which he could extricate himself and be pleased if he
kept his shirt on his back; Casey Ryan as the owner of a garage might
justly be considered a joke pushed to the very limit of plausibility. Yet
Casey Ryan became just that after two weeks of cramming on mechanics and
the compiling of a reference book which would have made a fortune for
himself and Bill if they had thought to publish it.

"A quort of oil becomes lubrecant and is worth from five to fifteen cents
more per quort when you put it into a two-thousand dollar car or over,"
was one valuable bit of information supplied by Bill. Also: "Never cuss or
fight a man getting work done in your place. Shut up and charge him
according to the way he acts."

It is safe to assume that Bill would make a fortune in the garage business
anywhere, given normal traffic.

Patmos consists of a water tank on the railroad, a siding where trains can
pass each other, a ten-by-ten depot, telegraph office and express and
freight office, six sweltering families, one sunbaked lodging place with
tent bedrooms so hot that even the soap melts, and the Casey Ryan garage.
I forgot to mention three trees which stand beside the water tank and try
to grow enough at night to make up for the blistering they get during the
day. The highway (Coast to Coast and signed at every crossroads in red
letters on white metal boards with red arrows pointing to the far skyline)
shies away from the railroad at Patmos so that perspiring travelers look
wistfully across two hundred yards or so of lava rock and sand and wish
that they might lie under those three trees and cool off. They couldn't,
you know. It is no cooler under the trees than elsewhere. It merely looks
cooler.

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 th