"Yeah--I guess L. A.'s a jinx for you all right.-I heard about your latest run-in with the cops.-I wish t' heck you'd of cleaned up a few for me.-I love them saps the way I like rat poison.-I've got no use for the clowns nor for towns that actually hands 'em good jack for dealin' misery to us guys.-The bird never lived that got a square deal from 'em.-They grab yuh and dust yuh off--"
"They won't grab Casey Ryan no more.-Why, lemme tell yuh what they done!"
Glendora slipped behind and was forgotten while Casey told the story of his wrongs.-In no particular, according to his version, had he been other than law-abiding.-Nobody, he declaimed heatedly, had ever taken HIM by the scruff of the neck and shaken him like a pup, and got away with it, and nobody ever would.
Casey was Irish and his father had been Irish, and the Ryan never lived that took sass and said thank-yuh.
His new friend listened with just that degree of sympathy which encourages the unburdening of the soul.-When Casey next awoke to the fact that he was getting farther and farther away from home, they were away past Claremont and still going to the full extent of the speed limit.-His friend had switched on the lights.
"I GOT to telephone my wife!" Casey exclaimed uneasily.-"I'll gamble she's down to the police station right now, lookin' for me. An' I want the cops t' kinda forgit about me.-I got to talkin' along an' plumb forgot I wasn't headed home."
"Aw, you can 'phone from Fontana.-I'll have to stop there anyway for gas.-Say, why don't yuh stall 'er off till morning?-You couldn't get home for supper now if yuh went by wireless. I guess yuh wouldn't hate a mouthful of desert air after swallowing smoke and insults, like yuh done in L. A.-Tell her you're takin' a ride to Barstow.-You can catch a train out of there and be home to breakfast, easy.-If you ain't got the change in your clothes for carfare," he added generously, "Why, I'll stake yuh just for your company on the trip.-Whadda yuh say?"
Casey looked at the orange and the grapefruit and lemon orchards that walled the Foothill Boulevard.-All trees looked alike to Casey, and these reminded him disagreeably of the fruit stalls in Los Angeles.
"Well, mebby I might go on to Barstow.-Too late now to take the missus to the show, anyway.-I guess I can dig up the price uh carfare from Barstow back."-He chuckled with a sinful pride in his prosperity, which was still new enough to be novel.-"Yuh don't catch Casey Ryan goin' around no more without a dime in his hind pocket. I've felt the lack of 'em too many times when they was needed. Casey Ryan's going to carry a jingle louder'n a lead burro from now on.-You can ask anybody."
"You bet it's wise for a feller to go heeled," the friend of Bill Masters responded easily.-"You never know when yuh might need it. Well, there's a Bell sign over there.-You can be askin' your wife's consent while I gas up."
Innocent pleasure; the blameless joy of riding in a Ford toward the desert, with a prince of a fellow for company, was not so easily made to sound logical and a perfectly commonplace incident over a long-distance telephone.-The Little Woman seemed struck with a sense of the unusual; her voice betrayed trepidation and she asked questions which Casey found it difficult to answer.
That he was merely riding as far as Barstow with a desert acquaintance and would catch the first train back, she apparently failed to find convincing.
"Casey Ryan, tell me the truth.-If you're in a scrape again, you know perfectly well that Jack and I will have to come and get you out of it.-San Bernardino sounds bad to me, Casey, and you're pretty close to the place.-Do you really want me to believe that you're coming back on the next train?"
"Sure as I'm standin' here!-What makes yuh think I'm in a scrape? Didn't I tell yuh I'm goin' to walk around trouble from now on? When Casey tells you a thing like that, yuh got a right to put it down for the truth. I'm going to Barstow for a breath uh fresh air. This is a feller that knows Bill Masters.-I'll be home to breakfast. I ain't in no trouble an, I ain't goin' to be.
You can believe that or you can set there callin' Casey Ryan a liar till I git back. G'by."
Whatever the Little Woman thought of it, Casey really meant to do exactly what he said he would do.-And he really did not believe that trouble was within a hundred miles of him.
