The Trail of the White Mule

s, or thought he did. He made the mistake, however, of buying a nearly new one and as

h such necessities for desert prospecting as he had not waited to buy in Los Angeles, turned short off the main highway where traffic officers might be summoned by telephone to lie in wait for him, and took the steeper and less u

e, diamond-shaped signs of a beneficent automobile club are posted here and there, where wrong turnings are most likely to prove disastrous to travelers, Casey Ryan was in the mood to lick any man who pointed out a sign to hi

y forest stands for mile upon mile. Up hill or down or across the level it is the same-a narrow, winding trail through dimly seen woods. Th

did not know them, he guessed shrewdly that he was on his way to the wilderness of mountains and sand which lies w

rill at the sheer luxury of stopping in the middle of the road without having some thick-necked cop stride toward him bawling insults. That he was obliged to stop, and that

for these things. Great, gaunt "Joshua" trees stood in grotesque groups all up and down the narrow valley, hiding the way he had come from the way he would go. It was as i

n no man's got a show. They pile in four deep and gang a feller. Out her

oky smell of bacon frying in a new frying pan that turned bluish with the heat; the sizzle of banno

pipe and fingered his vest pocket for a match. "Gas stoves can't cook nothin' so there's any taste to it. That there's the first real meal I'

ommon. For awhile he watched a Joshua palm that looked oddly like a giant man with one arm hanging loose at its side and another pointing fixedly at a distant, black-capped butte standing aloof from its fellows. Casey was tired after

t did the darned thing want? Casey would go when he, got good and ready. Perhaps he would go that way, and perhaps he would not. Right here wa

it. With some trouble Casey managed to button down the curtains and sat huddled on the front seat, watching through a streaming windshield the buffeted wilderness. He was glad he had not unloaded his outfit;

e all the water in the world is bein' poured down this pass. Keeps on, I'll have to gou

his hard-won freedom. He stabbed open a can of condensed milk, poured it into a cup, and drank it and ate what was left o

n, but gave up the notion. One sidehill, he decide

t of a Ford. His bones ached by morning, and he was hungry enough to eat raw bacon and relish it. But the sun was fighting through the piled clouds and

of the hill. She was going to have to get down and dig in her toes to make it, he told the Ford, when at

s and dingbats (using Casey's mechanical terms) looked them over dissatisfiedly, and put them back without having done them ny good whatever.

ng world to make him move until he got good and ready. He might have saved his vocabulary, for the road was impassabl

d removed more hootin'-annies and dingbats than he had touched the day before. That night he once more pitched his tent in the tr

hape of a packed burro that poked its nose around a group of Joshuas, stopped abruptly and backed precipitately into another burro which swung out of the trail and went careening awkwardly down the slope. The stampeding burro had not seen the Ford at all,

ntirely different direction. The lead burro had four large canteens strapped outside its pack, and Casey was gro

heels into the sand and hung on. Memory resurrected for his need certain choice phrases coined in times of stress for the ears of burros alone. Luxury and civilization and fifty-five thousand dollars and a wife were as if they had never been. He was Casey Ryan, the prospector, fighting a stubborn donkey all over a d

the other's past history and tentative plans for the future, censored and

ey Oakes, he discovered that they both knew Bill Masters, the garage man at Lund; and further gossip revealed the amazing fact tha

ar a sawmill workin' overtime? That's her-rippin' through knots an' never blowin' the whistle fer quittin' time. I never knowed a man could have as many faults as what she used t' name over fer me." He drained his

t the Ford; couldn't; and yielded to Barney's argument that burros were better than a car for prospectin' in that rough country. They overhauled

s the biggest and oldest in the bunch, and ever since I've been here she'

butte with the black capping, toward which the gaunt tree seemed to point. He spat out a sta

ack in there. I've follered poorer advi

two burros and a clouded past, and fared forth across the barren foothills with n