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Richard Harding Davis - "The Man Who Could Not Lose"

Julian Hawthorne - "The Golden Fleece"

Jules Verne - "The Underground City"

Hugh Lofting - "The Story of Doctor Dolittle"

The Trail of the White Mule

B >> B. M. Bower >> The Trail of the White Mule




"The corner was never yet so tight that Casey Ryan couldn't find
a crack somewhere to crawl through," he told himself
vaingloriously. "An' I hope to thunder the feller sleeps long an'
sleeps solid!"

For fifteen minutes the mind of Casey Ryan was at ease. He had
found a shovel in the car, placed conveniently at the side where
it could be used for just such an emergency as this. For fifteen
minutes he had been using that shovel in a shelving bank of loose
gravel just under an outcropping of rhyolite a rod or so behind
the car and well out of sight of Nolan.

He was beginning to consider his excavation almost deep enough to
bury two ten-gallon kegs and forty bottles of whisky, when the
shadow of a head and shoulders fell across the hole. Casey did
not lift the dirt and rocks he had on his shovel. He froze to a
tense quiet, goggling at the shadow.

"What are yuh doing, Casey? Trying to outdig a badger?" Mack
Nolan's chuckle was friendliness itself.

Casey's head snapped around so that he could cock an eye up at
Nolan. He grinned mechanically. "Naw. Picked up a rich-lookin'
piece uh float. Thought I'd just see if it didn't mebby come from
this ledge."

Mack Nolan stepped forward interestedly and looked at the ledge.

"Where's the piece you found?" he very naturally inquired. "The
formation just here wouldn't lead me to expect gold-bearing rock;
but of course, anything is possible with gold. Let's have a look
at the specimen."

Casey had once tried to bluff a stranger with two deuces and a
pair of fives, and two full stacks of blue chips pushed to the
center to back the bluff. The stranger had called him, with
three queens and a pair of jacks. Casey felt like that now.

He had laughed over his loss then, and he grinned now and reached
carelessly to the bank beside him as if he fully expected to lay
his hand on the specimen of gold-bearing rock. He went so far as
to utter a surprised oath when he failed to find it. He felt in
his pockets. He went forward and scanned the top of the ledge
almost convincingly. He turned and stood a-straddle, his hands
on his hips, and gazed on the pile of dirt he had thrown out of
the hole. Last, he pushed his hat back so that with the next
movement he could push it forward again over his eyebrow.

"Now if that there lump uh high-grade ain't went an' slid down
the bank an' got covered up with the muck!" he exclaimed
disgustedly. "I'm a son of a gun if Fate ain't playin' agin'
Casey Ryan with a flock uh aces under its vest!"

Mack Nolan laughed, and Casey slanted a look his way. "Thought I
left you takin, a nap," he said brazenly. "What's the matter?
Didn't your breakfast set good?"

Mack Nolan laughed again. It was evident that he found Casey
Ryan very amusing.

"The breakfast was fine," he replied easily. "A couple of
lizards got to playing tag over me. That woke me up, and the sun
was so hot I just thought I'd come down and crawl into the car
and go to sleep there. Go ahead with your prospecting, Casey--I
won't bother you."

Casey went on with his digging, but his heart was not in it. With
every laggard shovelful of dirt, he glanced over his shoulder
apprehensively, watching Mack Nolan crawl into the back of the
car and settle himself, with an audible sigh of satisfaction, on
top of the load. He had one wild, wicked impulse to lengthen the
hole and make it serve as a grave for more than bootleg whisky;
but it was an impulse born of desperation, and it died almost
before it had lived.



CHAPTER FOURTEEN

Casey left his digging and returned to the Ford, still determined
to carry on the bluff and pretend that much tinkering was
necessary before he could travel further. With a great show of
industry he rummaged for pliers and wrenches, removed the hood
from the motor and squinted down at the little engine.

By that time Mack Nolan was snoring softly in deep slumber. Casey
listened suspiciously, knowing too well how misleading a snore
could be. But his own eyelids were growing exceeding heavy, and
the soporific sound acted hypnotically upon his sleep-hungry
brain. He caught himself yawning, and suddenly threw down the
wrench.

"Aw, hell!" he muttered disgustedly, and went and crawled under
the back of the car where it was shady.

The sun was nearly down when Casey awoke and crawled out. Mack
Nolan was still curled comfortably in the car, his back against
the bed roll. He opened his eyes and yawned when Casey leaned
and looked in upon him.

"By Jove, that was a fine sleep I had," he announced cheerfully,
lifting himself up and dangling his legs outside the car. "Strike
anything yet?"

"Naw." Casey's grunt was eloquent of the mood he was in.

"Get the car fixed all right?" Mack Nolan's cheerfulness seemed
nothing less than diabolical to Casey.

"Naw." Then Casey added grimly, "I'm stuck. I dunno what ails
the damned thing. Have to send to Vegas fer new parts, I guess.
It's only three miles out here to the road. Mebby you better
hike over to the highway an' ketch a ride with somebody. I might
send in for a timer an' some things, too. No use waitin' fer me,
Nolan-- can't tell how long I'll be held up here."

Mack Nolan climbed out of the car. Casey's spirits rose
instantly. Nolan came forward and looked down at the engine as
casually as he would glance at a nickel alarm clock.

"She was hitting all right when you backed down here," Nolan
remarked easily. "I'll just take a look at her myself. Fords
are cranky sometimes. But I've assembled too many of them in the
factory to let one get the best of me in the desert."

Casey could almost hear his heart when it slumped down into his
boots. But he wasn't licked yet.

"Aw, let the darned thing alone till we eat," he said, pushing
his hat forward to hurry his wits.

"Well--I can throw a Ford together in the dark, if necessary,"
smiled Mack Nolan. "Eat, it is, if you want it that way. That
breakfast I put away seems to have sharpened my appetite for
supper. Tell you what, Ryan. I'll do a little trouble-shooting
here while you cook supper. How'll that be?"

That wouldn't be, if Casey could prevent it. His pale,
narrow-lidded eyes dwelt upon Nolan unwinkingly.

"Well, mebby I'm kind of a crank about my car," he hedged, with a
praiseworthy calmness. "Fords is like horses, to me. I drove
stage all m' life till I took to prospectin'--an' I never could
stand around and let anybody else monkey with my teams. I ain't
a doubt in the world, Mr. Nolan, but what you know as much about
Fords as I do. More, mebby. But Casey Ryan's got 'is little
ways, an' he can't seem to ditch 'em. We'll eat; an' then mebby
we'll look 'er over together.

"At the same time," he went on with rising courage, "I'm liable
to stick around here for awhile an' prospect a little. If you
wanta find them mules an' outfit, don't bank too strong on Casey
Ryan. He's liable to change 'is mind any old time. Day or night,
you can't tell what Casey might take a notion to do. That
there's a fact. You can ask anybody if it ain't."

Mack Nolan laughed and slapped Casey unexpectedly on the
shoulder. "You're a man after my own heart, Casey Ryan," he
declared enigmatically. "I'll stick to you and take a chance.
Darn the mules! Somebody will find them and look after them until
I show up."

Casey's spirits, as he admitted to himself, were rising and
falling like the hammer of a pile driver; and like the pile
driver, the hammer was driving him deeper and deeper into
hopelessness. He would have given an ear to know for certain
whether Mack Nolan were as innocent and friendly as he seemed.
Until he did know, Casey could see nothing before him but to wait
his chance to give Nolan the slip.

Sitting cross-legged in the glow of the campfire after supper,
with a huge pattern of stars drawn over the purple night sky,
Casey pulled out the old pipe with which he had solaced many an
evening and stuffed it thoughtfully with tobacco. Across the
campfire, Mack Nolan sat with his hat tilted down over his eyes,
smoking a cigarette and seeming at peace with all the world.

Casey hoped that Nolan would forget about fixing the Ford. He
hoped that Nolan would sleep well to-night. Casey was perfectly
willing to sacrifice a good roll of bedding and the cooking
outfit for the privilege of traveling alone. No man, he told
himself savagely, could ask a better deal than he was prepared to
give Nolan. He bent to reach a burning twig for his pipe, and
found Nolan watching him steadily from under his hat brim.

"What sort of looking fellows were those, Ryan, that left a load
of booze on your hands?" Nolan asked casually when he saw that
he was observed.

Casey burned his fingers with the blazing twig. "Who said
anything about any fellers leavin' me booze?" he evaded sharply.
"If it's a drink you're hintin' for, you won't get it. Casey
Ryan ain't no booze peddler, an' now's as good a time as any to
let that soak into your system."

Mack Nolan's gray eyes were still watching Casey with a
steadfastness that was disconcerting to a man in Casey's dilemma.

"It might help us both considerably," he said quietly, "if you
told me all about it. You can't cache that booze you've got in
the car-- I won't let you, for one thing; for another, that would
be merely dodging the issue, and if you'll forgive my frankness,
dodging doesn't seem to be quite in your line."

Casey puffed hard on his pipe. "The world's gittin' so darned
full uh crooks, a man can't turn around now'days without bumpin'
into a few!" he exploded bitterly. "What kind uh hold-up game
YOU playin', Mr. Nolan? If that's your name," he added fiercely.

Mack Nolan laughed to himself and rubbed the ash from his
cigarette against the sole of his shoe. "Why," he answered
genially, "my game is holding up bootleggers--and crooked cops.
Speaking off-hand (which I don't often do) I should say you have
a fine chance to sit in with me. I'm just guessing, now," he
added dryly, "but I'm tolerably good at guessing; a man's got to
be, these days."

"A man's got to do better than guess--with Casey Ryan," Casey
remarked ominously. "The last man that guessed Casey Ryan,
guessed 'im plumb wrong."

"Meaning that you'd refuse to help me round up bootleggers and
the officers that protect them?" A steel edge crept into Mack
Nolan's voice. He leaned forward, his elbows on his knees, his
eyes boring into Casey's mind.

"Man, don't stall with me! You've got brains enough to know that
if I were a crook I'd have held you up long before now. You gave
me three splendid opportunities to stick a gun in your back--and
I could have made others. And," he added with a smile, "if I had
thought that you were a bootlegger or a crook of any other kind,
I'd have had you in Las Vegas jail by this time. You're no more
a crook than I am. You've got neither the looks nor the actions
of a slicker. I may say I know you pretty well--"

Casey thrust out a pugnacious chin. "Say! D' you know Bill
Masters, too? That's all I wanta know!"

"Bill Masters? Why, is he the fellow who stepped out from under
this load of hootch? If he is, he must have picked himself a new
name; I never heard it."

Casey glared suspiciously for twenty seconds before he settled
back glumly into his mental corner.

"Ryan, I've been all day sizing you up. I'm going to be
perfectly honest with you and tell you why I think you're
straight--although you must admit the evidence is rather against
you.

"I happened to be right close when you drove down in here and
stopped. As a matter of fact, I was behind that little clump of
junipers. Had you driven around them instead of stopping this
side, you couldn't have failed to see me.

"You came down here mad at the trick that had been played you.
You were so mad, you started talking to yourself as a safety
valve --blowing off mental steam. You've spent a lot of time in
the desert --alone. Men like that frequently talk aloud their
thoughts, just to hear a human voice. You made matters pretty
plain to me before you knew there was any one within miles of
you. For instance, you're not at all sure this car you've got
wasn't stolen. You're inclined to think it was. You're
broke--robbed, I take it, by the men who somehow managed to leave
you with the car and a load of booze on your hands. The trick
must have been turned this morning; down at the railroad, I
imagine--because you hadn't taken time to stop and size up the
predicament you were in until you got here.

"Your main idea was to get off somewhere out of sight. You were
scared. You didn't hear me behind you until I spoke--which proves
you're a green hand at dodging. And that, Ryan, is a very good
recommendation to a man in my line of work. But you're shrewd,
and you're game-- dead game. You're a peach at thinking up
schemes to get yourself out of a hole. Of course, being new at
it, you don't think quite far enough. For instance, because you
found me afoot it never occurred to you that I might know
something about a car; but the rest of your plan was a dandy.

"Your idea of backing down there around the turn and burying the
booze was all right. With almost any other man it would have
worked. Once you got that hootch off your mind, I rather think
you'd have been glad to have me along with you, instead of giving
me broad hints to leave. But you haven't got the booze buried
yet, and you've been figuring all the evening. You don't see how
the devil you're going to manage it with me around.

"I'll do a little more guessing, now: I guess you've doped it out
that you'll pack the bedroll up here, tuck me in and pray to the
Lord I'll sleep sound. You're hoping you can cache the booze and
make your getaway while I've gone bye-low. Or possibly, if you
got the booze put away safe from my prying eyes, you might come
back to bed and I'd find you here in the morning just as if
nothing had happened. How Is that for guesswork?"

"You go tahell!" growled Casey, swallowing a sickly grin. He
pressed down the tobacco in his pipe, eyeing Nolan queerly. "If
them damn' lizards had uh let yuh alone, I wouldn't have nothin'
on m' mind now but my hat." He looked across the fire and
grinned again.

"Keep on; you'll be tellin' me what the missus an' I was arguin'
about last night over long-distance. I've heard tell uh this
four-bit mind reading an' forecastin' your horrorscope fer a
dime; but I never met up with it before. If you're aimin' to
take up a collection after the show, you'll fare slim. I've been
what a feller called 'dusted off'." He added, after a pause that
was eloquent, "They done it thorough!"

Mack Nolan laughed. "They usually are thorough, when they're
'dusting off a chump', as I believe they call it."

Casey grunted. "'Chump' is right, mebby. But anyways, you're
too late, Mr. Nolan. I'm cleaned."

Mack Nolan rolled another cigarette, lighted it and flipped the
match into the campfire. He smoked it down to the last inch,
staring into the fire and saying nothing the while. When the
cigarette stub followed the match, he leaned back upon one elbow
and began tracing a geometrical figure in the sand with a stick.

"Ryan," he said abruptly, "you're square and I know it. The very
nature of my business makes me cautious about trusting men--but
I'm going to trust you." He stopped again, taking great pains
with the point of a triangle he was drawing.

Casey knocked the ashes out of his pipe against a rock. "Puttin'
it that way, Mr. Nolan, the man's yet to live that Casey Ryan
ever double-crossed. Cops I got no use for; nor yet bootleggers.
Whether I got any use for you, Mr. Nolan, I can say better when
I've heard yuh out. A goat I've been for the last time. But I'm
willin' to HEAR yuh out--and that there's more'n what I'd uh said
this morning."

"And that's fair enough, Ryan. If you jumped into things with
your eyes shut, I don't think I'd want you with me."

Casey squirmed, remembering certain times when he had gone too
headlong into things.

"I'm going to ask you, Ryan, to tell me the whole story of this
car and its load of whisky. Before you do that, I'll tell you
this much to show good faith and prove to you how much I trust
you: I'm an officer, and my special work right now is to clean up
a gang of bootleggers and the crooked officers who are protecting
them. What I know about your case leads me to believe that you've
run afoul of them and that you're the man I've been looking for
that can help me set a trap for them. Would you like to do
that?"

"If it's that bunch you're after, Mr. Nolan, I'd ruther land 'em
in jail than to find a ledge of solid gold ten feet thick an' a
mile long. One thing I'd like to know first. Are yuh or ain't
yuh huntin' mules?"

Mack Nolan laughed. "I am, yes. But the mule I'm hunting is
white!"

Casey studied that until he had the fresh pipeful of tobacco
going well. Then he looked up and grinned understandingly.

"So it's White Mule you're trailin'." He kicked a stub of
greasewood branch back into the flames and laughed. "Well, the
tracks is deep an' plenty, and if that's the trail you're takin',
I'm with yuh. You ain't a cop--leastways you don't spread your
arms every time you turn around. Gosh, I hate them wing-floppin'
kind! They's one thing an' one only that I hate worse--an'
that's bootleggers an' moonshiners. If you got a scheme to give
them cusses their needin's, you can ask anybody if Casey Ryan
ain't the feller you can bank on."

"Yes. That's what I've been thinking. Now, I wish you'd tell me
exactly what you've been up against. Don't leave out anything,
however trivial it might seem to you."

Wherefore, Casey sat with the firelight flickering across his
seamed, Irish face and told the story of his wrongs. Trivial
details Nolan had asked for--and he got them with the full Casey
Ryan flavor. Even the old woman who rocked, Casey pictured--from
his particular angle. Mack Nolan sat up and listened, his eyes
steady and his mouth, that had curved to laughter many times
during the recital, once more firm and somewhat pitiless when
Casey finished.

"This Smiling Lou; you'd know him again, of course?"

"Know him! Say, I'd know him after he'd fried a week in hell!"
Casey's tone left no doubt of his meaning.

"And I suppose you could tell this man Kenner a mile off and
around a corner. Now, I'll tell you what I want you to do,
Casey. This may jar you a little--until I explain. I want
you--"Mack Nolan paused, his lips twitching in a faint smile--"to
do a little bootlegging yourself."

"Yuh--WHAT?" In the firelight Casey's eyes were seen to bulge.

"I want you to bootleg this whisky you've got in the car."
Nolan's eyes twinkled. "I want you to go back and peddle this
booze, and I want you to do it so that Smiling Lou or one of his
bunch will hold you up and highjack you. Do you see what I mean?
You don't--so I'll tell you. We'll put it in marked bottles. I
have the bottles and the seals and labels for every brand of
liquor to be had in the country to-day. With marked money and
marked bottles, we ought to be able to get the goods on that
gang."

Casey thought of something quite suddenly and held out an
imperative, pointing finger.

"There's something else that feller told me was in the car!" he
cried agitatedly. "He said he had forty pints of French
champagne cached in a false bottom under the front seat. And he
said the front cushion had a blind pocket around the edges that
was full uh dope. Hop, he called it."

Mack Nolan whistled under his breath.

"And he turned the whole outfit over to you for sixteen hundred
dollars or so?" He stared thoughtfully into the fire. Abruptly
he looked at Casey.

"What the deuce had you done to him, Ryan?" he asked, with a
quizzical intentness. "He must have been scared stiff, to let go
of all that stuff for sixteen hundred. Why, man, the 'junk'--
that's dope--alone must be worth more than that. And the
champagne --forty pints, you say? He ought to get twenty dollars
a pint for that. Figure it yourself. I hope," he added
seriously, "the fellow wasn't too scared to show up again."

"Well," Casey said grimly, "I dunno how scart he is--but he knows
darn' well I'll kill 'im. I told im I would."

Again Mack Nolan laughed. "Catching's much better than killing,
Ryan. It hurts a man worse, and it lasts a heap longer. What do
you say to turning in? To-morrow we'll have a full day at my
private bottling works."

They moved their cooking outfit down near the Ford for safety's
sake. While it was wholly improbable that the car would be robbed
in the night, Mack Nolan was a man who took as few chances as
possible. It happened that the excavation Casey had so hopefully
made that morning formed a convenient level for their bed;
wherefore they spread it there, talking in low tones of their
plans until they went to sleep.



CHAPTER FIFTEEN

Dawn was just thinning the curtain of darkness when Nolan woke
Casey with a shake of the shoulder.

"I think we'd better be moving from here before the world's
astir. You can back on down this draw, Ryan, and strike an old
trail that cuts over the ridge and up the next gulch to an old,
deserted mine where I've made headquarters. It isn't far, and we
can have breakfast at my camp."

Casey swallowed his astonishment, and for once in his life he did
as he was told without argument.

Mack Nolan's camp was fairly accessible by roundabout trail with
a few tire tracks to point the way for Casey. Straight across
the ridges, it would not have been more than two miles to Juniper
Wells. Nevertheless not one man in a year would be tempted to
come this way, unless it were definitely known that some one
lived here.

As the camp of a man who was prospecting for pastime rather than
for a grubstake, the place was perfect. Mack Nolan had taken
possession of a cabin dug into the hill at the head of a long
draw. A brush-covered shed of makeshift construction sheltered a
car of the ubiquitous Ford make. Fifty yards away and in full
sight of the cabin, the mouth of a tunnel yawned blackly under a
rhyolite ledge.

Casey swept the camp with an observant glance and nodded approval
as and stopped before the cabin.

"As a prospector, Mr. Nolan, I'll say 'tis a fine layout you got
here. An' tain't the first time an honest-lookin' mine has been
made to cover things far off from minin'. Like the Black Butte
bunch, f'r instance. But if any one was to ride up on yuh
unexpected here, I'll say yuh could meet 'em with a grin an' feel
easy about your secrets."

"That's praise indeed, coming from an old hand like you," Nolan
declared. "Now I'll tell you something else. With Casey Ryan in
the camp the whole thing's twice as convincing. Come in. I want
to show you what I call an artistic interior."

Grinning, Casey followed him inside and exclaimed profanely in
admiration of Mack Nolan's genius. The cabin showed every mark
of the owner's interest in the geologic formation of that
immediate district.

On the floor along the wall lay specimens of mineralized rock, a
couple of prospector's picks, a single-jack and a set of drills;
a sample sack, grimed and with a hole in the corner mended by the
simple process of gathering the cloth together around it and
tying it tightly with a string, hung from a nail above the tools.
On the window sill were specimens of ore; two or three of the
pieces showed a richness that lighted Casey's eyes with the
enthusiasm of an old prospector. Mining journals and a
prospector's manual lay upon a box table at the foot of the bunk.
For the rest, the cabin looked exactly what it was--the orderly
home of a man quite accustomed to primitive living far off from
his fellows.

They had a very satisfactory breakfast cooked by Mack Nolan from
his own supplies and eaten in a leisurely manner while Nolan
talked of primary formations and secondary, and of mineral
intrusions and breaks. Casey listened and learned a few things
he had not known, for all his years of prospecting. Mack Nolan,
he decided, could pass anywhere as a mining expert.

"And now, said Nolan briskly, when he had hung up the dishpan and
draped the dishcloth over it to dry, "I'll show you the bottling
works. We'll have to do the work by lantern-light. There's not
one chance in fifty that any one would show up here--but you
never can tell. We could get the stuff out of sight easily enough
while the car was coming up the gulch. But the smell is a
different matter. We'll take no chances."

At the head of the bunk, a curtained space beneath a high shelf
very obviously did duty as a wardrobe. A leather motor coat hung
there, one sleeve protruding beyond the curtain of flowered
calico. Other garments bulged the cloth here and there. Nolan,
smiling over his shoulder at Casey, nodded and pushed the
clothing aside. A door behind opened inward, admitting the two
into a small recess from which another door opened into a cellar
dug deep into the hill.

Undoubtedly this had once been used as a frost-proof storeroom. A
small ventilator pipe opened--so Nolan told Casey--in the middle
of a greasewood clump. Nolan lighted a gasoline lantern that
shed a white brilliance upon the room. On the long table which
extended down one side of the room, Casey saw boxes of bottles
and other supplies which he did not at the moment recognize.

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