You can ask anybody if it ain't." Mack Nolan laughed and slapped Casey unexpectedly on the shoulder.
"You're a man after my own heart, Casey Ryan," he declared enigmatically.

"I'll stick to you and take a chance.

Darn the mules! Somebody will find them and look after them until I show up." Casey's spirits, as he admitted to himself, were rising and falling like the hammer of a pile driver; and like the pile driver, the hammer was driving him deeper and deeper into hopelessness.

He would have given an ear to know for certain whether Mack Nolan were as innocent and friendly as he seemed.

Until he did know, Casey could see nothing before him but to wait his chance to give Nolan the slip.
Sitting cross-legged in the glow of the campfire after supper, with a huge pattern of stars drawn over the purple night sky, Casey pulled out the old pipe with which he had solaced many an evening and stuffed it thoughtfully with tobacco.