Being Casey Ryan, tough as hickory and wont to drive headlong to his
destination, Casey did not remain in town to loiter a half a day and sleep
a night and drive back the next day, as most desert dwellers did. He
hurried through with his business, filled up with gas and oil, loaded on
an extra can of each, strapped his box of dynamite upon the seat beside
him where he could keep an eye on it--just as if that would do any good if
the tricky stuff meant to blow up!--and started back at three in the
afternoon. He would be half the night getting to camp, even though he was
Casey Ryan and drove a mean Ford. But he would be there, ready to start
work at sunrise. A man who is going to marry a widow with two children had
best hurry up and strike every streak of rich ore he has in his claim,
thought Casey.
All that afternoon, though the wind blew hot in his face, Casey drilled
across the desert, meeting never a living thing, overtaking none. All that
afternoon a yellow dust cloud swirled rapidly along the rough desert road,
vainly trying to keep up with Casey who made it. In Yucca Pass he had to
stop and fill motor and radiator with oil and water, and just as he topped
the summit a front tire popped like a pistol.
Casey killed the engine and got out a bit stiffly, pried off a chew of
tobacco and gazed pensively at Barren Butte that held Lucky Lode, where
the widow was cooking supper at that moment. Casey wished practically that
he was there and could sit down to some of her culinary achievements.
"I sure would like to flop m'lip over one of her biscuits right now," he
said aloud. "If I do strike it, I wonder will she git too high-toned to
cook?"
His eyes went to Furnace Lake, lying smooth and pale yellow in the
saucerlike basin between Barren Butte and the foothills of Starvation. In
the soft light of the afterglow it seemed to smile at him with a glint of
malice, like the treacherous thing it was. For Furnace Lake is
treacherous. The Big Earthquake (America knows only one Big Earthquake,
that which rocked San Francisco so disastrously) had split Furnace Lake
halfway across, leaving an ugly crevice ten feet wide at the narrowest
point and eighty feet deep, men said. Time and passing storms had partly
filled the gash, but it was there, ugly, ominous, a warning to all men to
trust the lake not at all. Little cracks radiated from the big gash here
and there, and the cattle men rode often that way, though not often enough
to save their cattle from falling in.
By day the lake shimmered deceptively with mirages that painted it blue
with the likeness of water, Then a lone clump of greasewood stood up tall
and proclaimed itself a ship lying idle on a glassy expanse of water so
blue, so cool, so clear, one could not wonder that thirsty travelers went
mad sometimes with the false lure of it.
Just now the lake looked exactly like any lake at dusk, with the far shore
line reflected along its edge; and Casey's thought went beyond, to his
claim on Starvation. Being tired and hungry, he pictured wistfully a cabin
there, and a light in the window when he went chuckling up the long mesa
in the dark, and the widow inside with hot coffee and supper waiting for
him. Just as soon as he struck "shipping values" that picture would be
real, said Casey to himself; and he opened his tool box and set to work
changing the tire.
By the time he had finished it was dark, and Casey had yet a long forty
miles between himself and his sour-dough can. He cranked the engine,
switched on the electric headlights, and went tearing down the
fifteen-mile incline to the lake.
"She c'n see the lights, and she'll know I ain't hangin' out in town
lappin' up whisky," he told himself as he drove. "She'll know it's Casey
Ryan comin' home--know it the way them lights are slippin' over the
country. Ain't another man on the desert can put a car over the trail like
this! You ask anybody."
Pleased with himself and his reputation, urged by hunger and the desire to
make good on his claim so that he might have the little home he
instinctively craved, Casey pulled the gas lever down another eighth of an
inch--when he was already using more than he should--and nearly bounced
his dynamite off the seat when he lurched over a sandy hummock and down on
to the smooth floor of the lake.
It was five miles across that lake from rim to rim and taking a straight
line, as Casey did, well above the crevice. In all that distance there is
not a stick, or a stone, or a bush to mark the way. Not even a trail,
since Casey was the only man who traveled it, and Casey never made tracks
twice in the same place, but drove down upon it, picked himself a landmark
on the opposite side and steered for it exactly as one steers a boat. The
marks he left behind him were no more than pencil marks drawn upon a sheet
of buff wrapping paper. Unless the lake was wet with one of those sporadic
desert rains, you couldn't make any impression on the cement-like surface.
And when the lake was wet, you stuck where you were until wind and sun
dried it for you. Wherefore Casey plunged out upon five miles of blank,
baked clay with neither road, chart nor compass to guide him. It was the
first time he had ever crossed at night, and a blanket of thin, high
clouds hid the stars.
Casey thought nothing much of that,--being Casey Ryan. He had before him
the dim--very dim--outline of Starvation, and being perfectly sober, he
steered a straight course, and made sure he was well away from the upper
end of the crevice, and pulled the gas lever down another notch.
The little handful of engine roared beautifully and shook the car with the
vibration. Casey heaved a sigh of weariness mingled with content that the
way was smooth and he need not look for chuck holes for a few minutes, at
any rate. He settled back, and his fingers relaxed on the wheel. I think
he dozed, though Casey swears he did not.
Suddenly he leaned forward, stared hard, leaned out and stared, listened
with an ear cocked toward the engine. He turned and looked behind, then
stared ahead again.
"By _gosh_, I bet both hubs is busted!" he ejaculated under his breath,--
Furnace Lake subdues one somehow. "She's runnin' like a wolf--but she
ain't goin'!"
He waited for a minute longer, trifling with the gas, staring and
listening. The car was shaking with the throb of the motor, but Casey
could feel no forward motion. "Settin' here burnin' gas like a 'lection
bonfire--she sure _would_ think I'm drunk if she knowed it," Casey
muttered, and straddled over the side of the car to the running board.
"I wish--to--_hell_ I hadn't promised her not to cuss!" he gritted, and
with one hand still on the wheel, Casey shut off the gas and stepped down.
He stepped down upon a surface sliding beneath him at the rate of close to
forty miles an hour. The Ford went on, spinning away from him in a wide
circle, since Casey had unconsciously turned the wheel to the left as he
let go. The blow of meeting the hard clay stunned him just at first, and
he had rolled over a couple of times before he began to regain his senses.
He lifted himself groggily to his knees and looked for the car, saw it
bearing down upon him from the direction whence he had come. Before he had
time to wonder much at the phenomenon, it was upon him, over with a lurch,
and gone again.
Casey was tough, and he never knew when he was whipped. He crawled up to
his knees again, saw the same Ford coming at him with dimming headlights
from the same direction it had taken before, made a wild grab for it, was
knocked down and run over again. You may not believe that, but Casey had
the bruises to prove it.
On the third round the Ford had slowed to a walk, figuratively speaking.
Casey was pretty dizzy, and he thought his back was broken, but he was mad
clear through. He caught the Ford by its fender, hung on, clutching
frantically for a better hold, was dragged a little distance so and then,
as its speed slackened to a gentle forward roll, he made shift to get
aboard and give the engine gas before it had quite stopped. Which he told
himself was lucky, because he couldn't have cranked the thing to save his
life.
By sheer dogged nerve he drove to camp, drank cold coffee left from his
early breakfast, and decided that the bite of a Ford, while it is
poisonous, is not necessarily fatal unless it attacks one in a vital spot.
Casey could not drill a hole, he could not swing a pick; for two days he
limped groaning around camp and confined his activities to cooking his
meals. Frequently he would look at the Ford and shake his head. There was
something uncanny about it.
"She sure has got it in for me," he mused. "You can't blame her for
runnin' off when I dropped the reins and stepped out. But that don't
account for the way she come _at_ me, and the way she _got_ me every
circle she made. That's human. It's dog-_gone_ human! I've cussed her a
lot, and I've done things to her--like that syrup I poured into her--and
dog-gone her, she's been layin' low and watchin' her chance all this
while. Fords, I believe, are about as human as horses, and I've knowed
horses I believe coulda talked if their tongues was split. Ask anybody.
That there car _knowed_!"
The third day after the attack Casey was still too sore to work, but he
managed to crank the Ford--eyeing it curiously the while, and with
respect, too--and started down the mesa and up over the ridge and on down
to the lake. He was still studying the matter incredulously, still
wondering if Fords can think. He wanted to tell the widow about it and get
her opinion. The widow was a smart woman. A little touchy on the liquor
question, maybe, but smart. You ask anybody.
Lucky Lode greeted him with dropped jaws and wide staring eyes, which
puzzled Casey until the foreman, grasping his shoulder--which made Casey
wince and break a promise--explained their astonishment. They had, as
Casey expected, seen his lights when he came off the summit from Yucca
Pass. By the speed they traveled, Lucky Lode knew that Casey and no other
was at the steering wheel, even before he took to the lake.
"And then," said the foreman, "we saw your lights go round and round in a
circle, and disappear--"
"They didn't," Casey cut in trenchantly. "They went dim because I was
taking her slow, being about all in."
The foreman grinned. "We thought you'd drove into the crevice, and we went
down with lanterns and hunted the full length of it. We never found a sign
of you or the car--"
"'Cause I was over in camp, or thereabouts," interpolated Casey drily. "I
wish you'd of come on over. I sure needed help."
"We figured you was pretty well lit up, to circle around like that. I've
been down since, by daylight, and so have some of the boys, looking into
that crevice. But we gave it up, finally."
Then Casey, because he liked a joke even when it was on himself, told the
foreman and his men what had happened to him. He did not exaggerate the
mishap; the truth was sufficiently wild.
They whooped with glee. Every one laughs at the unusual misfortunes of
others, and this was unusual. They stood around the Ford and talked to it,
and whooped again. "You sure must have had so-ome jag, Casey," they told
him exuberantly.
"I was sober," Casey testified earnestly. "I'll swear I hadn't a drop of
anything worse than lemon soda, and that was before I left town."
Whereupon they whooped the louder, bent double, some of them with mirth.
"Say! If I was drunk that night, I'd say so," Casey exploded finally.
"What the hell--what's the matter with you rabbits? You think Casey Ryan
has got to the point where he's scared to tell what he done and all he
done? Lemme tell yuh, anything Casey does he ain't afraid to _tell_ about!
Lyin' is something I never was scared bad enough to do. You ask anybody."
"There's the widow," said the foreman, wiping his eyes.
Casey turned and looked, but the widow was not in sight. The foreman, he
judged, was speaking figuratively. He swung back glaring.
"You think I'm scared to tell her what happened? She'll know I was sober
if I say I was sober. She ain't as big a fool--" He did not want to fight,
although he was aching to lick every man of them. But for one thing, he
was too sore and lame, and then, the widow would not like it.
With his neck very stiff, Casey limped down to the house and tried to tell
the widow. But the widow was a woman, and she was hurt because Casey,
since he was alive and not in the crevice, had not come straight to
comfort her, but had lingered up there talking and laughing with the men.
The widow had taken Casey's part when the others said he must have been
drunk. She had maintained, red-lidded and trembly of voice, that something
had gone wrong with Casey's car so that he couldn't steer it. Such things
happened, she knew.
Well, Casey told the widow the truth, and the widow's face hardened while
she listened. She had permitted him to kiss her when he came in, but now
she moved away from him. She did not call him dear boy, nor even Casey
dear. She waited until he had reached the point that puzzled him, the
point of a Ford's degree of intelligence. Then her lips thinned before she
opened them.
"And what," she asked coldly, "had you been drinking, Mr. Ryan?"
"Me? One bottle of lemon soda before I left town, and I left town at three
o'clock in the afternoon. I swear--"
"You need not swear, Mr. Ryan." The widow folded her hands and regarded
him sternly, though her voice was still politely soft. "After I had told
you repeatedly that my little ones should ever be guarded from a drinking
father; after you had solemnly promised me that you would never again put
glass to your lips, or swallow a drop of whisky; after that very morning
renewing your pledge--"
"Well, I kept it," Casey said, his face a shade paler under its usual
frank red. "I swear to Gawd I was sober."
"You need not lie," said the widow, "and add to your misdeeds. You were
drunk. No man in his senses would imagine what you imagine, or do what you
did. I wish you to understand, Mr. Ryan, that I shall not marry you. I
could not trust you out of my sight."
"I--was--_sober_!" cried Casey, measuring his words. Very nearly shouting
them, in fact.
The widow turned pointedly away and began to stir something on the stove,
and did not look at him.
Casey went out, climbed the hill to his Ford, cranked it and went
larruping down the hill, out on the lake and, when he had traversed half
its length, turned and steered a straight course across it. Where tracings
of wheels described a wide circle he stopped and regarded them intently.
Then he began to swear, at nothing in particular, but with a hearty
enjoyment of the phrases he intoned.
"Casey, you sure as hell have had one close call," he remarked, when he
could think of nothing new and devilish to say. "You mighta run along, and
run along, till you got _married_ to her. Whadda I want a wife for,
anyway? Sour-dough biscuits tastes pretty good, and Casey sure can make
'em!" He got out his pipe, filled it and crammed down the tobacco, found a
match and leaned back, smoking with relish, one leg thrown over the wheel.
"A man's best friend is his Ford," he exclaimed. "You can ask anybody." He
grinned, and blew a lot of smoke, and gave the wheel an affectionate
little twist.