"I told you there's a twenty-gallon tank on this car; well, it holds twenty-five.-I've got a special carburetor that gives an actual mileage of twenty-two miles to the gallon on ordinary desert roads. I filled 'er till she run over at Victorville--and I notice you're easy on the gas with your drivin'.-Figure it yourself, Casey, and don't be countin' on a stop till I'm ready t' stop."
Casey grunted, more crestfallen than he would ever admit. But he hadn't given up; the give-up quality had been completely forgotten when Casey's personality was being put together.-He drove on, around the rubbly base of a blackened volcano long since cold and bleak, and bored his way through the sandy stretch that leads through Patmos.
Patmos was a place of unhappy memories, but he drove through the little hamlet so fast that he scarcely thought of his unpleasant sojourn there the summer before.-Young Kenner had fallen silent again and they drove the sixty miles or so to Goffs with not a word spoken between them.
Casey spent most of that time in mentally cursing the Ford for its efficiency.-He had prayed for blowouts, a fouled timer, for something or anything or everything to happen that could possibly befall a Ford.-He couldn't even make the radiator boil.-Worst and most persistent of his discomforts was the hard pressure of that six-shooter against his side.-Casey was positive that the imprint of it would be worn as a permanent brand upon his person for the rest of his life.-Young Kenner's voice speaking to him came so abruptly that Casey jumped.
"I've been thinking over your case," Kenner said cheerfully.
"Stop right here while we talk it over."
Casey stopped right there.
"I've changed my mind about havin' you for a pardner," young Kenner went on.-"You'd be a valuable man all right; but when a harp like you gets stubborn-bitter, my hunch tells me to break away clean. You're a mick--an' micks is all alike when they git a grudge. I can't be bothered keepin' yuh under my eye all the time, and the way I've felt yuh oozin' venom all this while shows me I'd have to. An' bumpin' yuh off would be neither pleasant ner safe.
"Now, the way I've doped this out,-I'm goin' to sell yuh the outfit fer just what jack yuh got in your clothes.-Fork it over, an' I'll give yuh the layout just as she stands."
"Yuh better wait till Casey says he wants t' buy!"-Swallowing resentment all night had made his voice husky; and it was bitter indeed to sit still and hear himself called a harp and a mick.
"Why wait?-Hand over the roll, and that closes the deal. I didn't ask yuh would yuh buy--I'm givin' yuh somethin' fer your money, is all.-I could take it off yuh after yuh quit kickin' and drive your remains in to this little burg, with a tale of how I'd caught a bootlegger that resisted arrest.-So fork over the jack, old-timer. I want to catch that train over there that's about ready to pull out." He prodded sharply with the gun, and Casey heard a click which needed no explanation.
Casey fumbled for a minute inside his vest and glumly "forked over." Young Kenner inspected the folded bank notes, smiled and slipped the flat bundle inside his shirt.
"You're stronger on the bank roll than what yuh let on," he remarked contentedly.-"I don't stand to lose so much, after all.
Sixteen hundred, I make it.-What's in your pants pockets?"
Casey, still balefully silent, emptied first one pocket and then the other into Kenner's cupped palm.-With heavy sarcasm he felt in his watch pocket and produced a nickel slipped there after paying street-car fare.-He held it out to young Kenner between his finger and thumb, still gazing straight before him.
Young Kenner took it and grinned.-"Oh, well--you're rich!-Drive on now, and when you get about even with that caboose, slow to twelve miles whilst I hop off; and then hit 'er up again an' keep 'er goin'.-If yuh don't, I'll grab yuh fer a bootlegger, sure.
And I'd have the hull train crew to help me wrassle yuh down.
They'd be willin' to sample the evidence, I guess, an' be witnesses against yuh.-An' bear in mind, Casey, that yuh got a darned good Ford and all its valuable contents for sixteen hundred and some odd bucks.-If you meet up with the law, you can treat 'em white an' still break even on the deal yuh just consummated with me."
"Like hell I consummated the deal!" Casey was goaded into muttering.
He drove abreast of the caboose, and at a final prod in the ribs Casey slowed down.-Young Kenner dropped off the running board, alighted running with his body slanted backwards and his lips smiling friendly-wise.
"Don't take any bad money--an' don't let 'em catch yuh!" he cried mockingly, as he headed for the caboose.
At a crossing, two miles farther on, Casey came larruping out of the sand hills and was forced to wait while the freight train went rattling past, headed east on a downhill grade.
Young Kenner, up in the cupola, leaned far out and waved his hat as the caboose flicked by.
