her. Casey's hands went to
his hips, and the muscles along his jaw hardened into lumps. He spat
into the dirt of the cellar floor.

"Water!" He snorted disgustedly. "Casey Ryan with the devil an' all
scart outa him, thinkin' he had ownership of a load uh booze an' hop
sufficient t' hang 'im!" His hand slid into his trousers pocket,
reaching for the comforting plug of tobacco. "Stuck up an' robbed is
what happens t' Casey. You can ask anybody if it ain't highway
robbery!"

Nolan stopped whistling under his breath. "There's the Ford," he
reminded Casey comfortingly.

"Which I wisht it wasn't!" snarled Casey. "You know yourself, Mr.
Nolan, it's likely stole, an' the first man I meet in the trail'll
likely take it off me, claimin' it's his'n!"

Mack Nolan started whistling again, but checked himself abruptly.
"Well, our trap's wanting bait, I see. This leaves me still hunting
the White Mule."

"Aw, tahell with your White Mule! Tahell with everything!" Casey
kicked the nearest keg viciously and went out into the sunshine,
swearing to himself.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

In the shade of a juniper that grew on the highest point of the gulch's
rim, Mack Nolan lay sprawled on the flat of his back, one arm for a
pillow, and stared up into the serene blue of the sky with cottony
flakes of cloud swimming steadily to the northeast. Three feet away,
Casey Ryan rested on left hip and elbow and stared glumly down upon the
cabin directly beneath them. Whenever his pale, straight-lidded eyes
focussed upon the dusty top of the Ford car standing in front of the
cabin, Casey said something under his breath. Miles away to the
south, pale violet, dreamlike in the distance, the jagged outline of a
small mountain range stood as if painted upon the horizon. A wavy
ribbon of smudgy brown was drawn uncertainly across the base of the
mountains. This, Casey knew, when his eyes lifted to look that way,
marked the line of the Sante Fe and a train moving heavily upgrade to
the west.

Toward it dipped the smooth stretch of barren mesa cut straight down
the middle with a yellow line that was the highway up which Casey had
driven the morning before. The inimitable magic of distance and high
desert air veiled greasewood, sage and sand with the glamour of
unreality. The mountains beyond, unspeakably desolate and forbidding
at close range, and the little black buttes standing afar, off--small
spewings of age-old volcanos dead before