Godsend to a Lady

by B. M. Bower

At four in the afternoon Casey hobbled into the restaurant and ate another steak and drank three cups of coffee, black. He meant to go across to the garage and have Bill hunt up the Barrymores and get them to unstrap him for a while, but, just as he was lifting his left crutch around the edge of the restaurant door, two women of Lund came up and began to pity him and ask him how it ever happened. Casey could not remember, just at the moment, what story he had told of his accident. He stuttered—a strange thing for an Irishman to do, by the way—and retreated into The Club where they dared not follow.

“H’lo, Casey! Give yuh a chance to win back some of your losin’s, if you’re game to try it again,” called a man from the far end of the room.

Casey swore and hobbled back to him, let himself stiffly down into a chair and dropped his crutches with a rattle of hard wood. Being a cripple was growing painful, besides being very inconvenient. The male half of Lund had practically suspended business that day to hover around him and exchange comments upon his looks. Casey had received a lot of sympathy that day, and only the fact that he had remained sequestered behind the curtained arch that cut across the rear of The Club saved him from receiving a lot more. But, of course, there were mitigations. Since walking was slow and awkward, Casey sat. And since he was not the man to sit and twiddle thumbs to pass the time, Casey played poker. That is how he explained it afterward. He had not intended to play poker for twenty-four hours, but tie up a man’s leg so he can’t walk, and he’s got to do something.

Wherefore Casey played, and did not win back what he had lost earlier in the day.

Once, while the bartender was bringing drinks—you are not to infer that Casey was drunk; he was merely a bit hazy over details—Casey pulled out his dollar watch and looked at it. Eight-thirty—the show must be pretty well started, by now. He thought he might venture to hobble over to Bill’s and have those dog-gone straps taken off before he was crippled for sure. But he did not want to do anything to embarrass the show lady. Besides, he had lost a great deal of money, and he wanted to win some of it back. He still had time to make that train, he remembered. It was reported an hour late, some one said.

So Casey rubbed his strapped leg, twisting his face at the cramp in his knee, and letting his companions believe that his accident had given him a heritage of pain. He hitched his lifted shoulder into an easier position and picked up another unfortunate assortment of five cards.

At ten o’clock Bill, the garage man, came and whispered something to Casey, who growled an oath and reached almost unconsciously for his crutches; so soon is a habit born in a man.

“What they raisin’ thunder about?” he asked apathetically when Bill had helped him across the gutter and into the street. “Didn’t the crowd turn out like they expected?” Casey’s tone was dismal. You simply cannot be a cripple for twenty-four hours, and sit up playing unlucky poker all night and all day and well into another night, without losing some of your animation; not even if you are Casey Ryan. “Hell, I missed that train ag’in,” he added heavily when he heard it whistle into the railroad yard.

At the garage the Barrymores were waiting for him in their stage clothes and makeup. The show lady had wept seams down through her rouge, and the beads on her lashes had clotted stickily. “This never happened to us before. We’ve took our bad luck with our good luck and lived honest and respectable and self-respecting, and here, at last ill fortune has tied the can onto us. I know you meant well and all that, mister, but we certainly have had a raw deal handed out to us in this town. We—certainly—have!”

“We got till noon to-morrow to be outa the county,” croaked the flat-chested one, shifting his Adam’s apple rapidly. “And that’s real comedy, ain’t it, when your damn county runs clean over to the Utah line, and we can’t go back the way we come, or—and we can’t go anywhere till this big slob here puts our car together. He’s got pieces of it strung from here around the block. Say, what kinda town is this you wished onto us, anyway? Holding night court, mind you, so they could can us quicker!”