"Hey! You stay right where y'are! I gotta deliver yuh up to the Bluebird
in a minute."

There were chatterings and gesticulations in the tonneau. Out of the
gabble a shrill voice rose be-seechingly in English. "We will _walk_,
meester'. If you _pleese_, meester! We are 'fraid for ride wit' dees
may_chine_, meester!"

Casey was nettled by the cackling and the thigh-slapping of the audience
on the sidewalk. He reached for his stage whip, and missing it used his
ready Irish fists. So the Bohunks crawled unhappily back into the car and
subsided shivering and with tears in their eyes.

"Dammit, when I take on passengers to ride, they're goin' to _ride_ till
they git there. You shut up, back there!"

A friend of Casey's stepped forward and cranked the machine, and Casey
pulled down the gas lever until the motor howled, turned in the shortest
possible radius and went lunging up the crooked steep trail to the
Bluebird mine on top of the hill, his engine racing and screaming in low.

Thereafter Pinnacle and Lund had a new standard by which to measure the
courage of a man. Had he made the trip with Casey Ryan and his new Ford?
He _had_? By golly, he sure had nerve. One man passed the peak for sheer
bravery and rode twice with Casey, but certain others were inclined to
disparage the feat, on the ground that on the second trip he was drunk.

Casey did not like that. He admitted that he was a hard driver; he had
always been proud because men called him the hardest driver in the West.