“Sure, give him more bacon! All he wants. I’ll fry another skillet full.” Casey spoke hurriedly, getting out the piece which he had packed away in the bag.
“He’s used to these holdup joints where they charge you forty cents for a greasy plate,” the flat-chested man explained, speaking with his mouth full. “Eat all yuh want, junior. This is a barbecue and no collection took up to pay the speaker of the day.”
“We certainly appreciate your kindness, mister,” the woman put in graciously, holding out her cup. “What we’d have done, stuck here in the mud with no provisions and no town within miles, Heaven only knows. Was you kidding us,” she added, with a betrayal of more real anxiety than she intended, “when you said Rhyolite is a dead one? We looked it up on the map, and it was marked like a town. We’re making all the little towns that the road shows mostly miss. We give a fine show, mister. It’s been played on all the best time in the country—we took it abroad before the war and made real good money with it. But we just wanted to see the country, you know—after doing the Cont’nent and all the like of that. So we thought we’d travel independent and make all the small towns—”
“The movie trust is what puts vodeville on the bum,” the man interrupted. “We used to play the best time only. We got a first-class act. One that ought to draw down good money anywhere, and would draw down good money, if the movie trust—”
“And then we like to be independent, and go where we like and get off the railroad for a spell. Freedom is the breath of life to he and I. We’d rather have it kinda rough, now and then, and be free and independent—”
“I’ve g-got a b-bunny, a-and it f-fell in the g-grease box a-and we c-can’t wash it off. And h-he’s asleep now. C-can I g-give my b-bunny some b-bacon, Mister G-godsend?”
The woman laughed, and the man laughed and Casey himself grinned sheepishly. Casey did not want to be called a godsend, and he hated the term mister when applied to himself. All his life he had been plain Casey Ryan and proud of it, and his face was very red when he confessed that there was no more bacon. He had not expected to feed a family when he left camp that morning, but had taken ample rations for himself only.
Junior whined and insisted that he wanted b-bacon for his b-bunny, and the man hushed him querulously and asked Casey what the chances were for getting under way. Casey repacked a lightened bag, emptied the coffee grounds, shouldered his canteen, and waded back to the cars and to the problem of red mud with an unbelievably tenacious quality.
The man followed and asked him if he happened to have any smoking tobacco, and afterward begged a cigarette paper, and then a match. “The dog-gone helpless, starved bunch!” Casey muttered while he dug out the wheels of his Ford, and knew that his own dream must wait upon the need of these three human beings whom he had never seen until an hour ago, of whose existence he had been in ignorance and who would probably contribute nothing whatever to his own welfare or happiness, however much he might contribute to theirs.
I do not say that Casey soliloquized in this manner while he was sweating there in the mud under hot midday. He did think that now he would no doubt miss the night train to Los Angeles, and that he would not, after all, be purchasing glad raiment and a luxurious car on the morrow. He regretted that, but he did not see how he could help it. He was Casey Ryan, and his heart was soft to suffering, even though a little of the spell cast by the woman’s blue eyes and her golden hair had dimmed for him.