burros, and what you can learn a burro you can learn a Ford, take time
enough."

Taking that point of view and keeping it, Casey managed very well.
Whenever anything went wrong that his vocabulary and a monkey wrench could
not mend, Casey sat down on the shadiest running board and conned the
Instruction Book which Bill handed him at the last minute. Other times he
treated the Ford exactly as he would treat a burro, with satisfactory
results.




CHAPTER III


Away out on the high mesas that are much like the desert below, except
that the nights are cool and the wind is not fanned out of a furnace,
Casey fought sand and brush and rocks and found a trail now and then which
he followed thankfully, and so came at last to a short range of mountains
whose name matched well their inhospitable stare. The Starvation Mountains
had always been reputed rich in mineral and malevolent in their attitude
toward man and beast. Even the Joshua trees stood afar off and lifted
grotesque arms defensively against them. But Casey was not easily daunted,
and eerie places held for him no meaning save the purely material one. If
he could find water and the rich vein of ore some one had told him was
there, then Casey would be happy in spite of snakes, tarantulas and
sinister stories of the place.

Water he found, not too far up a gulch. So he pitched his tent within