“This is the Santa Fe,” Casey bristled, looking at his watch. “I’m due in Barstow at 11:05 and bigod I’ll be there.”
Aboard his train he was a despot and a stickler for the rules, demanding that even his superiors obey them. This finally was his downfall and he came to the desert.
Elinor Glyn, who made the best seller list with “Three Weeks” in the early part of the century, came to Rawhide and Tex Rickard, spectacular gambler undertook to show her a bit of life a la Rawhide. He took her to the Stingaree district and later to a reception in his own place. The state’s notables were presented to the lady along with Nat Goodwin, Julian Hawthorne, and others internationally known.
Tex saw Casey standing alone at the end of the bar and knowing he was a voracious reader he went to Casey: “Come on and meet the author of Three Weeks....”
“I’ve read it,” Casey said. “They’ve hung folks for less.”
Casey’s method of getting a job when his grub ran out was unique and unfailing. He would storm into the store and turn loose on Charlie, in charge of the roads and long his friend. “Who’s keeping up these roads? Chuck holes in ’em big as the Grand Canyon ... disgrace—”
“Been waiting for you to come in,” Charlie would say with a sober face. “Get a shovel and fix ’em.”
A good conscientious worker, Casey would put the road in shape, pay his debts and again head into the horizon.
You who spin through Death Valley or along its approaches owe much to Casey, who made many of the original road beds the hard way—with pick and shovel.
At last Casey got the old age pension and his latter years were the best. His home, a dugout in the bank of a wash near Tecopa. With no rent, with books and magazines and the solitude he loved, he lived happily. “When I croak,” he often said, “just put me in my dugout. Toss a stick of dynamite in after me. Shut the door and cave in the goddam’ hill.”