Godsend to a Lady

By B. M. Bower Author of “You Ask Anybody,” “Cow Country,” Etc.
Transcriber’s Note: This story appeared in the December 20, 1920 issue of The Popular Magazine .
“Casey” Ryan mixes a little philanthropy with considerable poker and ends where he started—with the addition of a pair of socks.
Casey waved good-by to the men from Tonopah, squinted up at the sun, and got a coal-oil can of water and filled the radiator of his Ford. He rolled his bed in the tarp and tied it securely, put flour, bacon, coffee, salt, and various other small necessities of life into a box, inspected his sour-dough can and decided to empty it and start over again if hard fate drove him to sour dough. “Might bust down and have to sleep out,” he meditated. “Then again I ain’t liable to; and if I do I’ll be goin’ so fast I’ll git somewhere before she stops. I’m—sure—goin’ to go!” He cranked the battered car, straddled in over the edge on the driver’s side, and set his feet against the pedals with the air of a man who had urgent business elsewhere. The men from Tonopah were not yet out of sight around the butte scarred with granite ledges before Casey was under way, rattling down the rough trail from Ghost Mountain and bouncing clear of the seat as the car lurched over certain rough spots.
Pinned with a safety pin to the inside pocket of the vest he wore only when he felt need of a safe and secret pocket, Casey Ryan carried a check for twenty-five thousand dollars, made payable to himself. A check for twenty-five thousand dollars in Casey’s pocket was like a wild cat clawing at his imagination and spitting at every moment’s delay. Casey had endured solitude and some hardship while he coaxed Ghost Mountain to reveal a little of its secret treasure. Now he wanted action, light, life, and plenty of it. While he drove he dreamed, and his dreams beckoned, urged him faster and faster.
Up over the summit of the ridge that lay between Ghost Mountain and Furnace Lake he surged with radiator bubbling. Down the long slope to the lake lying there smiling sardonically at a world it loved to trick with its moods, Casey drove as if he were winning a bet. Across that five miles of baked, yellow-white clay he raced, his Ford a-creak in every joint.