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Casey Ryan
The Project Gutenberg eBook, Casey Ryan, by B. M. Bower
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Title: Casey Ryan
Author: B. M. Bower
Release Date: June 2, 2004 [eBook #12495]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CASEY RYAN***
E-text prepared by Suzanne Shell, Project Gutenberg Beginners Projects, Charles M. Bidwell, and the Project Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team
CASEY RYAN
BY
B. M. BOWER
Author of "Chip of the Flying U", "Rim O' the World", "Cow-Country", etc.
1921
[Illustration: Casey reached for his pocket, and the white man also reached for his. FRONTISPIECE. See page 237.]
CHAPTER I
From Denver to Spokane, from El Paso to Fort Benton, men talk of Casey Ryan and smile when they speak his name. Old men with the flat tone of coming senility in their voices will suck at their pipes and cackle reminiscently while they tell you of Casey's tumultuous youth--when he drove the six fastest horses in Colorado on the stage out from Cripple Creek, and whooped past would-be holdups with a grin of derision on his face and bullets whining after him and passengers praying disjointed prayers and clinging white-knuckled to the seats.
They say that once a flat, lanky man climbed bareheaded out at the stage station below the mountain and met Casey coming springily off the box with whip and six reins in his hand. The lanky man was stil