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diff --git a/.gitattributes b/.gitattributes new file mode 100644 index 0000000..d7b82bc --- /dev/null +++ b/.gitattributes @@ -0,0 +1,4 @@ +*.txt text eol=lf +*.htm text eol=lf +*.html text eol=lf +*.md text eol=lf diff --git a/LICENSE.txt b/LICENSE.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6312041 --- /dev/null +++ b/LICENSE.txt @@ -0,0 +1,11 @@ +This eBook, including all associated images, markup, improvements, +metadata, and any other content or labor, has been confirmed to be +in the PUBLIC DOMAIN IN THE UNITED STATES. + +Procedures for determining public domain status are described in +the "Copyright How-To" at https://www.gutenberg.org. + +No investigation has been made concerning possible copyrights in +jurisdictions other than the United States. Anyone seeking to utilize +this eBook outside of the United States should confirm copyright +status under the laws that apply to them. diff --git a/README.md b/README.md new file mode 100644 index 0000000..5c9b002 --- /dev/null +++ b/README.md @@ -0,0 +1,2 @@ +Project Gutenberg (https://www.gutenberg.org) public repository for +eBook #67855 (https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/67855) diff --git a/old/67855-0.txt b/old/67855-0.txt deleted file mode 100644 index 126a066..0000000 --- a/old/67855-0.txt +++ /dev/null @@ -1,1402 +0,0 @@ -The Project Gutenberg eBook of Godsend to a Lady, by B. M. Bower - -This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and -most other parts of the world 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. If you are not located in the United States, you -will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before -using this eBook. - -Title: Godsend to a Lady - -Author: B. M. Bower - -Release Date: April 23, 2022 [eBook #67855] - -Language: English - -Produced by: Roger Frank and Sue Clark - -*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK GODSEND TO A LADY *** - - - - - -GODSEND TO A LADY - -By B. M. Bower - -Author of “You Ask Anybody,” “Cow Country,” Etc. - - [Transcriber’s Note: This story appeared in the December 20, 1920 - issue of The Popular Magazine.] - - “Casey” Ryan mixes a little philanthropy with considerable - poker and ends where he started--with the addition of a - pair of socks. - - -Casey waved good-by to the men from Tonopah, squinted up at the sun, -and got a coal-oil can of water and filled the radiator of his Ford. -He rolled his bed in the tarp and tied it securely, put flour, -bacon, coffee, salt, and various other small necessities of life -into a box, inspected his sour-dough can and decided to empty it and -start over again if hard fate drove him to sour dough. “Might bust -down and have to sleep out,” he meditated. “Then again I ain’t -liable to; and if I do I’ll be goin’ so fast I’ll git somewhere -before she stops. I’m--sure--goin’ to go!” He cranked the battered -car, straddled in over the edge on the driver’s side, and set his -feet against the pedals with the air of a man who had urgent -business elsewhere. The men from Tonopah were not yet out of sight -around the butte scarred with granite ledges before Casey was under -way, rattling down the rough trail from Ghost Mountain and bouncing -clear of the seat as the car lurched over certain rough spots. - -Pinned with a safety pin to the inside pocket of the vest he wore -only when he felt need of a safe and secret pocket, Casey Ryan -carried a check for twenty-five thousand dollars, made payable to -himself. A check for twenty-five thousand dollars in Casey’s pocket -was like a wild cat clawing at his imagination and spitting at every -moment’s delay. Casey had endured solitude and some hardship while -he coaxed Ghost Mountain to reveal a little of its secret treasure. -Now he wanted action, light, life, and plenty of it. While he drove -he dreamed, and his dreams beckoned, urged him faster and faster. - -Up over the summit of the ridge that lay between Ghost Mountain and -Furnace Lake he surged with radiator bubbling. Down the long slope -to the lake lying there smiling sardonically at a world it loved to -trick with its moods, Casey drove as if he were winning a bet. -Across that five miles of baked, yellow-white clay he raced, his -Ford a-creak in every joint. - -“Go it, you tin lizard,” chortled Casey. “I’ll have me a real wagon -when I git to Los. She’ll be white, with red stripes along her sides -and red wheels, and she’ll eat up the road and lick her chops for -more. Sixty miles under her belt every time the clock strikes, or -she ain’t good enough for Casey! Mebby they think they got some -drivers in Californy. Meybe they think they have. They ain’t, -though, because Casey Ryan ain’t there yet. I’ll catch that night -train. Oughta be in by morning, and then you keep your eye on Casey. -There’s goin’ to be a stir around Los, about to-morrow noon. I’ll -have to buy some clothes, I guess. And I’ll find some nice girl with -yella hair that likes pleasure, and take her out ridin’. Yeah, I’ll -have to git me a swell outfit uh clothes. I’ll look the part, all -right!” - -Up a long, winding trail and over another summit, Casey dreamed -while the stark, scarred buttes on either side regarded him with -enigmatic calm. Since the first wagon train had worried over the -rough deserts on their way to California, the bleak hills of Nevada -had listened while prospectors dreamed aloud and cackled over their -dreaming; had listened, too, while they raved in thirst and heat and -madness. Inscrutably they watched Casey as he hurried by with his -twenty-five thousand dollars and his pleasant pictures of soft ease. - -At a dim fork in the trail Casey slowed and stopped. A boiling -radiator will not forever brook neglect, and Casey brought his mind -down to practical things for a space. “I can just as well take the -train from Lund,” he mused, while he poured in more water. “Then I -can leave this bleatin’ burro with Bill. He oughta give me a coupla -hundred for her, anyway. No use wasting money just because you -happen to have a few dollars in your pants.” He filled his pipe to -smoke and muse on that sensible idea and turned the nose of his Ford -down the dim trail to Lund. - -Eighty miles more or less straight away across the mountainous waste -lay Lund, halfway up a cañon that led to higher reaches in the hills -rich in silver, lead, copper, gold. Silver it was that Casey had -found and sold to the men from Tonopah--and it was a freak of luck, -he thought whimsically, that had led him and his Ford away over to -Ghost Mountain to find their stake when they had probably been -driving over millions every day that they made the stage trip from -Pinnacle down to Lund. For Casey, be it known, was an old stage -driver turned prospector. He had a good deal to think of while he -drove, and he had time enough in which to think it. - -The trail was rutted in places where the sluicing rains had driven -hard across the hills; soft with sand in places where the fierce -winds had swept the open. For a while the thin, wabbly track of a -wagon meandered over the road, then turned off up a flat-bottomed -draw and was lost in the sagebrush. Some prospector not so lucky as -he, thought Casey with swift, soon-forgotten sympathy. - -A coyote ran up a slope toward him, halted with forefeet planted on -a rock and stared at him, ears perked like an inquisitive dog. Casey -stopped, eased his rifle out of the crease in the back of the seat -cushion, chanced a shot and his luck held. He climbed out, picked up -the limp gray animal, threw it into the tonneau and went on. Even -with twenty-five thousand dollars in his pocket, Casey told himself -that coyote hides are not to be scorned. He had seen the time when -the price of a good hide meant flour and bacon and tobacco to him. -He would skin it when he stopped to eat. - -Eighty miles with never a soul to call good day to Casey. Nor shack -nor shelter made for man, nor water to wet his lips if they cracked -with thirst--unless, perchance, one of those swift downpours came -riding on the wind, lashing the clouds with lightning. Then there -was water, to be sure. Far ahead of Casey such a storm rolled in off -the barren hills to the south. “She’s wettin’ up that red lake -a-plenty,” observed Casey, squinting through the dirty windshield. -“No trail around, either, on account of the lava beds. But I guess I -can pull acrost, all right.” - -Doubt was in his voice, however, and he was half minded to turn back -and take the straight road to Vernal, which had been his first -objective. But he discarded the idea. “No, sir, Casey Ryan never -back-trailed yet. Poor time to commence now, when I got the world by -the tail and a downhill pull. We’ll make out, all right--can’t be so -terrible boggy with a short rain like that there. I bet,” he -continued optimistically to the Ford, which was the nearest he had -to human companionship, “I bet we make it in a long lope. Git along, -there! Shake a hoof--’s the last time you haul Casey around. - -“Casey’s goin’ to step high, wide, and handsome. Sixty miles an hour -or he’ll ask for his money back. They can’t step too fast for Casey! -Blue--if I git me a girl with yella hair, mebby she’ll show up -better in a blue car than she will in a white and red. This here -turnout has got to be tasty and have class. If she was dark--” He -shook his head at that. “No, sir, black hair grows too plenty on -squaws an’ chili queens. Yella goes with Casey. Clingin’ kind with -blue eyes--that’s the stuff! An’ I’ll sure show her some drivin’!” - -He wondered whether he should find the girl first and buy the car to -match her beauty, or buy the car first and with that lure the lady -of his dreams. It was a nice question and it required thought. It -was pleasant to ponder the problem, and Casey became so lost in -meditation that he forgot to eat when the sun flirted with the -scurrying clouds over his wind-torn automobile top. - -So he came bouncing and swaying down the last mesa to the place -called Red Lake. Casey had heard it spoken of with opprobrious -epithets by men who had crossed it in wet weather. In dry weather it -was red clay caked and checked by the sun, and wheels or hoofs -stirred clouds of red dust that followed and choked the traveler. In -rain it was said to be boggy, and travelers failed to travel at all. - -Casey was not thinking of the lake when he drove down to it. He was -seeing visions, though you would not think it to look at him; a -stocky, middle-aged man who needed a shave and a hair cut, wearing -cheap, dirt-stained overalls and blue shirt and square-toed shoes -studded thickly on the soles with hobnails worn shiny; driving a -desert-scarred Ford with most of the paint gone and a front fender -cocked up and flapping crazily, and tires worn down to the fabric in -places. - -But his eyes were very blue and there was a humorous twist to his -mouth, and the wrinkles around his eyes meant Irish laughter quite -as much as squinting into the sun. If he dreamed incongruously of -big, luxurious cars gorgeous in paint and nickel trim, and of slim, -young women with yellow hair and blue eyes--well, stranger dreams -have been hidden away behind exteriors more unsightly than was the -shell which holds the soul of Casey Ryan. - -Presently the practical, everyday side of his nature nudged him into -taking note of his immediate surroundings. Casey knew at a glance -that half of Red Lake was wet, and that the shiny patches here and -there were shallow pools of water. Moreover, out in the reddest, -wettest part of it an automobile stood with its back to him, and -pygmy figures were moving slowly upon either side. - -“Stuck” diagnosed Casey in one word, and tucked his dream into the -back of his mind even while he pulled down the gas lever a couple of -notches and lunged along the muddy ruts that led straight away from -the safe line of sagebrush and out upon the platterlike red expanse. - -The Ford grunted and lugged down to a steady pull. Casey drove as he -had driven his six horses up a steep grade in the old days, coaxing -every ounce of power into action. Now he coaxed with spark and gas -and somehow kept her in high, and stopped with nice judgment on a -small island of harder clay within shouting distance of the car -ahead. He killed the engine then and stepped down, and went picking -his way carefully out to them, his heavy shoes speedily collecting -great pancakes of mud that clung like glue. - -“Stuck, hey? You oughta kept in the ruts, no matter if they are -water-logged. You never want to turn outa the road on one of these -lake beds, huntin’ dry ground. If it’s wet in the road you can bank -on sinkin’ in to the hocks the minute you turn out.” He carefully -removed the mud pancakes from his shoes by scraping them across the -hub of the stalled car, and edged back to stand with his arms on his -hips while he surveyed the full plight of them. - -“She sure is bogged down a-plenty,” he observed, grinning -sympathetically. - -“Could you hitch on your car, mister, and pull us out?” This was a -woman’s voice, and it had an odd quality of youth and unquenchable -humor that thrilled Casey, woman hungry as he was. - -Casey put up a hand to his mouth and surreptitiously removed a chew -of tobacco almost fresh. With some effort he pulled his feet closer -together, and he lifted his old Stetson and reset it at a -consciously rakish angle. He glanced at the car, behind it and in -front, coming back to the flat-chested, depressed individual before -him. “Yes, ma’am. I’ll get you out, all right. Sure, I will.” While -he looked at the man he spoke to the woman. - -“We’ve been stalled here for an hour or more,” volunteered the -flat-chested one. “We was right behind the storm. Looked a sorry -chance that anybody would come along for the next week or so--” - -“Mister, you’re a godsend if ever there was one,” added the lady. -“I’d write your name on the roster of saints in my prayer book, if I -ever said prayers and had a prayer book and a pencil and knew what -name to write.” - -“Casey Ryan. Don’t you worry, ma’am. We’ll get you outa here in no -time.” Casey grinned and craned his neck. Looking lower this time, -he saw a pair of feet which did not seem to belong to that voice, -though they were undoubtedly feminine. Still, red mud will work -miracles of disfigurement, and Casey was an optimist by nature. - -“My wife is trying out a new comedy line,” the flat-chested one -observed unemotionally. “Trouble is it never gets over out front. If -she ever did get it across the footlights I could raise the price of -admission and get away with it. How far is it to Rhyolite?” - -“Rhyolite? Twenty or twenty-five miles, mebby.” Casey gave him an -inquiring look. - -“Can we get there in time to paper the town and hire a hall to show -in, mister?” Casey saw the mud-caked feet move laboriously toward -the rear of the car. - -“Yes, ma’am, I guess you can. There ain’t any town, though, and it -ain’t got any hall in it, ner anybody to go to a show.” - -The woman laughed. “That’s like my prayer book. Well, Jack, you -certainly have got a powerful eye, but you’ve been trying to look -this outfit out of the mud for an hour, and I haven’t saw it move an -inch, so far. Let’s just try something else.” - -“A prayer outa your prayer book, maybe,” the flat-chested one -retorted, not troubling to move or to turn his head. - -Casey blinked and looked again. The woman who appeared from the -farther side of the car might have been the creature of his dream, -so far as her face, her hair, and her voice went. Her hair was -yellow, unmistakably yellow. Her eyes were blue as Casey’s own, and -she had nice teeth and showed them in a red-lipped smile. A more -sophisticated man would have known that the powder on her nose was -freshly applied, and that her reason for remaining so long hidden -from his sight while she talked to him was revealed in the moist -color on her lips and the fresh bloom on her cheeks. Casey was not -sophisticated. He thought she was a beautiful woman, and asked no -questions of her makeup box. - -“Mister, you certainly are a godsend!”--she told him again when she -faced him. “I’d call you a direct answer to prayer, only I haven’t -been praying. I’ve been trying to tell Jack that the shovel is not -packed under the banjos, as he thinks it was, but was left back at -our last camp where he was trying to dig water out of a wet spot. -Jack, dear, perhaps the gentleman has got a shovel in his car. Ain’t -it a real gag, mister, us being stuck out here in a dry lake?” - -Casey tipped his hat and grinned and tried not to look at her too -long. Husbands of beautiful young women are frequently jealous, and -Casey knew his place and meant to keep it. - -All the way back to his car Casey studied the peculiar features of -the meeting. He had been thinking about yellow-haired women--well! -But, of course, she was married, and therefore not to be thought of -save as a coincidence. Still, Casey rather regretted the existence -of Jack, dear, and began to wonder why good-looking women always -picked such dried-up little runts for husbands. “Show actors, by the -talk,” he mused. “I wonder now if she don’t sing, mebby?” - -He started the car and forged out to them, making the last few rods -in low gear and knowing how risky it was to stop. They were rather -helpless, he had to admit, and did all the standing around while -Casey did all the work. But he shoveled the rear wheels out, waded -back to the tiny island of solid ground and gathered an armful of -brush, covered himself with mud while he crowded the brush in front -of the wheels, tied the tow rope he carried for emergencies like -this, waded to the Ford, cranked, and trusted the rest to luck. The -Ford moved slowly ahead until the rope between the two cars -tightened, then spun wheels and proceeded to dig herself in where -she stood. The other car, shaking with the tremor of its own engine, -ruthlessly ground the sagebrush into the mud and stood upon it -shaking and roaring and spluttering furiously. - -“Nothing like sticking together, mister,” called the lady -cheerfully, and he heard the music of her laughter above the churn -of their motor. - -“Say, ain’t your carburetor all off?” Casey leaned out to call back -to the flat-chested one. “You’re smokin’ back there like wet wood.” - -The man immediately stopped the motor and looked behind him. - -Casey muttered something under his breath when he climbed out. He -looked at his own car standing hub deep in red mud, and reached for -the solacing plug of chewing tobacco. Then he thought of the lady, -and withdrew his hand empty. - -“We’re certainly going to stick together, mister,” she repeated her -witticism, and Casey grinned foolishly. - -“She’ll dry up in a few hours, with this hot sun,” he observed -hearteningly. “We’ll have to pile brush in, I guess.” His glance -went back to the tiny island and to his double row of tracks. He -looked at the man. - -“Jack, dear, you might go help the gentleman get some brush,” the -lady suggested sweetly. - -“This ain’t my act,” Jack dear objected. “I just about broke my -spine trying to heave the car outa the mud when we first stuck. Say, -I wish there was a beanery of some kind in walking distance. Honest, -I’ll be dead of starvation in another hour. What’s the chance of a -bite, hon?” - -Contempt surged through Casey. Deep in his soul he pitied her for -being tied to such an insect. Immediately he was glad that she had -spirit enough to put the little runt in his place. - -“You would wait to buy supplies in Rhyolite, remember,” she reminded -her husband calmly. “I guess you’ll have to wait till you get there. -I’ve got one piece of bread saved for junior. You and I go -hungry--and cheer up, old dear, you’re used to it!” - -“I’ve got grub,” Casey volunteered hospitably. “Didn’t stop to eat -yet. I’ll pack the stuff back there to dry ground and boil some -coffee and fry some bacon.” He looked at the woman and was rewarded -by a smile so brilliant that Casey was dazzled. - -“You certainly are a godsend,” she called after him, as he turned -away to his own car. “It just happens that we’re out of everything. -It’s so hard to keep anything on hand when you’re traveling in this -country, with towns so far apart. You just run short, before you -know it.” - -Casey thought that the very scarcity of towns compelled one to avoid -running short of food, but he did not say anything. He waded back to -the island with a full load of provisions and cooking utensils, and -in three minutes he was squinting against the smoke of a camp fire -while he poured water from a canteen into his blackened coffeepot. - -“Coffee! Jack, dear, can you believe your nose!” chirped the woman -presently behind Casey. “Junior, darling, just smell the bacon! -Isn’t he a nice gentleman? Go give him a kiss like a little man.” - -Casey didn’t want any kiss--at least from junior. Junior was six -years old and his face was dirty and his eyes were old, old eyes, -hot brown like his father’s. He had the pinched, hungry look which -Casey had seen only among starving Indians, and after he had kissed -Casey perfunctorily he snatched the piece of raw bacon which Casey -had just sliced off, and tore at it with his teeth like a hungry -pup. - -Casey affected not to notice, and busied himself with the fire while -the woman reproved junior half-heartedly in an undertone and laughed -and remarked upon the number of hours since they had breakfasted. - -Casey tried not to watch them eat, but in spite of himself he -thought of a prospector whom he had rescued last summer after a -five-day fast. These people tried not to seem unusually hungry, but -they ate more than the prospector had eaten, and their eyes followed -greedily every mouthful which Casey took, as if they grudged him the -food. Wherefore Casey did not take as many mouthfuls as he would -have liked. - -“This desert air certainly does put an edge on one’s appetite,” the -woman smiled, while she blew across her fourth cup of coffee to cool -it, and between breaths bit into a huge bacon sandwich which Casey -could not help knowing was her third. “Jack, dear, isn’t this coffee -delicious!” - -“Mah-ma! Do we have to p-pay that there g-godsend? C-can you p-pay -for more b-bacon for me, mah-ma?” Junior licked his fingers and -twitched a fold of his mother’s soiled skirt. - -“Sure, give him more bacon! All he wants. I’ll fry another skillet -full.” Casey spoke hurriedly, getting out the piece which he had -packed away in the bag. - -“He’s used to these holdup joints where they charge you forty cents -for a greasy plate,” the flat-chested man explained, speaking with -his mouth full. “Eat all yuh want, junior. This is a barbecue and no -collection took up to pay the speaker of the day.” - -“We certainly appreciate your kindness, mister,” the woman put in -graciously, holding out her cup. “What we’d have done, stuck here in -the mud with no provisions and no town within miles, Heaven only -knows. Was you kidding us,” she added, with a betrayal of more real -anxiety than she intended, “when you said Rhyolite is a dead one? We -looked it up on the map, and it was marked like a town. We’re making -all the little towns that the road shows mostly miss. We give a fine -show, mister. It’s been played on all the best time in the -country--we took it abroad before the war and made real good money -with it. But we just wanted to see the country, you know--after -doing the Cont’nent and all the like of that. So we thought we’d -travel independent and make all the small towns--” - -“The movie trust is what puts vodeville on the bum,” the man -interrupted. “We used to play the best time only. We got a -first-class act. One that ought to draw down good money anywhere, -and would draw down good money, if the movie trust--” - -“And then we like to be independent, and go where we like and get -off the railroad for a spell. Freedom is the breath of life to he -and I. We’d rather have it kinda rough, now and then, and be free -and independent--” - -“I’ve g-got a b-bunny, a-and it f-fell in the g-grease box a-and we -c-can’t wash it off. And h-he’s asleep now. C-can I g-give my -b-bunny some b-bacon, Mister G-godsend?” - -The woman laughed, and the man laughed and Casey himself grinned -sheepishly. Casey did not want to be called a godsend, and he hated -the term mister when applied to himself. All his life he had been -plain Casey Ryan and proud of it, and his face was very red when he -confessed that there was no more bacon. He had not expected to feed -a family when he left camp that morning, but had taken ample rations -for himself only. - -Junior whined and insisted that he wanted b-bacon for his b-bunny, -and the man hushed him querulously and asked Casey what the chances -were for getting under way. Casey repacked a lightened bag, emptied -the coffee grounds, shouldered his canteen, and waded back to the -cars and to the problem of red mud with an unbelievably tenacious -quality. - -The man followed and asked him if he happened to have any smoking -tobacco, and afterward begged a cigarette paper, and then a match. -“The dog-gone helpless, starved bunch!” Casey muttered while he dug -out the wheels of his Ford, and knew that his own dream must wait -upon the need of these three human beings whom he had never seen -until an hour ago, of whose existence he had been in ignorance and -who would probably contribute nothing whatever to his own welfare or -happiness, however much he might contribute to theirs. - -I do not say that Casey soliloquized in this manner while he was -sweating there in the mud under hot midday. He did think that now he -would no doubt miss the night train to Los Angeles, and that he -would not, after all, be purchasing glad raiment and a luxurious car -on the morrow. He regretted that, but he did not see how he could -help it. He was Casey Ryan, and his heart was soft to suffering, -even though a little of the spell cast by the woman’s blue eyes and -her golden hair had dimmed for him. - -He still thought her a beautiful woman who was terribly mismated, -but he felt vaguely that women with beautiful golden hair should not -drink their coffee aloud, nor calmly turn up the bottom of their -skirts that they might use the under side of the hem for a napkin -after eating bacon. I do not like to mention this--Casey did not -like to think of it, either. It was with reluctance that he -reflected upon the different standards imposed by sex. A man, for -instance, might wipe his fingers on his pants and look his world -straight in the eye. But, dog-gone it, when a lady’s a lady, she -ought to be a lady. - -Later Casey forgot for a time the incident of the luncheon on Red -Lake. With infinite labor and much patience he finally extricated -himself and the show people, with no assistance from them, save -encouragement. He towed them to dry land, untied and put away his -rope and then discovered that he had not the heart to drive on at -his usual hurtling pace and leave them to follow. There was an -ominous stutter in their motor, for one thing, and Casey knew of a -stiffish hill a few miles this side of Rhyolite. - -It was full sundown when they reached the place, which was not a -town but a camp beside a spring, usually deserted. Three years -before, a mine had built the camp for the accommodation of the truck -drivers who hauled ore to Lund and were sometimes unable to make the -trip in one day. Casey, having adapted his speed to that of the -decrepit car of the show people, was thankful that they arrived at -all. He still had a little flour and coffee and salt, and he hoped -that there was enough grease left on the bacon paper to grease the -skillet so that bannocks would not stick to the pan. He also hoped -that his flour would hold out under the onslaught of their -appetites. - -But Casey was lucky. A half dozen cowboys were camped there with a -pack outfit, meaning to ride the cañons next day for cattle. They -were cooking supper, and they had “beefed a critter” that had broken -a leg that afternoon running among rocks. Casey shifted his -responsibility and watched, in complete content, while the show -people gorged on broiled yearling steaks. I dislike to use the word -gorge, where a lady’s appetite is involved, but that is the word -which Casey thought of first. - -Later, the show people very amiably consented to entertain their -hosts. It was then that Casey was once more blinded by the -brilliance of the lady, and forgot certain little blemishes that had -seemed to him quite pronounced. The cowboys obligingly built a -bonfire before the tent, into which the couple retired to set their -stage and tune their instruments. Casey lay back on a cowboy’s -rolled bed with his knees crossed, his hands clasped behind his -thinning hair, and smoked and watched the first pale stars come out -while he listened to the pleasant twang of banjos in the tuning. - -It was great. The sale of his silver claim to the men from Tonopah, -the check safely pinned in his pocket, the future which he had -planned for himself swam hazily through his mind. He was fed to -repletion, he was rich, he had been kind to those in need. He was a -man to be envied, and he told himself so. - -Then the tent flaps were lifted and a dazzling, golden-haired -creature in a filmy white evening gown to which the firelight was -kind, stood there smiling, a banjo in her hands. Casey gave a grunt -and sat up, blinking. She sang, looking at him frequently. At the -encore, which was livened by a clog, danced to hidden music, she -surely blew a kiss in the direction of Casey, who gulped and looked -around at the others self-consciously, and blushed hotly. - -In truth it was a very good show which the two gave there in the -tent; much better than the easiest-going optimist would expect. When -it was over to the last twang of a bango string, Casey took off his -hat, emptied into it what money he had in his pockets, and set the -hat in the fire glow. Without a word the cowboys followed his -example, turning pockets inside out to prove they could give no -more. - -Casey spread his bed apart from the others that night, and lay for a -long while smoking and looking up at the stars and dreaming again -his dream; only now the golden-haired creature who leaned back upon -the deep cushions of his speedy blue car was not a vague, bloodless -vision, but a real person with nice teeth and a red-lipped smile, -who called him mister in a tone he thought like music. Now his dream -lady sang to him, talked to him. I consider it rather pathetic that -Casey’s dreams always halted just short of mealtime. He never -pictured her sitting across the table from him in some expensive -cafe, although Casey was rather fond of cafe lights and music and -service and food. - -Next morning the glamour remained, although the lady was once more -the unkempt woman of yesterday. The three seemed to look upon Casey -still as a godsend. They had talked with some of the men and had -decided to turn back to Vernal, which was a bigger town than Lund -and, therefore, likely to produce better crowds. They even -contemplated a three-night stand, which would make possible some -very urgent repairs to their car. Casey demurred, although he could -not deny the necessity for repairs. It was a longer trail to Vernal, -and a rougher trail. Moreover, he himself was on his way to Lund. - -“You go to Lund,” he urged, “and you can stay there four nights if -you want to, and give shows. And I’ll take yuh on up to Pinnacle in -my car while yours is gittin’ fixed, and you can give a show there. -You’d draw a big crowd. I’d make it a point to tell folks you give a -dandy show. And I’ll git yuh good rates at the garage where I do -business. You don’t want nothin’ of Vernal. Lund’s the place you -want to hit fer.” - -“There’s a lot to that,” the foreman of the cowboys agreed. “If -Casey’s willin’ to back you up, you better hit straight for Lund. -Everybody there knows Casey Ryan. He drove stage from Pinnacle to -Lund for two years and never killed nobody, though he did come close -to it, now and again. I’ve saw strong men that rode with Casey and -said they never felt right afterward. Casey, he’s a dog-gone good -driver, but he used to be kinda hard on passengers. He done more to -promote heart failure in them two towns than all the altitude they -can pile up. But nobody’s going to hold that against a good show -that comes there. I heard there ain’t been a show stop off in Lund -for over a year. You’ll have to beat ’em away from the door, I bet.” - -Wherefore the Barrymores--that was the name they called themselves, -though I am inclined to doubt their legal right to it--the -Barrymores altered their booking and went with Casey to Lund. They -were not fools, by the way. Their car was much more disreputable -than you would believe a car could be and turn a wheel, and the -Barrymores recognized the handicap of its appearance. They camped -well out of sight of town, therefore, and let Casey drive in alone. - -Casey found that the westbound train had already gone, which gave -him a full twenty-four hours in Lund, even though he discounted his -promise to see the Barrymores through. There was a train, to be -sure, that passed through Lund in the middle of the night; but that -was the De Luxe, standard and drawing-room sleepers, which disdained -stopping to pick up plebeian local passengers. So Casey must spend -twenty-four hours in Lund, greeting men who hailed him joyously at -the top of their voices while they were yet afar off, and thumped -him painfully upon the shoulders when they came within reach of him. - -You may not grasp the full significance of this, unless you have -known old and popular stage drivers, soft of heart and hard of fist. -Then remember that Casey had spent months on end alone in the -wilderness, working like a lashed slave from sunrise to dark trying -to wrest a fortune from a certain mountainside. Remember how an -enforced isolation, coupled with rough fare and hard work, will -breed a craving for lights and laughter and the speech of friends. -Remember that, and don’t overlook the twenty-five thousand dollars -that Casey had pinned safe within his pocket. - -Casey had unthinkingly tossed his last dime into his hat for the -show people at Rhyolite. He had not even skinned the coyote whose -hide would have been worth ten or fifteen dollars, as hides go. In -the stress of pulling out of the mud at Red Lake he had forgotten -all about the dead animal in his tonneau until his nose reminded him -next morning that it was there. Then he had hauled it out by the -tail and thrown it away. He was broke, except that he had that check -in his pocket. - -Of course it was easy enough for Casey to get money. He went to the -store that sold everything from mining tools to green perfume -bottles tied with narrow pink ribbon. The man who owned that store -also owned the bank next door, and a little place down the street -which was called laconically “The Club.” One way and another, Dwyer -managed to feel the money of every man who came into Lund and -stopped there for a space. He was an honest man, too--or as honest -as is practicable for a man in business. - -Dwyer was tickled to see Casey again. Casey was a good fellow, and -he never needed his memory jogged when he owed a man. He paid before -he was asked to pay, and that is enough to make any merchant love -him. He watched Casey unpin his vest pocket and remove the check, -and he was not too eager to inspect it. - -“Good? Surest thing you know. Want it cashed, or applied to your old -checking account?--it’s open yet, with a dollar and sixty-seven -cents to your credit, I believe. I’ll take care of it, though it’s -after banking hours.” - -Casey was foolish. “I’ll take a couple of hundred, if it’s handy, -and a check book. I guess you can fix it so I can get what money I -want in Los. I’m goin’ to the city, Dwyer, and I’m goin’ to have one -hell of a time when I git there. I’ve earned it. You ask anybody -that ever mined.” - -Dwyer laughed while he inked a pen for Casey’s indorsement. “Hop to -it, Casey. Glad you made good. But you better let me put part of -that in a savings account, so you can’t check it out. You know, -Casey--remember your weak point.” - -“Aw--that’s all right! Don’t you worry none about Casey Ryan! -Casey’ll take care of himself--he’s had too many jolts to want -another one. Say, gimme a pair of them socks before you go in the -bank. I’ll pay yuh,” he grinned, “when yuh come back with some -money. Ain’t got a cent on me, Dwyer. Give it all away. Twelve -dollars and something. Down to twenty-five thousand dollars and my -Ford autymobil--and Bill’s goin’ to buy that off me soon as he -looks her over to see what’s busted and what ain’t.” - -Dwyer laughed again and unlocked the door behind the overalls and -jumpers, and disappeared into his bank. Presently he returned with a -receipted duplicate deposit slip for twenty-three thousand eight -hundred dollars, a little, flat check book and two hundred dollars -in worn bank notes. “You ought to be independent for the rest of -your life, Casey. This is a fine start for any man,” he said. - -Casey paid for the socks and slid the change for a ten-dollar bill -into his overalls pocket, put the check book and the bank notes away -where he had carried the check, and walked out with his hat very -much tilted over his right eye and his shoulders swaggering a -little. You can’t blame him for that, can you? - -As he stepped from the store he met an old acquaintance from -Pinnacle. There was only one thing to do, in a case like that, and -Casey did it quite naturally. They came out of The Club wiping their -lips, and the swagger in Casey’s shoulders was more pronounced. - -Then, face to face, Casey met the show lady, which was what he -called her in his mind. She had her arms clasped around a large -paper sack full of lumpy things, and her eyes had a strained, -anxious look. - -“Oh, mister! I’ve been looking all over for you. They say we can’t -show in this town. The license for road shows is fifty dollars, to -begin with, and I’ve been all over and can’t find a single place -where we could show, even if we could pay the license. Ain’t that -the last word in hard luck? Now, what to do beats me, mister. We’ve -just got to have the old car tinkered up so it’ll carry us on to the -next place, wherever that is. Jack, dear, says he must have a new -tire by some means or other, and we was counting on what we’d make -here. - -“And up at that other place you’ve mentioned the mumps has broke out -and they wouldn’t let us show for love or money. A man in the drug -store told me. Mister, we certainly are in a hole now for sure! If -we could give a benefit for something or somebody. Mister, those men -back there said you’re so popular in this town, I believe I’ve got -an idea. Mister, couldn’t you have bad luck, or be sick or -something, so we could give a benefit for you? People certainly -would turn out good for a man that’s liked the way they say you are. -I’d just love to put on a show for you, mister. Couldn’t we fix it -up some way?” - -Casey looked up and down the street, and found it practically empty. -Lund was dining at that hour. And while Casey expected later the -loud greetings and the handshakes and all, as a matter of fact he -had thus far talked with Bill, the garage man, with Dwyer, the -storekeeper and banker, and with the man from Pinnacle, who was -already making ready to crank his car and go home. Lund, as a town, -was yet unaware of Casey’s presence. Casey looked at the show lady, -found her gazing at his face with eyes that said please in four -languages, and hesitated. - -“You could git up a benefit for the Methodist church, mebby,” he -temporized. “There’s a church of some kind here--I guess it’s a -Methodist. They most generally are.” - -“We’d have to split with them if we did,” the show lady objected -practically. “Oh, mister, we’re stuck worse than when we was back -there in the mud! We’d only have to pay five dollars for a six -months’ theater license, which would let us give all the shows we -wanted to. It’s a new law that I guess you didn’t know anything -about,” she added kindly. “You certainly wouldn’t have insisted on -us coming if you’d knew about the license--” - -“It’s two years, almost, since I was here,” Casey admitted. “I been -out prospecting.” - -“Well, we can just work it fine! Can’t we go somewhere and talk it -over? I’ve got a swell idea, mister, if you’ll just listen to it a -minute, and it’ll certainly be a godsend to us to be able to give -our show. We’ve got some crutches among our stage props, and some -scar patches, mister, that would certainly make you up fine as a -cripple. Wouldn’t they believe it, mister, if it was told that you -had been in an accident and got crippled for life?” - -In spite of his perturbation Casey grinned. “Yeah, I guess they’d -believe it, all right,” he admitted. “They’d likely be tickled to -death to see me goin’ around on crutches.” He cast a hasty thought -back into his past, when he had driven a careening stage between -Pinnacle and Lund, strewing the steep trail with wreckage not his -own. “Yeah, it’d tickle ’em to death. Them that’s rode with me,” he -concluded. - -“Oh, mister, you certainly are a godsend! Duck outa sight somewhere -while I go tell Jack, dear, that we’ve found a way open for us to -show, after all!” While Casey was pulling the sag out of his jaw so -that he could protest, could offer her money, do anything save what -she wanted, the show lady disappeared. Casey turned and went back -into The Club, remained five minutes perhaps and then walked very -circumspectly across the street to Bill’s garage. It was there that -the Barrymores found him when they came a-seeking with their -dilapidated old car, their crutches, their grease paint and scar -patches, to make a cripple of Casey, whether he would or no. - -Bill fell uproariously in with the plan, and Dwyer, stopping at the -garage on his way home to dinner, thought it a great joke on Lund, -and promised to help the benefit along. Casey, with three drinks -under his belt and his stomach otherwise empty, wanted to sing -something which he had forgotten. Casey couldn’t have recognized -Trouble if it had walked up and banged him in the eye. He said sure, -he’d be a cripple for the lady. He’d be anything once, and some -things several times, if they asked him the right way. - -Casey looked very bad when the show people were through with him. He -had expected bandages wound picturesquely around his person, but the -Barrymores were more artistic than that. Casey’s right leg was drawn -up at the knee so that he could not put his foot on the ground when -he tried, and he did not know how the straps were fastened. His left -shoulder was higher than his right shoulder, and his eyes were -sunken in his head and a scar ran down along his temple to his left -cheek bone. When he looked in the glass which Bill brought him, -Casey actually felt ill. They told him that he must not wash his -face, and that his week’s growth of beard was a blessing from -Heaven. The show lady begged him, with dew on her lashes, to play -the part faithfully, and they departed very happy over their -prospects. - -Casey did not know whether he was happy or not. With Bill to -encourage him and give him a lift over the gutters, he crossed the -street to a restaurant and ordered largely of sirloin steak and -French-fried potatoes. After supper there was a long evening to -spend quietly on crutches, and The Club was just next door. A man -can always spend an evening very quickly at The Club--or he could in -the wet days--if his money held out. Casey had money enough, and -within an hour he didn’t care whether he was crippled or not. There -were five besides himself at that table, and they had agreed to -remove the lid. Moreover, there was a crowd ten deep around that -particular table. For the news had gone out that here was Casey Ryan -back again, a hopeless cripple, playing poker like a drunken -Rockefeller and losing as if he liked to lose. - -At eight o’clock the next morning Bill came in to tell Casey that -the show people had brought up their car to be fixed, and was the -pay good? Casey replied without looking up from his hand, which held -a pair of queens which interested him. He’d stand good, he said, and -Bill gave a grunt and went off. - -At noon Casey meant to eat something. But another man had come into -the game with a roll of money and a boastful manner. Casey rubbed -his cramped leg and hunched down in his chair again and called for a -stack of blues. Casey, I may as well confess, had been calling for -stacks of blues and reds and whites rather often since midnight. - -At four in the afternoon Casey hobbled into the restaurant and ate -another steak and drank three cups of coffee, black. He meant to go -across to the garage and have Bill hunt up the Barrymores and get -them to unstrap him for a while, but, just as he was lifting his -left crutch around the edge of the restaurant door, two women of -Lund came up and began to pity him and ask him how it ever happened. -Casey could not remember, just at the moment, what story he had told -of his accident. He stuttered--a strange thing for an Irishman to -do, by the way--and retreated into The Club where they dared not -follow. - -“H’lo, Casey! Give yuh a chance to win back some of your losin’s, if -you’re game to try it again,” called a man from the far end of the -room. - -Casey swore and hobbled back to him, let himself stiffly down into a -chair and dropped his crutches with a rattle of hard wood. Being a -cripple was growing painful, besides being very inconvenient. The -male half of Lund had practically suspended business that day to -hover around him and exchange comments upon his looks. Casey had -received a lot of sympathy that day, and only the fact that he had -remained sequestered behind the curtained arch that cut across the -rear of The Club saved him from receiving a lot more. But, of -course, there were mitigations. Since walking was slow and awkward, -Casey sat. And since he was not the man to sit and twiddle thumbs to -pass the time, Casey played poker. That is how he explained it -afterward. He had not intended to play poker for twenty-four hours, -but tie up a man’s leg so he can’t walk, and he’s got to do -something. - -Wherefore Casey played, and did not win back what he had lost -earlier in the day. - -Once, while the bartender was bringing drinks--you are not to infer -that Casey was drunk; he was merely a bit hazy over details--Casey -pulled out his dollar watch and looked at it. Eight-thirty--the show -must be pretty well started, by now. He thought he might venture to -hobble over to Bill’s and have those dog-gone straps taken off -before he was crippled for sure. But he did not want to do anything -to embarrass the show lady. Besides, he had lost a great deal of -money, and he wanted to win some of it back. He still had time to -make that train, he remembered. It was reported an hour late, some -one said. - -So Casey rubbed his strapped leg, twisting his face at the cramp in -his knee, and letting his companions believe that his accident had -given him a heritage of pain. He hitched his lifted shoulder into an -easier position and picked up another unfortunate assortment of five -cards. - -At ten o’clock Bill, the garage man, came and whispered something to -Casey, who growled an oath and reached almost unconsciously for his -crutches; so soon is a habit born in a man. - -“What they raisin’ thunder about?” he asked apathetically when Bill -had helped him across the gutter and into the street. “Didn’t the -crowd turn out like they expected?” Casey’s tone was dismal. You -simply cannot be a cripple for twenty-four hours, and sit up playing -unlucky poker all night and all day and well into another night, -without losing some of your animation; not even if you are Casey -Ryan. “Hell, I missed that train ag’in,” he added heavily when he -heard it whistle into the railroad yard. - -At the garage the Barrymores were waiting for him in their stage -clothes and makeup. The show lady had wept seams down through her -rouge, and the beads on her lashes had clotted stickily. “This never -happened to us before. We’ve took our bad luck with our good luck -and lived honest and respectable and self-respecting, and here, at -last ill fortune has tied the can onto us. I know you meant well and -all that, mister, but we certainly have had a raw deal handed out to -us in this town. We--certainly--have!” - -“We got till noon to-morrow to be outa the county,” croaked the -flat-chested one, shifting his Adam’s apple rapidly. “And that’s -real comedy, ain’t it, when your damn county runs clean over to the -Utah line, and we can’t go back the way we come, or--and we can’t go -anywhere till this big slob here puts our car together. He’s got -pieces of it strung from here around the block. Say, what kinda town -is this you wished onto us, anyway? Holding night court, mind you, -so they could can us quicker!” - -The show lady must have seen how dazed Casey looked. “Maybe you -ain’t heard the horrible deal they handed us, mister. They stopped -our show before we’d raised the curtain--and it was a -seventy-five-dollar house if it was a cent!” she wailed. “They had a -bill as long as my arm for license--we couldn’t get by with the -five-dollar one--and for lights and hall rent and what all. There -wasn’t enough money in the house to pay it! And they was going to -send us to jail! The sheriff acted anything but a gentleman, mister, -and if you ever lived in this town and liked it I must say I -question your taste!” - -“We wouldn’t use a town like this for a garbage dump, back home,” -cut in the flat-chested one, with all the contempt he could master. - -“And they hauled us over to their dirty old justice of the peace, -and he told us he’d give us thirty days in jail if we was in the -county to-morrow noon, and we don’t know how far this county goes, -either way!” - -“Fifty miles to St. Simon,” Bill told them comfortingly. “You can -make it, all right if--” - -“We can make it, hey? How’re we going to make it, with our car -layin’ around all over your garage?” The flat-chested one’s tone was -arrogant past belief. - -Casey was fumbling for strap buckles which he could not reach. He -was also groping through his colorful, stage-driver’s vocabulary for -words which might be pronounced in the presence of a lady, and -finding mighty few that were of any use to him. The combined effort -was turning him a fine purple when the lady was seized with another -brilliant idea. - -“Jack, dear, don’t be harsh. The gentleman meant well--and I’ll tell -you, mister, what let’s do! Let’s trade cars till the man has our -car repaired. Your car goes just fine, and we can load our stuff in -and get out away from this horrible town. Why, the preacher was -there and made a speech and said the meanest things about you, -because you was having a benefit and at the same identical time you -was setting in a saloon gambling. He said it was an outrage on -civilization, mister, and an insult to the honest, hardworking -people in Lund. Them was his very words.” - -“Well, hell!” Casey exploded abruptly. “I’m honest and hardworkin’ -as any damn preacher. You can ask anybody!” - -“Well, that’s what he said, mister. We certainly didn’t know you was -a gambler when we offered to give you a benefit. We certainly never -dreamed you’d queer us like that. But you’ll do us the favor to lend -us your car, won’t you, mister? You wouldn’t refuse that, and see me -and little junior languishin’ in jail when you knew in your heart -that--” - -“Aw, take the darn car!” muttered Casey distractedly, and hobbled -into the garage office where he knew that Bill kept liniment. - -Five minutes, perhaps, after that, Casey opened the office door wide -enough to fling out an assortment of straps and two crutches. - -Sounds from the rear of the garage indicated that Casey’s Ford was -“r’arin’ to go,” as Casey frequently expressed it. Voices were -jumbled in the tones of suggestions, commands, protest. Casey heard -the show lady’s clear treble berating Jack, dear, with thin -politeness. Then the car came snorting forward, paused in the wide -doorway, and the show lady’s voice called out clearly, untroubled as -the voice of a child after it has received that which it cried for. - -“Well, good-by, mister! You certainly are a godsend to give us the -loan of your car!” There was a buzz and a splutter, and they were -gone--gone clean out of Casey’s life into the unknown whence they -had come. - -Bill opened the door gently and eased into the office, sniffing -liniment. The painted hollows under Casey’s eyes gave him a ghastly -look in the lamplight when he lifted his face from examining a -chafed and angry knee. Bill opened his mouth for speech, caught a -certain look in Casey’s eyes, and did not say what he had intended -to say. Instead: - -“You better sleep here in the office, Casey. I’ve got another bed -back of the machine shop. I’ll lock up, and if any one comes and -rings the night bell--well, never mind. I’ll plug her so they can’t -ring her.” The world needs more men like Bill. - -Even after an avalanche human nature cannot resist digging, in the -melancholy hope of turning up grewsome remains. I know that you are -all itching to put shovel into the debris of Casey’s dreams, and to -see just what was left of them! - -There was mighty little, let me tell you. I said in the beginning -that twenty-five thousand dollars was like a wild cat in Casey’s -pocket. You can’t give a man that much money all in a lump and, -suddenly, after he has been content with dollars enough to pay for -the grub he eats, without seeing him lose his sense of proportion. -Twenty-five dollars he understands and can spend more prudently than -you, perhaps. Twenty-five thousand he simply cannot gauge. It seems -exhaustless. It is as if you plucked from the night all the stars -you can see, knowing that the Milky Way is still there and -unnumbered other stars invisible even in the aggregate. - -Casey played poker, with an appreciative audience and the lid off. -Now and then he took a drink stronger than two-and-three-fourths per -cent. He kept that up for a night and a day and well into another -night. Very well, gather round and look at the remains, and if -there’s a moral, you are welcome, I am sure. - -Casey awoke just before noon, and went out and held his head under -Bill’s garage hydrant with the water running a full stream. He -looked up and found Bill standing there with his hands in his -pockets, gazing at Casey sorrowfully. Casey grinned. - -“How’s she comin’, Bill?” - -Bill grunted and spat. “She ain’t. Not if you mean that car them -folks wished onto you. The tail light’s pretty fair, though. And in -their hurry the lady went off and left a pink silk stockin’ in the -back seat. The toe’s wore out of it, though. Casey, if you wait till -you overhaul ’em with that thing they wheeled in here under the name -of a car--” - -“Oh, that’s all right, Bill,” Casey grunted gamely. “I was goin’ to -git me a new car, anyway. Mine wasn’t so much. They’re welcome.” - -Bill grunted and spat again, but he did not say anything. - -“I’ll go see Dwyer, and see how much I got left,” Casey said -presently, and his voice, whether you believe it or not, was -cheerful. - -After a while Casey returned. He was grinning, but the grin was, to -a careful observer, a bit sickish. “Say, Bill, talk about poker--I’m -off it fer life. Now look what it done to me, Bill! I puts -twenty-five thousand dollars into the bank--minus two hundred I took -in money--and I takes a check book and I goes over to The Club and -gits into a game. I wears the check book down to the stubs. I goes -back and asks Dwyer how much I got in the bank, and he looks me over -like I was a sick horse he had doubts about bein’ worth doctorin’, -and as if he thought he mebby might better take me out an’ shoot me -an’ put me outa my misery. ‘Jest one dollar an’ sixty-seven cents, -Casey,’ he says to me. ‘If the checks is all in, which I trust they -air!’” - -Casey got out his plug of chewin’ tobacco and pried off a blunted -corner. “An’ hell, Bill! I had that much in the bank when I -started,” he finished plaintively. - -“Hell!” said Bill in brief, eloquent sympathy. - -Casey set his teeth together and extracted comfort from the tobacco. -He expectorated ruminatively. - -“Well, anyway, I got me some bran’-new socks, an’ they’re paid for, -thank God!” He tilted his old Stetson down over his right eye at his -favorite, Caseyish angle, stuck his hands in his pocket, and -strolled out into the sunshine. - -*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK GODSEND TO A LADY *** - -Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions will -be renamed. - -Creating the works from print editions not protected by U.S. copyright -law means that no one owns a United States copyright in these works, -so the Foundation (and you!) can copy and distribute it in the -United States without permission and without paying copyright -royalties. 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Thus, we do not -necessarily keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper -edition. - -Most people start at our website which has the main PG search -facility: www.gutenberg.org - -This website includes information about Project Gutenberg-tm, -including how to make donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary -Archive Foundation, how to help produce our new eBooks, and how to -subscribe to our email newsletter to hear about new eBooks. diff --git a/old/67855-0.zip b/old/67855-0.zip Binary files differdeleted file mode 100644 index d66263c..0000000 --- a/old/67855-0.zip +++ /dev/null diff --git a/old/67855-h.zip b/old/67855-h.zip Binary files differdeleted file mode 100644 index 6eae302..0000000 --- a/old/67855-h.zip +++ /dev/null diff --git a/old/67855-h/67855-h.htm b/old/67855-h/67855-h.htm deleted file mode 100644 index 6a60d02..0000000 --- a/old/67855-h/67855-h.htm +++ /dev/null @@ -1,1527 +0,0 @@ -<!DOCTYPE html> -<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" xml:lang="en" lang="en"> -<head> - <meta charset="UTF-8" /> - <title>The Project Gutenberg eBook of Godsend to a Lady, by B. M. Bower</title> - <link rel="icon" href="images/cover.jpg" type="image/x-cover" /> - <style> - body { margin-left:8%; margin-right:8%; } - p { text-indent:1.15em; margin-top:0.1em; margin-bottom:0.1em; text-align:justify; } - h1 { text-align:center; font-weight:normal; font-size:1.4em; } - .tn { background-color:linen; font-size:0.8em; border:1px solid silver; margin-top:1.8em; margin-left:8%; margin-bottom:1em; width:80%; padding:0.4em 2%; } - </style> -</head> - -<body> -<p style='text-align:center; font-size:1.2em; font-weight:bold'>The Project Gutenberg eBook of Godsend to a Lady, by B. M. Bower</p> -<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'> -This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and -most other parts of the world 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 <a href="https://www.gutenberg.org">www.gutenberg.org</a>. If you -are not located in the United States, you will have to check the laws of the -country where you are located before using this eBook. -</div> - -<p style='display:block; margin-top:1em; margin-bottom:1em; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em'>Title: Godsend to a Lady</p> -<p style='display:block; margin-top:1em; margin-bottom:0; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em'>Author: B. M. Bower</p> -<p style='display:block; text-indent:0; margin:1em 0'>Release Date: April 23, 2022 [eBook #67855]</p> -<p style='display:block; text-indent:0; margin:1em 0'>Language: English</p> - <p style='display:block; margin-top:1em; margin-bottom:0; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em; text-align:left'>Produced by: Roger Frank and Sue Clark</p> -<div style='margin-top:2em; margin-bottom:4em'>*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK GODSEND TO A LADY ***</div> - -<h1>Godsend to a Lady</h1> -<p style='text-align:center;'>By B. M. Bower<br/> -<span style='font-size:smaller'>Author of “You Ask Anybody,” “Cow Country,” Etc.</span></p> -<div class='tn'> - <p style='text-indent:0'>Transcriber’s Note: This story appeared in - the December 20, 1920 issue of <i>The Popular Magazine</i>.</p> -</div> - -<blockquote style='font-size:0.9em;'>“Casey” Ryan mixes a little -philanthropy with considerable poker and ends where he started—with -the addition of a pair of socks.</blockquote> - -<p>Casey waved good-by to the men from Tonopah, squinted up at the -sun, and got a coal-oil can of water and filled the radiator of his -Ford. He rolled his bed in the tarp and tied it securely, put -flour, bacon, coffee, salt, and various other small necessities of -life into a box, inspected his sour-dough can and decided to empty -it and start over again if hard fate drove him to sour dough. “Might -bust down and have to sleep out,” he meditated. “Then again I ain’t -liable to; and if I do I’ll be goin’ so fast I’ll git somewhere -before she stops. I’m—sure—goin’ to go!” He cranked the battered -car, straddled in over the edge on the driver’s side, and set his -feet against the pedals with the air of a man who had urgent -business elsewhere. The men from Tonopah were not yet out of sight -around the butte scarred with granite ledges before Casey was under -way, rattling down the rough trail from Ghost Mountain and bouncing -clear of the seat as the car lurched over certain rough spots.</p> - -<p>Pinned with a safety pin to the inside pocket of the vest he wore -only when he felt need of a safe and secret pocket, Casey Ryan -carried a check for twenty-five thousand dollars, made payable to -himself. A check for twenty-five thousand dollars in Casey’s pocket -was like a wild cat clawing at his imagination and spitting at every -moment’s delay. Casey had endured solitude and some hardship while -he coaxed Ghost Mountain to reveal a little of its secret treasure. -Now he wanted action, light, life, and plenty of it. While he drove -he dreamed, and his dreams beckoned, urged him faster and -faster.</p> - -<p>Up over the summit of the ridge that lay between Ghost Mountain -and Furnace Lake he surged with radiator bubbling. Down the long -slope to the lake lying there smiling sardonically at a world it -loved to trick with its moods, Casey drove as if he were winning a -bet. Across that five miles of baked, yellow-white clay he raced, -his Ford a-creak in every joint.</p> - -<p>“Go it, you tin lizard,” chortled Casey. “I’ll have me a real -wagon when I git to Los. She’ll be white, with red stripes along her -sides and red wheels, and she’ll eat up the road and lick her chops -for more. Sixty miles under her belt every time the clock strikes, -or she ain’t good enough for Casey! Mebby they think they got some -drivers in Californy. Meybe they <em>think</em> they have. They -ain’t, though, because Casey Ryan ain’t there yet. I’ll catch that -night train. Oughta be in by morning, and then you keep your eye on -Casey. There’s goin’ to be a stir around Los, about to-morrow noon. -I’ll have to buy some clothes, I guess. And I’ll find some nice girl -with yella hair that likes pleasure, and take her out ridin’. Yeah, -I’ll have to git me a swell outfit uh clothes. I’ll look the part, -all right!”</p> - -<p>Up a long, winding trail and over another summit, Casey dreamed -while the stark, scarred buttes on either side regarded him with -enigmatic calm. Since the first wagon train had worried over the -rough deserts on their way to California, the bleak hills of Nevada -had listened while prospectors dreamed aloud and cackled over their -dreaming; had listened, too, while they raved in thirst and heat and -madness. Inscrutably they watched Casey as he hurried by with his -twenty-five thousand dollars and his pleasant pictures of soft -ease.</p> - -<p>At a dim fork in the trail Casey slowed and stopped. A boiling -radiator will not forever brook neglect, and Casey brought his mind -down to practical things for a space. “I can just as well take the -train from Lund,” he mused, while he poured in more water. “Then I -can leave this bleatin’ burro with Bill. He oughta give me a coupla -hundred for her, anyway. No use wasting money just because you -happen to have a few dollars in your pants.” He filled his pipe to -smoke and muse on that sensible idea and turned the nose of his Ford -down the dim trail to Lund.</p> - -<p>Eighty miles more or less straight away across the mountainous -waste lay Lund, halfway up a cañon that led to higher reaches in the -hills rich in silver, lead, copper, gold. Silver it was that Casey -had found and sold to the men from Tonopah—and it was a freak of -luck, he thought whimsically, that had led him and his Ford away -over to Ghost Mountain to find their stake when they had probably -been driving over millions every day that they made the stage trip -from Pinnacle down to Lund. For Casey, be it known, was an old stage -driver turned prospector. He had a good deal to think of while he -drove, and he had time enough in which to think it.</p> - -<p>The trail was rutted in places where the sluicing rains had -driven hard across the hills; soft with sand in places where the -fierce winds had swept the open. For a while the thin, wabbly track -of a wagon meandered over the road, then turned off up a -flat-bottomed draw and was lost in the sagebrush. Some prospector -not so lucky as he, thought Casey with swift, soon-forgotten -sympathy.</p> - -<p>A coyote ran up a slope toward him, halted with forefeet planted -on a rock and stared at him, ears perked like an inquisitive dog. -Casey stopped, eased his rifle out of the crease in the back of the -seat cushion, chanced a shot and his luck held. He climbed out, -picked up the limp gray animal, threw it into the tonneau and went -on. Even with twenty-five thousand dollars in his pocket, Casey told -himself that coyote hides are not to be scorned. He had seen the -time when the price of a good hide meant flour and bacon and tobacco -to him. He would skin it when he stopped to eat.</p> - -<p>Eighty miles with never a soul to call good day to Casey. Nor -shack nor shelter made for man, nor water to wet his lips if they -cracked with thirst—unless, perchance, one of those swift downpours -came riding on the wind, lashing the clouds with lightning. Then -there was water, to be sure. Far ahead of Casey such a storm rolled -in off the barren hills to the south. “She’s wettin’ up that red -lake a-plenty,” observed Casey, squinting through the dirty windshield. -“No trail around, either, on account of the lava beds. -But I guess I can pull acrost, all right.”</p> - -<p>Doubt was in his voice, however, and he was half minded to turn -back and take the straight road to Vernal, which had been his first -objective. But he discarded the idea. “No, sir, Casey Ryan never -back-trailed yet. Poor time to commence now, when I got the world by -the tail and a downhill pull. We’ll make out, all right—can’t be so -terrible boggy with a short rain like that there. I bet,” he -continued optimistically to the Ford, which was the nearest he had -to human companionship, “I bet we make it in a long lope. Git along, -there! Shake a hoof—’s the last time you haul Casey around.</p> - -<p>“Casey’s goin’ to step high, wide, and handsome. Sixty miles an -hour or he’ll ask for his money back. They can’t step too fast for -Casey! Blue—if I git me a girl with yella hair, mebby she’ll show -up better in a blue car than she will in a white and red. This here -turnout has got to be tasty and have class. If she was dark—” He -shook his head at that. “No, sir, black hair grows too plenty on -squaws an’ chili queens. Yella goes with Casey. Clingin’ kind with -blue eyes—that’s the stuff! An’ I’ll sure show her some -drivin’!”</p> - -<p>He wondered whether he should find the girl first and buy the car -to match her beauty, or buy the car first and with that lure the -lady of his dreams. It was a nice question and it required thought. -It was pleasant to ponder the problem, and Casey became -so lost in meditation that he forgot to eat when the sun flirted -with the scurrying clouds over his wind-torn automobile top.</p> - -<p>So he came bouncing and swaying down the last mesa to the place -called Red Lake. Casey had heard it spoken of with opprobrious -epithets by men who had crossed it in wet weather. In dry weather it -was red clay caked and checked by the sun, and wheels or hoofs -stirred clouds of red dust that followed and choked the traveler. In -rain it was said to be boggy, and travelers failed to travel at -all.</p> - -<p>Casey was not thinking of the lake when he drove down to it. He -was seeing visions, though you would not think it to look at him; a -stocky, middle-aged man who needed a shave and a hair cut, wearing -cheap, dirt-stained overalls and blue shirt and square-toed shoes -studded thickly on the soles with hobnails worn shiny; driving a -desert-scarred Ford with most of the paint gone and a front fender -cocked up and flapping crazily, and tires worn down to the fabric in -places.</p> - -<p>But his eyes were very blue and there was a humorous twist to his -mouth, and the wrinkles around his eyes meant Irish laughter quite -as much as squinting into the sun. If he dreamed incongruously of -big, luxurious cars gorgeous in paint and nickel trim, and of slim, -young women with yellow hair and blue eyes—well, stranger dreams -have been hidden away behind exteriors more unsightly than was the -shell which holds the soul of Casey Ryan.</p> - -<p>Presently the practical, everyday side of his nature nudged him -into taking note of his immediate surroundings. Casey knew at a -glance that half of Red Lake was wet, and that the shiny patches -here and there were shallow pools of water. Moreover, out in the -reddest, wettest part of it an automobile stood with its back to -him, and pygmy figures were moving slowly upon either side.</p> - -<p>“Stuck” diagnosed Casey in one word, and tucked his dream into -the back of his mind even while he pulled down the gas lever a -couple of notches and lunged along the muddy ruts that led straight -away from the safe line of sagebrush and out upon the platterlike -red expanse.</p> - -<p>The Ford grunted and lugged down to a steady pull. Casey drove as -he had driven his six horses up a steep grade in the old days, -coaxing every ounce of power into action. Now he coaxed with spark -and gas and somehow kept her in high, and stopped with nice judgment -on a small island of harder clay within shouting distance of the car -ahead. He killed the engine then and stepped down, and went picking -his way carefully out to them, his heavy shoes speedily collecting -great pancakes of mud that clung like glue.</p> - -<p>“Stuck, hey? You oughta kept in the ruts, no matter if they are -water-logged. You never want to turn outa the road on one of these -lake beds, huntin’ dry ground. If it’s wet in the road you can bank -on sinkin’ in to the hocks the minute you turn out.” He carefully -removed the mud pancakes from his shoes by scraping them across the -hub of the stalled car, and edged back to stand with his arms on his -hips while he surveyed the full plight of them.</p> - -<p>“She sure is bogged down a-plenty,” he observed, grinning -sympathetically.</p> - -<p>“Could you hitch on your car, mister, and pull us out?” This was -a woman’s voice, and it had an odd quality of youth and unquenchable -humor that thrilled Casey, woman hungry as he was.</p> - -<p>Casey put up a hand to his mouth and surreptitiously removed a -chew of tobacco almost fresh. With some effort he pulled his feet -closer together, and he lifted his old Stetson and reset it at a -consciously rakish angle. He glanced at the car, behind it and in -front, coming back to the flat-chested, depressed individual before -him. “Yes, ma’am. I’ll get you out, all right. Sure, I will.” While -he looked at the man he spoke to the woman.</p> - -<p>“We’ve been stalled here for an hour or more,” volunteered the -flat-chested one. “We was right behind the storm. Looked a sorry -chance that anybody would come along for the next week or so—”</p> - -<p>“Mister, you’re a godsend if ever there was one,” added the lady. -“I’d write your name on the roster of saints in my prayer book, if I -ever said prayers and had a prayer book and a pencil and knew what -name to write.”</p> - -<p>“Casey Ryan. Don’t you worry, ma’am. We’ll get you outa here in -no time.” Casey grinned and craned his neck. Looking lower this -time, he saw a pair of feet which did not seem to belong to that -voice, though they were undoubtedly feminine. Still, red mud will -work miracles of disfigurement, and Casey was an optimist by -nature.</p> - -<p>“My wife is trying out a new comedy line,” the flat-chested one -observed unemotionally. “Trouble is it never gets over out front. If -she ever did get it across the footlights I could raise the price of -admission and get away with it. How far is it to Rhyolite?”</p> - -<p>“Rhyolite? Twenty or twenty-five miles, mebby.” Casey gave him -an inquiring look.</p> - -<p>“Can we get there in time to paper the town and hire a hall to -show in, mister?” Casey saw the mud-caked feet move laboriously -toward the rear of the car.</p> - -<p>“Yes, ma’am, I guess you can. There ain’t any town, though, and -it ain’t got any hall in it, ner anybody to go to a show.”</p> - -<p>The woman laughed. “That’s like my prayer book. Well, Jack, you -certainly have got a powerful eye, but you’ve been trying to look -this outfit out of the mud for an hour, and I haven’t saw it move an -inch, so far. Let’s just try something else.”</p> - -<p>“A prayer outa your prayer book, maybe,” the flat-chested one -retorted, not troubling to move or to turn his head.</p> - -<p>Casey blinked and looked again. The woman who appeared from the -farther side of the car might have been the creature of his dream, -so far as her face, her hair, and her voice went. Her hair was -yellow, unmistakably yellow. Her eyes were blue as Casey’s own, and -she had nice teeth and showed them in a red-lipped smile. A more -sophisticated man would have known that the powder on her nose was -freshly applied, and that her reason for remaining so long hidden -from his sight while she talked to him was revealed in the moist -color on her lips and the fresh bloom on her cheeks. Casey was not -sophisticated. He thought she was a beautiful woman, and asked no -questions of her makeup box.</p> - -<p>“Mister, you certainly are a godsend!”—she told him again when -she faced him. “I’d call you a direct answer to prayer, only I -haven’t been praying. I’ve been trying to tell Jack that the shovel -is not packed under the banjos, as he thinks it was, but was left -back at our last camp where he was trying to dig water out of a wet -spot. Jack, dear, perhaps the gentleman has got a shovel in his car. -Ain’t it a real gag, mister, us being stuck out here in a dry -lake?”</p> - -<p>Casey tipped his hat and grinned and tried not to look at her too -long. Husbands of beautiful young women are frequently jealous, and -Casey knew his place and meant to keep it.</p> - -<p>All the way back to his car Casey studied the peculiar features -of the meeting. He had been thinking about yellow-haired women—well! -But, of course, she was married, and therefore not to be -thought of save as a coincidence. Still, Casey rather regretted the -existence of Jack, dear, and began to wonder why good-looking women -always picked such dried-up little runts for husbands. “Show actors, -by the talk,” he mused. “I wonder now if she don’t sing, mebby?”</p> - -<p>He started the car and forged out to them, making the last few -rods in low gear and knowing how risky it was to stop. They were -rather helpless, he had to admit, and did all the standing around -while Casey did all the work. But he shoveled the rear wheels out, -waded back to the tiny island of solid ground and gathered an armful -of brush, covered himself with mud while he crowded the brush in -front of the wheels, tied the tow rope he carried for emergencies -like this, waded to the Ford, cranked, and trusted the rest to luck. -The Ford moved slowly ahead until the rope between the two cars -tightened, then spun wheels and proceeded to dig herself in where -she stood. The other car, shaking with the tremor of its own engine, -ruthlessly ground the sagebrush into the mud and stood upon it -shaking and roaring and spluttering furiously.</p> - -<p>“Nothing like sticking together, mister,” called the lady -cheerfully, and he heard the music of her laughter above the churn -of their motor.</p> - -<p>“Say, ain’t your carburetor all off?” Casey leaned out to call -back to the flat-chested one. “You’re smokin’ back there like wet -wood.”</p> - -<p>The man immediately stopped the motor and looked behind him.</p> - -<p>Casey muttered something under his breath when he climbed out. He -looked at his own car standing hub deep in red mud, and reached for -the solacing plug of chewing tobacco. Then he thought of the lady, -and withdrew his hand empty.</p> - -<p>“We’re certainly going to stick together, mister,” she repeated -her witticism, and Casey grinned foolishly.</p> - -<p>“She’ll dry up in a few hours, with this hot sun,” he observed -hearteningly. “We’ll have to pile brush in, I guess.” His glance -went back to the tiny island and to his double row of tracks. He -looked at the man.</p> - -<p>“Jack, dear, you might go help the gentleman get some brush,” the -lady suggested sweetly.</p> - -<p>“This ain’t my act,” Jack dear objected. “I just about broke my -spine trying to heave the car outa the mud when we first stuck. Say, -I wish there was a beanery of some kind in walking distance. Honest, -I’ll be dead of starvation in another hour. What’s the chance of a -bite, hon?”</p> - -<p>Contempt surged through Casey. Deep in his soul he pitied her for -being tied to such an insect. Immediately he was glad that she had -spirit enough to put the little runt in his place.</p> - -<p>“You <em>would</em> wait to buy supplies in Rhyolite, remember,” -she reminded her husband calmly. “I guess you’ll have to wait till -you get there. I’ve got one piece of bread saved for junior. You and -I go hungry—and cheer up, old dear, you’re used to it!”</p> - -<p>“I’ve got grub,” Casey volunteered hospitably. “Didn’t stop to -eat yet. I’ll pack the stuff back there to dry ground and boil some -coffee and fry some bacon.” He looked at the woman and was rewarded -by a smile so brilliant that Casey was dazzled.</p> - -<p>“You certainly are a godsend,” she called after him, as he turned -away to his own car. “It just happens that we’re out of everything. -It’s so hard to keep anything on hand when you’re traveling in this -country, with towns so far apart. You just run short, before you -know it.”</p> - -<p>Casey thought that the very scarcity of towns compelled one to -avoid running short of food, but he did not say anything. He waded -back to the island with a full load of provisions and cooking -utensils, and in three minutes he was squinting against the smoke of -a camp fire while he poured water from a canteen into his blackened -coffeepot.</p> - -<p>“Coffee! Jack, dear, can you believe your nose!” chirped the -woman presently behind Casey. “Junior, darling, just smell the -bacon! Isn’t he a nice gentleman? Go give him a kiss like a little -man.”</p> - -<p>Casey didn’t want any kiss—at least from junior. Junior was six -years old and his face was dirty and his eyes were old, old eyes, -hot brown like his father’s. He had the pinched, hungry look which -Casey had seen only among starving Indians, and after he had kissed -Casey perfunctorily he snatched the piece of raw bacon which Casey -had just sliced off, and tore at it with his teeth like a hungry -pup.</p> - -<p>Casey affected not to notice, and busied himself with the fire -while the woman reproved junior half-heartedly in an undertone and -laughed and remarked upon the number of hours since they had -breakfasted.</p> - -<p>Casey tried not to watch them eat, but in spite of himself he -thought of a prospector whom he had rescued last summer after a -five-day fast. These people tried not to seem unusually hungry, but -they ate more than the prospector had eaten, and their eyes followed -greedily every mouthful which Casey took, as if they grudged him the -food. Wherefore Casey did not take as many mouthfuls as he would -have liked.</p> - -<p>“This desert air certainly does put an edge on one’s appetite,” -the woman smiled, while she blew across her fourth cup of coffee to -cool it, and between breaths bit into a huge bacon sandwich which -Casey could not help knowing was her third. “Jack, dear, isn’t this -coffee delicious!”</p> - -<p>“<em>Mah-ma!</em> Do we have to p-pay that there g-godsend? C-can -you p-pay for more b-bacon for me, mah-ma?” Junior licked his -fingers and twitched a fold of his mother’s soiled skirt.</p> - -<p>“Sure, give him more bacon! All he wants. I’ll fry another -skillet full.” Casey spoke hurriedly, getting out the piece which he -had packed away in the bag.</p> - -<p>“He’s used to these holdup joints where they charge you forty -cents for a greasy plate,” the flat-chested man explained, speaking -with his mouth full. “Eat all yuh want, junior. This is a barbecue -and no collection took up to pay the speaker of the day.”</p> - -<p>“We certainly appreciate your kindness, mister,” the woman put in -graciously, holding out her cup. “What we’d have done, stuck here in -the mud with no provisions and no town within miles, Heaven only -knows. Was you kidding us,” she added, with a betrayal of more real -anxiety than she intended, “when you said Rhyolite is a dead one? We -looked it up on the map, and it was marked like a town. We’re making -all the little towns that the road shows mostly miss. We give a -fine show, mister. It’s been played on all the best time in the -country—we took it abroad before the war and made real good money -with it. But we just wanted to see the country, you know—after doing -the Cont’nent and all the like of that. So we thought we’d travel -independent and make all the small towns—”</p> - -<p>“The movie trust is what puts vodeville on the bum,” the man -interrupted. “We used to play the best time only. We got a -first-class act. One that ought to draw down good money anywhere, -and would draw down good money, if the movie trust—”</p> - -<p>“And then we like to be independent, and go where we like and get -off the railroad for a spell. Freedom is the breath of life to he -and I. We’d rather have it kinda rough, now and then, and be free -and independent—”</p> - -<p>“I’ve g-got a b-bunny, a-and it f-fell in the g-grease box a-and -we c-can’t wash it off. And h-he’s asleep now. C-can I g-give my -b-bunny some b-bacon, Mister G-godsend?”</p> - -<p>The woman laughed, and the man laughed and Casey himself grinned -sheepishly. Casey did not want to be called a godsend, and he hated -the term mister when applied to himself. All his life he had been -plain Casey Ryan and proud of it, and his face was very red when he -confessed that there was no more bacon. He had not expected to feed -a family when he left camp that morning, but had taken ample rations -for himself only.</p> - -<p>Junior whined and insisted that he wanted b-bacon for his -b-bunny, and the man hushed him querulously and asked Casey what the -chances were for getting under way. Casey repacked a lightened bag, -emptied the coffee grounds, shouldered his canteen, and waded back -to the cars and to the problem of red mud with an unbelievably -tenacious quality.</p> - -<p>The man followed and asked him if he happened to have any smoking -tobacco, and afterward begged a cigarette paper, and then a match. -“The dog-gone helpless, starved bunch!” Casey muttered while he dug -out the wheels of his Ford, and knew that his own dream must wait -upon the need of these three human beings whom he had never seen -until an hour ago, of whose existence he had been in ignorance and -who would probably contribute nothing whatever to his own welfare or -happiness, however much he might contribute to theirs.</p> - -<p>I do not say that Casey soliloquized in this manner while he was -sweating there in the mud under hot midday. He did think that now he -would no doubt miss the night train to Los Angeles, and that he -would not, after all, be purchasing glad raiment and a luxurious car -on the morrow. He regretted that, but he did not see how he could -help it. He was Casey Ryan, and his heart was soft to suffering, -even though a little of the spell cast by the woman’s blue eyes and -her golden hair had dimmed for him.</p> - -<p>He still thought her a beautiful woman who was terribly mismated, -but he felt vaguely that women with beautiful golden hair should not -drink their coffee aloud, nor calmly turn up the bottom of their -skirts that they might use the under side of the hem for a napkin -after eating bacon. I do not like to mention this—Casey did not like -to think of it, either. It was with reluctance that he reflected -upon the different standards imposed by sex. A man, for instance, -might wipe his fingers on his pants and look his world straight in -the eye. But, dog-gone it, when a lady’s a lady, she ought to -<em>be</em> a lady.</p> - -<p>Later Casey forgot for a time the incident of the luncheon on Red -Lake. With infinite labor and much patience he finally extricated -himself and the show people, with no assistance from them, save -encouragement. He towed them to dry land, untied and put away his -rope and then discovered that he had not the heart to drive on at -his usual hurtling pace and leave them to follow. There was an -ominous stutter in their motor, for one thing, and Casey knew of a -stiffish hill a few miles this side of Rhyolite.</p> - -<p>It was full sundown when they reached the place, which was not a -town but a camp beside a spring, usually deserted. Three years -before, a mine had built the camp for the accommodation of the truck -drivers who hauled ore to Lund and were sometimes unable to make the -trip in one day. Casey, having adapted his speed to that of the -decrepit car of the show people, was thankful that they arrived at -all. He still had a little flour and coffee and salt, and he hoped -that there was enough grease left on the bacon paper to grease the -skillet so that bannocks would not stick to the pan. He also hoped -that his flour would hold out under the onslaught of their -appetites.</p> - -<p>But Casey was lucky. A half dozen cowboys were camped there with -a pack outfit, meaning to ride the cañons next day for cattle. They -were cooking supper, and they had “beefed a critter” that had broken -a leg that afternoon running among rocks. Casey shifted his -responsibility and watched, in complete content, while the show -people gorged on broiled yearling steaks. I dislike to use the word -gorge, where a lady’s appetite is involved, but that is the word -which Casey thought of first.</p> - -<p>Later, the show people very amiably consented to entertain their -hosts. It was then that Casey was once more blinded by the -brilliance of the lady, and forgot certain little blemishes that had -seemed to him quite pronounced. The cowboys obligingly built a -bonfire before the tent, into which the couple retired to set their -stage and tune their instruments. Casey lay back on a cowboy’s -rolled bed with his knees crossed, his hands clasped behind his -thinning hair, and smoked and watched the first pale stars come out -while he listened to the pleasant twang of banjos in the tuning.</p> - -<p>It was great. The sale of his silver claim to the men from -Tonopah, the check safely pinned in his pocket, the future which he -had planned for himself swam hazily through his mind. He was fed to -repletion, he was rich, he had been kind to those in need. He was a -man to be envied, and he told himself so.</p> - -<p>Then the tent flaps were lifted and a dazzling, golden-haired -creature in a filmy white evening gown to which the firelight was -kind, stood there smiling, a banjo in her hands. Casey gave a grunt -and sat up, blinking. She sang, looking at him frequently. At the -encore, which was livened by a clog, danced to hidden music, she -surely blew a kiss in the direction of Casey, who gulped and looked -around at the others self-consciously, and blushed hotly.</p> - -<p>In truth it was a very good show which the two gave there in the -tent; much better than the easiest-going optimist would expect. When -it was over to the last twang of a bango string, Casey took off his -hat, emptied into it what money he had in his pockets, and set the -hat in the fire glow. Without a word the cowboys followed his -example, turning pockets inside out to prove they could give no -more.</p> - -<p>Casey spread his bed apart from the others that night, and lay -for a long while smoking and looking up at the stars and dreaming -again his dream; only now the golden-haired creature who leaned back -upon the deep cushions of his speedy blue car was not a vague, -bloodless vision, but a real person with nice teeth and a red-lipped -smile, who called him mister in a tone he thought like music. Now -his dream lady sang to him, talked to him. I consider it rather -pathetic that Casey’s dreams always halted just short of mealtime. -He never pictured her sitting across the table from him in some -expensive cafe, although Casey was rather fond of cafe lights and -music and service and food.</p> - -<p>Next morning the glamour remained, although the lady was once -more the unkempt woman of yesterday. The three seemed to look upon -Casey still as a godsend. They had talked with some of the men and -had decided to turn back to Vernal, which was a bigger town than -Lund and, therefore, likely to produce better crowds. They even -contemplated a three-night stand, which would make possible some -very urgent repairs to their car. Casey demurred, although he could -not deny the necessity for repairs. It was a longer trail to Vernal, -and a rougher trail. Moreover, he himself was on his way to -Lund.</p> - -<p>“You go to Lund,” he urged, “and you can stay there four nights -if you want to, and give shows. And I’ll take yuh on up to Pinnacle -in my car while yours is gittin’ fixed, and you can give a show -there. You’d draw a big crowd. I’d make it a point to tell folks you -give a dandy show. And I’ll git yuh good rates at the garage where I -do business. You don’t want nothin’ of Vernal. Lund’s the place you -want to hit fer.”</p> - -<p>“There’s a lot to that,” the foreman of the cowboys agreed. “If -Casey’s willin’ to back you up, you better hit straight for Lund. -Everybody there knows Casey Ryan. He drove stage from Pinnacle to -Lund for two years and never killed nobody, though he did come close -to it, now and again. I’ve saw strong men that rode with Casey and -said they never felt right afterward. Casey, he’s a dog-gone good -driver, but he used to be kinda hard on passengers. He done more to -promote heart failure in them two towns than all the altitude they -can pile up. But nobody’s going to hold that against a good show -that comes there. I heard there ain’t been a show stop off in Lund -for over a year. You’ll have to beat ’em away from the door, I -bet.”</p> - -<p>Wherefore the Barrymores—that was the name they called -themselves, though I am inclined to doubt their legal right to -it—the Barrymores altered their booking and went with Casey to Lund. -They were not fools, by the way. Their car was much more -disreputable than you would believe a car could be and turn a wheel, -and the Barrymores recognized the handicap of its appearance. They -camped well out of sight of town, therefore, and let Casey drive in -alone.</p> - -<p>Casey found that the westbound train had already gone, which gave -him a full twenty-four hours in Lund, even though he discounted his -promise to see the Barrymores through. There was a train, to be -sure, that passed through Lund in the middle of the night; but that -was the De Luxe, standard and drawing-room sleepers, which disdained -stopping to pick up plebeian local passengers. So Casey must spend -twenty-four hours in Lund, greeting men who hailed him joyously at -the top of their voices while they were yet afar off, and thumped -him painfully upon the shoulders when they came within reach of -him.</p> - -<p>You may not grasp the full significance of this, unless you have -known old and popular stage drivers, soft of heart and hard of fist. -Then remember that Casey had spent months on end alone in the -wilderness, working like a lashed slave from sunrise to dark trying -to wrest a fortune from a certain mountainside. Remember how an -enforced isolation, coupled with rough fare and hard work, will -breed a craving for lights and laughter and the speech of friends. -Remember that, and don’t overlook the twenty-five thousand dollars -that Casey had pinned safe within his pocket.</p> - -<p>Casey had unthinkingly tossed his last dime into his hat for the -show people at Rhyolite. He had not even skinned the coyote whose -hide would have been worth ten or fifteen dollars, as hides go. In -the stress of pulling out of the mud at Red Lake he had forgotten -all about the dead animal in his tonneau until his nose reminded him -next morning that it was there. Then he had hauled it out by the -tail and thrown it away. He was broke, except that he had that check -in his pocket.</p> - -<p>Of course it was easy enough for Casey to get money. He went to -the store that sold everything from mining tools to green perfume -bottles tied with narrow pink ribbon. The man who owned that store -also owned the bank next door, and a little place down the street -which was called laconically “The Club.” One way and another, Dwyer -managed to feel the money of every man who came into Lund and -stopped there for a space. He was an honest man, too—or as honest as -is practicable for a man in business.</p> - -<p>Dwyer was tickled to see Casey again. Casey was a good fellow, -and he never needed his memory jogged when he owed a man. He paid -before he was asked to pay, and that is enough to make any merchant -love him. He watched Casey unpin his vest pocket and remove the -check, and he was not too eager to inspect it.</p> - -<p>“Good? Surest thing you know. Want it cashed, or applied to your -old checking account?—it’s open yet, with a dollar and sixty-seven -cents to your credit, I believe. I’ll take care of it, though it’s -after banking hours.”</p> - -<p>Casey was foolish. “I’ll take a couple of hundred, if it’s handy, -and a check book. I guess you can fix it so I can get what money I -want in Los. I’m goin’ to the city, Dwyer, and I’m goin’ to have one -hell of a time when I git there. I’ve earned it. You ask anybody -that ever mined.”</p> - -<p>Dwyer laughed while he inked a pen for Casey’s indorsement. “Hop -to it, Casey. Glad you made good. But you better let me put part of -that in a savings account, so you can’t check it out. You know, -Casey—remember your weak point.”</p> - -<p>“Aw—that’s all right! Don’t you worry none about Casey Ryan! -Casey’ll take care of himself—he’s had too many jolts to want -another one. Say, gimme a pair of them socks before you go in the -bank. I’ll pay yuh,” he grinned, “when yuh come back with some -money. Ain’t got a cent on me, Dwyer. Give it all away. Twelve -dollars and something. Down to twenty-five thousand dollars and my -Ford auty<i>mo</i>bil—and Bill’s goin’ to buy that off me soon as he looks -her over to see what’s busted and what ain’t.”</p> - -<p>Dwyer laughed again and unlocked the door behind the overalls and -jumpers, and disappeared into his bank. Presently he returned with a -receipted duplicate deposit slip for twenty-three thousand eight -hundred dollars, a little, flat check book and two hundred dollars -in worn bank notes. “You ought to be independent for the rest of -your life, Casey. This is a fine start for any man,” he said.</p> - -<p>Casey paid for the socks and slid the change for a ten-dollar -bill into his overalls pocket, put the check book and the bank notes -away where he had carried the check, and walked out with his hat -very much tilted over his right eye and his shoulders swaggering a -little. You can’t blame him for that, can you?</p> - -<p>As he stepped from the store he met an old acquaintance from -Pinnacle. There was only one thing to do, in a case like that, and -Casey did it quite naturally. They came out of The Club wiping their -lips, and the swagger in Casey’s shoulders was more pronounced.</p> - -<p>Then, face to face, Casey met the show lady, which was what he -called her in his mind. She had her arms clasped around a large -paper sack full of lumpy things, and her eyes had a strained, -anxious look.</p> - -<p>“Oh, mister! I’ve been looking all over for you. They say we -can’t show in this town. The license for road shows is fifty -dollars, to begin with, and I’ve been all over and can’t find a -single place where we could show, even if we could pay the license. -Ain’t that the last word in hard luck? Now, what to do beats me, -mister. We’ve just got to have the old car tinkered up so it’ll -carry us on to the next place, wherever that is. Jack, dear, says he -must have a new tire by some means or other, and we was counting on -what we’d make here.</p> - -<p>“And up at that other place you’ve mentioned the mumps has broke -out and they wouldn’t let us show for love or money. A man in the -drug store told me. Mister, we certainly are in a hole now for sure! -If we could give a benefit for something or somebody. Mister, those -men back there said you’re so popular in this town, I believe I’ve -got an idea. Mister, couldn’t you have bad luck, or be sick or -something, so we could give a benefit for you? People certainly -would turn out good for a man that’s liked the way they say you are. -I’d just love to put on a show for you, mister. Couldn’t we fix it -up some way?”</p> - -<p>Casey looked up and down the street, and found it practically -empty. Lund was dining at that hour. And while Casey expected later -the loud greetings and the handshakes and all, as a matter of fact -he had thus far talked with Bill, the garage man, with Dwyer, the -storekeeper and banker, and with the man from Pinnacle, who was -already making ready to crank his car and go home. Lund, as a town, -was yet unaware of Casey’s presence. Casey looked at the show lady, -found her gazing at his face with eyes that said please in four -languages, and hesitated.</p> - -<p>“You could git up a benefit for the Methodist church, mebby,” he -temporized. “There’s a church of some kind here—I guess it’s a -Methodist. They most generally are.”</p> - -<p>“We’d have to split with them if we did,” the show lady objected -practically. “Oh, mister, we’re stuck worse than when we was back -there in the mud! We’d only have to pay five dollars for a six -months’ theater license, which would let us give all the shows we -wanted to. It’s a new law that I guess you didn’t know anything -about,” she added kindly. “You certainly wouldn’t have insisted on -us coming if you’d knew about the license—”</p> - -<p>“It’s two years, almost, since I was here,” Casey admitted. “I -been out prospecting.”</p> - -<p>“Well, we can just work it fine! Can’t we go -somewhere and talk it over? I’ve got a swell idea, mister, if you’ll -just listen to it a minute, and it’ll certainly be a godsend to us -to be able to give our show. We’ve got some crutches among our stage -props, and some scar patches, mister, that would certainly make you -up fine as a cripple. Wouldn’t they believe it, mister, if it was -told that you had been in an accident and got crippled for -life?”</p> - -<p>In spite of his perturbation Casey grinned. “Yeah, I guess they’d -believe it, all right,” he admitted. “They’d likely be tickled to -death to see me goin’ around on crutches.” He cast a hasty thought -back into his past, when he had driven a careening stage between -Pinnacle and Lund, strewing the steep trail with wreckage not his -own. “Yeah, it’d tickle ’em to death. Them that’s rode with me,” he -concluded.</p> - -<p>“Oh, mister, you certainly are a godsend! Duck outa sight -somewhere while I go tell Jack, dear, that we’ve found a way open -for us to show, after all!” While Casey was pulling the sag out of -his jaw so that he could protest, could offer her money, do anything -save what she wanted, the show lady disappeared. Casey turned and -went back into The Club, remained five minutes perhaps and then -walked very circumspectly across the street to Bill’s garage. It was -there that the Barrymores found him when they came a-seeking with -their dilapidated old car, their crutches, their grease paint and -scar patches, to make a cripple of Casey, whether he would or -no.</p> - -<p>Bill fell uproariously in with the plan, and Dwyer, stopping at -the garage on his way home to dinner, thought it a great joke on -Lund, and promised to help the benefit along. Casey, with three -drinks under his belt and his stomach otherwise empty, wanted to -sing something which he had forgotten. Casey couldn’t have -recognized Trouble if it had walked up and banged him in the eye. He -said sure, he’d be a cripple for the lady. He’d be anything once, -and some things several times, if they asked him the right way.</p> - -<p>Casey looked very bad when the show people were through with him. -He had expected bandages wound picturesquely around his person, but -the Barrymores were more artistic than that. Casey’s right leg was -drawn up at the knee so that he could not put his foot on the ground -when he tried, and he did not know how the straps were fastened. His -left shoulder was higher than his right shoulder, and his eyes were -sunken in his head and a scar ran down along his temple to his left -cheek bone. When he looked in the glass which Bill brought him, -Casey actually felt ill. They told him that he must not wash his -face, and that his week’s growth of beard was a blessing from -Heaven. The show lady begged him, with dew on her lashes, to play -the part faithfully, and they departed very happy over their -prospects.</p> - -<p>Casey did not know whether he was happy or not. With Bill to -encourage him and give him a lift over the gutters, he crossed the -street to a restaurant and ordered largely of sirloin steak and -French-fried potatoes. After supper there was a long evening to -spend quietly on crutches, and The Club was just next door. A man -can always spend an evening very quickly at The Club—or he could in -the wet days—if his money held out. Casey had money enough, and -within an hour he didn’t care whether he was crippled or not. There -were five besides himself at that table, and they had agreed to -remove the lid. Moreover, there was a crowd ten deep around that -particular table. For the news had gone out that here was Casey Ryan -back again, a hopeless cripple, playing poker like a drunken -Rockefeller and losing as if he liked to lose.</p> - -<p>At eight o’clock the next morning Bill came in to tell Casey that -the show people had brought up their car to be fixed, and was the -pay good? Casey replied without looking up from his hand, which held -a pair of queens which interested him. He’d stand good, he said, and -Bill gave a grunt and went off.</p> - -<p>At noon Casey meant to eat something. But another man had come -into the game with a roll of money and a boastful manner. Casey -rubbed his cramped leg and hunched down in his chair again and -called for a stack of blues. Casey, I may as well confess, had been -calling for stacks of blues and reds and whites rather often since -midnight.</p> - -<p>At four in the afternoon Casey hobbled into the restaurant and -ate another steak and drank three cups of coffee, black. He meant to -go across to the garage and have Bill hunt up the Barrymores and get -them to unstrap him for a while, but, just as he was lifting his -left crutch around the edge of the restaurant door, two women of -Lund came up and began to pity him and ask him how it ever happened. -Casey could not remember, just at the moment, what story he had told -of his accident. He stuttered—a strange thing for an Irishman to -do, by the way—and retreated into The Club where they dared not -follow.</p> - -<p>“H’lo, Casey! Give yuh a chance to win back some of your losin’s, -if you’re game to try it again,” called a man from the far end of -the room.</p> - -<p>Casey swore and hobbled back to him, let himself stiffly down -into a chair and dropped his crutches with a rattle of hard wood. -Being a cripple was growing painful, besides being very -inconvenient. The male half of Lund had practically suspended -business that day to hover around him and exchange comments upon his -looks. Casey had received a lot of sympathy that day, and only the -fact that he had remained sequestered behind the curtained arch that -cut across the rear of The Club saved him from receiving a lot more. -But, of course, there were mitigations. Since walking was slow and -awkward, Casey sat. And since he was not the man to sit and twiddle -thumbs to pass the time, Casey played poker. That is how he -explained it afterward. He had not intended to play poker for -twenty-four hours, but tie up a man’s leg so he can’t walk, and he’s -got to do <em>something</em>.</p> - -<p>Wherefore Casey played, and did not win back what he had lost -earlier in the day.</p> - -<p>Once, while the bartender was bringing drinks—you are not to -infer that Casey was drunk; he was merely a bit hazy over -details—Casey pulled out his dollar watch and looked at it. -Eight-thirty—the show must be pretty well started, by now. He -thought he might venture to hobble over to Bill’s and have those -dog-gone straps taken off before he was crippled for sure. But he -did not want to do anything to embarrass the show lady. Besides, he -had lost a great deal of money, and he wanted to win some of it -back. He still had time to make that train, he remembered. It was -reported an hour late, some one said.</p> - -<p>So Casey rubbed his strapped leg, twisting his face at the cramp -in his knee, and letting his companions believe that his accident -had given him a heritage of pain. He hitched his lifted shoulder -into an easier position and picked up another unfortunate assortment -of five cards.</p> - -<p>At ten o’clock Bill, the garage man, came and whispered something -to Casey, who growled an oath and reached almost unconsciously for -his crutches; so soon is a habit born in a man.</p> - -<p>“What they raisin’ thunder about?” he asked apathetically when -Bill had helped him across the gutter and into the street. “Didn’t -the crowd turn out like they expected?” Casey’s tone was dismal. You -simply cannot be a cripple for twenty-four hours, and sit up playing -unlucky poker all night and all day and well into another night, -without losing some of your animation; not even if you are Casey -Ryan. “Hell, I missed that train ag’in,” he added heavily when he -heard it whistle into the railroad yard.</p> - -<p>At the garage the Barrymores were waiting for him in their stage -clothes and makeup. The show lady had wept seams down through her -rouge, and the beads on her lashes had clotted stickily. “This never -happened to us before. We’ve took our bad luck with our good luck -and lived honest and respectable and self-respecting, and here, at -last ill fortune has tied the can onto us. I know you meant well and -all that, mister, but we certainly have had a raw deal handed out to -us in this town. We—certainly—have!”</p> - -<p>“We got till noon to-morrow to be outa the county,” croaked the -flat-chested one, shifting his Adam’s apple rapidly. “And that’s -real comedy, ain’t it, when your damn county runs clean over to the -Utah line, and we can’t go back the way we come, or—and we can’t go -anywhere till this big slob here puts our car together. He’s got -pieces of it strung from here around the block. Say, what kinda town -is this you wished onto us, anyway? Holding night court, mind you, -so they could can us quicker!”</p> - -<p>The show lady must have seen how dazed Casey looked. “Maybe you -ain’t heard the horrible deal they handed us, mister. They stopped -our show before we’d raised the curtain—and it was a -seventy-five-dollar house if it was a cent!” she wailed. “They had a -bill as long as my arm for license—we couldn’t get by with the -five-dollar one—and for lights and hall rent and what all. There -wasn’t enough money in the house to pay it! And they was going to -send us to jail! The sheriff acted anything but a gentleman, mister, -and if you ever lived in this town and liked it I must say I -question your taste!”</p> - -<p>“We wouldn’t use a town like this for a garbage dump, back home,” -cut in the flat-chested one, with all the contempt he could -master.</p> - -<p>“And they hauled us over to their dirty old justice of the peace, -and he told us he’d give us thirty days in jail if we was in -the county to-morrow noon, and we don’t know how far this county -goes, either way!”</p> - -<p>“Fifty miles to St. Simon,” Bill told them comfortingly. “You can -make it, all right if—”</p> - -<p>“We can make it, hey? How’re we going to make it, with our car -layin’ around all over your garage?” The flat-chested one’s tone was -arrogant past belief.</p> - -<p>Casey was fumbling for strap buckles which he could not reach. He -was also groping through his colorful, stage-driver’s vocabulary for -words which might be pronounced in the presence of a lady, and -finding mighty few that were of any use to him. The combined effort -was turning him a fine purple when the lady was seized with another -brilliant idea.</p> - -<p>“Jack, dear, don’t be harsh. The gentleman meant well—and I’ll -tell you, mister, what let’s do! Let’s trade cars till the man has -our car repaired. Your car goes just fine, and we can load our stuff -in and get out away from this horrible town. Why, the preacher was -there and made a speech and said the meanest things about you, -because you was having a benefit and at the same identical time you -was setting in a saloon gambling. He said it was an outrage on -civilization, mister, and an insult to the honest, hardworking -people in Lund. Them was his very words.”</p> - -<p>“Well, hell!” Casey exploded abruptly. “I’m honest and -hardworkin’ as any damn preacher. You can ask anybody!”</p> - -<p>“Well, that’s what he said, mister. We certainly didn’t know you -was a gambler when we offered to give you a benefit. We certainly -never dreamed you’d queer us like that. But you’ll do us the favor -to lend us your car, won’t you, mister? You wouldn’t refuse that, -and see me and little junior languishin’ in jail when you knew in -your heart that—”</p> - -<p>“Aw, take the darn car!” muttered Casey distractedly, and hobbled -into the garage office where he knew that Bill kept liniment.</p> - -<p>Five minutes, perhaps, after that, Casey opened the office door -wide enough to fling out an assortment of straps and two -crutches.</p> - -<p>Sounds from the rear of the garage indicated that Casey’s Ford -was “r’arin’ to go,” as Casey frequently expressed it. Voices were -jumbled in the tones of suggestions, commands, protest. Casey heard -the show lady’s clear treble berating Jack, dear, with thin -politeness. Then the car came snorting forward, paused in the wide -doorway, and the show lady’s voice called out clearly, untroubled as -the voice of a child after it has received that which it cried -for.</p> - -<p>“Well, good-by, mister! You certainly are a godsend to give us -the loan of your car!” There was a buzz and a splutter, and they -were gone—gone clean out of Casey’s life into the unknown whence -they had come.</p> - -<p>Bill opened the door gently and eased into the office, sniffing -liniment. The painted hollows under Casey’s eyes gave him a ghastly -look in the lamplight when he lifted his face from examining a -chafed and angry knee. Bill opened his mouth for speech, caught a -certain look in Casey’s eyes, and did not say what he had intended -to say. Instead:</p> - -<p>“You better sleep here in the office, Casey. I’ve got another bed -back of the machine shop. I’ll lock up, and if any one comes and -rings the night bell—well, never mind. I’ll plug her so they can’t -ring her.” The world needs more men like Bill.</p> - -<p>Even after an avalanche human nature cannot resist digging, in -the melancholy hope of turning up grewsome remains. I know that you -are all itching to put shovel into the debris of Casey’s dreams, and -to see just what was left of them!</p> - -<p>There was mighty little, let me tell you. I said in the beginning -that twenty-five thousand dollars was like a wild cat in Casey’s -pocket. You can’t give a man that much money all in a lump and, -suddenly, after he has been content with dollars enough to pay for -the grub he eats, without seeing him lose his sense of proportion. -Twenty-five dollars he understands and can spend more prudently than -you, perhaps. Twenty-five thousand he simply cannot gauge. It seems -exhaustless. It is as if you plucked from the night all the stars -you can see, knowing that the Milky Way is still there and -unnumbered other stars invisible even in the aggregate.</p> - -<p>Casey played poker, with an appreciative audience and the lid -off. Now and then he took a drink stronger than -two-and-three-fourths per cent. He kept that up for a night and a -day and well into another night. Very well, gather round and look at -the remains, and if there’s a moral, you are welcome, I am sure.</p> - -<p>Casey awoke just before noon, and went out and held his head -under Bill’s garage hydrant with the water running a full stream. He -looked up and found Bill standing there with his hands in his -pockets, gazing at Casey sorrowfully. Casey grinned.</p> - -<p>“How’s she comin’, Bill?”</p> - -<p>Bill grunted and spat. “She ain’t. Not if you mean that car them -folks wished onto you. The tail light’s pretty fair, though. And in -their hurry the lady went off and left a pink silk stockin’ in the -back seat. The toe’s wore out of it, though. Casey, if you wait till -you overhaul ’em with that thing they wheeled in here under the name -of a car—”</p> - -<p>“Oh, that’s all right, Bill,” Casey grunted gamely. “I was goin’ -to git me a new car, anyway. Mine wasn’t so much. They’re -welcome.”</p> - -<p>Bill grunted and spat again, but he did not say anything.</p> - -<p>“I’ll go see Dwyer, and see how much I got left,” Casey said -presently, and his voice, whether you believe it or not, was -cheerful.</p> - -<p>After a while Casey returned. He was grinning, but the grin was, -to a careful observer, a bit sickish. “Say, Bill, talk about -poker—I’m off it fer life. Now look what it done to me, Bill! I puts -twenty-five thousand dollars into the bank—minus two hundred I took -in money—and I takes a check book and I goes over to The Club and -gits into a game. I wears the check book down to the stubs. I goes -back and asks Dwyer how much I got in the bank, and he looks me over -like I was a sick horse he had doubts about bein’ worth doctorin’, -and as if he thought he mebby might better take me out an’ shoot me -an’ put me outa my misery. ‘Jest one dollar an’ sixty-seven cents, -Casey,’ he says to me. ‘If the checks is all in, which I trust they -air!’”</p> - -<p>Casey got out his plug of chewin’ tobacco and pried off a blunted -corner. “An’ hell, Bill! I had that much in the bank when I -started,” he finished plaintively.</p> - -<p>“Hell!” said Bill in brief, eloquent sympathy.</p> - -<p>Casey set his teeth together and extracted comfort from the -tobacco. He expectorated ruminatively.</p> - -<p>“Well, anyway, I got me some bran’-new socks, an’ they’re paid -for, thank God!” He tilted his old Stetson down over his right eye -at his favorite, Caseyish angle, stuck his hands in his pocket, and -strolled out into the sunshine.</p> - -<div style='display:block; margin-top:4em'>*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK GODSEND TO A LADY ***</div> -<div style='text-align:left'> - -<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'> -Updated editions will replace the previous one—the old editions will -be renamed. -</div> - -<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'> -Creating the works from print editions not protected by U.S. copyright -law means that no one owns a United States copyright in these works, -so the Foundation (and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United -States without permission and without paying copyright -royalties. 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