She seemed a wise woman, after a fashion.
Casey drove back to his camp at Starvation Mountain happy and a little scared.

Why, after all these years of careless freedom, he should precipitate himself into matrimony with a woman he had known casually for two days puzzled him a little.
"Well, a man gits to feelin' like he wants to settle down when he's crowdin' fifty," he explained his recklessness to the Ford as it hummed away over Furnace Lake which was flat as a floor and dry as a bleached bone,--and much the same color.

"Any man feels the want of a home as he gits older.

And Casey's the man that will try anything once, you ask anybody." He took out his pipe, looked at it, bethought himself of his promise and put it away again, substituting a chew of tobacco as large as his cheek would hold without prying his mouth open.

"G'long, there--can't you?
You got your belly full of oil--shake a wheel and show you're alive." After that, Casey spent every Sunday at Lucky Lode.