Casey Ryan Page 2

  CHAPTER II

  Thus was the trade effected with much speed and few preliminaries, becauseBill knew Casey Ryan very intimately and had seen him in action when histemper was up. Bill adjusted an extra horn which he happened to have instock. One of those terrific things that go far toward making the life ofa pedestrian a nerve-racking succession of startles. Casey tried it out onhimself before he would accept it. He walked several doors down the streetwith the understanding that Bill would honk at him when he was some littledistance away. Bill waited until Casey's attention was drawn to a ladywith thick ankles who was crossing the street in a hurry and a stiffbreeze. Bill came down on the metal plunger of the horn with all hismight, and Casey jumped perceptibly and came back grinning.

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

  Naturally the garage man was somewhat perturbed at this nonchalant mannerof getting acquainted with a Ford. He knew the road from Lund to Pinnacle.He had driven it himself, with a conscious sigh of relief when he hadsafely negotiated the last hair-pin curve; and Bill was counted a gooddriver. He suggested an insurance policy to Casey, not half so jokingly ashe tried to sound.

  Casey turned and gave him a pale blue, unwinking stare. "Say! Never youmind gettin' out insurance on _this_ auty-_mo_-bile. What you wanta do isinsure the cars that's liable to meet up with me in the trail."

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

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

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

  Pinnacle did know, and waited on the sidewalk that afforded a view of thelong hill where the road curled down around the head of the gulch and intotown. Much sooner than his most optimistic backers had a right to expect--for there were bets laid on the outcome there in Pinnacle--on the brow ofthe hill a swirl of red dust grew rapidly to a cloud. Like a desertwhirlwind it swept down the road, crossed the narrow bridge over the deepcut at the head of the gulch where the famous Youbet mine belched blacksmoke, and rolled on down the steep, narrow little street.

  Out of the whirlwind poked the pugnacious little brass-rimmed nose of anew Ford, and behind the windshield Casey Ryan grinned widely as he swungup to the postoffice and stopped as he had always stopped his four-horsestage,--with a flourish. Stopping with a flourish is fine and spectacularwhen you are driving horses accustomed to that method and on the lookoutfor it. Horses have a way of stiffening their forelegs and sliding theirhind feet and giving a lot of dramatic finish to the performance. Butthere is no dramatic sense at all in the tin brain of a Ford. It juststopped. And the insecure fourth Bohunk in the tonneau went hurtlingforward into the front seat straight on his way through the windshield.Casey threw up an elbow instinctively and caught him in the collar buttonand so avoided breakage and blood spattered around. Three other foreignerswere scrambling to get out when Casey stopped them with a yell that frozethem quiet where they were.

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

  There were chatterings and gesticulations in the tonneau. Out of thegabble a shrill voice rose be-seechingly in English. "We will _walk_,meester'. If you _pleese_, meester! We are 'fraid for ride wit' deesmay_chine_, meester!"

  Casey was nettled by the cackling and the thigh-slapping of the audienceon the sidewalk. He reached for his stage whip, and missing it used hisready Irish fists. So the Bohunks crawled unhappily back into the car andsubsided shivering and with tears in their eyes.

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

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

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

  Casey did not like that. He admitted that he was a hard driver; he hadalways been proud because men called him the hardest driver in the West.But he argued that he was also a safe driver, and that they had nobusiness to make such a fuss over riding with him. Didn't he ride afterhis own driving every day of his life? Had he ever got killed? Had he everkilled anybody else? Well! What were they all yawping about, then?Pinnacle and Lund made him tired.

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

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

  Casey had an accident now and then; and his tire expense was such as tokeep him up nights playing poker for money to support his Ford. You simplycan't whirl into town at a thirty-mile gait--I am speaking now ofPinnacle, whose street was a gravelly creek bed quite dry and ridgybetween rains--and stop in twice the car's length without scouring morerubber off your tires than a capacity load of passengers will pay for.Besides, you run short of passengers if you persist in doing it. Even thestrangers who came in on the Salt Lake line were quite likely to look onceat the cute little narrow-gauge train with its cunning little day coachhitched behind a string of ore cars, glance at Casey's Ford stage withindifference and climb into the cunning day coach for the trip toPinnacle. The psychology of it passed quite over Casey's head, but hispocket felt the change.

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

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

  Bill asked a question or two while he led Casey to the latest model ofFords, just in from the factory.

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

  You've no doubt suspected before now that not even poker, playedindustriously o' nights, could
keep Casey's head above the financialwaters that threatened to drown him and his Ford and his reputation. Caseydid not mind repair bills, so long as he achieved the speed he wanted. Buthe did mind not being able to pay the repair bills when they werepresented to him. Whatever else were his faults, Casey Ryan had alwaysgone cheerfully into his pocket and paid what he owed. Now he was hauntedby a growing fear that an unlucky game or two would send him under, andthat he might not come up again.

  He began to think seriously of selling his car and going back to horseswhich, in spite of the high cost of feeding them, had paid their way andhis, and left him a pleasant jingle in his pockets. But then he bumpedhard into one of those queer little psychological facts which men nevertake into account until it is too late. Casey Ryan, who had driven horsessince he could stand on his toes and fling harness on their backs, couldnot go back to driving horses. The speed fiend of progress had him by theneck. Horses were too slow for Casey. Moreover, when he began to thinkabout it, he knew that the thirty-mile stretch between Pinnacle and Lundhad become too tame for him, too monotonous. He knew in the dark everytwist in the road, every sharp turn, and he could tell you offhand whatevery sharp turn had cost him in the past month, either in repairs to hisown car or to the car that had unluckily met him without warning. ForCasey, I must tell you, habitually forgot all about that earsplittingklaxon at his left elbow. He was always in too much of a hurry to blow it;and anyway, by the time he reached a turn, he was around it; there eitherwas no car in the road or Casey had scraped paint off it or worse and goneon. So why honk?

  Far distances called Casey. In one day, he meditated, he could cover moredesert with his Ford than horses could travel in a week. An old,half-buried passion stirred, lifted its head and smiled at himseductively,--a dream he had dreamed of finding some of that wealth whichNature holds so miser-like in her hills. A gold mine, or perhaps silver orcopper,--what matter which mineral he found, so long as it spelled wealthfor him? Then he would buy a bigger car and a faster car, and he wouldbore farther and farther into yonder. In his past were tucked away monthson end of tramping across deserts and up mountain defiles with a packedburro nipping patiently along in front of him and this same, seductivedream beckoning him over the next horizon. Burros had been slow. While hehurtled down the road from Pinnacle to Lund, Casey pictured himselfplodding through sand and sage and over malapai and up dry canyons, hazinga burro before him.

  "No, sir, the time for that is gone by. I could do in a week now what ittook me a month to do then. I could get into country a man'd hate totackle afoot, not knowing the water holes. I'll git me a radiator thatdon't boil like a teakettle over a pitch fire, and load up with water andgrub and gas, and I'll find the Injun Jim mine, mebby. Or some other darnmine that'll put me in the clear the rest of my life. Couldn't before,because I had to travel too slow. But shucks! A Ford can go anywhere amountain goat can go. You ask anybody."

  So Casey sold his stage line and the hypothetical good will that went withit, and Pinnacle and Lund breathed long and deep and planned trips theyhad refrained from taking heretofore, and wished Casey luck. Bill Masterslaid a friendly hand on his shoulder and made a suggestion so wise thatnot even Casey could shut his mind against it.

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

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

  Nevertheless he remained all of that day with Bill and crammed onmechanics. He was amazed to discover how many and how different were theailments that might afflict a Ford. That he had boldly--albeitunconsciously--driven a thing filled with timers, high-tension plugs thatmay become fouled and fail to "spark," carburetors that could get out ofadjustment (whatever that was) spark plugs that burned out and had to bereplaced, a transmission that absolutely _must_ have grease or somethinghappened, bearings that were prone to burn out if they went dry of oil,and a multitude of other mishaps that could happen and did happen if onedid not watch out, would have filled Casey with foreboding if that werepossible. Being an optimist to the middle of his bones, he merely felt agrowing pride in himself. He had actually driven all this aggregation ofpotential internal grief! Whenever anything had happened to his Fordauty-_mo_-bile between Pinnacle and Lund, Casey never failed to trace thedirect cause, which had always been external rather than internal, savethat time when he had walked in and bought a new car without out probinginto the vitals of the other.

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

  Taking that point of view and keeping it, Casey managed very well.Whenever anything went wrong that his vocabulary and a monkey wrench couldnot mend, Casey sat down on the shadiest running board and conned theInstruction Book which Bill handed him at the last minute. Other times hetreated the Ford exactly as he would treat a burro, with satisfactoryresults.