The Project Gutenberg eBook of Godsend to a Lady, by B. M. Bower

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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.

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