CHAPTER V
Some months later Casey waved good-by to the men from Tonopah, squinted upat the sun and got a coal-oil can of water, with which he filled theradiator 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 lifeinto a box, inspected his sour-dough can, and decided to empty it andstart over again if hard fate drove him to sourdough.
"Might bust down and have to sleep out," he meditated. "Then, agin, Iain't liable to; and if I do, I'll be goin' so fast I'll git somewherebefore she stops. I'm--sure--goin' to go!"
He cranked the battered car, straddled in over the edge on the driver'sside and set his feet against the pedals with the air of a man who hadurgent business elsewhere. The men from Tonopah were not yet out of sightaround the butte scarred with rhyolite ledges before Casey was under way,rattling down the rough trail from Starvation Mountain and bouncing clearof the seat as the car lurched over certain rough spots.
Pinned with a safety pin to the inside pocket of the vest he wore onlywhen he felt need of a safe and secret pocket, Casey Ryan carried a checkfor twenty-five thousand dollars, made payable to himself. A check fortwenty-five thousand dollars in Casey's pocket was like a wildcat clawingat his imagination and spitting at every moment's delay. Casey had enduredsolitude and some hardship while he coaxed Starvation Mountain to reveal alittle of its secret treasure. Now he wanted action, light, life andplenty of it. While he drove he dreamed, and his dreams beckoned, urgedhim faster and faster.
Up over the summit of the ridge that lay between Starvation and FurnaceLake he surged, with radiator bubbling. Down the long slope to the lake,lying there smiling sardonically at a world it loved to trick with itsmoods, Casey drove as if he were winning a bet. Across that five miles ofbaked, 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 Igit to Los. She'll be white, with red stripes along her sides and redwheels, and she'll lay 'er belly to the ground and eat up the road andlick her chops for more. Sixty miles under her belt every time the clockstrikes, or she ain't good enough fer Casey! Mebby they think they gotsome drivers in Californy. Mebby 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'sgoin' to be a stir around Los, about to-morrow noon. I'll have to buy someclothes, I guess. And I'll git acquainted with some nice girl with yellahair that likes pleasure, and take her out ridin'. Yeah, I'll have to gitme a swell outfit uh clothes. I'll look the part, all right---"
Up a long, winding trail and over another summit to Yucca Pass Caseydreamed, while the stark, scarred buttes on either side regarded him withenigmatic calm. Since the first wagon train had worried over the roughdeserts on their way to California, the bleak hills of Nevada had listenedwhile prospectors dreamed aloud and cackled over their dreaming; hadlistened, too, while they raved in thirst and heat and madness.Inscrutably they watched Casey as he hurried by with his twenty-fivethousand dollars and his pleasant pictures of soft ease.
At a dim fork in the trail Casey slowed and stopped. A boiling radiatorwill not forever brook neglect, and Casey brought his mind down topractical things for a space. "I can just as well take the train fromLund," he mused, while he poured in more water. "Then I can leave thisbleatin' burro with Bill. He oughta give me a coupla hundred for her,anyway. No use wasting money just because you happen to have a fewthousand in your pants." He filled his pipe at that sensible idea andturned the nose of his Ford down the dim trail to Lund.
Eighty miles more or less straight away across the mountainous waste layLund, halfway up a canyon that led to higher reaches in the hills, rich insilver, lead, copper, gold. Silver it was that Casey had found and sold tothe men from Tonopah, and it was a freak of luck, he thought whimsically,that had led him and his Ford away over to Starvation Mountains to findtheir stake when they had probably been driving over millions every daythat they made the stage trip from Pinnacle down to Lund.
The trail was rutted in places where the sluicing rains had driven hardacross the hills; soft with sand in places where the fierce winds hadswept the open. For awhile the thin, wobbly track of a wagon meanderedalong ahead of him, then turned off up a flat-bottomed draw and was lostin the sagebrush. Some prospector not so lucky as he, thought Casey, withswift, soon forgotten sympathy. A coyote ran up a slope toward him, haltedwith forefeet planted on a rock, and stared at him, ears perked like aninquisitive dog. Casey stopped, eased his rifle out of the crease in theback of the seat cushion, chanced a shot,--and his luck held. He climbedout, picked up the limp gray animal, threw it into the tonneau and wenton. Even with twenty-five thousand dollars in his pocket, Casey toldhimself that coyote hides are not to be scorned. He had seen the time whenthe price of a good hide meant flour and bacon and tobacco to him. Hewould skin it when he stopped to eat.
Eighty miles with never a soul to call good day to Casey. Nor shack norshelter made for man, and only one place where there was water to wet hislips if they cracked with thirst,--unless, perchance, one of those swiftdesert downpours came riding on the wind, lashing the clouds withlightning.
Far ahead of Casey such a storm rolled in off the barren hills to thesouth. "She's a-wettin' up that red lake a-plenty," observed Casey,squinting through the dirty windshield. "No trail around, either, onaccount of the lava beds. But I guess I can pull acrost, all right." Doubtwas in his voice, however, and he was half minded to turn back and takethe straight road to Vegas, which had been his first objective. But hediscarded the idea.
"No, sir, Casey Ryan never back-trailed yet. Poor time to commence, nowwhen I got the world by the tail and a downhill pull. We'll make out, allright--can't be so terrible boggy with a short rain like that there. Ibet," he continued optimistically to the Ford, which was the nearest hehad to human companionship, "I bet we make it in a long lope. Git along,there! Shake a wheel--'s the last time you haul Casey around. Casey'sgoin' to step high, wide and handsome. Sixty miles _an hour_, or he'll askfor his money back. They can't step too fast for Casey! Blue--if I get mea lady friend with yella hair, mebby she'll show up better in a blue carthan she will in a white-and-red. This here turnout has got to be tastyand have class. If she was dark--" He shook his head at that. "No, sir,black hair grows too plenty on squaws an' chilli queens. Yella goes withCasey. Clingin' kinda girl with blue eyes--that's the stuff! An' I'll sureshow her some drivin'!"
He wondered whether he should try and find the girl first and buy the carto match her beauty, or buy the car first and with that lure the lady ofhis dreams. It was a nice question and it required thought. It waspleasant to ponder the problem, and Casey became so lost in meditationthat he forgot to eat when the sun flirted with the scurrying clouds overhis wind-torn automobile top.
So he came bouncing and swaying down the last mesa to the place called RedLake. Casey had heard it spoken of with opprobrious epithets by men whohad crossed it in wet weather. In dry weather it was red clay caked andchecked by the sun, and wheels or hoofs stirred clouds of red dust thatfollowed and choked the traveler.
Casey was not thinking at all of the lake when he drove down to it. He wasseeing 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 a blue shirt and square-toed shoes studdedthickly on the soles with hobnails worn shiny; driving a desert-scarredFord with most of the paint gone and a front fender cocked up and flappingcrazily, and tires worn down to the fabric in places. But his eyes werevery keen and steady, and there was a humorous twist to his mouth. If hedreamed incongruously of big, luxurious cars gorgeous in paint and nickeltrim, and of slim young women with yellow hair and blue eyes,--well,stranger dreams have been hidden away behind exteriors more unsightly thanwas the shell which holds the soul of Casey Ryan.
Presently the practical, everyday side of his nature nudged him intotaking note o
f his immediate surroundings. Red Lake had received awetting. The dark, shiny surface betrayed that fact, and it was surprisinghow real water, when you did see it on a lake subject to mirage, was sounmistakably real. It is like putting flakes of real gold beside flakes ofmica; you are ready to swear that the mica is gold--until you see the realgold beside it. So Casey knew at a glance that half of Red Lake was wet,and that the shiny patches here and there were not mirage pictures butshallow pools of water. Moreover, out in the reddest, wettest part of itan automobile stood with its back to him, and pigmy figures were movingslowly upon either side.