by B. M. Bower
But it was all pretty hazy and rapidly growing hazier. Casey Ryan, you must know, was not what is informally termed a drinking man. In his youth he might have been able to handle a sudden half-pint of moonshine whisky and keep as level a head as he now strove valiantly to retain. But Casey’s later years had been more temperate than most desert men would believe. Unfortunately virtue is not always it own reward; at least Casey now found himself the worse for past abstinences.
Joe led him into the tunnel, laughing sardonically because Casey found it scarcely wide enough for his oscillating progress. They turned into a drift. Casey did not know which drift it was, though he tried foggily to remember. He was still, you must know, trying to keep a level head and gain valuable information for the sheriff who he hoped would return to the butte with Barney.
Paw and Hank were wrangling somewhere ahead. Casey could hear their raised voices mingled in a confused rumbling in the pent walls of the drift. Casey thought they passed through a doorway, and that Joe closed a heavy door behind them, but he was not sure.
Memory of the old woman intoning her horrible anathema surged back upon Casey with the closing of the door. The voices of Hank and Paw he now mistook for the ravings of the woman in the stone hut. Casey balked there, and would not go on. He did not want to face the old woman again, and he said so repeatedly—or believed that he did.
Joe caught him by the arm and pulled him forward by main strength. The voices of Paw and Hank came closer and clarified into words; or did Casey and Joe walk farther and come into their presence?
They were all standing together somewhere, in a large, underground chamber with a hole letting in the sunlight high up on one side. Casey was positive there was a hole up there, because the sun shone in his eyes and to avoid it he moved aside and fell over a bucket or a keg or something. Hank laughed loudly at the spectacle, and Paw swore because the fall startled him; but it was Joe who helped Casey up.
Casey knew that he was sitting on a barrel—or something—and telling a funny story. He thought it must be very funny indeed, because every one was laughing and bending double and slapping legs while he talked. Casey realized that here at last were men who appreciated Casey Ryan as he deserved to be appreciated. Tears ran down his own weathered cheeks—tears of mirth. He had never laughed so much before in all his life, he thought. Every one, even Paw, who was normally a mean, cantankerous old cuss, was having the time of his life.
They attempted to show Casey certain intricacies of their still, which made it better than other stills and put a greater kick in the White Mule it bred. Somewhere back in the dim recesses of Casey’s mind, he felt that he ought to listen and remember what they told him. Vaguely he knew that he must not take another drink, no matter how insistent they were. In the brief glow of that resolution Casey protested that he could hoot without any more hootch. But he hated to hurt Paw’s feelings, or Hank’s or Joe’s. They had made the hootch with a new and different twist, and they were honestly anxious for his judgment and approval. He decided that perhaps he really ought to take a little more just to please them; not much—a couple of drinks maybe. Wherefore, he graciously consented to taste the “run” of the day before. 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.
CHAPTER SIX
Casey awoke under the vivid impression that some one was driving a gadget into his skull with a “double-jack.” The smell of bacon scorching filled his very soul with the loathing of food. The sight of Joe calmly filling his pipe roused Casey to the fighting mood—with no power to fight. He was a sick man; and to remain alive was agony.
The squalid disorder and the stale aroma of a drunken orgy still pervaded the dugout and made it a nightmare hole to Casey. Hank came tittering to the bunk and offered him a cup of coffee, muddy from too long boiling, and Joe grinned over his pipe at the colorful language with which Casey refused the offering.
“Better take a brace uh hootch,” Joe suggested with no more than his normal ill nature. “I got some over at the still we made awhile back that, ain’t quite so kicky. Been agin’ it in wood an’ charcoal. That tones ’er down. I’ll go git yuh some after we eat. Kinda want a brace, myself. That new hootch shore is a kickin’ fool.”
Paw accepted this remark, as high praise, and let three hot cakes burn until their edges curled while he bragged of his skill as a maker of moonshine. Paw himself was red-eyed and loose-lipped from yesterday’s debauch. Hank’s whole face, especially in the region of his eyes, was puffed unbecomingly. Casey, squinting an angry eye at Hank and the cup of coffee, spared a thought from his own misery to acknowledge surprise that anything on earth could make Hank more unpleasant to look upon. Joe had a sickly pallor to prove the potency of the brew.
For such is the way of moonshine when fusel oil abounds, as it does invariably in new whisky distilled by furtive amateurs working in secret and with neither the facilities nor the knowledge for its scientific manufacture. There is grim significance in the sardonic humor of the man who first named it White Mule. The kick is certain and terrific; frequently it is fatal as well. The worst of it is, you never know what the effect will be until you have drunk the stuff; and after you have drunk it, you are in no condition to resist the effect or to refrain from courting further disaster.
That is what happened to Casey. The poison in the first half-pint, swallowed under the eye of Joe’s six-shooter, upset his judgment. The poison in his further potations made a wholly different man of Casey Ryan; and the after effect was so terrific that he would have swallowed cyanide if it promised relief.
He gritted his teeth and suffered tortures until Joe returned and gave him a drink of whisky in a chipped granite cup. Almost immediately he felt better. The pounding agony in his head eased perceptibly and his nerves ceased to quiver. After a while he sat up, gazed longingly at the water bucket and crawled down from the bunk. He drank largely in great gulps. His bloodshot eyes strayed meditatively to the coffee pot. After an undecided moment he walked uncertainly to the stove and poured himself a cup of coffee.
Casey lifted the cup to drink, but the smell of it under his nose sickened him. He weaved uncertainly to the door, opened it and threw out the coffee—cup and all. Which was nature flying a storm flag, had any one with a clear head been there to observe the action and the look on Casey’s face.
“Gimme another shot uh that damn’ hootch,” he growled. Joe pushed the bottle toward Casey, eyeing him curiously.
“That stuff they run yesterday shore is kicky,” Joe ruminated sympathetically. “Pap’s proud as pups over it. He thinks it’s the real article—but I dunno. Shore laid yuh out, Casey, an’ yuh never got much, neither. Not enough t’ lay yuh out the way it did. Y’ look sick.”
“I am sick!” Casey snarled, and poured himself a drink more generous than was wise. “When Casey Ryan says he’s sick, you can put it down he’s sick! He don’t want nobody tellin’ ’im whether ’e’s sick ’r not.—he knows ’e’s sick!” He drank, and swore that it was rotten stuff not fit for a hawg (which was absolute truth). Then he staggered to the stove, picked up the coffee pot, carried it to the door and flung it savagely outside because the odor offended him.
“Mart got back last night,” Joe announced casually. “You was dead t’ the world. But we told ’im you was all right, an’ I guess he aims t’ give yuh steady work an’ a cut-in on the deal. We been cleanin’ up purty good money—but Mart says the market ain’t what it was; too many gone into the business. You’re a good cook an’ a good miner an’ a purty good feller all around—only the boss says you’ll have t’ cut out the booze.”
“Did you tell ’im you made me drink it?” Casey halted in the middle of the floor, facing Joe indignantly.
“I told ’im I put it up t’ yuh straight—what your business is, an’ all. You got no call t’ kick—didn’t I go swipe this bottle uh booze for yuh t’ sober up on, soon as the boss’s back was turned? I knowed yuh needed it; that’s why. We all needed it. I’m just tellin’ yuh the boss don’t approve of no celebrations like we had yest’day. I got up early an’ hauled that burro outa sight ’fore he seen it. That’s how much a friend I be, an’ it wouldn’t hurt yuh none to show a little gratitude!”
“Gratitude, hell! A lot I got in life t’ be grateful for!” Casey slumped down on the nearest bench, laid his injured hand carefully on the table and leaned his aching head on the other while he discoursed bitterly on the subject of his wrongs.
His muddled memory fumbled back to his grievance against traffic cops, distorting and magnifying the injustice he had received at their hands. He had once had a home, a wife and a fortune, he declared, and what had happened? Laws and cops had driven him out, had robbed him of his home and his family and sent him out in the hills like a damned kiotey, hopin’ he’d starve to death. And where, he asked defiantly, was the gratitude in that?
He told Joe ramblingly but more or less truthfully how he had been betrayed and deserted by a man he had befriended; one Barney Oakes, upon whom Casey would like to lay his hands for a minute.
“What I done to the burro ain’t nothin’ t’ what I’d do t’ that hound uh hell!” he declared, pounding the table with his good fist.
Homeless, friendless; but Joe was his friend, and Paw and Hank were his friends—and besides them there was in all the world not one friend of Casey Ryan’s. They were good friends and good fellows, even if they did put too much hoot in their hootch. Casey Ryan liked his hootch with a hoot in it.
He was still hooting (somewhat incoherently it is true, with recourse now and then to the bottle because he was sick and he didn’t give a darn who knew it) when the door opened and he whom they called Mart walked in. Joe introduced him to Casey, who sat still upon the bench and looked him over with drunken disparagement. Casey had a hazy recollection of wanting to see the boss and have it out with him, but he could not recall what it was that he had been so anxious to quarrel about.
Mart was a slender man of middle height, with thin, intelligent face and a look across the eyes like the old woman who rocked in the stone hut. He glanced from the bottle to Casey, eyeing him sharply. Drunk or sober, Casey was not the man to be stared down; nevertheless his fingers strayed involuntarily to his shirt collar and pulled fussily at the wrinkles.
“So you’re the man the
y’ve been holding here for my inspection,” Mart said coolly, with a faint smile at Casey’s evident discomfort. “You’re still hitting it up, I see. Joe, take that bottle away from him. When he’s sober enough to talk straight, I’ll give him the third degree and see what he really is, anyway. Guess he’s all right—but he sure can lap up the booze. That’s a point against him.”
Casey’s hand went to the bottle, beating Joe’s by three inches. He did not particularly want the whisky, but it angered him to hear Mart order it taken from him. Away back in his mind where reason had gone into hiding, Casey knew that some great injustice was being done him; that he, Casey Ryan, was not the man they were calmly taking it for granted that he was.
With the bottle in his hand he rose and walked unsteadily to his bunk. He did not like this man they called the boss. He remembered that in his bunk, under the bedding, he had concealed something that would make him the equal of them all. He fumbled under the blankets, found what he sought and with his back turned to the others he slipped the thing into his sling out of sight.
Mart and Joe were talking together by the table, paying no attention to Casey, who was groggily making up his mind to crawl into his bunk and take another sleep. He still meant to have it out with Mart, but he did not feel like tackling the job just now.
Mart turned to the door and Joe got up to follow him, with a careless glance over his shoulder at Casey, who was lifting a foot as if it weighed a great deal, and was groping with it in the air trying to locate the edge of the lower bunk. Joe laughed, but the laugh died in his throat, choked off suddenly by what he saw when Mart pulled open the door.