Every morning, without fail, he and William fought every minute from breakfast to starting time.  From his actions you would think that William had never seen a pack before, and expected it to bite him fatally if he came within twenty feet of it.  You could tell Casey’s camp by the manner in which the sagebrush was trampled and the sand scored with small hoofprints in a wide circle around it.  But once the battle was lost to William for that day, and Casey had rested and mopped the perspiration off his face and taken a comforting chew of tobacco and relapsed into silence simply because he could think of nothing more to say, William became a pet dog that hazed the two lazy burros along with little nippings on their rumps, and saw to it that they did not stray too far from camp.

Casey strung into Searchlight one evening at dusk and camped on a little knoll behind the town hall, which was open beyond for grazing, and the village dogs were less likely to bother.  Searchlight was not on his way, but miles off to one side.  Casey made the detour because he had heard a good deal about the place and knew it as a favorite stamping ground of miners and prospectors who sought free gold.  Searchlight is primarily a gold camp, you see.  He wanted to hear a little more about Injun Jim.

But there had been a murder in Searchlight a dark night or so before his coming, and three suspects were being discussed and championed by their friends.  Searchlight was not in the mood for aimless gossip of Indians.  Killings had been monotonously frequent, but they usually had daylight and an audience to rob them of mystery.  A murder done on a dark night, in the black shadow of an empty dance hall, and accompanied by a piercing scream and the sound of running feet was vastly different.

Casey lingered half a day, bought a few more pounds of bacon and some matches and ten yards of satin ribbon in assorted colors and went his way.

I mention his stop at Searchlight so that those who demand exact geography will understand why Casey journeyed on to Vegas, tramped its hot sidewalks for half a day and then went on by way of Indian Spring to the Tippipah country and his destination.  He was following the beaten trail of miners, now that he was in Jim’s country, and he was gleaning a little information from every man he met.  Not altogether concerning Injun Jim, understand,—­ but local tidbits that might make him a welcome companion to the old buck when he met him.  Casey says you are not to believe story-writers who assume that an Indian is wrapped always in a blanket and inscrutable dignity.  He says an Indian is as great a gossip as any old woman, once you get him thawed to the talking point.  So he was filling his bag of tricks as he went along.

From Vegas there is what purports to be an automobile road across the desert to Round Butte, and Casey as he walked cursed his burros and William and sighed for his Ford.  He was four days traveling to Furnace Lake, which he had made in a matter of hours with his Ford when he first came to Starvation.