California Gold (40 page)

Johnson grimaced as they struggled. “I got a feeling about this one, a good feeling.”

Apr. 9 ’94—abandoned. Lost 200 ft. 8 5/18” casing.

Mack looked up from the logbook as Johnson returned from the coal wagon. The walking beam shunted the No. 3 tool string up and down, up and down. Spurred by the balmy spring weather, both men had taken most of their clothes off; they worked in greasy long underwear unbuttoned to the navel.

Johnson tossed something that glittered in the sunshine. Mack dropped the logbook to catch it. It was a lump of coal.

“Last load’s more’n half gone. Our luck damn well better improve. Quick.”

May 1 ’94. Another dry hole. Abandoned.

Mack had a strong feeling about No. 4, punched down near the canal. It was the same kind of feeling Johnson had had about the second duster: a baseless confidence that this time, they’d hit. Only a quarter of the original load of coal remained. But Mack was wildly confident—maybe because they were desperate.

May 17—1,055 ft. Water—some oil. Have not seen anybody but H.J. for 3 wks.

“Don’t think this one’s going to pay out,” Johnson said at half past ten the following night. They’d worked since five in the morning.

“Shut up,” Mack said. He was splicing sand line.

Johnson stiffened, glared, then folded his arms and left.

May 18—1,106 ft.—rock again. SON OF A BITCH.

He scratched out the intemperate note. But he’d written it large, and it stayed visible under the horizontal slashes, accusing and further discouraging him. It was 10:40
P.M.

Six hours later, under the feeble glow of lanterns on the derrick, Johnson mopped the sweat accumulated in his scraggling beard. Neither partner had touched a razor for days; both smelled to heaven. The night was still, every chuff and squeak and thud of the well machinery magnified. A sticky evil haze blurred the stars. Johnson stared unhappily at his bandanna, one of his good ones, buttercup yellow, ruined by oil and sweat.

With an oath, he threw it in his hat lying nearby. “These damn underground slate beds got us whipped. Ain’t an oilman west of the Divide who can tell where they are, ’cept by bustin’ or losin’ tools.” He yawned, then groggily sat down on a barrel, getting an oil stain on the drop seat of his union suit. “It must be almost morning. Let’s give it up and sleep. This here’s just another dry hole.”

Mack stared at the well with a fixed, almost fanatic expression. “No. We’ve been drawing some oil for the past two hours. I have a hunch about this one.”

“Lord you’re persistent. Must be because we’re starvin’ to death out here.”

Dawn came, pale and still. The gas smell had thickened steadily. The walking beam lifted and dropped the drill line. Lifted and dropped it. Mack and Johnson sat watching the equipment, fatigue-glazed eyes not really seeing anything but some inner vision of failure.

Suddenly, a different sound at the well head brought Mack to his feet. Mud-brown water burbled from the casing.

“Johnson,” he whispered without looking around. The little engine chugged with maddening persistence, then, deep in the earth, he heard another sound. A subterranean rushing. Mack gigged his partner with his bare toe. “Johnson.”

Filthy dirty and complaining, Hugh Johnson finally struggled up. He heard it too—the rushing that deepened to a rumble. He stared at Mack, his green eyes full of warring hope and skepticism.

“I wouldn’t want to get too excited, because if it ain’t—”

Liquid spurted from the well head, quickly rising under pressure to a three-foot column. The muddy brown flow changed to black, the rumbling becoming a roar. It shot up to a six-foot column, and then exploded at the sky, rising like the black barrel of some enormous howitzer aiming at God. Above the derrick’s crown block the oil spread in a great fan, and fell back.

“Gusher!” Mack shouted. “We got a gusher, Hugh!”

“Jesus God, I think so!” Johnson shouted over the roar of the hundred-foot-high column of oil. It slicked the boards under their feet, dotted and then blackened their union suits. Johnson ran his hands through his hair and stared at them. Black as patent leather.

He threw his head back and crowed like a rooster. Mack tilted his head and opened his mouth and spread his hands and let the oil soak his skin, his forehead, his eyelids, his tongue.

May 19, 1894—No. 4 pumped 27 bbls. crude.

May 20—62 bbls. crude.

May 21—114 bbls.

Next day the steam engine stopped and the pump fell silent. The coal was gone.

The single lump Johnson had brought in lay between them on the depot desk, seeming to mock them with its rough, glistening beauty. Johnson speculated aloud. “We can sell the crude in the storage tanks and buy more—”

“No.” Mack jumped up, pounding the desk. “Not another penny. We buy coal from Vines, we’re pouring cash into the railroad’s pocket. I’m tired of enriching those bastards.”

“Well, I reckon we can always lift the oil out by hand, a teaspoon at a time—”

Mack ignored him. “There’s got to be a better way.”

“Good luck, then. I’m going to catch a snooze.”

Johnson wandered off to his cot in the back room. Mack flung the front door open and leaned there, chewing his knuckle, staring at the lemon-colored evening sky above the steep hills. He stared at the silent derrick farther back in the tract. Stared at it, and through it, to the larger problem.

All at once his brow puckered up. “Johnson,” he said in a tentative voice. “Hugh Johnson. Come here a minute.”

Grumbling and scratching, Johnson shuffled from the back.

Mack spoke slowly, testing the idea that had hit him. “Maybe we’re overlooking the obvious. I told Ed Doheny that poor people around here burned
brea
because it was cheap. I told him the oil market had to be expanded with a product other than kerosene and axle grease.” He paused. “Fuel. What we’re pumping in that well is fuel, just like coal. Why the hell can’t we burn it instead of coal?”

“Yes, sir. Why not? I’ll tell you why not. Got to have some contraption to make it ignite proper. A special—I dunno— special-design firebox, maybe?”

“Well, you’re the mechanic,” Mack said. “Build it.”

Johnson talked a Newhall hardware merchant into selling him a kerosene burner on credit. Quickly finding that the heavy crude clogged it too badly for combustion, he rigged a metal-pan with rocks in the bottom, and a nozzle to drip a steady flow of oil onto them, but that didn’t work either. Next he snipped and hammered and jerry-rigged a special nozzle, wide and flat, which diffused the crude into something approximating a spray. There was a momentary flame when Johnson touched a match to it, then it fizzled out.

He was ebullient. “If I can get a spray under pressure, don’t y’see—a steady fine spray—I think we can get a flame in that there kerosene burner. I need tools and more coal. You got to ask Potter for a loan.”

Mack hated doing that, but he did, and he ate some more of his pride and bought enough coal to run the engine for a short period. On June 12, Johnson was ready. Mack fired up the boiler and started the little engine. Apprehensively, Johnson crouched over his contraption. He struck a match, then turned a valve and oil hissed through a line into the special nozzle, now concealed within the housing of the cleaned-out kerosene burner. When Johnson slipped the match to the burner ring, a loud bang and spurting flame threw him back on his heels.

“Valve it down,” Mack exclaimed.

“Thanks, never would have thought of that,” Johnson snarled, fingering his left eyebrow, which the blowback had burned away almost totally. He twisted the valve.

The flame settled to a constant level above the burner ports. Johnson jumped to his feet and covered the burner with a ventilated housing of battered metal, then stepped back, awaiting congratulations.

“You did it, Hugh,” Mack said with an enormous grin. “That’s a hell of a burner.”

The pale-green eyes danced. “Say. That’s a hell of a name too.”

Mack didn’t get it.

“Hell-burner Johnson. Hello, Hellburner. So long, Hugh.” He certified his approval with a rebel yell.

Chance-Johnson No. 4 pumped 825 barrels a day. Soon all the wooden storage tanks were full, and Mack signed a temporary agreement with Lyman Stewart’s 14,000-barrel-capacity refinery in Santa Paula to take all the crude. Stewart personally inspected the burner Johnson built. Enthusiastic, he dickered with Mack for two hours over a licensing agreement before they came to terms.

The following week, Stewart’s machine shop started construction of forty burners, Mack taking ten as part of the payment to Chance-Johnson. Stewart was elated over the burners and visited San Solaro again to report that he had his shop draftsman working to modify the principle for a locomotive firebox. “I’m going to install one aboard a Southern Pacific locomotive to show those gentlemen they never need coal again. Think of the market if that happens.”

“I’ve thought of it,” Mack said.

“Will you go with me to sell them?”

“No, I won’t.” He didn’t explain and Lyman Stewart didn’t press. Macklin Chance had a reputation as a peculiar hermitlike maverick. Of course, now, with No. 4 a gusher and the capital coming in to punch new holes all over San Solaro, overnight Macklin Chance had become a man with money and prospects. The foibles of a man like that could be forgiven.

“Hold still,” cried the photographer.

Wearing their best, they posed on the derrick floor of No. 4 while the well pumped away. The photographer raised the flashlight holder and the powder exploded. Mack and Johnson bear-hugged each other while the reporter from the Los Angeles
Tribune
hastily finished his notes.

“Uh, gentlemen, one thing. Ours is a family organ, you know. I’m not sure my editor will allow the words ‘hell burner.’ ”

Johnson daggered him with those leaf-green eyes. “One word: ‘Hellburner.’ You tell him he better allow it or I’ll pay him an unfriendly call. Hellburner’s my name, boy. I’m proud of it.”

They bought tanker wagons and teams, hired drivers, drillers, tool dressers, roughnecks, a cook, built new storage tanks and shored up the old, put up dormitory tents, opened a machine shop, punched down new holes, put fresh paint on the depot, and enlarged one side for a bigger office. They deepened Wyatt’s original water well, started framing in a cottage, a permanent house for the owners. Mack sited it on the canal, with the porch beside the dry bed. Putting it there was an act of faith. One day, the sounds of flowing water would soothe whoever sat on that porch.

Mack had never been so busy, never felt so good. Everything was going well. Then came a letter soaked in orange-blossom scent.

I’m back,

my dear.

Yours, Carla

A MAN HAD DAYS
OF GOOD LUCK AND BAD. THE DAY
he thought of burning their own crude for fuel was one of the good ones. Long afterward, he counted the day Nellie visited as one of the worst. And it had started auspiciously.

It was October: cool, bright, pleasant. Nellie drove her buggy through the iron arch shortly before noon, having taken the train out to Newhall and hired the rig there. Reining the horse by the large signboard erected on Grande Boulevard, she smiled at the gaudy lettering, though she was impressed by what it represented:

CHANCE-JOHNSON OIL CO.

SAN SOLARO FIELD

Seven wells were scattered through the tract, all pumping noisily, and the number of workers swarming on the property amazed her.

“Mack?” She knocked at the office door.

He was cranking up a wall telephone. “Nellie. What are you doing here?” Slapping the earpiece on its hook, he ran to hug her. He looked fit and prosperous in a checkered vest and clean white shirt with cuffs turned up. A thick gold chain hung from the watch pocket of his trousers.

Breathless, she threw her arms around him. He lifted her five inches from the floor and set her down. “More harbor hearings,” she said. “I planned to skip them till I saw a copy of the
Tribune
in San Francisco. An article about you and your new partner and your gusher. There is one—?”

“Yes indeed. Number Four.” Mack was unexpectedly emotional at the sight of her. “You must meet Johnson. He’s in Santa Paula this morning. Rode over with a caravan of tank wagons. Here, sit down…”

She took the chair he dusted for her and inspected the office. Thick ledgers, files, and papers were stacked everywhere. Two walls were covered with tacked-up maps, charts, reports, and plats. One huge schematic showed all of San Solaro, with various points labeled
PRODUCING WELLS
and others marked
NEW WELLS
. She counted eleven of the latter.

“You’ve done so splendidly…” she began. Then, on a corner of his desk, she recognized the embossed cover of
The Emigrant’s Guide to California & Its Gold Fields.
She smiled. “You finally struck it, didn’t you?”

“Yes. Promised you I would.”

“I’m happy for you—happy and proud.” She covered the sudden surge of emotion by taking off her lavender gloves and fussily folding them in her lap.

Mack sat back in his walnut chair. He couldn’t get enough of gazing at her, realizing now how much he’d missed her, how much he cared for her.

“Are you staying in town?”

“The Pico House, as usual.”

“Let me go back with you and we’ll have dinner.”
And afterward?
he thought with longing, and a sudden consuming fear of rejection. Afterward, could there be something more? He hoped so. Now that affairs at Chance-Johnson Oil were settling down—he and Hellburner Johnson worked a mere twelve, fourteen hours a day—he should be thinking about things other than money. Starting a family, for instance.

“There’s a hearing scheduled for tonight,” she said.

“Important?”

“I’m not sure.”

“Then forget it.”

She saw his intent and blushed, breathing a little more quickly. “All right.” Again, with effort, she composed herself. “I have a piece of news about Diego Marquez. He’s turned up in the Valley. He left the Church, as you know, but he’s still preaching—to the field-workers. This time it’s a different gospel, much more militant.”