Casey stayed that night and the next day and the next at Lucky Lode. The foreman helped him tow the sweetened car up the hill to the machine shop where they could get at it, and Casey worked until night trying to remove the dingbats from the hootin’-annies—otherwise the pistons from the cylinders. The foreman showed him what to do, and Casey did it, using a “double jack” and a lot of energy.
Before he left the Lucky Lode Casey knew exactly what sirup will do to a Ford if applied internally, and the widow had promised to marry him if he would stop drinking and smoking and swearing. Casey took the drinking pledge quite cheerfully for her sake, since he had not been drunk in ten years on account of having seen a big yellow snake with a green head on the occasion of his last carouse. He promised to stop smoking, glad that the widow neglected to mention chewing tobacco which was his everyday comfort. As for the swearing, he told her he would do his best, and that he would taste the oil hereafter before he fed it to the Ford.
“But Casey, if you leave whisky alone you won’t need to taste the oil,” the widow told him. Whereat Casey grinned feebly and explained for the tenth time that he had not been drinking. She did not contradict him. She seemed a wise woman, after a fashion.
Casey drove back to his camp at Ghost Mountain, happy and a little scared. Why, after all these years of careless freedom he should precipitate himself into matrimony with a woman he had known only casually for two days, puzzled him a little.
“Well, a man gits to feelin’ like he wants to settle down when he’s crowdin’ fifty,” he explained his recklessness to the Ford as it hummed away over Furnace Lake which was flat as a floor and dry as a bleached bone—and much the same color. “Any man feels the want of a home as he gits older. And Casey’s the man that will try anything once. You ask anybody.” He took out his pipe, looked at it, bethought him of his promise and put it away again, substituting a chew of tobacco as large as his cheek would hold without prying his mouth open. “G’long, there! You got your belly full of oil—shake your feet and show you’re alive!”
After that, Casey spent every Sunday at Lucky Lode. He liked the widow better and better. Only he wished she would take it for granted that when Casey Ryan made a promise, Casey Ryan would keep it. “I’ve got so now I can bark a knuckle with m’single jack when I’m puttin’ down a hole, and say, ‘Oh, dear!’ and let it go at that,” he boasted to her on the second Sunday. “I’ll bet there ain’t another man in the State of Nevada could do that.”
“Yes. But Casey, dear, if only you will never touch another drop of liquor. You’ll keep your promise, won’t you, dear boy?”
“Sure as hell I’ll keep my promise!” Casey assured her headily. It had been close to twenty years since he had been called dear boy, at least to his face. He had kissed the woman full on the lips before he saw that a frown sat upon her forehead like a section of that ridgy cardboard they wrap bottles in.
“Casey, you swore!”
“Swore? Me?”