California Gold (35 page)

The work paid $3 a day because it was mindless, filthy, and lonely. A few coarse whores hung around Asphalto, but even they expressed distaste for the smelly, sticky miners. In the dark of the bunk tents, men made love to each other. Mack often lay awake, forearm on his forehead, hand clenched, listening, longing for Nellie, struggling against the urges of a young man’s body.

A new man came to work, a man of intimidating bulk. He wore a wide belt with a studded buckle and he often used it as a weapon, so others called him Strap. One night, outside the bunk tent, Mack found Strap Vigory grappling with one of the scraper boys, a timid lad named Homer.

“Look, Vigory, leave the boy alone,” Mack said.

“You interferin’ with a man’s pleasure?” Vigory said, touching his studded buckle.

“Never. So long as it’s Homer’s pleasure too. Doesn’t appear that it is. Homer, scoot out of here.”

“Yeah, Homer, I see you later. This gent an’ me, we got business.”

Mack and Strap Vigory squared off, buck naked, in a ring of miners excitedly making bets. Strap used his belt while Mack fought bare-knuckled. Strap lashed him and flayed him around the head and shoulders, drawing blood, but Mack waded in, and in ten minutes his deft punching wore through the bigger man’s defenses and put him down. The fourth time Strap fell, he didn’t get up. Mack left him snorting and thrashing.

Next morning, in the wagon stable where he quartered Railroad, Mack found the mule lying motionless—bludgeoned to death by some kind of blunt instrument. Strap Vigory had already disappeared. Deciding he’d had a bellyful of Asphalto, Mack quit at the end of that week.

By early autumn he was back in Santa Paula. It was a small place, about three hundred in the permanent population, but that was swelled by a constantly changing troupe of wildcatters, roughnecks, gamblers, and other parasites who fed on the oilmen. There were also some characters with no discernible reason for their presence unless it was a desire to hide out from civilization, and maybe the law. A lot of the transients lived in tents or packing-box hovels, which lent the town an even more temporary air. Santa Paula’s rough element boasted that they had a saloon for every seven families. Shootings were a common occurrence.

Mack signed on as a roughneck with Hardison & Stewart Oil, which soon was to merge with two others, Sespe Canyon Oil and Torrey Canyon Oil, into a larger and stronger firm called Union. With some of his wages Mack finally bought a pistol, a secondhand Model ’73 Peacemaker Colt, six-shot, .45-caliber. It was a popular frontier weapon, simple and well built, with walnut stocks and a blued finish. Mack chose the more citified snub-nosed version, the so-called Shopkeeper’s model. He packed it in a holster riding behind him, at the top of his right buttock.

Hardison & Stewart sent him to a crew working in the hills north of the river. On the fourth day of spudding in a new well, the bit cocked in the hole and couldn’t be dislodged. Mack volunteered to go down after it, not out of any bravado, but to see whether human strength could solve such a problem. The lost bit, which roughnecks called the fish, was stuck at a depth of 245 feet.

Mack stripped off his shirt. They tied a hemp line under his arms—he stuffed rags into his armpits first—and after lowering a lantern to be sure there was breathable air, he stepped into the narrow hole.

Down he went in the dark, suspended on the sand line from the sand reel. The sand line normally lowered the bailer that brought out the slurry of rock broken up by the drilling tool, which worked on a separate line. Very shortly, Mack regretted volunteering. He could hardly move in the well, its diameter roughly 2 feet. About 150 feet of heavy sheet-iron casing had been put in, and it scraped his shoulders till they bled. The air grew heavy, rank, almost impossible to breathe. Down he went, and down, until the light above no longer revealed his own hands in front of his face. The sense of confinement, of being buried alive in a small grave, worsened every moment.

Finally he was just above the jammed tool. He had no room to bend and reach it with his hands but could only draw his legs up slightly, then kick. He kicked for ten minutes, sweat pouring over his face. He thought he would die from lack of air. Finally he raised one hand to yank the line and signal the crew to pull him up. He didn’t like being defeated but it seemed impossible to free the tool. He vented his disgust in one last clumsy kick.

The tool dislodged from the slate ridge where it had stuck. Mack gasped—he was ready to faint—and yanked hard on the line. The steam engine rewound the hemp line on the sand wheel. He was brought up into the sunlight a hero.

The firm’s senior partner, Lyman Stewart, personally rewarded him with two tours off, at full pay; cable tool drills were expensive items.

Stewart was about fifty, a small-boned, natty man with a beard, pince-nez, and the demeanor of a Presbyterian deacon. He walked among the foul-mouthed roughnecks like a schoolmaster among rowdy but promising pupils. Stewart was currently raising money to build a new chapel in Santa Paula.

At the end of a little speech of commendation, Stewart said, “Be prudent with the extra money, Chance. To squander it on drinking or chewing is to play the Devil’s game.” A good Presbyterian, all right.

Mack’s trip down the hole earned him a reputation in Santa Paula. Another wildcatter sought him out, a man with offices in a crude one-story wood box of a building located directly across the main street from the crude one-story wood box Stewart and his partner shared with Mission Transfer, a pipeline company.

Jason Preston Danvers, a Pennsylvanian, headed Keystone Oil. The company had leases up in the foothills, but no producing wells so far. Danvers was a heavy man with large spectacles, a high pompadour, and an air of being oppressed, and depressed, by circumstance. Like Enrique Potter, he kept a photograph of his family on his desk. Mack counted eight children, the oldest but ten or eleven.

“Thank you, Mr. Danvers, but I’ve got a job like that,” Mack said after he heard the man’s offer.

Jace Danvers sighed. Another defeat. “What is it you want, then?”

“To learn more about the business. I figure the only way I can do that is to move up to tool dresser.” A tool dresser was number two on a two-man drill crew, responsible for sharpening the tools to the required diameter and keeping them sharp at the derrick forge. A tool dresser also did whatever else the driller told him to do.

“Oil is something that interests you? I mean, as more than temporary work?”

Mack nodded. “But I’ve got to be honest. I don’t know much about petroleum geology.”

“Hell, neither do nine tenths of the men punching holes around here. What good would it do? The surface signs, the standing pools, aren’t reliable. You’d think oil up above would mean oil right below, but no. The strata are tilted every which way. You can’t pierce them straight and clean, the way you can in Pennsylvania. Even if you get the crude out, it’s inferior. Paraffin content’s low …California lubricating oils and axle grease flow like water. The key is refining—better refining. I’ve discussed that with Stewart. He’s working on it.”

“I appreciate that there are problems, but—”

“You can’t imagine how many,” Danvers interrupted. “One of the biggest is the railroad.”

“Then I’ll learn about those too, when I get the right kind of job.”

He sat waiting, sensing that Danvers could be prodded. Presently Danvers shot him a look from under his dour brow.

“I have a new driller working up in Salt Marsh Canyon. Derrick’s just being built. He might take you on.”

“As a tool dresser? Four dollars a day? That’s standard—”

“Chance, I’m hard-pressed for cash.”

“If I do the work, I want the pay.”

“All right, all right,” Danvers said wearily. “You’ve got a good reputation. I’ll hire you if the driller says yes. Go see him. I’ll write the directions.”

He rummaged for paper on a desk overflowing with it, in the process knocking a stack off the edge. “God, sometimes I wonder why I stay in this rotten business.”

Out in Salt Marsh Canyon, the derrick floor was down and the rig-building crew was dragging four peeled tree trunks from a wagon. The logs would be the lower legs of the derrick.

“Where’s the boss?” Mack asked one of the rig men. He was referred to a tall, lank, homely fellow in his mid-to-late thirties, with a long, strong-looking jaw and crinkly hair already showing a lot of gray. He wore tooled boots, tight jeans, a work shirt cut off at the shoulders, and a large flowing yellow bandanna. Holstered on his left hip was a longer, more expensive version of Mack’s Peacemaker Colt.

Mack went over to introduce himself. “Macklin Chance is my name.” He held out his hand. The older man didn’t shake. He was sunburned, his face as rough and full of gullies as the land roundabout, and his eyes were pale green, the color of new leaves on a cottonwood.

“Johnson. Fella from town said yesterday Jace was sending you out. Know anything about worrying down an oil well?” There was a thick slice of the South in the man’s speech.

“I’ve worked in parts of the business almost two years,” Mack said.

“That’s no damn answer. I need an experienced tool dresser.”

Mack didn’t care for his bluntness. “I don’t have experience but I can learn. You tell me once, it’ll be done.”

Johnson snorted. “Cocky cuss, ain’t you? Well, why not? I don’t see any other candidates lined up around here.” He calculated silently. “Three-fifty a day and your keep.”

“Four dollars. Regular tool dresser’s wage.”

“You got no experience. You said so.”

“I’ll work that much harder to make up for it. Give you double effort on every tour.” He rhymed it with
hour.
He could tell Johnson caught that.

“Let’s discuss it up at my palatial ranch house yonder.” He indicated a shanty a short way up the slope from the well site. The company’s financial condition was clear from its sign: just an amateurish keystone and a large
14
painted in whitewash.

“I got a few swigs of popskull in a bottle,” Johnson added. “Mighty hot out here, and these boys can get along for a while. Follow me.”

Mack followed.

Johnson put wooden chairs against the front of the shanty. From there he could watch the rig builders setting spikes into braces between the first pair of derrick legs. These spikes would be hammered the rest of the way when the legs were raised in position.

Johnson brought out his brown bottle but Mack passed on it. The driller set it under his own chair, tilted back, and began to worry invisible specks off the barrel of his Peacemaker with a clean rag.

The gun was a beautiful weapon, its silvered metal elaborately engraved, each of its mother-of-pearl handgrips embossed with a large lone star. The front half of the trigger guard was cut away, for faster shooting. The Colt did not look like an amateur’s piece.

“Fine gun,” Johnson said when he noticed Mack’s interest. “A hundred dollars, new, in Fort Worth.”

“That’s where you’re from?”

“There and elsewhere. First name’s Hugh, H-U-G-H. Hell of a name for a Texas boy, ain’t it? My mama hoped I’d grow up to be a gentleman. I sure-God disappointed the dear woman.”

“When did you come to California?”

Johnson’s expression grew guarded. “Oh, some years back. I used to be a cowboy. Then the big ranch combines from New York started buying up all the spreads I worked for, one after another, and cutting wages, and soon I couldn’t earn a dime. So I drifted over the mountains and learned a new trade.” He gestured to the derrick site.

“So now you’re an oilman—”

“Till something better shows up. I never stick long at any one thing. Somehow or other I was born with an urge to drift. I reckon I can’t drift until I punch this hole for Jace Danvers. Lord, that man travels with a cloud of pain and woe thicker’n a blue norther.”

“I noticed.”

“Jace is a decent sort, I’ll give him that. Loves his family. Wants to provide. It flogs him something awful.” Johnson idly scraped at a nostril with his thumbnail. “It’s a reason I never married. Among many.”

“I’m single too.”

“What are you doing in this part of the world?”

Mack gave him a level look, the two of them seated there with chairs tilted back in the scant shade. A foot-long chuck-walla lizard with a broad fat head wandered by in the shale below. Apparently unafraid of daylight or human beings, it stuck out its tongue at the men. Johnson stuck out his tongue at the lizard, and it ran.

“What I’m trying to do is get rich,” Mack said.

“How?”

“Any way I can. I’m from Pennsylvania, like Danvers. I already own some land over in Los Angeles County.”

“And I’m ’sposed to learn you what I know about oil, huh?”

“I guess you’d better.” Mack swung a hand to encompass the steep narrow canyon and the derrick site. “I don’t see any other candidates lined up here.”

“By God you’re a pert cuss, Mr. Chance. Pertness says to me that a man’s got sand. I like that. I dunno, though. I’m out here to work, not run a school.”

A long silence told Mack he was in trouble. Impulsively, he said, “I’ll take care of the grub too. Bear steak, fancy omelets, hangtown fry—I’m a damn good cook.”

“You’re hired.”

M
ACK HAD SEEN OPERATING
wells and knew something about their components, but he’d never had his hands on a standard tool rig or helped spud in a new hole. This equipment was modern, a far cry from Mulroy’s spring poles.

The basic tool string consisted of a chisel-like bit hooked to the stem, an iron bar connected to a long two-and-a-quarter-inch Manila line. A coal-fired boiler generated steam for the little twenty-horsepower engine. The engine spun the band wheel, and the band wheel and its pitman rod tipped a walking beam up and down over the hole. Pulling the tool string up and dropping it by means of the walking-beam action dug the well.

Johnson was a brusque, impatient teacher, but a good one. There was no job on the rig Mack didn’t learn. He sharpened tools at the coal forge, and clambered to the top of the derrick to free a drill line fouled on the crown block pulley. He and Johnson sweated to make casing out of columns of steel pipe, one wedged inside the other; to Mack fell the task of pounding the casing with a sledge to indent it, thus creating a strong bond without rivets. The casing, heavier than the tools, had its own special block-and-tackle support system, running off the calf wheel.