Casey Ryan | Page 2

those
who once knew him.
So in time it happened that Casey was driving a stage of his own from
Pinnacle down to Lund, in Nevada, and making boast that his four
horses could beat the record--the month's record, mind--of any
dog-gone auty-_mo_-bile that ever infested the trail. Infest is a word
that Casey would have used often had he known its dictionary
reputation. Having been deprived of close acquaintance with
dictionaries, but having a facile imagination and some creative ability,
Casey kept pace with progress and invented words of his own which he

applied lavishly to all automobiles; but particularly and emphatically he
applied the spiciest, most colorful ones to Fords.
Put yourself in Casey's place, and you will understand. Imagine
yourself with a thirty-mile trip to make down a twisty, rough mountain
road built in the days when men hauled ore down the mountain on
wagons built to bump over rocks without damage to anything but
human bones. You are Casey Ryan, remember; you never stopped for
stage robbers or grizzlies in the past, and you have your record to
maintain as the hardest driver in the West. You are proud of that record,
because you know how you have driven to earn it.
You pop the lash over the ears of your leaders and go whooping down a
long, straight bit of road where you count on making time. When you
are about halfway down and the four horses are running even and
tugging pleasantly at the reins, and you are happy enough to sing your
favorite song, which begins,
"Hey, ole Bill! Can-n yuh play the fiddle-o? Yes, by gosh! I--I--kin
play a liddle-o--"
and never gets beyond that one flat statement, around the turn below
you comes a Ford, rattling all its joints trying to make the hill on
"high." The driver honks wildly at you to give him the road--you,
Casey Ryan! Wouldn't you writhe and invent words and apply them
viciously to all Fords and the man who invented them? But the driver
comes at you honking, squawking,--and you turn out.
You have to, unless the Ford does; and Fords don't. A Ford will send a
twin-six swerving sharply to the edge of a ditch, and even Casey Ryan
must swing his leaders to the right in obedience to that raucous
command.
Once Casey didn't. He had the patience of the good-natured, and for
awhile he had contented himself with his vocabulary and his reputation
as a driver and a fighter, and the record he held of making the thirty
miles from Pinnacle to Lund in an hour and thirty-five minutes,
twenty-six days in the month. (He did not publish his running expenses,

by the way, nor did he mention the fact that his passengers were mostly
strangers picked up at the railway station at Lund because they liked
the look of the picturesque four-horses-and-Casey stagecoach.)
Once Casey refused to turn out. That morning he had been compelled
to wait and whip a heavy man who berated Casey because the heavy
man's wife had ridden from Pinnacle to Lund the day before and had
fainted at the last sharp turn in the road and had not revived in time to
board the train for Salt Lake which she had been anxious to catch.
Casey had known she was anxious to catch the train, and he had made
the trip in an hour and twenty-nine minutes in spite of the fact that he
had driven the last mile with a completely unconscious lady leaning
heavily against his left shoulder. She made much better time with
Casey than she would have made on the narrow-gauge train which
carried ore and passengers and mail to Lund, arriving when most
convenient to the train crew. That it took half an hour to restore her to
consciousness was not Casey's fault.
Casey had succeeded in whipping the heavy man till he hollered, but
the effort had been noticeable. Casey wondered uneasily whether by
any chance he, Casey Ryan, was growing old with the rest of the world.
That possibility had never before occurred to him, and the thought was
disquieting. Casey Ryan too old to lick any man who gave him cause,
too old to hold the fickle esteem of those who met him in the road?
Casey squinted belligerently at the Old-man-with-the-scythe and
snorted. "I licked him good. You ask anybody. And he's twice as big as
I am. I guess they's a good many years left in Casey Ryan yet! Giddap,
you--thus-and-so! We're ten minutes late and we got our record!"
At that moment a Ford touring car popped around the turn below him
and squawked presumptuously for a clear passage ahead. Casey pulled
his lash off the nigh leader, yelled and charged straight down the road.
Did