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.