Battering rain woke Casey some hours later and drove him to the shelter of the Ford.-Thunder and lightning came with the rain, and a bellowing wind that rocked the car and threatened once or twice to overturn it.-With some trouble Casey managed to button down the curtains and sat huddled on the front seat, watching through a streaming windshield the buffeted wilderness.-He was glad he had not unloaded his outfit; gladder still that the storm had not struck which he was traveling.-Down the trail toward him a small river galloped, washing deep gullies where the wheels of his car offered obstruction to its boisterousness.
"She's a tough one," grinned Casey, in spite of the chattering of his teeth.-"Looks like all the water in the world is bein' poured down this pass.-Keeps on, I'll have to gouge out a couple of Joshuays an' turn the old Ford into a boat--but Casey'll keep agoin'!"
Until inky dark it rained like the deluge.-Casey remained perched in his one-man ark and tried hard to enjoy himself and his hard-won freedom.-He stabbed open a can of condensed milk, poured it into a cup, and drank it and ate what was left of his breakfast bannock, which he had fortunately put away in the car out of the reach of a hill of industrious red ants.
He thought vaguely of cranking the car and going on, but gave up the notion.-One sidehill, he decided, was as good as another sidehill for the present.
That night Casey slept fitfully in the car and discovered that even a wall bed in a despised apartment house may be more comfortable than the front seat of a Ford.-His bones ached by morning, and he was hungry enough to eat raw bacon and relish it.
But the sun was fighting through the piled clouds and shone cheerfully upon the draggled pass, and Casey boiled coffee and fried bacon and bannock beside the trail, and for a little while was happy again.
From breakfast until noon he was busy as a beaver repairing the washout beneath the car and on to the top of the hill. She was going to have to get down and dig in her toes to make it, he told the Ford, when at last he heaved pick and shovel into the tonneau, packed in his cooking outfit and made ready to crank up.
From then until supper time he wore a trail around the car, looking to see what was wrong and why he could not crank.-He removed hootin'-annies and dingbats (using Casey's mechanical terms) looked them over dissatisfiedly, and put them back without having done them ny good whatever.-Sometimes they were returned to a different place, I imagine, since I know too well how impartial Casey is with the mechanical parts of a Ford.
He made camp there that night, pitching his little tent in the trail for pure cussedness, and defying aloud a traveling world to make him move until he got good and ready.-He might have saved his vocabulary, for the road was impassable before him and behind; and had Casey managed to start the car, he could not have driven a mile in either direction.
Since he did not know that, the next day he painstakingly cleaned the spark plugs and tried again to crank the Ford; couldn't, and removed more hootin'-annies and dingbats than he had touched the day before.-That night he once more pitched his tent in the trail, hoping in his heart that some one would drive along and dispute his right to camp there; when he would lick the doggone cuss.
