e won't be one in a dozen you can't talk into a new tire
or two. Whichever way they're goin', tell 'em the road's a heap worse from
there on than what it was behind 'em. They'll buy new tires--you take it
from me they will. And," he added virtuously, "you'll do 'em no harm
whatever. If you got a car, you need tires, and a new one'll always come
in handy sometime. You know that yourself, Casey.

"Now, I'll put in an assortment of tires, and I'll trust you to sell 'em.
You and the road they got to travel. Why, when I was in Ludlow, a feller
blew in there with a big brute of a car--36-6 tires. He'd had a blow-out
down the other side of Patmos and he was sore because they didn't have no
tires he could use down there. He bought three tires--_three,_ mind yuh,
and peeled off the bills to pay for 'em! Sa-ay when yuh figure two hundred
cars a day rollin' through, and half of 'em comin' to yuh with grief of
some kind--"

"It's darn little I know about any car but a Ford," Casey admitted
plaintively. "When yuh come to them complicated ones that you can crawl
behind the wheel and set your boot on a button and holler giddap and
she'll start off in a lope, I don't know about it. A Ford's like a mule or
a burro. You take a monkey wrench and work 'em over, and cuss, and that's
about all there is to it. But you take them others, and I got to admit I
don't know."

"Well," said Bill, and spat reflectively, "you roll up your sleeves and
I'll learn yuh. It'll take time for the stuff to be delivered, and you can
learn a lot in two or three weeks, Casey, if you fergit that prospectin'
idea and put your mind to it."

Casey rolled a cigarette and smoked half of it, his eyes clinging
pensively to the barren hills behind Lund. He hunched his shoulders,
looked at Bill and grinned reluctantly.

"She's a go with me, Bill, if you can't think of no other way to spend
money. I wisht you took to poker more, or minin', or something that's got
action. Stakin' Casey Ryan to a garage business looks kinda foolish to me.
But if you can stand it, Bill, I can. It's kinda hard on the tourists,
don't yuh think?"

Thus are garages born,--too many of them, as suffering drivers will
testify. Casey Ryan, known wherever men of the open travel and spin their
yarns, famous for his recklessly efficient driving of lurching
stagecoaches in the old days, and for his soft heart and his
happy-go-lucky ways; famous too as the man who invented ungodly
predicaments from