Godsend to a Lady

by B. M. Bower

“You go to Lund,” he urged, “and you can stay there four nights if you want to, and give shows. And I’ll take yuh on up to Pinnacle in my car while yours is gittin’ fixed, and you can give a show there. You’d draw a big crowd. I’d make it a point to tell folks you give a dandy show. And I’ll git yuh good rates at the garage where I do business. You don’t want nothin’ of Vernal. Lund’s the place you want to hit fer.”

“There’s a lot to that,” the foreman of the cowboys agreed. “If Casey’s willin’ to back you up, you better hit straight for Lund. Everybody there knows Casey Ryan. He drove stage from Pinnacle to Lund for two years and never killed nobody, though he did come close to it, now and again. I’ve saw strong men that rode with Casey and said they never felt right afterward. Casey, he’s a dog-gone good driver, but he used to be kinda hard on passengers. He done more to promote heart failure in them two towns than all the altitude they can pile up. But nobody’s going to hold that against a good show that comes there. I heard there ain’t been a show stop off in Lund for over a year. You’ll have to beat ’em away from the door, I bet.”

Wherefore the Barrymores—that was the name they called themselves, though I am inclined to doubt their legal right to it—the Barrymores altered their booking and went with Casey to Lund. They were not fools, by the way. Their car was much more disreputable than you would believe a car could be and turn a wheel, and the Barrymores recognized the handicap of its appearance. They camped well out of sight of town, therefore, and let Casey drive in alone.

Casey found that the westbound train had already gone, which gave him a full twenty-four hours in Lund, even though he discounted his promise to see the Barrymores through. There was a train, to be sure, that passed through Lund in the middle of the night; but that was the De Luxe, standard and drawing-room sleepers, which disdained stopping to pick up plebeian local passengers. So Casey must spend twenty-four hours in Lund, greeting men who hailed him joyously at the top of their voices while they were yet afar off, and thumped him painfully upon the shoulders when they came within reach of him.

You may not grasp the full significance of this, unless you have known old and popular stage drivers, soft of heart and hard of fist. Then remember that Casey had spent months on end alone in the wilderness, working like a lashed slave from sunrise to dark trying to wrest a fortune from a certain mountainside. Remember how an enforced isolation, coupled with rough fare and hard work, will breed a craving for lights and laughter and the speech of friends. Remember that, and don’t overlook the twenty-five thousand dollars that Casey had pinned safe within his pocket.

Casey had unthinkingly tossed his last dime into his hat for the show people at Rhyolite. He had not even skinned the coyote whose hide would have been worth ten or fifteen dollars, as hides go. In the stress of pulling out of the mud at Red Lake he had forgotten all about the dead animal in his tonneau until his nose reminded him next morning that it was there. Then he had hauled it out by the tail and thrown it away. He was broke, except that he had that check in his pocket.

Of course it was easy enough for Casey to get money. He went to the store that sold everything from mining tools to green perfume bottles tied with narrow pink ribbon. The man who owned that store also owned the bank next door, and a little place down the street which was called laconically “The Club.” One way and another, Dwyer managed to feel the money of every man who came into Lund and stopped there for a space. He was an honest man, too—or as honest as is practicable for a man in business.

Dwyer was tickled to see Casey again. Casey was a good fellow, and he never needed his memory jogged when he owed a man. He paid before he was asked to pay, and that is enough to make any merchant love him. He watched Casey unpin his vest pocket and remove the check, and he was not too eager to inspect it.

“Good? Surest thing you know. Want it cashed, or applied to your old checking account?—it’s open yet, with a dollar and sixty-seven cents to your credit, I believe. I’ll take care of it, though it’s after banking hours.”

Casey was foolish. “I’ll take a couple of hundred, if it’s handy, and a check book. I guess you can fix it so I can get what money I want in Los. I’m goin’ to the city, Dwyer, and I’m goin’ to have one hell of a time when I git there. I’ve earned it. You ask anybody that ever mined.”