The Trail of the White Mule | Page 7

"he'll probably make it to the Nevada line all right."
I rose, also glancing at the clock. But the Little Woman put up a hand
to forbid the plan she read in my mind.
"Let him alone, Jack," she advised. "Let him go and be just as wild and
devilish as he wants to be. I'm only thankful he can take it out on a
Ford and a pick and shovel. There really isn't any trouble between us
two. Casey knows I can look out for myself for awhile. He's got to have
a vacation from loafing and matrimony. I'm so thankful he isn't taking
it in jail!"
I told her somewhat bluntly that she was a brick, and that if I could get
in touch with Casey I'd try to keep an eye on him. It would probably be
a good thing, I told her, if he did stay away long enough to let this
collection of complaints against him be forgotten at the police station.
I went away, hoping fervently that Casey would break even his own
records that night. I really intended to find him and keep an eye on him.
But keeping an eye on Casey Ryan is a more complicated affair than it
sounds.
Wherefore, much of this story must be built upon my knowledge of
Casey and a more or less complete report of events in which I took no
part, welded together with a bit of healthy imagination.
CHAPTER TWO
Casey Ryan knew his desert. Also, from long and not so happy
experience, he knew Fords, or thought he did. He made the mistake,
however, of buying a nearly new one and asking it to accomplish the
work of a twin six from the moment he got behind the wheel.
He was fortunate in buying a demonstrator's car with a hundred miles
or so to its credit. He arrived in Barstow before the proprietor of a

supply store had gone to bed--for which he was grateful to the Ford. He
loaded up there with such necessities for desert prospecting as he had
not waited to buy in Los Angeles, turned short off the main highway
where traffic officers might be summoned by telephone to lie in wait
for him, and took the steeper and less used trail north. He was still mad
and talking bitterly to himself in an undertone while he drove--telling
the new Ford what he thought of city rules and city ways, and driving it
as no Ford was ever meant by its maker to be driven.
The country north of Barstow is not to be taken casually in the middle
of a dark night, even by Casey Ryan and a Ford. The roads, once you
are well away from help, are all pretty much alike, and all bad. And
although the white, diamond-shaped signs of a beneficent automobile
club are posted here and there, where wrong turnings are most likely to
prove disastrous to travelers, Casey Ryan was in the mood to lick any
man who pointed out a sign to him. He did see one or two in spite of
himself and gave a grunt of contempt. So, where he should have turned
to the east (his intention being to reach Nevada by way of Silver Lake)
he continued traveling north and didn't know it.
Driving across the desert on a dark night is confusing to the most
observant wayfarer. On either side, beyond the light of the car, illusory
forest stands for mile upon mile. Up hill or down or across the level it
is the same--a narrow, winding trail through dimly seen woods. The
most familiar road grows strange; the miles are longer; you drive
through mystery and silence and the world around you is a formless
void.
Dawn and a gorgeous sunrise painted out the woods and revealed
barren hilltops which Casey did not know. Because he did not know
them, he guessed shrewdly that he was on his way to the wilderness of
mountains and sand which lies west of Death Valley. Small chance he
had of hearing the shop whistles blow in Las Vegas at noon, as he had
expected.
He was telling himself that he didn't care where he went, when the car,
laboring more and more reluctantly up a long, sandy hill, suddenly
stopped. In Casey's heart was a thrill at the sheer luxury of stopping in

the middle of the road without having some thick-necked cop stride
toward him bawling insults. That he was obliged to stop, and that a hill
uptilted before him, and the sand was a foot deep outside the ruts failed
to impress him with foreboding. He gloried in his freedom and thought
not at all of the Ford.
He climbed stiffly out, squinted at the sky line,