You Ask Anybody

Tumultuous “Casey” Ryan had driven horses since he could stand on his toes, and as one of Nevada’s last stage-drivers speed was his middle name. Wherefore the ubiquitous Ford finally claimed him for its own—and so did The Widow at Lucky Lode Mine. A combination prolific of complications. You will be glad to continue Casey’s acquaintance in future numbers.

From Denver to Spokane, from El Paso to Butte, men talk of “Casey” Ryan and smile as they speak his name. Bearded men with the flat tone of age in their voices will suck pipes and cackle reminiscently while they tell you of Casey’s tumultuous youth—time when he drove the fastest six horses in Colorado to the stage line out from Cripple Creek, and whooped past would-be holdups with a grin of derision on his lips and bullets whining after him, and his passengers praying and clinging white-knuckled to the seats.

Once a flat-chested, lank man climbed out at the stage station below the mountain and met Casey coming off the box with whip and six reins in his hand.

“Sa-ay! Next time that gang starts in to hold up the stage, by gosh, you stop! I’d ruther be shot than pitched off into a cañon som’eres.”

Casey paused and looked at him, and spat and grinned. “You’re here, ain’t yuh?” he retorted finally. “You ain’t shot, and you ain’t laying in no cañon. Any time a man gets shot outa Casey’s stage, it’ll be because he jumps out and waits for the bullet to ketch up.”

The lank man snorted and reached under his coat tail for the solacing, plug of chewing tobacco. “Why, hell, man, you come down around that hairpin turn, up there, on two wheels!” he complained.

Casey grunted and turned away uninterested. “I’ve done it on one,” he belittled the achievement. “The leaders wasn’t runnin’ good, to-day. That nigh one’s tenderfooted. I gotta see about havin’ him shod before the next trip.” He started off, then paused to fling reassurance over his shoulder. “Don’t you never worry none about Casey’s driving. Casey can drive. You ask anybody.”

Well, that was Casey’s youth. Part of it. The rest was made up of reckless play, fighting for the sheer love of action, love that never left a scar across his memory and friendships that laughed at him, laughed with him, and endured to the end. Along the years behind him he left a straggling procession of men, women, and events, that linked themselves reminiscently in the memory of those who knew him. “Remember the time Casey licked that Swede foreman up at Gold Gap?” one would say. “Remember that little girl Casey sent back to her folks in Vermont—and had to borrow the money to pay her fare, and then borrow the money to play poker to win the money to pay back what he borrowed in the first place? Borrowed a hundred dollars from Ed Blair, and then borrowed another hundred off Ed the next day and boned Ed to set into a game with him, and won the money off Ed to pay Ed back. That’s Casey for yuh!”

As for the events, they were many and they had the Casey flavor, every one of them. A few I should like to tell you, and I’m going to begin with one which shows how Casey was born an optimist and never let life get the better of him, no matter what new wallop it invented.

From the days when his daily drives were apt to be interrupted by holdups—and once by a grizzly that rose up in front of his leaders on a sharp turn and all but made an end of Casey and his record for shaving death close and never drawing blood—Casey drifted from mountain to desert, from desert to plain, blithely meeting hard luck face to face and giving it good day as if it were a friend. That was the remarkable trait which Casey possessed. Nothing downed him, because he never seemed to know when he was whipped, but thought it merely an incident of the game. Cheerfulness was in the bones of him—though he had a temper as Irish as his name.

So, in time, it happened that Casey was driving stage from Pinnacle down to Lund and making boast that his four horses could beat any automobile that ever infested the trail. Infest was the word Casey would have used often had he known the dictionary contained it. Having been deprived of much knowledge of books, but having a facile imagination and some creative ability, Casey invented words of his own and applied them lavishly to all automobiles and, in particular and emphatically, he applied the spiciest ones to Fords.