Five minutes, perhaps, after that, Casey opened the office door wide enough to fling out an assortment of straps and two crutches.
Sounds from the rear of the garage indicated that Casey’s Ford was “r’arin’ to go,” as Casey frequently expressed it. Voices were jumbled in the tones of suggestions, commands, protest. Casey heard the show lady’s clear treble berating Jack, dear, with thin politeness. Then the car came snorting forward, paused in the wide doorway, and the show lady’s voice called out clearly, untroubled as the voice of a child after it has received that which it cried for.
“Well, good-by, mister! You certainly are a godsend to give us the loan of your car!” There was a buzz and a splutter, and they were gone—gone clean out of Casey’s life into the unknown whence they had come.
Bill opened the door gently and eased into the office, sniffing liniment. The painted hollows under Casey’s eyes gave him a ghastly look in the lamplight when he lifted his face from examining a chafed and angry knee. Bill opened his mouth for speech, caught a certain look in Casey’s eyes, and did not say what he had intended to say. Instead:
“You better sleep here in the office, Casey. I’ve got another bed back of the machine shop. I’ll lock up, and if any one comes and rings the night bell—well, never mind. I’ll plug her so they can’t ring her.” The world needs more men like Bill.
Even after an avalanche human nature cannot resist digging, in the melancholy hope of turning up grewsome remains. I know that you are all itching to put shovel into the debris of Casey’s dreams, and to see just what was left of them!
There was mighty little, let me tell you. I said in the beginning that twenty-five thousand dollars was like a wild cat in Casey’s pocket. You can’t give a man that much money all in a lump and, suddenly, after he has been content with dollars enough to pay for the grub he eats, without seeing him lose his sense of proportion. Twenty-five dollars he understands and can spend more prudently than you, perhaps. Twenty-five thousand he simply cannot gauge. It seems exhaustless. It is as if you plucked from the night all the stars you can see, knowing that the Milky Way is still there and unnumbered other stars invisible even in the aggregate.
Casey played poker, with an appreciative audience and the lid off. Now and then he took a drink stronger than two-and-three-fourths per cent. He kept that up for a night and a day and well into another night. Very well, gather round and look at the remains, and if there’s a moral, you are welcome, I am sure.
Casey awoke just before noon, and went out and held his head under Bill’s garage hydrant with the water running a full stream. He looked up and found Bill standing there with his hands in his pockets, gazing at Casey sorrowfully. Casey grinned.
“How’s she comin’, Bill?”