"Ryan," he said abruptly, "you're square and I know it.-The very nature of my business makes me cautious about trusting men--but I'm going to trust you."-He stopped again, taking great pains with the point of a triangle he was drawing.
Casey knocked the ashes out of his pipe against a rock.-"Puttin' it that way, Mr. Nolan, the man's yet to live that Casey Ryan ever double-crossed.-Cops I got no use for; nor yet bootleggers.
Whether I got any use for you, Mr. Nolan, I can say better when I've heard yuh out.-A goat I've been for the last time.-But I'm willin' to HEAR yuh out--and that there's more'n what I'd uh said this morning."
"And that's fair enough, Ryan.-If you jumped into things with your eyes shut, I don't think I'd want you with me."
Casey squirmed, remembering certain times when he had gone too headlong into things.
"I'm going to ask you, Ryan, to tell me the whole story of this car and its load of whisky.-Before you do that, I'll tell you this much to show good faith and prove to you how much I trust you: I'm an officer, and my special work right now is to clean up a gang of bootleggers and the crooked officers who are protecting them. What I know about your case leads me to believe that you've run afoul of them and that you're the man I've been looking for that can help me set a trap for them.-Would you like to do that?"
"If it's that bunch you're after, Mr. Nolan, I'd ruther land 'em in jail than to find a ledge of solid gold ten feet thick an' a mile long.-One thing I'd like to know first.-Are yuh or ain't yuh huntin' mules?"
Mack Nolan laughed.-"I am, yes.-But the mule I'm hunting is white!"
Casey studied that until he had the fresh pipeful of tobacco going well.-Then he looked up and grinned understandingly.
"So it's White Mule you're trailin'."-He kicked a stub of greasewood branch back into the flames and laughed.-"Well, the tracks is deep an' plenty, and if that's the trail you're takin', I'm with yuh. You ain't a cop--leastways you don't spread your arms every time you turn around.-Gosh, I hate them wing-floppin' kind!-They's one thing an' one only that I hate worse--an' that's bootleggers an' moonshiners.-If you got a scheme to give them cusses their needin's, you can ask anybody if Casey Ryan ain't the feller you can bank on."
"Yes.-That's what I've been thinking.-Now, I wish you'd tell me exactly what you've been up against.-Don't leave out anything, however trivial it might seem to you."
Wherefore, Casey sat with the firelight flickering across his seamed, Irish face and told the story of his wrongs.-Trivial details Nolan had asked for--and he got them with the full Casey Ryan flavor. Even the old woman who rocked, Casey pictured--from his particular angle.-Mack Nolan sat up and listened, his eyes steady and his mouth, that had curved to laughter many times during the recital, once more firm and somewhat pitiless when Casey finished.
"This Smiling Lou; you'd know him again, of course?"
"Know him!-Say, I'd know him after he'd fried a week in hell!"
Casey's tone left no doubt of his meaning.
"And I suppose you could tell this man Kenner a mile off and around a corner.-Now, I'll tell you what I want you to do, Casey.-This may jar you a little--until I explain.-I want you--"Mack Nolan paused, his lips twitching in a faint smile--"to do a little bootlegging yourself."
"Yuh--WHAT?" In the firelight Casey's eyes were seen to bulge.
"I want you to bootleg this whisky you've got in the car."
Nolan's eyes twinkled.-"I want you to go back and peddle this booze, and I want you to do it so that Smiling Lou or one of his bunch will hold you up and highjack you.-Do you see what I mean?
You don't--so I'll tell you.-We'll put it in marked bottles.-I have the bottles and the seals and labels for every brand of liquor to be had in the country to-day.-With marked money and marked bottles, we ought to be able to get the goods on that gang."
Casey thought of something quite suddenly and held out an imperative, pointing finger.
"There's something else that feller told me was in the car!" he cried agitatedly.-"He said he had forty pints of French champagne cached in a false bottom under the front seat.-And he said the front cushion had a blind pocket around the edges that was full uh dope.-Hop, he called it."
Mack Nolan whistled under his breath.
"And he turned the whole outfit over to you for sixteen hundred dollars or so?"-He stared thoughtfully into the fire.-Abruptly he looked at Casey.
"What the deuce had you done to him, Ryan?" he asked, with a quizzical intentness.-"He must have been scared stiff, to let go of all that stuff for sixteen hundred.-Why, man, the 'junk'-- that's dope--alone must be worth more than that.-And the champagne --forty pints, you say?-He ought to get twenty dollars a pint for that.-Figure it yourself.-I hope," he added seriously, "the fellow wasn't too scared to show up again."
"Well," Casey said grimly, "I dunno how scart he is--but he knows darn' well I'll kill 'im. I told im I would."
Again Mack Nolan laughed.-"Catching's much better than killing, Ryan.-It hurts a man worse, and it lasts a heap longer.-What do you say to turning in?-To-morrow we'll have a full day at my private bottling works."
They moved their cooking outfit down near the Ford for safety's sake. While it was wholly improbable that the car would be robbed in the night, Mack Nolan was a man who took as few chances as possible. It happened that the excavation Casey had so hopefully made that morning formed a convenient level for their bed; wherefore they spread it there, talking in low tones of their plans until they went to sleep.
