Pinned with a safety pin to the inside pocket of the vest he wore only when he felt need of a safe and secret pocket, Casey Ryan carried a check for twenty-five thousand dollars, made payable to himself.  A check for twenty-five thousand dollars in Casey’s pocket was like a wildcat clawing at his imagination and spitting at every moment’s delay.  Casey had endured solitude and some hardship while he coaxed Starvation Mountain to reveal a little of its secret treasure.  Now he wanted action, light, life and plenty of it.  While he drove he dreamed, and his dreams beckoned, urged him faster and faster.

Up over the summit of the ridge that lay between Starvation and Furnace Lake he surged, with radiator bubbling.  Down the long slope to the lake, lying there smiling sardonically at a world it loved to trick with its moods, Casey drove as if he were winning a bet.  Across that five miles of baked, yellow-white clay he raced, his Ford a-creak in every joint.

“Go it, you tin lizard!” chortled Casey.  “I’ll have me a real wagon when I git to Los.  She’ll be white, with red stripes along her sides and red wheels, and she’ll lay ’er belly to the ground and eat up the road and lick her chops for more.  Sixty miles under her belt every time the clock strikes, or she ain’t good enough fer Casey!  Mebby they think they got some drivers in Californy.  Mebby they think they have.  They ain’t, though, because Casey Ryan ain’t there yet.  I’ll catch that night train.  Oughta be in by morning, and then you keep your eye on Casey.  There’s goin’ to be a stir around Los, about to-morrow noon.  I’ll have to buy some clothes, I guess.  And I’ll git acquainted with some nice girl with yella hair that likes pleasure, and take her out ridin’.  Yeah, I’ll have to git me a swell outfit uh clothes.  I’ll look the part, all right—–­”

Up a long, winding trail and over another summit to Yucca Pass Casey dreamed, while the stark, scarred buttes on either side regarded him with enigmatic calm.  Since the first wagon train had worried over the rough deserts on their way to California, the bleak hills of Nevada had listened while prospectors dreamed aloud and cackled over their dreaming; had listened, too, while they raved in thirst and heat and madness.  Inscrutably they watched Casey as he hurried by with his twenty-five thousand dollars and his pleasant pictures of soft ease.

At a dim fork in the trail Casey slowed and stopped.  A boiling radiator will not forever brook neglect, and Casey brought his mind down to practical things for a space.  “I can just as well take the train from Lund,” he mused, while he poured in more water.  “Then I can leave this bleatin’ burro with Bill.  He oughta give me a coupla hundred for her, anyway.  No use wasting money just because you happen to have a few thousand in your pants.”  He filled his pipe at that sensible idea and turned the nose of his Ford down the dim trail to Lund.