hill or down or across
the level it is the same--a narrow, winding trail through dimly seen
woods. The most familiar road grows strange; the miles are longer; you
drive through mystery and silence and the world around you is a
formless void.

Dawn and a gorgeous sunrise painted out the woods and revealed barren
hilltops which Casey did not know. Because he did not know them, he
guessed shrewdly that he was on his way to the wilderness of mountains
and sand which lies west of Death Valley. Small chance he had of
hearing the shop whistles blow in Las Vegas at noon, as he had expected.

He was telling himself that he didn't care where he went, when the car,
laboring more and more reluctantly up a long, sandy hill, suddenly
stopped. In Casey's heart was a thrill 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 a
hill uptilted before him, and the sand was a foot deep outside the ruts
failed to impress him with foreboding. He gloried in his freedom and
thought not at all of the Ford.

He climbed stiffly out, squinted at the sky line, which was jagged, and
at his immediate surroundings, which were barren and lonely and
soothing to his soul that hungered 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
if the desert had purposely dropped a curtain before his past and would
show him none of his future. Whereat Casey Ryan grinned, took a chew of
tobacco and was himself again.

"If they wanta come pinch me here, I'll meet 'em man to man. Back in
town no man's got a show. They pile in four deep and gang a feller.
Out here it's lick er git licked. They can all go t' thunder. Tahell
with town!"

The odor of coffee boiling in a new pot which the sagebrush fire was
fast blackening; the salty, smoky smell of bacon frying in a new frying
pan that turned bluish with the heat; the sizzle of bannock batter
poured into hot grease--these things made the smiling mouth of Casey
Ryan water with desire.

"Hell!" said Casey, breathing deep when, stomach full and resentment
toward the past blurred by satisfaction with his present, he filled his
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've et in si