head.

But it was all pretty hazy and rapidly growing hazier. Casey Ryan, you
must know, was not what is informally termed a drinking man. In his
youth he might have been able to handle a sudden half-pint of moonshine
whisky and keep as level a head as he now strove valiantly to retain.
But Casey's later years had been more temperate than most desert men
would believe. Unfortunately virtue is not always it own reward; at
least Casey now found himself the worse for past abstinences.

Joe led him into the tunnel, laughing sardonically because Casey found
it scarcely wide enough for his oscillating progress. They turned into
a drift. Casey did not know which drift it was, though he tried
foggily to remember. He was still, you must know, trying to keep a
level head and gain valuable information for the sheriff who he hoped
would return to the butte with Barney.

Paw and Hank were wrangling somewhere ahead. Casey could hear their
raised voices mingled in a confused rumbling in the pent walls of the
drift. Casey thought they passed through a doorway, and that Joe
closed a heavy door behind them, but he was not sure.

Memory of the old woman intoning her horrible anathema surged back upon
Casey with the closing of the door. The voices of Hank and Paw he now
mistook for the ravings of the woman in the stone hut. Casey balked
there, and would not go on. He did not want to face the old woman
again, and he said so repeatedly--or believed that he did.

Joe caught him by the arm and pulled him forward by main strength. The
voices of Paw and Hank came closer and clarified into words; or did
Casey and Joe walk farther and come into their presence?

They were all standing together somewhere, in a large, underground
chamber with a hole letting in the sunlight high up on one side. Casey
was positive there was a hole up there, because the sun shone in his
eyes and to avoid it he moved aside and fell over a bucket or a keg or
something. Hank laughed loudly at the spectacle, and Paw swore because
the fall startled him; but it was Joe who helped Casey up.

Casey knew that he was sitting on a barrel--or something--and telling a
funny story. He thought it must be very funny indeed, because every
one was laughing and bending double and slapping legs while he talked.
Casey realized that here at last were men who appreciated Casey Ryan as
he deserved to be appreciated. Tears ran down his own weathered
cheeks--tears of mirth. He