ou take no checks. Don't trust nobody for anything
whatever. That's your weakness, Casey, and you know it. You're too
dog-gone trusting. You promise me you'll put a bell on your tire tester
and a log chain and drag on your pump and jack--say, you wouldn't believe
the number of honest men that go off for a vacation and steal everything,
by golly, they can haul away! Pliers, wrenches, oil cans, tire testers--
say, you sure wanta watch 'em when they ask yuh for a tester! You can lose
more tire testers in the garage business--"

"Well, now, you watch Casey! When it comes to putting things like that
over, they wanta try somebody besides Casey Ryan. You ask anybody if
Casey's easy fooled. But I'd ruther go hunt the Injun Jim mine, Bill."

"Say, Casey, in this one summer you can make enough money in Patmos to
_buy_ a gold mine. I've been reading the papers pretty careful. Why, they
say tourist travel is the heaviest that ever was known, and this is early
May and it's only beginning. And lemme tell yuh something, Casey. I'd
ruther have a garage in Patmos than a hotel in Los Angeles, and by all
they say that's puttin' it strong. Ever been over the road west uh
Needles, Casey?"

Casey never had, and Bill proceeded to describe it so that any tourist who
ever blew out a tire there with the sun at a hundred and twenty and
running in high, would have confessed the limitations of his own
vocabulary.

"And there you are, high and dry, with fifteen miles of the ungodliest,
tire-chewinest road on either side of yuh that America can show. About
like this stretch down here between Rhyolite and Vegas. And hills and
chucks--say, don't talk to me about any Injun packin' gold in a lard
bucket. Why, lemme tell yuh, Casey, if you work it right and don't be so
dog-gone kind-hearted, you'll want a five-ton truck to haul off your
profits next fall. I'd go myself and let you run this place here, only I
got a lot of credit trade and you'd never git a cent outa the bunch. And
then you're wantin' to leave Lund for awhile, anyway."

"You could git somebody else," Casey suggested half-heartedly. "I kinda
hate to be hobbled to a place like a garage, Bill. And if there's anything
gits my goat, it's patchin' up old tires. I'll run 'em flat long as
they'll stay on, before I'll git out and mend 'em. I'd about as soon go to
jail, Bill, as patch tires for tourists; I--"

"You don't have to," said Bill, his grin widening. "You sell 'em new
tires, see. Ther