Casey Ryan | Page 4

himself, with a conscious sigh of relief
when he had safely negotiated the last hair-pin curve; and Bill was
counted a good driver. He suggested an insurance policy to Casey, not
half so jokingly as he tried to sound.
Casey turned and gave him a pale blue, unwinking stare. "Say! Never
you mind gettin' out insurance on this auty-_mo_-bile. What you wanta
do is insure the cars that's liable to meet up with me in the trail."
Bill saw the sense of that, too, and said no more about insuring Casey.
He drove down the canyon where the road is walled in on both sides by
cliffs, and proceeded to give Casey a lesson in driving. Casey did not
think that he needed to be taught how to drive. All he wanted to know,
he said, was how to stop 'er and how to start 'er. Bill needn't worry
about the rest of it.
"She's darn tender-bitted," he commented, after two round trips over
the straight half-mile stretch,--and fourteen narrow escapes. "And the
man that made 'er sure oughta known better than to make 'er neck rein
in harness. And I don't like this windin' 'er up every time you wanta
start. But she can sure _go_--and that's what Casey Ryan's after every
day in the week.
"All right, Bill. I'll go gather up the Bohunks and start. You better
'phone up to Pinnacle that Casey's on the road--and tell 'em he says it's
his road's long's he's on it. They'll know what I mean."
Pinnacle did know, and waited on the sidewalk that afforded a view of
the long hill where the road curled down around the head of the gulch
and into town. Much sooner than his most optimistic backers had a
right to expect-- for there were bets laid on the outcome there in
Pinnacle--on the brow of the hill a swirl of red dust grew rapidly to a
cloud. Like a desert whirlwind it swept down the road, crossed the
narrow bridge over the deep cut at the head of the gulch where the

famous Youbet mine belched black smoke, and rolled on down the
steep, narrow little street.
Out of the whirlwind poked the pugnacious little brass-rimmed nose of
a new Ford, and behind the windshield Casey Ryan grinned widely as
he swung up to the postoffice and stopped as he had always stopped his
four-horse stage,--with a flourish. Stopping with a flourish is fine and
spectacular when you are driving horses accustomed to that method and
on the lookout for it. Horses have a way of stiffening their forelegs and
sliding their hind feet and giving a lot of dramatic finish to the
performance. But there is no dramatic sense at all in the tin brain of a
Ford. It just stopped. And the insecure fourth Bohunk in the tonneau
went hurtling forward into the front seat straight on his way through the
windshield. Casey threw up an elbow instinctively and caught him in
the collar button and so avoided breakage and blood spattered around.
Three other foreigners were scrambling to get out when Casey stopped
them with a yell that froze them quiet where they were.
"Hey! You stay right where y'are! I gotta deliver yuh up to the Bluebird
in a minute."
There were chatterings and gesticulations in the tonneau. Out of the
gabble a shrill voice rose be-seechingly in English. "We will walk,
meester'. If you pleese, meester! We are 'fraid for ride wit' dees
maychine, meester!"
Casey was nettled by the cackling and the thigh-slapping of the
audience on the sidewalk. He reached for his stage whip, and missing it
used his ready Irish fists. So the Bohunks crawled unhappily back into
the car and subsided shivering and with tears in their eyes.
"Dammit, when I take on passengers to ride, they're goin' to ride till
they git there. You shut up, back there!"
A friend of Casey's stepped forward and cranked the machine, and
Casey pulled down the gas lever until the motor howled, turned in the
shortest possible radius and went lunging up the crooked steep trail to
the Bluebird mine on top of the hill, his engine racing and screaming in

low.
Thereafter Pinnacle and Lund had a new standard by which to measure
the courage of a man. Had he made the trip with Casey Ryan and his
new Ford? He _had_? By golly, he sure had nerve. One man passed the
peak for sheer bravery and rode twice with Casey, but certain others
were inclined to disparage the feat, on the ground that on the second
trip he was drunk.
Casey did not like that. He admitted that he was a hard driver; he had
always been proud because men called him the hardest driver in the