'em thinkin' you're honest but unlucky.

"So you 'n' me is pardners till I say when. We'll clean up some real
jack together. Minin' ain't in it, no more, with hootch runnin'--if
yuh play it right. The good old White Mule goes under the wire,
old-timer, an' takes the money. Burros is extinct."

"Burros ain't any extincter than what you'll be when I git through with
yuh," gritted Casey savagely, shutting off the gas. "Bill Masters can
like it or not--I'm goin' to lick the livin' tar outa you here an' now.
When I'm through with yuh, if you're able to wiggle the wheel, yuh can
take your load uh hootch an' go tahell! I'll hoof it down here to the
next station on the railroad an' ketch a ride back to L. A."

Kenner laughed. "An' what would I be doin', you poor nut? Set here
meek till yuh tell me to git out an' take a lickin'? Yuh feel that gun
proddin' yuh in the ribs, don't yuh? I can't help wonderin' how your
wife would feel towards you if you was found with a hole drilled
through your middle, an' a carload uh booze. That'd jar the faith of
the most believin' woman on earth. You take this cut-off road up here
an' drive till I tell yuh t' stop. As you may know, a man can't be
chickenhearted and peddle hootch--an' I'm called an expert. So you
think that over, Casey--an' drive purty, see?"

Casey drove as "purty" as was possible with a six-shooter pressed
irritatingly against his lowest floating rib; but he did not dwell upon
the spectacle of himself found dead with a carload of booze. He wished
to heaven he hadn't let the Little Woman talk him out of packing a gun,
and waited for his chance.

Young Kenner was thoughtful, brooding through the hours of darkness
with his head slightly bent and his eyes, so far as Casey could
determine, fixed steadily on the uneven trail where the headlights
revealed every rut, every stone, every chuck-hole. But Casey was not
deceived by that quiescence. The revolver barrel never once ceased its
pressure against his side, and he knew that young Kenner never for an
instant forgot that he was riding with Casey Ryan at the wheel, waiting
for a chance to kill him.

By daylight, such was Casey's driving, they were well down the highway
which leads to Needles and on through Arizona. Casey was just thinking
that they would soon run out of gas, and that he would then have a
fighting chance, when he was startled almost into believing that he had
spoken his plan.

"I told you there's a t