Even the water tank is a disappointment to the uninitiated. You cannot drink the water which the pump draws wheezingly up from some deep reservoir of bad flavors. It is very clear water and it has a sparkle that lures the unwary, but it is common knowledge that no man ever drank two swallows of it if he could help himself. So the water supply of Patmos lies twelve miles away in the edge of the hills, where there is a very good spring. One of the six male residents of Patmos hauls water in barrels, at fifty cents a barrel. He makes a living at it, too.
One other male resident keeps the lodging place,—I avoid the term lodging house, because this place is not a house. It is a shack with a sign straddling out over the hot porch to insult the credulity of the passers-by. The sign says that this place is “The Oasis,”—and the nearest trees a long rifleshot away, and the coolest water going warm into parched mouths!
The Oasis stands over by the highway, alongside Casey’s garage, and the proprietor spends nine tenths of his waking hours sitting on the front porch and following the strip of shade from the west end to the east end, and in watching the trains go by, and counting the cars of tourists and remarking upon the State license plate.
“There’s an outfit from Ioway, maw,” he will call in to his wife. “Wonder where they’re headed fer?” His wife will come to the door and look apathetically at the receding dust cloud, and go back somewhere,—perhaps to put fresh soap in the tents to melt. Toward evening the cars are very likely to slow down and stop reluctantly; sunburned, goggled women and men looking the place over without enthusiasm. It isn’t much of a place, to be sure, but any place is better than none in the desert, unless you have your own bed and frying pan with you, roped in dusty canvas to the back of your car.
Alongside the Oasis stands the garage, and in the garage swelters Casey,—during this episode. Just at first Bill came down from Lund and helped him to arrange and mark prices on his stock of tires and “parts” and accessories, and to remember the catalogue names for things so that he would recognize them when a car owner asked for them.
Casey, I must explain, had evolved a system of his own while driving his Ford wickedly here and there to the consternation of his fellow men. Whatever was not a hootin’-annie was a dingbat, and treated accordingly. The hootin’-annie appeared to be the thing that went wrong, while the dingbat was the thing the hootin’-annie was attached to. It was perfectly simple, to Casey and his Ford, but Bill thought it was a trifle limited and was apt to confuse customers. So Bill remained three days mopping his face with his handkerchief and explaining things to Casey. After that Casey hired a heavy-eyed young Mexican to pump tires and fill radiators and the like, and settled down to make his fortune.
Chapter X
Cars came and cars went, in heat and dust and some tribulation. In a month Casey had seen the color of every State license plate in the Union, and some from Canada and Mexico. From Needles way they came, searching their souls for words to tell Casey what they thought of it as far as they had gone. And Casey would squint up at them from under the rim of his greasy old Stetson and grin his Irish grin.
“Cheer up, the worst is yet to come,” he would chant, with never a qualm at the staleness of the slogan. “How yuh fixed for water? Better fill up your canteens—yuh don’t wanta git caught out between here and Ludlow with a boilin’ radiator and not water enough. Got oil enough? Juan, you look and see. Can’t afford to run low on oil, stranger. No, ma’am, there ain’t any other road—and if there was another road it’d be worse than what this one is. No, ma’am, you ain’t liable to git off’n the road. You can’t. You’d git stuck in the sand ‘fore you’d went the length of your car.”
He would walk around them and look at their tires, his hands on his hips perhaps and his mouth damped shut in deep cogitation.
“What kinda shape is your extras in?” he would presently inquire. “She’s a tough one, from here on to the next stop. You got a hind tire here that ain’t goin’ to last yuh five miles up the road.” He would kick the tire whose character he was blackening. “Better lay in a supply of blow-out patches, unless you’re a mind to invest in a new casing.” Very often he would sell a tire or two, complete with new tubes, before the car moved on.
Casey never did things halfway, and Bill had impressed certain things deep on his mind. He was working with Bill’s money and he obeyed Bill’s commands. He never took a check or a promise for his pay, and he never once let his Irish temper get beyond his teeth or his blackened finger tips. Which is doing remarkably well for Casey Ryan, as you would admit if you knew him.
At the last moment, when the driver was settling himself behind the wheel, Casey would square his conscience for whatever strain the demands of business had put upon it. “Wait and take a good drink uh cold water before yuh start out,” he would say, and disappear. He knew that the car wouldwait. The man or woman never lived who refused a drink of cold water on the desert in summer. Casey would return with a pale green glass water pitcher and a pale green glass. He would grin at their exclamations, and pour for them water that was actually cold and came from the coolest water bag inside. Those of you who have never traveled across the desert will not really understand the effect this would have. Those who have will know exactly what was said of Casey as that car moved out once more into the glaring sun and the hot wind and the choking dust.
Casey always kept one cold water bag and one in process of cooling, and he would charge as much as he thought they would pay and be called a fine fellow afterwards. He knew that. He had lived in dry, hot places before, and he was conscientiously trying to please the public and also make money for Bill, who had befriended him. You are not to jump to the conclusion, however, that Casey systematically robbed the public. He did not. He aided the public, helped the public across a rather bad stretch of country, and saw to it that the public paid for the assistance.
Casey saw all sorts and sizes of cars pass to and fro, and most of them stopped at his door, for gas or for water or oil, or perhaps merely to inquire inanely if they were on the right road to Needles or to Los Angeles, as the case might be. Any fool, thought Casey, would know without asking, since there was no other road, and since the one road was signed conscientiously every mile or two. But he always grinned good-naturedly and told them what they wanted him to tell them, and if they shifted money into his palm for any reason whatever he brought out his green glass pitcher and his green glass tumbler and gave them a drink all around and wished them luck.
There were strip-down Fords that tried to look like sixes, and there were six-cylinder cars that labored harder than Fords. There were limousines, sedans, sport cars,—and they all carried suitcases and canvas rolls and bundles draped over the hoods, on the fenders and piled high on the running boards.
Sometimes he would find it necessary to remove a thousand pounds or so of ill-wrapped bedding from the back of a tonneau before he could get at the gas tank to fill it, but Casey never grumbled. He merely retied the luggage with a packer’s hitch that would take the greenhorn through his whole vocabulary before he untied it that night, and he would add two bits to the price of the gas because his time belonged to Bill, and Bill expected Casey’s time to be paid for by the public.
One day when it was so hot that even Casey was limp and pale from the heat, and the proprietor of the Oasis had forsaken the strip of shade