“I sure would like to flop m’lip over one of her biscuits right now,” he said aloud.  “If I do strike it, I wonder will she git too high-toned to cook?”

His eyes went to Furnace Lake, lying smooth and pale yellow in the saucerlike basin between Barren Butte and the foothills of Starvation.  In the soft light of the afterglow it seemed to smile at him with a glint of malice, like the treacherous thing it was.  For Furnace Lake is treacherous.  The Big Earthquake (America knows only one Big Earthquake, that which rocked San Francisco so disastrously) had split Furnace Lake halfway across, leaving an ugly crevice ten feet wide at the narrowest point and eighty feet deep, men said.  Time and passing storms had partly filled the gash, but it was there, ugly, ominous, a warning to all men to trust the lake not at all.  Little cracks radiated from the big gash here and there, and the cattle men rode often that way, though not often enough to save their cattle from falling in.

By day the lake shimmered deceptively with mirages that painted it blue with the likeness of water, Then a lone clump of greasewood stood up tall and proclaimed itself a ship lying idle on a glassy expanse of water so blue, so cool, so clear, one could not wonder that thirsty travelers went mad sometimes with the false lure of it.

Just now the lake looked exactly like any lake at dusk, with the far shore line reflected along its edge; and Casey’s thought went beyond, to his claim on Starvation.  Being tired and hungry, he pictured wistfully a cabin there, and a light in the window when he went chuckling up the long mesa in the dark, and the widow inside with hot coffee and supper waiting for him.  Just as soon as he struck “shipping values” that picture would be real, said Casey to himself; and he opened his tool box and set to work changing the tire.

By the time he had finished it was dark, and Casey had yet a long forty miles between himself and his sour-dough can.  He cranked the engine, switched on the electric headlights, and went tearing down the fifteen-mile incline to the lake.

“She c’n see the lights, and she’ll know I ain’t hangin’ out in town lappin’ up whisky,” he told himself as he drove.  “She’ll know it’s Casey Ryan comin’ home—­know it the way them lights are slippin’ over the country.  Ain’t another man on the desert can put a car over the trail like this!  You ask anybody.”

Pleased with himself and his reputation, urged by hunger and the desire to make good on his claim so that he might have the little home he instinctively craved, Casey pulled the gas lever down another eighth of an inch—­when he was already using more than he should—­and nearly bounced his dynamite off the seat when he lurched over a sandy hummock and down on to the smooth floor of the lake.