge rock and had crouched down so 



CASEY RYAN 223 

that I could steady the telescope across a flat rock 
in front of me. So I was not discovered by a man 
down in the canyon whom I picked up with the tele 
scope while I was searching the canyon side for a 
spring. 

" The man was suddenly revealed to me as he 
parted the branches of a large greasewood and 
peered out. I think it was the stealthiness of his 
manner that impressed me most. He looked up and 
down and across, but he did not see me. After a 
short wait, while he seemed to be listening, he crept 
out from behind the bush, turned and lifted forward 
a bag which hadn't much in it, yet appeared quite 
heavy. He went down into the canyon, picking his 
way carefully and stepping on rocks, mostly. But 
in one place where he must cross a wash of deep 
sand, he went backward and with a dead branch he 
had picked up among the rocks he scratched out 
each track as he made it. Babe reminded me of 
that to-day when she scratched out the snake's track 
in the sand up by the mine." 

Casey was leaning toward her, listening avidly, 
his pipe going cold in his hand. " Was he ? " 

" He was an Indian, and very old, and he walked 
with that bent, tottery walk of old age. He had one 
eye and " 

" Injun Jim, that was couldn't be anybody 
else ! " Casey knocked his pipe against the front of 
the little cookstove, emptying the half-burned 
tobacco into the hearth. The Little Woman prob 
ably wondered why he seemed so unexcited, but 
she did not know all of Casey's traits. He put 



224 CASEY RYAN 

away his pipe and almost immediately reached for 
his plug of tobacco, taking a chew without remem 
bering where he was. "If you feel able to ride," he 
said, " I'll ketch up the mule in the morning, and 
we'll go over there." 

" So your heart is really set on finding it, after 
all. I've been wondering about that. You haven't 
seemed to be thinking much about it, lately." 

" A feller can prospect," Casey declared, " when 
he can't do nothin' else." And he added rather con 
vincingly, " Good jobs is scarce, out this way. I'd 
be a fool to pass up this one, when I'd have the hull 
winter left fer prospectin'." 

"And what about those partners of yours? " 

" Oh, them? " Casey hesitated, tempted perhaps 
to tell the truth. " Oh, they've quit on me. They 
quit right away after I went to work. We we 
had a kinda fuss, and they've went back to town." 
He stopped and added with a sigh of relief, " We 
can just as well count them out, fr'm now on an' 
fergit about 'em." 

" Oh," said the Little Woman, and smiled to her 
self. " Well, if you are anxious about that patch 
of brush in the canyon, we'll go and see what's be 
hind it. To-morrow is Sunday, anyway." 

" I'd a made up the time, if it wasn't," Casey as 
sured her with dignity. " I've been waitin' a good 
many years for a look at that Injun Jim gold." 

" And it's just possible that I have been almost 
within reach of it for the past four years and didn't 
know it! Well, I always have believed that Fate 
weaves our destinies for us ; and a curious pattern is 



CASEY RYAN 225 

the weaving, sometimes! I'll go with you, Casey 
Ryan, and I hope, for your sake, that Indian Jim's 
mine is behind that clump of bushes. And I hope," 
she added, with a little laugh whose meaning was not 
clear to Casey, " I hope you get a million dollars out 
of it! I should like to point to Casey Ryan, the 
mining millionaire and say, * That plutocratic gen 
tleman over there once knocked me down with a 
hammer, and washed my dishes for two weeks, and 
really, my dears, you should taste his sour-dough 
biscuits ! ' " 

Casey went away to his camp and lay awake a 
long time, not thinking about the Injun Jim mine, 
if you please, but wondering what he had done to 
make the Little Woman give him hell about his bis 
cuits. Good Lord! Did she still blame him for 
hitting her with that double-jack ? when he knew 
and she knew that she had made him do it ! and if 
she didn't like his sour-dough biscuits, why in thun 
der had she kept telling him she did ? 

He tucked the incident away in the back of his 
mind, meaning to watch her and find out just what 
she did mean, anyway. Her opinion of him had 
become vital to Casey; more vital than the Injun Jim 
mine, even. 

He saddled the buckskin mule next morning and 
after breakfast the three set out, with a lunch and 
two canteens of water. The Little Woman was in 
a very good humor and kept Casey " jumpin' side 
ways," as he afterwards confessed to me, wonder 
ing just what she meant or whether she meant noth 
ing at all by her remarks concerning his future 



CASEY RYAN 

7.LV. iz: :_--- in: .:: :e would 

be bad forgotten the 



they canoe to it. She 



mjt BHBKtBBBf CBtBCiy ult~ 
.--.:' f.-.r :, : 



' ".:_::- fi:. :r. .:.: MIX 
Casey 5 MHDBjge of 

to test it, you nerer 
BBS m the BBOC ot 




of 

afrari to stare at the 
eye saw a 

Babe's fist. It lay jiot 

rtmni^ of BBBBESL Bft BBC shade. 

e saw a ycflow ^eam on the 



" t a. bad czoyoa to prospect in. Yon 

I take a look 



CASEY RYAN 227 



In five mantes or less IK cave back to her 
little nugget the size of Babe's taanb, 

If ynh vaut to sec soaKoang pretty, COB 
np where I got this here,** he tali her. " IH 
ynh what drives prospectors crazy. This ain't ao 
free gold country, but there's a pile nh gold in a din 

and mebby ynh didn't. 

way, tnts is where we beaded for. 

" Wefl, yoa really are a prospector, after at I 
just wondered." The Tittle We 
in the least emoarrassc 




Babe by the hand, and they went ap brvond the 

Cunning- that was the mood Nature 
been m wnen she planted free in 
wiiakk on the side of Two Peak, and set the 
in the month of the draw, and piled an rron 
the top and spread barrea monataaKsn 
In tae aitaat; lajam Jaa kad doi 
too. He had 
face of the bank of 

passed k by 




Hi 



to Casey, her eyes saoBBg. -^^^7 .- ^r 
end of yoor xaaibow ! Aadyoafic: 

siyoa 5 ** got your pot o ; 



22S CASEY RYAN 

Ac end of one," he said. " But they s another one, 
now, t I can sec plainer than this one. I dtmno's 
IH ener git to where that one points/* 

A. mans newer satisfied, scoffed fhf Little 
Woman, tinning the pfcciuus little yeflow fragments 
OTtTthoagbtfnDymberpalin. " I'should dunk tins 
ought to be enough for you, man afive."* 

"Mebbyithad. Bat it ain't." He looked at her. 
, and I dunk the Little Woman waited 
held her breath for what he might say next. 



He turned away without another glance at the 



* You:" n the kid can gopher around there whilst 
I go step off the fines of a daim an* put op the loca 
tion notice,** he said, and left her standing there with 
the gold in her palm. 

That night it was the Little Woman who planned 
great things for Casey, and it was Casey who 
smoked and said fittk about it Bat once he shook 
Ms head when she described the gilded future she 

Money in great gobs Ukc that ain*t mnch use to 
v" he demurred. " Once I blew into Land, over 
here, with twenty-fire thousand dollars in my 
pockei that I got oota sOw ctiims All I ever 
sawed onta that <JMH!I was two pairs of ff^HFi No 
need of you tnanr puns on my l*^'"g a 



It ain't in me. I gness Fm nothin* bat a roog^i-neck 
ili^idiiiu an* prospector, dear into the middle of 
my hones. If I had Ac sense of a rabbit I never'd 
gone lirtBg* through fife the way PTC done. I d 



CASEY RYAN 229 



to somethai' by now. As it is I ain't 
and I ain't nobody *" 
You're Casey Wyan! Yoa make me sad when 



yoa say that! ^i:r rr::tr'.ti r.rt'.. _.:i_rr n-tr 
n ~Z-^. L i r i m .""- 1 ~ ~ .T- i j.. i. T r z~n z. 5 T-^.TTIT~- ^r n_r7" r^ ~ r i ~~_^ ^ . ~" 
on the 'l"'"^ * \ OO'TC my bes' friend and jpwfvt 
got a lots more sense than ai'VBikd*' 

"* And your rainbow, Casey Ryan ? " the Little 
\V oman asked aofUj. b What aboot das other, 
new ramoowr* 

" Ifs there," said Casey gtoomfly. ~ If! always 
be there jot ower the ridge ahead oh me. In 

I. ,J T -- * -. . . - . ----- 9 * 

DDL X - . ~ ^~ _ ^r - . 



* m go catch yoor wainbom, Casey Wyan, IH 
ran fas' as I can, an* F9 catch it for you!" 
K W31 yah. Babe?" Casey be* Ms head 



AeLhde Woman spoke of it again, 



CHAPTER XXII 

Oddly enough, it was Lucy Lily who uncon 
sciously brought Casey to his rainbow. Lucy Lily 
did not mean to do Casey any favor, I can assure 
you, but Fate just took her and used her for the 
moment, and Lucy Lily had nothing to say about it. 

Don't think that a squaw who wants to live like a 
white princess will forget to go hunting a gold mine 
whose richness she had seen, in a lard bucket, per 
haps. Lucy Lily did not abandon her bait. She 
used it again, and a renegade white man snapped 
at it, worse luck. So they went hunting through 
the Tippipahs for the mine of Injun Jim. What ex 
cuses the squaw made for not being able to lead 
the man directly to the spot, I can't say, of course; 
but I suppose she invented plenty. 

She did one clever thing, at least. In their wan 
derings she led the way into the old camp of Injun 
Jim. There had been no storm to dim the tracks 
Casey had made, and Lucy Lily, Indian that she 
was, knew that these were the tracks of Casey Ryan 
and guessed what was his errand there. So she and 
her white man trailed him across the valley to Two 
Peak. 

They came first to the camp, and there the Little 
Woman met them, and by some canny intuition 
knew who they were and what they wanted, 



CASEY RYAN 231 

thanks to Casey's garrulous mood when he told her 
of Lucy Lily. They said that they were hunting 
horses, and presently went on over the ridge; not 
following Casey's plain trail to the tunnel, but rid 
ing off at an angle so that they could come into the 
trail once they were hidden from the house. 

Casey, as it happened, was not at the tunnel at 
all, but over at the gold mine, doing the location 
work. Doing it in the side hill a good two hun 
dred feet away from the gold streak, too, I will add. 

The Little Woman watched until the squaw and 
her man were out of sight, and then she took a small 
canteen and filled it, got her rifle, pocketed her auto 
matic revolver, and tied Babe's sunbonnet firmly 
under Babe's double chin. She could not take the 
mule, because Casey had ridden him, so she walked, 
and carried Babe most of the way on her back. 
She kept to the gulches until she was too far away 
to be seen in the sage, even when a squaw was 
squinting sharp-eyed after her. 

She came, in the course of two hours or so, to the 
lip of the canyon, and who-whooed to Casey, muck 
ing out after a shot he had put down in the location 
hole. Casey looked up, waved his hand and then 
came running. No whim would send the Little 
Woman on a four-mile walk with a heavy child like 
Babe to carry, and Casey was as white as he'll ever 
get when he met her halfway to the bottom of the 
canyon. 

" Take Babe and let's get back to the claim," she 
panted. " I came to tell you that squaw is on your 
trail with a white man in tow, and it'll be a case of 



232 CASEY RYAN 

claim- jumping if they can see their way tolerably 
dear. He's a mate for the two you helped me haul 
oat of camp, and I think, Casey Ryan, the 
squaw would kill you in a mimrte if she gets the 
chance." 

Casey did rather a funny thing, considering how 
scared he was usually of the Little Woman. -" You 
pack that kid all the way over here? " he grunted, 
and picked up the Little Woman and carried her, 
and left Babe to walk. Of course he helped Babe, 
holding her hand over the roughest spots, but it was 
the Little Woman whom he carried the rest of the 
way. And Babe, if yon please, was quite calm 
aboot it and never once became " sad " so that she 
must sit down and cry. 

"AH the claim-jumpin' they 11 do won't hurt no 
body," Casey observed unexcitedly, when he had set 
the Little Woman down on a rock beside his loca 
tion " cut " in the canyon's side. " She likely 
picked on a white man so's he could locate under the 
Jaw, but this claim's located a'ready.'' He waved 
a band toward the monument, a few rods up the can 
yon. "And Casey Ryan ain't spreadin' no rich 
gold vein wide open for every prowlin' desert rat to 
pack off all he kin stagger under. I'm callin' it the 
DeviFs Lantern. You c'n call a mine any name yuh 
darn want to. And if it wasn't fer the Devil's Lan 
tern, I wouldn't be here. That name won't mean 
nodrin' to 'em. Let 'em come." His eyes turned 
toward the hidden richness and dwelt there, study 
ing the tracks, big and little, that led up to it, and 
deriding that tracks do not necessarily mean a gold 



CASEY RYAN 233 

mine, and that it would be better to leave diem as 
they were and not attempt to cover them. 

" You just say if s yottr claim, H they come 
snoopin* around here. I'm supposed to be woridn* 
for yuh," he said abruptly, giving her one of his 
quick, steady glances. 

" They can go and read the location notice," die 
Little Woman pointed out Casey did not make 
any reply to that, but picked up his shovel and went 
to work again, mocking oat the dirt and broken 
rocks which the dynamite had loosened in th? cn<% 

" She's a bird, ain't she? " he grinned orer his 
shoulder, his mind reverting to Lacy I-fly. ** Did 
she have on her war paint? n 

" She wffl have, when she sees you/' the Little 
Woman retorted, watching the farther rim of the 
canyon. Then she remembered Babe and called to 
her. That yuuugster was always prospecting 
around on her own initiative, and she answered 
shriHy now from up the canyon. The Little 
Woman stood up, looking that way, never dreaming 
how wishfully Casey was watching her, and how 
reverently. 

"Baby Girl, you most nor run off like that! 
Mother will be compelled to tie a rope on you." 

" I was jes" getting Casey Wyan's *bacax 
Poor Casey Wyan forgot his "bacco! He's my 
frien'. I have to give him his Tjacco/' Babe de 
fended herself, coming down from die location 
monument in small jumps and scrambles. Close to 
her importantly heaving chest she cmtched a small, 
red tobacco can of the kind which smokers care- 



234 CASEY RYAN 

lessly call " P.A." " Casey Wyan lost it up in the 
wocks," Babe explained, when her mother met her 
disapprovingly and caught her by the hand. 

" Why, Babe ! You've been naughty. This 
must be Casey Ryan's location notice. It must be 
left in the rocks, Baby Girl, so people will know 
that Casey Ryan owns this claim." 

" It's his 'bacco ! " Babe insisted stubbornly. 
" Casey Wyan needs his 'bacco." 

The Little Woman knew that streak of stubborn 
ness of old. There was just one way to deal with 
it, and that was to prove to Babe that she was mis 
taken. So she opened the red can and pulled out 
a folded paper, unfolded the paper and began to 
read it aloud. Not that Babe would understand it 
all, but to make it seem very convincing and im 
portant, and I think partly to enjoy for herself 
the sense of Casey's potential wealth. 

" ' NOTICE OF LOCATION QUARTZ/ " she read, 
and glanced over the paper at her listening small 
daughter. " ' To Whom it May Concern: Please 
take notice that: The name of this claim is the 
Devil's Lantern Quartz Mining Claim. Said Claim 
is situated in the Unsurueyed Mining District, 
County of Nye, State of Nevada. Located this 
twenty-fifth day of September, ip . This discov 
ery is made and this notice is posted this twenty-fifth 
day of September, ip . 

2. That the undersigned locators are citizens of 
the United States or have declared their intention to 
become such, and have discovered mineral-bearing 
rock!" 



CASEY RYAN 235 

"What's mineral-bearing wock, mother?" 

" That's the gold, Baby Girl. ' in place there 
on and do locate and claim same for mining pur 
poses. 

J. That t]ie number of linear feet in length 
along the course of the vein each way from the point 
of discovery whereon we have erected a monument 
' That's the monument, up there, and Babe must 
not touch it ' ' is Easterly 950 feet; Westerly 
550 feet; tJmt the total length does not exceed 1500 
feet. That the width on the southerly side is 500 
feet; that the width on the northerly side is joo 
feet; that the end lines are parallel; that the general 
course of the vein or lode as near as may be is in an 
Easterly and Westerly direction; that the bound 
aries of this claim may be readily traced and are 
defined as follows, to-wit: /' 

She skipped a lot of easterly and westerly tech 
nique in Casey's clear, uncompromising handwriting 
done in an indelible pencil and came down to 
the last paragraph: 

" ' That all the dips, variations, spurs, angles and 
all veins, ledges, or deposits within the lines of said 
claim, together with all water and timber and any 
other rights appurtenant, allowed by the law of this 
State or of the United States are hereby claimed. 

LOCATORS 
" ' Jack I. Gleason, 
'Margaret Sutten. ' 

" Why why-y Good Lord ! " 

" Here they come," Casey called at that moment. 
" Put 'er back in the monument and don't let on like 



CASEY RYAN 

at affl. It's a 



He was ^ery bn^r. in fact, 




CASEY RYAN 



237 



l.ri Ht 

1m 



* Wd," said Casey 
the sic of ihe cz* 9 

of tou from a oxfTaA zaoe, haiwe 



Lacy Lihr lodheiat him with 
ity UH-U you wiD sec xn lie 



doad of dnst in tbe 




----- 



238 CASEY RYAN 

rode on to where the Little Woman sat beside her 
monument, imperturbably watching their approach. 
Had those two only known it, they were covered 
with a rifle from the moment they turned their backs 
upon Casey; though they might not have seen him 
if they had looked his way. Casey was back in the 
cut, resting the Little Woman's rifle upon the broken 
trunk of a sage bush at the rim. His finger was 
crooked on the trigger, and he would have shot the 
instant either of them made a hostile move toward 
the Little Woman. 

She seemed to pay no attention to them beyond 
answering a question by waving one hand toward 
the monument. Lucy Lily climbed heavily off her 
pony, eyed the Little Woman curiously, and walked 
consciously wide of her as she went to read the 
notice in the little red can. Lucy Lily seemed dis 
tinctly crestfallen when she replaced the can. 

"It is the Devil's Lantern Mine, and it's hers," 
she informed her scowling companion. " And a 
man I don't know his name. I guess we have made 
ourselves a hell of trouble for nothing. You come." 
She remounted, rather clumsily because of her 
weight, and led the way back down the canyon with 
out a word or a glance toward the two who watched 
her go. You can't beat an Indian for sublime 
crudity of manner. Without warning or greeting 
they come, and when they have finished the errand 
which brought them, they go, and that settles it. 

The Little Woman sat for a long while beside 
the monument, her chin in her two hands, her face 
turned away from Casey. Nothing, I believe, wor- 



CASEY RYAN 239 

ries a man like a woman's silence. Casey looked 
at her every time he threw a shovel of dirt over 
the dump, and he thought of her while he picked out 
the broken rock. Was she mad ? Had he hurt her 
feelings? Did she think, mebby, that he had his 
nerve, naming the claim the Devil's Lantern without 
asking her ? Or did she think, what in thunder 
did she think? 

Casey made up his mind that he could stand it as 
long as she could. And immediately he began to 
feel himself an outcast, a pariah in her sight, a per 
son whom she utterly despised, just as she de 
spised Ole and Joe. He knew why he had done 
what he did, and he knew that he had been happy in 
the doing, and couldn't have done anything different 
if he had tried. Why, hell ! Didn't a half-interest 
belong to Jack, both by custom and agreement? 
The man who grubstaked always got half. And 
didn't the Little Woman show him the mine? 
Would he ever have come over to this particular 
spot and discovered it, hidden as it was ? And since 
she did show it to him, wasn't it hers by right? 
How could any man have the nerve not to give her a 
half -interest? Casey drove his pick viciously into a 
seam in the rock, when he reached that point in his 
argument, and then swore because the pick broke. 

" An' I wisht you'd show me how'n hell you can 
make more'n two halves outa anything!" he ex 
claimed aloud in his distraction. 

" You might find the answer to that at the end 
of your rainbow," the Little Woman's voice an 
swered him with a tender kind of mockery. And 



240 CASEY RYAN 

there she was, standing within three feet of him, 
holding Babe by the hand and looking at him with 
such a shine in her gray eyes ! 

" Oh, Casey Ryan ! " she laughed unsteadily, " I 
think Lucy Lily went directly to the heart of the 
matter. I am going to adopt her method." She 
stopped and looked full at Casey, who was engaged 
at that moment in scrubbing his face wildly with 
his blue handkerchief. 

" I am going to give the gold to my husband for 
a wedding present," said the Little Woman. 

Casey was not looking at her, and so he swal 
lowed hard over that bald statement. "I I 
thought I didn't know's you had a-any " he 
floundered and stuck there, out of breath and out of 
courage, too. 

" I haven't yet," said the Little Woman very 
quietly. "Are you spoken for, Casey Ryan?" 

Still, Casey swears that he proposed. He's as 
proud of it as a hen with young ducks, and I think 
he would whip any man who had the nerve to hint 
that Casey had to be cornered first. 

He came to me for moral support at the wedding, 
so I helped Casey buy the ring, helped Casey buy a 
new outfit of clothes, helped him choose the right 
tie, by Jove. Casey wanted a blue one with wavy 
threads of rainbow colors squirming all over it, and 
I saved him from that, I remember. I remember, 
too, that Babe had one of her " sad " attacks in the 
middle of the ceremony, and had to be carried out to 
the kitchen by the preacher's wife, and given a 



CASEY RYAN 241 

cookie. I thought sure Casey would need something 
of the sort himself before he was through. I wish 
you could have seen his knees buckle when the 
preacher looked him in the eye and began to intone, 
" Do you take this woman to be your lawful wedded 
wife?" 

Oh, say! Casey will murder me, if he ever reads 
this (but then, Casey never reads stories; that's why 
I've told so much of the truth about him). Well, 
believe it or not, when the preacher finished that do- 
you-take question, and paused with that solemn air 
after "So long as you both shall live?" Casey 
was so up in the air that he threw back his shoulders, 
tilted his head sidewise belligerently and barked, 
" You ask anybody if I will or not! " 

If you don't believe that, you just ask the Little 
Woman, or the preacher. No one else heard him, 
fortunately, the preacher's wife being in the kitchen 
at the moment with Babe, and coming back only 
when she was called to sign her name as a witness. 
I'll bet the preacher told her, though. 

That's about all, I think, unless you want to know 
just how the Devil's Lantern mine panned out. As 
a matter of fact, I don't know, exactly. You see, I 
made over my half -interest to Casey and his wife as 
a wedding present, and Casey, confiding to me his 
fear that the mine was really just a " pocket " that 
would not hold up under any extensive working, 
sold out to a company of promoters for fifty thou 
sand dollars. At the same time he managed to work 
off the silver claim of the Little Woman's on to the 
same outfit for something like five thousand, and 



242 CASEY RYAN 

with all that money to start them housekeeping the 
Casey Ryan family went straight to the American 
heaven, California. Los Angeles, to be explicit. 

I had a letter from Casey just the other day, in 
which he boasted of having been pinched twice for 
speeding since those new and drastic traffic laws 
went into effect. He's driving a Six, and he says 
it's blue. But I noticed that " very dark " was writ 
ten in there, in fine handwriting not at all like 
Casey's. He's tamed, all right; he must be if he 
permits his wife to censor his letters to as old a 
friend as I am. 



THE END 



THE RANCH AT THE WOLVERINE 

A ringing tale full of exhilarating cowboy atmosphere, abundantly 
and absorbingly illustrating the outstanding feature of that alluring 
ranch life that is fast vanishing. Chicago Tribune. 

JEAN OF THE LAZY A 

A spirited novel of ranch life in which the fascinating 
heroine poses for film pictures that she may make money 
necessary to prove her father innocent of a crime for which 
he has been convicted. 

It possesses all the popular ingredients a quick-action plot, color 
and picturesqueness aplenty, and an unflagging interest to be 
found in Bower's earlier successes. Philadelphia Public Ledger. 

THE PHANTOM HERD 

Another western tale in which the Happy Family be 
come real "movie" actors. 

There has been so much truck written in the last few years about 
motion pictures, that it is a positive relief to find a book by an author 
who knows exactly what to talk about in an entertaining manner 
with a knowledge of actual conditions as they exist. Boston Post. 

THE HERITAGE OF THE SIOUX 

A Flying U story in which the Happy Family get 
mixed up in a robbery faked for film purposes. 

Altogether a rattling story, that is better in conception and ex 
pression than the conventional thriller on account of its touches of 
real humanity in characterization. Philadelphia Public Ledger. 

RIM O' THE WORLD 

An engrossing tale of a ranch-feud between "gun- 
fighters" in Idaho. 

LITTLE, BROWN & CO., Publishers, Boston, Mass. 



NOVELS BY B. M. BOWER 



GOOD INDIAN 

A story named for its half-breed hero, who dominates 
this stirring Western romance. 

There is excitement and action on every page . . A somewhat 
unusual love story runs through the book; Boston Transcript. 

THE UPHILL CLIMB 

How a cowboy fought the hardest of all battles a 
fight against himself. 

Bower knows the West of the cowboys, as do few writers to-day 
. . . The word pictures of Western life are realistic, and strongly 
suffused with local color. Philadelphia North American. 

LONESOME LAND 

A story of modern Montana, giving a wholly different 
phase of life among the ranches. 

Montana described as it really is, is the "lonesome land" of this 
new Bower story. A prairie fire and the death of the worthless 
husband are especially well handled. A. L. A. Booklist. 

SKYRIDER 

A cowboy who becomes an aviator is the hero of this 
new story of Western ranch life. 

An engrossing ranch story with a new note of interest woven into 
its breezy texture. Philadelphia Public Ledger. 

THE THUNDER BIRD 

Further aeronautic adventures of "Skyrider" Johnnie 
Jewel. 

"A good story with numberless thrills and a humorous quality 
throughout its pages." New Tork Sun. 



LITTLE, BROWN & CO., Publishers, Boston, Mass. 



NOVELS BY B. M. BOWER 



THE LOOKOUT MAN 

A tale of action, excitement and love, full of the charm 
of the great outdoors, in which the story of the life at a 
Forest Reserve Station on top of a California mountain is 
vividly portrayed. 

CABIN FEVER 

How Bud Moore and his wife, Marie, fared through 
their attack of "cabin fever" is the theme of this B. M. 
Bower story. 

STARR, OF THE DESERT 

A story of mystery, love and adventure, which has a 
Mexican revolt as its main theme. 

THE FLYING U'S LAST STAND 

What happened when a company of school teachers and 
farmers encamped on the grounds of the Flying U Ranch. 

THE QUIRT 

A story of ranch life in Idaho, with an abundance of 
action, adventure and romance. 

COW-COUNTRY 

This story of Bud Birnie, who decided to stand on his 
own feet in life and faced trouble so staunchly at Little Lost 
Ranch, will appeal to all lovers of tales of the real west. 



LITTLE, BROWN & CO., Publishers, Boston, Mass. 



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