You Ask Anybody

by B. M. Bower

Away out on the high mesas that are much like the desert below, except that the nights are cool and the wind is not fanned out of a furnace, Casey fought sand and brush and rocks and found a trail now and then which he followed thankfully, and so came at last to a short range of mountains whose name matched well their sinister stare. The Ghost Mountains had always been reputed rich in mineral and malevolent in their attitude toward man and beast. Even the Joshua trees stood afar off and lifted grotesque arms defensively. But Casey was not easily daunted, and eerie places held for him no meaning save the purely material one. If he could find water and the rich vein of ore he dreamed of, then Casey would be happy in spite of snakes, tarantulas, and sinister stories of the place.

Water he found, not too far up a gulch. So he pitched his tent within carrying distance from the spring, thanked the god of mechanics that an automobile neither eats nor drinks when it does not work, and set out to find his fortune.

Now this is not a story of Casey’s quest for gold. It’s a love story, if you please. Until the lady entered Casey’s orbit there was no logical reason for telling you, nor for stating that the Ford autymobil played the part of Fate—and played erratically.

Casey knew there was a mining camp on the high slope of Furnace Butte. He knew the name of the camp, which was Lucky Lode, and he knew the foreman there—knew him from long ago in the days when Casey was what he himself called wild. In reaching Ghost Mountains Casey had driven for fifteen miles within plain sight of Lucky Lode. But gas is precious when you are a hundred miles from a garage, and since business did not take him there Casey did not drive up the five-mile slope to the Lucky Lode just to shake hands with the foreman and swap a yarn or two. Instead, he headed down on to the bleached, bleak oval of Furnace Lake and forged across it straight as he could drive toward Ghost Mountain.

But the next time Casey made the trip—needing supplies, powder, fuse, caps, and so on—Fate took him by the ear and led him to the lady. This is how Fate did it—and I will say it was an original idea.

Casey had a gallon sirup can in the car, which he used for extra oil for the engine. Having an appetite for sour-dough biscuits and sirup, he had also a gallon can of sirup in the car. It was a terrifically hot day, and the wind that blew full against Casey’s left cheek as he drove, burned where it struck. Casey was afraid he was running short of water, and a Ford comes first, as every man knows, so that Casey was parched pretty thoroughly, inside and out. Within a mile of the lake he stopped, took an unsatisfying sip from his big canteen and emptied the rest of the water into the radiator. Then he replenished the oil in the motor generously, cranked and went bumping along down the trail worn rough with the trucks from Lucky Lode.

For a little way he bumped along the trail, then the motor began to labor and, although Casey pulled the gas lever down as far as it would go, the car slowed and stopped dead in the road. It was after an hour of fruitless monkey-wrenching and swearing and sweating that Casey began to suspect something. He examined both cans, “hefted” them, smelled and even tasted the one half empty, and decided that Ford autymobils did not require two quarts of sirup at one dose. He thought that a little sirup ought not make much difference, but half a gallon was probably too much.

He put in more oil on top of the sirup, but he could not even move the crank, much less “turn ’er over.” He did not know what to do. So long as a man can wind the crank of a Ford he seems able to keep alive his hopes. Casey could not crank, wherefore he knew himself beaten even while he heaved and lifted and swore, and strained every muscle in his back. He got so desperately wrathful that he lifted the car perceptibly off its right front wheel with every heave, but he felt as if he were trying to lift a bowlder.

It was past supper time at Lucky Lode when Casey arrived, staggering a little with exhaustion both mental and physical. His eyes were bloodshot with the hot wind, his face was purple from the same wind, his lips were dry and rough. I cannot blame the men at Lucky Lode for a sudden thirst when they saw him coming, and a hope that he still had a little left. And when he told them that he had filled his engine with sirup instead of oil, what would any one think?

Their unjust suspicions would not have worried Casey in the least, had Lucky Lode not possessed a lady cook who was a lady. She was a widow with two children, and she had the children with her and held herself aloof from the men in a manner befitting a lady. Casey was hungry and thirsty and tired and, as much as was possible to his nature, disgusted with life in general. The widow gave him a smile of sympathy which went straight to his heart; and hot biscuits and coffee and beans cooked the way he liked them best. These went straight to ease the gnawing emptiness of his stomach—and being a man who took his emotions at their face value, he jumped to the conclusion that it was the lady whose presence gave him the glow.