CASEY RYAN
BY
B. M. BOWER
Author of "Chip of the Flying U", "Rim O' the World", "Cow-Country", etc.
1921
Casey reached for his pocket, and the white man alsoreached for his. FRONTISPIECE. _See page_ 237.]
CHAPTER I
From Denver to Spokane, from El Paso to Fort Benton, men talk of CaseyRyan and smile when they speak his name. Old men with the flat tone ofcoming senility in their voices will suck at their pipes and cacklereminiscently while they tell you of Casey's tumultuous youth--when hedrove the six fastest horses in Colorado on the stage out from CrippleCreek, and whooped past would-be holdups with a grin of derision on hisface and bullets whining after him and passengers praying disjointedprayers and clinging white-knuckled to the seats.
They say that once a flat, lanky man climbed bareheaded out at the stagestation below the mountain and met Casey coming springily off the box withwhip and six reins in his hand. The lanky man was still pale from hisride, and he spluttered when he spoke:
"Sa-ay! N-next time you're held up and I'm r-ridin' with yuh, b-by gosh,you s-_stop_. I-I'd ruther be shot t-than p-pitched off into ac-canyon, s-somewhere a-and busted up!"
Casey is a little man. When he was young he was slim, but he always hasowned a pale blue, unwinking squint which he uses with effect. He haltedwhere he was and squinted up at the man, and spat fluid tobacco andgrinned.
"You're here, and you're able to kick about my drivin'. That's purty goodluck, I'd say. You _ain't_ shot, an' you ain't layin' busted in no canyon.Any time a man gits shot outa Casey Ryan's stage, he'll have to jump outan' wait for the bullet to ketch up. And there ain't any passengers offn'this stage layin' busted in no canyon, neither. I bring in what I startout with."
The other man snorted and reached under his coat tail for the solacingplug of chewing tobacco. Opposition and ridicule had brought a littlecolor into his face.
"Why, hell, man! You--you come around that ha-hairpin turn up there on twowheels! It's a miracle we wasn't--"
"Miracles is what happens once and lets it go at that. Say! Casey Ryan_always_ saves wear on a coupla wheels, on that turn. I've made it on one;but the leaders wasn't runnin' right to-day. That nigh one's cast a shoe.I gotta have that looked after." He gave up the reins to the waitinghostler and went off, heading straight for the station porch where waiteda red-haired girl with freckles and a warm smile for Casey.
That was Casey's youth; part of it. The rest was made up of fighting,gambling, drinking hilariously with the crowd and always with his temperon hair trigger. Along the years behind him he left a stragglingprocession of men, women and events. The men and women would always knowthe color of his eyes and would recognize the Casey laugh in a crowd,years after they had last heard it; the events were full of the true Caseyflavor,--and as I say, when men told of them and mentioned Casey, theylaughed.
From the time when his daily drives were likely to be interrupted byholdups, and once by a grizzly that reared up in the road fairly under thenose of his leaders and sent the stage off at an acute angle, blazing atrail by itself amongst the timber, Casey drifted from mountain to desert,from desert to plain and back again, blithely meeting hard luck face toface and giving it good day as if it were a friend. For Casey was born anoptimist, and misfortune never quite got him down and kept him there,though it tried hard and often, as you will presently see. Some called himgritty. Some said he hadn't the sense to know when he was licked. Eitherway, it made a rare little Irishman of Casey Ryan, and kept his name frombecoming blurred in the memories of those who once knew him.
So in time it happened that Casey was driving a stage of his own fromPinnacle down to Lund, in Nevada, and making boast that his four horsescould beat the record--the month's record, mind--of any dog-goneauty-_mo_-bile that ever infested the trail. Infest is a word that Caseywould have used often had he known its dictionary reputation. Having beendeprived of close acquaintance with dictionaries, but having a facileimagination and some creative ability, Casey kept pace with progress andinvented words of his own which he applied lavishly to all automobiles;but particularly and emphatically he applied the spiciest, most colorfulones to Fords.
Put yourself in Casey's place, and you will understand. Imagine yourselfwith a thirty-mile trip to make down a twisty, rough mountain road builtin the days when men hauled ore down the mountain on wagons built to bumpover 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 earnit.
You pop the lash over the ears of your leaders and go whooping down along, straight bit of road where you count on making time. When you areabout halfway down and the four horses are running even and tuggingpleasantly at the reins, and you are happy enough to sing your favoritesong, 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 youcomes 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 Fordsand 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 atwin-six swerving sharply to the edge of a ditch, and even Casey Ryan mustswing 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 awhilehe had contented himself with his vocabulary and his reputation as adriver and a fighter, and the record he held of making the thirty milesfrom Pinnacle to Lund in an hour and thirty-five minutes, twenty-six daysin the month. (He did not publish his running expenses, by the way, nordid he mention the fact that his passengers were mostly strangers pickedup at the railway station at Lund because they liked the look of thepicturesque four-horses-and-Casey stagecoach.)
Once Casey refused to turn out. That morning he had been compelled to waitand whip a heavy man who berated Casey because the heavy man's wife hadridden from Pinnacle to Lund the day before and had fainted at the lastsharp turn in the road and had not revived in time to board the train forSalt Lake which she had been anxious to catch. Casey had known she wasanxious to catch the train, and he had made the trip in an hour andtwenty-nine minutes in spite of the fact that he had driven the last milewith a completely unconscious lady leaning heavily against his leftshoulder. She made much better time with Casey than she would have made onthe 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 hourto restore her to consciousness was not Casey's fault.
Casey had succeeded in whipping the heavy man till he hollered, but theeffort had been noticeable. Casey wondered uneasily whether by any chancehe, Casey Ryan, was growing old with the rest of the world. Thatpossibility had never before occurred to him, and the thought wasdisquieting. Casey Ryan too old to lick any man who gave him cause, tooold to hold the fickle esteem of those who met him in the road? Caseysquinted belligerently at the Old-man-with-the-scythe and snorted. "Ilicked him good. You ask anybody. And he's twice as big as I am. I guessthey'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 andsquawked presumptuously for a clear passage ahead. Casey pulled his lashoff the nigh leader, yelled and charged straight down the road. Did theythink they could honk him off the road? Hunh! Casey Ryan was still CaseyRyan. Never agai
n would he turn out for man or devil.
Wherefore Casey was presently extricating his leaders from the harness ofhis wheelers ten feet below the grade. On the road above him the driver ofthe Ford inspected bent parts and a smashed headlight and cranked andcranked ineffectively, and swore down at Casey Ryan, who squintedunblinkingly up under his hatbrim at the man he likewise cussed.
They were a long while there exchanging disagreeable opinions of oneanother, and Casey was even obliged to climb the steep bank and whip thedriver of the Ford because he had applied a word to Casey which had neverfailed as automatic prelude to a Casey Ryan combat. Casey was franklywinded when he finally mounted one of his horses and led the other three,and so proceeded to Lund as mad as he had ever been in his life.
"That there settles it final," he snorted, when the town came into view inthe flat below. "They've pushed Casey off'n the grade for the first timeand the last time. What pushin' and crowdin' and squawkin' is done fromnow on, it'll be Casey Ryan doin' it! Faint! I'll learn 'em something tofaint about. If it's Fords goin' to run horses off'n the trail, you watchhow Casey Ryan'll drive the livin' tar outa one. Dog-gone 'em, there ain'tno Ford livin' that can drive Casey off'n the road. I'll drive 'em tilltheir tongues hang out. I'll make 'em bawl like a calf, and I'll pound 'emon the back and make 'em fan it faster."
So talking to himself and his team he rode into town and up to one ofthose ubiquitous Ford agencies that write their curly-tailed bluelettering across the continent from the high nose of Maine to the shoulderof Cape Flattery.
"Gimme one of them dog-goned blankety bing-bing Ford auty-_mo_-biles," hecommanded the garage owner who came to meet Casey amiably in his shirtsleeves. "Here's four horses I'll trade yuh, with what's left of theharness. And up at the third turn you'll find a good wheel off'n thestage." He slid down from the sweaty back of his nigh leader and stoodslightly bow-legged and very determined before the garage owner, BillMasters.
"Wel-l--there ain't much sale for horses, Casey. I ain't got any place tokeep 'em, nor any feed. I'll sell yuh a Ford on time, and--"
Casey glanced over his shoulder to make sure the horses were standingquiet, dropped the reins and advanced upon Bill.
"You _trade_," he stated flatly.
Bill backed a little. "Oh, all right, if that's the way yuh feel. What yuhaskin' for the four just as they stand?"
"Me? A Ford auty-_mo_-bile. I told yuh that, Bill. And I want you to puton the biggest horn that's made; one that can be heard from here toPinnacle and back when I turn 'er loose. And run the damn thing out hereright away and show me how it works, and how often you gotta wind it andwhen. Lucky I didn't bring no passengers down--I was runnin' empty. But Igotta take back a load of Bohunks to the Bluebird this afternoon, and mystage, she's a total wreck. I'll sign papers to-night if you got any tosign."