The Trail of the White Mule | Page 9

for a little while was happy again.
From breakfast until noon he was busy as a beaver repairing the
washout beneath the car and on to the top of the hill. She was going to
have to get down and dig in her toes to make it, he told the Ford, when
at last he heaved pick and shovel into the tonneau, packed in his
cooking outfit and made ready to crank up.
From then until supper time he wore a trail around the car, looking to
see what was wrong and why he could not crank. He removed
hootin'-annies and dingbats (using Casey's mechanical terms) looked
them over dissatisfiedly, and put them back without having done them
ny good whatever. Sometimes they were returned to a different place, I
imagine, since I know too well how impartial Casey is with the
mechanical parts of a Ford.
He made camp there that night, pitching his little tent in the trail for
pure cussedness, and defying aloud a traveling world to make him
move until he got good and ready. He might have saved his vocabulary,
for the road was impassable before him and behind; and had Casey
managed to start the car, he could not have driven a mile in either
direction.
Since he did not know that, the next day he painstakingly cleaned the
spark plugs and tried again to crank the Ford; couldn't, and removed
more hootin'-annies and dingbats than he had touched the day before.
That night he once more pitched his tent in the trail, hoping in his heart
that some one would drive along and dispute his right to camp there;
when he would lick the doggone cuss.

On the fourth day, after a long, fatiguing session with the vitals of a
Ford that refused to be cranked, Casey was busy gathering brush, for
his supper fire when Fate came walking up' the trail. Fate appears in
many forms. In this instance it assumed the shape of a packed burro
that poked its nose around a group of Joshuas, stopped abruptly and
backed precipitately into another burro which swung out of the trail and
went careening awkwardly down the slope. The stampeding burro had
not seen the Ford at all, but accepted the testimony of its leader that
something was radically wrong with the trail ahead. His pack bumped
against the yuccas as he went; after him lurched a large man, heavy to
the point of fatness, yelling hoarse threats and incoherent objurgations.
Casey threw down his armful of dead brush and went after the lead
burro which was blazing itself a trail in an entirely different direction.
The lead burro had four large canteens strapped outside its pack, and
Casey was growing so short of water that he had begun to debate
seriously the question of draining the radiator on the morrow.
I don't suppose many of you would believe the innate cussedness of a
burro when it wants to be that way. Casey hazed this one to the hills
and back down the trail for half a mile before he rushed it into a clump
of greasewood and sneaked up on it when it thought itself hidden from
all mortal eyes. After that he dug heels into the sand and hung on.
Memory resurrected for his need certain choice phrases coined in times
of stress for the ears of burros alone. Luxury and civilization and
fifty-five thousand dollars and a wife were as if they had never been.
He was Casey Ryan, the prospector, fighting a stubborn donkey all
over a desert slope. He led it conquered back to the Ford, tied it to a
wheel and lifted off the four canteens, gratified with their weight and
hoping there were more on the other burro. He had quite forgotten that
he had meant to lick the first man he saw, and grinned when the fat
man came toiling back with the other animal.
By the time their coffee was boiled and their bacon fried, each one
knew the other's past history and tentative plans for the future, censored
and glossed somewhat by the teller but received without question or
criticism.

The fat man's name was Barney Oakes, and he had heard of Casey
Ryan and was glad to meet him. Though Casey had never heard of
Barney Oakes, he discovered that they both knew Bill Masters, the
garage man at Lund; and further gossip revealed the amazing fact that
Barney Oakes had once been the husband of the woman whom Casey
had very nearly married, the widow who cooked for the Lucky Lode.
"Boy, you're sure lucky she turned loose on yuh before yuh went an'
married her!" Barney congratulated Casey, slapping his great thigh and
laughing loudly. "She shore is handy with her tongue--that