h with Casey I'd try to keep an eye on him. It would
probably be a good thing, I told her, if he did stay away long enough
to let this collection of complaints against him be forgotten at the
police station.

I went away, hoping fervently that Casey would break even his own
records that night. I really intended to find him and keep an eye on
him. But keeping an eye on Casey Ryan is a more complicated affair
than it sounds.

Wherefore, much of this story must be built upon my knowledge of Casey
and a more or less complete report of events in which I took no part,
welded together with a bit of healthy imagination.

CHAPTER TWO

Casey Ryan knew his desert. Also, from long and not so happy
experience, he knew Fords, or thought he did. He made the mistake,
however, of buying a nearly new one and asking it to accomplish the
work of a twin six from the moment he got behind the wheel.

He was fortunate in buying a demonstrator's car with a hundred miles or
so to its credit. He arrived in Barstow before the proprietor of a
supply store had gone to bed--for which he was grateful to the Ford. He
loaded up there with 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 used trail north. He was still
mad and talking bitterly to himself in an undertone while he
drove--telling the new Ford what he thought of city rules and city
ways, and driving it as no Ford was ever meant by its maker to be
driven.

The country north of Barstow is not to be taken casually in the middle
of a dark night, even by Casey Ryan and a Ford. The roads, once you
are well away from help, are all pretty much alike, and all bad. And
although the white, 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 him. He did see one or two in spite of
himself and gave a grunt of contempt. So, where he should have turned
to the east (his intention being to reach Nevada by way of Silver Lake)
he continued traveling north and didn't know it.

Driving across the desert on a dark night is confusing to the most
observant wayfarer. On either side, beyond the light of the car,
illusory forest stands for mile upon mile. Up