Ryan, Casey (Fictitious character) -- Fiction; Western stories
I admit that an odd, prickly sensation at the base of my scalp annoyed me
while I watched this fire race up the slope and leave no red trail behind
it. Then it disappeared, blinked out again. I opened my mouth to call
Casey's attention to it--though I felt that he was watching it with that
steady, squinting stare of his that never seems to wink or waver for a
second--but there it was again, come to a stop just under the crest of the
mountain where the white slide was topped by a black rim capped with
bleak, bare rock like a crude skullcap on Tippipah. The fire flared,
dimmed, burned bright again, as though some one had piled on dry brush. I
caught up the glasses and watched the light for a full minute. They were
good glasses,--I ought to have seen the flicker of flames; but I did not.
Just the reddish yellow glow and no more.
"Must be fox fire," I said, feeling impatient because that did not satisfy
me at all, but having no other explanation that I could think of handy.
"I've seen wonderful exhibitions of it in low, swampy ground--"
Casey spat into the dark. "I never heard of nobody boggin' down, up there
on Tippipah." He put his cold pipe in his mouth, removed it and gestured
with it toward the light. "I've seen jack-o'-lanterns myself. You know
darn well that ain't it; not up on them rocks, dry as a bone. A minute ago
you said it was lightnin' burnin' a yucca. Why don't yuh come out in the
open, an' say you don't _know_? Mebby you'll come closer to believin' what
I told yuh about that devil's lantern I follered. He's lit another one--
kinda hopin' we'll be fool enough to fall for it. You come inside where
yuh can't watch it. That's what does the damage--watchin' and wonderin'
and then goin' to see. I bet you wanta strike out right now and see just
what it is."
I didn't admit it, but Casey had guessed exactly what was in my mind. I
was itching with curiosity and trying to ignore the creepiness of it.
Casey went into the tent and lighted the candle and proceeded to unlace
his high hiking boots. "You come on in and go to bed. Don't yuh pay no
attention to that light--that's what the Old Boy plays for first, every
time; workin' your curiosity up. You ask anybody. He played me fer a
sucker and I told yuh about it, and yuh thought Casey was stringin' yuh.
Well, I can take a joke from the devil himself and never let out a yip--
but once is enough for Casey! I'm goin' to bed. Let him set out there and
hold his darn lantern and be damned; he ain't going to make nothin' off'n
Casey Ryan this time. You can ask anybody if Casey Ryan bites twice on the
same hook."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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