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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Trail of the White Mule, by B. M. Bower
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Trail of the White Mule
+
+Author: B. M. Bower
+
+Posting Date: November 19, 2008 [EBook #2063]
+Release Date: February, 2000
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE TRAIL OF THE WHITE MULE ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Daniel Wentzell.  HTML version by Al Haines.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+THE TRAIL OF THE WHITE MULE
+
+
+by
+
+B. M. Bower
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER ONE
+
+Casey Ryan, hunched behind the wheel of a large, dark blue touring car
+with a kinked front fender and the glass gone from the left  headlight,
+slid out from the halted traffic, shied sharply away from a
+hysterically clanging street car, crossed the path of a huge red truck
+coming in from his right, missed it with two inches to spare and was
+halfway down the block before the traffic officer overtook him.
+
+The traffic officer was Irish too, and bigger than Casey, and madder.
+For all that, Casey offered to lick the livin' tar outa him before
+accepting a pale, expensive ticket which he crumbled and put into his
+pocket without looking at it.
+
+"What I know about these here fancy city rules ain't sufficient to give
+a horn-toad a headache--but it's a darn sight more'n I care," Casey
+declaimed hotly.  "I never was asked what I thought of them tin signs
+you stick up on the end of a telegraft pole, to tell folks when to go
+an' when to quit goin'.  Mebby it's all right fer these here city
+drivers--"
+
+"This'll mean thirty days for you," spluttered the officer.  "I ought
+to call the patrol right now--"
+
+"Get the undertaker on the line first!"  Casey advised him ominously.
+
+Traffic was piling up behind them, and horns were honking a blatant
+chorus that extended two blocks up the street.  The traffic officer
+glanced into the troubled gray eyes of the Little Woman beside Casey
+and took his foot off the running board.
+
+"Better go put up your bail and then forfeit it," he advised in a
+milder tone.  "The judge will probably remember you; I do, and my
+memory ain't the best in the world.  Twice you've been hooked for
+speeding through traffic; and parking by fire-plugs and in front of the
+No Park signs and after four, seems to be your big outdoor sport.
+Forfeit your bail, old boy--or it's thirty days for you, sure."
+
+Casey Ryan made bitter retort, but the traffic cop had gone to untangle
+two furious Fords from a horse-drawn mail wagon, so he did not hear.
+Which was good luck for Casey.
+
+"Why do you persist in making trouble for yourself?" the Little Woman
+beside him exclaimed. "It can't be so hard to obey the rules; other
+drivers do.  I know that I have driven this car all over town without
+any trouble whatever."
+
+Casey hogged the next safety-zone line to the deep disgust of a young
+movie star in a cream-and-silver racer, and pulled in to the curb just
+where he could not be passed.
+
+"All right, ma'am.  You can drive, then."  He slid out of the driver's
+seat to the pavement, his face a deeper shade of red than usual.
+
+"For pity's sake, Casey!  Don't be silly," his wife cried sharply, a
+bit of panic in her voice.
+
+"You was in a hurry to git home," Casey pointed out to her with that
+mildness of manner which is not mild.  "I was hurryin', wasn't I?"
+
+"You aren't hurrying now--you're delaying the traffic again.  Do be
+reasonable!  You know it costs money to argue with the police."
+
+"Police be damned!  I'm tryin' to please a woman, an' I'm up agin a
+hard proposition.  You can ask anybody if I'm the unreasonable one. You
+hustled me out of the show soon as the huggin' commenced.  You wouldn't
+even let me stay to see the first of Mutt and Jeff.  You said you was
+in a hurry.  I leaves the show without seein' the best part, gits the
+car an' drills through the traffic tryin' to git yuh home quick.  Now
+you're kickin' because I did hurry."
+
+"Hey!  Whadda yuh mean, blockin' the traffic?" a domineering voice
+behind him bellowed.  "This ain't any reception hall, and it ain't no
+free auto park neither."
+
+Another traffic officer with another pencil and another pad of tickets
+such as drivers dread to see began to write down the number of Casey's
+car.  This man did not argue.  He finished his work briskly, presented
+another notice which advised Casey Ryan to report immediately to police
+headquarters, waved Casey peremptorily to proceed, and returned to his
+little square platform to the chorus of blatting automobile horns.
+
+"The cops in this town hands out tickets like they was Free Excursion
+peddlers!" snorted Casey, his eyes a pale glitter behind his
+half-closed lids.  "They can go around me, or they can honk and be
+darned to 'em. Git behind the wheel, ma'am--Casey Ryan's drove the last
+inch he'll ever drive in this darned town. If they pinch me again,
+it'll have to be fer walkin'."
+
+The Little Woman looked at him, pressed her lips together and moved
+behind the wheel.  She did not say a word all the way out to the white
+apartment house on Vermont which held the four rooms they called home.
+She parked the car dexterously in front and led the way to their
+apartment (ground floor, front) before she looked at me.
+
+"It's coming to a show-down, Jack," she said then with a faint smile.
+"He's on probation already for disobeying traffic rules of one sort and
+other, and his fines cost more than the entire upkeep of the car. I
+think he really will have to go to jail this time.  It just isn't in
+Casey Ryan to take orders from any one, especially when his own
+personal habits of driving a car are concerned."
+
+"Town life is getting on his nerves," I tried to defend Casey, and at
+the same time to comfort the Little Woman.  "I didn't think it would
+work, his coming here to live, with nothing to do but spend money.
+This is the inevitable result of too much money and too much leisure."
+
+"It sounds much better, putting it that way," murmured Mrs. Casey. "I
+think you're right--though he did behave back there as if it were too
+much matrimony.  Jack, he's been looking forward to your visit.  I'm
+sorry this has happened to spoil it."
+
+"It isn't spoiled," I grinned. "Casey Ryan is, always and ever shall be
+Casey Ryan.  He's running true to form, though tamer than one would
+expect.  When do you think he'll show up?"
+
+Mrs. Casey did not know.  She ventured a guess or two, but there was no
+conviction in her tone.  With two nominal arrests in five minutes
+chalked against him, and with his first rebellion against the Little
+Woman to rankle in his conscience and memory, she owned herself at a
+loss.
+
+With a cheerfulness that was only conversation deep, we waited for
+Casey and finally ate supper without him.  The evening was enlivened
+somewhat by Babe's chatter of kindergarten doings; and was punctuated
+by certain pauses while steps on the sidewalk passed on or ended with
+the closing of another door than the Ryans'.  I fought the impulse to
+call up the police station, and I caught the eyes of the Little Woman
+straying unconsciously to the telephone in the hall while she talked of
+things remote from our inner thoughts.  Margaret Ryan is game, I'll say
+that.  We played cribbage for an hour or two, and the Little Woman beat
+me until finally I threw up my hands and quit.
+
+"I can't stand it any longer, Mrs. Casey.  Do you think he's in jail,
+or just sulking at a movie somewhere?" I blurted.  "Forgive my butting
+in, but I wish you'd talk about it.  You know you can, to me.  Casey
+Ryan is a friend and more than a friend: he's a pet theory of mine--a
+fad, if you prefer to call him that.
+
+"I consider him a perfect example of human nature in its unhampered,
+unbiased state, going straight through life without deviating a hair's
+breadth from the viewpoint of youth.  A fighter and a castle builder; a
+sort of rough-edged Peter Pan. Till he gums soft food and hobbles with
+a stick because the years have warped his back and his legs, Casey Ryan
+will keep that indefinable, bubbling optimism of spiritual youth.  So
+tell me all about him.  I want to know who has licked, so far; luxury
+or Casey Ryan."
+
+The Little Woman laughed and picked up the cards, evening their edges
+with sensitive fingers that had not been manicured so beautifully when
+first I saw them.
+
+"Well-sir," she drawled, making one word of the two and failing to keep
+a little twitching from her lips, "I think it's been about a tie, so
+far.  As a husband--Casey's a darned good bachelor."  Her chuckle
+robbed that statement of anything approaching criticism.  "Aside from
+his insisting on cooking breakfast every morning and feeding me in bed,
+forcing me to eat fried eggs and sour-dough hotcakes swimming in butter
+and honey--when I crave grapefruit and thin toast and one French lamb
+chop with a white paper frill on the handle and garnished with fresh
+parsley--he's the soul of consideration.  He wants four kinds of jam on
+the table every meal, when fresh fruit is going to waste.  He's bullied
+the laundryman until the poor fellow's reached the point where he won't
+stop if the car's parked in front and Casey's liable to be home; but
+aside from that, Casey's all right.
+
+"After serving time in the desert and rustling my own wood and living
+on bacon and beans and sour-dough bread,  I'm perfectly willing to
+spend the rest of my life doing painless housekeeping with all the
+modern built-in features ever invented; and buying my bread and cakes
+and salads from the delicatessen around the corner.  I never want to
+see a sagebush again as long as I live, or feel the crunch of gravel
+under my feet.  I expect to die in French-heeled pumps and embroidered
+silk stockings and the finest, silliest silk things ever put in a show
+window to tempt the soul of a woman.  But it took just two weeks and
+three days to drive Casey back to his sour-dough can."
+
+"He craved luxury more than you seemed to do," I remembered aloud.
+
+"He did, yes.  But his idea of luxury is sitting down in the kitchen to
+a real meal of beans and biscuits and all the known varieties of jam
+and those horrible whitewashed store cookies and having the noise of
+the phonograph drowned every five minutes by a passing street car.
+Casey wants four movies a day, and he wants them all funny.  He brings
+home silk shirts with the stripes fairly shrieking when he unwraps
+them--and he has to be thrown and tied to get a collar on him.
+
+"He will get up at any hour of the night to chase after a fire engine,
+and every whipstitch he gets pinched for doing something which is
+perfectly lawful and right in the desert and perfectly awful in the
+city.  You saw him," said the Little Woman, "to-day."  And she added
+wistfully, "It's the first time since we were married that he has ever
+talked back--to me.
+
+"And you know," she went on, shuffling the cards and stopping to regard
+the joker attentively (though I am sure she didn't know what card she
+was looking at), "just chasing around town and doing nothing but square
+yourself for not playing according to the rules costs money without
+getting you anywhere.  Fifty-five thousand dollars isn't so much just
+to play with, in this town. Casey's highest ambition now seems to be
+nickel disk wheels on a new racing car that can make the speed cops go
+some to catch him. His idea of economy is to put six or seven thousand
+dollars into a car that will enable him to outrun a twenty-dollar fine!
+
+"We have some money invested," she went on.  "We own this apartment
+house--and fortunately it's in my name.  So long as the housing problem
+continues critical, I think I can keep Casey going without spending our
+last cent."
+
+"He did one good stroke of business," I ventured, "when he bought this
+place.  Apartment houses are good as gold mines these days."
+
+The Little Woman laughed. "Well-sir, it wasn't so much a stroke as it
+was a wallop.  Casey bought it just to show who was boss, he or the
+landlord.  The first thing he did when we moved in was to take down the
+nicely framed rules that said we must not cook cabbage nor onions nor
+fish, nor play music after ten o'clock at night, nor do any loud
+talking in the halls.
+
+"Every day for a week Casey cooked cabbage, onions and fish.  He sat up
+nights to play the graphophone.  He stayed home to talk loudly and play
+bucking bronk with Babe all up and down the stairs and in the halls.
+Our rent was paid for a month in advance, and the landlord was too
+little and old to fight.  So he sold out cheap--and it really was a
+good stroke of business for us, though not deliberate.
+
+"Well-sir, at first we lost tenants who didn't enjoy the freedom of
+their neighbors' homes.  But really, Jack, you'd be surprised to know
+how many people in this city just LOVE cabbage and onions and fish, and
+to have children they needn't disown whenever they go house-hunting. I
+had ventilator hoods put over every gas range in the house, and turned
+the back yard into a playground with plenty of sand piles and swings.
+I raised the price, too, and made the place look very select, with a
+roof garden for the grown-ups.  We have the house filled now with
+really nice families--avoiding the garlic brand--and as an investment I
+wouldn't ask for anything better.
+
+"Casey enjoyed himself hugely while he was whipping things into shape,
+but the last month he's been going stale.  The tenants are all so
+thankful to do as they please that they're excruciatingly polite to
+him, no matter what he does or says.  He's tired of the beaches and he
+has begun to cuss the long, smooth roads that are signed so that he
+couldn't get lost if he tried.  It does seem as if there's no interest
+left in anything, unless he can get a kick out of going to jail.  And,
+Jack, I do believe he's gone there."
+
+The telephone rang and the Little Woman excused herself and went into
+the hall, closing the door softly behind her.
+
+I'm not greatly given to reminiscence, but while I sat and watched the
+flames of civilization licking tamely at the impregnable iron bark of
+the gas logs, the eyes of my memory looked upon a picture:
+
+Desert, empty and with the mountains standing back against the sky, the
+great dipper uptilted over a peak and the stars bending close for very
+friendliness.  The licking flames of dry greasewood burning, with a
+pungent odor in my nostrils when the wind blew the smoke my way. The
+far-off hooting of an owl, perched somewhere on a juniper branch
+watching for mice; and Casey Ryan sitting cross-legged in the sand,
+squinting humorously at me across the fire while he talked.
+
+I saw him, too, bolting a hurried breakfast under a mesquite tree in
+the chill before sunrise, his mind intent upon the trail; facing the
+desert and its hardships as a matter of course, with never a thought
+that other men would shrink from the ordeal.
+
+I saw him kneeling before a solid face of rock in a shallow cut in the
+hillside, swinging his "single-jack" with tireless rhythm; a tap and a
+turn of the steel, a tap and a turn--chewing tobacco industriously and
+stopping now and then to pry off a fresh bit from the plug in his hip
+pocket before he reached for the "spoon" to muck out the hole he was
+drilling.
+
+I saw him larruping in his Ford along a sandy, winding trail it would
+break a snake's back to follow, hot on the heels of his next adventure,
+dreaming of the fortune that finally came. . . .
+
+The Little Woman came in looking as if she had been talking with
+Destiny and was still dazed and unsteady from the meeting.
+
+"Well-sir, he's gone!" she announced, and stopped and tried to smile.
+But her eyes looked hurt and sorry.  "He has bought a Ford and a tent
+and outfit since he left us down on Seventh and Broadway, and he just
+called me up on long-distance from San Bernardino.  He's going out on a
+prospecting trip, he says.  I'll say he's been going some!  A speed cop
+overhauled him just the other side of Claremont, he told me, and he was
+delayed for a few minutes while he licked the cop and kicked him and
+his motorcycle into a ditch.  He says he's sorry he sassed me, and if I
+can drive a car in this darned town and not spend all my loose change
+paying fines, I'm a better man than he is.  He doesn't know when he'll
+be back--and there you are."
+
+She sat down wearily on the arm of an over-stuffed armchair and looked
+up at the gilt-and-onyx clock which I suspected Casey of having bought.
+"If he isn't lynched before morning," she sighed whimsically, "he'll
+probably make it to the Nevada line all right."
+
+I rose, also glancing at the clock.  But the Little Woman put up a hand
+to forbid the plan she read in my mind.
+
+"Let him alone, Jack," she advised.  "Let him go and be just as wild
+and devilish as he wants to be.  I'm only thankful he can take it out
+on a Ford and a pick and shovel.  There really isn't any trouble
+between us two.  Casey knows I can look out for myself for awhile.
+He's got to have a vacation from loafing and matrimony. I'm so thankful
+he isn't taking it in jail!"
+
+I told her somewhat bluntly that she was a brick, and that if I could
+get in touch with Casey I'd try to keep an eye on him. It would
+probably be a good thing, I told her, if he did stay away long enough
+to let this collection of complaints against him be forgotten at the
+police station.
+
+I went away, hoping fervently that Casey would break even his own
+records that night.  I really intended to find him and keep an eye on
+him.  But keeping an eye on Casey Ryan is a more complicated affair
+than it sounds.
+
+Wherefore, much of this story must be built upon my knowledge of Casey
+and a more or less complete report of events in which I took no part,
+welded together with a bit of healthy imagination.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER TWO
+
+Casey Ryan knew his desert.  Also, from long and not so happy
+experience, he knew Fords, or thought he did.  He made the mistake,
+however, of buying a nearly new one and asking it to accomplish the
+work of a twin six from the moment he got behind the wheel.
+
+He was fortunate in buying a demonstrator's car with a hundred miles or
+so to its credit.  He arrived in Barstow before the proprietor of a
+supply store had gone to bed--for which he was grateful to the Ford. He
+loaded up there with such necessities for desert prospecting as he had
+not waited to buy in Los Angeles, turned short off the main highway
+where traffic officers might be summoned by telephone to lie in wait
+for him, and took the steeper and less used trail north. He was still
+mad and talking bitterly to himself in an undertone while he
+drove--telling the new Ford what he thought of city rules and city
+ways, and driving it as no Ford was ever meant by its maker to be
+driven.
+
+The country north of Barstow is not to be taken casually in the middle
+of a dark night, even by Casey Ryan and a Ford.  The roads, once you
+are well away from help, are all pretty much alike, and all bad.  And
+although the white, diamond-shaped signs of a beneficent automobile
+club are posted here and there, where wrong turnings are most likely to
+prove disastrous to travelers, Casey Ryan was in the mood to lick any
+man who pointed out a sign to him.  He did see one or two in spite of
+himself and gave a grunt of contempt.  So, where he should have turned
+to the east (his intention being to reach Nevada by way of Silver Lake)
+he continued traveling north and didn't know it.
+
+Driving across the desert on a dark night is confusing to the most
+observant wayfarer.  On either side, beyond the light of the car,
+illusory forest stands for mile upon mile.  Up hill or down or across
+the level it is the same--a narrow, winding trail through dimly seen
+woods.  The most familiar road grows strange; the miles are longer; you
+drive through mystery and silence and the world around you is a
+formless void.
+
+Dawn and a gorgeous sunrise painted out the woods and revealed barren
+hilltops which Casey did not know.  Because he did not know them, he
+guessed shrewdly that he was on his way to the wilderness of mountains
+and sand which lies west of Death Valley. Small chance he had of
+hearing the shop whistles blow in Las Vegas at noon, as he had expected.
+
+He was telling himself that he didn't care where he went, when the car,
+laboring more and more reluctantly up a long, sandy hill, suddenly
+stopped.  In Casey's heart was a thrill at the sheer luxury of stopping
+in the middle of the road without having some thick-necked cop stride
+toward him bawling insults.  That he was obliged to stop, and that a
+hill uptilted before him, and the sand was a foot deep outside the ruts
+failed to impress him with foreboding.  He gloried in his freedom and
+thought not at all of the Ford.
+
+He climbed stiffly out, squinted at the sky line, which was jagged, and
+at his immediate surroundings, which were barren and lonely and
+soothing to his soul that hungered for these things. Great, gaunt
+"Joshua" trees stood in grotesque groups all up and down the narrow
+valley, hiding the way he had come from the way he would go.  It was as
+if the desert had purposely dropped a curtain before his past and would
+show him none of his future. Whereat Casey Ryan grinned, took a chew of
+tobacco and was himself again.
+
+"If they wanta come pinch me here, I'll meet 'em man to man. Back in
+town no man's got a show.  They pile in four deep and gang a feller.
+Out here it's lick er git licked.  They can all go t' thunder. Tahell
+with town!"
+
+The odor of coffee boiling in a new pot which the sagebrush fire was
+fast blackening; the salty, smoky smell of bacon frying in a new frying
+pan that turned bluish with the heat; the sizzle of bannock batter
+poured into hot grease--these things made the smiling mouth of Casey
+Ryan water with desire.
+
+"Hell!" said Casey, breathing deep when, stomach full and resentment
+toward the past blurred by satisfaction with his present, he filled his
+pipe and fingered his vest pocket for a match.  "Gas stoves can't cook
+nothin' so there's any taste to it.  That there's the first real meal
+I've et in six months. Light a match and turn on the gas and call that
+a fire!  Hunh! Good old sage er greasewood fer Casey Ryan, from here
+on!"
+
+He laid back against the sandy sidehill, tilted his hat over his eyes
+and crossed his legs luxuriously.  He was in no hurry to continue his
+journey.  Now that he and the desert were alone together, haste and
+Casey Ryan held nothing in common.  For awhile he watched a Joshua palm
+that looked oddly like a giant man with one arm hanging loose at its
+side and another pointing fixedly at a distant, black-capped butte
+standing aloof from its fellows.  Casey was tired after his night on
+the trail.  Easy living in town had softened his muscles and slowed a
+little that untiring energy which had balked at no hardship.  He was
+drowsy, and his brain stopped thinking logically and slipped into
+half-waking fancy.
+
+The Joshua seemed to move, to lift its arm and point more imperatively
+toward the peak.  Its ungainly head seemed to turn and nod at Casey.
+What did the darned thing want?  Casey would go when he, got good and
+ready.  Perhaps he would go that way, and perhaps he would not. Right
+here was good enough for Casey Ryan at present; and you could ask
+anybody if he were the man to follow another man's pointing, much less
+a Joshua tree.
+
+Battering rain woke Casey some hours later and drove him to the shelter
+of the Ford.  Thunder and lightning came with the rain, and a bellowing
+wind that rocked the car and threatened once or twice to overturn it.
+With some trouble Casey managed to button down the curtains and sat
+huddled on the front seat, watching through a streaming windshield the
+buffeted wilderness.  He was glad he had not unloaded his outfit;
+gladder still that the storm had not struck which he was traveling.
+Down the trail toward him a small river galloped, washing deep gullies
+where the wheels of his car offered obstruction to its boisterousness.
+
+"She's a tough one," grinned Casey, in spite of the chattering of his
+teeth.  "Looks like all the water in the world is bein' poured down
+this pass.  Keeps on, I'll have to gouge out a couple of Joshuays an'
+turn the old Ford into a boat--but Casey'll keep agoin'!"
+
+Until inky dark it rained like the deluge.  Casey remained perched in
+his one-man ark and tried hard to enjoy himself and his hard-won
+freedom.  He stabbed open a can of condensed milk, poured it into a
+cup, and drank it and ate what was left of his breakfast bannock, which
+he had fortunately put away in the car out of the reach of a hill of
+industrious red ants.
+
+He thought vaguely of cranking the car and going on, but gave up the
+notion.  One sidehill, he decided, was as good as another sidehill for
+the present.
+
+That night Casey slept fitfully in the car and discovered that even a
+wall bed in a despised apartment house may be more comfortable than the
+front seat of a Ford.  His bones ached by morning, and he was hungry
+enough to eat raw bacon and relish it. But the sun was fighting through
+the piled clouds and shone cheerfully upon the draggled pass, and Casey
+boiled coffee and fried bacon and bannock beside the trail, and for a
+little while was happy again.
+
+From breakfast until noon he was busy as a beaver repairing the washout
+beneath the car and on to the top of the hill. She was going to have to
+get down and dig in her toes to make it, he told the Ford, when at last
+he heaved pick and shovel into the tonneau, packed in his cooking
+outfit and made ready to crank up.
+
+From then until supper time he wore a trail around the car, looking to
+see what was wrong and why he could not crank.  He removed
+hootin'-annies and dingbats (using Casey's mechanical terms) looked
+them over dissatisfiedly, and put them back without having done them ny
+good whatever.  Sometimes they were returned to a different place, I
+imagine, since I know too well how impartial Casey is with the
+mechanical parts of a Ford.
+
+He made camp there that night, pitching his little tent in the trail
+for pure cussedness, and defying aloud a traveling world to make him
+move until he got good and ready.  He might have saved his vocabulary,
+for the road was impassable before him and behind; and had Casey
+managed to start the car, he could not have driven a mile in either
+direction.
+
+Since he did not know that, the next day he painstakingly cleaned the
+spark plugs and tried again to crank the Ford; couldn't, and removed
+more hootin'-annies and dingbats than he had touched the day before.
+That night he once more pitched his tent in the trail, hoping in his
+heart that some one would drive along and dispute his right to camp
+there; when he would lick the doggone cuss.
+
+On the fourth day, after a long, fatiguing session with the vitals of a
+Ford that refused to be cranked, Casey was busy gathering brush, for
+his supper fire when Fate came walking up' the trail.  Fate appears in
+many forms.  In this instance it assumed the shape of a packed burro
+that poked its nose around a group of Joshuas, stopped abruptly and
+backed precipitately into another burro which swung out of the trail
+and went careening awkwardly down the slope.  The stampeding burro had
+not seen the Ford at all, but accepted the testimony of its leader that
+something was radically wrong with the trail ahead. His pack bumped
+against the yuccas as he went; after him lurched a large man, heavy to
+the point of fatness, yelling hoarse threats and incoherent
+objurgations.
+
+Casey threw down his armful of dead brush and went after the lead burro
+which was blazing itself a trail in an entirely different direction.
+The lead burro had four large canteens strapped outside its pack, and
+Casey was growing so short of water that he had begun to debate
+seriously the question of draining the radiator on the morrow.
+
+I don't suppose many of you would believe the innate cussedness of a
+burro when it wants to be that way.  Casey hazed this one to the hills
+and back down the trail for half a mile before he rushed it into a
+clump of greasewood and sneaked up on it when it thought itself hidden
+from all mortal eyes.  After that he dug heels into the sand and hung
+on.  Memory resurrected for his need certain choice phrases coined in
+times of stress for the ears of burros alone.  Luxury and civilization
+and fifty-five thousand dollars and a wife were as if they had never
+been.  He was Casey Ryan, the prospector, fighting a stubborn donkey
+all over a desert slope. He led it conquered back to the Ford, tied it
+to a wheel and lifted off the four canteens, gratified with their
+weight and hoping there were more on the other burro.  He had quite
+forgotten that he had meant to lick the first man he saw, and grinned
+when the fat man came toiling back with the other animal.
+
+By the time their coffee was boiled and their bacon fried, each one
+knew the other's past history and tentative plans for the future,
+censored and glossed somewhat by the teller but received without
+question or criticism.
+
+The fat man's name was Barney Oakes, and he had heard of Casey Ryan and
+was glad to meet him.  Though Casey had never heard of Barney Oakes, he
+discovered that they both knew Bill Masters, the garage man at Lund;
+and further gossip revealed the amazing fact that Barney Oakes had once
+been the husband of the woman whom Casey had very nearly married, the
+widow who cooked for the Lucky Lode.
+
+"Boy, you're sure lucky she turned loose on yuh before yuh went an'
+married her!"  Barney congratulated Casey, slapping his great thigh and
+laughing loudly.  "She shore is handy with her tongue--that old girl.
+Ever hear a sawmill workin' overtime? That's her--rippin' through knots
+an' never blowin' the whistle fer quittin' time. I never knowed a man
+could have as many faults as what she used t' name over fer me."  He
+drained his cup and sighed with great content.  "At that, I stayed with
+her seven months and fourteen days," he boasted.  "I admit, two of them
+months I was laid up with a busted ankle an' shoulder blade. Tunnel
+caved in on me."
+
+They talked late that night and were comrades, brothers, partners share
+and share alike before they slept.  Next morning Casey tried again to
+start the Ford; couldn't; and yielded to Barney's argument that burros
+were better than a car for prospectin' in that rough country.  They
+overhauled Casey's outfit, took all the grub and as much else as the
+burros could carry and debated seriously what point in the Panamints
+they should aim for.
+
+"Where's that there Joshuay tree pointin' to?" Casey asked finally.
+"She's the biggest and oldest in the bunch, and ever since I've been
+here she's looked like she's got somethin' on 'er mind. Whadda yuh
+think, Barney?"
+
+Barney walked around the yucca, stood behind the extended arm, squinted
+at the sharp-peaked butte with the black capping, toward which the
+gaunt tree seemed to point.  He spat out a stale quid of tobacco and
+took a fresh one, squinted again toward the butte and looked at Casey.
+
+"She's country I never prospected in, back in there.  I've follered
+poorer advice than a Joshuay.  Le's try it a whirl."
+
+Thus it came to pass that Casey Ryan forsook his Ford for a strange
+partner with two burros and a clouded past, and fared forth across the
+barren foothills with no better guidance than the rigid, outstretched
+limb of a great, gaunt Joshua tree.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER THREE
+
+In a still sunny gulch which shadows would presently fill to the brim,
+Casey Ryan was reaching, soiled bandanna in his hand, to pull a pot of
+bubbling coffee from the coals,--a pot now blackened with the smoke of
+many campfires to prove how thoroughly a part of the open land it had
+become.  Something nipped at his right shoulder, and at the same
+instant ticked the coffeepot and overturned it into a splutter of steam
+and hot ashes.  The spiteful crack of a rifle shot followed close.
+Casey ducked behind a nose of rock, and big Barney Oakes scuttled for
+cover, spilling bacon out of the frying pan as he went.
+
+For a week the two had been camped in this particular gulch, which drew
+in to a mere wrinkle on the southwestern slope of the black-topped
+butte, toward which the Joshua tree in the pass had directed them.
+Nearly a week they had spent toiling across the hilly, waterless waste,
+with two harrowing days when their canteens flopped empty on the burros
+and big Barney stumbled oftener than Casey liked to see.  Casey himself
+had gone doggedly ahead, his body bent forward, his square shoulders
+sagging a bit, but with never a thought of doing anything but go on.
+
+A red splotch high up on the side of this gulch promised "water
+formation" as prospectors have a way of putting it.  They had found the
+water, else adventure would have turned to tragedy. Near the water they
+had also found a promising outcropping of silver-bearing quartz.
+Barney's blowpipe had this very day shown them silver in
+castle-building quantities.
+
+Just at this moment, however, they were not thinking of mines. They
+were eyeing a round hole in the coffeepot from which a brown rivulet
+ran spitting into the blackening coals.
+
+Casey was the more venturesome.  He raised himself to see if he could
+discover where the bullet had come from, and very nearly met the fate
+of the coffeepot.  He felt the wind of a second bullet that spatted
+against a boulder near Barney.  Barney burrowed deeper into his covert.
+
+Casey went down on all fours and crawled laboriously toward a
+concealing bank covered thick with brush.  A third bullet clipped a
+twig of sage just about three inches above the middle of his back, and
+Casey flattened on his stomach and swore.  Some one on the peak of the
+hill had good eyesight, he decided.  Neither spoke, other than to swear
+in undertones; for voices carried far in that clear atmosphere, and
+nothing could be gained by conversation.
+
+Darkness never had poured so slowly into that gulch since the world was
+young.  The campfire had died to black embers before Casey ventured
+from his covert, and Barney Oakes seemed to have holed up for the
+season.  Unless you have lived for a long while in a land altogether
+empty of any human life save your own, you cannot realize the effect of
+having mysterious bullets zip past your ears and ruin your supper for
+you.
+
+"Somebody's gunnin' fer us, looks like t' me," Barney observed
+belatedly in a hoarse whisper, from his covert.
+
+"Found that out, did yuh?  Well, it ain't the first time Casey's been
+shot at and missed," Casey retorted peevishly in the lee of the bank.
+"Say! I knowed the sing of bullets before I was old enough to carry a
+tune."
+
+"So'd I," boasted Barney, "but that ain't sayin' I learned t' like the
+song."
+
+"What I'm figurin' out now," said Casey, "is how to get up there an' AT
+'am.  An' how we kin do it without him seein' us.  Goin' t' be kinda
+ticklish--but it ain't the first ticklish job Casey Ryan ever tackled."
+
+"It can't be did," Barney stated flatly.  "An' if it could be did, I
+wouldn't do it.  I ain't as easy t' miss as what you be. I got bulk."
+
+"A hole bored through your tallow might mebbe do you good," Casey
+suggested harshly.  "Might let in a little sand.  You can't never
+tell--"
+
+"My vitals," said Barney with dignity, "is just as close to the surface
+as what your vitals be.  I ain't so fat--I'm big.  An' I got all the
+sand I need.  I also have got sense, which some men lacks."
+
+"What yuh figurin' on doin'?" Casey wanted to know.  "Set here under a
+bush an' let 'em pick yuh up same as they would a cottontail, mebbe? We
+got a hull night to work in, an' Casey's eyes is as good as anybody's
+in the dark.  More'n that, Casey's six-gun kin shoot just as hard an'
+fast as a rifle--let 'im git close enough."
+
+Barney did not want to be left alone and said so frankly. Neither did
+he want to climb the butte.  He could see no possible gain in climbing
+to meet an enemy or enemies who could hear the noise of approach. It
+was plain suicide, he declared, and Barney Oakes was not ready to die.
+
+But Casey could never listen to argument when a fight was in prospect.
+He filled a canteen, emptied a box of cartridges into his pocket, stuck
+his old, Colt six-shooter inside his trousers belt, and gave Barney
+some parting instruction under his breath.
+
+Barney was to move camp down under the bank by the spring, and dig
+himself in there, so that the only approach would be up the narrow
+gulch.  He would then wait until Casey returned.
+
+"Somebody's after our outfit, most likely," Casey reasoned. "It ain't
+the first time I've knowed it to happen.  So you put the hull outfit
+outa sight down there an' stand guard over it.  If we'd 'a' run when
+they opened up, they'd uh cleaned us out and left us flat.  They's two
+of us, an' we'll git 'em from two sides."
+
+He stuffed cold bannock into the pocket that did not hold the
+cartridges and disappeared, climbing the side of the gulch opposite the
+point which held their ambitious marksman.
+
+To Barney's panicky expostulations he had given little heed. "If yore
+vitals is as close to your hide as what you claim," Casey had said
+impatiently, "an' you don't want any punctures in 'em, git to work an'
+git that hide of yourn outa sight. It'll take some diggin'; they's a
+lot of yuh to cover."
+
+Barney, therefore, dug like a badger with a dog snuffing at its tail.
+Casey, on the other hand, climbed laboriously in the darkness a bluff
+he had not attempted to climb by daylight.  It was hard work and slow,
+for he felt the need of going quietly. What lay over the rim-rock he
+did not know, though he meant to find out.
+
+Daylight found him leaning against a smooth ledge which formed a part
+of the black capping he had seen from the road.  He had spent the night
+toiling over boulders and into small gulches and out again, trying to
+find some crevice through which he might climb to the top. Now he was
+just about where he had been several hours before, and even Casey Ryan
+could not help realizing what a fine target he would make if he
+attempted to climb back down the bluff to camp before darkness again
+hid his movements.
+
+Standing there puffing and wondering what to do next, he saw the two
+burros come picking their way toward the spring for their morning drink
+and a handful apiece of rolled oats which Barney kept to bait them into
+camp.  The lead burro was within easy flinging distance of a rock, from
+camp, when the thin, unmistakable crack of a rifle-shot came from the
+right, high up on the rim somewhere beyond Casey.  The lead burro
+pitched forward, struggled to get up, fell again and rolled over,
+lodging against a rock with its four feet sticking up at awkward angles
+in the air.
+
+The second burro, always quick to take alarm, wheeled and went
+galloping away down the draw.  But he couldn't outgallop the bullet
+that sent him in a complete somersault down the slope. Barney might
+keep the rest of his rolled oats, for the burros were through wanting
+them.
+
+Casey squinted along the rim of black rock that crested the peak
+irregularly like a stiff, ragged frill of mourning stuff the gods had
+thrown away.  He could not see the man who had shot the burros. By the
+intervals between shots, Casey guessed that one man was doing the
+shooting, though it was probable there were others in the gang. And now
+that the burros were dead, it became more than ever necessary to locate
+the gang and have it out with them.  That necessity did not worry Casey
+in the least.  The only thing that troubled him now was getting up on
+the rim without being seen.
+
+It was characteristic of Casey Ryan that, though he moved with caution,
+he nevertheless moved toward their unseen enemy.  Not for a long, long
+while had Casey been cautious in his behavior, and the necessity galled
+him.  If the hidden marksman had missed that last burro, Casey would
+probably have taken a longer chance. But to date, every bullet had gone
+straight to its destination; which was enough to make any man think
+twice.
+
+Once during the forenoon, while Casey was standing against the rim-rock
+staring glumly down upon the camp, Barney's hat, perched on a pick
+handle, lifted its crown above the edge of his hiding place; an old,
+old trick Barney was playing to see if the rifle were still there and
+working.  The rifle worked very well indeed, for Barney was presently
+flattened into his retreat, swearing and poking his finger through a
+round hole in his hat.
+
+Casey seized the opportunity created by the diversion and scurried like
+a lizard across a bare, gravelly slide that had been bothering him for
+half an hour.  By mid-afternoon he reached a crevice that looked
+promising enough when he craned up it, but which nearly broke his neck
+when he had climbed halfway up. Never before had he been compelled to
+measure so exactly his breadth and thickness.  It was drawing matters
+down rather fine when he was compelled to back down to where he had
+elbow room, and remove his coat before he could squeeze his body
+through that crack.  But he did it, with his six-shooter inside his
+shirt and the extra ammunition weighting his trousers pockets.
+
+In spite of his long experience with desert scenery, Casey was somewhat
+astonished to find himself in a new land, fairly level and with thick
+groves of pinon cedar and juniper trees scattered here and there.  Far
+away stood other barren hills with deep canyons between.  He knew now
+that the black-capped butte was less a butte than the uptilted nose of
+a high plateau not half so barren as the lower country.  From the
+pointing Joshua tree it had seemed a peak, but contours are never so
+deceptive as in the high, broken barrens of Nevada.
+
+He looked down into the gulch where Barney was holed up with their
+outfit.  He could scarcely distinguish the place, it had dwindled so
+with the distance.  He had small hope of seeing Barney.  After that
+last leaden bee had buzzed through his hat crown, you would have to dig
+faster than Barney if you wanted a look at him. Casey grinned when he
+thought of it.
+
+When he had gotten his breath and had scraped some loose dirt out of
+his shirt collar, Casey crouched down behind a juniper and examined his
+surroundings carefully, his pale, straight-lidded eyes moving slowly as
+the white, pointing finger of a searchlight while he took in every
+small detail within view.  Midway in the arc of his vision was a ledge,
+ending in a flat-topped boulder.
+
+The ledge blocked his view, except that he could see trees and a higher
+peak of rocks beyond it.  He made his way cautiously toward the ledge,
+his eyes fixed upon the boulder.  A huge, sloping slab of the granite
+outcropping it seemed, scaly with gray-green fungus in the cracks where
+moisture longest remained; granite ledge banked with low junipers
+warped and stunted and tangled with sage. The longer Casey looked at
+the boulder, the less he saw that seemed unnatural in a country filled
+with boulders and outcroppings and stunted vegetation.
+
+But the longer he looked at it, the stronger grew his animal instinct
+that something was wrong.  He waited for a time--a long time indeed for
+Casey Ryan to wait.  There was no stir anywhere save the sweep of the
+wind blowing steadily from the west.
+
+He crept forward, halting often, eyeing the boulder and its neighboring
+ledge, distrust growing within him, though he saw nothing, heard
+nothing but the wind sweeping through branches and bush.  Casey Ryan
+was never frightened in his life.  But he was Irish born--and there's
+something in Irish blood that will not out; something that goes beyond
+reason into the world of unknown wisdom.
+
+It's a tricksy world, that realm of intuitions.  For this is what
+befell Casey Ryan, and you may account for it as best pleases you.
+
+He circled the rock as a wolf will circle a coiled rattler which it
+does not see.  Beyond the rock, built close against it so that the rear
+wall must have been the face of the ledge, a little rock cabin squatted
+secretively.  One small window, with two panes of glass was set high
+under the eaves on the side toward Casey. Cleverly concealed it was,
+built to resemble the ledge.  Visible from one side only, and that was
+the side where Casey stood. At the back the sloping boulder, untouched,
+impregnable; at the north and west, a twist of the ledge that hid the
+cabin completely in a niche.  It was the window on the south side that
+betrayed it.
+
+So here was what the boulder concealed,--and yet, Casey was not
+satisfied with the discovery.  Unconsciously he reached for his gun.
+This, he told himself, must be the secret habitation of the fiend who
+shot from rim-rocks with terrible precision at harmless prospectors and
+their burros.
+
+Casey squinted up at the sun and turned his level gaze again upon the
+cabin.  Reason told him that the man with the rifle was still watching
+for a pot shot at him and Barney, and that there was nothing whatever
+to indicate the presence of only one man in the camp below. Had he been
+glimpsed once during the climb, he would have been fired upon; he would
+never have been given the chance to gain the top and find this cabin.
+
+The place looked deserted.  His practical, everyday mind told him it
+was empty for the time being.  But he felt queer and uncomfortable,
+nevertheless.  He sneaked along the ledge to the cabin, flattened
+himself against the corner next the gray boulder and waited there for a
+minute.  He felt the flesh stiffening on his jaws as he crept up to the
+window to look in.  By standing on his toes, Casey's eyes came on a
+level with the lowest inch of glass,--the window was so high.
+
+Just at first Casey could not see much.  Then, when his eyes had
+adjusted themselves to the half twilight within, his mind at first
+failed to grasp what he saw.  Gradually a dimly sensed dread took hold
+of him, and grew while he stood there peering in at commonplace things
+which should have given him no feeling save perhaps a faint surprise.
+
+A fairly clean, tiny room he saw, with a rough, narrow bed in one
+corner and a box table at its head.  From the ceiling hung a lantern
+with the chimney smoked on one side and the warped, pole rafter above
+it slightly blackened to show how long the lantern had hung there
+lighted.  A door opposite the tiny window was closed, and there was no
+latch or fastening on the inner side. An Indian blanket covered half
+the floor space, and in the corner opposite the bed was a queer,
+drumlike thing of sheet iron with a pipe running through the wall; some
+heating arrangement, Casey guessed.
+
+In the center of the room, facing the window, a woman sat in a wooden
+rocking chair and rocked.  A pale old woman with dark hollows under her
+eyes that were fixed upon the pattern of the Indian rug. Her hair was
+white.  Her thin, white hands rested limply on the arms of the chair,
+and she was rocking back and forth, back and forth, steadily,
+quietly,--just rocking and staring at the Indian rug.
+
+Casey has since told me that she was the creepiest thing he ever saw in
+his life.  Yet he could not explain why it was so. The woman's face was
+not so old, though it was lined and without color.  There was a
+terrible quiet in her features, but he felt, somehow, that her thoughts
+were not quiet.  It was as if her thoughts were reaching out to him,
+telling him things too awful for her thin, hushed lips to let pass.
+
+But after all, Casey's main object was to locate the man with the
+rifle, and to do it before he himself was seen on the butte.  He
+watched a little longer the woman who rocked and rocked. Never once did
+her eyes move from that fixed point on the rug.  Never once did her
+fingers move on the arm of the chair.  Her mouth remained immobile as
+the lips of a dead woman.  He had to force himself to leave the window;
+and when he did, he felt guilty, as if he had somehow deserted some one
+helpless and needing him.  He sneaked back, lifted himself and took
+another long look.  The old woman was rocking back and forth, her face
+quiet with that terrible, pent placidity which Casey could not
+understand.
+
+Away from the cabin a pebble's throw, he shook his shoulders and pulled
+his mind away from her, back to the man with the rifle--and to Barney.
+Rocking in a chair never hurt anybody that he ever heard of.  And
+shooting from rim-rocks did.  And Barney was down there, holed up and
+helpless, though he had grub and water. Casey was up here in a mighty
+dangerous place without much grub or water but--he hoped--not quite
+helpless.  His immediate, pressing job was not to peek through a
+high-up window at an old woman rocking back and forth in a chair, but
+to round up the man who was interfering with Casey's peaceful quest
+for--well, he called it wealth; but I think that adventure meant more
+to him.
+
+He picked his way carefully along the edge of the rim-rock, keeping
+under cover when he could and watching always the country ahead.  And
+without any artful description of his progress, I will simply say that
+Casey Ryan combed the edge of that rampart for two miles before dark,
+and found himself at last on the side farthest from Barney without
+having discovered the faintest trace of any living soul save the woman
+who rocked back and forth in the little, secret cabin.
+
+Casey sat down on a rock, took a restrained drink from his canteen, and
+said everything he knew or could invent that was profane and
+condemnatory of his luck, of the unseen assassin, of the country and
+his present predicament.  He got up, looked all around him, sniffed
+unavailingly for some tang of smoke in the thin, crisp air, reseated
+himself and said everything all over again.
+
+Presently he rose and made his way straight across the butte, going
+slowly to lessen his chance of making a noise for unfriendly ears to
+hear, and with the stars for guidance.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER FOUR
+
+The night was growing cold, and Casey had no coat.  At least he could
+go down and tell Barney what he had discovered and had failed to
+discover, and get something to eat.  Barney would probably be worrying
+about him, though there was a chance that a bullet had found Barney
+before dark.  Casey was uneasy, and once he was down the fissure again,
+he hurried as much as possible.
+
+He managed to reach the camp by the little spring without being shot at
+and without breaking a leg.  But Barney was not there. Just at first
+Casey believed he was dead; but a brief search told Casey that two of
+the largest canteens were gone, together with a side of bacon, some
+flour and all of the tobacco.  White assassins would have made a more
+thorough job of robbing the camp.  Barney, it was evident, had fled the
+fate of the burros.
+
+Casey told the stars what he thought of a partner like Barney.
+Afterward he ate what was easiest to swallow without cooking,
+overhauled what was left of their outfit, cached the remainder in a
+clump of bushes, and wearily climbed the bluff again under a capacity
+load.  He concealed himself in the bottom of the fissure to sleep,
+since he could search no farther.
+
+If he thought wistfully of the palled comfort of his apartment in Los
+Angeles, and of the Little Woman there, he still did not think strongly
+enough to send him back to them.  For with a canteen or two of water,
+some food and his two capable legs to carry him, Casey Ryan could have
+made it to Barstow easily enough.  But because he was Casey Ryan, and
+Irish, and because he was always on the hunt for trouble without
+recognizing it when he met it in the trail, it never occurred to him to
+follow Barney down to safer country.
+
+"That there Joshuay tree meant a lot more'n what it let on, pointin' up
+this way!"  Casey muttered, staring down upon a somnolent wilderness
+blanketed with hushed midnight.  "If it thinks it's got Casey whipped,
+it better think agin and think quick.  I'll give it somethin' to point
+at, 'fore I leave this here butte.
+
+"Funny, the way it kept pointin' up this way.  I've saw Joshuays
+before--miles of 'em. But I never seen one that looked so kinda human
+and so kinda like it was tryin' to talk.  Seems kinda funny; an' that
+old lady rockin' an' lookin'--seems like her an' the Joshuay has kinda
+throwed in together, hopin' somebody might come along with savvy enough
+to kinda--aw, hell!"  So did Casey and his Irish belief in the
+supernatural fall plump against the limitations of his vocabulary.
+
+Against the limitations proscribed by his material predicament,
+however, Casey Ryan set his face with a grin.  Somebody was going to
+get the big jolt of his life before long, he told himself over a
+careful breakfast fire built cunningly far back in the crevice where a
+current of air sucked into the rock capping of the butte. Something was
+going on up here that shouldn't go on.  He did not know what it was,
+but he meant to stop it.  He did not know who was making Indian war on
+peaceful prospectors, but Casey felt that they were already as good as
+licked, since he was here with breakfast under his belt and his
+six-shooter tucked handily inside his waistband.
+
+He squinted up the crack in the ledge, made certain mental alterations
+in its narrow, jagged walls, and reached for the tough-handled,
+efficient prospector's pick he had thoughtfully included in his meagre
+equipment.  Slowly and methodically he worked up the crevice, knocking
+off certain sharp points of rock, and knowing all the while what would
+probably happen to him if he were overheard.
+
+He was not discovered, however.  When he laid elbows on the upper level
+of the rim and pulled himself up, his coat was on his back where it
+belonged, and even Barney could have followed him.  Yet the top showed
+no evidence of a widening of the fissure.  The bushy junipers hid him
+completely while he reconnoitred and considered what he should do.
+
+Because the place was close and the invisible call was strong, Casey
+went first to the rock hut, circled it carefully and found that it was
+exactly what it had seemed at first sight; a hidden place with no
+evident opening save that high, small window under the eaves.  There
+was no sign of pathway leading to it, no trace of life outside its
+wall.  But when he crept close and peeked in again, there sat the old
+woman rocking back and forth.  But to-day she stared at the wall before
+her.
+
+Casey felt a distinct sensation of relief just in knowing that she was,
+after all, capable of moving.  Now her head was not bent, but rested
+against the back of her chair.  She was rocking steadily, quietly, with
+never a halt.
+
+Casey rapped on the window and waited, fighting a nameless dread of the
+mystery of her.  But she continued to rock and to stare at the wall; if
+she heard the tapping she gave no sign whatever. So presently he turned
+away and set himself to the work of finding the man with the rifle.
+
+To that end he first of all climbed the tallest pinon tree in sight; a
+tree that stood on a rise of ground apart from its brothers. From the
+concealment of its branches, he surveyed his surroundings carefully,
+noting especially the notched unevenness of the butte's rim and how
+just behind him it narrowed unexpectedly to a thin ridge not more than
+a couple of hundred yards in breadth.  A jagged outcropping cut
+straight across and Casey saw how yesterday he had mistaken that ledge
+for the rim of the butte.  His man must have been out on the point
+beyond him all the while.  He was out there now, very likely; there, or
+down in the camp he had watched yesterday like a vulture.
+
+His search having narrowed to an area easily covered in an hour or two,
+Casey turned his head and examined as well as he could the deep canyon
+that had bitten into the butte and caused that narrow peak. Trees
+blocked his view there, and he was feeling about for a lower foothold
+so that he could make the descent when a voice from the ground startled
+him considerably.
+
+"Come down outa there, before I shoot yuh down!"
+
+Casey looked down and saw what he afterwards declared was the meanest
+looking man on earth, pointing straight at him the widest muzzled
+shotgun he had ever seen in his life.
+
+Casey came down.  The last ten feet of the distance he made in a clean
+jump, planting his feet full in the old man's stomach. The meanest
+looking man on earth gave a grunt and crumpled, with Casey's fingers
+digging into his throat.
+
+Whether Casey would have killed him or not will never be known. For
+just as the man was falling limp in his hands, another heavy body
+landed upon Casey's back.  Casey felt a hard, chill circle pressed
+against his perspiring temple.  His hands relaxed and fall away from
+the throat, leaving finger marks there in the flesh.
+
+"Git up off'n him!" a new voice commanded harshly, and Casey obeyed.
+His captor shifted the gun muzzle to the back of Casey's neck and poked
+the gasping, bearded old man with his toe.
+
+"Git up, Paw, you old fool, you!  What'd you let 'im light on yuh fer?
+Why couldn't you a stood back a piece, outa reach?  You like to got
+croaked."
+
+Casey found it prudent to hold his head rather still, as a man does
+when he carries a boil on his neck.  The muzzle of a six-shooter has a
+quieting effect, when applied to the person by an unfriendly hand.
+Casey did not at once see the intruder.  But presently "Paw" recovered
+himself and his shotgun, and swung it menacingly toward Casey.
+Whereupon the cold circle left Casey's medulla oblongata and a
+long-faced, long-legged youth stepped somewhat hastily to one side.
+
+"Paw, you ol' fool, you, get your finger off'n that trigger whilst
+you're aimin' at me!" he exclaimed pettishly.
+
+"I wa'n't aimin' at you.  I was aimin' at this 'ere--" Casey heard
+himself called many names, any one of which was good for a fight when
+Casey was free.
+
+"Aw, you shut up, Paw.  You ain't gittin' nobody nowhere," the son
+interrupted.  "You can't cuss 'im t' death--he looks like he could cut
+loose a few of them pet names hisself if he got a chancet. Yuh might
+tell us what you was doin' up that there tree, mister. An' what you're
+doin' on this here butte, anyhow."
+
+Casey looked at him.  Knowing Casey, I should say that his eyes were
+not pleasant.  "Talk to Paw," he advised contemptuously. "The two of
+yuh may possibly be able to stand each other without gittin' sick; but
+me, I never did git used to skunks!"
+
+That remark very nearly got him a through ticket to Land Beyond. But,
+being very nearly what Casey had called them, they contented themselves
+with mouthing vile epithets.
+
+"Better take 'im down to the mine an' keep 'im till Mart gets back,
+Paw," the long-jawed youth suggested, when he ran short of
+objurgations. "Mart'll fix 'im when he comes."
+
+"I'd fix 'im, here an', now," threatened Paw, "but Mart, he's so damned
+techy lately--what we oughta do is bust 'is head with a rock an' pitch
+'im over the rim.  That'd fix 'im."
+
+They wrangled over the suggestion, and finally decided to take him down
+and turn him over to one whom they called Joe.  Casey went along
+peaceably, hopeful that he would later have a chance to fight back. He
+told himself that they both had heads like peanuts, and whenever they
+moved, he swore, he could hear their brains rattle in their skulls. It
+doesn't take brains to shoot straight, and he decided that the lanky
+young man was the one who had shot from the rim-rock. They drove him
+down into the narrow, deep gulch, following a steep trail that Casey
+had not seen the day before.  The trail led them to the mouth of a
+tunnel; and by the size of the dump Casey judged that the workings were
+of a considerable extent.  They were getting out silver ore, he
+guessed, after a glance or two at stray pieces of rock.
+
+Joe was a big, glum-looking individual with his left hand bandaged. He
+chewed tobacco industriously and maintained a complete silence while
+Hank, frequently telling Paw to shut up, told how and where they had
+found Casey spying up on the butte.
+
+"We don't fancy stray desert rats prowlin' around without no reason,"
+said Joe.  "Our boss that we're workin' for ain't at home.  We're
+lookin' for 'im back any day now, an' we'll just hold yuh till he
+comes.  He can do as he likes about yuh.  You'll have to work fer your
+board--c'm on an' I'll show yuh how."
+
+Hank followed Casey and Joe into the tunnel.  Casey made no objections
+whatever to going.  The tunnel was a fairly long one, he noticed, with
+drifts opening out of it to left and right. At the end of the main
+tunnel, Joe turned, took Casey's candle from him and stuck it into a
+seam in the wall, as he had done with his own.
+
+"Ever drill in rock?" he asked shortly.
+
+"Mebbe I have an' mebbe I ain't," Casey returned defiantly.
+
+"Here's a drill, an' here's your single-jack.  Now git t' work. There
+ain't any loafin' around this camp, and spies never meant good to
+nobody.  Yuh needn't expect to be popular with us--but you'll git your
+grub if yuh earn it."
+
+Casey looked at the drill, took the double-headed, four-pound hammer
+and hesitated.  He has said that it was pretty hard to resist braining
+the two of them at once.  But there would still be the old man with the
+shotgun, and he admitted that he was curious about the old woman who
+rocked and rocked.  He decided to wait awhile and see, why these miners
+found it necessary to shoot harmless prospectors who came near the
+butte.  So he spat into the dust of the tunnel floor, squinted at Joe
+for a minute and went to work.
+
+That day Casey was kept underground except during the short interval of
+"shooting" and waiting for the dynamite smoke to clear out of the
+tunnel; which process Casey assisted by operating a hand blower much
+against his will.  Joe remained always on guard, eyeing Casey
+suspiciously.  When at last he was permitted to pick up his coat and
+leave the tunnel, night had fallen so that the gulch was dim and
+shadowy.  Casey was conducted to a dugout cabin where bacon was frying
+too fast and smoking suffocatingly.  Paw was there, in a vile temper
+which seemed to be directed toward the three impartially and to have
+been caused chiefly by his temporary occupation as camp cook.
+
+Casey watched the old man place food for one person in little dishes
+which he set in a bake pan for want of a tray.  He added a small tin
+teapot of tea and disappeared from the dugout.
+
+"Two of us waitin' to see your boss, huh?"  Casey inquired boldly of
+Joe.  "Can't we eat together?"
+
+"You can call yourself lucky if you eat at all," Joe retorted glumly.
+"The old man's pretty sore at the way you handled him. He's runnin'
+this camp; I ain't."
+
+Casey let it go at that, chiefly because he was hungry and tired and
+did not want to risk losing his supper altogether.  Hounds like these,
+he told himself bitterly, were capable of any crime--from smashing a
+man's skull and throwing him off the rim-rock to starving him to death.
+He was Casey Ryan, ready always to fight whether his chance of winning
+was even or merely microscopical; but even so, Casey was not inclined
+toward suicide.
+
+When the old man presently returned and the three sat down to the
+table, Casey obeyed a gesture and sat down with them.  In spite of
+Joe's six-shooter laid handily upon the table beside his plate, Casey
+ate heartily, though the food was neither well cooked nor over
+plentiful.
+
+After supper he rose and filled his pipe which they had permitted him
+to keep.  A stranger coming into the cabin might not have guessed that
+Casey was a prisoner.  When the table was cleared and Hank set about
+washing the dishes, Casey picked up a grimy dish towel branded black in
+places where it had rubbed sooty kettles, and grinned cheerfully at Paw
+while he dried a tin plate.  Paw eyed him dubiously over a stinking
+pipe, spat reflectively into the woodbox and crossed his legs the other
+way, loosely swinging an ill-shod foot.
+
+"Y'ain't told us yet what brung yuh up on the butte," Paw observed
+suddenly.  "Yuh wa'n't lost--yuh ain't got the mark uh no tenderfoot.
+What was yuh doin' up in that tree?"
+
+"Mebbe I mighta been huntin' mountain sheep," Casey retorted calmly.
+
+"Huntin' mountain sheep up a tree is a new one," tittered Hank. "Wish
+you'd give me a swaller uh that brand.  Must have a kick like a brindle
+mule."
+
+"More likely 'White Mule.'" Casey cocked a knowing eye at Hank. "You're
+too late, young feller.  I chewed the cork day before yesterday," he
+declared.
+
+While he fished another plate out of the pan, Casey observed that Paw
+looked at Joe inquiringly, and that Joe moved his head sidewise a
+careful inch, and back again.
+
+"Moonshine, huh?" Paw hazarded hopefully.  "Yuh peddlin' it, er makin'
+it?"
+
+Casey grinned secretively.  "A man can't be pinched without the goods,"
+he observed shrewdly.  "I was raised in a country where they took fools
+out an' brained 'em with an axe.  You fellers ain't been none too
+friendly, recollect.  When's your boss expected home, did yuh say?  I'd
+kinda like to meet 'im."
+
+"He'll kinda like to meet you," Joe returned darkly. "Your actions has
+been plumb suspicious.
+
+"Nothin' suspicious about MY actions," Casey stated truculently,
+throwing discretion behind him.  "The suspiciousness lays up here
+somewheres on this butte.  If yuh want to know what brung me up here,
+Casey Ryan's the man that can tell yuh to your faces.  I come up here
+to find out who's been gittin' busy with a high-power on my camp down
+below.  Ain't it natural a man'd want to know who'd shot his two
+burros--an' 'is pardner?"  Casey had impulsively decided to throw in
+Barney for good measure.  "Casey Ryan ain't the man to set under a bush
+an' be shot at like a rabbit.  You can ask anybody if Casey ever backed
+up fer man er beast.  I come up here huntin'. Shore I did.  It wasn't
+sheep I was after--that there's my mistake. It was goats."
+
+"Guess I got yourn," Hank leered "when stuck my gun in your back hair."
+
+"If any one's 'been usin' a high-power it wasn't on this butte," Joe
+growled.  "None uh this bunch done any shootin'.  Pap an' Hank, they
+was up here huntin' burros an I caught yuh up a tree spyin'. We got a
+little band uh antelope up here we're pertectin'.  Our boss got himself
+made a deppity fer just such cases as yourn appears t' be--pervidin'
+your case ain't worse.
+
+"Now you say your pardner was shot down below in your camp. That shore
+looks bad fer you, old-timer.  The boss'll shore have t' look into it
+when he gits here.  Lucky we made up our minds t' hold yuh--a murderer,
+like as not."  He filled his pipe with deliberation, while Casey, his
+jaw sagging, stared from one to the other.
+
+Casey had meant to accuse them to their faces of shooting Barney and
+the burros from the rim-rock.  It had occurred to him that if they
+believed Barney dead, they might reveal something of their purpose in
+the attack.  Concealment, he felt vaguely, would serve merely to
+sharpen their suspicion of him.  It had seemed very important to Casey
+that these three should not know that Barney was probably well on his
+way to Barstow by now.
+
+Barney in Barstow would mean Barney bearing news that Casey Ryan was
+undoubtedly murdered by outlaws in the Panamints; which would mean a
+few officers on the trail, with Barney to guide them to the spot.  Paw
+and Hank and Joe--outlaws all, he would have sworn would get what Casey
+called their needin's.  His jaw muscles tightened when he thought of
+that, and the prospect held him quiet under Joe's injustice.
+
+"I can prove anything I'm asked to prove when the time comes," he said
+sourly, and began to roll himself a cigarette, since his pipe had gone
+out.  "But I ain't in any courtroom yet, an' you fellers ain't any
+judge an' jury."
+
+"We got to hold ye,"  Paw spoke up unctiously, as if the decision had
+been his.  "Ef a crime's been committed, like you say it has, we got to
+do our duty an' hold ye.  The boss'll know what to do with ye--like I
+said all along; when I hauled ye down outa that tree, for instance.
+
+"Aw, shut up, Paw, you ol' fool, you," Hank commanded again with filial
+gentleness.  "He had yore tongue hangin' out a foot when I come along
+an' captured 'im.  Don't go takin' no credit to yourself--you ain't got
+none comin'.  Mart'll know what to do with 'im, all right.  But yuh
+needn't go an' try to let on to Mart that you was the one that caught
+'im.  He had you caught. An' he'd a killed yuh if I hadn't showed up
+an' pulled 'im off'n yuh."
+
+"Well now, when it comes to KILLIN'," Casey interjected spitefully, "I
+guess I coulda put the two of yuh away if I'd a wanted to right bad.
+Casey Ryan ain't no killer, because he don't have to be.  G'wan an'
+hold me if yuh feel that way.  Grub ain't none too good, but I can
+stand it till your boss comes.  I want a man-to-man talk with him,
+anyway."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER FIVE
+
+That night Casey slept soundly in a bunk built above Joe's bed in the
+dugout, with Hank and Paw on the opposite side of the room with their
+guns handy.  In the morning he thought well enough of his stomach to
+get up and start breakfast when Hank had built the fire. He was aware
+of Joe's suspicious gaze from the lower bunk, and of the close presence
+of Joe's six-shooter eyeing him balefully from underneath the top
+blanket.  Hank, too, was watchful as a coyote, which he much resembled,
+in Casey's opinion.  But Casey did not mind trifles of that kind, once
+his mind was at ease about the breakfast and he was free to slice bacon
+the right thickness, and mix the hot-cake batter himself. For the first
+time in many weeks he sang--if you could call it singing--over his work.
+
+When Casey Ryan sings over a breakfast fire, you may expect the bacon
+fried exactly right.  You may be sure the hot-cakes will be browned
+correctly with no uncooked dough inside, and that the coffee will give
+you heart for whatever hardship the day may hold.
+
+Even Paw's surliness lightened a bit by the time he had speared his
+tenth cake and walloped it in the bacon grease before sprinkling it
+thick with sugar and settling the eleventh cake on top.  Casey was
+eyeing the fourteenth cake on Hank's plate when Joe looked up at him
+over a loaded fork.
+
+"Save out enough dough for three good uns," Joe ordered, "an' fill that
+little coffee pot an' set it to keep hot, before Hank hogs the hull
+thing.  Dad, seems like you're, too busy t' think uh some things Mart
+wouldn't want forgot."  Paw looked quickly at Casey; but Casey Ryan had
+played poker all his life, and his weathered face showed no expression
+beyond a momentary interest, which was natural.
+
+"Other feller hurt bad?" he inquired carelessly,  looking at Joe's
+bandaged hand.  He almost grinned when he saw the relieved glances
+exchanged between Joe and Paw.
+
+"Leg broke," Joe mumbled over a mouthful.  "Dad, he set it an' it's
+doin' all right.  He's up in another cabin."  Through Hank's brainless
+titter, Joe added carefully, "Bad ground in the first right-hand drift.
+We had to abandon it.  Rocks big as your head comin' in on yuh
+onexpected.  None uh them right-hand drifts is safe fer a man t' walk
+in, much less work."
+
+Thereupon Casey related a thrilling story of a cave-in, and assured Joe
+that he and his partner were lucky to get off with mere broken bones.
+Casey, you will observe, was running contrary to his nature and leaning
+to diplomacy.
+
+For himself, I am sure he would never have troubled to placate them. He
+would have taken the first slim chance that offered--or made one--and
+fought the three to a finish.
+
+But there was the old woman in the rock hut above them, rocking back
+and forth and staring at a wall that had no visible opening save one
+small window to let in the light of outdoors.  Prisoner she must
+be--though why, Casey could only guess.
+
+Perhaps she was some desert woman, the widow of some miner who had been
+shot as these three had tried to shoot him and Barney Oakes. Mean,
+malevolent as they were, they would still lack the brutishness
+necessary to shoot an old woman.  So they had shut her up there in the
+rock hut, not daring to take her back to civilization where she would
+tell of the crime.  It was all plain enough to Casey.  The story of the
+crippled miner made him curl his lip contemptuously when his back was
+safely turned from Joe.
+
+That day Casey thought much of the old woman in the hut, and of Paw's
+worse than inferior cooking.  Though he did not realize the change in
+himself, six months of close companionship with the Little Woman had
+changed Casey Ryan considerably.  Time was when even his
+soft-heartedness would not have impelled him to patient scheming that
+he might help an old woman whose sole claim upon his sympathy consisted
+of four rock walls and a look of calm despair in her eyes.  Now, Casey
+was thinking and planning for the old woman more than for himself.
+
+Wherefore, Casey chose the time when he was "putting in an upper"
+(which is miner's parlance for drilling a hole in the upper face of the
+tunnel).  He gritted his teeth when he swung back the single-jack and
+landed a glancing blow on the knuckles of his left hand instead of the
+drill end.  No man save Casey Ryan or a surgeon could have told
+positively whether the metacarpal bones were broken or whether the hand
+was merely skinned and bruised.
+
+Joe came up, regarded the bleeding hand sourly, led Casey out to the
+dugout and bandaged the hand for him.  There would be no more tunnel
+work for Casey until the hand had healed; that was accepted without
+comment.
+
+That night Casey proved to Paw that, with one hand in a sling much
+resembling Joe's, he could nevertheless cook a meal that made eating a
+pleasure to look forward to.  After that the old woman in the little
+stone hut had pudding, sometimes, and cake made without eggs, and pie;
+and the potatoes were mashed or baked instead of plain boiled. Casey
+had the satisfaction of seeing the dishes return empty to the dugout,
+and know that he was permitted to add something to her comfort and
+well-being. The Little Woman would be glad of that, Casey thought with
+a glow.  She might never hear of it, but Casey liked to feel that he
+was doing something that would please the Little Woman.
+
+For the first few days after Casey was installed as cook, one of the
+three remained always with him, making it plain that he was under
+guard.  Two were always busy elsewhere.  Casey saw that he was expected
+to believe that they were at work in the tunnel, driving it in to a
+certain contact of which they spoke frequently and at length.
+
+At supper they would mention their footage for that day's work, and
+Casey would hide a grin of derision.  Casey knew rock as he knew bacon
+and beans and his sour-dough can.  To make the footage they claimed to
+be making in that tunnel, they would need to shoot twice a day, with a
+round of, say, five holes to a shot.
+
+As a matter of fact, two holes a day, one shot at noon and one at
+night, were the most Casey ever heard fired in the tunnel or elsewhere
+about the mine.  But he did not tell them any of the things he thought;
+not even Joe, who had intelligence far above Paw and Hank, ever guessed
+that Casey listened every day for their shots and could tell, almost to
+an inch what progress they were actually making in the tunnel.  Nor did
+he guess that Casey Ryan with his mouth shut was more unsafe than
+"giant powder" laid out in the sun until it sweated destruction.
+
+Persistent effort, directed by an idea based solely upon an abstract
+theory, must be driven by a trained intelligence.  In this case the
+abstract theory that every prisoner must be watched must support itself
+unaided by Casey's behavior.  Not even Joe's intelligence was trained
+to a degree where the theory in itself was sufficient to hold him to
+the continuous effort of watching Casey.
+
+Wherefore Paw, Hank and Joe presently slipped into the habit of leaving
+Casey alone for an hour or so; being careful to keep the guns out of
+his reach, and returning to the dugout at unexpected intervals to make
+sure that all was well.
+
+Casey Ryan knew his pots and pans, and how to make them fill his days
+if need be.  With savory suppers and his care-free, Casey Ryan grin, he
+presently lulled them into accepting him as a handy man around camp,
+and into forgetting that he was at least a potential enemy.  Afoot and
+alone in that unfriendly land, with his left hand smashed and carried
+in a sling, and on his tongue an Irish joke that implied content with
+his captivity, Casey Ryan would not have looked dangerous to more
+intelligent men than these three.
+
+They should have looked one night under the bedding in Casey's bunk.
+More important still would have been the safeguarding of their "giant
+powder" and caps and fuse.  They should not have left it in a gouged,
+open hollow under a boulder near the dugout. They were not burdened by
+the weight of their brains, I imagine.
+
+Just here I should like to say a few words to those who are wholly
+ignorant of the devastating power contained in "giant powder"--which is
+dynamite.  If you have never had any experience with the stuff, you are
+likely to go out with a bang and a puff of bluish-brown smoke when you
+go.  On the other hand, you may believe the weird tales one reads now
+and then, of how whole mountainsides have been thrown down by the
+discharge of a few sticks of dynamite.  Or of one man striking terror
+to the very souls of a group of mutinous miners by threatening to throw
+a piece at them.  Very well, now this is the truth without any frills
+of exaggeration or any belittlement:
+
+Dynamite MAY go off by being thrown so that it lands with a jar, but it
+is not likely to be so hasty as all that.  Whole boxes of it have been
+dropped off wagons traveling over rough trails, with no worse effect
+than a nervous chill down the spine of the driver of the wagon.  It is
+true that old stuff, after lying around for months and months through
+varying degrees of temperature, may perform erratically, exploding when
+it shouldn't and refusing to explode when it should.  The average miner
+refuses to take a chance with stale "giant" if he can get hold of fresh.
+
+One stick the size of an ordinary candle, and from that to a maximum
+amount of four sticks, may be used to "load" a hole eighteen to
+twenty-four inches long, drilled into living rock. The amount of
+dynamite used depends upon the quality of rock to be broken and the
+skill and good judgment of the miner.  In average hard-rock mining,
+from three to five of these holes are drilled in a space four-by-six
+feet in area.
+
+A stick of dynamite is exploded by inserting in one end of the stick a
+high-power detonating cap which will deliver a twenty-pound blow per
+X--whatever that means.  From three- to six-X caps are used in ordinary
+mining.  Three-X caps sometimes fail to explode a stick of dynamite.  A
+six-X cap, delivering a one-hundred-and-twenty-pound blow, may be
+counted upon to do the work without fail.
+
+The cap itself is exploded by a spark running through a length of fuse,
+the length depending altogether upon the time required to reach a point
+of safety after the fuse is lighted.  The cap is really more dangerous
+to handle than is the dynamite itself.  The cap is a tricky thing that
+may go off at any jar or scratch or at a spark from pipe or cigarette.
+You can, if you are sufficiently careless of possible results, light
+the twisted paper end of a stick of dynamite and watch the dynamite
+burn like wax in your fingers; it MAY go off and set your friends to
+work retrieving portions of your body.  More likely, it will do nothing
+but burn harmlessly.
+
+Well, then, a piece of fuse is inserted in the open end of the cap, and
+the metal pressed tight against the fuse to hold it in place. Pressed
+down by the miner's teeth, sometimes, if he has been long in the
+business and has grown careless about his head; otherwise he crimps the
+cap on with a small pair of pliers or the back of his knife blade--and
+feels a bit easier when it is done without losing a hand.
+
+You would think, unless you are accustomed to the stuff, that when five
+holes are loaded with, probably, ten or twelve sticks of dynamite to
+the lot, each hole containing a six-X exploding cap as well, that the
+first shot would likewise be the last shot and that the whole tunnel
+would cave in and the mountain behind it would shake. Nothing like that
+occurs.  If there are five loaded holes in the tunnel face, and you do
+not hear, one after the other, five muffled BOOMS, you will know that
+one hole failed to go off--and that the miner is worried.  It happens
+sometimes that four holes loaded with eight sticks of dynamite explode
+within a foot or so of the fifth hole and yet the fifth hole remains
+"dead" and a menace to the miner until it is discharged.
+
+So please don't swallow those wild tales of a stick of dynamite that
+threw down a mountainside.  I once read a story--it was not so long
+ago--of a Chinaman who wiped out a mine with a little piece of dynamite
+which he carried in his pocket.  I laughed.
+
+Casey Ryan, on the first day when he was left alone with his crippled
+hand and his pots and pans for company, did nothing whatever that he
+would not have done had one of the three been present.  He was
+suspicious of their going and thought it was a trap set to catch him in
+an attempted escape.
+
+On the second day when the three went off together and left him alone,
+Casey went out gathering wood and discovered just where the "powder,"
+fuse and caps were kept under a huge, black boulder between the tunnel
+portal and the dugout.  On the third day he also gathered wood and
+helped himself to two sticks of dynamite, three caps and eighteen
+inches of fuse.  Not enough to be missed unless they checked their
+supply more carefully than Casey believed they did; but enough for
+Casey's purpose nevertheless.
+
+That night, while the moon shone in through the dingy window at the
+head of his bunk and gave him a little light to work by, Casey sat up
+in bed and snored softly and with a soothing rhythm while he cut a
+stick of dynamite in two, capped five inches of fuse for each piece
+working awkwardly with his one good hand and pinching the caps tight
+with his teeth, which might have sent him with a bang into Kingdom
+Come--and very carefully worked the caps into the powder until no more
+than three inches of fuse protruded from the end of the half stick.  It
+would have been less dangerous to land with a yell in the middle of the
+floor and fight the three men with one bare hand, but Casey's courage
+never turned a hair.
+
+Still snoring mildly, he held up to the moonlight two deadly weapons
+and surveyed them with much satisfaction.  They would not be so quick,
+as fiction would have them, but if his aim was accurate in throwing,
+they would be deadly enough.  Moreover, he could count with a good deal
+of certainty upon a certain degree of terror which the sight of them in
+his hand would produce.
+
+When Casey Ryan cooked breakfast next morning, he carried two
+half-sticks of loaded dynamite under his hand in the sling. Can you
+wonder that even he shied at standing over the stove cooking hot cakes
+and complained that his broken hand pained him a lot and that the heat
+made it worse?  But a shrewd observer would have noticed on his face
+the expression of a cat that has been shut in the pantry over night.
+
+Joe volunteered to take another look at the hand and see if blood
+poison was "setting in"; but Casey said it didn't feel like blood
+poison.  He had knocked it against the bunk edge in his sleep, he
+declared.  He'd dose 'er with iodine after a while, and she'd be all
+right.
+
+Joe let it go at that, being preoccupied with other matters at which
+Casey could only guess.  He conferred with Paw outside the dugout after
+breakfast, called Hank away from the dish-washing and the three set off
+toward the tunnel with a brisker air than usually accompanied them to
+work.  Casey watched them go and felt reasonably sure of at least two
+hours to himself.
+
+The first thing Casey did after he had made sure that he was actually
+alone was to remove the deadly stuff from the sling and lay it on a
+shadowed shelf where it would be safe but convenient to his hand. Then,
+going to his bunk, he reached under the blankets and found the other
+stick of dynamite which he had not yet loaded.  This he laid on the
+kitchen table and cut it in two as he had done last night with the
+other stick.  With his remaining cap he loaded a half and carried it
+back to his bunk. He was debating in his mind whether it was worth
+while purloining another cap from a box under the boulder when another
+fancy took him and set him grinning.
+
+Four separate charges of dynamite, he reasoned, would not be necessary.
+It was an even chance that the sight of a piece with the fuse in his
+hand would be sufficient to tame Paw or Hank or Joe--or the three
+together, for that matter--without going further than to give them a
+sight of it.
+
+With that idea uppermost, Casey split the paper carefully down the side
+of the remaining half-stick, took out the contents in a tin plate and
+carried it outside where he buried it in the sand beneath a bush.
+Returning to the dugout he made a thick dough of leftover pancake
+batter and molded it into the dynamite wrapping with a fragment of
+harmless fuse protruding from the opened end. When the thing was dry,
+Casey thought it would look very deadly and might be useful.  After
+several days of helplessness for want of a weapon, Casey was in a mood
+to supply himself generously.
+
+He finished the dish-washing, working awkwardly with one hand. After
+that he put a kettle of beans on to boil, filled the stove with pinon
+sticks and closed the drafts.  He armed himself with the two loaded
+pieces of dynamite from the cupboard, filled his pockets with such
+other things as he thought he might need, and went prospecting on his
+own account.
+
+At the portal of the tunnel he stopped and listened for the ping-g,
+ping-g of a single-jack striking steadily upon steel. But the tunnel
+was silent, the ore car uptilted at the end of its track on the dump.
+Yet the three men were supposedly at work in the mine, had talked at
+breakfast about wanting to show a certain footage when the boss
+returned, and of needing to hurry.
+
+Casey went into the tunnel, listening and going silently; sounds travel
+far in underground workings.  At the mouth of the first right-hand
+drift he stopped again and listened.  This, if he would believe Joe,
+was the drift where the bad ground had caused the accident to Joe and
+his partner whose leg had been broken. Casey found the drift as silent
+as the main tunnel.  He went in ten feet or so and lighted the candle
+he had pulled from inside his shirt. With the candle held in the
+swollen fingers of his injured hand, and a prospector's pick taken from
+the portal in his other, Casey went on cautiously, keeping an eye upon
+the roof which, to his wise, squinting eyes, looked perfectly solid and
+safe.
+
+If a track had ever been laid in this drift it had long since been
+removed.  But a well-defined path led along its center with boot tracks
+going and coming, blurring one another with much passing. Casey grinned
+and went on, his ears cocked for any sound before or behind, his shoes
+slung over his arm by their tied laces.
+
+So he came, in the course of a hundred feet or so, to a crude door of
+split cedar slabs, the fastening padlocked on his side. Casey had
+vaguely expected some such bar to his path, and he merely gave a grunt
+of satisfaction that the lock was old and on his side of the door.
+
+With his jackknife Casey speedily took off one side of the lock and
+opened it.  Making the door appear locked behind him when he had passed
+through was a different matter, and Casey did not attempt it.  Instead,
+he merely closed the door behind him, carrying the padlock in with him.
+
+As Casey reviewed his situation, being on the butte at all was a risk
+in itself.  One detail more or less could not matter so much. Besides,
+he was a bold Casey Ryan with two loaded half-sticks of dynamite in his
+sling.
+
+A crude ladder against the wall of a roomy stope beyond the door did
+not in the least surprise him.  He had expected something of this sort.
+When he had topped the ladder and found himself in a chamber that
+stretched away into blackness, he grunted again his mental confirmation
+of a theory working out beautifully in fact. His candle held close to
+the wall, he moved forward along the well-trodden path, looking for a
+door.  Mechanically he noticed also the formation of the wall and the
+vein of ore--probably high-grade in pockets, at least--that had caused
+this chamber to be dug.  The ore, he judged, had long since been taken
+out and down through the stope into the tunnel and so out through the
+main portal. These workings were old and for mining purposes abandoned.
+But just now Casey was absorbed in solving the one angle of the mystery
+which he had stumbled upon at first, and he gave no more than a glance
+and a thought to the silent testimony of the rock walls.
+
+He found the door, fastened also on the outside just as he had expected
+it would be.  Beside it stood a rather clever heating apparatus which
+Casey did not examine in detail.  His Irish heart was beating rather
+fast while he unfastened the door.  Beyond that door his thoughts went
+questing eagerly but he hesitated nevertheless before he lifted his
+knuckles and rapped.
+
+There was no reply.  Casey waited a minute, knocked again, then pulled
+the door open a crack and looked in.  The old woman sat there rocking
+back and forth, steadily, quietly.  But her thin fingers were rolling a
+corner of her apron hem painstakingly, as if she meant to hem it again.
+Her eyes were fixed absently upon the futile task.  Casey watched her
+as long as he dared and cleared his throat twice in the hope that she
+would notice him. But the old woman rocked back and forth and rolled
+her apron hem; unrolled it and carefully rolled it again.
+
+"Good morning, ma'am," said Casey, clearing his throat for the third
+time and coming a step into the room with his candle dripping wax on
+the floor.
+
+For just an instant the uneasy fingers paused in their rolling of the
+apron hem.  For just so long the rockers hesitated in their motion.
+But the old woman did not reply nor turn her face toward him; and Casey
+pushed the door shut behind him and took two more steps toward her.
+
+"I come to see if yuh needed anything, ma'am; a friend, mebbe." Casey
+grinned amiably, wanting to reassure her if it were possible to make
+her aware of his presence.  "They had yuh locked in, ma'am. That don't
+look good to Casey Ryan.  If yuh wanta get out--if they got yuh held a
+prisoner here, or anything like 'that, you can trust Casey Ryan any old
+time. Is--can I do anything for yuh, ma'am?" The old woman dropped her
+hands to her lap and held them there, closely clasped.  Her head swung
+slowly round until she was looking at Casey with that awful, fixed
+stare she had heretofore directed at the wall or the floor.
+
+"Tell those hell-hounds they have a thousand years to burn--every one
+of them!" she said in a deep, low voice that had in it a singing
+resonance like a chant.  "Every cat, every rat, every mouse, every
+louse, has a thousand year's to burn.  Tell Mart the hounds of hell
+must burn!"  Her voice carried a terrible condemnation far beyond the
+meaning of the words themselves.  It was as if she were pronouncing the
+doom of the whole world. "Every cat, every rat, every mouse, every
+louse--"
+
+Casey Ryan's jaw dropped an inch.  He backed until he was against the
+door.  He had to swallow twice before he could find his voice, and
+those of you who know Casey Ryan will appreciate that. He waited until
+she had finished her declaration.
+
+"No, ma'am, you're wrong.  I come up here to see if I could help yuh."
+
+"Hounds of hell--black as the bottomless pit that spewed you forth to
+prey upon mankind!  The world will have to burn.  Tell those hounds of
+hell that bay at the gibbous moon the world will have to burn.  Every
+cat, every rat, every mouse, every louse has a thousand years to burn!"
+
+Casey Ryan, with his mouth half open and his eyes rather wild,
+furtively opened the door behind him.  Still meeting fixedly the dull
+glare of the old woman's eyes, Casey slid out through the door and
+fastened it hastily behind him.  With an uneasy glance now and then
+over his shoulder as if he feared the old woman might be in pursuit of
+him, he hurried back down the ladder to the closed door in the drift,
+pulled the door shut behind him and put the padlock in place before he
+breathed naturally.
+
+He stopped then to put on his shoes, made his way to the drift opening
+and listened again for voices or footsteps.  When he found the way
+clear he hurried out and back to the dugout.  The first thing he did
+was to fill his pipe and light it.  Even then the sonorous voice of the
+old woman intoning her dreadful proclamation against the world rang in
+his ears and sent occasional ripples of horror down his spine.  Seen
+through the window, she had looked a sad, lonely old lady who needed
+sympathy and help.  At closer range she was terrible.  Casey was trying
+to forget her by busying himself about the stove when Joe walked in
+unexpectedly.
+
+Joe stood just inside the door, staring at Casey with a glassy look in
+his eyes.  Something in Joe's face warned Casey of impending events;
+but with that terrible old woman still fresh in his mind, Casey was in
+the mood to welcome distraction of any sort.  He shifted his hand in
+the sling so that his concealed weapons lay more comfortably therein,
+secure from detection, and waited.
+
+Joe leaned forward, lifted an arm slowly and aimed a finger at Casey
+accusingly.
+
+"Pap says that you're a Federal officer!" he began, waggling his finger
+at Casey.  "Pap thinks you come here spyin' around t' see what we're up
+to on this here butte.  Now, you can't pull nothin' like that!  You
+can't get away with it.
+
+"Hank, he wants t' bump yuh off an' say nothin' to anybody.  Now, I
+come t' have it out with yuh.  If you're a Federal officer we're goin'
+t' settle with yuh an' take no chances.  Mart, he's more easy-goin' in
+some ways, on account of havin' his crazy ol' mother on 'is hands t'
+take care of.  Mart don't want no killin'--on account of his mother
+goin' loony when 'is dad got killed.  But Mart ain't here. Pap an'
+Hank, they been at me all mornin' t' let 'em bump yuh off.
+
+"But Pap an' Hank, they're drunk, see?  I'm the only sober man left on
+the job.  So I come up here t' settle with yuh myself. Takes a sober
+man with a level head t' settle these things.  Now, if you come up here
+spyin' an' snoopin', you git bumped off an' no argument about it.
+Mart's got his mother t' take care of--an' we aim t' pertect Mart.  If
+you're a Federal officer, I want t' know it here an' now.  If yuh
+ain't, I want yuh t' sample some uh the out-kickin'est 'White Mule' yuh
+ever swallered.  Now which are yuh, and what yuh goin' t' do?  I want
+my answer here an' now, an' no argument an' no foolin'!"
+
+Casey blinked but his mouth widened in a grin.  "Me, I never went
+lookin' fer nothin, I wouldn't put under my vest, Joe," he declared
+convincingly.  So that was it!  He was thinking against time.
+Moonshiners as well as would-be murderers they were--and Joe drunk and
+giving them away like a fool.  Casey wished that he knew where Hank and
+Paw were at this moment.  He hoped, too, that Joe was right--that Hank
+and Paw were drunk.  He'd have the three of them tied in a row before
+dark, in any case.  The thing to do now was to humor Joe along--leave
+it to Casey Ryan!
+
+Joe was uncorking a small, flat bottle of pale liquor.  Now he held it
+out to Casey.  Casey took it, thinking he would pretend to drink, would
+urge Joe to take a drink; it would be simple, once he got Joe started.
+But Joe had a few ideas of his own concerning the celebration.  He
+pulled a gun unexpectedly, leaned against the closed door to steady
+himself and aimed it full at Casey.
+
+"In just two minutes I'm goin' t' shoot if that there bottle ain't
+empty," he stated gravely, nodding his head with intense pride in his
+ability to handle the situation.  "If you're a Federal officer, yuh
+won't dast t' drink.  If yuh ain't, you'll be almighty glad to. Anyway,
+it'll be settled one way or t'other. Drink 'er down!"
+
+Casey blinked again, but this time he did not grin.  He debated swiftly
+his chance of scaring Joe with the dynamite before Joe would shoot.
+But Joe had his finger crooked with drunken solemnity upon the trigger.
+The time for dynamite was not now.
+
+"Pap an' Hank, they lap up anything an' call it good.  I claim that's
+got a back-action kick to it.  Drink 'er down!"
+
+Casey drank 'er down.  It was like swallowing flames. It was a
+half-pint flask, and it was full when Casey, with Joe's eyes fixed upon
+him, tilted it and began to drink.  Under Joe's baleful glare Casey
+emptied the flask before he stopped.
+
+Joe settled his shoulders comfortably against the doorway and watched
+Casey make for the water bucket.
+
+"I claim that's the out-kickin'est stuff that ever was made on Black
+Butte.  How'd yuh like it?"
+
+"All right," Casey bore witness, keeping his eyes fixed on Joe and the
+gun and trying his best to maintain a nonchalant manner. "I'd call it
+purty fair hootch."
+
+"It's GOOD hootch!" Joe declared impressively, apparently quite
+convinced that Casey was not a Federal officer.  "Can yuh feel the
+kick'to it?"
+
+Casey backed until he sat on the edge of the table his good right hand
+supporting his left elbow outside the sling.  He grinned at Joe and
+while he still keenly realized that he was playing a part for the sole
+purpose of gaining somehow an advantage over Joe, he was conscious of a
+slight giddiness.  An unprejudiced observer would have noticed that his
+grin was not quite the old, Casey Ryan grin.  It was a shade foolish.
+
+"Bet your life I can feel the kick!" he agreed, nodding his head. "You
+can ask anybody."  Then Casey discovered something strange in Joe's
+appearance.  He lifted his head, held it very still and regarded Joe
+attentively.
+
+"Say, Joe, what yuh tryin' to do with that six-gun?  Tryin' to write
+your name in the air with it?"
+
+Joe looked inquiringly down at the gun, eyeing it as if it were a new
+and absolutely unknown object.  He satisfied himself apparently beyond
+all doubt that the gun was doing nothing it should not do, and finally
+turned his attention to Casey sitting on the table and grinning at him
+meaninglessly.
+
+"Ain't writin' nothin'," Joe stated solemnly.  "It's yore eyes. Gun's
+all right--yo'r seein' crooked.  It's the hootch. Back-action kick to
+it.  Ain't that right?"
+
+"That's right," nodded Casey and he added, grinning more foolishly,
+"Darn right, that's right!  Back-action kick--bet your life."
+
+Joe pushed the gun inside his waistband and crooked his finger at
+Casey, beckoning mysteriously.  "C'mon an' I'll show yuh how it's
+made," he invited with heavy enthusiasm.  "Yore a judge uh hootch all
+right--I can see that.  I'll show yuh how we do it.  Best White Mule in
+Nevada.  Ain't that right?  Ain't that the real hootch?"
+
+"'S right, all right," Casey agreed earnestly.  "Puttin' the hoot in
+hootch--you fellers.  You can ask anybody if that ain't right."
+
+Joe laughed hoarsely.  "Puttin' the hoot in hootch--that's right. I
+knowed you was all right.  Didn't I say you was?  I told Hank an' Pap
+you wasn't no Federal officer.  They know it, too. I was foolin' back
+there.  I knowed you didn't need no gun pulled on yuh t' make yuh put
+away the hootch.  Lapped it up like a thirsty hound. I knowed yuh
+would--I was kiddin' yuh, runnin' that razoo with the gun.  Ain't that
+right?"
+
+"Darn right, that's right! I knew you was foolin' all along. You knew
+Casey Ryan's all right--sure, you knowed it!"  Casey laid his good hand
+investigatively against his stomach.  "Pretty hot hootch--you can ask
+anybody if it ain't!  Workin' like an air drill a'ready."
+
+He blinked inquisitively at Joe, who stared back inquiringly. "Who's
+your friend?"  Casey demanded pugnaciously.  "He sneaked in on yuh.  I
+never seen 'im come in."
+
+Joe turned slowly and looked behind him at the blank boards of the
+unpainted door.  Just as slowly he turned back to Casey.  A slow grin
+split his leathery face.
+
+"Ain't nobody.  It's the hootch. Told yuh, didn't I?  Gittin' the best
+of yuh, ain't it?  C'mon--I'll show yuh how it's made."
+
+"Take a barr'l t' git the besta--Casey Ry'n," Casey boasted, his words
+blurring noticeably.  "Where's y'r White Mule?  Let 'er kick--Casey
+Ry'n can lead 'er an' tame 'er--an' make'r eat outa 's hand!"
+Following Joe, Casey stepped high over a rock no bigger than his fist.
+
+With a lurch he straightened and tried to pull his muddled wits out of
+the fog that was fast enveloping them.  Dimly he sensed the importance
+of this discovery which Joe had forced upon him. In flashes of normalcy
+he knew that he must see all he could of their moonshine operations.
+He must let them think he was drunk until he knew all their secrets.
+He assured himself vaguely that he must, above all things, keep his
+head.
+
+But it was all pretty hazy and rapidly growing hazier. Casey Ryan, you
+must know, was not what is informally termed a drinking man. In his
+youth he might have been able to handle a sudden half-pint of moonshine
+whisky and keep as level a head as he now strove valiantly to retain.
+But Casey's later years had been more temperate than most desert men
+would believe.  Unfortunately virtue is not always it own reward; at
+least Casey now found himself the worse for past abstinences.
+
+Joe led him into the tunnel, laughing sardonically because Casey found
+it scarcely wide enough for his oscillating progress. They turned into
+a drift.  Casey did not know which drift it was, though he tried
+foggily to remember.  He was still, you must know, trying to keep a
+level head and gain valuable information for the sheriff who he hoped
+would return to the butte with Barney.
+
+Paw and Hank were wrangling somewhere ahead.  Casey could hear their
+raised voices mingled in a confused rumbling in the pent walls of the
+drift.  Casey thought they passed through a doorway, and that Joe
+closed a heavy door behind them, but he was not sure.
+
+Memory of the old woman intoning her horrible anathema surged back upon
+Casey with the closing of the door.  The voices of Hank and Paw he now
+mistook for the ravings of the woman in the stone hut. Casey balked
+there, and would not go on.  He did not want to face the old woman
+again, and he said so repeatedly--or believed that he did.
+
+Joe caught him by the arm and pulled him forward by main strength. The
+voices of Paw and Hank came closer and clarified into words; or did
+Casey and Joe walk farther and come into their presence?
+
+They were all standing together somewhere, in a large, underground
+chamber with a hole letting in the sunlight high up on one side. Casey
+was positive there was a hole up there, because the sun shone in his
+eyes and to avoid it he moved aside and fell over a bucket or a keg or
+something.  Hank laughed loudly at the spectacle, and Paw swore because
+the fall startled him; but it was Joe who helped Casey up.
+
+Casey knew that he was sitting on a barrel--or something--and telling a
+funny story.  He thought it must be very funny indeed, because every
+one was laughing and bending double and slapping legs while he talked.
+Casey realized that here at last were men who appreciated Casey Ryan as
+he deserved to be appreciated. Tears ran down his own weathered
+cheeks--tears of mirth.  He had never laughed so much before in all his
+life, he thought.  Every one, even Paw, who was normally a mean,
+cantankerous old cuss, was having the time of his life.
+
+They attempted to show Casey certain intricacies of their still, which
+made it better than other stills and put a greater kick in the White
+Mule it bred.  Somewhere back in the dim recesses of Casey's mind, he
+felt that he ought to listen and remember what they told him.  Vaguely
+he knew that he must not take another drink, no matter how insistent
+they were.  In the brief glow of that resolution Casey protested that
+he could hoot without any more hootch.  But he hated to hurt Paw's
+feelings, or Hank's or Joe's. They had made the hootch with a new and
+different twist, and they were honestly anxious for his judgment and
+approval.  He decided that perhaps he really ought to take a little
+more just to please them; not much--a couple of drinks maybe.
+Wherefore, he graciously consented to taste the "run" of the day
+before. Thereafter Casey Ryan hooted to the satisfaction of everybody,
+himself most of all.
+
+After an indeterminate interval the four left the still, taking a
+bottle with them so that it might be had without delay, should they
+meet a snake or a hydrophobia skunk or some other venomous reptile. It
+was Casey who made the suggestion, and he became involved in
+difficulties when he attempted the word venomous. Once started Casey
+was determined to pronounce the word and pronounce it correctly,
+because Casey Ryan never backed up when he once started. The result was
+a peculiar humming which accompanied his reeling progress down the
+drift (now so narrow that Casey scraped both shoulders frequently) to
+the portal.
+
+They stopped on the flat of the dump and argued over the advisability
+of taking a drink apiece before going farther, as a sort of preventive.
+Joe told them solemnly that they couldn't afford to get drunk on the
+darn' stuff.  It had too hard a back-action kick, he explained, and
+they might forget themselves if they took too much.  It was important,
+Joe explained at great length, that they should not forget themselves.
+The boss had always impressed upon them the grim necessity of remaining
+sober whatever happened.
+
+"We never HAVE got drunk," Joe reiterated, "and we can't afford t' git
+drunk now.  We've got t' keep level heads, snakes or no snakes."
+
+Casey Ryan's head was level.  He wabbled up to Joe and told him so to
+his face, repeating the statement many times and in many forms.  He
+declaimed it all the way up the path to the dugout, and when they were
+standing outside.  Beyond all else, Casey was anxious that Joe should
+feel perfectly certain that he, Casey Ryan, knew what he was doing,
+knew what he was saying, and that his head was and always had been
+perr-rf'c'ly level-l-l.
+
+"Jus' t' prove-it--I c'n kill that jack-over-there--without-no-gun!"
+Casey bragged bubblingly, running his words together as if they were
+being poured in muddy liquid from his mouth.  "B'lieve it?
+Think-I-can't?"
+
+The three turned circumspectly and stared solemnly at a gray burro with
+a crippled front leg that had limped to the dump heap within easy
+throwing distance from the cabin door.  Hobbling on three legs it went
+nosing painfully amongst a litter of tin cans and bent paper cartons,
+hunting garbage.  As if conscious that it was being talked about, the
+burro lifted its head and eyed the four mournfully, its ears loosely
+flopping.
+
+"How?" questioned Paw, waggling his beard disparagingly.  "Spit 'n 'is
+eye?"
+
+"Talk 'm t' death," Hank guessed with imbecile shrewdness.
+
+"Think-I-can't?  What'll--y'bet?"
+
+They disputed the point with drunken insistence and mild imprecations,
+Hank and Paw and Joe at various times siding impartially for and
+against Casey.  Casey gathered the impression that none of them
+believed him.  They seemed to think he didn't know what he was talking
+about.  They even questioned the fact that his head was level.  He felt
+that his honor was at stake and that his reputation as a truthful man
+and a level-headed man was threatened.
+
+While they wrangled, the fingers of Casey's right hand fumbled
+unobserved in the sling on his left, twisting together the two short
+lengths of fuse so that he might light both as one piece. Even in his
+drunkenness Casey knew dynamite and how best to handle it.  Judgment
+might be dethroned, but the mechanical details of his profession were
+grooved deep into habit and were observed automatically and without the
+aid of conscious thought.
+
+He braced himself against the dugout wall and raised his hand to the
+cigarette he had with some trouble rolled and lighted. A spitting
+splutter arose, that would have claimed the attention of the three, had
+they not been unanimously engaged in trying to out-talk one another
+upon the subject of Casey's ability to kill a burro seventy-five feet
+away without a gun.
+
+Casey glanced at them cunningly, drew back his right hand and pitched
+something at the burro.
+
+"Y' watch 'im!" he barked, and the three turned around to look, with no
+clear conception of what it was they were expected to watch.
+
+The burro jerked its head up, then bent to sniff at the thin curl of
+powder smoke rising from amongst the cans.  Paw and Hank and Joe were
+lifted some inches from the ground with the explosion. They came down
+in a hail of gravel, tin cans and fragments of burro. Casey, flattened
+against the wall in preparation for the blast, laughed exultantly.
+
+Paw and Hank and Joe picked themselves up and clung together for mutual
+support and comfort.  They craned necks forward, goggling incredulously
+at what little was left of the burro and the pile of tin cans.
+
+"'Z that a bumb?"  Paw cackled nervously at last, clawing gravel out of
+his uncombed beard.  "'Z got me all shuck up. Whar's that 'r bottle?"
+
+"'Z goin' t' eat a bumb--ol' fool burro!"  Hank chortled weakly,
+feeling tenderly certain nicks on his cheeks where gravel had landed.
+"Paw, you ol' fool, you, don't hawg the hull thing--gimme a drink!"
+
+"Casey's sure all right," came Joe's official O.K. of the performance.
+"Casey said 'e c'd do it--'n' Casey done it!"  He turned and slapped
+Casey somewhat uncertainly on the back, which toppled him against the
+wall again.  "Good'n on us, Casey!  Darn' good joke on us--'n' on the
+burro!"
+
+Whereupon they drank to Casey solemnly, and one and all, they
+proclaimed that it was a VERY good joke on the burro.  A merciful joke,
+certainly; as you would agree had you seen the poor brute hungry and
+hobbling painfully, hunting scraps of food amongst the litter of tin
+cans.
+
+After that, Casey wanted to sleep.  He forced admissions from the three
+that he, Casey Ryan, was all right and that he knew exactly what he was
+doing and kept a level head.  He crawled laboriously into his bunk,
+shoes, hat and all; and, convinced that he had defended his honor and
+preserved the Casey Ryan reputation untarnished, he blissfully skipped
+the next eighteen hours.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER SIX
+
+Casey awoke under the vivid impression that some one was driving a
+gadget into his skull with a "double-jack."  The smell of bacon
+scorching filled his very soul with the loathing of food.  The sight of
+Joe calmly filling his pipe roused Casey to the fighting mood--with no
+power to fight.  He was a sick man; and to remain alive was agony.
+
+The squalid disorder and the stale aroma of a drunken orgy still
+pervaded the dugout and made it a nightmare hole to Casey.  Hank came
+tittering to the bunk and offered him a cup of coffee, muddy from too
+long boiling, and Joe grinned over his pipe at the colorful language
+with which Casey refused the offering.
+
+"Better take a brace uh hootch," Joe suggested with no more than his
+normal ill nature.  "I got some over at the still we made awhile back
+that, ain't quite so kicky.  Been agin' it in wood an' charcoal. That
+tones 'er down.  I'll go git yuh some after we eat.  Kinda want a
+brace, myself.  That new hootch shore is a kickin' fool."
+
+Paw accepted this remark, as high praise, and let three hot cakes burn
+until their edges curled while he bragged of his skill as a maker of
+moonshine.  Paw himself was red-eyed and loose-lipped from yesterday's
+debauch.  Hank's whole face, especially in the region of his eyes, was
+puffed unbecomingly.  Casey, squinting an angry eye at Hank and the cup
+of coffee, spared a thought from his own misery to acknowledge surprise
+that anything on earth could make Hank more unpleasant to look upon.
+Joe had a sickly pallor to prove the potency of the brew.
+
+For such is the way of moonshine when fusel oil abounds, as it does
+invariably in new whisky distilled by furtive amateurs working in
+secret and with neither the facilities nor the knowledge for its
+scientific manufacture.  There is grim significance in the sardonic
+humor of the man who first named it White Mule.  The kick is certain
+and terrific; frequently it is fatal as well.  The worst of it is, you
+never know what the effect will be until you have drunk the stuff; and
+after you have drunk it, you are in no condition to resist the effect
+or to refrain from courting further disaster.
+
+That is what happened to Casey.  The poison in the first half-pint,
+swallowed under the eye of Joe's six-shooter, upset his judgment. The
+poison in his further potations made a wholly different man of Casey
+Ryan; and the after effect was so terrific that he would have swallowed
+cyanide if it promised relief.
+
+He gritted his teeth and suffered tortures until Joe returned and gave
+him a drink of whisky in a chipped granite cup.  Almost immediately he
+felt better.  The pounding agony in his head eased perceptibly and his
+nerves ceased to quiver.  After a while he sat up, gazed longingly at
+the water bucket and crawled down from the bunk. He drank largely in
+great gulps.  His bloodshot eyes strayed meditatively to the coffee
+pot.  After an undecided moment he walked uncertainly to the stove and
+poured himself a cup of coffee.
+
+Casey lifted the cup to drink, but the smell of it under his nose
+sickened him.  He weaved uncertainly to the door, opened it and threw
+out the coffee--cup and all.  Which was nature flying a storm flag, had
+any one with a clear head been there to observe the action and the look
+on Casey's face.
+
+"Gimme another shot uh that damn' hootch," he growled.  Joe pushed the
+bottle toward Casey, eyeing him curiously.
+
+"That stuff they run yesterday shore is kicky," Joe ruminated
+sympathetically.  "Pap's proud as pups over it.  He thinks it's the
+real article--but I dunno.  Shore laid yuh out, Casey, an' yuh never
+got much, neither.  Not enough t' lay yuh out the way it did. Y' look
+sick."
+
+"I AM sick!"  Casey snarled, and poured himself a drink more generous
+than was wise.  "When Casey Ryan says he's sick, you can put it down
+he's SICK!  He don't want nobody tellin' 'im whether 'e's sick 'r
+not.--he KNOWS 'e's sick!"  He drank, and swore that it was rotten
+stuff not fit for a hawg (which was absolute truth).  Then he staggered
+to the stove, picked up the coffee pot, carried it to the door and
+flung it savagely outside because the odor offended him.
+
+"Mart got back last night," Joe announced casually. "You was dead t'
+the world.  But we told 'im you was all right, an' I guess he aims t'
+give yuh steady work an' a cut-in on the deal.  We been cleanin' up
+purty good money--but Mart says the market ain't what it was; too many
+gone into the business.  You're a good cook an' a good miner an' a
+purty good feller all around--only the boss says you'll have t' cut out
+the booze."
+
+"'J you tell 'im you MADE me drink it?"  Casey halted in the middle of
+the floor, facing Joe indignantly.
+
+"I told 'im I put it up t' yuh straight--what your business is, an'
+all.  You got no call t' kick--didn't I go swipe this bottle uh booze
+for yuh t' sober up on, soon as the boss's back was turned? I knowed
+yuh needed it; that's why.  We all needed it. I'm just tellin' yuh the
+boss don't approve of no celebrations like we had yest'day.  I got up
+early an' hauled that burro outa sight 'fore he seen it.  That's how
+much a friend I be, an' it wouldn't hurt yuh none to show a little
+gratitude!"
+
+"Gratitude, hell!  A lot I got in life t' be grateful for!" Casey
+slumped down on the nearest bench, laid his injured hand carefully on
+the table and leaned his aching head on the other while he discoursed
+bitterly on the subject of his wrongs.
+
+His muddled memory fumbled back to his grievance against traffic cops,
+distorting and magnifying the injustice he had received at their hands.
+He had once had a home, a wife and a fortune, he declared, and what had
+happened?  Laws and cops had driven him out, had robbed him of his home
+and his family and sent him out in the hills like a damned kiotey,
+hopin' he'd starve to death. And where, he asked defiantly, was the
+gratitude in that?
+
+He told Joe ramblingly but more or less truthfully how he had been
+betrayed and deserted by a man he had befriended; one Barney Oakes,
+upon whom Casey would like to lay his hands for a minute.
+
+"What I done to the burro ain't nothin' t' what I'd do t' that hound uh
+hell!" he declared, pounding the table with his good fist.
+
+Homeless, friendless; but Joe was his friend, and Paw and Hank were his
+friends--and besides them there was in all the world not one friend of
+Casey Ryan's.  They were good friends and good fellows, even if they
+did put too much hoot in their hootch. Casey Ryan liked his hootch with
+a hoot in it.
+
+He was still hooting (somewhat incoherently it is true, with recourse
+now and then to the bottle because he was sick and he didn't give a
+darn who knew it) when the door opened and he whom they called Mart
+walked in.  Joe introduced him to Casey, who sat still upon the bench
+and looked him over with drunken disparagement.  Casey had a hazy
+recollection of wanting to see the boss and have it out with him, but
+he could not recall what it was that he had been so anxious to quarrel
+about.
+
+Mart was a slender man of middle height, with thin, intelligent face
+and a look across the eyes like the old woman who rocked in the stone
+hut.  He glanced from the bottle to Casey, eyeing him sharply.  Drunk
+or sober, Casey was not the man to be stared down; nevertheless his
+fingers strayed involuntarily to his shirt collar and pulled fussily at
+the wrinkles.
+
+"So you're the man they've been holding here for my inspection," Mart
+said coolly, with a faint smile at Casey's evident discomfort. "You're
+still hitting it up, I see. Joe, take that bottle away from him.  When
+he's sober enough to talk straight, I'll give him the third degree and
+see what he really is, anyway. Guess he's all right--but he sure can
+lap up the booze.  That's a point against him."
+
+Casey's hand went to the bottle, beating Joe's by three inches. He did
+not particularly want the whisky, but it angered him to hear Mart order
+it taken from him.  Away back in his mind where reason had gone into
+hiding, Casey knew that some great injustice was being done him; that
+he, Casey Ryan, was not the man they were calmly taking it for granted
+that he was.
+
+With the bottle in his hand he rose and walked unsteadily to his bunk.
+He did not like this man they called the boss.  He remembered that in
+his bunk, under the bedding, he had concealed something that would make
+him the equal of them all.  He fumbled under the blankets, found what
+he sought and with his back turned to the others he slipped the thing
+into his sling out of sight.
+
+Mart and Joe were talking together by the table, paying no attention to
+Casey, who was groggily making up his mind to crawl into his bunk and
+take another sleep.  He still meant to have it out with Mart, but he
+did not feel like tackling the job just now.
+
+Mart turned to the door and Joe got up to follow him, with a careless
+glance over his shoulder at Casey, who was lifting a foot as if it
+weighed a great deal, and was groping with it in the air trying to
+locate the edge of the lower bunk.  Joe laughed, but the laugh died in
+his throat, choked off suddenly by what he saw when Mart pulled open
+the door.
+
+Casey turned suspiciously at the laugh and the sound of the door
+opening.  He swung round and steadied himself with his back against the
+bunk when he saw Mart and Joe lift their hands and hold them there,
+palms outward, a bit higher than their heads. Something in the sight
+enraged Casey unreasoningly.  A flick of the memory may have carried
+him back to the old days in the mining camps when Casey drove stage and
+hold-ups were frequent.
+
+"What 'r yuh tryin' to pull on me now?" he bawled, and rushed headlong
+toward them, pushing them forcibly out into the open with a collision
+of his body against Joe.  Outside, a voice harshly commanded him to
+throw up his hands--and it was then that Casey Ryan's Irish fighting
+blood boiled and bubbled over. Unconsciously he pushed his hat forward
+over one eye, drew back his lips in a fighting grin, stepped down off
+the low doorsill with a lurch that nearly sent him sprawling and went
+weaving belligerently toward a group of five men whose attitude was
+anything but conciliatory.
+
+"Casey Ryan!  I'm dogged if it ain't Casey!" exclaimed a familiar voice
+in the group, whereat the others looked astonished. Through his slits
+of swollen lids Casey glared toward the voice and recognized Barney
+Oakes, grinning at him with what Casey considered a Judas treachery.
+He saw two men step away from Joe and the boss, leaving them in
+handcuffs.
+
+"Take them irons off'n my friends!" bellowed Casey as he charged.
+"Whadda yuh think you're doin', anyway?  Take 'em off!  It's Casey Ryan
+that's tellin' yuh, an' yuh better heed what he says, before you're
+tore from limb to limb!"
+
+"B-but, Casey!  This 'ere's a shurf's possy!"  The voice of Barney rose
+in a protesting 'squawk.  "I brung 'em all the way over here to your
+rescue!  They brung a cor'ner to view your remains!  Don't you know
+your pardner, BARNEY OAKES?
+
+"Ah-h--I know yuh think I don't?  I know yuh to a fare-yuh-well! Brung
+a cor'ner, did yuh?  Tha's all right--goin' t' need a cor'ner-but he
+won't set on Casey Ryan's remains--you c'n ask anybody if any cor'ners
+ever set on Casey Ryan yit!  Naw." Casey snarled as contemptuously as
+was possible to a man in his condition. "No cor'ner ever set on Casey
+Ryan, an' he ain't goin' to!"
+
+The men glanced questioningly at one another.  One laughed. He was a
+large, smooth-jowled man inclined to portliness, and his laugh vibrated
+his entire front contagiously so that the others grinned and took it
+for granted that Casey Ryan was a comedy element introduced
+unexpectedly where they had thought to find him a tragedy.
+
+"No, you're a pretty lively man for me to sit on; I admit it," the
+portly man remarked.  "I'm the  coroner, and it looks as if I wouldn't
+sit, this trip."
+
+Casey eyed him blearily, not in the least mollified but instead
+swinging to a certain degree of lucidity that was nevertheless governed
+largely by the hoot he had swallowed in the hootch.
+
+"There's part of a burro 'round here some'er's you c'n set on," Casey
+informed him grimly, and fumbled in his coat pocket for his pipe.  He
+drew it out empty, looked at it and returned it to his pocket.  One who
+knew Casey intimately would have detected a hidden purpose in his
+manner.  The warning was faint, indefinable at best, and difficult to
+picture in words.  One might say that an intimate acquaintance would
+have detected a false note in Casey's defiance. His manner was
+restrained just when violence would have been more natural.
+
+"Damn a pipe," Casey grumbled with drunken petulance.  "Anybody got a
+cigarette?  I'm single-handed an' I ain't able t' roll 'em."
+
+It was the coroner himself who handed Casey a "tailor-made." Casey
+nodded glumly, accepted a match and lighted the cigarette almost as if
+he were sober.  He looked the group over noncommittally, eyed again the
+handcuffs on Mart and Joe, sent a veiled glance toward Barney Oakes and
+turned away.  He still held the center of the stage.  Fully expecting
+to find him dead, the sheriff and his men were slow to adjust
+themselves to the fact that he was very much alive and very drunk and
+apparently not greatly interested in his rescue.
+
+Casey halted in his unsteady progress toward the dugout.  The sheriff
+was already questioning his two prisoners about other members of the
+gang; but he looked up when Casey lifted up his voice and spoke his
+mind of the moment.
+
+"Brung a cor'ner, did yuh, lookin' for some one to set on! Barney Oakes
+is the man that'll need a cor'ner in a minute. You're all goin' to need
+'im.  Casey Ryan never stood around yit whilst his friends was hobbled
+up by a shurf--turn 'em loose an' turn 'em loose quick!  An' git back
+away from Barney Oakes so he won't drop on yuh in chunks--I'll fix 'im
+for yuh to set on!"
+
+His hand had gone up to his cigarette, but only Joe knew what was
+likely to follow.  Joe gave a yell of warning, ducked and ran straight
+away from the group.  The sheriff yelled also and gave chase.  The
+group was broken--luckily--just as Casey heaved something in that
+direction.
+
+"I blowed up a jackass yesterday when they thought I couldn't--I'll
+blow up a bunch of 'em to-day!  Yuh c'n set on what's left uh Barney
+Oakes!"
+
+The explosion scattered dirt and small stones--and the sheriff's posse.
+Casey sent one malevolent glance over his shoulder as he stumbled into
+the dugout.
+
+"Missed 'im!" he grumbled disgustedly to himself when he saw no
+fragments of Barney falling.  His ferociousness, like the dynamite,
+annihilated itself with the explosion.  "Missed 'im! Casey Ryan's
+gittin' old; old an' sick an' a damn' fool.  Missed 'im with the last
+shot--drunk--drunk an' don't give a darn!"
+
+He slammed the door shut behind him, pushed his hat forward so
+violently that it rested on the bridge of his nose, and wabbled over to
+his bunk.  This time his foot found the edge of the lower bunk, and he
+scratched and clawed his way up and rolled in upon the blankets.
+
+He was asleep and snoring when the sheriff, edging his way in as if he
+were an animal trainer's apprentice entering the lion's cage, sneaked
+on his toes to the bunk and slipped the handcuffs on Casey.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER SEVEN
+
+Casey awoke almost sober and considerably surprised when he discovered
+the handcuffs.  His injured hand was throbbing from the poison in his
+system and the steel band on his swollen wrist. His head still ached
+frightfully and his tongue felt thick and dry as flannel in his mouth.
+
+He rolled over and sat up, staring uncomprehendingly at the cabin full
+of men.  The sight of Barney Oakes recalled in a measure his
+performance with the dynamite; at least, he felt a keen disappointment
+that Barney was alive and whole and grinning. Casey could not see what
+there was to grin about, and he took it as a direct insult to himself.
+
+Mart and Joe sat sullenly on a bench against the wall, and Paw reclined
+in his bunk at the farther end of the room.  A blood-stained bandage
+wrapped Paw's head turbanwise, and his little, deep-set eyes gleamed
+wickedly in his pallid face.  Casey looked for Hank, but he was not
+there.
+
+A strange man was cooking supper, and Casey wanted to tell him that he
+was slicing the bacon twice as thick as it should be. The corpulent
+man, whom he dimly remembered as a coroner, was talking with a big,
+burly individual whom Casey guessed was the sheriff.  A man came in and
+announced to the big man that the car was fixed and they could go any
+time.  Mart, who had been staring morosely down at his shackled wrists,
+lifted his head and spoke to the sheriff.
+
+"You'll have to do something about my mother," he said, and bit his lip
+at the manner in which every head swung his way.
+
+"What about your mother?" the sheriff asked moving toward him. "Is she
+here?"  His eyes sent a quick glance around the room which obviously
+had four outside walls.
+
+Mart swallowed.  "She has a cabin to herself," he explained
+constrainedly.  "She--she isn't quite right.  Strangers excite her.
+She--hasn't been well since my father was killed in the mine; she's
+quiet enough with us--she knows us.  I don't know how she'll be now.
+I'm afraid--but she can't be left here alone; all I ask is, be as
+gentle as you can."
+
+The sheriff looked from him to Joe.  Joe nodded confirmation. "Plumb
+harmless," he said gruffly.  "It IS kinda--pitiful. Thinks everybody in
+the world is damned and going to hell on a long lope."  He gave a snort
+that resembled neither mirth nor disgust.  "Mebbe she's right at that,"
+he added grimly.
+
+The sheriff asked more questions, and Mart stood up.  "I'll show you
+where she is, sure.  But can't you leave her be till we're ready to
+start?  She--it ain't right to bring her here."
+
+"She'll want her supper," the sheriff reminded Mart. "We'll be driving
+all night. Is she sick abed?"
+
+Casey lay down again and turned his face to the wall.  He remembered
+the old woman now, and he hoped sincerely they would not bring her into
+the cabin.  But whatever they did, Casey wanted no part in it whatever.
+He wanted to be left alone, and he wanted to think. More than all else
+he wanted not to see again the old woman who chanted horrible things
+while she rocked and rocked.
+
+He was roused from uneasy slumber by two officious souls, one of whom
+was Barney Oakes.  Their intentions were kindly enough, they only
+wanted to give him his supper.  But Casey wanted neither supper nor
+kindly intentions, and he was still unregenerately regretful that
+Barney Oakes was not lying out on the garbage heap in a more or less
+fragmentary condition.  They raised him to a sitting posture, and Casey
+swung his legs over the edge of the bunk and delivered a ferocious kick
+at Barney Oakes.
+
+He caught Barney under the chin, and Barney went down for several
+counts.  After that Casey wore hobbles on his feet, and was secretly
+rather proud of the fact that they considered him so dangerous as all
+that.  Had his mood not been a sulky one which refused to have speech
+with any one there, they would probably have found it wise to gag him
+as well.
+
+That is one night in Casey's turbulent life which he never recalled if
+he could help it.  Two cars had brought the sheriff's party, and one
+was a seven-passenger.  In the roomy rear seat of this car, Casey,
+shackled and savage, was made to ride with Mart and his mother. Two
+deputies occupied the folding seats and never relaxed their
+watchfulness.
+
+Casey's head still ached splittingly, and the jolting of the car did
+not serve to ease the pain.  The old woman sat in the middle, with a
+blanket wound round and round her to hold her quiet; which it failed to
+do.  Into Casey's ear rolled the full volume of her rich contralto
+voice as she monotonously intoned the doom of all mankind--together
+with every cat, every rat, etc. Mart's fear had proved well-founded.
+Strangers had excited the woman and it was not until sheer exhaustion
+silenced her that she ceased for one moment her horrible chant.
+
+I read the story in the morning paper, and made a flying trip to San
+Bernardino.  Casey was in jail, naturally; but he didn't care much
+about that so long as he owned a head with an air-drill going inside.
+At least, that is what he told me when I was let in to see him.  I was
+working to get him out of there on bail if possible before I sent word
+to the Little Woman, hoping she had not read the papers.  I had some
+trouble piecing the facts together and trying to get the straight of
+things before I sent word to the Little Woman. I went out and got him
+some medicine guaranteed, by the doctor who wrote the prescription, to
+take the hoot out of the hootch Casey had swallowed.  That afternoon
+Casey left off glaring at me, sat up, accepted a cigarette and
+consented to talk.
+
+"--an' all I got to say is, Barney Oakes is a liar an' the father uh
+liars.  I never was in cahoots with him at no time.  When he says I got
+'im to foller a Joshuay palm jest to git 'im out in the hills an' kill
+'im off, he lies.  Let 'im come an' tell me that there story!"
+
+Casey was still slightly abnormal, I noticed, so I calmed him as best I
+could and left him alone for a time.  There was some hesitancy about
+the bail, too, which I wished to overcome. Throwing that half-stick of
+dynamite might be construed as an attempt at wholesale murder.  I did
+not want the county officials to think too long and harshly about the
+matter.
+
+I explained later to Casey that Barney Oakes had reported his
+disappearance to the officials in Barstow.  The sheriff's office had
+long suspected a nest of moonshiners somewhere near Black Butte, and it
+was rumored that one Mart Hanson, who owned a mine up there, was
+banking more money than was reasonable, these hard times, for a miner,
+who ships no ore.  Casey's disappearance had crystallized the
+suspicions into an immediate investigation.  And Barney's assertion
+that Casey had been murdered took the coroner along with the posse.
+
+It had all been straight and fairly simple until they reached the mine
+and discovered Casey uproariously one of the gang.  Throwing loaded
+dynamite at sheriffs is frowned upon nowadays in the best official
+circles, I told Casey; he would have to explain that in court, I was
+afraid.
+
+Then Barney, after Casey had kicked him in the chin, had reversed his
+first report of the trouble and was now declaiming to all who would
+listen that he had been decoyed to Black Butte by Casey Ryan and there
+ambushed and nearly killed.  Casey, as Barney now interpreted the
+incident, had joined his confederates under the very thin pretense of
+climbing the butte to come at them from behind. Barney now remembered
+that he had been shot at from three different angles, and that the
+burros had been killed by pistol shots fired at close range--presumably
+by Casey Ryan.
+
+It was like taming tigers to make Casey sit still and listen to all
+this, but I had to do it so that he would know what to disprove.
+Afterwards I had a talk with Joe and Paw, separately, and so got at the
+whole truth.  They bore no malice toward Casey and were perfectly
+willing to see him out of the scrape.  They were a sobered pair; Hank,
+like a fool, had fired at the posse and was killed.
+
+The next day came the Little Woman to the rescue.  I told her the whole
+story, not even omitting the burro, before she went to the jail to see
+Casey.  It was a pretty mess--take it all around--and I was secretly
+somewhat doubtful of the outcome.
+
+The Little Woman is game as women are made.  She went with me to the
+jail, and she met Casey with a whimsical smile.  We found him sitting
+on the side of his bunk with his legs stretched out and his feet
+crossed, his good hand thrust in his trousers pocket and a cigarette in
+one corner of his mouth, which turned sourly downward. He cocked an eye
+up at us and rose, as the Little Woman had maybe taught him was proper.
+But he did not say a word until the Little Woman walked up and kissed
+him on both cheeks, turning his face this way and that with her hand
+under his chin.
+
+Casey grinned sheepishly then and hugged her with his good arm. I wish
+you could have seen the look in his eyes when they dwelt on the Little
+Woman!
+
+"Casey Ryan, you need a shave.  And your shirt collar is a disgrace to
+a Piute," she drawled reprovingly.
+
+Casey looked at me over her shoulder and grinned.  He hadn't a word to
+say for himself, which was unusual in Casey Ryan.
+
+"It's lucky for you, Casey Ryan, that I remembered to go down to the
+police station and get the proof that you were pinched twice on
+Broadway just five days before Barney Oakes says he found you stalled
+in the trail north of Barstow; and that you had been pinched pretty
+regularly every whip-stitch for the last six months, and were a
+familiar and unwelcome figure in downtown traffic and elsewhere.
+
+"The sheriff who raided Black Butte admitted to me that it is utterly
+impossible for the world to hold more than one Casey Ryan at a time;
+and that he, for one, is willing to accept the word of the city police
+that you were there raising the record for traffic trouble and not
+moonshining at Black Butte.  He doesn't approve of throwing dynamite at
+people, but--well, I talked with the prosecuting attorney, too, and
+they both seem to be mighty nice men and reasonable.  I'm afraid Barney
+Oakes will see his beautiful story all spoiled."
+
+"He'll forget it when he feels the ruin to his face I'm goin' t' create
+for him if I ever meet up with 'im again," Casey commented grimly.
+
+"Babe sent you a pincushion she made in school.  I think she made
+beautiful, neat stitches in that C," went on the Little Woman in a
+placid, gossipy tone invented especially for domestic conversation.
+"And--oh, yes!  There's a new laundryman on our route, and he PERSISTS
+in running across the lawn and dumping the laundry in the front hall,
+though I've told him and TOLD him to deliver it at the back.  And
+there's a new tenant in Number Six, and they hadn't been in more than
+three days before he came home drunk and kept everybody in the house
+awake, bellowing up and down the hall and abusing his wife and all.  I
+told him held have to go when his month is up, but he says he'll be
+damned if he will. He says he won't and I can't make him."
+
+"He won't, hey?"  A familiar, pale glitter came into Casey's eyes. "You
+watch and see whether he goes or not!  He better tell Casey Ryan he
+won't go!  Who'd, they think's runnin' the place? Lemme ketch that
+laundry driver oncet, runnin' across our lawn; I'll run 'im across
+it--on his nose!  They take advantage of you quick as my back's turned.
+I'll learn 'em they got Casey Ryan to reckon with!"
+
+The Little Woman gave me a smiling glance over Casey's shoulder, and
+lowered a cautious eyelid.  I left them then and went away to have a
+satisfying talk with the sheriff and the prosecuting attorney.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER EIGHT
+
+In the desert, where roads are fewer and worse than they should be, a
+man may travel wherever he can negotiate the rocks and sand, and none
+may say him nay.  If any man objects, the traveler is by custom
+privileged to whip the objector if he is big enough, and afterwards go
+on his way with the full approval of public opinion.  He may blaze a
+trail of his own, return that way a year later and find his trail an
+established thoroughfare.
+
+In the desert Casey gave trail to none nor asked reprisals if he
+suffered most in a sudden meeting.  In Los Angeles Casey was halted and
+rebuked on every corner, so he complained; hampered and annoyed by
+rules and regulations which desert dwellers never dreamed of.
+
+Since he kept the optimistic viewpoint of a child, experience seemed to
+teach him little. Like the boy he was at heart, he was perfectly
+willing to make good resolutions--all of which were more or less
+theoretical and left to a kindly Providence to keep intact for him.
+
+So here he was, after we had pried him loose from his last predicament,
+perfectly optimistic under his fresh haircut, and thinking the traffic
+cops would not remember him.  Thinking, too--as he confided to the
+Little Woman--that Los Angeles looked pretty good, after all. He was
+resolved to lead henceforth a blameless life. It was time he settled
+down, Casey declared virtuously.  His last trip into the desert was all
+wrong, and he wanted you to ask anybody if Casey Ryan wasn't ready at
+any and all times to admit his mistakes, if he ever happened to make
+any. He was starting in fresh now, with a new deal all around from a
+new deck.  He had got up and walked around his chair, he told us, and
+had thrown the ash of a left-handed cigarette over his right shoulder;
+he'd show the world that Casey Ryan could and would keep out of gunshot
+of trouble.
+
+He was rehearsing all this and feeling very self-righteous while he
+drove down West Washington Street.  True, he was doing twenty-five
+where he shouldn't, but so far no officer had yelled at him and he
+hadn't so much as barked a fender.  Down across Grand Avenue he
+larruped, never noticing the terrific bounce when he crossed the water
+drains there (being still fresh from desert roads).  He was still doing
+twenty-five when he turned into Hill Street.
+
+Busy with his good resolutions and the blameless life he was about to
+lead, Casey forgot to signal the left-hand turn.  In the desert you
+don't signal, because the nearest car is probably forty or fifty miles
+behind you and collisions are not imminent.
+West-Washington-and-Hill-Street crossing is not desert, however. A car
+was coming behind Casey much closer than fifty miles; one of those
+scuttling Ford delivery trucks.  It locked fenders with Casey when he
+swung to the left.  The two cars skidded as one toward the right-hand
+curb; caught amidships a bright yellow, torpedo-tailed runabout coming
+up from Main Street, and turned it neatly on its back, its four wheels
+spinning helplessly in the quiet, sunny morning.  Casey himself was
+catapulted over the runabout, landing abruptly in a sitting position on
+the corner of the vacant lot beyond, his self-righteousness
+considerably jarred.
+
+A new traffic officer had been detailed to watch that intersection and
+teach a driving world that it must not cut corners.  A bright, new
+traffic button had been placed in the geographical center of the
+crossing; and woe be unto the right-hand pocket of any man who failed
+to drive circumspectly around it.  New traffic officers are apt to be
+keenly conscientious in their work.  At twenty-five dollars per cut,
+sixteen unhappy drivers had been taught where the new button was
+located and had been informed that twelve miles per hour at that
+crossing would be tolerated, and that more would be expensive.
+
+Not all drivers take their teaching meekly, and the new traffic officer
+near the end of his shift had pessimistically decided that the driving
+world is composed mostly of blamed idiots and hardened criminals.
+
+He gritted his teeth ominously when Casey Ryan came down upon the
+crossing at double the legal speed.  He held his breath for an instant
+during the crash that resounded for blocks.  When the dust had settled,
+he ran over and yanked off the dented sand of the vacant lot a dazed
+and hardened malefactor who had committed three traffic crimes in three
+seconds: he had exceeded the speed limit outrageously, cut fifteen feet
+inside the red button, and failed to signal the turn.
+
+"You damned, drunken boob!" shouted the new traffic cop and shook Casey
+Ryan (not knowing him).
+
+Shaking Casey will never be safe until he is in his coffin with a lily
+in his hand.  He was considerably jolted, but he managed a fourth crime
+in the next five minutes.  He licked the traffic cop rather
+thoroughly--I suppose because his onslaught was wholly
+unexpected--kicked an expostulating minister in the pit of the stomach,
+and was profanely volunteering to lick the whole darned town when he
+was finally overwhelmed by numbers and captured alive; which speaks
+well for the L. A. P.
+
+Wherefore Casey Ryan continued his ride down town in a dark car that
+wears a clamoring bell the size of a breakfast plate under the driver's
+foot, and a dark red L. A. Police Patrol sign painted on the sides.
+Two uniformed, stern-lipped cops rode with him and didn't seem to care
+if Casey's nose WAS bleeding all over his vest. A uniformed cop stood
+on the steps behind, and another rode beside the driver and kept his
+eye peeled over his shoulder, thinking he would be justified in
+shooting if anything started inside.  Boys on bicycles pedaled
+furiously to keep up, and many an automobile barely escaped the curb
+because the driver was goggling at the mussed-up prisoner in the "Black
+Maria."
+
+The Little Woman telegraphed me at San Francisco that night. The wire
+was brief but disquieting. It merely said,  "CASEY IN JAIL SERIOUS NEED
+HELP."  But I caught the Lark an hour later and thanked God it was
+running on time.
+
+The Little Woman and I spent two frantic days getting Casey out of
+jail.  The traffic cop's defeat had been rather public; and just as
+soon as he could stand up straight in the pulpit, the minister meant to
+preach a series of sermons against the laxity of a police force that
+permits such outrages to occur in broad daylight.  More than that, the
+thing was in the papers, and people were reading and giggling on the
+street cars and in restaurants. Wherefore, the L. A. P. was on its tin
+ear.
+
+Even so, much may be accomplished for a man so wholesomely human as
+Casey Ryan.  On the third day the charge against him was changed from
+something worse to  "Reckless driving and disturbing the peace." Casey
+was persuaded to plead guilty to that charge, which was harder to
+accomplish than mollifying the L. A. P.
+
+He paid two fifty-dollar fines and was forbidden to drive a car "in the
+County of Los Angeles, State of California, during the next succeeding
+period of two years."  He was further advised (unofficially but
+nevertheless with complete sincerity) to pay all damages to the two
+cars he had wrecked and to ask the minister's doctor what was his fee;
+a new uniform for the traffic cop was also suggested, since Casey had
+thrust his foot violently into the cop's pocket which was not tailored
+to resist the strain.  The judge also observed, in the course of the
+conversation, that desert air was peculiarly invigorating and that
+Casey should not jeopardize his health and well-being by filling his
+lungs with city smoke.
+
+I couldn't blame Casey much for the mood he was in after a setback like
+that to his good resolutions.  I was inclined to believe with Casey
+that Providence had lain down on the job.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER NINE
+
+At the corner of the Plaza where traffic is heaviest, a dingy Ford
+loaded with camp outfit stalled on the street-car track just as the
+traffic officer spread-eagled his arms and turned with majestic
+deliberation to let the East-and-West traffic through. The motorman
+slid open his window and shouted insults at the driver, and the traffic
+cop left his little platform and strode heavily toward the Ford,
+pulling his book out of his pocket with the mechanical motion born of
+the grief of many drivers.
+
+Casey Ryan, clinging to the front step of the street car on his way to
+the apartment house he once more called home, swung off and beat the
+traffic officer to the Ford.  He stooped and gave a heave on the crank,
+obeyed a motion of the driver's head when the car started, and stepped
+upon the running board.  The traffic officer paused, waved his book
+warningly and said something.  The motorman drew in his head, clanged
+the bell, and the afternoon traffic proceeded to untangle.
+
+"Get in, old-timer," invited the driver whom Casey had assisted. Casey
+did not ask whether the driver was going in his direction, but got in
+chuckling at the small triumph over his enemies, the police.
+
+"Fords are mean cusses," he observed sympathetically.  "They like
+nothing better than to get a feller in bad.  But they can't pull
+nothin' on me.  I know 'em to a fare-you-well.  Notice how this one
+changed 'er mind about gettin' you tagged, soon as Casey Ryan took 'er
+by the nose?"
+
+"Are you Casey Ryan?"  The driver took his eyes off the traffic long
+enough to give Casey an appraising look that measured him mentally and
+physically.  "Say, I've heard quite a lot about you. Bill Masters, up
+at Lund, has spoke of you often.  He knows you, don't he?"
+
+"Bill Masters sure had ought t' know me," Casey grinned. In a big,
+roaring, unfriendly city, here sounded a friendly, familiar tone; a
+voice straight from the desert, as it were.  Casey forgot what had
+happened when Barney Oakes crossed his path claiming acquaintance with
+Bill Masters, of Lund.  He bit off a chew of tobacco, hunched down
+lower in the seat, and prepared himself for a real conflab with the man
+who spoke the language of his tribe.
+
+He forgot that he had just bought tickets to that evening's performance
+at the Orpheum, as a sort of farewell offering to his domestic goddess
+before once more going into voluntary exile as advised by the judge.
+Pasadena Avenue heard conversational fragments such as, "Say!  Do you
+know--?  Was you in Lund when--?"
+
+Casey's new friend drove as fast as the law permitted.  He talked of
+many places and men familiar to Casey, who was in a mood that hungered
+for those places and men in a spiritual revulsion against the city and
+all its ways.
+
+Pasadena, Lamanda Park, Monrovia--it was not until the car slowed for
+the Glendora speed-limit sign that Casey lifted himself off his
+shoulder blades, and awoke to the fact that he was some distance from
+home and that the shadows were growing rather long.
+
+"Say!  I better get out here and 'phone to the missus," he exclaimed
+suddenly.  "Pull up at a drug store or some place, will yuh?  I got to
+talkin' an' forgot I was on my way home when I throwed in with yuh."
+
+"Aw, you can 'phone any time.  There is street cars running back to
+town all the time I or you can catch a bus anywhere's along here. I got
+pinched once for drivin' through here without a tail-light; and twice
+I've had blowouts right along here.  This town's a jinx for me and I
+want to slip it behind me."
+
+Casey nodded appreciatively.  "Every darn' town's a jinx for me," he
+confided resentfully.  "Towns an' Casey Ryan don't agree. Towns is
+harder on me than sour beans."
+
+"Yeah--I guess L. A.'s a jinx for you all right.  I heard about your
+latest run-in with the cops.  I wish t' heck you'd of cleaned up a few
+for me.  I love them saps the way I like rat poison.  I've got no use
+for the clowns nor for towns that actually hands 'em good jack for
+dealin' misery to us guys.  The bird never lived that got a square deal
+from 'em.  They grab yuh and dust yuh off--"
+
+"They won't grab Casey Ryan no more.  Why, lemme tell yuh what they
+done!"
+
+Glendora slipped behind and was forgotten while Casey told the story of
+his wrongs.  In no particular, according to his version, had he been
+other than law-abiding.  Nobody, he declaimed heatedly, had ever taken
+HIM by the scruff of the neck and shaken him like a pup, and got away
+with it, and nobody ever would. Casey was Irish and his father had been
+Irish, and the Ryan never lived that took sass and said thank-yuh.
+
+His new friend listened with just that degree of sympathy which
+encourages the unburdening of the soul.  When Casey next awoke to the
+fact that he was getting farther and farther away from home, they were
+away past Claremont and still going to the full extent of the speed
+limit.  His friend had switched on the lights.
+
+"I GOT to telephone my wife!" Casey exclaimed uneasily.  "I'll gamble
+she's down to the police station right now, lookin' for me. An' I want
+the cops t' kinda forgit about me.  I got to talkin' along an' plumb
+forgot I wasn't headed home."
+
+"Aw, you can 'phone from Fontana.  I'll have to stop there anyway for
+gas.  Say, why don't yuh stall 'er off till morning?  You couldn't get
+home for supper now if yuh went by wireless. I guess yuh wouldn't hate
+a mouthful of desert air after swallowing smoke and insults, like yuh
+done in L. A.  Tell her you're takin' a ride to Barstow.  You can catch
+a train out of there and be home to breakfast, easy.  If you ain't got
+the change in your clothes for carfare," he added generously, "Why,
+I'll stake yuh just for your company on the trip.  Whadda yuh say?"
+
+Casey looked at the orange and the grapefruit and lemon orchards that
+walled the Foothill Boulevard.  All trees looked alike to Casey, and
+these reminded him disagreeably of the fruit stalls in Los Angeles.
+
+"Well, mebby I might go on to Barstow.  Too late now to take the missus
+to the show, anyway.  I guess I can dig up the price uh carfare from
+Barstow back."  He chuckled with a sinful pride in his prosperity,
+which was still new enough to be novel.  "Yuh don't catch Casey Ryan
+goin' around no more without a dime in his hind pocket. I've felt the
+lack of 'em too many times when they was needed. Casey Ryan's going to
+carry a jingle louder'n a lead burro from now on.  You can ask anybody."
+
+"You bet it's wise for a feller to go heeled," the friend of Bill
+Masters responded easily.  "You never know when yuh might need it.
+Well, there's a Bell sign over there.  You can be askin' your wife's
+consent while I gas up."
+
+Innocent pleasure; the blameless joy of riding in a Ford toward the
+desert, with a prince of a fellow for company, was not so easily made
+to sound logical and a perfectly commonplace incident over a
+long-distance telephone.  The Little Woman seemed struck with a sense
+of the unusual; her voice betrayed trepidation and she asked questions
+which Casey found it difficult to answer. That he was merely riding as
+far as Barstow with a desert acquaintance and would catch the first
+train back, she apparently failed to find convincing.
+
+"Casey Ryan, tell me the truth.  If you're in a scrape again, you know
+perfectly well that Jack and I will have to come and get you out of it.
+San Bernardino sounds bad to me, Casey, and you're pretty close to the
+place.  Do you really want me to believe that you're coming back on the
+next train?"
+
+"Sure as I'm standin' here!  What makes yuh think I'm in a scrape?
+Didn't I tell yuh I'm goin' to walk around trouble from now on? When
+Casey tells you a thing like that, yuh got a right to put it down for
+the truth. I'm going to Barstow for a breath uh fresh air. This is a
+feller that knows Bill Masters.  I'll be home to breakfast. I ain't in
+no trouble an' I ain't goin' to be. You can believe that or you can set
+there callin' Casey Ryan a liar till I git back. G'by."
+
+Whatever the Little Woman thought of it, Casey really meant to do
+exactly what he said he would do.  And he really did not believe that
+trouble was within a hundred miles of him.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER TEN
+
+"Wanta drive?"  Casey's friend was rolling a smoke before he cranked
+up.  "They tell me up in Lund that no man livin' ever got the chance to
+look back and see Casey Ryan swallowing dust.  I've heard of some
+that's tried.  But I reckon," he added pensively, while he rubbed the
+damp edge of the paper down carefully with a yellowed thumb, "Fords is
+out of your line, now.  Maybe you don't toy with nothin' cheaper than a
+twin-six."
+
+"Well, you can ask anybody if Casey Ryan's the man to git big-headed!
+Money don't spoil ME none.  There ain't anybody c'n say it does. Casey
+Ryan is Casey Ryan wherever an' whenever yuh meet up with him. Yuh
+might mebby see me next, hazin' a burro over a ridge.  Or yuh might see
+me with ten pounds uh flour, a quart uh beans an' a sour-dough bucket
+on my back.  Whichever way the game breaks--you'll be seein' Casey
+Ryan; an' you'll see 'im settin' in the game an' ready t' push his last
+white chip to the center."
+
+"I believe it, Casey.  Darned if I don't.  Well, you drive 'er awhile;
+till yuh get tired, anyway."  He bent to the crank, gave a heave and
+climbed in, with Casey behind the wheel, looking pleased to be there
+and quite ready to show the world he could drive.
+
+"Say, if I drive till I'm TIRED," he retorted, "I'm liable to soak 'er
+hubs in the Atlantic Ocean before I quit.  And then, mebby I'll back
+'er out an' drive 'er to the end of Venice Pier just for pastime."
+
+"Up in Lund they're talkin' yet about your drivin'," his new friend
+flattered him.  "They say there's no stops when you get the wheel
+cuddled up to your chest.  No quittin' an' no passin' yuh by with a
+merry laugh an' a cloud of alkali dust.  I guess it's right. I've been
+wantin' to meet yuh."
+
+"That there last remark sounds like a traffic cop I had a run-in with
+once!"  Casey snorted--merely to hide his gratification. "You sound
+good, just to listen to, but you ain't altogether believable.  There's
+men in Lund that'd give an ear to meet me in a narrow trail with a
+hairpin turn an' me on the outside an' drunk.
+
+"They'd like it to be about a four-thousand-foot drop, straight down.
+Lund as a town ain't so crazy about me that they'd close up whilst I
+was bein' planted, an' stop all traffic for five minutes.  A show
+benefit was sprung on Lund once, to help Casey Ryan that was supposed
+to be crippled.  An' I had to give a good Ford--a DARN' good Ford!--to
+the benefitters, so is they could git outa town ahead uh the howlin'
+mob.  That's how I know the way Lund loves Casey Ryan. Yuh can't kid
+ME, young feller."
+
+Meanwhile, Casey swung north into Cajon Pass; up that long, straight,
+cement-paved highway to the hills he showed his new friend how a Ford
+could travel when Casey Ryan juggled the wheel. The full moon was
+pushing up into a cloud bank over a high peak beyond the Pass. The few
+cars they met were gone with a whistle of wind as Casey shot by.
+
+He raced a passenger train from the mile whistling-post to the
+crossing, made the turn and crossed the track with the white finger of
+the headlight bathing the Ford blindingly.  He completed that S turn
+and beat the train to the next crossing half a mile farther on; where
+he "spiked 'er tail", as he called it, stopping dead still and waiting
+jeeringly for the train to pass.  The engineer leaned far out of the
+cab window to bellow his opinion of such driving; which was unfavorable
+to the full extent of his vocabulary.
+
+"Nothin' the matter with a Ford, as I can see," Casey observed
+carelessly, when he was under way again.
+
+"You sure are some driver," his new friend praised him, letting go the
+edge of the car and easing down again into the seat. "Give yuh a Ford
+and all the gas yuh can burn and I can't see that you'd need to worry
+none about any of them saps that makes it their business to interfere
+with travelin'.  I'm glad that moon's quit the job. Gives the
+headlights a show.  Hit 'er up now, fast as yuh like. After that
+crossin' back there I ain't expectin' to tremble on no curves.  I see
+you're qualified to spin 'er on a plate if need be.  And for a Ford,
+she sure can travel."
+
+Casey therefore "let 'er out", and the Ford went like a scared lizard
+up the winding highway through the Pass.  At Cajon Camp he slowed,
+thinking they would need to fill the radiator before attempting to
+climb the steep grade to the summit.  But the young man shook his head
+and gave the "highball."  (Which, if you don't already know it, is the
+signal for full speed ahead.)
+
+Full speed ahead Casey gave him, and they roared on up the steep,
+twisting grade to the summit of the Pass.  Casey began to feel a
+distinct admiration for this particular Ford.  The car was heavily
+loaded--he could gauge the weight by the "feel" of the car as he drove
+yet it made the grade at twenty-five miles an hour and reached the top
+without boiling the radiator; which is better than many a more
+pretentious car could do.
+
+"Too bad you've made your pile already," the young man broke a long
+silence.  "I'd like to have a guy like you for my pardner. The desert
+ain't talkative none when you're out in the middle of it, and you know
+there ain't another human in a day's drive. I've been going it alone.
+Nine-tenths of these birds that are eager to throw in with yuh thinks
+that fifty-fifty means you do the work and they take the jack.  I'm
+plumb fed upon them pardnerships.  But if you didn't have your jack
+stored away--a hull mountain of it, I reckon--I'd invite yuh to set
+into the game with me; I sure would."
+
+Casey spat into the dark beside the car.  "They's never a pile so big a
+feller ain't willin' to make it bigger," he replied sententiously.
+"Fer, as I'm concerned, Casey's never backed up from a dollar yet.  But
+I ain't no wild colt no more, runnin' loose an' never a halter mark on
+me.  I'm bein' broke to harness, and it's stable an' corral from now
+on, an' no more open range fer Casey.  The missus hopes to high-school
+me in time.  She's a good hand--gentle but firm, as the preacher says.
+And I guess it's time fer Casey Ryan to quit hellin' around the country
+an' settle down an' behave himself."
+
+"I could put you in the way of adding some easy money to your bank
+roll," the other suggested tentatively.
+
+But Casey shook his head.  "Twenty years ago yuh needn't have asked me
+twice, young feller. I'd 'a' drawed my chair right up and stacked my
+chips a mile high.  Any game that come along, I played 'er down to the
+last chip.  Twenty years ago--yes, er ten!--Casey Ryan woulda tore that
+L. A. jail down rock by rock an' give the roof t' the kids to make a
+playhouse.  Them L. A. cops never woulda hauled me t' jail in no wagon.
+I mighta loaded 'em in behind, and dropped 'em off at the first morgue
+an' drove on a-whistlin'.  That there woulda been Casey Ryan's gait a
+few years back.  Take me now, married to a good woman an' gettin'
+gray--" Casey sighed, gazing wishfully back at the Casey Ryan he had
+been and might never be again.
+
+"No, sir, I ain't so darned rich I ain't willin' to add a few more iron
+men to the bunch.  But on account of the missus I've got to kinda pick
+my chances.  I ain't had money so long but what it feels good to remind
+myself I got it.  I carry a thousand dollars or so in my inside pocket,
+just to count over now an' then to convince myself I needn't worry
+about a grubstake.  I've got to soak it into my bones gradual that I
+can afford to settle down and live tame, like the missus wants.
+Stand-up collars every day, an' step into a chiny bathtub every night
+an' scrub--when you ain't doin' nothin' to git dirt under your finger
+nails even!  Funny, the way city folks act.  The less they do to git
+dirty, the more soap they wear out. You can ask anybody if that ain't
+right.
+
+"Can't chew tobacco in the house, even, 'cause there's no place yuh
+dast to spit.  I stuck m' head out of the bedroom window oncet, an I
+let fly an' it landed on a lady; an' the missus went an' bought her a
+new hat an took my plug away from me.  I had to keep my chewin' tobacco
+in the tool-box of my car, after that, an' sneak out to the beach now
+an' then an' chew where I could spit in the ocean.  That's city life
+for yuh!"
+
+"When I git to thinkin' about hittin' out into the hills prospectin, or
+somethin', that roll uh dough I pack stands right on its hind legs an'
+says I got no excuse.  I've got enough to keep me in bacon an' beans,
+anyway.  An' the missus gits down in the mouth when I so much as
+mention minin'."
+
+"A guy grows old fast when he quits the game and sets down to do the
+grandpa-by-the-fire.  First you know, a clown that thinks it's time he
+took it easy is gummin' 'is grub, and shiverin' when yuh open the door,
+an' takin' naps in the daytime same as babies. Let a guy once preach
+he's gettin' old--"
+
+Casey jerked the gas lever and jumped the car ahead viciously. "Well,
+now, any time yuh see CASEY RYAN gummin' 'is grub an' needin' a nap
+after dinner--"
+
+"A clown GITS that way once he pulls out of the game.  I've saw it
+happen time an' again."  The young man laughed rather irritatingly.
+"Say, when I tell it to Bill Masters that Casey Ryan has plumb played
+out his string an' laid down an' QUIT, by hock, and can be seen
+hereafter SETTIN' WITH A SHAWL OVER HIS SHOULDERS--"
+
+Casey nearly turned the Ford over at that insult.  He jerked it back
+into the road and sent it ahead again at a faster pace.
+
+"Well, now, any time yuh see CASEY RYAN settin' with a shawl over his
+shoulders--"
+
+"Well, maybe not YOU; but the bird sure comes to it that thinks he's
+too old to play the game.  Why, you'll never be ready to settle down!
+Take yuh twenty years from now--I'd rather bank on a pardner like you'd
+be than some young clown that ain't had the experience. From the yarns
+I've heard about yuh, yuh don't back down from nothing.  And you're
+willing to give a pardner a chance to get away with his hide on him.
+I'd rather be held up by the law than by some clown that's workin' with
+me."
+
+He paused; and when he, spoke again his tone had changed to meet a
+prosaic detail of the drive.
+
+"Stop here in Victorville, will yuh, Casey?  I'll take a look at the
+radiator and maybe take on some more gas and oil.  I've been stuck on
+the desert a few times with an empty tank--and that learns a guy to
+keep the top of his gas tank full and never mind the bottom."
+
+"Good idea," said Casey shortly, his own tone relaxing its tension of a
+few minutes before.  "I run a garage over at Patmos once, an' the boobs
+I seen creepin' in on their last spoonful uh gas--walkin' sometimes for
+miles to carry gas back to where they was stalled--learnt Casey Ryan to
+fill 'er up every chancet he gits."
+
+But although the subject of age had been dropped half a mile back in
+the sand, certain phrases flung at him had been barbed and had bitten
+deep into Casey Ryan's self-esteem.  They stung and rankled there.  He
+had squirmed at the picture his new friend had so ruthlessly drawn with
+crude words, but bold, of doddering old age. Casey resented the
+implication that he might one day fill that picture.
+
+He began vaguely to resent the Little Woman's air of needing to protect
+him from himself.  Casey Ryan, he told himself boastfully, had never
+needed protection from anybody.  He had managed for a good many years
+to get along on his own hook.  The Little Woman was all right, but she
+was making a mistake--a big mistake--if she thought she had to
+close-herd him to keep him out of trouble.
+
+He rolled a smoke and wished that the Little Woman would settle down
+with him somewhere in the desert, where he could keep a couple of
+burros and go prospecting in the hills.  Where sagebrush could grow to
+their very door if it wanted to, and the moon could show them long
+stretches of mesa land shadowed with mystery, and then drop out of
+sight behind high peaks.
+
+He felt that he might indeed grow old fast, shut up in a city. It
+occurred to him that the Little Woman was unreasonable to expect it of
+him.  Her idea of getting him out of town for a time, as the judge had
+advised, was to send him up to San Francisco to be close-herded there.
+Casey had promised to go, but now the prospect jarred.  He wasn't
+feeble-minded, that he knew of; it seemed natural to want to do his own
+deciding now and then.  When he got back home in the morning,  Casey
+meant to have a serious talk with the Little Woman, and get right down
+to cases, and tell her that he was built for the desert, and that you
+can't teach an old dog new tricks.
+
+"They been tryin' to make Casey Ryan over into something he ain't," he
+muttered under his breath, while his new friend was in the garage
+office paying for the gas.  "Jack an' the Little Woman's all right, but
+they can't drive Casey Ryan in no town herd.  Cops is cops; and they
+got 'em in San Francisco same as they got 'em in L. A. If they got 'em,
+I'll run agin' 'em. I'll tell 'em so, too."
+
+The young man came out, sliding silver coins into his trousers pocket.
+He glanced up and down the narrow, little street already deserted,
+cranked the Ford and climbed in.
+
+"All set," he observed cheerfully, "Let's go!"
+
+Casey slipped his cigarette to the upper, left-hand corner of his
+whimsical, Irish mouth, forced a roar out of the little engine and
+whipped around the corner and across the track into the faintly lighted
+road that led past shady groves and over a hill or two, and so into the
+desert again.
+
+His new friend had fallen into a meditative mood, staring out through
+the windshield and whistling under his breath a pleasant little melody
+of which he was probably wholly unaware.  Perhaps he felt that he had
+said enough to Casey just at present concerning a possible partnership.
+Perhaps he even regretted having said anything at all.
+
+Casey himself drove mechanically, his rebellious mood slipping
+gradually into optimism.  You can't keep Casey Ryan down for long; in
+spite of his past unpleasant experiences he was presently weaving
+optimistic plans of his own.  The young fellow beside him seemed to
+return Casey's impulsive friendship.  Casey thought pleasureably of the
+possibility of their driving over the desert together, sharing alike
+the fortunes of the game and the adventures of the trail. Casey himself
+had learned to be shy of partnerships--witness Barney Oakes!--but any
+man with a drop of Irish in his blood and a bit of Irish twinkle in his
+eye would turn his back on defeat and try again for a winning.
+
+They had just passed over a hilly stretch with many turns and windings,
+the moon blotted out completely now by the cloud bank. For half an hour
+they had not seen any evidence that other human beings were alive in
+the world.  But when they went rattling across a small mesa where the
+sand was deep, a car with one brilliant spotlight suddenly showed
+itself around a turn just ahead of them.
+
+Casey slowed down automatically and gave a twist to the steering wheel.
+But the sand just here was deep and loose, and the front wheels of the
+Ford gouged unavailingly at the sides of the ruts. Casey honked the
+horn warningly and stopped full, swearing a good, Caseyish oath.  The
+other car, having made no apparent effort to turn out, also stopped
+within a few feet of Casey, the spotlight fairly blinding him.
+
+The young man beside Casey slid up straight in the seat and stopped
+whistling.  He leaned out of the car and stared ahead without the dusty
+interference of the windshield.
+
+"You can back up a few lengths and make the turn-out all right," he
+suggested.
+
+"If I can back up, so can he.  He's got as much road behind him as what
+I'VE got," Casey retorted stubbornly.  "He never made a try at turnin'
+out.  I was watchin'.  Any time I can't lick a road hawg, he's got a
+license to lick me.  Make yourself comf'table, young feller--we're
+liable to set here a spell." Casey grinned.  "I spent four hours on a
+hill once, out-settin, a road hawg that wanted me to back up."
+
+The man in the other car climbed out and came toward them, walking
+outside the beams cast by his own glaring spotlight.  He bulked rather
+large in the shadows; but Casey Ryan, blinking at him through the
+windshield, was still ready and willing to fight if necessary.  Or, if
+stubbornness were to be the test, Casey could grin and feel secure.  A
+little man, he reflected, can sit just as long as a big man.
+
+The big man walked leisurely up to the car and smiled as he lifted a
+foot to the running board.  He leaned forward, his eyes going past
+Casey to the other man.
+
+"I kinda thought it was you, Kenner," he drawled.  "How much liquor you
+got aboard to-night?"
+
+Casey, slanting a glance downward, glimpsed the barrel of a big
+automatic looking toward them.
+
+"What if I ain't got any?" the young man parried glumly.  "You're
+taking a lot for granted."
+
+The big man chuckled.  "If you ain't loaded with hootch, it's because
+one of the boys met up with yuh before I did.  Open 'er up.  Lemme see
+what you got."
+
+The young fellow scowled, swore under his breath and climbed out,
+turning toward the loaded tonneau with reluctant obedience.
+
+"I can't argue with the law," he said, as he began to pull out a roll
+of bedding wedged in tightly.  "But, for cripes sake, go as easy as you
+can.  I'm plumb lame from my last fall!"
+
+The big man chuckled again.  "The law's merciful as, it can afford to
+be, and I've got a heart like an ox.  Got any jack on yuh?"
+
+"I'm just about cleaned, and that's the Gawd's truth.  Have a heart,
+can't yuh?  A man's got t' live."
+
+"Slip me five hundred, anyway.  How much is your load?"
+
+"Sixty gallons--bottled, most of it.  Two kegs in bulk."  Young Kenner
+was proceeding stoically with the unloading.  Casey, his mouth clamped
+tight shut, was glaring stupifiedly straight out through the windshield.
+
+"Pile out thirty gallons of the bottled goods by that bush. You can
+keep the kegs."  The big man's eyes shifted to Casey Ryan's
+expressionless profile and dwelt there curiously.
+
+"Seems like I know you," he said abruptly.  "Ain't you the guy that was
+brought in with that Black Butte bunch of moonshiners and got off on
+account of a nice wife and an L. A. alibi?  Sure you are! Casey Ryan.
+I got yuh placed now."  He threw back his head and laughed.
+
+Casey might have been an Indian making a society call for all the sign
+of life he gave.  Young Kenner, having deposited his camp outfit in a
+heap on the ground, began lifting out tall, round bottles, four at a
+time and ricking them neatly beside the large sagebush indicated by the
+officer.
+
+Standing upon the running board at Casey's shoulder where he had a
+clear view, the big man watched the unloading and at the same time kept
+an eye on Casey.  It was perfectly evident that for all his easy good
+nature, he was not a man who could be talked out of his purpose.
+
+"All right, pile in your blankets," the big man ordered at last, and
+young Kenner unemotionally began to reload the camp outfit. The big
+man's attention shifted to Casey again.  He looked at him curiously and
+grinned.
+
+"Say, that's a good one you pulled!  You had all the county officials
+bluffed into thinking you were the victim of that Black Butte bunch,
+instead of being in cahoots.  That alibi of yours was a bird. Does
+Kenner, here, know you hit the hootch pretty strong at times?
+Bootlegging's bad business for a man that laps it up the way you do.
+Where's that piece of change, Kenner?"
+
+"Aw, can't yuh find some way to leave me jack enough to buy gas and
+grub?"  Young Kenner asked sullenly, reaching into his pocket. The big
+man shook his head.
+
+"I'm doing a lot for you boys, when I let yuh get past me with the
+Lizzie, to say nothing of half your load.  I'd ought to trundle yuh
+back to San Berdoo; you both know that as well as I do.  I'm too
+soft-hearted for this job, anyway.  Hand over the roll."
+
+Young Kenner swore and extended his arm behind Casey.  "That leaves me
+six bits," he growled, as the big man dropped something into his coat
+pocket.  "You might give me back ten, anyway."
+
+"Couldn't possibly.  I have to have something to square myself with if
+this leaks out.  Just back up, till you can get around my car. Turn to
+the left where the sand ain't so deep and you ain't likely to run over
+the booze."
+
+With the big man still standing at his shoulder on the running board,
+Casey Ryan did what he had rashly declared he never would do; he backed
+the Ford, turned it to the left as he had been commanded to do, and
+drove around the other car.  It was bitter work for Casey; but even he
+recognized the fact that the "settin'" was not good that evening.  Back
+in the road again, he stopped when he was told to stop, and waited,
+with a surface calm altogether strange to Casey, while the officer
+stepped off and gave a bit of parting advice.
+
+"Better keep right on going, boys. I'd hate to see yuh get in trouble,
+so you'd better take this old road up ahead here. That'll bring yuh out
+at Dagget and you'll miss Barstow altogether.  I just came from there;
+there's a hard gang hanging around on the lookout for anything they can
+pick up.  Don't get caught again.  On your way!"
+
+Casey drove for half a mile still staring straight before him. Then
+young Kenner laughed shortly.
+
+"That's Smilin' Lou," he said.  "He's a mean boy to monkey with. Talk
+about road hawgs--he's one yuh can't outset!"
+
+
+
+CHAPTER ELEVEN
+
+"So that's the kind uh game yuh asked me to set in on!"  Casey broke
+another long silence.  He had felt in his bones that young Kenner was
+watching him secretly, waiting for him to take his stand for or against
+the proposition.
+
+"I'd like to know who passed the word around amongst outlaws that Casey
+Ryan is the only original easy mark left runnin' wild, an' that he can
+be caught an' made a goat of any time it's handy! Look at the crowd of
+folks bunched on that crossing this afternoon! Why didn't yuh pick some
+one else for the goat?  Outa all them hundreds uh people, why'n hell
+did yuh have to go an' pick on Casey Ryan?  Ain't he had trouble enough
+tryin' to keep outa trouble?
+
+"Naw!  Casey Ryan's went an' blowed hisself to show tickets, an' he's
+headed home, peaceful an' on time, so's he can shave an' put on a clean
+collar an' slick up to please his wife an' take 'er to the show!
+Nothin' agin the law in that!  Not a damn' thing yuh can haul 'im to
+jail fer!  So YOU had to come along, loaded to the guards with
+hootch--stall your Ford on the car track right under m' nose, an' tell
+Casey Ryan to git in!  Couldn't leave 'im to go home peaceful to 'is
+wife--naw!  You had t' haul 'im away out here an' git 'im in wrong with
+a cop agin!  That's a fine game you're playin'!  That's a DARNED fine
+game!"
+
+"Sure, it is!  It's better than the game you've been playing," young
+Kenner stated calmly.  "Take your own story, for instance. You've been
+dubbin' along, tryin' t' play the way the law tells you to.  An' the
+saps has been flockin' to yuh like a bunch uh hornets--every bird
+tryin' t' sink his stinger in first. Ain't that right?
+
+"Keepin' the law has laid yuh in jail twice in the last month, by your
+own tell.  Why, a clown like you, that's aimin' t' keep the law an'
+live honest, is the easiest mark in the world.  Them's the guys that do
+the most harm--they make graftin' so darned easy! Them's the guys the
+saps lay for and dust off regular in the shape of fines an' taxes an'
+the like uh that.  Oncet in awhile they'll snatch yuh fer somethin' yuh
+never done at all an' lay yuh away fer a day or two, just t' keep yuh
+scared and easy t' handle next time.
+
+"Now, yuh take me, fer instance.  I play agin' the law--an' I'm
+cleanin' up right along, and have yet to take my morning sunlight in
+streaks.  I know as much about the inside of a jail as I know about the
+White House--an' no more.  I've hauled hootch all over the country, an'
+I never yet was dusted off so hard by the law that I didn't come
+through with a roll uh jack they'd overlooked.
+
+"Take this highjackin' to-night, for instance.  Look what Smilin' Lou
+took off'n me!  And yet," Kenner turned and grinned impudently at
+Casey, "don't never think I didn't come out a long jump ahead! I carry
+nothin' cheap; nothin' but good whisky an' brandy that the liquor
+houses failed to declare when the world went dry. Then there's real,
+honest-to-gosh European stuff run in from Mexico; now you're in, Casey,
+I'll tell yuh the snap.  When I said easy money, I was in my right mind.
+
+"You can count on highjackers leavin' yuh half your load; mebby a
+little more, if yuh set purty.  They don't aim t' force yuh out uh the
+business.  They grab what the traffic'll bear, an' let yuh go on an
+make a profit so you'll stay.
+
+"Now there's a card you can slip up your sleeve for this game. Yuh load
+in the best stuff first--see?  Anything real special you wanta put in
+kegs with double sides an' ends which you fill with moonshine.  Yuh
+never can tell--they might wanta sample it. Smilin' Lou did once--an'
+you notice to-night he left the kegs be. So they get a good grade of
+whisky from the liquor houses. And they pass up the best, imported
+stuff that can be got to-day. We'll have regular customers for that;
+and you can gamble they'll pay the price!" He laughed at some secret
+joke which he straightway shared with Casey.
+
+"You noticed I got my gas-tank behind--a twenty-gallon tank at that.
+Well, what if I tell yuh that right under this front seat there's a
+false bottom to the tool-box and under that--well, suppose you're
+settin' on forty pints uh French champagne? More'n all that, this
+cushion we're settin' on has got a concealed pocket down both
+sides--for hop.  So yuh see, Casey, a man can make an honest livin' at
+this game, even if he's highjacked every trip.  Now you're in, I can
+show yuh all kinds uh tricks."
+
+The muscles, along Casey's jaw had hardened until they looked bunched.
+His eyes, fixed upon the winding trail in front of him, were a pale,
+unwinking glitter.
+
+"Who says I'm in?  Yuh ain't heard Casey Ryan say it yet, have yuh? Yuh
+better wait till Casey says he's in b'fore yuh bank on 'im too strong.
+Casey may be an easy mark--he may be the officious goat pro tem of
+every darn' bootlegger an' moonshiner an' every darn' cop that crosses
+his trail; but you can ask anybody if Casey Ryan don't do 'is own
+decidin'!
+
+"Before you go any further, young feller, I'll tell yuh just how fur
+Casey's in your game--an' that's as fur as Barstow.  When Casey says
+he'll do a thing he comes purty near doin' it.  I ain't playin' no
+bootleg game, young feller; White Mule an' me ain't an' never was trail
+pardners.  Make me choose between bootleggers an' cops, an' I'd have to
+flip a dollar on it.  Only fer Bill Masters bein' your friend, I dunno
+but what I'd take yuh right back with me t' L. A. an' let yuh sleep in
+a jail oncet--seein' you've never had the pleasure!"
+
+The young man laughed imperturbably. "Flip that dollar for me, Casey,
+to see whether I shoot yuh now an' dump yuh out in the brush
+somewheres, or make yuh play the hootch game an' like it. Why, you
+didn't think for one minute, did yuh, that I was takin' any chance with
+you?  Not a chance in the world!  Go squeal to the law--an' what would
+it get yuh?
+
+"You was drivin' this car yourself when Smilin' Lou stopped us,
+recollect.  He had yuh placed as one of that Black Butte gang quick as
+he lamped yuh.  Yuh think Smilin' Lou is goin' to take a chance? You
+was caught with the goods t'night, old-timer, an' it's the second time
+inside a month.  It'd be the third time you an' the law has tangled.
+Why, you set there yourself an' told me how you was practically run
+outa L. A., right this week.  You set still a minute and figure out
+about how many years they'd give yuh!
+
+"How come Smilin' Lou overlooked cleanin' yuh of your roll when he took
+mine, do yuh think?  He was treatin' yuh white, an' givin' yuh a chance
+to come back strong next time--that's why. They got so much on yuh now
+after to-night, that he knows you got just one chance to sidestep a
+stretch in the pen.  That's to play the game with pertection.  Smilin'
+Lou never to my knowledge throwed down a guy that come through on
+demand.
+
+"Smilin' Lou stood there an' sized yuh up about the same as I did,
+somethin' like this: 'Here Is Casey Ryan--a clown that's safe anywhere
+in the desert States.  He got honest prospector wrote all over 'im.
+Why, if you boarded a street car the conductor would be guessin',
+wild-eyed, how much gold dust it takes to make a nickel, expectin' you
+to haul out your poke an' look around fer the gold scales.  Why, you
+could git by where a town guy couldn't. You've got a rep a mile long as
+a fightin', squareshootin' Irishman that's a drivin' fool an' knows the
+desert like he knows ham-an'-eggs. Tie on some picks an' shovels an'
+put you behind the wheel, and only the guys that are in the know would
+ever get wise in a thousand years.
+
+"Why, look what he said about you havin' 'em all bluffed in San Berdoo!
+Grabbed you with a bunch uh moonshiners, and you fightin' the saps
+harder'n any of 'em--and then, by heck, you slips the noose an' leaves
+'em thinkin' you're honest but unlucky.
+
+"So you 'n' me is pardners till I say when.  We'll clean up some real
+jack together.  Minin' ain't in it, no more, with hootch runnin'--if
+yuh play it right.  The good old White Mule goes under the wire,
+old-timer, an' takes the money.  Burros is extinct."
+
+"Burros ain't any extincter than what you'll be when I git through with
+yuh," gritted Casey savagely, shutting off the gas. "Bill Masters can
+like it or not--I'm goin' to lick the livin' tar outa you here an' now.
+When I'm through with yuh, if you're able to wiggle the wheel, yuh can
+take your load uh hootch an' go tahell! I'll hoof it down here to the
+next station on the railroad an' ketch a ride back to L. A."
+
+Kenner laughed.  "An' what would I be doin', you poor nut?  Set here
+meek till yuh tell me to git out an' take a lickin'?  Yuh feel that gun
+proddin' yuh in the ribs, don't yuh?  I can't help wonderin' how your
+wife would feel towards you if you was found with a hole drilled
+through your middle, an' a carload uh booze. That'd jar the faith of
+the most believin' woman on earth.  You take this cut-off road up here
+an' drive till I tell yuh t' stop. As you may know, a man can't be
+chickenhearted and peddle hootch--an' I'm called an expert.  So you
+think that over, Casey--an' drive purty, see?"
+
+Casey drove as "purty" as was possible with a six-shooter pressed
+irritatingly against his lowest floating rib; but he did not dwell upon
+the spectacle of himself found dead with a carload of booze. He wished
+to heaven he hadn't let the Little Woman talk him out of packing a gun,
+and waited for his chance.
+
+Young Kenner was thoughtful, brooding through the hours of darkness
+with his head slightly bent and his eyes, so far as Casey could
+determine, fixed steadily on the uneven trail where the headlights
+revealed every rut, every stone, every chuck-hole. But Casey was not
+deceived by that quiescence.  The revolver barrel never once ceased its
+pressure against his side, and he knew that young Kenner never for an
+instant forgot that he was riding with Casey Ryan at the wheel, waiting
+for a chance to kill him.
+
+By daylight, such was Casey's driving, they were well down the highway
+which leads to Needles and on through Arizona. Casey was just thinking
+that they would soon run out of gas, and that he would then have a
+fighting chance, when he was startled almost into believing that he had
+spoken his plan.
+
+"I told you there's a twenty-gallon tank on this car; well, it holds
+twenty-five.  I've got a special carburetor that gives an actual
+mileage of twenty-two miles to the gallon on ordinary desert roads. I
+filled 'er till she run over at Victorville--and I notice you're easy
+on the gas with your drivin'.  Figure it yourself, Casey, and don't be
+countin' on a stop till I'm ready t' stop."
+
+Casey grunted, more crestfallen than he would ever admit. But he hadn't
+given up; the give-up quality had been completely forgotten when
+Casey's personality was being put together.  He drove on, around the
+rubbly base of a blackened volcano long since cold and bleak, and bored
+his way through the sandy stretch that leads through Patmos.
+
+Patmos was a place of unhappy memories, but he drove through the little
+hamlet so fast that he scarcely thought of his unpleasant sojourn there
+the summer before.  Young Kenner had fallen silent again and they drove
+the sixty miles or so to Goffs with not a word spoken between them.
+
+Casey spent most of that time in mentally cursing the Ford for its
+efficiency.  He had prayed for blowouts, a fouled timer, for something
+or anything or everything to happen that could possibly befall a Ford.
+He couldn't even make the radiator boil.  Worst and most persistent of
+his discomforts was the hard pressure of that six-shooter against his
+side.  Casey was positive that the imprint of it would be worn as a
+permanent brand upon his person for the rest of his life.  Young
+Kenner's voice speaking to him came so abruptly that Casey jumped.
+
+"I've been thinking over your case," Kenner said cheerfully. "Stop
+right here while we talk it over."
+
+Casey stopped right there.
+
+"I've changed my mind about havin' you for a pardner," young Kenner
+went on.  "You'd be a valuable man all right; but when a harp like you
+gets stubborn-bitter, my hunch tells me to break away clean. You're a
+mick--an' micks is all alike when they git a grudge. I can't be
+bothered keepin' yuh under my eye all the time, and the way I've felt
+yuh oozin' venom all this while shows me I'd have to. An' bumpin' yuh
+off would be neither pleasant ner safe.
+
+"Now, the way I've doped this out,  I'm goin' to sell yuh the outfit
+fer just what jack yuh got in your clothes.  Fork it over, an' I'll
+give yuh the layout just as she stands."
+
+"Yuh better wait till Casey says he wants t' buy!"  Swallowing
+resentment all night had made his voice husky; and it was bitter indeed
+to sit still and hear himself called a harp and a mick.
+
+"Why wait?  Hand over the roll, and that closes the deal. I didn't ask
+yuh would yuh buy--I'm givin' yuh somethin' fer your money, is all.  I
+could take it off yuh after yuh quit kickin' and drive your remains in
+to this little burg, with a tale of how I'd caught a bootlegger that
+resisted arrest.  So fork over the jack, old-timer. I want to catch
+that train over there that's about ready to pull out." He prodded
+sharply with the gun, and Casey heard a click which needed no
+explanation.
+
+Casey fumbled for a minute inside his vest and glumly "forked over."
+Young Kenner inspected the folded bank notes, smiled and slipped the
+flat bundle inside his shirt.
+
+"You're stronger on the bank roll than what yuh let on," he remarked
+contentedly.  "I don't stand to lose so much, after all. Sixteen
+hundred, I make it.  What's in your pants pockets?"
+
+Casey, still balefully silent, emptied first one pocket and then the
+other into Kenner's cupped palm.  With heavy sarcasm he felt in his
+watch pocket and produced a nickel slipped there after paying
+street-car fare.  He held it out to young Kenner between his finger and
+thumb, still gazing straight before him.
+
+Young Kenner took it and grinned.  "Oh, well--you're rich!  Drive on
+now, and when you get about even with that caboose, slow to twelve
+miles whilst I hop off; and then hit 'er up again an' keep 'er goin'.
+If yuh don't, I'll grab yuh fer a bootlegger, sure. And I'd have the
+hull train crew to help me wrassle yuh down. They'd be willin' to
+sample the evidence, I guess, an' be witnesses against yuh.  An' bear
+in mind, Casey, that yuh got a darned good Ford and all its valuable
+contents for sixteen hundred and some odd bucks.  If you meet up with
+the law, you can treat 'em white an' still break even on the deal yuh
+just consummated with me."
+
+"Like hell I consummated the deal!" Casey was goaded into muttering.
+
+He drove abreast of the caboose, and at a final prod in the ribs Casey
+slowed down.  Young Kenner dropped off the running board, alighted
+running with his body slanted backwards and his lips smiling
+friendly-wise.
+
+"Don't take any bad money--an' don't let 'em catch yuh!" he cried
+mockingly, as he headed for the caboose.
+
+At a crossing, two miles farther on, Casey came larruping out of the
+sand hills and was forced to wait while the freight train went rattling
+past, headed east on a downhill grade.
+
+Young Kenner, up in the cupola, leaned far out and waved his hat as the
+caboose flicked by.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER TWELVE
+
+The highway north from the Santa Fe Railroad just west of Needles
+climbs an imperceptible grade across barren land to where the mesa
+changes and becomes potentially fertile.  Up this road, going north, a
+cloud of yellow dust rolled swiftly.  See at close range, the nose of a
+dingy Ford protruded slightly in front of the enveloping cloud--and
+behind it Casey Ryan, hard-eyed and with his jaw set to the fighting
+mood, gripped the wheel and drove as if he had a grudge against the
+road.
+
+At the first signpost Casey canted a malevolent eye upward and went
+lurching by at top speed.  The car bulked black for a moment, dimmed,
+and merged into the fleeing cloud that presently seemed no more than a
+dust-devil whirling across the mesa.  At the second signpost Casey
+slowed, his eyes dwelling speculatively upon the legend:
+
+"JUNIPER WELLS 3 M"
+
+The arrow pointed to the right where a narrow, little-used trail angled
+crookedly away through the greasewood.  Casey gave a deciding twist to
+the steering wheel and turned into the trail.
+
+Juniper Wells is not nearly so nice a place as it sounds.  But it is
+the first water north of the Santa Fe, and now and then a wayfarer of
+the desert leaves the main highway and turns that way, driven by
+necessity.  It is a secluded spot, too unattractive to tempt people to
+linger; because of its very seclusion it therefore tempted Casey Ryan.
+
+When a man has driven a Ford fifteen hours without once leaving the
+wheel or taking a drink of water or a mouthful of food, however great
+his trouble or his haste, his first thought will be of water, food and
+rest.  Even Casey's deadly rage at the diabolical trick played upon him
+could not hold his thoughts from dwelling upon bacon and coffee and a
+good sleep afterwards.
+
+Wind and rain and more wind, buffeting that trail since the last car
+had passed, made "heavy going."  The Ford labored up small hills and
+across gullies, dipping downward at last to Juniper Wells; there Casey
+stopped close beside the blackened embers left by some forgotten
+traveler of the wild.  He slid stiffly from behind the wheel to the
+vacant seat beside him, and climbed out like the old man he had last
+night determined never to become. He walked away a few paces, turned
+and stood glaring back at the car as if familiarizing himself with an
+object little known and hated much.
+
+Fate, he felt, had played a shabby trick upon an honest man. Here he
+stood, a criminal in the eyes of the law, a liar in the eyes of the
+missus.  An honest man and a truthful, here he was--he, Casey
+Ryan--actually afraid to face his fellow men.
+
+"HE wasn't no friend of Bill Masters; the divil himself wouldn'ta owned
+him fer a friend!" snarled Casey, thinking of Kenner. "Me--CASEY
+RYAN!--with a load uh booze wished onto me--and a car that may have
+been stolen fer all I know--an' not a darn' nickel to my name! They can
+make a goat uh Casey Ryan once, but watch clost when they try it the
+second time!  Casey MAY be gittin' old; he might possibly have
+softenin' of the brain; but he'll git the skunk that done this, or
+you'll find his carcass layin' alongside the trail bleachin' like a
+blowed-out tire!  I'll trail 'im till my tongue hangs down to my knees!
+I'll git 'im an' I'll drown 'im face down in a bucket of his own
+booze!"  Whipped by emotion, his voice rose stridently until it cracked
+just under a shout.
+
+"That sounds pretty businesslike, old man," a strange voice spoke
+whimsically behind Casey.  "Who's all this you're going to trail till
+your tongue hangs down to your knees?  Going to need any help?"
+
+Casey whirled belligerently upon the man who had walked quietly up
+behind him.
+
+"Where the hell did YOU come from?" he countered roughly.
+
+"Does it matter?  I'm here," the other parried blandly.  "But by the
+way!  If you've got the makings of a meal in your car--and you look too
+old a hand in the desert to be without grub--I won't refuse to have a
+snack with you.  I hate to invite myself to breakfast, but it's that or
+go hungry--and an empty belly won't stand on ceremony."
+
+The hard-bitten features of Casey Ryan, tanned as they were by wind and
+sun to a fair imitation of leather, were never meant to portray mixed
+emotions.  His face, therefore, remained impassive except for a queer,
+cornered look in his eyes.  With a sick feeling at the pit of his
+stomach he wondered just how much of his impassioned soliloquy the man
+had overheard; who and what this man was, and how he had managed to
+approach within six feet of Casey without being overheard.  With a
+sicker feeling, he wondered if there were any grub in the car; and if
+so, how he could get at it without revealing his contraband load to
+this stranger.
+
+But Casey Ryan was nothing if not game.  He reached for his trusty plug
+of tobacco and pried off a corner with his teeth.  He lifted his left
+hand mechanically to the back of his head and pushed his black felt hat
+forward so that it rested over his right eyebrow at a devil-may-care
+angle.  These preparations made involuntarily and unconsciously, Casey
+Ryan was himself again.
+
+"All right--if you're willin' to rustle the wood an' start a fire, I'll
+see if I can dig up somethin'."  He cocked an eye up at the sun. "I et
+my breakfast long enough ago so I guess it's settled. I reckon mebby I
+c'd take on some bacon an' coffee myself.  Feller I had along with me I
+ditched, back here at the railroad.  He done the packin' up--an' I'd
+hate to swear to what he put in an' what he left out.  Onery cuss--I
+wouldn't put nothin' past him.  But mebby we can make out a meal."
+
+The stranger seemed perfectly satisfied with this arrangement and
+studied preamble.  He started off to gather dead branches of
+greasewood; and Casey, having prepared the way for possible
+disappointment, turned toward the car.
+
+Fear and Casey Ryan have ever been strangers; yet he was conscious of a
+distinct, prickly chill down his spine.  The glance he cast over his
+shoulder at the stranger betrayed uneasiness, best he could do.  He
+turned over the roll of bedding and cautiously began a superficial
+search which he hoped would reveal grub in plenty--without revealing
+anything else.  He wished now that he had taken a look over his
+shoulder when young Kenner was unloading the car at Smiling Lou's
+command.  He would be better prepared now for possible emergencies.  He
+remembered, with a bit of comfort, that the bootlegger had piled a good
+deal of stuff upon the ground before Casey first heard the clink of
+bottles.
+
+A grunt of relief signaled his location of a box containing grub. A
+moment later he lifted out a gunny sack bulging unevenly with cooking
+utensils.  He fished a little deeper, turned back a folded tarp and
+laid naked to his eyes the top of a whisky keg. With a grunt of
+consternation he hastily replaced the tarp, his heart flopping in his
+chest like a fresh-landed fish.
+
+The stranger was kneeling beside a faintly crackling little pile of
+twigs, his face turned inquiringly toward Casey.  Casey, glancing
+guiltily over his shoulder, felt the chill hand of discovery reaching
+for his very soul.  It was as if a dead man were hidden away beneath
+that tarp.  It seemed to him that the eyes of the stranger were sharp,
+suspicious eyes, and that they dwelt upon him altogether too
+attentively for a perfectly justifiable interest even in the box of
+grub.
+
+Black coffee, drunk hot and strong, gave the world a brighter aspect.
+Casey decided that the situation was not so desperate, after all. Easy
+enough to bluff it out--easiest thing in the world!  He would just go
+along as if there wasn't a thing on his mind heavier than his thinning,
+sandy hair.  No man living had any right or business snooping around in
+his car, unless he carried a badge of an officer of the law.  Even with
+the badge, Casey told himself sternly, a man would have to show a
+warrant before he could touch a finger to his outfit.
+
+Over his third cup of coffee Casey eyed the stranger guardedly. He did
+not look like an officer.  He was not big and burly, with arrogant eyes
+and the hint of leashed authority in his tone. Instead, he was of
+medium height, owned a pair of shrewd gray eyes and an easy drawl, and
+was dressed in the half military style so popular with mining men,
+surveyors and others who can afford to choose what garb they will adopt
+for outdoor living.
+
+He had shown a perfect familiarity with cooking over a campfire, and
+had fried the bacon in a manner which even Casey could not criticize.
+Before the coffee was boiled he had told Casey that his name was Mack
+Nolan.  Immediately afterward he had grinned and added the superfluous
+information that he was Irish and didn't care who knew it.
+
+"Well, I'm Irish, meself," Casey returned approvingly and with more
+than his usual brogue.  "You can ask anybody if Casey Ryan has ever
+showed shame fer the blood that's in' 'im.  'Tis the Irish that never
+backs up from a rough trail or a fight."  He poured a fourth cup of
+coffee into a chipped enamel cup and took his courage in his two hands.
+Mack Nolan, he assured himself optimistically, couldn't possibly know
+what lay hidden under the camp outfit in the Ford.  Until he did know,
+he was harmless as anybody, so long as Casey kept an eye on him.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER THIRTEEN
+
+During the companionable smoke that followed breakfast, Casey learned
+that Mack Nolan had spent some time in Nevada, ambling through the
+hills, examining the geologic formation of the country with a view to
+possible future prospecting in districts yet undeveloped.
+
+"The mineral possibilities of Nevada haven't been more than scratched,"
+Mack Nolan observed, lying back with one arm thrown up under his head
+as a makeshift pillow and the other hand negligently attending to the
+cigarette he was smoking.  His gray army hat was tilted over his eyes,
+shielding them from the sun while they dwelt rather studiously upon the
+face of Casey Ryan.
+
+"Every spring I like to get out and poke around through these hills
+where folks as a rule don't go.  Never did much prospecting--as such.
+Don't take kindly enough to a pick and shovel for that.  What I like
+best is general field work.  If I run across something rich, time
+enough then to locate a claim or two and hire a couple of strong backs
+to do the digging.
+
+"I've been out now for about three weeks; and night before last, just
+as I stopped to make camp and before I'd started to unpack, my two
+mules got scared at a rattler and quit the country.  Left me flat,
+without a thing but my clothes and six-shooter, and what I had in my
+pockets."  He lifted the cigarette from between his lips--thin, they
+were, and curved and rather pitiless, one could guess, if the man were
+sufficiently roused.
+
+"I wasted all yesterday trying to trail 'em.  But you can't do much
+tracking in these rocks back here toward the river.  I was hitting for
+the highway to catch a ride if I could, when I saw you topping this
+last ridge over here.  Don't blame me much for bumming a breakfast, do
+you?"  And he added, with a sigh of deep physical content, "It sure-lee
+was some feed!"
+
+His lids drooped lower as if sleep were overtaking him in spite of
+himself.  "I'd ask yuh if you'd seen anything of those mules--only I
+don't give a damn now.  I wish this was night instead of noon; I could
+sleep the clock around after that bacon and bannock of yours.  Haven't
+a care in the world," he murmured drowsily. "Happy as a toad in the
+sun, first warm day of spring.  How soon you going to crank up?"
+
+Casey stared at him unwinkingly through narrowed lids.  He pushed his
+hat forward with a sharp tilt over his eyebrow--which meant always that
+Casey Ryan had just O. K.'d an idea--and reached for his chewing
+tobacco.
+
+"Go ahead an' take a nap if yuh want to," he urged.  "I got some
+tinkerin' to do on the Ford, an' I was aimin' to lay over here an' do
+it.  I'm kinda lookin' around, myself, for a likely prospect; I got all
+the time there is.  I guess I'll back the car down the draw a piece
+where she'll set level, an' clean up 'er dingbats whilst you take a
+sleep."
+
+Casey left the breakfast things where they were, as a silent
+reassurance to Mack Nolan that the car would not go off without him. It
+was a fine, psychological detail of which Casey was secretly rather
+proud.  A box of grub, a smoked coffee pot and dirty breakfast dishes
+left beside a dead campfire establishes evidence, admissible before any
+jury, that the owner means to return.
+
+Casey went over and cranked the Ford, grimly determined to make the
+coffee pot lie for him if necessary.  He backed the car down the draw a
+good seventy-five yards, to where a wrinkle in the bank hid him from
+the breakfast camp.  He stopped there and left the engine running while
+he straddled out over the side and went forward to the dip of the front
+fender to see if the Ford were still visible to Mack Nolan.  He was
+glad to find that by crouching and sighting across the fender he could
+just see the campfire and the top of Nolan's hat beyond it.  The man
+need only lift his head off his arm to see that the Ford was standing
+just around the turn of the draw.
+
+"The corner was never yet so tight that Casey Ryan couldn't find a
+crack somewhere to crawl through," he told himself vaingloriously. "An'
+I hope to thunder the feller sleeps long an' sleeps solid!"
+
+For fifteen minutes the mind of Casey Ryan was at ease.  He had found a
+shovel in the car, placed conveniently at the side where it could be
+used for just such an emergency as this.  For fifteen minutes he had
+been using that shovel in a shelving bank of loose gravel just under an
+outcropping of rhyolite a rod or so behind the car and well out of
+sight of Nolan.
+
+He was beginning to consider his excavation almost deep enough to bury
+two ten-gallon kegs and forty bottles of whisky, when the shadow of a
+head and shoulders fell across the hole.  Casey did not lift the dirt
+and rocks he had on his shovel.  He froze to a tense quiet, goggling at
+the shadow.
+
+"What are yuh doing, Casey?  Trying to outdig a badger?" Mack Nolan's
+chuckle was friendliness itself.
+
+Casey's head snapped around so that he could cock an eye up at Nolan.
+He grinned mechanically.  "Naw.  Picked up a rich-lookin' piece uh
+float. Thought I'd just see if it didn't mebby come from this ledge."
+
+Mack Nolan stepped forward interestedly and looked at the ledge.
+
+"Where's the piece you found?" he very naturally inquired.  "The
+formation just here wouldn't lead me to expect gold-bearing rock; but
+of course, anything is possible with gold.  Let's have a look at the
+specimen."
+
+Casey had once tried to bluff a stranger with two deuces and a pair of
+fives, and two full stacks of blue chips pushed to the center to back
+the bluff.  The stranger had called him, with three queens and a pair
+of jacks.  Casey felt like that now.
+
+He had laughed over his loss then, and he grinned now and reached
+carelessly to the bank beside him as if he fully expected to lay his
+hand on the specimen of gold-bearing rock.  He went so far as to utter
+a surprised oath when he failed to find it.  He felt in his pockets.
+He went forward and scanned the top of the ledge almost convincingly.
+He turned and stood a-straddle, his hands on his hips, and gazed on the
+pile of dirt he had thrown out of the hole.  Last, he pushed his hat
+back so that with the next movement he could push it forward again over
+his eyebrow.
+
+"Now if that there lump uh high-grade ain't went an' slid down the bank
+an' got covered up with the muck!" he exclaimed disgustedly. "I'm a son
+of a gun if Fate ain't playin' agin' Casey Ryan with a flock uh aces
+under its vest!"
+
+Mack Nolan laughed, and Casey slanted a look his way.  "Thought I left
+you takin, a nap," he said brazenly.  "What's the matter? Didn't your
+breakfast set good?"
+
+Mack Nolan laughed again.  It was evident that he found Casey Ryan very
+amusing.
+
+"The breakfast was fine," he replied easily.  "A couple of lizards got
+to playing tag over me.  That woke me up, and the sun was so hot I just
+thought I'd come down and crawl into the car and go to sleep there.  Go
+ahead with your prospecting, Casey--I won't bother you."
+
+Casey went on with his digging, but his heart was not in it. With every
+laggard shovelful of dirt, he glanced over his shoulder apprehensively,
+watching Mack Nolan crawl into the back of the car and settle himself,
+with an audible sigh of satisfaction, on top of the load.  He had one
+wild, wicked impulse to lengthen the hole and make it serve as a grave
+for more than bootleg whisky; but it was an impulse born of
+desperation, and it died almost before it had lived.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER FOURTEEN
+
+Casey left his digging and returned to the Ford, still determined to
+carry on the bluff and pretend that much tinkering was necessary before
+he could travel further.  With a great show of industry he rummaged for
+pliers and wrenches, removed the hood from the motor and squinted down
+at the little engine.
+
+By that time Mack Nolan was snoring softly in deep slumber. Casey
+listened suspiciously, knowing too well how misleading a snore could
+be.  But his own eyelids were growing exceeding heavy, and the
+soporific sound acted hypnotically upon his sleep-hungry brain. He
+caught himself yawning, and suddenly threw down the wrench.
+
+"Aw, hell!" he muttered disgustedly, and went and crawled under the
+back of the car where it was shady.
+
+The sun was nearly down when Casey awoke and crawled out.  Mack Nolan
+was still curled comfortably in the car, his back against the bed roll.
+He opened his eyes and yawned when Casey leaned and looked in upon him.
+
+"By Jove, that was a fine sleep I had," he announced cheerfully,
+lifting himself up and dangling his legs outside the car. "Strike
+anything yet?"
+
+"Naw."  Casey's grunt was eloquent of the mood he was in.
+
+"Get the car fixed all right?"  Mack Nolan's cheerfulness seemed
+nothing less than diabolical to Casey.
+
+"Naw." Then Casey added grimly, "I'm stuck.  I dunno what ails the
+damned thing.  Have to send to Vegas fer new parts, I guess. It's only
+three miles out here to the road.  Mebby you better hike over to the
+highway an' ketch a ride with somebody.  I might send in for a timer
+an' some things, too.  No use waitin' fer me, Nolan--can't tell how
+long I'll be held up here."
+
+Mack Nolan climbed out of the car.  Casey's spirits rose instantly.
+Nolan came forward and looked down at the engine as casually as he
+would glance at a nickel alarm clock.
+
+"She was hitting all right when you backed down here," Nolan remarked
+easily.  "I'll just take a look at her myself.  Fords are cranky
+sometimes.  But I've assembled too many of them in the factory to let
+one get the best of me in the desert."
+
+Casey could almost hear his heart when it slumped down into his boots.
+But he wasn't licked yet.
+
+"Aw, let the darned thing alone till we eat," he said, pushing his hat
+forward to hurry his wits.
+
+"Well--I can throw a Ford together in the dark, if necessary," smiled
+Mack Nolan.  "Eat, it is, if you want it that way. That breakfast I put
+away seems to have sharpened my appetite for supper.  Tell you what,
+Ryan.  I'll do a little trouble-shooting here while you cook supper.
+How'll that be?"
+
+That wouldn't be, if Casey could prevent it.  His pale, narrow-lidded
+eyes dwelt upon Nolan unwinkingly.
+
+"Well, mebby I'm kind of a crank about my car," he hedged, with a
+praiseworthy calmness.  "Fords is like horses, to me. I drove stage all
+m' life till I took to prospectin'--an' I never could stand around and
+let anybody else monkey with my teams.  I ain't a doubt in the world,
+Mr. Nolan, but what you know as much about Fords as I do.  More, mebby.
+But Casey Ryan's got 'is little ways, an' he can't seem to ditch 'em.
+We'll eat; an' then mebby we'll look 'er over together.
+
+"At the same time," he went on with rising courage, "I'm liable to
+stick around here for awhile an' prospect a little.  If you wanta find
+them mules an' outfit, don't bank too strong on Casey Ryan. He's liable
+to change 'is mind any old time.  Day or night, you can't tell what
+Casey might take a notion to do.  That there's a fact.  You can ask
+anybody if it ain't."
+
+Mack Nolan laughed and slapped Casey unexpectedly on the shoulder.
+"You're a man after my own heart, Casey Ryan," he declared
+enigmatically.  "I'll stick to you and take a chance. Darn the mules!
+Somebody will find them and look after them until I show up."
+
+Casey's spirits, as he admitted to himself, were rising and falling
+like the hammer of a pile driver; and like the pile driver, the hammer
+was driving him deeper and deeper into hopelessness.  He would have
+given an ear to know for certain whether Mack Nolan were as innocent
+and friendly as he seemed. Until he did know, Casey could see nothing
+before him but to wait his chance to give Nolan the slip.
+
+Sitting cross-legged in the glow of the campfire after supper, with a
+huge pattern of stars drawn over the purple night sky, Casey pulled out
+the old pipe with which he had solaced many an evening and stuffed it
+thoughtfully with tobacco.  Across the campfire, Mack Nolan sat with
+his hat tilted down over his eyes, smoking a cigarette and seeming at
+peace with all the world.
+
+Casey hoped that Nolan would forget about fixing the Ford.  He hoped
+that Nolan would sleep well to-night.  Casey was perfectly willing to
+sacrifice a good roll of bedding and the cooking outfit for the
+privilege of traveling alone.  No man, he told himself savagely, could
+ask a better deal than he was prepared to give Nolan.  He bent to reach
+a burning twig for his pipe, and found Nolan watching him steadily from
+under his hat brim.
+
+"What sort of looking fellows were those, Ryan, that left a load of
+booze on your hands?"  Nolan asked casually when he saw that he was
+observed.
+
+Casey burned his fingers with the blazing twig.  "Who said anything
+about any fellers leavin' me booze?" he evaded sharply. "If it's a
+drink you're hintin' for, you won't get it.  Casey Ryan ain't no booze
+peddler, an' now's as good a time as any to let that soak into your
+system."
+
+Mack Nolan's gray eyes were still watching Casey with a steadfastness
+that was disconcerting to a man in Casey's dilemma.
+
+"It might help us both considerably," he said quietly, "if you told me
+all about it.  You can't cache that booze you've got in the car--I
+won't let you, for one thing; for another, that would be merely dodging
+the issue, and if you'll forgive my frankness, dodging doesn't seem to
+be quite in your line."
+
+Casey puffed hard on his pipe.  "The world's gittin' so darned full uh
+crooks, a man can't turn around now'days without bumpin' into a few!"
+he exploded bitterly.  "What kind uh hold-up game YOU playin', Mr.
+Nolan?  If that's your name," he added fiercely.
+
+Mack Nolan laughed to himself and rubbed the ash from his cigarette
+against the sole of his shoe.  "Why," he answered genially, "my game is
+holding up bootleggers--and crooked cops. Speaking off-hand (which I
+don't often do) I should say you have a fine chance to sit in with me.
+I'm just guessing, now,"  he added dryly,  "but I'm tolerably good at
+guessing; a man's got to be, these days."
+
+"A man's got to do better than guess--with Casey Ryan," Casey remarked
+ominously.  "The last man that guessed Casey Ryan, guessed 'im plumb
+wrong."
+
+"Meaning that you'd refuse to help me round up bootleggers and the
+officers that protect them?" A steel edge crept into Mack Nolan's
+voice.  He leaned forward, his elbows on his knees, his eyes boring
+into Casey's mind.
+
+"Man, don't stall with me!  You've got brains enough to know that if I
+were a crook I'd have held you up long before now.  You gave me three
+splendid opportunities to stick a gun in your back--and I could have
+made others.  And," he added with a smile, "if I had thought that you
+were a bootlegger or a crook of any other kind, I'd have had you in Las
+Vegas jail by this time.  You're no more a crook than I am.  You've got
+neither the looks nor the actions of a slicker.  I may say I know you
+pretty well--"
+
+Casey thrust out a pugnacious chin.  "Say!  D' you know Bill Masters,
+too?  That's all I wanta know!"
+
+"Bill Masters?  Why, is he the fellow who stepped out from under this
+load of hootch?  If he is, he must have picked himself a new name; I
+never heard it."
+
+Casey glared suspiciously for twenty seconds before he settled back
+glumly into his mental corner.
+
+"Ryan, I've been all day sizing you up.  I'm going to be perfectly
+honest with you and tell you why I think you're straight--although you
+must admit the evidence is rather against you.
+
+"I happened to be right close when you drove down in here and stopped.
+As a matter of fact, I was behind that little clump of junipers. Had
+you driven around them instead of stopping this side, you couldn't have
+failed to see me.
+
+"You came down here mad at the trick that had been played you. You were
+so mad, you started talking to yourself as a safety valve--blowing off
+mental steam.  You've spent a lot of time in the desert--alone.  Men
+like that frequently talk aloud their thoughts, just to hear a human
+voice.  You made matters pretty plain to me before you knew there was
+any one within miles of you.  For instance, you're not at all sure this
+car you've got wasn't stolen.  You're inclined to think it was.  You're
+broke--robbed, I take it, by the men who somehow managed to leave you
+with the car and a load of booze on your hands.  The trick must have
+been turned this morning; down at the railroad,  I imagine--because you
+hadn't taken time to stop and size up the predicament you were in until
+you got here.
+
+"Your main idea was to get off somewhere out of sight.  You were
+scared. You didn't hear me behind you until I spoke--which proves
+you're a green hand at dodging.  And that, Ryan, is a very good
+recommendation to a man in my line of work.  But you're shrewd, and
+you're game--dead game.  You're a peach at thinking up schemes to get
+yourself out of a hole.  Of course, being new at it, you don't think
+quite far enough.  For instance, because you found me afoot it never
+occurred to you that I might know something about a car; but the rest
+of your plan was a dandy.
+
+"Your idea of backing down there around the turn and burying the booze
+was all right.  With almost any other man it would have worked. Once
+you got that hootch off your mind, I rather think you'd have been glad
+to have me along with you, instead of giving me broad hints to leave.
+But you haven't got the booze buried yet, and you've been figuring all
+the evening.  You don't see how the devil you're going to manage it
+with me around.
+
+"I'll do a little more guessing, now: I guess you've doped it out that
+you'll pack the bedroll up here, tuck me in and pray to the Lord I'll
+sleep sound.  You're hoping you can cache the booze and make your
+getaway while I've gone bye-low.  Or possibly, if you got the booze put
+away safe from my prying eyes, you might come back to bed and I'd find
+you here in the morning just as if nothing had happened.  How Is that
+for guesswork?"
+
+"You go tahell!" growled Casey, swallowing a sickly grin.  He pressed
+down the tobacco in his pipe, eyeing Nolan queerly.  "If them damn'
+lizards had uh let yuh alone, I wouldn't have nothin' on m' mind now
+but my hat."  He looked across the fire and grinned again.
+
+"Keep on; you'll be tellin' me what the missus an' I was arguin' about
+last night over long-distance.  I've heard tell uh this four-bit mind
+reading an' forecastin' your horrorscope fer a dime; but I never met up
+with it before.  If you're aimin' to take up a collection after the
+show, you'll fare slim.  I've been what a feller called 'dusted off'."
+He added, after a pause that was eloquent, "They done it thorough!"
+
+Mack Nolan laughed.  "They usually are thorough, when they're 'dusting
+off a chump', as I believe they call it."
+
+Casey grunted.  "'Chump' is right, mebby.  But anyways, you're too
+late, Mr. Nolan. I'm cleaned."
+
+Mack Nolan rolled another cigarette, lighted it and flipped the match
+into the campfire.  He smoked it down to the last inch, staring into
+the fire and saying nothing the while.  When the cigarette stub
+followed the match, he leaned back upon one elbow and began tracing a
+geometrical figure in the sand with a stick.
+
+"Ryan," he said abruptly, "you're square and I know it.  The very
+nature of my business makes me cautious about trusting men--but I'm
+going to trust you."  He stopped again, taking great pains with the
+point of a triangle he was drawing.
+
+Casey knocked the ashes out of his pipe against a rock.  "Puttin' it
+that way, Mr. Nolan, the man's yet to live that Casey Ryan ever
+double-crossed.  Cops I got no use for; nor yet bootleggers. Whether I
+got any use for you, Mr. Nolan, I can say better when I've heard yuh
+out.  A goat I've been for the last time.  But I'm willin' to HEAR yuh
+out--and that there's more'n what I'd uh said this morning."
+
+"And that's fair enough, Ryan.  If you jumped into things with your
+eyes shut, I don't think I'd want you with me."
+
+Casey squirmed, remembering certain times when he had gone too headlong
+into things.
+
+"I'm going to ask you, Ryan, to tell me the whole story of this car and
+its load of whisky.  Before you do that, I'll tell you this much to
+show good faith and prove to you how much I trust you: I'm an officer,
+and my special work right now is to clean up a gang of bootleggers and
+the crooked officers who are protecting them. What I know about your
+case leads me to believe that you've run afoul of them and that you're
+the man I've been looking for that can help me set a trap for them.
+Would you like to do that?"
+
+"If it's that bunch you're after, Mr. Nolan, I'd ruther land 'em in
+jail than to find a ledge of solid gold ten feet thick an' a mile long.
+One thing I'd like to know first.  Are yuh or ain't yuh huntin' mules?"
+
+Mack Nolan laughed.  "I am, yes.  But the mule I'm hunting is white!"
+
+Casey studied that until he had the fresh pipeful of tobacco going
+well.  Then he looked up and grinned understandingly.
+
+"So it's White Mule you're trailin'."  He kicked a stub of greasewood
+branch back into the flames and laughed.  "Well, the tracks is deep an'
+plenty, and if that's the trail you're takin', I'm with yuh. You ain't
+a cop--leastways you don't spread your arms every time you turn around.
+Gosh, I hate them wing-floppin' kind!  They's one thing an' one only
+that I hate worse--an' that's bootleggers an' moonshiners.  If you got
+a scheme to give them cusses their needin's, you can ask anybody if
+Casey Ryan ain't the feller you can bank on."
+
+"Yes.  That's what I've been thinking.  Now, I wish you'd tell me
+exactly what you've been up against.  Don't leave out anything, however
+trivial it might seem to you."
+
+Wherefore, Casey sat with the firelight flickering across his seamed,
+Irish face and told the story of his wrongs.  Trivial details Nolan had
+asked for--and he got them with the full Casey Ryan flavor. Even the
+old woman who rocked, Casey pictured--from his particular angle.  Mack
+Nolan sat up and listened, his eyes steady and his mouth, that had
+curved to laughter many times during the recital, once more firm and
+somewhat pitiless when Casey finished.
+
+"This Smiling Lou; you'd know him again, of course?"
+
+"Know him!  Say, I'd know him after he'd fried a week in hell!" Casey's
+tone left no doubt of his meaning.
+
+"And I suppose you could tell this man Kenner a mile off and around a
+corner.  Now, I'll tell you what I want you to do, Casey.  This may jar
+you a little--until I explain.  I want you--"  Mack Nolan paused, his
+lips twitching in a faint smile--"to do a little bootlegging yourself."
+
+"Yuh--WHAT?" In the firelight Casey's eyes were seen to bulge.
+
+"I want you to bootleg this whisky you've got in the car." Nolan's eyes
+twinkled.  "I want you to go back and peddle this booze, and I want you
+to do it so that Smiling Lou or one of his bunch will hold you up and
+highjack you.  Do you see what I mean? You don't--so I'll tell you.
+We'll put it in marked bottles.  I have the bottles and the seals and
+labels for every brand of liquor to be had in the country to-day.  With
+marked money and marked bottles, we ought to be able to get the goods
+on that gang."
+
+Casey thought of something quite suddenly and held out an imperative,
+pointing finger.
+
+"There's something else that feller told me was in the car!" he cried
+agitatedly.  "He said he had forty pints of French champagne cached in
+a false bottom under the front seat.  And he said the front cushion had
+a blind pocket around the edges that was full uh dope.  Hop, he called
+it."
+
+Mack Nolan whistled under his breath.
+
+"And he turned the whole outfit over to you for sixteen hundred dollars
+or so?"  He stared thoughtfully into the fire.  Abruptly he looked at
+Casey.
+
+"What the deuce had you done to him, Ryan?" he asked, with a quizzical
+intentness.  "He must have been scared stiff, to let go of all that
+stuff for sixteen hundred.  Why, man, the 'junk'--that's dope--alone
+must be worth more than that.  And the champagne--forty pints, you say?
+He ought to get twenty dollars a pint for that.  Figure it yourself.  I
+hope," he added seriously, "the fellow wasn't too scared to show up
+again."
+
+"Well," Casey said grimly, "I dunno how scart he is--but he knows darn'
+well I'll kill 'im. I told im I would."
+
+Again Mack Nolan laughed.  "Catching's much better than killing, Ryan.
+It hurts a man worse, and it lasts a heap longer.  What do you say to
+turning in?  To-morrow we'll have a full day at my private bottling
+works."
+
+They moved their cooking outfit down near the Ford for safety's sake.
+While it was wholly improbable that the car would be robbed in the
+night, Mack Nolan was a man who took as few chances as possible. It
+happened that the excavation Casey had so hopefully made that morning
+formed a convenient level for their bed; wherefore they spread it
+there, talking in low tones of their plans until they went to sleep.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER FIFTEEN
+
+Dawn was just thinning the curtain of darkness when Nolan woke Casey
+with a shake of the shoulder.
+
+"I think we'd better be moving from here before the world's astir. You
+can back on down this draw, Ryan, and strike an old trail that cuts
+over the ridge and up the next gulch to an old, deserted mine where
+I've made headquarters.  It isn't far, and we can have breakfast at my
+camp."
+
+Casey swallowed his astonishment, and for once in his life he did as he
+was told without argument.
+
+Mack Nolan's camp was fairly accessible by roundabout trail with a few
+tire tracks to point the way for Casey.  Straight across the ridges, it
+would not have been more than two miles to Juniper Wells. Nevertheless
+not one man in a year would be tempted to come this way, unless it were
+definitely known that some one lived here.
+
+As the camp of a man who was prospecting for pastime rather than for a
+grubstake, the place was perfect.  Mack Nolan had taken possession of a
+cabin dug into the hill at the head of a long draw. A brush-covered
+shed of makeshift construction sheltered a car of the ubiquitous Ford
+make.  Fifty yards away and in full sight of the cabin, the mouth of a
+tunnel yawned blackly under a rhyolite ledge.
+
+Casey swept the camp with an observant glance and nodded approval as
+and stopped before the cabin.
+
+"As a prospector, Mr. Nolan, I'll say 'tis a fine layout you got here.
+An' tain't the first time an honest-lookin' mine has been made to cover
+things far off from minin'.  Like the Black Butte bunch, f'r instance.
+But if any one was to ride up on yuh unexpected here, I'll say yuh
+could meet 'em with a grin an' feel easy about your secrets."
+
+"That's praise indeed, coming from an old hand like you," Nolan
+declared.  "Now I'll tell you something else.  With Casey Ryan in the
+camp the whole thing's twice as convincing.  Come in.  I want to show
+you what I call an artistic interior."
+
+Grinning, Casey followed him inside and exclaimed profanely in
+admiration of Mack Nolan's genius.  The cabin showed every mark of the
+owner's interest in the geologic formation of that immediate district.
+
+On the floor along the wall lay specimens of mineralized rock, a couple
+of prospector's picks, a single-jack and a set of drills; a sample
+sack, grimed and with a hole in the corner mended by the simple process
+of gathering the cloth together around it and tying it tightly with a
+string, hung from a nail above the tools. On the window sill were
+specimens of ore; two or three of the pieces showed a richness that
+lighted Casey's eyes with the enthusiasm of an old prospector.  Mining
+journals and a prospector's manual lay upon a box table at the foot of
+the bunk. For the rest, the cabin looked exactly what it was--the
+orderly home of a man quite accustomed to primitive living far off from
+his fellows.
+
+They had a very satisfactory breakfast cooked by Mack Nolan from his
+own supplies and eaten in a leisurely manner while Nolan talked of
+primary formations and secondary, and of mineral intrusions and breaks.
+Casey listened and learned a few things he had not known, for all his
+years of prospecting.  Mack Nolan, he decided, could pass anywhere as a
+mining expert.
+
+"And now," said Nolan briskly, when he had hung up the dishpan and
+draped the dishcloth over it to dry, "I'll show you the bottling works.
+We'll have to do the work by lantern-light.  There's not one chance in
+fifty that any one would show up here--but you never can tell. We could
+get the stuff out of sight easily enough while the car was coming up
+the gulch.  But the smell is a different matter. We'll take no chances."
+
+At the head of the bunk, a curtained space beneath a high shelf very
+obviously did duty as a wardrobe.  A leather motor coat hung there, one
+sleeve protruding beyond the curtain of flowered calico. Other garments
+bulged the cloth here and there.  Nolan, smiling over his shoulder at
+Casey, nodded and pushed the clothing aside.  A door behind opened
+inward, admitting the two into a small recess from which another door
+opened into a cellar dug deep into the hill.
+
+Undoubtedly this had once been used as a frost-proof storeroom. A small
+ventilator pipe opened--so Nolan told Casey--in the middle of a
+greasewood clump.  Nolan lighted a gasoline lantern that shed a white
+brilliance upon the room.  On the long table which extended down one
+side of the room, Casey saw boxes of bottles and other supplies which
+he did not at the moment recognize.
+
+"We'll have to rebottle all the whisky," said Nolan.
+
+"You'll see a certain mark blown into the bottom of each one of these.
+The champagne, I'm afraid, I must either confiscate and destroy or run
+the risk of marking the labels.  The hop we'll lay aside for further
+consideration."
+
+Casey grinned, thinking of the speedy downfall of his enemies, Smiling
+Lou and Kenner--and, as a secondary consideration other crooks of their
+type.
+
+"So now we'll unload the stuff, Ryan, and get to work here." Nolan
+adjusted the white flame in the mantle of the gasoline lantern and led
+the way outside.  "Take in the seat-cushion, Casey.  I don't fancy
+opening it outside, even in this howling wilderness."
+
+"I think I'll just pack in the kegs first, Mr. Nolan."  For the first
+time since the shock of Mr. Nolan's "mind-reading" the night before,
+Casey ventured a suggestion.  "Anybody comes along, it's the kegs
+they'd look at cross-eyed.  Cushions is expected in Fords--if I ain't
+buttin' in," he added meekly.
+
+"Which you're not.  You're acting as my agent now, Ryan, and it will
+take two heads to put this over without a hitch.  Sure, put the kegs
+out of sight first.  The bottles next--and then we'll make short work
+of the dope in the cushion."
+
+Casey carried in the kegs while Nolan kept watch for inopportune
+visitors.  It was thought inadvisable to unload the camp outfit from
+the car until the whisky was all removed.  The outfit effectually hid
+what was below--and they were taking no chances. They both breathed
+freer when the two kegs were in the cellar. Nolan was pleased; too,
+when Casey came out with the sample bag and announced that he would
+carry the bottles in the bag.  Then Nolan fancied he heard a car, and
+walked away to where he would have a longer view down the gulch.  He
+would whistle, he said, and warn Casey if someone was coming.
+
+He had not proceeded fifty yards when Casey yelled and brought him back
+at a run.  Casey was rummaging in the car, throwing things about with a
+recklessness which ill-became an agent of the self-possessed Mack Nolan.
+
+"There ain't a damn' bottle here!" he bellowed indignantly. "Them
+crooks gypped me outa ten gallons uh good, bottle whisky! Now what do
+you know about that, Mr. Nolan?  That feller said it was high-grade
+stuff he had packed away at the bottom.  He lied. There ain't nothin'
+here but a set uh skid chains an' a jack. An' the champagne, mebby,
+under the front seat!"
+
+Mack Nolan's eyes narrowed.  "I think Ryan, I'll have a look under that
+front seat."
+
+He had a look--several looks, in fact.  There was the false bottom
+under the seat, but there was nothing in it.  He took his pocket knife,
+opened a blade and split the edge of the seat-cushion at the bottom. He
+inserted a finger and thumb and drew out a bit of hair stuffing. He
+stood up and eyed Casey sharply, and Casey stared back defensively.
+
+"He was a darned liar from start t' finish.  He said there was
+champagne an' he said there was hop," Casey stated flatly.
+
+"I wondered at his letting go of stuff as valuable as that," said
+Nolan. "I think we'd better take a look at those kegs."
+
+They went into the cellar and took a look at the kegs.  Both kegs.
+Afterward they stood and looked at each other.  Casey's hands went to
+his hips, and the muscles along his jaw hardened into lumps. He spat
+into the dirt of the cellar floor.
+
+"Water!"  He snorted disgustedly.  "Casey Ryan with the devil an' all
+scart outa him, thinkin' he had ownership of a load uh booze an' hop
+sufficient t' hang 'im!"  His hand slid into his trousers pocket,
+reaching for the comforting plug of tobacco.  "Stuck up an' robbed is
+what happens t' Casey.  You can ask anybody if it ain't highway
+robbery!"
+
+Nolan stopped whistling under his breath. "There's the Ford," he
+reminded Casey comfortingly.
+
+"Which I wisht it wasn't!" snarled Casey.  "You know yourself, Mr.
+Nolan, it's likely stole, an' the first man I meet in the trail'll
+likely take it off me, claimin' it's his'n!"
+
+Mack Nolan started whistling again, but checked himself abruptly.
+"Well, our trap's wanting bait, I see.  This leaves me still hunting
+the White Mule."
+
+"Aw, tahell with your White Mule!  Tahell with everything!" Casey
+kicked the nearest keg viciously and went out into the sunshine,
+swearing to himself.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER SIXTEEN
+
+In the shade of a juniper that grew on the highest point of the gulch's
+rim, Mack Nolan lay sprawled on the flat of his back, one arm for a
+pillow, and stared up into the serene blue of the sky with cottony
+flakes of cloud swimming steadily to the northeast. Three feet away,
+Casey Ryan rested on left hip and elbow and stared glumly down upon the
+cabin directly beneath them. Whenever his pale, straight-lidded eyes
+focussed upon the dusty top of the Ford car standing in front of the
+cabin, Casey said something under his breath.       Miles away to the
+south, pale violet, dreamlike in the distance, the jagged outline of a
+small mountain range stood as if painted upon the horizon.  A wavy
+ribbon of smudgy brown was drawn uncertainly across the base of the
+mountains.  This, Casey knew, when his eyes lifted to look that way,
+marked the line of the Sante Fe and a train moving heavily upgrade to
+the west.
+
+Toward it dipped the smooth stretch of barren mesa cut straight down
+the middle with a yellow line that was the highway up which Casey had
+driven the morning before.  The inimitable magic of distance and high
+desert air veiled greasewood, sage and sand with the glamour of
+unreality.  The mountains beyond, unspeakably desolate and forbidding
+at close range, and the little black buttes standing afar, off--small
+spewings of age-old volcanos dead before man was born--seemed
+fascinating, unknown islets anchored in a sea of enchantment.  Across
+the valley to the west nearer mountains, all amethyst and opal tinted,
+stood bold and inscrutable, with jagged peaks thrust into the blue to
+pierce and hold the little clouds that came floating by.  Even the
+gulch at hand had been touched by the enchanter's wand and smiled
+mysteriously in the vivid sunlight, the very air a-quiver with that
+indescribable beauty of the high mesa land which holds desert dwellers
+in thrall.
+
+When first Casey saw the smoke smudge against the mountains to the
+south, he remembered his misadventure of the lower desert and swore.
+When he looked again, the majestic sweep of distance gave him a
+satisfied feeling of freedom from the crowded pettinesses of the city.
+For the first time since trouble met him in the trail between
+Victorville and Barstow, Casey heaved a sigh of content because he was
+once more out in the big land he loved. Those distant, painted
+mountains, looking as impossible as the back drop of a stage, held
+gulches and deep canyons he knew.  The closer hills he had prospected.
+The mesa, spread all around him, seemed more familiar than the white
+apartment house in Los Angeles which Casey had lately called home.  And
+if the thought of the Little Woman brought with it the vague discomfort
+of a schoolboy playing hookey, Casey could not have regretted being
+here with Mack Nolan if he had tried.
+
+They were lying up here in the shade--following the instinct of other
+creatures of the wild to guard against surprises--while they worked out
+a nice problem in moonshine.  And since the desert had never meant a
+monotonously placid life to Casey--who carried his problems
+philosophically as a dog bears patiently with fleas--he had every
+reason now for feeling very much at home.  When he reached mechanically
+into his pocket for his Bull Durham and papers, any man who knew him
+well would have recognized the motion as a sign that Casey was himself
+again, once more on his mental feet and ready to go boring
+optimistically into his next bunch of trouble.
+
+Mack Nolan raised his head off his arm and glanced at Casey quizzically.
+
+"Well--we can't catch fish if we won't cut bait," he volunteered
+sententiously.  "I've a nice little job staked out for you, Casey."
+
+Casey gave a grunt that might mean one of several things, and which
+probably meant them all.  He waited until he had his cigarette going.
+"If it ain't a goat's job I'm fer it," he said. "Casey Ryan ain't the
+man t' set in the shade whilst there's men runnin' loose he's darned
+anxious t' meet."
+
+"I've been thinking over the deal those fellows pulled on you. If the
+man Kenner had left you the booze and dope he told you was in the car,
+I'd say it was a straight case of a sticky-fingered officer letting a
+bootlegger by with part of his load, and a later attack of cold feet on
+the part of the bootlegger.  But they didn't leave you any booze.  So I
+have doped it this way, Ryan.
+
+"The thing's deeper than it looked, yesterday.  Those two were working
+together, part of a gang, I should say, with a fairly well-organized
+system.  By accident--and probably for a greater degree of safety in
+getting out of the city, Kenner invited you to ride with him.  He
+wanted no argument with that traffic cop--no record made of his name
+and license number.  So he took you in. When he found out who you were,
+he knew you were at outs with the law. He knew you as an experienced
+desert man.  He had you placed as a valuable member of their gang, if
+you could be won over and persuaded to join them.
+
+"As soon as possible he got you behind the wheel--further protection to
+himself if he should meet an officer who was straight.  He felt you out
+on the subject of a partnership.  And when you met Smiling Lou--well,
+this Kenner had decided to take no chance with you. He still had hopes
+of pulling you in with them, but he was far from feeling sure of you.
+He undoubtedly gave Smiling Lou the cue to make the thing appear an
+ordinary case of highjacking while he ditched his whole load so that
+there would be no evidence against him if he lost out and you turned
+nasty.
+
+"I'm absolutely certain, Casey, that if you had not been along, Smiling
+Lou would not have touched that load.  They'd probably have stopped
+there for a talk, exchanged news and perhaps perfected future plans,
+and parted like two old cronies.  It's possible, of course, that
+Smiling Lou might have taken some whisky back with him--if he had
+needed it.  Otherwise, I think they split more cash than booze, as a
+rule."
+
+Casey sat up.  "Well, they coulda played me for a sucker easy enough,"
+he admitted reluctantly.  "An' if it'll be any help to yuh, Mr. Nolan,
+I'll say that I never seen the money passed from Kenner to Smilin' Lou,
+an' I never seen a bottle unloaded from the car.  I heard 'em yes. An'
+I'll say there was a bunch of 'em all right.  But what I SEEN was the
+road ahead of me and that car of Smilin' Lou's standin' in the middle
+of it.  He had a gun pulled on me, mind yuh--and you can ask anybody if
+a feller feels like rubberin' much when there's only the click of a
+trigger between him an' a six-foot hole in the ground."
+
+"All the more reason," said Nolan, also sitting up with his hands
+clasped around his knees, "why it's important to catch them with the
+goods.  You'll have to peddle hootch, Casey, until we get Smiling Lou
+and his outfit."
+
+"And where, Mr. Nolan, do I git the booze to peddle?" asked Casey
+practically.
+
+Nolan laughed to himself.  "It can be bought," he said, "but I'd rather
+not.  Since you've never monkeyed with the stuff, it might make you
+conspicuous if you went around buying up a load of hootch. And of
+course I can't appear in this thing at all.  But I have what I think is
+a very good plan."
+
+Casey looked at him inquiringly, and again Nolan laughed.
+
+"Nothing for it, Casey,--we'll have to locate a still and rob it. That,
+or make some of our own, which takes time.  And it's an unpleasant,
+messy job anyway."
+
+Casey stared dubiously down into the gulch.  "That'd be fine, Mr.
+Nolan, if we knew where was the still.  Or mebby yuh do know."
+
+Mack Nolan shook his head.  "No, I don't, worse luck. I haven't been
+long enough in the district to know as much about it as I hope to know
+later on.  Prospecting for this headquarters took a little time; and
+getting my stuff moved in here secretly took more time.  A week ago,
+Casey, I shouldn't have been quite ready to use you.  But you came when
+you were needed, and so--I feel sure the White Mule will presently show
+up."
+
+Casey lifted his head and stared meditatively out across the immensity
+of the empty land around them.
+
+"She's a damn' big country, Mr. Nolan. I dunno," he remarked
+doubtfully.  "But Casey Ryan has yet t' go after a thing an' fail t'
+git it.  I guess if it's hootch we want, it ought t' be easy enough t'
+find; it shore has been hard t' dodge it lately! If yuh want White
+Mule, Mr. Nolan, you send Casey out travelin' peaceful an' meanin' harm
+t' nobody.  Foller Casey and you'll find 'im tangled up with a mess uh
+hootch b'fore he gits ten miles from camp."
+
+"You could go out and highjack some one." Nolan agreed, taking him
+seriously--which Casey had not intended.  "I think we'll go down and
+load the camp outfit into my car, Ryan, and I'll start you out.  Go up
+into your old stamping ground where people know you. If you're careful
+in picking your men, you could locate some hootch, couldn't you,
+without attracting attention?"
+
+Casey studied the matter.  "Bill Masters could mebby help me out," he
+said finally.  "Only I don't like the friends Bill's been wishin' onto
+me lately.  This man Kenner, that held me up, knowed Bill Masters
+intimate.  I'm kinda losin' my taste fer Bill lately."
+
+Mack Nolan seized upon the clue avidly.  Before Casey quite realized
+what he had done, he found himself hustled away from camp in Mack
+Nolan's car, headed for Lund in the service of his government. Since
+young Kenner had been able to talk so intimately of Bill Masters, Mack
+Nolan argued that Bill Masters should likewise be able to give some
+useful information concerning young Kenner. Moreover, a man in Bill
+Masters' position would probably know at least a few of the hidden
+trails of the White Mule near Lund.
+
+"If you can bring back a load of moonshine Ryan, by all means do so,"
+Nolan instructed Casey at the last moment.  "Here's money to buy it
+with.  We should have enough to make a good haul for Smiling Lou.
+Twenty gallons at least--forty, if you can get them. Keep your weather
+eye open, and whatever happens, don't mention my name or say that you
+are working with the law.  In five days, if you are not here, I shall
+drive to Las Vegas.  Get word to me there if anything goes wrong.  Just
+write or wire to General Delivery. But I look for you back, Ryan, not
+later than Friday midnight. Take no unnecessary risk; this is more
+important than you know."
+
+Nolan's crisp tone of authority remained with Casey mile upon mile. And
+such was the Casey Ryan driving that midnight found him coasting into
+Bill Masters' garage in Lund with the motor shut off and a grin on the
+Casey Ryan face.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
+
+Mack Nolan had just crawled into his bunk on Wednesday night when he
+thought he heard a car laboring up the gulch.  He sat up in bed to
+listen and then got hurriedly into his clothes.  He was standing just
+around the corner of the dugout where the headlights could not reach
+him, when Casey killed the engine and stopped before the door. Steam
+was rising in a small cloud from the radiator cap, and the sound of
+boiling water was distinctly audible some distance away.
+
+Mack Nolan waited until Casey had climbed out from behind the wheel and
+headed for the door.  Then he stepped out and hailed him.  Casey
+started perceptibly, whirling as if to face an enemy. When he saw that
+it was Nolan he apparently lost his desire to enter the cabin. Instead
+he came close to Nolan and spoke in a hoarse whisper.
+
+"We better run 'er under the shed, Mr. Nolan, and drain the darned
+radiator.  I dunno am I follered or not, but I was awhile back. But the
+man that catches Casey Ryan when he's on the trail an' travelin, has
+yet t' be born.  An' you can ask anybody if that ain't so."
+
+Mack Nolan's eyes narrowed.  "And who followed you then?" he asked
+quietly. "Did you bring any hootch?"
+
+"Did yuh send Casey Ryan after hootch, or was it mebby spuds er
+somethin'?"  Casey retorted with heavy dignity.  "Will yuh pack it in,
+Mr. Nolan, whilst I back the car in the shed, or shall I bring it when
+I come?  It ain't so much," he added drily,  "but it cost the trouble
+of a trainload."
+
+"I'll take it in," said Nolan.  "If any one does come we want no
+evidence in reach."
+
+Casey turned to the car, clawed at his camp outfit and lifted out a
+demijohn which he grimly handed to Nolan.  "Fer many a mile it rode on
+the seat with me so I could drink 'er down if they got me cornered," he
+grinned.  "One good swaller is about the size of it, Mr. Nolan."
+
+Nolan grinned in sympathy and turned into the cabin, bearing the
+three-gallon, wicker-covered glass bottle in his arms.  Presently he
+returned to the doorway and stood there listening down the gulch until
+Casey came up, walking from the shed.
+
+"'Tis a good thing yuh left this other car standin' here cold an'
+peaceful, Mr. Nolan," Casey, observed, after he also had stood for a
+minute listening.  "If they're follerin' they'll be here darn' soon. If
+they ain't I've ditched 'em.  Let's git t' bed an' I'll tell yuh my
+tale uh woe."
+
+Without a word Nolan led the way into the cabin.  In the dark they
+undressed and got into the bed which was luckily wide enough for two.
+
+"Had your supper?" Nolan asked belatedly when they were settled.
+
+"I did not," Casey grunted.  "I will say, Mr. Nolan, there's few times
+in my life when you'd see Casey Ryan missin' 'is supper whilst layin'
+tracks away from a fight.  But if it was light enough you could gaze
+upon 'im now.  And I must hand it t' the Gallopin' Gussie yuh give me
+the loan of fer the trip.  She brung me home ahead of the sheriff--and
+you can ask anybody if Casey Ryan himself can't be proud uh that!"
+
+"The sheriff?" Nolan's voice was puzzled.  He seemed to be considering
+something for a minute, before he spoke again.  "You could have
+explained to the sheriff, couldn't you, your reason for having booze in
+the car?"
+
+Casey raised to one elbow.  "When yuh told Casey Ryan 'twas not many
+men you'd trust, and that you trusted me an' the business was t' be
+secret--Mr. Nolan, you 'was talkin' t' CASEY RYAN!" He lay down again
+as if that precluded further argument.
+
+"Good! I thought I hadn't made a mistake in my man," Nolan approved, in
+a tone that gave Casey an inner glow of pride in himself.  "Let's have
+the story, old man.  Did you see Bill Masters?"
+
+"Bill Masters," said Casey grimly, "was not in Lund.  His garage is
+sold an' Bill's in Denver--which is a long drive for a Ford t' git
+there an' back before Friday midnight.  Yuh put a time limit me, Mr.
+Nolan, an' nobody had Bill's address.  I didn't foller Bill t' Denver.
+I asked some others in Lund if they knowed a man named Kenner, and they
+did not.  So then I went huntin' booze that I could git without the
+hull of Nevada knowin' it in fifteen minutes.  An' Casey's got this t'
+say: When yuh WANT hootch, it's hard t' find as free gold in granite.
+When yuh DON'T want it, it's forced on yuh at the point of a gun.  This
+jug I stole--seein' your business is private, Mr. Nolan.
+
+"I grabbed it off some fellers I knowed in Lund an' never had no use
+for, anyway.  They're mean enough when they're sober, an' when they're
+jagged they're not t' be mentioned on a Sunday.  I mighta paid 'em for
+it, but money's no good t' them fellers an' there's no call t' waste
+it.  So they made a holler and I sets the jug down an' licks them both,
+an' comes along home mindin' my own business.
+
+"So I guess they 'phoned the sheriff in Vegas that here comes a
+bootlegger and land 'im quick.  Anyway, I was goin' t' stop there an'
+take on a beefsteak an' a few cups uh coffee, but I never done it.  I
+was slowin' down in front uh Sam's Place when a friend uh mine gives me
+the high sign t' put 'er in high an' keep 'er goin'. Which I done.
+
+"Down by Ladd's, Casey looks back an' here comes the sheriff's car hell
+bent fer 'lection (anyway it looked like the sheriff's car). An' I
+wanta say right here, Mr. Nolan, that's a darn' good Ford yuh got!  I
+was follered, and 'I was follered hard.  But I'm here an' they'
+ain't--an' you can ask anybody if that didn't take some going'!"
+
+In the darkness of the cabin Casey turned over and heaved a great sigh.
+On the heels of that came a chuckle.
+
+"I got t' hand it t' the L. A. traffic cops, Mr. Nolan.  They shore
+learned me a lot about dodgin'.  So now yuh got the hull story. If it
+was the sheriff behind me an' if he trails me here, they got no
+evidence an' you can mebby square it with 'im.  You'd know what t' tell
+'im--which is more'n what Casey Ryan can say."
+
+Casey fell asleep immediately afterward, but Mack Nolan lay for a long
+while with his eyes wide open and his ears alert for strange sounds in
+the gulch.  He was a new man in this district, working independently of
+sheriff's offices.  Casey Ryan was the first man he had confided in;
+all others were fair game for Nolan to prove honest or dishonest with
+the government.  The very nature of his business made it so.  For when
+whisky runners drove openly in broad daylight through the country with
+their unlawful loads, somewhere along the line officers of the law were
+sharing the profits. Nolan knew none of them,--by sight.  If he carried
+the records of some safely memorized and pigeonholed for future use,
+that was his own business. Mack Nolan's thoughts were his own and he
+guarded them jealously and slept with his lips tightly closed. He
+wanted no sheriff coming to him for explanation of his movements.
+Wherefore he listened long, and when he slept his slumber was light.
+
+At daylight he was up and abroad.  Two hours after sunrise Casey awoke
+with the smell of breakfast in his nostrils.  He rolled over and
+blinked at Mack Nolan standing with his hat on the back of his head and
+a cigarette between his lips, calmly turning three hot-cakes with a
+kitchen knife.  Casey grinned condescendingly.  He himself turned his
+cakes by the simple process of tossing them in the air a certain kind
+of flip, and catching them dexterously as they came down.  Right there
+he decided that Mack Nolan was not after all a real outdoors man.
+
+"Well, the sheriff didn't arrive last night," Nolan observed
+cheerfully, when he saw that Casey was awake.  "I don't much look for
+him, either.  Your driving on past the turn to Juniper Wells and coming
+up that other old road very likely threw him off the track.  You must
+have been close to the State line then and he gave you up as a bad job."
+
+"It was a GOOD job!"  Casey maintained reaching for his clothes. "I
+made 'em think I was headed clean outa the country.  If they knowed who
+it was at all, they'd know I belong in L. A., and I figured they'd
+guess I was headed there.  They stopped for something this side of
+Searchlight an' so I pulls away from 'em a couple of miles.  They never
+seen where I went to."
+
+While he washed for breakfast, Casey began to take stock of certain
+minor injuries.
+
+"That darned Pete Gibson has got tushes in his mouth like a wild hawg;
+the kind that sticks out," he grumbled, touching certain skinned places
+on his knuckles.  "Every time I landed on 'im yesterday I run against
+them tushes uh his'n."  But he added with a grin, "They ain't so solid
+as they was when I met up with 'im. I felt one of 'em give 'fore I got
+through."
+
+"Brings the price of moonshine up a bit, doesn't it?"  Nolan suggested
+drily.  "I rather think you might better have paid the men their price.
+A fight is well enough in its way--I'm Irish myself.  But as my agent,
+Ryan, the main idea is to let the law fight for you.  Our work is
+merely to give the law a chance.  I like your not wanting to explain to
+the sheriff.  Prohibition officers do not explain, as a rule. The law
+behind them does that.
+
+"And since the price seems to be rather hard on the knuckles--" He
+glanced down at Casey's hands and grinned.  "--I think it may come
+cheaper to make the stuff ourselves.  Licking two men for three
+gallons, and getting the officers at your tail light into the bargain,
+is all right as an experiment; but I don't believe, Ryan, we ought to
+adopt that as a habit."
+
+Casey cocked an eye up at him.  "Did yuh ever make White Mule, Mr.
+Nolan?" he asked grimly.
+
+Nolan laughed his easy little chuckle. "Why, no, Ryan, I never did. Did
+you?"
+
+"Naw.  I seen some made once, but I had too much of it inside me at the
+time to learn the receipt for it.  I'd rather steal it, if it's all the
+same to you, Mr. Nolan."  His hand went up to the back of his head and
+moved forward, although there was no hat to push. "I've lived honest
+all these years--an', dammit, it's kinda tough to break out with
+stealin I what yuh don't want!  Couldn't we fill them bottles with
+somethin' that LOOKS like hootch?  Cold tea should get by, Mr. Nolan.
+It'd be a fine joke on Smilin' Lou."
+
+"A good joke, maybe--but no evidence.  It isn't against the law, Ryan,
+to have cold tea in your possession.  No, it's got to be whisky, and
+there's got to be a load of it.  Enough to look like business and tempt
+him or any other member of the gang you happen to meet.  If they caught
+you with three gallons, Casey, they'd probably run you in and feel very
+virtuous about it.  Nothing for it, I'm afraid.  We'll have to become
+real moonshiners ourselves for awhile."
+
+Casey ate with less appetite after that.  Making moonshine did not
+appeal to him at all.  Given his choice, I think he would even prefer
+drinking it, unhappy as the effect had been on him.
+
+"We'll need a still, and we'll need the stuff.  I'm going to leave you
+in charge of the camp, Ryan, while I make a trip to Needles. I'll
+deputize you to assist me in cleaning up this district. And this
+district, Ryan, touches salt water.  So if revenge looks good to you,
+you'll have a fine chance to get even with the bootleggers.  And in the
+meantime, just kill time around camp here while I'm gone.  If any one
+shows up, you're prospecting."
+
+That day, doubt-devils took hold of Casey Ryan and plucked at his
+belief.  How did he know that Mack Nolan wasn't another bootlegger,
+wanting to rope Casey in on a job for some fell purpose of his own?  He
+had Mack Nolan's word and nothing more. For that matter, he had also
+had young Kenner's word.  Kenner had fooled him completely.  Mack Nolan
+could also fool him--perhaps.
+
+"Well, anyhow, he never claimed to know Bill Masters, and that's a
+point in 'is favor.  And if it's some dirty work he's up to, he coulda
+made it shorter than what he's doin'.  An' if he's double-crossin'
+Casey Ryan--well, anyway, Casey Ryan 'll be present at the time an'
+place when he does it!"
+
+Upon that comforting thought, Casey decided to trust Mack Nolan until
+he caught him playing crooked; and proceeded to kill time as best he
+could.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
+
+It was noon the next day when Nolan returned, and he did not explain
+why he was eighteen hours overdue.  Casey eyed him expectantly, but
+Nolan's manner was brisk and preoccupied.
+
+"Help me unload this stuff, Ryan," he said, "and put it out of sight in
+the cellar.  We won't have to go through the process of making
+moonshine, after all."
+
+Casey looked into the car, pulling aside the tarp.  Four kegs he
+counted, and lifted out one.
+
+"An' how many did YOU lick, Mr. Nolan?" he grinned over his shoulder as
+he started for the door.
+
+Nolan laughed noncommittally.
+
+"Perhaps I'm luckier at picking my bootleggers," he retorted. "If you
+carry the right brand of bluff, you can keep the skin on your knuckles,
+Ryan.  This beats making it, at any rate."
+
+That afternoon and the next day, Casey Ryan did what he never dreamed
+was possible.  With Mack Nolan to show him how, Casey performed
+miracles.  While he did not, literally change water into wine, he did
+give forty-three gallons of White Mule a most imposing pedigree.
+
+He turned kegs of crude, moonshine whisky into Canadian Club, Garnkirk,
+Tom Pepper, Three Star Hennessey and Cognac--if you were to believe the
+bottles, labels and government seals.  Under Mack Nolan's instruction
+and with his expert assistance, the forgery was perfect.  While the
+cellar reeked with the odor of White Mule when they had finished, the
+bottled array on the table whispered of sybaritic revelings to glisten
+the eyes of the most dissipated man about town.
+
+"When it's as easy done as that, Mr. Nolan, the feller's a fool that
+drinks it.  You've learnt Casey Ryan somethin' that mighta done 'im
+some good a few years back."  He picked up a flat, pint bottle and
+caressed its label with reminiscent finger tips.
+
+"Many's the time me an' old Tommy Pepper drove stage together," he
+mused.  "Throwed 'im at a bear once that I met in the trail over in
+Colorado when I hadn't no gun on me.  Busted a pint on his nose--man!
+Then I never waited to see what happened. I was a wild divil them days
+when me an' Tommy Pepper was side pardners. But a yaller snake with a
+green head crawled out of a bottle of 'im once--and that there was
+where Casey Ryan says good-by to booze. If I hadn't quit 'im then, I'd
+sure as hell quit 'im now. After this performance, Mr. Nolan, Casey
+Ryan's goin' to look twice into his coffee pot.  I wouldn't believe in
+cow's milk, if I done the milkin' myself!"
+
+"Most of the stuff that's peddled nowadays is doctored,"  Nolan
+replied, with the air of one who knows.  "When it isn't White Mule,
+it's likely to be something worse.  That's one of the chief reasons why
+I'm fighting it.  If they only peddled decent whisky it wouldn't be so
+bad, Ryan.  But it's rank poison.  I've seen so many go stone blind--or
+die--that it makes me pretty savage sometimes.  So now I'll coach you
+in the part you're to play as hootch runner; and to-morrow you can
+start for Los Angeles."
+
+Casey did not answer.  He felt absently for his pipe, filled and
+lighted it and went out to sit on the doorstep in gloomy meditation
+while he smoked.
+
+Returning to Los Angeles, even without a bootlegger's load, was not a
+matter which Casey liked to contemplate.  He would have to face the
+Little Woman if he went back; either as a deliberate liar, who lied to
+his wife to gain the freedom he might have had without resorting to
+deceit, or as the victim once more of crooks.  Casey thought he would
+prefer the accusation of lying deliberately to the Little Woman, though
+it made him squirm to think of it.  He wished she had not openly
+taunted him with getting into trouble and needing her always to get him
+out.
+
+He would like to tell her that he was now working for the government.
+The secrecy of his mission, the danger it involved, would impress even
+her amused cynicism.  But the very secrecy of his mission in itself
+made it impossible for him to tell her anything about it. Casey would
+not admit it, but it was a real disappointment to him that he could not
+wear a star on his coat.
+
+All that day and evening he was glum, a strange mood for Casey Ryan.
+But if Mack Nolan noticed his silence, he gave no sign. Nolan himself
+was wholly absorbed by the business in hand.  The success of this plan
+meant a good deal to him, and he told Casey so very frankly; which
+lightened Casey's gloom perceptibly.
+
+Casey was to drive to Los Angeles--even to San Diego if necessary--and
+return within a week, unless Nolan's hopes were fulfilled and Casey was
+held up and highjacked.  If he were apprehended by officers who were
+honestly discharging their duty, Casey was to do thus-and-so, and
+presently be free to drive on with his load.  If he were highjacked
+(Casey gritted his teeth and said he hoped the highjacker would be
+Smiling Lou), he was to permit himself to be robbed, worm himself as
+far as possible into their confidence and return for further orders.
+
+If Mack Nolan should chance to be absent from the cabin, then Casey was
+to wait until he returned.  And Nolan intimated that hereafter the
+making of moonshine might be a part of Casey's duties. Then, without
+warning, Mack Nolan struck at the heart of Casey's worry.
+
+"I don't want to dictate to any man in family affairs, Ryan. But I've
+got to speak of one other matter," he said diffidently. "I suppose
+naturally you'll want to go home and let your wife know you're still
+alive, anyway.  But if you can manage to keep your present business a
+secret for the time being, I think you'd better do it.  You said you
+were planning to be away on a trip for some time, I remember.  If you
+can just let it go that way, or say that you are prospecting over here,
+I wish you would. Think you can manage that all right?"
+
+"I'd rather manage a six-horse team of bronk mules," Casey admitted.
+"But after the way the missus thinks I lied to 'er about takin' the
+next train home from Barstow, anything I say 'll be used agin' me. My
+wife's got brains.  She ain't put it down that the trains have quit
+runnin'.  Accordin' to her figures, Casey's lied and he's in a hole
+again, an' it'll be up to her an' Jack to run windlass an' pull 'im
+out.  Don't matter what I say she won't believe me anyhow--so Casey
+won't say nothin'.  Can't lie with your mouth shut, can yuh?"
+
+"Oh, yes, it's been done," Mack Nolan chuckled.  "Now we'll set down
+the serial numbers and the bank name of this 'jack',--and here's your
+expense money separate.  And if there's anything that isn't clear to
+you, Ryan, speak up.  You won't hear from me again, probably, until
+you're back from this fishing trip."
+
+Casey thought that everything was perfectly clear, and rashly he said
+so, as he started off.
+
+From Barstow to Victorville, from Victorville to Camp Cajon Casey drove
+expectantly, hoping to meet Smiling Lou.  He scanned each car that
+approached and slowed for every meeting like a searching party or a man
+who is lost and wishes to inquire the way.  His pace would have been
+law-abiding in Los Angeles at five o'clock on Broadway between Fourth
+and Eighth streets.  Goggled women tourists eyed him curiously, and one
+car stopped full to see what he wanted. But his "Tom Pepper" rode safe
+under the tarp behind him, and the "Three Star Hennessey" beaded
+daintily with the joggling it got, and Casey was neither halted nor
+questioned as he passed.
+
+At Camp Cajon Casey stopped and cooked an early supper, because the
+summer crowd was there and a real bootlegger would have considered
+stopping rather unsafe.  Casey boiled coffee over one of the camp
+fireplaces and watched furtively the sunburned holiday group nearest.
+He placed his supper on one of the round, cement tables near the car,
+and every man who passed that way Casey watched unblinkingly while he
+ate.
+
+He succeeded in making three different parties swallow their supper in
+a hurry and pack up and leave, glancing back uneasily at Casey as they
+drove away.  But Casey himself was unmolested, and no one asked about
+his load.
+
+From Camp Cajon to San Bernardino Casey drove furiously, remembering
+young Kenner's desire for speed.  He stopped there for the night, and
+nearly had a fight with the garage man where he put up, because he
+showed undue caution concerning the safety of his car from prowlers
+during the night.
+
+He left the car there that day and returned furtively after dark,
+asking the night man if he had seen any saps around his car. The night
+man looked at him uncomprehendingly.
+
+"I dunno--nothin's been picked up since I come on at six.  We ain't
+responsible for lost articles, anyway.  See that sign?"
+
+Casey grunted, cranked up and drove away, wondering whether the night
+man was as innocent as he tried to act.
+
+From San Bernardino to Los Angeles Casey drove placidly as a load of
+oranges in February.  He put up at a cheap place on San Pedro Street,
+with his car in the garage next door and a five-dollar tip in the palm
+of a rat-faced mechanic with Casey's injunction to clean 'er dingbats
+and keep other people away.
+
+He did not go out to see the Little Woman, after all.  He had sent her
+a wire from Goffs the day before, saying that he was prospecting with a
+fellow and he hoped she was well.  This, after long pondering, had
+seemed to him the easiest way out of an argument with the Little Woman.
+The wire had given no address whereby she might reach him, but the
+omission was not the oversight Casey hoped she would consider it.  He
+wanted to be reassuring without starting anything.
+
+Los Angeles with no Little Woman at his elbow was a dismal hole, and
+Casey got out of it as soon as possible.  As per instructions, he drove
+down to San Diego, ventured perilously close to the Mexico line, fooled
+around there for a day looking for trouble, failed to find so much as a
+frown and drove back.
+
+He headed straight for San Bernardino, which was Smiling Lou's
+headquarters.  He killed time there and met the sheriff on the street
+the day he arrived.  The sheriff had a memory trained to hold faces
+indefinitely.  He smiled a little, made a polite gesture in the general
+direction of his hat and passed on.  Casey swore to himself and
+resolved to duck guiltily around the nearest corner if he saw the
+sheriff coming his way again.
+
+On the day when his time limit expired Casey drove up the gulch to
+Nolan's camp.  In the car behind him rode undisturbed his Canadian
+Club, Garnkirk, Three-Star Hennessey, Cognac and Tom Pepper; bottles,
+labels, government seals and all.  Nolan was walking over from the
+tunnel when Casey arrived.  He smiled inquiringly as he shook hands,--a
+ceremony to which Casey was plainly unaccustomed.
+
+"What luck, Ryan?  I beat you back by about two hours.  Getting things
+ready to begin making it. Did they catch you all right?"
+
+"Naw!" Casey spat disgustedly.  "Never seen a booze peddler, never seen
+a cop look my way.  I went around actin' like I just killed a man an'
+stole a lady's diamonds, and the sheriff at San Berdoo TIPS 'IS HAT TO
+ME, by golly!  Drove through L. A. hella-whoopin' an' not a darned
+traffic cop knowed it was Casey Ryan.  You can ask anybody if I didn't
+do every thing possible to git in bad or give bootleggers a tip I was
+one of 'em.
+
+"You can't git Casey Ryan up agin' the gang you're after, Mr. Nolan.
+Only way Casey Ryan can git up agin' the law is to go along peaceable
+tryin' to please the missus an' mindin' his own business.  I coulda
+peddled that damn' hootch on a hangin' tray like circus lemonade. I
+coulda stood on the corner in any uh them damned towns with the hull
+works piled out on a table in front of me, an' I coulda hollered my
+damn' head off; an' Smilin' Lou woulda passed me by like I was sellin'
+chewin' gum and shoe strings."
+
+Mack Nolan looked at Casey, turned and went into the cabin, sat down on
+the edge of the bed and laughed until the tears dripped over his
+lashes.  Casey Ryan followed him, and sat on the edge of the table with
+his arms folded.  Whenever Mack Nolan lifted his face from his palms
+and looked at Casey, Casey swore.  Whereat Mack Nolan would give
+another whoop.
+
+You can't wonder if relations were somewhat strained, between them for
+the rest of that day.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER NINETEEN
+
+Nature had made Casey Ryan an optimist.  The blood of Ireland had made
+him pugnacious.  And Mack Nolan had a way with him. Wherefore, Casey
+Ryan once more came larruping down the grade to Camp Cajon and turned
+in there with a dogged purpose in his eyes and with his jaw set
+stubbornly.  History has it that whenever Casey Ryan gets that look in
+his face, the man underneath might just as well holler and crawl out;
+because holler he must, before Casey would ever let him up.
+
+Behind him, stowed under the bedding, grub and camp dishes, rode his
+eight cases of bootlegger's bait, packed convincingly in the sawdust,
+straw and cardboard of the wet old days when Uncle Sam himself O. K.'d
+the job.  A chain of tiny beads at the top of each bottle lied and said
+it was good liquor.  The boxes themselves said, "This side up"--when
+any side up would thrill the soul of the man who owned a wet appetite
+and a dry throat.
+
+It was a good job Mack Nolan had made of the bottling.  Uncle Sam
+himself must needs polish his spectacles and take another look to
+detect the fraud.  It was a marvelous job of bottling,--and the proof
+lay only in the drinking.  "Tommy" Pepper rode in pint flasks designed
+to slip safely into a man's coat pocket.  Beside him two cases of
+Canadian Club (if you were satisfied with the evidence of your eyes)
+sat serene in round-shouldered bottles--conventional, secure in its
+reputation.  Cognac and Garnkirk, a case for each, rode in tall, slim
+bottles with no shoulders at all.  Plumper than they, Three Star
+Hennessey sat smugly waiting until the joke was turned upon its victim.
+A tempting load it was, to men of certain minds and morals.  Casey
+grinned sardonically when he thought of it.
+
+Casey drove deep into the grove of sycamores and made camp there, away
+from the chattering picnic parties at the cement tables. By Mack
+Nolan's advice he was adopting a slightly different policy. He no
+longer shunned his fellow men or glared suspiciously when strangers
+approached.  Instead he was very nearly the old Casey Ryan, except that
+he failed to state his name and business to all and sundry with the old
+Casey Ryan candor, but instead avoided the subject altogether or evaded
+questions with vague generalities.
+
+But as an understudy for Ananias, Casey Ryan would have been a failure.
+In two hours or less he had made easy trail acquaintance with six
+different men, and he had unconsciously managed to vary his vague
+account of himself six different times.  Wherefore he was presently
+asked cautiously concerning his thirst.
+
+"They's times," said Casey, hopefully lowering an eyelid, "when a
+feller dassent take a nip, no matter how thirsty he gits."
+
+The questioner stared at him for a minute and slowly nodded. "You're
+darn' right," he assented.  "I scursely ever touch anything, myself."
+And he added vaguely, "Quite a lot of it peddled out here in this camp,
+I guess.  Tourists comin' through are scared to pack it themselves--but
+they sure don't overlook any chances to take a snort."
+
+"Yeah?"  Casey cocked a knowing eye at the speaker.  "They must pay a
+pretty fair price fer it, too.  Don't the cops bother folks none?"
+
+"Some--I guess."
+
+Casey filled his pipe and offered his tobacco sack to the man. The
+fellow took it, nodding listless thanks, and filled his own pipe. The
+two sat down together on the knee of a deformed sycamore and smoked in
+circumspect silence.
+
+"Arizona, I see."  The man nodded toward the license plates on Casey's
+car.
+
+"Uh-huh."  Casey glanced that way.  "Know a man name of Kenner?" He
+asked abruptly.
+
+The fellow looked at Casey sidelong, without turning his head.
+
+"Some. Do you?"
+
+"Some."  Casey felt that he was making headway, though it was a good
+deal like playing checkers with the king row wide open and only two
+crowned heads to defend his men.
+
+"Friend uh yours?"  The fellow turned his head and looked straight at
+Casey.
+
+Casey returned him a pale, straight-lidded stare.  The man's glance
+flickered and swung away.
+
+"Who wants to know?"  Casey asked calmly.
+
+"Oh, you can call me Jim Cassidy.  I just asked."  He removed his pipe
+from his mouth and inspected it apathetically.  "He's a friend of Bill
+Masters, garage man up at Lund.  Know Bill?"
+
+"Any man says I don't, you can call 'im a liar."  Casey also inspected
+his pipe.  "Bought that car off'n Kenner,"  Casey added boldly. Getting
+into trouble, he discovered, carried almost the thrill of trying to
+keep out of it.
+
+"Yeah?"  The self-styled Jim Cassidy looked at the Ford more
+attentively.  "And contents?"
+
+Casey snorted.  "What do you know about goats, if anything?" he asked
+mysteriously.
+
+Jim Cassidy eyed Casey sidelong through a silence.  Then he brought his
+palm down flat on his thigh and laughed.
+
+"You pass," he stated, with a relieved sigh. "He's a dinger, ain't he?"
+
+"You know 'im, all right." Casey also laughed and put out his hand. "If
+you're a friend of Kenner's, shake hands with Casey Ryan!  He's damned
+glad to meet yuh--an' you can ask anybody if that ain't the truth."
+
+After that the acquaintance progressed more smoothly.  By the time
+Casey spread his bed close alongside the car--he knew just how much
+booze Jim Cassidy carried, just what Cassidy expected to make off the
+load, and a good many other bits of information of no particular use to
+Casey.
+
+A strange, inner excitement held Casey awake long after Jim Cassidy was
+asleep snoring.  He lay looking up into the leafy branches of the
+sycamore beside him and watched a star slip slowly across an open space
+between the branches.  Farther up the grove a hilarious group of young
+hikers sang snatches of songs to the uncertain accompaniment of a
+ukelele.  A hundred feet away on his right, occasional cars went
+coasting past on the down grade, coming in off the desert, or climbed
+more slowly with motors working, on their way up from the valley below.
+The shifting brilliance from their headlights flicked the grove
+capriciously as they went by. Now and then a car stopped.  One, a big,
+high-powered car with one dazzling spotlight swung into the narrow
+driveway and entered the grove.
+
+Casey lifted his head like a desert turtle and blinked curiously at the
+car as it eased past him a few feet and stopped.  A gloved hand went
+out to the spotlight and turned it slowly, lighting the grove foot by
+foot and pausing to dwell upon each silent, parked car. Casey sat up in
+the blankets and waited.
+
+Luck, he told himself, was grinning at him from ear to ear.  For this
+was Smiling Lou himself, and none other.  He was alone,--a big, hungry,
+official fish searching the grove greedily.  Casey swallowed a grin and
+tried to look scared.  The light was slowly working around in his
+direction.
+
+I don't suppose Casey Ryan had ever looked really scared in his life.
+His face simply refused to wear so foreign an expression. Therefore,
+when the spotlight finally revealed him, Casey blinked against it with
+a half-hearted grin, as if he had been caught at something foolish.
+The light remained upon him, and Smiling Lou got out of the car and
+came back to him slowly.
+
+Not even Casey thought of calling Smiling Lou a fool.  He couldn't be
+and play the game he was playing.  Smiling Lou said nothing whatever
+until he had looked the car over carefully (giving the license number a
+second sharp glance) and had regarded Casey fixedly while he made up
+his mind.
+
+"Hullo!  Where's your pardner?" he demanded then.
+
+"I'm in pardnerships with myself this trip," Casey retorted. He waited
+while Smiling Lou looked him over again, more carefully this time.
+
+"Where did you get that car?"
+
+"From Kenner--for sixteen-hundred and seventeen dollars and five
+cents."  Casey fumbled in the blankets--Smiling Lou following his
+movements suspiciously--and got out the makings of a cigarette.
+
+"Got any booze in that car?"  Smiling Lou might have been a traffic
+cop, for all the trace of humanity there was in his voice.
+
+Casey cocked an eye up at him, sent a quick glance toward the Ford, and
+looked back into Smiling Lou's face.  He hunched his shoulders and
+finished the making of his cigarette.
+
+"I wisht you wouldn't look," he said glumly.  "I got half my outfit in
+there an' I hate to have it tore up."
+
+Smiling Lou continued to look at him, seeming slightly puzzled. But
+indecision was not one of his characteristics, evidently. He stepped up
+to the car, pulled a flashlight from his pocket and looked in.
+
+Casey was up and into his clothes by the time Smiling Lou had uncovered
+a box or two.  Smiling Lou turned toward him, his lips twitching.
+
+"Lift this stuff out of here and put it in my car," he commanded,
+elation creeping into his voice in spite of himself.  "My Lord! The
+chances you fellows take!  Think a dab of paint is going to cover up a
+brand burnt into the wood?"
+
+Casey looked startled, glancing down into the car to where Smiling Lou
+pointed.
+
+"The boards is turned over on all the rest," he muttered
+confidentially.  "I dunno how that darned Canadian Club sign got right
+side up."
+
+"What all have you got?"  Smiling Lou lowered his voice when he asked
+the question.  Casey tried not to grin when he replied. Smiling Lou
+gasped,
+
+"Well, get it into my car, and make it snappy."
+
+Casey made it as snappy as he could, and kept his face straight until
+Smiling Lou spoke to him sharply.
+
+"I won't take you in to-night with me.  I want that car.  You drive it
+into headquarters first thing in the morning.  And don't think you can
+beat it, either.  I'll have the road posted.  You can knock a good deal
+off your sentence if you crank up and come in right after breakfast.
+And make it an early breakfast, too."
+
+His manner was stern, his voice perfectly official.  But Casey, eyeing
+him grimly, saw distinctly the left eyelid lower and lift again.
+
+"All right--I'm the goat," he surrendered and sat down again on his
+canvas-covered bed.  He did not immediately crawl between the blankets,
+however, because interesting things were happening over at Jim
+Cassidy's car.
+
+Casey watched Jim Cassidy go picking his way amongst the tree roots and
+camp litter, his back straightened under the load of hootch he was
+carrying to Smiling Lou's car.  With Jim Cassidy also, Smiling Lou was
+crisply official.  When the last of the hootch had been transferred,
+Casey heard Smiling Lou tell Jim Cassidy to drive in to headquarters
+after breakfast next morning--but he did not see Smiling Lou wink when
+he said it.
+
+After that, Smiling Lou started his motor and drove slowly up through
+the grove, halting to scan each car as he passed.  He swung out through
+the upper driveway, turned sharply there and came back down the highway
+speeding up on the downhill grade to San Bernardino.
+
+Jim Cassidy came furtively over and settle down for a whispered
+conference on Casey's bed.
+
+"How much did he get off'n YOU?" he asked inquisitively.  "Did he clean
+yuh out?"
+
+"Clean as a last year's bone in a kioty den," Casey declared, hiding
+his satisfaction as best he could.  "Never got my roll though."
+
+"He wouldn't--not with you workin' on the inside.  Guess it must be
+kinda touchy around here right now.  New officers, mebby. He wouldn't
+a' cleaned us out if we'd a' been safe.  He never came into camp
+before--not when I've been here.  Made that same play to you, didn't
+he--about givin' yourself up in the morning?  Uh course yuh know what
+that means--DON'T!"
+
+"He shore is foxy, all right," Casey commented with absolute sincerity.
+"You can ask anybody if he didn't pull it off like the pleasure was all
+his'n.  No L. A. traffic cop ever pinched me an I looked like he
+enjoyed it more."
+
+"Oh, Lou's cute, all right.  They don't any of 'em put anything over on
+Lou.  You must be new at the business, ain't yuh?"
+
+"Second trip," Casey informed him with an air of importance--which he
+really felt, by the way.  "What Casey's studyin' on now, is the next
+move.  No use hangin' around here empty.  What do YOU figger on doin'?"
+
+"Well, Lou didn't give no tip--not to me, anyway.  So I guess it'll be
+safe to drive on in to the city and load up again.  I got a feller with
+me--he caught a ride in to San Berdoo; left just before you drove in.
+Know where to go in the city?  'Cause I can ride in with you, an' let
+him foller."
+
+"That'll suit me fine," Casey declared.  And so they left it for the
+time being, and Cassidy went back to bed.
+
+A great load had dropped from Casey's shoulders, and he was asleep
+before Jim Cassidy had ceased to turn restlessly in his blankets.
+Getting the White Mule out of his car and into the car of Smiling Lou
+had been the task which Nolan had set for him. What was to happen
+thereafter Casey could only guess, for Nolan had not told him. And such
+was the Casey Ryan nature that he made no attempt to solve the problems
+which Mack Nolan had calmly reserved for himself.
+
+He did not dream, for instance, that Mack Nolan had watched him load
+the stuff into Smiling Lou's car.  He did know that an unobtrusive
+Cadillac roadster was parked at the next campfire. It had come in half
+an hour behind him, but the driver had not made any move toward camping
+until after dark.  Casey had glanced his way when the car was parked
+and the driver got out and began fussing around the car, but he had not
+been struck with any sense of familiarity in the figure.
+
+There was no reason why he should.  Thousands and thousands of men are
+of Mack Nolan's height and general build.  This man looked like a
+doctor or a dentist perhaps.  Beyond the matter of size, similarity to
+Mack Nolan ceased.  The Cadillac man wore a vandyke beard and colored
+glasses, and a panama and light gray business suit.  Casey set him down
+in his mental catalog as "some town feller" and assumed that they had
+nothing in common.
+
+Yet Mack Nolan heard nearly every word spoken by Smiling Lou, Casey and
+Jim Cassidy.  (Readers are so inquisitive about these things that I
+felt I ought to tell you--else you'll be worrying as hard as Casey Ryan
+did later on.  I'm soft-hearted, myself; I never like to worry a reader
+more than is absolutely necessary. So I'm letting you in, hoping you'll
+get an added kick out of Casey's further maneuvers).
+
+The Cadillac car, I should explain, was only one of Mack Nolan's little
+secrets.  There is a very good garage at Goffs, not many miles from
+Juniper Wells.  A matter of an hour's driving was sufficient at any
+time for Mack Nolan to make the exchange. And no man at Goffs would
+think it very strange that the owner of a Cadillac should prefer to
+drive a Ford over rough, desert trails to his prospect in the
+mountains.  Mack Nolan, as I have told you before, had a way with him.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER TWENTY
+
+With a load of booze in the car and Jim Cassidy by his side, Casey Ryan
+drove down the long, eucalyptus-shaded avenue that runs past the
+balloon school at Arcadia and turned into the Foothill Boulevard.  Half
+a mile farther on a Cadillac roadster honked and slid past them,
+speeding away toward Monrovia.  But Casey Ryan was busy talking
+chummily with Jim Cassidy, and he scarcely knew that a car had passed.
+
+The money he had been given for Smiling Lou had been used to pay for
+this new load of whisky, and Casey found himself wishing that he could
+get word of it to Mack Nolan.  Still, Nolan's oversight in the matter
+of arranging for communication between them did not bother Casey much.
+He was doing his part; if Mack Nolan failed to do his, that was no
+fault of Casey Ryan's.
+
+At Fontana, where young Kenner had stopped for gas on that eventful
+first trip of Casey's, Casey slowed down also, for the same purpose,
+half tempted to call up the Little Woman on long distance while the gas
+tank was being filled.  But presently the matter went clean from his
+mind--and this was the reason:
+
+A speed cop whose motorcycle stood inconspicuously around the corner of
+the garage, came forward and eyed the Ford sharply.  He drew his little
+book from his pocket, turned a few leaves, found what he was looking
+for and eyed again the car.  The garage man, slowly turning the crank
+of the gasoline pump, looked at him inquiringly; but the speed cop
+ignored the look and turned to Casey.
+
+"Where'd you get this car?" he demanded, in much the same tone which
+Smiling Lou had used the night before.
+
+"Bought it," Casey told him gruffly.
+
+"Where did you buy it?"
+
+"Over at Goffs, just this side of Needles."
+
+"Got a bill of sale?"
+
+"You got Casey Ryan's word fer it," Casey retorted, with a growing heat
+inside, where he kept his temper when he wasn't using it.
+
+"Are you Casey Ryan?"  The speed cop's eyes hardened just a bit.
+
+"Anybody says I ain't, you send 'em to me--an' then come around in
+about ten minutes an' look 'em over."
+
+"What's YOUR name?"  The officer turned to Jim Cassidy.
+
+"Tom Smith.  I was just ketchin' a ride with this feller.  Don't go an'
+mix ME in--I ain't no ways concerned; just ketchin' a ride is all. If
+I'd 'a' knowed--"
+
+"You can explain that to the judge.  Get in there, you, and drive in to
+San Berdoo.  I'll be right with you, so you needn't forget the road!"
+He stepped back to his motorcycle and pushed it forward.
+
+"Hey!  Don't I git paid fer my gas?" the garage man wailed, pulling a
+dripping nozzle from Casey's gas tank.
+
+"Aw, go tahell!" Casey grunted, and threw a wadded bank note in his
+direction.  "Take that an' shut up.  What yuh cryin' around about a
+gallon uh gas, fer?  YOU ain't pinched!"
+
+The money landed near the motorcycle and the officer picked it up,
+smoothed out the bill, glanced at it and looked through tightened lids
+at Casey.
+
+"Throwin' money around like a hootch-runner!" he sneered.  "I guess you
+birds need lookn' after, all right.  Git goin'!"
+
+Casey "got going."  Twice on the way in the officer spurted up
+alongside and waved him down for speeding.  Casey had not intended to
+speed, either.  He was merely keeping pace unconsciously with his
+thoughts.
+
+He had been told just what he must do if he were arrested for
+bootlegging, but he was not at all certain that his instructions would
+cover an arrest for stealing an automobile.  Nolan had forgotten about
+that, he guessed.  But Casey's optimism carried him jauntily to jail in
+San Bernardino, and while he was secretly a bit uneasy, he was not half
+so worried as Jim Cassidy appeared to be.
+
+Casey was booked--along with "Tom Smith"--on two charges: theft of one
+Ford car, motor number so-and-so, serial number this-and-that, model,
+touring, year, whatever-it-was.  And, unlawful transportation of
+spirituous liquor.  He tried to give the judge the wink, but without
+any happy result.  So he eventually found himself locked in a cell with
+Jim Cassidy.
+
+Just at first, Casey Ryan was proud of the part he was playing. He
+could look with righteous toleration upon the limpness of his fellow
+prisoner.  He could feel secure in the knowledge that he, Casey Ryan,
+was an agent of the government engaged in helping to uphold the laws of
+his country.
+
+He waited for an hour or two, listening with a superior kind of
+patience to Jim Cassidy's panicky unbraidings of his luck.  At first
+Jim was inclined to blame Casey rather bitterly for the plight he was
+in.  But Casey soon stopped that.  Young Kenner was the  responsible
+party in this mishap, as Casey very soon made plain to Jim.
+
+"Well, I dunno but what you're right.  It WAS kind of a dirty
+trick--workin' a stole car off onto you.  Why didn't he pick some
+sucker on the outside?  Don't line up with Kenner, somehow. Well, I
+guess mebby Smilin' Lou can see us out uh this hole all right--only I
+don't like that car-stealin' charge.  Mebby Kenner an' Lou can
+straighten it up, though."
+
+Casey wondered if they could.  He wondered, too, how Nolan was going to
+find out about Smiling Lou getting the camouflaged White Mule. Nolan
+had not explained that to Casey--but Casey was not worrying yet.  His
+faith in Mack Nolan was firm.
+
+Came bedtime, however, with no sign of official favor toward Casey
+Ryan.  Casey began to wonder.  But probably, he consoled himself with
+thinking, they meant to wait until Jim Cassidy was asleep before they
+turned Casey loose.  He lay on the hard bunk and waited hopefully,
+listening to the stertorous breathing of Jim Cassidy, who had forgotten
+his troubles in sleep.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
+
+At noon the next day Casey was still waiting--but not hopefully.
+"Patience on a monument" couldn't have resembled Casey Ryan in any
+particular whatever.  He was mad.  By midnight he had begun to wonder
+if he was not going to be made a goat again.  By daylight, he was
+positive that he was already a goat.  By the time the trusty brought
+his breakfast, Casey was applying to Mack Nolan the identical words and
+phrases which he had applied to young Kenner when he was the maddest.
+Don't ask me to tell you what they were.
+
+Jim Cassidy still clung desperately to his faith in Smiling Lou; but
+Casey's faith hadn't so much as a finger-hold on anything. What kind of
+a government was it, he asked himself bitterly, that would leave a
+trusted agent twenty-four hours shut up in a cell with a whining crook
+like Jim Cassidy?  If, he added pessimistically, he were an agent of
+the government.  Casey doubted it.  So far as he could see, Casey Ryan
+wasn't anything but the goat.
+
+His chief desire now was to get out of there as soon as possible so
+that he could hunt up Mack Nolan and lick the livin' tar wit of him--or
+worse.  He wanted bail and he wanted it immediately. Not a soul bad
+come near him, save the trusty, in spite of certain mysterious messages
+which Casey had sent to the office, asking for an interview with the
+judge or somebody; Casey didn't care who. Locked in a cell, how was he
+going to do any of the things Nolan had told him to do if he happened
+to find himself arrested by an honest officer?
+
+When they hauled him before the police judge, Casey hadn't been given
+the chance to explain anything to anybody.  Unless, of course, he
+wanted to beller out his business before everybody; and that, he told
+himself fiercely, was not Casey Ryan's idea of the way to keep a
+secret.  Moreover, that damned speed cop was standing right there, just
+waiting for a chance to wind his fingers in Casey's collar and choke
+him off if he tried to say a word.  And how the hell, Casey would like
+to know, was a man going to explain himself when he couldn't get a word
+in edgeways?
+
+So Casey wanted bail.  There were just two ways of getting it, and it
+went against the grain of his pride to take either one. That is why
+Casey waited until noon before his Irish stubbornness yielded a bit and
+he decided to wire me to come.  He had to slip the wire out by the
+underground method--meaning the good will of the trusty.  It cost Casey
+ten dollars, but he didn't grudge that.
+
+He spent that afternoon and most of the night mentally calling the
+trusty a liar and a thief because there was no reply to the message. As
+a matter of fact, the trusty sent the wire through as quickly as
+possible and the fault was mine if any one's.  I was too busy hurrying
+to the rescue to think about sending Casey word that I was coming.
+Casey said afterwards that my thoughtlessness would be cured for life
+if I were ever locked in jail and waiting for news.
+
+As it happened, I wired the Little Woman that Casey was in jail again,
+and caught the first train to San "Berdoo"--coming down by way of
+Barstow.  I could save two or three hours that way, I found, so I told
+the Little Woman to meet me there and bring all the money she could get
+her hands on.  Not knowing just what Casey was in for this time, it
+seemed well to be prepared for a good, stiff bail.  She beat me by
+several hours, and between us we had ten thousand dollars.
+
+At that it was a fool's errand.  Casey was out of jail and gone before
+either of us arrived.  So there we were, holding the bag, as you might
+say, and our ten thousand dollars' bail money.
+
+"It's no use asking questions, Jack," the Little Woman told me
+pensively when we had finished our salad in the best cafe in town, and
+were waiting for the fish.  "I've asked questions of every uniform in
+this town, from the district judge down to the courthouse janitor.
+Nobody knows a thing.  I DID find that Casey was booked yesterday for
+having a stolen car and a load of booze in his possession, but he isn't
+in jail--or if he is, they're keeping him down in some dungeon and have
+thrown away the key. It was hinted in the police court that he was
+dismissed for want of evidence; but they wouldn't SAY anything, and so
+there you are!"
+
+We finished our fish in a thoughtful silence.  Then, when the waiter
+had removed the plates, the Little Woman looked at me with a twinkle in
+her eyes.
+
+"Well-sir, there's something I want to tell you, Jack.  I believe Casey
+has put this town on the run.  They can't tell ME! Something's
+happened, over around the courthouse.  A lot of the men I talked with
+had a scared look in their eyes, and they were nervous when doors
+opened, and looked around when people came walking along.  I don't know
+what he's been doing--but Casey Ryan's been up to something. You can't
+tell ME!  I know how our laundry boy looks when Casey's home."
+
+"And didn't you get any line at all on his whereabouts?" I asked her.
+Given three hours the start of me, I knew perfectly well that the
+Little Woman had found out all there was to know about Casey.
+
+"Well-sir--I've got this to go on," the Little Woman drawled and held a
+telegram across the table.  "You'll notice that was sent from Goffs.
+It's ten days old, but I've been getting ready ever since it arrived.
+I've put Babe in a boarding-school, and I leased the apartment house.
+I kept three dressmakers ruining their eyes with nightwork, Jack,
+making up some nifty sports clothes.  If Casey's bound to stay in the
+desert--well, I'm his wife--and Casey does kind of like to have me
+around.  You can't tell ME.
+
+"So I've got the twin-six packed with the niftiest camp outfit you ever
+saw, Jack.  I've got a yellow and red beach umbrella, and two reclining
+chairs, and--well-sir, I'm going to rough it de luxe.  I don't expect
+to keep Casey in hand--I happen to know him.  But it's just possible,
+Jack, that I can keep him in sight!"
+
+Of course I told her--as I've told her often enough before--that she
+was a brick.  I added that I would go along, if she liked; which she
+did.  Not even the Little Woman should ever attempt to drive across the
+Mojave alone.
+
+We started out as soon as we had finished the meal.  A Cadillac
+roadster came up behind us and honked for clear passing as we swung
+into the long, straight stretch that leads up the Cajon. The Little
+Woman peered into the rear vision mirror and pressed the toe of her
+white pump upon the accelerator.
+
+"There's only one man in the world that can pass ME on the road," the
+Little Woman drawled, "and he doesn't wear a panama!"
+
+As we snapped around the turns of Cajon Grade, I looked back once or
+twice.  The Cadillac roadster was still following pertinaciously, but
+it was too far back to honk at us.  When we slid down to the
+Victorville garage and stopped for gas, the Cadillac slid by. The
+driver in the panama gave us one glance through his colored glasses,
+but I felt, somehow, that the glance was sufficiently comprehensive to
+fix us firmly in his memory.  I inquired at the garage concerning Casey
+Ryan, taking it for granted he would be driving a Ford.  A man of that
+description had stopped at the garage for gas that forenoon, the boy
+told me. About nine o'clock, I learned from further questioning.
+
+"Well-sir, that gives him five hours the start," the Little Woman
+remarked, as she eased in the clutch and slid around the corner into
+the highway to Barstow.  "But you can't tell me I can't run down a Ford
+with this car.  I know to the last inch what a Jawn Henry is good for.
+I drove one myself, remember.  Now we'll see."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
+
+At Dagget, the big, blue car with a lady driver sounded the warning
+signal and passed Mack Nolan and the Cadillac roadster. Like Casey
+Ryan, Nolan is rather proud of his driving, and with sufficient reason.
+He was already hurrying, not to overhaul Casey, but to arrive soon
+after him.
+
+Women drivers loved to pass other cars with a sudden spurt of speed, he
+had found by experience.  They were not, however, consistently fast
+drivers.  Mack Nolan was conscious of a slight irritation when the
+twin-six took the lead.  Somewhere ahead--probably in one of the rough,
+sandy stretches--he would either have to pass that car or lag behind.
+Your expert driver likes a clear road ahead.
+
+So Mack Nolan drove a bit harder, and succeeded in getting most of the
+dust kicked up by the big, blue car.  He counted on passing before they
+reached Ludlow, but he could never quite make it. In that ungodly
+stretch of sand and rocks and chuck-holes that lies between Ludlow and
+Amboy, Nolan was sure that the woman driver would have to slow down.
+He swore a little, too, because she would probably slow down just where
+passing was impossible. They always did.
+
+They went through Amboy like one party, the big, blue car leading by
+twenty-five yards.  It was a long drive for a woman to make; a hard
+drive to boot.  He wondered if the two in the big car ever ate.
+
+Five miles east of Amboy, when a red sunset was darkening to starlight,
+the blue car, fifty yards in the lead, overhauled a Ford in trouble.
+In the loose, sandy trail the big car slowed and stopped abreast of the
+Ford.  There was no passing now, unless Mack Nolan wanted to risk
+smashing his crank-case on a lava rock, millions of which peppered that
+particular portion of the Mojave Desert.  He stopped perforce.
+
+A pair of feet with legs attached to them, protruded from beneath the
+running board of the Ford.  The Little Woman in the big car leaned over
+the side and studied the feet critically.
+
+"Casey Ryan, are those the best pair of shoes you own?" she drawled at
+last.  "If you wouldn't wear such rundown heels, you know, you wouldn't
+look so bow-legged.  I've told you and TOLD you that your legs aren't
+so bad when you wear straight heels."
+
+Casey Ryan crawled out and looked up at her grinning sheepishly.
+
+"They was all right when I left home, ma'am," he defended his shoes
+mildly.  "Desert plays hell with shoe leather--you can ask anybody."
+Then he added, "Hullo, Jack!  What you two think you're doin', anyway.
+Tryin' t' elope?"
+
+"Why, hello, Ryan!"  Mack Nolan greeted, coming up from the Cadillac.
+"Having trouble with your car?"  Casey whirled and eyed Nolan dubiously.
+
+"Naw.  This ain't no trouble," he granted. "I only been here four hours
+or so--this is pastime!"
+
+There was an awkward silence.  We in the blue car wanted to know (not
+at that time knowing) who was the man in the Cadillac roadster, and how
+he happened to know Casey so well.  Nolan, no doubt, wanted to know who
+we were.  And there was so much that Casey wanted to know and needed to
+know that he couldn't seem to think of anything. However, Casey was the
+hardest to down.  He came up to the side of the blue car, reached in
+with his hands all greasy black, and took the Little Woman's hand from
+the wheel and kissed it.  The Little Woman made a caressing sound and
+leaned out to him--and Nolan and I felt that we mustn't look.  So our
+eyes met.
+
+He came around to my side of the car and put out his hand.
+
+"I'm pretty good at guessing," he smiled.  "I guess you're Jack
+Gleason.  Casey has talked of you to me.  I'm right glad to meet you,
+too.  My name is Mack Nolan, and I'm Irish.  I'm Casey Ryan's partner.
+We have a good--prospect."
+
+Casey looked past the Little Woman and me, straight into Mack Nolan's
+eyes.  I felt something of an electric quality in the air while their
+gaze held.
+
+"I'm just getting back from a trip down in the valley," Nolan observed
+easily.  "You never did see me in town duds, did you, Casey?"  His eyes
+went to the Little Woman's face and then to me. "I suppose you know
+what this wild Irishman has just pulled off back there," he said,
+tilting his head toward San Bernardino, many a mile away to the
+southwest.  "You wouldn't think it to look at him, but he surely has
+thrown a monkey wrench into as pretty a bootlegging machine as there is
+in the country.  It's such confidential stuff, of course, that you may
+call it absolutely secret. But for once I'm telling the truth about it.
+
+"Your husband, Mrs. Casey Ryan, holds a commission from headquarters as
+a prohibition officer.  A deputy, it is true,--but commissioned
+nevertheless.  He's just getting back from a very pretty piece of work.
+A crooked officer named Smiling Lou was arrested last night. He had all
+kinds of liquor cached away in his house.  Casey can tell you sometime
+how he trapped him.
+
+"Of course, I'm just an amateur mining expert on a vacation, myself."
+His eyes met Casey's straight.  "I wasn't with him when he pulled the
+deal, but I heard about it afterwards, and I knew he was planning
+something of the sort when he left camp.  How I happened to know about
+the commission," he added, reaching into his pocket, "is because he
+left it with me for safe keeping.  I'm going to let you look at
+it--just in case he's too proud to let it out of his hands once I give
+it back.
+
+"Now, of course, I'm talking like an old woman and telling all Casey's
+secrets--and you'll probably see a real Irish fight when he gets in
+reach of me.  But I knew he hadn't told you exactly what he's doing,
+and--I personally feel that his wife and his best friend are entitled
+to know as much as his partner knows about him."
+
+The Little Woman nodded absently her thanks.  She was holding Casey's
+commission under the dash-light to read it.
+
+I saw Casey gulp once or twice while he stared across the car at Mack
+Nolan.  He pushed his dusty, black hat forward over one eyebrow and
+reached into his pocket.
+
+"Aw, hell," he grunted, grinning queerly. "You come around here oncet,
+Mr. Nolan, where I can git my hands on yuh!"
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's The Trail of the White Mule, by B. M. Bower
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