Thereafter Casey Ryan hooted to the satisfaction of everybody, himself most of all.
After an indeterminate interval the four left the still, taking a bottle with them so that it might be had without delay, should they meet a snake or a hydrophobia skunk or some other venomous reptile. It was Casey who made the suggestion, and he became involved in difficulties when he attempted the word venomous.
Once started Casey was determined to pronounce the word and pronounce it correctly, because Casey Ryan never backed up when he once started. The result was a peculiar humming which accompanied his reeling progress down the drift (now so narrow that Casey scraped both shoulders frequently) to the portal.
They stopped on the flat of the dump and argued over the advisability of taking a drink apiece before going farther, as a sort of preventive. Joe told them solemnly that they couldn't afford to get drunk on the darn' stuff.-It had too hard a back-action kick, he explained, and they might forget themselves if they took too much.-It was important, Joe explained at great length, that they should not forget themselves. The boss had always impressed upon them the grim necessity of remaining sober whatever happened.
"We never HAVE got drunk," Joe reiterated, "and we can't afford t' git drunk now.-We've got t' keep level heads, snakes or no snakes."
Casey Ryan's head was level.-He wabbled up to Joe and told him so to his face, repeating the statement many times and in many forms.-He declaimed it all the way up the path to the dugout, and when they were standing outside.-Beyond all else, Casey was anxious that Joe should feel perfectly certain that he, Casey Ryan, knew what he was doing, knew what he was saying, and that his head was and always had been perr-rf'c'ly level-l-l.
"Jus' t' prove-it--I c'n kill that jack-over-there--without-no-gun!" Casey bragged bubblingly, running his words together as if they were being poured in muddy liquid from his mouth.-"B'lieve it? Think-I-can't?"
The three turned circumspectly and stared solemnly at a gray burro with a crippled front leg that had limped to the dump heap within easy throwing distance from the cabin door.-Hobbling on three legs it went nosing painfully amongst a litter of tin cans and bent paper cartons, hunting garbage.-As if conscious that it was being talked about, the burro lifted its head and eyed the four mournfully, its ears loosely flopping.
"How?" questioned Paw, waggling his beard disparagingly.-"Spit 'n 'is eye?"
"Talk 'm t' death," Hank guessed with imbecile shrewdness.
"Think-I-can't?-What'll--y'bet?"
They disputed the point with drunken insistence and mild imprecations, Hank and Paw and Joe at various times siding impartially for and against Casey.-Casey gathered the impression that none of them believed him.-They seemed to think he didn't know what he was talking about.-They even questioned the fact that his head was level.-He felt that his honor was at stake and that his reputation as a truthful man and a level-headed man was threatened.
While they wrangled, the fingers of Casey's right hand fumbled unobserved in the sling on his left, twisting together the two short lengths of fuse so that he might light both as one piece.
Even in his drunkenness Casey knew dynamite and how best to handle it.-Judgment might be dethroned, but the mechanical details of his profession were grooved deep into habit and were observed automatically and without the aid of conscious thought.
He braced himself against the dugout wall and raised his hand to the cigarette he had with some trouble rolled and lighted. A spitting splutter arose, that would have claimed the attention of the three, had they not been unanimously engaged in trying to out-talk one another upon the subject of Casey's ability to kill a burro seventy-five feet away without a gun.
Casey glanced at them cunningly, drew back his right hand and pitched something at the burro.
"Y' watch 'im!" he barked, and the three turned around to look, with no clear conception of what it was they were expected to watch.
The burro jerked its head up, then bent to sniff at the thin curl of powder smoke rising from amongst the cans.-Paw and Hank and Joe were lifted some inches from the ground with the explosion.
They came down in a hail of gravel, tin cans and fragments of burro. Casey, flattened against the wall in preparation for the blast, laughed exultantly.
Paw and Hank and Joe picked themselves up and clung together for mutual support and comfort.-They craned necks forward, goggling incredulously at what little was left of the burro and the pile of tin cans.
"'Z that a bumb?"-Paw cackled nervously at last, clawing gravel out of his uncombed beard.-"'Z got me all shuck up. Whar's that 'r bottle?"
"'Z goin' t' eat a bumb--ol' fool burro!"-Hank chortled weakly, feeling tenderly certain nicks on his cheeks where gravel had landed. "Paw, you ol' fool, you, don't hawg the hull thing --gimme a drink!"
"Casey's sure all right," came Joe's official O.K. of the performance. "Casey said 'e c'd do it--'n' Casey done it!"-He turned and slapped Casey somewhat uncertainly on the back, which toppled him against the wall again.-"Good'n on us, Casey!-Darn' good joke on us--'n' on the burro!"
Whereupon they drank to Casey solemnly, and one and all, they proclaimed that it was a VERY good joke on the burro.-A merciful joke, certainly; as you would agree had you seen the poor brute hungry and hobbling painfully, hunting scraps of food amongst the litter of tin cans.
After that, Casey wanted to sleep.-He forced admissions from the three that he, Casey Ryan, was all right and that he knew exactly what he was doing and kept a level head.-He crawled laboriously into his bunk, shoes, hat and all; and, convinced that he had defended his honor and preserved the Casey Ryan reputation untarnished, he blissfully skipped the next eighteen hours.