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 littlephilanthropy with considerable poker and ends where he started—withthe addition of a pair of socks.
Casey waved good-by to the men from Tonopah, squinted up at thesun, and got a coal-oil can of water and filled the radiator of hisFord. He rolled his bed in the tarp and tied it securely, putflour, bacon, coffee, salt, and various other small necessities oflife into a box, inspected his sour-dough can and decided to emptyit and start over again if hard fate drove him to sour dough. “Mightbust down and have to sleep out,” he meditated. “Then again I ain’tliable to; and if I do I’ll be goin’ so fast I’ll git somewherebefore she stops. I’m—sure—goin’ to go!” He cranked the batteredcar, straddled in over the edge on the driver’s side, and set hisfeet against the pedals with the air of a man who had urgentbusiness elsewhere. The men from Tonopah were not yet out of sightaround the butte scarred with granite ledges before Casey was underway, rattling down the rough trail from Ghost Mountain and bouncingclear of the seat as the car lurched over certain rough spots.
Pinned with a safety pin to the inside pocket of the vest he woreonly when he felt need of a safe and secret pocket, Casey Ryancarried a check for twenty-five thousand dollars, made payable tohimself. A check for twenty-five thousand dollars in Casey’s pocketwas like a wild cat clawing at his imagination and spitting at everymoment’s delay. Casey had endured solitude and some hardship whilehe coaxed Ghost Mountain to reveal a little of its secret treasure.Now he wanted action, light, life, and plenty of it. While he drovehe dreamed, and his dreams beckoned, urged him faster andfaster.
Up over the summit of the ridge that lay between Ghost Mountainand Furnace Lake he surged with radiator bubbling. Down the longslope to the lake lying there smiling sardonically at a world itloved to trick with its moods, Casey drove as if he were winning abet. 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 realwagon when I git to Los. She’ll be white, with red stripes along hersides and red wheels, and she’ll eat up the road and lick her chopsfor more. Sixty miles under her belt every time the clock strikes,or she ain’t good enough for Casey! Mebby they think they got somedrivers in Californy. Meybe they think they have. Theyain’t, though, because Casey Ryan ain’t there yet. I’ll catch thatnight train. Oughta be in by morning, and then you keep your eye onCasey. 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 girlwith 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 dreamedwhile the stark, scarred buttes on either side regarded him withenigmatic calm. Since the first wagon train had worried over therough deserts on their way to California, the bleak hills of Nevadahad listened while prospectors dreamed aloud and cackled over theirdreaming; had listened, too, while they raved in thirst and heat andmadness. Inscrutably they watched Casey as he hurried by with histwenty-five thousand dollars and his pleasant pictures of softease.
At a dim fork in the trail Cas