The Trail of the White Mule
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B. M. Bower >> The Trail of the White Mule
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12 Etext scanned by Daniel Wentzell of Leesburg, Georgia.
THE TRAIL OF THE WHITE MULE
by B. M. Bower
CHAPTER ONE
Casey Ryan, hunched behind the wheel of a large, dark blue
touring car with a kinked front fender and the glass gone from
the left headlight, slid out from the halted traffic, shied
sharply away from a hysterically clanging street car, crossed the
path of a huge red truck coming in from his right, missed it with
two inches to spare and was halfway down the block before the
traffic officer overtook him.
The traffic officer was Irish too, and bigger than Casey, and
madder. For all that, Casey offered to lick the livin' tar outa
him before accepting a pale, expensive ticket which he crumbled
and put into his pocket without looking at it.
"What I know about these here fancy city rules ain't sufficient
to give a horn-toad a headache--but it's a darn sight more'n I
care," Casey declaimed hotly. "I never was asked what I thought
of them tin signs you stick up on the end of a telegraft pole, to
tell folks when to go an' when to quit goin'. Mebby it's all
right fer these here city drivers--"
"This'll mean thirty days for you," spluttered the officer. "I
ought to call the patrol right now--"
"Get the undertaker on the line first!" Casey advised him
ominously.
Traffic was piling up behind them, and horns were honking a
blatant chorus that extended two blocks up the street. The
traffic officer glanced into the troubled gray eyes of the Little
Woman beside Casey and took his foot off the running board.
"Better go put up your bail and then forfeit it," he advised in a
milder tone. "The judge will probably remember you; I do, and my
memory ain't the best in the world. Twice you've been hooked for
speeding through traffic; and parking by fire-plugs and in front
of the No Park signs and after four, seems to be your big outdoor
sport. Forfeit your bail, old boy--or it's thirty days for you,
sure."
Casey Ryan made bitter retort, but the traffic cop had gone to
untangle two furious Fords from a horse-drawn mail wagon, so he
did not hear. Which was good luck for Casey.
"Why do you persist in making trouble for yourself?" the Little
Woman beside him exclaimed. "It can't be so hard to obey the
rules; other drivers do. I know that I have driven this car all
over town without any trouble whatever."
Casey hogged the next safety-zone line to the deep disgust of a
young movie star in a cream-and-silver racer, and pulled in to
the curb just where he could not be passed.
"All right, ma'am. You can drive, then." He slid out of the
driver's seat to the pavement, his face a deeper shade of red
than usual.
"For pity's sake, Casey! Don't be silly," his wife cried
sharply, a bit of panic in her voice.
"You was in a hurry to git home," Casey pointed out to her with
that mildness of manner which is not mild. "I was hurryin',
wasn't I?"
"You aren't hurrying now--you're delaying the traffic again. Do
be reasonable! You know it costs money to argue with the
police."
"Police be damned! I'm tryin' to please a woman, an' I'm up agin
a hard proposition. You can ask anybody if I'm the unreasonable
one. You hustled me out of the show soon as the huggin'
commenced. You wouldn't even let me stay to see the first of
Mutt and Jeff. You said you was in a hurry. I leaves the show
without seein' the best part, gits the car an' drills through the
traffic tryin' to git yuh home quick. Now you're kickin' because
I did hurry."
"Hey! Whadda yuh mean, blockin' the traffic?" a domineering
voice behind him bellowed. "This ain't any reception hall, and
it ain't no free auto park neither."
Another traffic officer with another pencil and another pad of
tickets such as drivers dread to see began to write down the
number of Casey's car. This man did not argue. He finished his
work briskly, presented another notice which advised Casey Ryan
to report immediately to police headquarters, waved Casey
peremptorily to proceed, and returned to his little square
platform to the chorus of blatting automobile horns.
"The cops in this town hands out tickets like they was Free
Excursion peddlers!" snorted Casey, his eyes a pale glitter
behind his half-closed lids. "They can go around me, or they can
honk and be darned to 'em. Git behind the wheel, ma'am--Casey
Ryan's drove the last inch he'll ever drive in this darned town.
If they pinch me again, it'll have to be fer walkin'."
The Little Woman looked at him, pressed her lips together and
moved behind the wheel. She did not say a word all the way out
to the white apartment house on Vermont which held the four rooms
they called home. She parked the car dexterously in front and
led the way to their apartment (ground floor, front) before she
looked at me.
"It's coming to a show-down, Jack," she said then with a faint
smile. "He's on probation already for disobeying traffic rules
of one sort and other, and his fines cost more than the entire
upkeep of the car. I think he really will have to go to jail this
time. It just isn't in Casey Ryan to take orders from any one,
especially when his own personal habits of driving a car are
concerned."
"Town life is getting on his nerves," I tried to defend Casey,
and at the same time to comfort the Little Woman. "I didn't
think it would work, his coming here to live, with nothing to do
but spend money. This is the inevitable result of too much money
and too much leisure."
"It sounds much better, putting it that way," murmured Mrs.
Casey. "I think you're right--though he did behave back there as
if it were too much matrimony. Jack, he's been looking forward
to your visit. I'm sorry this has happened to spoil it."
"It isn't spoiled," I grinned. "Casey Ryan is, always and ever
shall be Casey Ryan. He's running true to form, though tamer
than one would expect. When do you think he'll show up?"
Mrs. Casey did not know. She ventured a guess or two, but there
was no conviction in her tone. With two nominal arrests in five
minutes chalked against him, and with his first rebellion against
the Little Woman to rankle in his conscience and memory, she
owned herself at a loss.
With a cheerfulness that was only conversation deep, we waited
for Casey and finally ate supper without him. The evening was
enlivened somewhat by Babe's chatter of kindergarten doings; and
was punctuated by certain pauses while steps on the sidewalk
passed on or ended with the closing of another door than the
Ryans'. I fought the impulse to call up the police station, and
I caught the eyes of the Little Woman straying unconsciously to
the telephone in the hall while she talked of things remote from
our inner thoughts. Margaret Ryan is game, I'll say that. We
played cribbage for an hour or two, and the Little Woman beat me
until finally I threw up my hands and quit.
"I can't stand it any longer, Mrs. Casey. Do you think he's in
jail, or just sulking at a movie somewhere?" I blurted. "Forgive
my butting in, but I wish you'd talk about it. You know you can,
to me. Casey Ryan is a friend and more than a friend: he's a pet
theory of mine-- a fad, if you prefer to call him that.
"I consider him a perfect example of human nature in its
unhampered, unbiased state, going straight through life without
deviating a hair's breadth from the viewpoint of youth. A
fighter and a castle builder; a sort of rough-edged Peter Pan.
Till he gums soft food and hobbles with a stick because the years
have warped his back and his legs, Casey Ryan will keep that
indefinable, bubbling optimism of spiritual youth. So tell me
all about him. I want to know who has licked, so far; luxury or
Casey Ryan."
The Little Woman laughed and picked up the cards, evening their
edges with sensitive fingers that had not been manicured so
beautifully when first I saw them.
"Well-sir," she drawled, making one word of the two and failing
to keep a little twitching from her lips, "I think it's been
about a tie, so far. As a husband--Casey's a darned good
bachelor." Her chuckle robbed that statement of anything
approaching criticism. "Aside from his insisting on cooking
breakfast every morning and feeding me in bed, forcing me to eat
fried eggs and sour-dough hotcakes swimming in butter and
honey--when I crave grapefruit and thin toast and one French lamb
chop with a white paper frill on the handle and garnished with
fresh parsley--he's the soul of consideration. He wants four
kinds of jam on the table every meal, when fresh fruit is going
to waste. He's bullied the laundryman until the poor fellow's
reached the point where he won't stop if the car's parked in
front and Casey's liable to be home; but aside from that, Casey's
all right.
"After serving time in the desert and rustling my own wood and
living on bacon and beans and sour-dough bread, I'm perfectly
willing to spend the rest of my life doing painless housekeeping
with all the modern built-in features ever invented; and buying
my bread and cakes and salads from the delicatessen around the
corner. I never want to see a sagebush again as long as I live,
or feel the crunch of gravel under my feet. I expect to die in
French-heeled pumps and embroidered silk stockings and the
finest, silliest silk things ever put in a show window to tempt
the soul of a woman. But it took just two weeks and three days
to drive Casey back to his sour-dough can."
"He craved luxury more than you seemed to do," I remembered aloud.
"He did, yes. But his idea of luxury is sitting down in the
kitchen to a real meal of beans and biscuits and all the known
varieties of jam and those horrible whitewashed store cookies and
having the noise of the phonograph drowned every five minutes by
a passing street car. Casey wants four movies a day, and he wants
them all funny. He brings home silk shirts with the stripes
fairly shrieking when he unwraps them--and he has to be thrown
and tied to get a collar on him.
"He will get up at any hour of the night to chase after a fire
engine, and every whipstitch he gets pinched for doing something
which is perfectly lawful and right in the desert and perfectly
awful in the city. You saw him," said the Little Woman,
"to-day." And she added wistfully, "It's the first time since we
were married that he has ever talked back--to me.
"And you know," she went on, shuffling the cards and stopping to
regard the joker attentively (though I am sure she didn't know
what card she was looking at), "just chasing around town and
doing nothing but square yourself for not playing according to
the rules costs money without getting you anywhere. Fifty-five
thousand dollars isn't so much just to play with, in this town.
Casey's highest ambition now seems to be nickel disk wheels on a
new racing car that can make the speed cops go some to catch him.
His idea of economy is to put six or seven thousand dollars into
a car that will enable him to outrun a twenty-dollar fine!
"We have some money invested," she went on. "We own this
apartment house--and fortunately it's in my name. So long as the
housing problem continues critical, I think I can keep Casey
going without spending our last cent."
"He did one good stroke of business," I ventured, "when he bought
this place. Apartment houses are good as gold mines these days."
The Little Woman laughed. "Well-sir, it wasn't so much a stroke
as it was a wallop. Casey bought it just to show who was boss,
he or the landlord. The first thing he did when we moved in was
to take down the nicely framed rules that said we must not cook
cabbage nor onions nor fish, nor play music after ten o'clock at
night, nor do any loud talking in the halls.
"Every day for a week Casey cooked cabbage, onions and fish. He
sat up nights to play the graphophone. He stayed home to talk
loudly and play bucking bronk with Babe all up and down the
stairs and in the halls. Our rent was paid for a month in
advance, and the landlord was too little and old to fight. So he
sold out cheap--and it really was a good stroke of business for
us, though not deliberate
"Well-sir, at first we lost tenants who didn't enjoy the freedom
of their neighbors' homes. But really, Jack, you'd be surprised
to know how many people in this city just LOVE cabbage and onions
and fish, and to have children they needn't disown whenever they
go house-hunting. I had ventilator hoods put over every gas range
in the house, and turned the back yard into a playground with
plenty of sand piles and swings. I raised the price, too, and
made the place look very select, with a roof garden for the
grown-ups. We have the house filled now with really nice
families--avoiding the garlic brand--and as an investment I
wouldn't ask for anything better.
"Casey enjoyed himself hugely while he was whipping things into
shape, but the last month he's been going stale. The tenants are
all so thankful to do as they please that they're excruciatingly
polite to him, no matter what he does or says. He's tired of the
beaches and he has begun to cuss the long, smooth roads that are
signed so that he couldn't get lost if he tried. It does seem as
if there's no interest left in anything, unless he can get a kick
out of going to jail. And, Jack, I do believe he's gone there."
The telephone rang and the Little Woman excused herself and went
into the hall, closing the door softly behind her.
I'm not greatly given to reminiscence, but while I sat and
watched the flames of civilization licking tamely at the
impregnable iron bark of the gas logs, the eyes of my memory
looked upon a picture:
Desert, empty and with the mountains standing back against the
sky, the great dipper uptilted over a peak and the stars bending
close for very friendliness. The licking flames of dry
greasewood burning, with a pungent odor in my nostrils when the
wind blew the smoke my way. The far-off hooting of an owl,
perched somewhere on a juniper branch watching for mice; and
Casey Ryan sitting cross-legged in the sand, squinting humorously
at me across the fire while he talked.
I saw him, too, bolting a hurried breakfast under a mesquite tree
in the chill before sunrise, his mind intent upon the trail;
facing the desert and its hardships as a matter of course, with
never a thought that other men would shrink from the ordeal.
I saw him kneeling before a solid face of rock in a shallow cut
in the hillside, swinging his "single-jack" with tireless rhythm;
a tap and a turn of the steel, a tap and a turn--chewing tobacco
industriously and stopping now and then to pry off a fresh bit
from the plug in his hip pocket before he reached for the "spoon"
to muck out the hole he was drilling.
I saw him larruping in his Ford along a sandy, winding trail it
would break a snake's back to follow, hot on the heels of his
next adventure, dreaming of the fortune that finally came. . . .
The Little Woman came in looking as if she had been talking with
Destiny and was still dazed and unsteady from the meeting.
"Well-sir, he's gone!" she announced, and stopped and tried to
smile. But her eyes looked hurt and sorry. "He has bought a Ford
and a tent and outfit since he left us down on Seventh and
Broadway, and he just called me up on long-distance from San
Bernardino. He's going out on a prospecting trip, he says. I'll
say he's been going some! A speed cop overhauled him just the
other side of Claremont, he told me, and he was delayed for a few
minutes while he licked the cop and kicked him and his motorcycle
into a ditch. He says he's sorry he sassed me, and if I can
drive a car in this darned town and not spend all my loose change
paying fines, I'm a better man than he is. He doesn't know when
he'll be back--and there you are."
She sat down wearily on the arm of an over-stuffed armchair and
looked up at the gilt-and-onyx clock which I suspected Casey of
having bought. "If he isn't lynched before morning," she sighed
whimsically, "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, which was
jagged, and at his immediate surroundings, which were barren and
lonely and soothing to his soul that hungered for these things.
Great, gaunt "Joshua" trees stood in grotesque groups all up and
down the narrow valley, hiding the way he had come from the way
he would go. It was as if the desert had purposely dropped a
curtain before his past and would show him none of his future.
Whereat Casey Ryan grinned, took a chew of tobacco and was
himself again.
"If they wanta come pinch me here, I'll meet 'em man to man.
Back in town no man's got a show. They pile in four deep and
gang a feller. Out here it's lick er git licked. They can all go
t' thunder. Tahell with town!"
The odor of coffee boiling in a new pot which the sagebrush fire
was fast blackening; the salty, smoky smell of bacon frying in a
new frying pan that turned bluish with the heat; the sizzle of
bannock batter poured into hot grease--these things made the
smiling mouth of Casey Ryan water with desire.
"Hell!" said Casey, breathing deep when, stomach full and
resentment toward the past blurred by satisfaction with his
present, he filled his pipe and fingered his vest pocket for a
match. "Gas stoves can't cook nothin' so there's any taste to
it. That there's the first real meal I've et in six months.
Light a match and turn on the gas and call that a fire! Hunh!
Good old sage er greasewood fer Casey Ryan, from here on!"
He laid back against the sandy sidehill, tilted his hat over his
eyes and crossed his legs luxuriously. He was in no hurry to
continue his journey. Now that he and the desert were alone
together, haste and Casey Ryan held nothing in common. For
awhile he watched a Joshua palm that looked oddly like a giant
man with one arm hanging loose at its side and another pointing
fixedly at a distant, black-capped butte standing aloof from its
fellows. Casey was tired after his night on the trail. Easy
living in town had softened his muscles and slowed a little that
untiring energy which had balked at no hardship. He was drowsy,
and his brain stopped thinking logically and slipped into
half-waking fancy.
The Joshua seemed to move, to lift its arm and point more
imperatively toward the peak. Its ungainly head seemed to turn
and nod at Casey. What did the darned thing want? Casey would go
when he, got good and ready. Perhaps he would go that way, and
perhaps he would not. Right here was good enough for Casey Ryan
at present; and you could ask anybody if he were the man to
follow another man's pointing, much less a Joshua tree.
Battering rain woke Casey some hours later and drove him to the
shelter of the Ford. Thunder and lightning came with the rain,
and a bellowing wind that rocked the car and threatened once or
twice to overturn it. With some trouble Casey managed to button
down the curtains and sat huddled on the front seat, watching
through a streaming windshield the buffeted wilderness. He was
glad he had not unloaded his outfit; gladder still that the storm
had not struck which he was traveling. Down the trail toward him
a small river galloped, washing deep gullies where the wheels of
his car offered obstruction to its boisterousness.
"She's a tough one," grinned Casey, in spite of the chattering of
his teeth. "Looks like all the water in the world is bein'
poured down this pass. Keeps on, I'll have to gouge out a couple
of Joshuays an' turn the old Ford into a boat--but Casey'll keep
agoin'!"
Until inky dark it rained like the deluge. Casey remained
perched in his one-man ark and tried hard to enjoy himself and
his hard-won freedom. He stabbed open a can of condensed milk,
poured it into a cup, and drank it and ate what was left of his
breakfast bannock, which he had fortunately put away in the car
out of the reach of a hill of industrious red ants.
He thought vaguely of cranking the car and going on, but gave up
the notion. One sidehill, he decided, was as good as another
sidehill for the present.
That night Casey slept fitfully in the car and discovered that
even a wall bed in a despised apartment house may be more
comfortable than the front seat of a Ford. His bones ached by
morning, and he was hungry enough to eat raw bacon and relish it.
But the sun was fighting through the piled clouds and shone
cheerfully upon the draggled pass, and Casey boiled coffee and
fried bacon and bannock beside the trail, and 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.
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