Casey awoke under the vivid impression that some one was driving a
gadget into his skull with a "double-jack." The smell of bacon
scorching filled his very soul with the loathing of food. The sight of
Joe calmly filling his pipe roused Casey to the fighting mood--with no
power to fight. He was a sick man; and to remain alive was agony.
The squalid disorder and the stale aroma of a drunken orgy still
pervaded the dugout and made it a nightmare hole to Casey. Hank came
tittering to the bunk and offered him a cup of coffee, muddy from too
long boiling, and Joe grinned over his pipe at the colorful language
with which Casey refused the offering.
"Better take a brace uh hootch," Joe suggested with no more than his
normal ill nature. "I got some over at the still we made awhile back
that, ain't quite so kicky. Been agin' it in wood an' charcoal. That
tones 'er down. I'll go git yuh some after we eat. Kinda want a
brace, myself. That new hootch shore is a kickin' fool."
Paw accepted this remark, as high praise, and let three hot cakes burn
until their edges curled while he bragged of his skill as a maker of
moonshine. Paw himself was red-eyed and loose-lipped from yesterday's
debauch. Hank's whole face, especially in the region of his eyes, was
puffed unbecomingly. Casey, squinting an angry eye at Hank and the cup
of coffee, spared a thought from his own misery to acknowledge surprise
that anything on earth could make Hank more unpleasant to look upon.
Joe had a sickly pallor to prove the potency of the brew.
For such is the way of moonshine when fusel oil abounds, as it does
invariably in new whisky distilled by furtive amateurs working in
secret and with neither the facilities nor the knowledge for its
scientific manufacture. There is grim significance in the sardonic
humor of the man who first named it White Mule. The kick is certain
and terrific; frequently it is fatal as well. The worst of it is, you
never know what the effect will be until you have drunk the stuff; and
after you have drunk it, you are in no condition to resist the effect
or to refrain from courting further disaster.
That is what happened to Casey. The poison in the first half-pint,
swallowed under the eye of Joe's six-shooter, upset his judgment. The
poison in his further potations made a wholly different man of Casey
Ryan; and the after effect was so terrific that he would have swallowed
cyanide if it promised relief.
He gritted his teeth and suffered tortures until Joe returned and gave
him a drink of whisky in a chipped granite cup. Almost immediately he
felt better. The pounding agony in his head eased perceptibly and his
nerves ceased to quiver. After a while he sat up, gazed longingly at
the water bucket and crawled down from the bunk. He drank largely in
great gulps. His bloodshot eyes strayed meditatively to the coffee
pot. After an undecided moment he walked uncertainly to the stove and
poured himself a cup of coffee.
Casey lifted the cup to drink, but the smell of it under his nose
sickened him. He weaved uncertainly to the door, opened it and threw
out the coffee--cup and all. Which was nature flying a storm flag, had
any one with a clear head been there to observe the action and the look
on Casey's face.
"Gimme another shot uh that damn' hootch," he growled. Joe pushed the
bottle toward Casey, eyeing him curiously.
"That stuff they run yesterday shore is kicky," Joe ruminated
sympathetically. "Pap's proud as pups over it. He thinks it's the
real article--but I dunno. Shore laid yuh out, Casey, an' yuh never
got much, neither. Not enough t' lay yuh out the way it did. Y' look
sick."
"I AM sick!" Casey snarled, and poured himself a drink more generous
than was wise. "When Casey Ryan says he's sick, you can put it down
he's SICK! He don't want nobody tellin' 'im whether 'e's sick 'r
not.--he KNOWS 'e's sick!" He drank, and swore that it was rotten
stuff not fit for a hawg (which was absolute truth). Then he staggered
to the stove, picked up the coffee pot, carried it to the door and
flung it savagely outside because the odor offended him.
"Mart got back last night," Joe announced casually. "You was dead t'
the world. But we told 'im you was all right, an' I guess he aims t'
give yuh steady work an' a cut-in on the deal. We been cleanin' up
purty good money--but Mart says the market ain't what it was; too many
gone into the business. You're a good cook an' a good miner an' a
purty good feller all around--only the boss says you'll have t' cut out
the booze."
"'J you tell 'im you MADE me drink it?" Casey halted in the middle of
the floor, facing Joe indignantly.
"I told 'im I put it up t' yuh straight--what your business is, an'
all. You got no call t' kick--didn't I go swipe this bottle uh booze
for yuh t' sober up on, soon as the boss's back was turned? I knowed
yuh needed it; that's why. We all needed it. I'm just tellin' yuh the
boss don't approve of no celebrations like we had yest'day. I got up
early an' hauled that burro outa sight 'fore he seen it. That's how
much a friend I be, an' it wouldn't hurt yuh none to show a little
gratitude!"
"Gratitude, hell! A lot I got in life t' be grateful for!" Casey
slumped down on the nearest bench, laid his injured hand carefully on
the table and leaned his aching head on the other while he discoursed
bitterly on the subject of his wrongs.
His muddled memory fumbled back to his grievance against traffic cops,
distorting and magnifying the injustice he had received at their hands.
He had once had a home, a wife and a fortune, he declared, and what had
happened? Laws and cops had driven him out, had robbed him of his home
and his family and sent him out in the hills like a damned kiotey,
hopin' he'd starve to death. And where, he asked defiantly, was the
gratitude in that?
He told Joe ramblingly but more or less truthfully how he had been
betrayed and deserted by a man he had befriended; one Barney Oakes,
upon whom Casey would like to lay his hands for a minute.
"What I done to the burro ain't nothin' t' what I'd do t' that hound uh
hell!" he declared, pounding the table with his good fist.
Homeless, friendless; but Joe was his friend, and Paw and Hank were his
friends--and besides them there was in all the world not one friend of
Casey Ryan's. They were good friends and good fellows, even if they
did put too much hoot in their hootch. Casey Ryan liked his hootch with
a hoot in it.
He was still hooting (somewhat incoherently it is true, with recourse
now and then to the bottle because he was sick and he didn't give a
darn who knew it) when the door opened and he whom they called Mart
walked in. Joe introduced him to Casey, who sat still upon the bench
and looked him over with drunken disparagement. Casey had a hazy
recollection of wanting to see the boss and have it out with him, but
he could not recall what it was that he had been so anxious to quarrel
about.
Mart was a slender man of middle height, with thin, intelligent face
and a look across the eyes like the old woman who rocked in the stone
hut. He glanced from the bottle to Casey, eyeing him sharply. Drunk
or sober, Casey was not the man to be stared down; nevertheless his
fingers strayed involuntarily to his shirt collar and pulled fussily at
the wrinkles.
"So you're the man they've been holding here for my inspection," Mart
said coolly, with a faint smile at Casey's evident discomfort. "You're
still hitting it up, I see. Joe, take that bottle away from him. When
he's sober enough to talk straight, I'll give him the third degree and
see what he really is, anyway. Guess he's all right--but he sure can
lap up the booze. That's a point against him."
Casey's hand went to the bottle, beating Joe's by three inches. He did
not particularly want the whisky, but it angered him to hear Mart order
it taken from him. Away back in his mind where reason had gone into
hiding, Casey knew that some great injustice was being done him; that
he, Casey Ryan, was not the man they were calmly taking it for granted
that he was.
With the bottle in his hand he rose and walked unsteadily to his bunk.
He did not like this man they called the boss. He remembered that in
his bunk, under the bedding, he had concealed something that would make
him the equal of them all. He fumbled under the blankets, found what
he sought and with his back turned to the others he slipped the thing
into his sling out of sight.
Mart and Joe were talking together by the table, paying no attention to
Casey, who was groggily making up his mind to crawl into his bunk and
take another sleep. He still meant to have it out with Mart, but he
did not feel like tackling the job just now.
Mart turned to the door and Joe got up to follow him, with a careless
glance over his shoulder at Casey, who was lifting a foot as if it
weighed a great deal, and was groping with it in the air trying to
locate the edge of the lower bunk. Joe laughed, but the laugh died in
his throat, choked off suddenly by what he saw when Mart pulled open
the door.
Casey turned suspiciously at the laugh and the sound of the door
opening. He swung round and steadied himself with his back against the
bunk when he saw Mart and Joe lift their hands and hold them there,
palms outward, a bit higher than their heads. Something in the sight
enraged Casey unreasoningly. A flick of the memory may have carried
him back to the old days in the mining camps when Casey drove stage and
hold-ups were frequent.
"What 'r yuh tryin' to pull on me now?" he bawled, and rushed headlong
toward them, pushing them forcibly out into the open with a collision
of his body against Joe. Outside, a voice harshly commanded him to
throw up his hands--and it was then that Casey Ryan's Irish fighting
blood boiled and bubbled over. Unconsciously he pushed his hat forward
over one eye, drew back his lips in a fighting grin, stepped down off
the low doorsill with a lurch that nearly sent him sprawling and went
weaving belligerently toward a group of five men whose attitude was
anything but conciliatory.
"Casey Ryan! I'm dogged if it ain't Casey!" exclaimed a familiar voice
in the group, whereat the others looked astonished. Through his slits
of swollen lids Casey glared toward the voice and recognized Barney
Oakes, grinning at him with what Casey considered a Judas treachery.
He saw two men step away from Joe and the boss, leaving them in
handcuffs.
"Take them irons off'n my friends!" bellowed Casey as he charged.
"Whadda yuh think you're doin', anyway? Take 'em off! It's Casey Ryan
that's tellin' yuh, an' yuh better heed what he says, before you're
tore from limb to limb!"
"B-but, Casey! This 'ere's a shurf's possy!" The voice of Barney rose
in a protesting 'squawk. "I brung 'em all the way over here to your
rescue! They brung a cor'ner to view your remains! Don't you know
your pardner, BARNEY OAKES?
"Ah-h--I know yuh think I don't? I know yuh to a fare-yuh-well! Brung
a cor'ner, did yuh? Tha's all right--goin' t' need a cor'ner-but he
won't set on Casey Ryan's remains--you c'n ask anybody if any cor'ners
ever set on Casey Ryan yit! Naw." Casey snarled as contemptuously as
was possible to a man in his condition. "No cor'ner ever set on Casey
Ryan, an' he ain't goin' to!"
The men glanced questioningly at one another. One laughed. He was a
large, smooth-jowled man inclined to portliness, and his laugh vibrated
his entire front contagiously so that the others grinned and took it
for granted that Casey Ryan was a comedy element introduced
unexpectedly where they had thought to find him a tragedy.
"No, you're a pretty lively man for me to sit on; I admit it," the
portly man remarked. "I'm the coroner, and it looks as if I wouldn't
sit, this trip."
Casey eyed him blearily, not in the least mollified but instead
swinging to a certain degree of lucidity that was nevertheless governed
largely by the hoot he had swallowed in the hootch.
"There's part of a burro 'round here some'er's you c'n set on," Casey
informed him grimly, and fumbled in his coat pocket for his pipe. He
drew it out empty, looked at it and returned it to his pocket. One who
knew Casey intimately would have detected a hidden purpose in his
manner. The warning was faint, indefinable at best, and difficult to
picture in words. One might say that an intimate acquaintance would
have detected a false note in Casey's defiance. His manner was
restrained just when violence would have been more natural.
"Damn a pipe," Casey grumbled with drunken petulance. "Anybody got a
cigarette? I'm single-handed an' I ain't able t' roll 'em."
It was the coroner himself who handed Casey a "tailor-made." Casey
nodded glumly, accepted a match and lighted the cigarette almost as if
he were sober. He looked the group over noncommittally, eyed again the
handcuffs on Mart and Joe, sent a veiled glance toward Barney Oakes and
turned away. He still held the center of the stage. Fully expecting
to find him dead, the sheriff and his men were slow to adjust
themselves to the fact that he was very much alive and very drunk and
apparently not greatly interested in his rescue.
Casey halted in his unsteady progress toward the dugout. The sheriff
was already questioning his two prisoners about other members of the
gang; but he looked up when Casey lifted up his voice and spoke his
mind of the moment.
"Brung a cor'ner, did yuh, lookin' for some one to set on! Barney Oakes
is the man that'll need a cor'ner in a minute. You're all goin' to need
'im. Casey Ryan never stood around yit whilst his friends was hobbled
up by a shurf--turn 'em loose an' turn 'em loose quick! An' git back
away from Barney Oakes so he won't drop on yuh in chunks--I'll fix 'im
for yuh to set on!"
His hand had gone up to his cigarette, but only Joe knew what was
likely to follow. Joe gave a yell of warning, ducked and ran straight
away from the group. The sheriff yelled also and gave chase. The
group was broken--luckily--just as Casey heaved something in that
direction.
"I blowed up a jackass yesterday when they thought I couldn't--I'll
blow up a bunch of 'em to-day! Yuh c'n set on what's left uh Barney
Oakes!"
The explosion scattered dirt and small stones--and the sheriff's posse.
Casey sent one malevolent glance over his shoulder as he stumbled into
the dugout.
"Missed 'im!" he grumbled disgustedly to himself when he saw no
fragments of Barney falling. His ferociousness, like the dynamite,
annihilated itself with the explosion. "Missed 'im! Casey Ryan's
gittin' old; old an' sick an' a damn' fool. Missed 'im with the last
shot--drunk--drunk an' don't give a darn!"
He slammed the door shut behind him, pushed his hat forward so
violently that it rested on the bridge of his nose, and wabbled over to
his bunk. This time his foot found the edge of the lower bunk, and he
scratched and clawed his way up and rolled in upon the blankets.
He was asleep and snoring when the sheriff, edging his way in as if he
were an animal trainer's apprentice entering the lion's cage, sneaked
on his toes to the bunk and slipped the handcuffs on Casey.