Eighty miles more or less straight away across the mountainous waste lay Lund, halfway up a canyon that led to higher reaches in the hills, rich in silver, lead, copper, gold.  Silver it was that Casey had found and sold to the men from Tonopah, and it was a freak of luck, he thought whimsically, that had led him and his Ford away over to Starvation Mountains to find their stake when they had probably been driving over millions every day that they made the stage trip from Pinnacle down to Lund.

The trail was rutted in places where the sluicing rains had driven hard across the hills; soft with sand in places where the fierce winds had swept the open.  For awhile the thin, wobbly track of a wagon meandered along ahead of him, then turned off up a flat-bottomed draw and was lost in the sagebrush.  Some prospector not so lucky as he, thought Casey, with swift, soon forgotten sympathy.  A coyote ran up a slope toward him, halted with forefeet planted on a rock, and stared at him, ears perked like an inquisitive dog.  Casey stopped, eased his rifle out of the crease in the back of the seat cushion, chanced a shot,—­and his luck held.  He climbed out, picked up the limp gray animal, threw it into the tonneau and went on.  Even with twenty-five thousand dollars in his pocket, Casey told himself that coyote hides are not to be scorned.  He had seen the time when the price of a good hide meant flour and bacon and tobacco to him.  He would skin it when he stopped to eat.

Eighty miles with never a soul to call good day to Casey.  Nor shack nor shelter made for man, and only one place where there was water to wet his lips if they cracked with thirst,—­unless, perchance, one of those swift desert downpours came riding on the wind, lashing the clouds with lightning.

Far ahead of Casey such a storm rolled in off the barren hills to the south.  “She’s a-wettin’ up that red lake a-plenty,” observed Casey, squinting through the dirty windshield.  “No trail around, either, on account of the lava beds.  But I guess I can pull acrost, all right.”  Doubt was in his voice, however, and he was half minded to turn back and take the straight road to Vegas, which had been his first objective.  But he discarded the idea.

“No, sir, Casey Ryan never back-trailed yet.  Poor time to commence, now when I got the world by the tail and a downhill pull.  We’ll make out, all right—­can’t be so terrible boggy with a short rain like that there.  I bet,” he continued optimistically to the Ford, which was the nearest he had to human companionship, “I bet we make it in a long lope.  Git along, there!  Shake a wheel—­’s the last time you haul Casey around.  Casey’s goin’ to step high, wide and handsome.  Sixty miles an hour, or he’ll ask for his money back.  They can’t step too fast for Casey!  Blue—­if I get me a lady friend with yella hair, mebby she’ll show up better in a blue car than she will in a white-and-red.  This here turnout has got to be tasty and have class.  If she was dark—­” He shook his head at that.  “No, sir, black hair grows too plenty on squaws an’ chilli queens.  Yella goes with Casey.  Clingin’ kinda girl with blue eyes—­that’s the stuff!  An’ I’ll sure show her some drivin’!”