CHAPTER IX
"At that," said Bill, grinning a little, "you'll know as much as theaverage garage-man. What ain't reformed livery-stable men are second-handblacksmiths, and a feller like you, that has drove stage for fifteenyear--"
"Twenty," Casey Ryan corrected jealously. "Six years at Cripple Creek, andthen four in Yellowstone, and I was up in Montana for over five years,driving stage from Dry Lake to Claggett and from there I come to Nevada--"
"Twenty," Bill conceded without waiting to hear more, "knows as much as aman that has kept livery stable. Then again you've had two Fords--"
"Oh, I ain't sayin' I can't _run_ a garage," Casey interrupted. "I don'tback down from runnin' anything. But if you'd grubstake me for a year,instead of settin' up this here garage at Patmos, I'd feel like I had abetter chance of makin' us both a piece uh money. There's a lost gold mineI been wantin' fer years to get out and look for. I believe I know nowabout where to hit for. It ain't lost, exactly. There's an old Injun beenin the habit of packin' in high grade in a lard bucket, and nobody's beenable to trail him and git back to tell about it. He's an old she-bear todo anything with, but I got a scheme, Bill--"
"Ferget it," Bill advised. "Now you listen to me, Casey, and lay off thatprospectin' bug for awhile. Here's this long strip of desert from Needlesto Ludlow, and tourists trailin' through like ants on movin' day. Andhere's this garage that I can get at Patmos for about half what thebuildin's worth. You ain't got any competition, none whatever. You've gota cinch. There'll be cars comin' in from both ways with their tongueshangin' out, outa gas, outa oil, needin' this and needin' that and lookingon that garage as a godsend--"
"Say, Bill, if I gotta be a godsend I'll go out somewheres and hollermyself to death. Casey's off that godsend stuff for life; you hear me,Bill--"
"Glad to hear it, Casey. If you go down there to Patmos to clean up somemoney for you 'n' me, you wanta cut out this soft-hearted stuff. Get themoney, see? Never mind being kind; you can be kind when you've got a staketo be it with. Charge 'em for everything they git, and see to it that themoney's good. Don't you take no checks. Don't trust nobody for anythingwhatever. That's your weakness, Casey, and you know it. You're toodog-gone trusting. You promise me you'll put a bell on your tire testerand a log chain and drag on your pump and jack--say, you wouldn't believethe number of honest men that go off for a vacation and steal everything,by golly, they can haul away! Pliers, wrenches, oil cans, tire testers--say, you sure wanta watch 'em when they ask yuh for a tester! You can losemore tire testers in the garage business--"
"Well, now, you watch Casey! When it comes to putting things like thatover, they wanta try somebody besides Casey Ryan. You ask anybody ifCasey's easy fooled. But I'd ruther go hunt the Injun Jim mine, Bill."
"Say, Casey, in this one summer you can make enough money in Patmos to_buy_ a gold mine. I've been reading the papers pretty careful. Why, theysay tourist travel is the heaviest that ever was known, and this is earlyMay and it's only beginning. And lemme tell yuh something, Casey. I'druther have a garage in Patmos than a hotel in Los Angeles, and by allthey say that's puttin' it strong. Ever been over the road west uhNeedles, Casey?"
Casey never had, and Bill proceeded to describe it so that any tourist whoever blew out a tire there with the sun at a hundred and twenty andrunning in high, would have confessed the limitations of his ownvocabulary.
"And there you are, high and dry, with fifteen miles of the ungodliest,tire-chewinest road on either side of yuh that America can show. Aboutlike this stretch down here between Rhyolite and Vegas. And hills andchucks--say, don't talk to me about any Injun packin' gold in a lardbucket. Why, lemme tell yuh, Casey, if you work it right and don't be sodog-gone kind-hearted, you'll want a five-ton truck to haul off yourprofits next fall. I'd go myself and let you run this place here, only Igot a lot of credit trade and you'd never git a cent outa the bunch. Andthen you're wantin' to leave Lund for awhile, anyway."
"You could git somebody else," Casey suggested half-heartedly. "I kindahate to be hobbled to a place like a garage, Bill. And if there's anythinggits my goat, it's patchin' up old tires. I'll run 'em flat long asthey'll stay on, before I'll git out and mend 'em. I'd about as soon go tojail, Bill, as patch tires for tourists; I--"
"You don't have to," said Bill, his grin widening. "You sell 'em newtires, see. There won't be one in a dozen you can't talk into a new tireor two. Whichever way they're goin', tell 'em the road's a heap worse fromthere on than what it was behind 'em. They'll buy new tires--you take itfrom me they will. And," he added virtuously, "you'll do 'em no harmwhatever. If you got a car, you need tires, and a new one'll always comein handy sometime. You know that yourself, Casey.
"Now, I'll put in an assortment of tires, and I'll trust you to sell 'em.You and the road they got to travel. Why, when I was in Ludlow, a fellerblew in there with a big brute of a car--36-6 tires. He'd had a blow-outdown the other side of Patmos and he was sore because they didn't have notires he could use down there. He bought three tires--_three,_ mind yuh,and peeled off the bills to pay for 'em! Sa-ay when yuh figure two hundredcars a day rollin' through, and half of 'em comin' to yuh with grief ofsome kind--"
"It's darn little I know about any car but a Ford," Casey admittedplaintively. "When yuh come to them complicated ones that you can crawlbehind the wheel and set your boot on a button and holler giddap andshe'll start off in a lope, I don't know about it. A Ford's like a mule ora burro. You take a monkey wrench and work 'em over, and cuss, and that'sabout all there is to it. But you take them others, and I got to admit Idon't know."
"Well," said Bill, and spat reflectively, "you roll up your sleeves andI'll learn yuh. It'll take time for the stuff to be delivered, and you canlearn a lot in two or three weeks, Casey, if you fergit that prospectin'idea and put your mind to it."
Casey rolled a cigarette and smoked half of it, his eyes clingingpensively to the barren hills behind Lund. He hunched his shoulders,looked at Bill and grinned reluctantly.
"She's a go with me, Bill, if you can't think of no other way to spendmoney. I wisht you took to poker more, or minin', or something that's gotaction. Stakin' Casey Ryan to a garage business looks kinda foolish to me.But if you can stand it, Bill, I can. It's kinda hard on the tourists,don't yuh think?"
Thus are garages born,--too many of them, as suffering drivers willtestify. Casey Ryan, known wherever men of the open travel and spin theiryarns, famous for his recklessly efficient driving of lurchingstagecoaches in the old days, and for his soft heart and hishappy-go-lucky ways; famous too as the man who invented ungodlypredicaments from which he could extricate himself and be pleased if hekept his shirt on his back; Casey Ryan as the owner of a garage mightjustly be considered a joke pushed to the very limit of plausibility. YetCasey Ryan became just that after two weeks of cramming on mechanics andthe compiling of a reference book which would have made a fortune forhimself and Bill if they had thought to publish it.
"A quort of oil becomes lubrecant and is worth from five to fifteen centsmore per quort when you put it into a two-thousand dollar car or over,"was one valuable bit of information supplied by Bill. Also: "Never cuss orfight a man getting work done in your place. Shut up and charge himaccording to the way he acts."
It is safe to assume that Bill would make a fortune in the garage businessanywhere, given normal traffic.
Patmos consists of a water tank on the railroad, a siding where trains canpass each other, a ten-by-ten depot, telegraph office and express andfreight office, six sweltering families, one sunbaked lodging place withtent bedrooms so hot that even the soap melts, and the Casey Ryan garage.I forgot to mention three trees which stand beside the water tank and tryto grow enough at night to make up for the blistering they get during theday. The highway (Coast to Coast and signed at every crossroads in redletters on white metal boards with red arrows pointing to the far skyline)shies away from the railroad at Patmos so that perspiring travelers lookwistfully across two hundred yards or so of lava rock and sand and
wishthat they might lie under those three trees and cool off. They couldn't,you know. It is no cooler under the trees than elsewhere. It merely lookscooler.
Even the water tank is a disappointment to the uninitiated. You cannotdrink the water which the pump draws wheezingly up from some deepreservoir of bad flavors. It is very clear water and it has a sparkle thatlures the unwary, but it is common knowledge that no man ever drank twoswallows of it if he could help himself. So the water supply of Patmoslies twelve miles away in the edge of the hills, where there is a verygood spring. One of the six male residents of Patmos hauls water inbarrels, at fifty cents a barrel. He makes a living at it, too.
One other male resident keeps the lodging place,--I avoid the term lodginghouse, because this place is not a house. It is a shack with a signstraddling out over the hot porch to insult the credulity of thepassers-by. The sign says that this place is "The Oasis,"--and the nearesttrees a long rifleshot away, and the coolest water going warm into parchedmouths!
The Oasis stands over by the highway, alongside Casey's garage, and theproprietor spends nine tenths of his waking hours sitting on the frontporch and following the strip of shade from the west end to the east end,and in watching the trains go by, and counting the cars of tourists andremarking upon the State license plate.
"There's an outfit from Ioway, maw," he will call in to his wife. "Wonderwhere they're headed fer?" His wife will come to the door and lookapathetically at the receding dust cloud, and go back somewhere,--perhapsto put fresh soap in the tents to melt. Toward evening the cars are verylikely to slow down and stop reluctantly; sunburned, goggled women and menlooking the place over without enthusiasm. It isn't much of a place, to besure, but any place is better than none in the desert, unless you haveyour own bed and frying pan with you, roped in dusty canvas to the back ofyour car.
Alongside the Oasis stands the garage, and in the garage swelters Casey,--during this episode. Just at first Bill came down from Lund and helped himto arrange and mark prices on his stock of tires and "parts" andaccessories, and to remember the catalogue names for things so that hewould recognize them when a car owner asked for them.
Casey, I must explain, had evolved a system of his own while driving hisFord wickedly here and there to the consternation of his fellow men.Whatever was not a hootin'-annie was a dingbat, and treated accordingly.The hootin'-annie appeared to be the thing that went wrong, while thedingbat was the thing the hootin'-annie was attached to. It was perfectlysimple, to Casey and his Ford, but Bill thought it was a trifle limitedand was apt to confuse customers. So Bill remained three days mopping hisface with his handkerchief and explaining things to Casey. After thatCasey hired a heavy-eyed young Mexican to pump tires and fill radiatorsand the like, and settled down to make his fortune.