Godsend to a Lady

“Casey” Ryan mixes a little philanthropy with considerable poker and ends where he started—with the addition of a pair of socks.

Casey waved good-by to the men from Tonopah, squinted up at the sun, and got a coal-oil can of water and filled the radiator of his Ford. He rolled his bed in the tarp and tied it securely, put flour, bacon, coffee, salt, and various other small necessities of life into a box, inspected his sour-dough can and decided to empty it and start over again if hard fate drove him to sour dough. “Might bust down and have to sleep out,” he meditated. “Then again I ain’t liable to; and if I do I’ll be goin’ so fast I’ll git somewhere before she stops. I’m—sure—goin’ to go!” He cranked the battered car, straddled in over the edge on the driver’s side, and set his feet against the pedals with the air of a man who had urgent business elsewhere. The men from Tonopah were not yet out of sight around the butte scarred with granite ledges before Casey was under way, rattling down the rough trail from Ghost Mountain and bouncing clear of the seat as the car lurched over certain rough spots.

Pinned with a safety pin to the inside pocket of the vest he wore only when he felt need of a safe and secret pocket, Casey Ryan carried a check for twenty-five thousand dollars, made payable to himself. A check for twenty-five thousand dollars in Casey’s pocket was like a wild cat clawing at his imagination and spitting at every moment’s delay. Casey had endured solitude and some hardship while he coaxed Ghost Mountain to reveal a little of its secret treasure. Now he wanted action, light, life, and plenty of it. While he drove he dreamed, and his dreams beckoned, urged him faster and faster.

Up over the summit of the ridge that lay between Ghost Mountain and Furnace Lake he surged with radiator bubbling. Down the long slope to the lake lying there smiling sardonically at a world it loved to trick with its moods, Casey drove as if he were winning a bet. Across that five miles of baked, yellow-white clay he raced, his Ford a-creak in every joint.

“Go it, you tin lizard,” chortled Casey. “I’ll have me a real wagon when I git to Los. She’ll be white, with red stripes along her sides and red wheels, and she’ll eat up the road and lick her chops for more. Sixty miles under her belt every time the clock strikes, or she ain’t good enough for Casey! Mebby they think they got some drivers in Californy. Meybe they think they have. They ain’t, though, because Casey Ryan ain’t there yet. I’ll catch that night train. Oughta be in by morning, and then you keep your eye on Casey. There’s goin’ to be a stir around Los, about to-morrow noon. I’ll have to buy some clothes, I guess. And I’ll find some nice girl with yella hair that likes pleasure, and take her out ridin’. Yeah, I’ll have to git me a swell outfit uh clothes. I’ll look the part, all right!”

Up a long, winding trail and over another summit, Casey dreamed while the stark, scarred buttes on either side regarded him with enigmatic calm. Since the first wagon train had worried over the rough deserts on their way to California, the bleak hills of Nevada had listened while prospectors dreamed aloud and cackled over their dreaming; had listened, too, while they raved in thirst and heat and madness. Inscrutably they watched Casey as he hurried by with his twenty-five thousand dollars and his pleasant pictures of soft ease.