y on
the table and leaned his aching head on the other while he discoursed
bitterly on the subject of his wrongs.

His muddled memory fumbled back to his grievance against traffic cops,
distorting and magnifying the injustice he had received at their hands.
He had once had a home, a wife and a fortune, he declared, and what had
happened? Laws and cops had driven him out, had robbed him of his home
and his family and sent him out in the hills like a damned kiotey,
hopin' he'd starve to death. And where, he asked defiantly, was the
gratitude in that?

He told Joe ramblingly but more or less truthfully how he had been
betrayed and deserted by a man he had befriended; one Barney Oakes,
upon whom Casey would like to lay his hands for a minute.

"What I done to the burro ain't nothin' t' what I'd do t' that hound uh
hell!" he declared, pounding the table with his good fist.

Homeless, friendless; but Joe was his friend, and Paw and Hank were his
friends--and besides them there was in all the world not one friend of
Casey Ryan's. They were good friends and good fellows, even if they
did put too much hoot in their hootch. Casey Ryan liked his hootch with
a hoot in it.

He was still hooting (somewhat incoherently it is true, with recourse
now and then to the bottle because he was sick and he didn't give a
darn who knew it) when the door opened and he whom they called Mart
walked in. Joe introduced him to Casey, who sat still upon the bench
and looked him over with drunken disparagement. Casey had a hazy
recollection of wanting to see the boss and have it out with him, but
he could not recall what it was that he had been so anxious to quarrel
about.

Mart was a slender man of middle height, with thin, intelligent face
and a look across the eyes like the old woman who rocked in the stone
hut. He glanced from the bottle to Casey, eyeing him sharply. Drunk
or sober, Casey was not the man to be stared down; nevertheless his
fingers strayed involuntarily to his shirt collar and pulled fussily at
the wrinkles.

"So you're the man they've been holding here for my inspection," Mart
said coolly, with a faint smile at Casey's evident discomfort. "You're
still hitting it up, I see. Joe, take that bottle away from him. When
he's sober enough to talk straight, I'll give him the third degree and
see what he really is, anyway. Guess he's all right--but he sure can
lap up the booze. That's a point against him."

Casey's hand w