Gunsmoke over Texas (3 page)

“A
LL
I’
VE GOT TO SAY
is that it’s the locoest deal I ever got mixed up in,” declared Ayers, the head driller. “Here we are down one thousand, one hundred and sixty feet — that’s the last reading — and sloggin’ through a sand bank. About as much oil under this section as you’d find in a grindstone. Bob Kent is plumb off his mental reservation, if you ask me.”

“His dad was one of the smartest oil men in the business and he just about raised young Bob in oil,” objected Quales, the rigger.

“Uh-huh, and he ended up busted,” replied Ayers.

“Sure, because he got into things he didn’t know anything about,” said Quales. “After all, Jasper Kent was just a driller who got on top. He didn’t have no book learnin’ to speak of. He got mixed up in business deals and got skun, naturally. Young Bob is different. He’s educated some. Don’t forget, he finished high school and had a year in college.”

“That’s just the trouble,” Ayers declared. “Uh-huh, he goes plasterin’ those hifalutin’ college notions on the drilling business. Calls it scientific analysis of natural conditions, or some such durn foolishness. And what’s he got to go on? Nothing but those danged hills up there he claims were the banks of a big sea once, and a salt spring he found in a cave. Nothing here to indicate an oil pool. No domes, no shale, no seepage. Scientific analysis! Blooey!”

“Suppose you’d prefer a witchin’ stick,” chuckled Quales.

“Don’t go throwing off on witchin’ sticks,” Ayers returned seriously. “Remember old Rice Haggard down in the Neuces country? Haggard was ambling around with his forked stick one day, witchin’ for water, and the stick dipped and dipped. Haggard said there was oil or something like it under the section. Folks laughed at him and said he was loco, but quite a few years later Haggard got Dunn of the Gladwell Company interested. They drilled right down where Haggard had done the witchin’. And what happened? One of the biggest production fields in Texas.”

“Just happened,” replied Quales. “And I’m willing to bet that Dunn saw indications there before he set a bit to the soil. Nothing much Dunn don’t know about the oil business. He’s smart. And so is young Bob. You wait and see.”

Ayers snorted and glared at the great walking beam of the rig doing its slow and ponderous dance as it drew the suspending rope back and forth across the pulley at the top of the tall derrick, churning the heavy bit into the ground far beneath the surface. From the bore came a soft and muffled sound as the drill pounded its way through the yielding sand.

“After all, Bill, it was you who was first to agree to Bob’s proposition that we go into this thing on shares, receiving a percentage of any strike for our work instead of wages,” Quales remarked.

Ayers grinned a trifle sheepishly. “I can’t help but like the young devil,” he said, almost apologetically. “And I don’t forget that it was his dad who risked his life to get me out from under that walking beam when the well blew and caught fire up north of Beaumont. Jasper Kent had the burn scars he got that day on his face when he died.

“But just the same I still think Bob’s plumb loco,” he added.

Quales winked at Curly Nevins who lounged comfortably in his saddle near the door of the cook shack, smoking a cigarette.

“Old Tom still on the prod?” he asked.

“Oh, he’s still sort of ringey, but he’s feeling better lately, seeing as you fellers ‘pear to be sinking a dry hole,” Nevins replied. “He figures you’ll pull out soon and leave this section like it was.”

“He may get a surprise,” said a slender, pleasant-faced young man who stepped out of the cock shanty in time to hear Nevins’ remarks. “Anyhow, there’s no sense in him pawing sand like he has been just because I bought this little strip down here from the state. He doesn’t need it for his cows.”

“The Old Man is open range,” Nevins replied. “This section down here south of the crik has always been open range and, he figures it should stay that way. And anyhow, he don’t want to see oil wells cluttering up the grassland. He says they mean ditches and pipe lines and bad smells and cows poisoned by gas. He figures it’ll be the ruination of this section if you jiggers do happen to strike oil.”

“He’s all wrong,” Kent said earnestly. “When we strike it’ll be the best thing ever happened to the section. It’ll bring folks in and money, too, plenty of it.”

“That’s just what the old man is scairt of,” Nevins explained. “He ‘lows all sorts of unsavory jiggers will be troopin’ in. He says Proctor up to the north of here is a nice cowtown and he don’t want it spoiled.”

“He needn’t worry about that,” Kent chuckled. “When we strike there’ll be a town down here in no time.”

“Uh-huh, when we strike,” grunted Ayers.

Bob Kent chuckled again and did not directly answer his pessimistic driller.

“But we’ll have to make good mighty soon or Mawson won’t have anything to worry about,” he told Nevins. “I’ve just about scraped the bottom of the barrel; no money to buy more casing, and the bank won’t let me have any more. They say at Proctor that they’ve gone as far as they can with the land here for security. I’ve a notion if Mawson hadn’t been swearing he’s going to get title to the whole section as quick as he can they wouldn’t have gone as far as they have.”

“He’s talking about it but he ain’t done anything about it,” observed Nevins.

“He’s being foolish if he really wants the land down here,” said Kent. “When we strike there’ll be a quick grab for every foot between here and the desert and Mawson will find himself out of luck.”

“I tried to tell him that myself, and young Clate agreed with me,” admitted Nevins, “but he’s bull-headed as an old shorthorn and says he’ll get title to everything as soon as you fellers pull out.”

Ayers suddenly cocked his head in an attitude of listening. The sound coming from the bore had changed. The silky chuffing had been replaced by a heavy thudding. The suspending rope danced and quivered.

“Rock!” grunted Ayers. “We got through that sand bank and hit rock again. Now we’ll jiggle along forever and get nowhere.”

Bob Kent rose from squatting on his heels. “Shut her down,” he ordered. “We’ll change the bit and sink new casing. Might as well eat first; chuck’s about ready. Let’s go wash up. Come on, Curly, and have a bite with us.”

The engineer closed his throttle; the jiggling of the rope ceased, the walking beam hung motionless. The silence that followed could be felt. Curly Nevins dismounted and joined the drillers moving toward the cook shanty. They had almost reached the door when without warning there was a deafening roar.

“Look out!” yelled Kent and dived for the shelter of the shack.

The roar was followed by a terrific rattling and crashing. Tons of pipe were projected through the rig floor, up and out of the hole and high into the air. The derrick went to pieces in a rain of falling iron and timbers. Then there was a black geyser that spouted two hundred feet in a wind-frayed, greasy plume. Crude oil sprayed the vicinity.

“She’s in!” howled Ayers, dancing in the door of the shack. “Boys, she’s in! I knew it all the time! Look at her spout! That’s a gusher what is a gusher!”

The driller’s excitement was contagious. The crew members howled and bellowed. Curly Nevins jerked his six-shooter and sent bullets splitting the air in every direction.

No tanks had been built for storage, Kent lacking the money for their construction, but he had shrewdly set his rig on the edge of a wide and deep hollow. Now oil was flowing a river into the depression, a natural reservoir.

While the crew cursed and toiled at the gigantic task of capping the gusher, Kent saddled his horse, which was tethered under a lean-to back to the shanty, and went racing to Proctor, the cowtown twenty miles to the north.

Two days of wild excitement followed before the gusher was brought under control by a firmly anchored valve. The great hollow was brimful of “black gold.”

Meanwhile the activity around the well was nothing to what was taking place on the flats west of the drilling. At dawn of the day following the strike a grader was cutting streets through the mesquite and greasewood. A stream of material wagons was rolling down from Proctor and from McCarney, the railroad town seventy miles to the north. The Proctor bank that had refused Kent further loans had literally handed him the key to its vault. Businessmen from Proctor and McCarney vied with one another offering Kent high rentals for plots of land on which to erect buildings. Kent rented the first lot with the stipulation that a building be started within one hour. The renter had carpenters at work within thirty minutes on a saloon!

Kent was right in his prediction relative to the land south of the creek. Before old Tom Mawson knew what was happening the whole section was grabbed off under his very nose. A forest of derricks began to rise. Kent was preparing to drill three more wells on his holdings. He was building storage tanks and pouring in material and equipment.

The saloon, as usual, was first to open for business, but other buildings were erected in mad haste. People poured in and above the trails hung an ever-present cloud of choking white dust. Huge wagons lumbered in with drilling supplies, foodstuffs, furnishings and liquid refreshment.

Came, too, the hangers-on of every new oil field to ply their questionable trades. The gamblers, the ladies of easy virtue, the dance hall characters opened up for business in tents and shacks, and did plenty.

Old Tom Mawson rode down and shook his fist under Bob Kent’s unimpressed nose. “Dang you, you’ve ruined this country!” he roared. “I ought to shoot you! I oughta have shot you when you first showed up here! You’ve spoiled everything!”

“You’re wrong, Mr. Mawson,” Kent told him. “The time will come when you’ll thank me.”

Old Tom raised clenched fists and swore himself breathless. Still cursing he stormed back to his big ranchhouse to rumble and fume and glare south toward the smoke cloud that stained the clean blue of the Texas sky.

“And that’s how she went,” concluded Curly Nevins, twinkling his faded blue eyes at his absorbed listener.

T
HEY HAD ROUNDED A BEND
and before them in the distance lay the town of Weirton, a wide straggle of shacks, tents, false-fronts and somewhat more substantial buildings to the north.

One thing Slade instantly noted with interest. The land south of the flash and glitter of the wide creek running west to east boasted an elevation considerably above that of the land north of the stream. It was in the nature of a small mesa running from the creek to the desert five miles farther south. Again Slade turned in his saddle to gaze at the hills walling the valley.

“Up here must have experienced a subsidiary subsidence,” he remarked to himself rather than to his companion. Nevins favored him with a blank look but Slade did not see fit to amplify the observation that was cryptic so far as old Curly was concerned.

“Hey!” he exclaimed, “look at the smoke boilin’ up down there to the south! Danged if I don’t believe there’s another well on fire!”

“There is,” Slade replied. “I was sitting in my window last night when it caught. Lit up the whole sky.”

Nevins shook his head. “And they’ll blame the cowmen for setting it, sure as blazes,” he predicted.

“Not improbable,” Slade conceded, “judging from the things I’ve heard.”

When they first sighted the town it was about three miles distant. They spoke to their horses and the pace quickened. They had covered the better part of a mile when Nevins gestured toward the grassland flanking the trail.

“See what the old man meant when he was telling you about the grass down here?” he remarked.

Slade saw. The lush growth was changing to a crisped straggle utterly dead and drying up. Farther on the ground looked almost bare.

“This way nearly clean across our holdings which run east for better than fifteen miles,” said Nevins. “More than six thousand acres of prime pasture gone to the devil. The spread to the east, the Bradded R, ain’t affected much but the crik is spoiled all the way, a black scum all over it. Cows won’t touch the water. And our waterholes even farther north than this are spoiled. Cows drank that water but it killed ‘em. We had to fence every hole along here, which spoils more range.”

Slade stared at the parched grass, a perplexed expression on his face.

“It just doesn’t seem to make sense that overflow or seepage through the grass would reach this far,” he protested.

“Maybe not, but there she is,” Nevins returned.

“Yes,” Slade agreed soberly, “there she is.” For a third time he turned in his saddle to study the encroaching hills, his black brows drawing together till the concentration furrow was deep between them, a sign El Halcon was doing some hard thinking.

Passing across the arid region, they splashed through the waters of the stream, the surface of which reflected the sunlight in a rainbow bloom of color and was singularly smooth and glassy. Slade agreed that without doubt it was heavily coated with oil. After leaving the stream, the trail wound up a long and fairly steep slope to the crest of the mesa and they got a full view of the town surrounded by a forest of derricks.

“We’ll drop in at the Black Gold,” suggested Nevins. “That’s the biggest and best rumhole in town. A purty nice feller named Wade Ballard runs it. Everybody likes Wade. Even the old man couldn’t help but think purty well of him when he met him once up in Proctor. Asked him why the devil he had to set up business in such a stinkin’ hole. Ballard told him he’d had saloons in various oil strike towns and always found they paid. Said all he knows is the likker business, was brought up in it by his dad. Said he worked in his dad’s place in Dallas when he was only fourteen. Never got to go to school and learn anything else and that he has to set up where the money is.”

“Not an illogical viewpoint,” Slade admitted.

“Reckon you went to school plenty, son, judging from the way you talk,” Nevins chuckled. “How the devil did you get to punchin’ cows?”

“Well, reckon my case rather parallels Ballard’s,” Slade smiled reply. “My dad was a cowman and sort of brought me up in the business. Reckon when you’ve got horse hair and rope in your blood it’s hard to get it out.”

Nevins chuckled his understanding. A few minutes later they were threading their way along Weirton’s main street which was straight and wide, differing from the usual winding continuation of a trail that formed the principal thoroughfare of the average cowtown. Slade noticed quite a few cow ponies tethered at the racks.

“Yep, the boys come here,” Nevins explained. “Some friction between them and the town folks but their money is welcome and they find things livelier and more fun here than at Proctor where the old-timers run things and it’s a bit on the stodgy side.”

Slade nodded his understanding. Nevins pulled up in front of a rough building boasting an ornate false-front and much plate glass.

“They sure put her up in a hurry, but didn’t do such a bad job of it,” Nevins remarked to Slade. “Inside she’s quite a joint; the mirror back of the bar came clean from Dallas.”

The big room was indeed a scene of contrasts. The woodwork was raw and unpainted, the long bar of rough planks, but the back bar mirror was real French plate. The chairs and tables were new and shiny. There was a roulette wheel elaborate with carvings and decorations and the lunch counter over to one side gleamed with copper and glass.

Bottles of every shape and color pyramided the back bar. The three bartenders wore white coats and shirts and black string ties. The dealers at the card tables were garbed in somber black. A lookout on a high stool wore fancy stitched boots and had a sawed-off shotgun cradled across his knees.

Early as it was, there was a sizable crowd in the place. Most of these, Slade noted, were undoubtedly oil workers in greasy clothes and laced boots. There was a sprinkling of cowhands. Also, several gentlemen who looked like cowhands but whom, Slade quickly decided, had not for some time been on familiar terms with rope or branding iron. Soberly dressed shopkeepers and other substantial citizens completed the gathering.

Standing at the far end of the bar was a small, neatly dressed man with surprisingly broad shoulders for his height and abnormally long arms. His features were shapely and regular as is often the case in small men and his face seemed to wear a perpetual smile. His eyes were a clear blue and had a keen look about them. His hair was tawny and inclined to curl. He waved a slender hand to Nevins and nodded in a friendly fashion.

“That’s Wade Ballard who owns the place, the feller I was telling you about,” Nevins said to Slade, as they found places at the bar and ordered drinks.

While they were sipping their glasses, a tall, powerfully built and rather uncouth looking man with a blocky, bad-tempered face entered. He rumbled a greeting to Nevins and passed on to the far end of the bar.

“That’s Blaine Richardson, a sort of salty hombre but a mighty good oil man, from what everybody says,” remarked Nevins. “Guess there’s nothing about the business he don’t know. I understand he brought in a couple of good wells in Oklahoma and some up at Beaumont. He’s brought one in here, down toward the desert. He says the natural slope of the land is toward the desert and that there should be some good drilling out there on the sands and is thinking of having a try of it. Fact is he says the real strike will be made down there where the deeper part of the pool must be.”

Slade glanced quickly at his companion and then shot a glance at Richardson who, glass in hand, was talking to Wade Ballard.

“An experienced oil man you say?” he remarked. “Not just a driller?”

“Oh, I reckon he came up from a driller,” Nevins replied. “Rough sort of a jigger.”

Slade nodded, his eyes thoughtful.

Suddenly a heavy explosion quivered the air. The glasses jumped on the bar, the bottles rattled. “What in blazes?” demanded Nevins.

“They’re trying to blow that burning well and put out the fire,” the bartender explained. “Reckon they’re not having much luck with it. I heard the pressure is mighty low and the fire spreads out so they can’t get close enough to chuck the dynamite in the bore. All they’ve been doing is blow holes in the ground. Liable to have to wait till she burns down a lot. Plenty of money going up in that smoke.”

“What you say we ride down and take a look at it?” Nevins suggested.

Slade offered no objection and a few minutes later found them riding across the prairie toward the great cloud of smoke that marked the burning well. More dynamite was set off before they arrived at the scene but the pall of smoke, shot through with tongues of flame, continued to foul the clear air.

They pulled up as near the well as was practical and watched with interest the activities of the workers who were engaged in an effort to extinguish the blaze.

Standing nearby was a pleasant-looking young man and an older one with grizzled hair and a worried face.

“Hi-yuh, Bob,” Nevins called as the younger man glanced their way. “Come on over, I want you to meet Walt Slade, a right hombre if there ever was one. Slade, this young squirt is Bob Kent who started all this down here.”

“And this is Arch Caldwell who owns that danged burning well,” Kent said, nodding to his companions as they shook hands.

Slade also shook hands with the elderly Caldwell. He liked the looks of both men.

“We ain’t doing any good,” Caldwell replied to a question from Nevins. “Can’t get close enough to place the dynamite right, and if a good wind springs up it’s liable to spread to the other wells.”

Slade dropped his gaze to the operator’s face. “Mr. Caldwell,” he said, “I’ve a notion I can get that fire out for you.”

“What’s that?” exclaimed Caldwell, staring at the ranger.

“A little trick I saw worked once,” Slade elaborated, not deeming it necessary to explain that it was he who had worked the trick. “I believe I can work it here if you’ll give me the chance and get together the stuff I’ll need.”

Caldwell hesitated, stroking his chin and still staring at Slade.

“Better let him have a try at it, Arch,” urged Bob Kent. “I’ve a notion Slade’s the sort of feller who gets things done.”

“And you can say that over and double it,” remarked Curly Nevins.

The stocky Caldwell shrugged his shoulders. “Okay,” he consented. “You can’t make things any worse, that’s sure for certain. What do you want to work with?”

Slade dismounted with lithe grace, towering over the old operator. “First off,” he said, “I’ll need a fairly flexible steel rod about a half or three-quarters of an inch in diameter and six feet long. Then a file and a coil of fine but strong wire. The wire must be strong or something is liable to happen if it breaks at the wrong time.”

“I can get all that,” Caldwell said. “What else?”

Slade glanced around, nodded with satisfaction. “Kent,” he said, “see that thicket over there? Looks like some young hickories are growing from a stump. There should be plenty of good straight shoots coming out of that stump. Cut me three or four and bring them here.”

The young oil man hastened to obey. Caldwell had already departed in quest of the needed materials; he was back soon with all Slade had requested. A group gathered around the ranger and watched his preparations with interest.

Slade took the file and notched the steel rod at both ends. He secured the wire to one end, bent the springy rod into an arc and secured the other end of the wire. Kent meanwhile had returned with an armload of strong, straight hickory shoots. Slade cut several to four-foot lengths and carefully notched the smaller end of each.

“A bow and arrows!” chuckled Kent. “What you figure to do, feller — shoot holes in the fire?”

“Something like that,” Slade replied with a smile. “Now I want dynamite, one stick at a time. I don’t want a box lying around here if something should go wrong. Bring caps and fuse, too.”

A workman procured one of the fat, greasy cylinders. Slade proceeded to bind it to the un-notched end of the arrow, using a length of wire to secure it firmly in place.

“Good Lord!” exploded Kent, understanding at last. “You mean to say you’re going to try and shoot that thing into the well? If the wire breaks or the arrow slides sideways there won’t be enough left of you to grease a gun barrel with!”

“Reckon everything will work out okay,” Slade replied cheerfully as he capped the stick and secured a very short length of fuse to the cap. He drew matches from his pocket.

“Going to light the fuse?” exclaimed Kent. “Tarnation! Why not just shoot it into the fire and let the flames light the fuse? Would be a heck of a sight safer.”

“Yes, but the chances are it wouldn’t work,” Slade replied. “There is some pressure coming out of the well and the flames are several feet above the ground. The fuse would hardly light as it whizzed through them.”

“But wouldn’t the jar when the dynamite landed set it off?” Kent suggested.

Again Slade shook his head. “You’ll notice there’s a considerable oil pool under the fire,” he pointed out. “That would cushion the fall and tend to minimize the shock, unless we had the luck to drop it right in the bore, which isn’t likely, and even then the rising column of oil would be very apt to toss it back before it exploded. No, the only way is to shoot it in lighted. Now all you fellows get back in the clear, just in case.”

The workmen hurriedly retreated. Kent and Nevins hesitated, then also took their departure, taking the horses with them. Old Arch Caldwell stayed right where he was. Slade glanced at him questioningly.

“You think I’m going to stand back safe while another man risks his life to save my property?” the well owner growled belligerently. “I’m staying right here with you.”

Slade smiled down at him approvingly and did not protest.

“Okay,” he said, “you can light the fuse after I’ve got the arrow on the string. That will make it easier and less chance of something going wrong.”

He fitted the notched end of the arrow to the wire string as he spoke and raised the bow.

“Powder!” he said briefly.

Caldwell struck a match and applied it to the dangling end of the fuse. There was a hiss, a rain of sparks. Slade drew the death-laden arrow back its full length. Caldwell saw great muscles leap out on arm and shoulder to swell the ranger’s shirt sleeve to the bursting point, for the bow was a stiff one and not easy to bend.