or stratum of dead fish and plants would form. All this heaving and
twisting of the earth formed traps or domes, called anticlines, into
which the oil and gas moved. That’s why we find oil today at different
depths beneath the surface.”
“I understand that water and gas pressure keeps pushing oil toward the
surface,” Sandy said on one occasion, “but then why doesn’t it escape?”
“Usually it gets caught under anticlines where the rock is too thick and
hard for it to move any farther,” Quiz cut in, eager to show off his new
knowledge of geology. “But it does escape in some places, Sandy. You’ve
heard of oil springs. George Washington owned one of them. And the
Indians used to sop crude petroleum from such springs with their
blankets and use it as a medicine or to waterproof their canoes.
Sometimes the springs catch fire. Some of those still exist in parts of
Iran. I read an article once which said that Jason really was looking
for a cargo of oil when he sailed the _Argo_ to the Caucasus Mountains
in search of the Golden Fleece. The fleece was just a flowery Greek term
for a burning spring, maybe.”
“Maybe,” Donovan agreed as he stoked his pipe and sent clouds of smoke
billowing through the laboratory. “There’s also a theory that Job was an
oilman. The Bible has him saying that ‘the rock poured me forth rivers
of oil,’ you remember. If you read the Book of Job carefully, it almost
sounds as if the poor fellow’s troubles started when his oil field
caught fire. However that may be, we know that the Greeks of Jason’s
time used quite a bit of oil. The Arabs even refined petroleum and
lighted the streets of their cities with something resembling kerosene
almost a thousand years ago.”
“Golly,” said Sandy. “It’s all too deep for me—several thousand feet too
deep. I think I’ll go help Chao get dinner ready! I _do_ know how to
cook.”
The one job around the derrick that the boys never got a chance to
handle was that of Peter Sanchez, the platform man who worked on their
shift, or “tower.” Whenever the time came to replace a bit, Peter would
climb to his perch halfway up the rig, snap on a safety belt, and guide
the upper ends of the ninety-foot stands of pipe into their rack. There
they would stand upright in a slimy black bunch until it was time to
return them to the well.
Peter, who boasted that he had been an oilman for a quarter of a
century, worked effortlessly. He never lost his footing on the narrow
platform, even when the strongest wind blew. Platform men on the other
shifts were equally sure-footed—and very proud of their ability to
“walk” strings of pipe weighing several tons. And they took things easy
whenever they climbed down from their dizzy perches.
Peter, in particular, was fond of amusing the other crew members by
telling them stories about the oil fields in the “good old days.” His
favorite character was a driller named Gib Morgan. Gib, he said, had
come down originally from the Pennsylvania regions when the first big
strikes were being made in Texas and Oklahoma, around 1900.
“You never heard of Gib?” Peter said one night as the off-duty crews
were sitting around a roaring campfire after dinner. “Well, I’ll tell
you....” He rolled a cigarette with one hand, cowboy fashion, while
studying the young greenhorns out of the corner of his eye. “Gib was a
little feller with a big mustache but he could put Davy Crockett and
Paul Bunyan in the shade when he had a mind to. When he first came to
Texas he had a run of bad luck. Drilled almost a hundred dry holes
without hitting a single gusher. Got down to his last silver dollar.
Then do you know what he did to make a stake?”
“No. What?” Quiz leaned forward eagerly.
“He pulled up all those dusters, sawed ’em into four-foot lengths, and
sold ’em to the ranchers for postholes. That’s how it happens that all
the Texas ranges got fenced in with barbed wire, son.”
When the laughter had died down and Quiz’s ears had returned to their
normal color, the platform man went on: “That wasn’t the only time that
Gib helped out his fellow man. Back around 1900, just before the big
Spindletop gusher came in, oilmen in these parts were having a lot of
trouble with whickles—you know what a whickle is, don’t you, Sandy?”
“It’s a cross between a canary bird and a bumblebee, isn’t it?” Sandy
was dimly remembering a story that his father had told him.
“Well! Well!” Peter looked at him with more respect. “That’s exactly
right. Pretty little varmints, whickles, but they developed a powerful
taste for crude oil. Soon as a well came in, they’d smell it from miles
away. That’s no great feat, I’ll admit, for crude oil sure has a strong
odor. Anyway, they’d descend on the well in swarms so thick that they’d
darken the sky. And they’d suck it plumb dry before you could say Jack
Robinson, unless you capped it quick.
“Well, Gib got one of his big ideas. He went out to one of his dusters
that he hadn’t pulled up yet, poured several barrels of oil down it, and
‘salted’ the ground with more oil. Pretty soon, here came the whickles.
They lapped up all the oil on the ground. Then a big whickle, probably
the boss, rose up in the air and let out a lot of whickle talk about how
he personally had discovered the biggest oil highball on earth. After
that he dived into the well, and all the others followed him, like the
animals that went into the ark. Soon as the last one was down the hole,
Gib grabbed a big wooden plug and capped the well. We haven’t had any
whickle trouble since.”
“Then all the poor whickles died?” Quiz rose to the bait.
“Oh, no,” Peter answered with a straight face. “They’re still buzzing
around in that hole, mad as hops. Some day a greenhorn like you will
come along and let ’em out.”
“Wonder what ever became of Gib,” said Donovan, between puffs on his
pipe.
“Last I heard he was up Alaska way,” Ralph said. “Here’s a story about
him that you may want to add to your repertoire, Pete. Gib was drilling
near Moose Jaw in December when it got so cold the mercury in the
thermometer on the derrick started shivering and shaking so hard that it
knocked a hole right through the bottom of the tube. During January it
got colder yet and the joints on the drill pipe froze so they couldn’t
be unscrewed.
“Now Gib had a bet he could finish that well in four months and he
wasn’t going to let Jack Frost faze him. He just rigged up a pile driver
that drove that frozen pipe on down into the ground as pretty as you
please. Soon as one stand of pipe was down, the crew would weld on
another and keep driving. Course the pipe got compressed a lot from all
that hammering, but Gib couldn’t see any harm in that.
“Time February came around it got real chilly—a hundred or so below
zero. He was using a steam engine by that time because the diesel fuel
was frozen solid, but no sooner would the smoke from the fire box come
out of the chimney than it would freeze and fall back on the snow.
Wading through that black stuff was like pushing through cotton wool,
and besides, the men tracked it all over the clean bunkhouse floor. So
Gib had to get out a bulldozer and shove it into one corner of the
clearing where he had his rig set up.
“They were down about four miles on March 15 when an early spring thaw
set in. First thing that happened was that the smoke melted and spread
all over the place. Couldn’t see your nose on your face. Fire wardens
came from miles around thinking the forest was ablaze. Gib was in a
tight spot so he did something he had never done before—he looked up his
hated rival, Bill McGee, who was in the Yukon selling some refrigerators
to the Eskimos. He had to give skinflint McGee a half interest in the
well to get him to help out. McGee just borrowed those refrigerators,
stuffed the smoke into them, and refroze it.
“No sooner was the smoke under control than all that compressed drill
pipe down the well started to thaw out. It began shooting out of the
hole like a released coil spring. First it humped up under the derrick
and pushed it a hundred feet into the air. Then it toppled over and
squirmed about the clearing like a boa constrictor.
“That was where Bill McGee made his big mistake. Gib had told him the
drill bit, which had been dragged out of the well by the thrashing pipe,
had cuttings on it which showed there was good oil sand only a few feet
farther down. But Bill figured that with the derrick a wreck, the well
was a frost. So he sold his half interest back to Gib, who didn’t
object, for a plug of good chewing tobacco.
“Soon as McGee was out of sight, Gib headed for the nearest U.S. Assay
Office. He got the clerk to lend him about a quart of the mercury that
assay men use to test the purity of gold nuggets.
“Morgan went back to camp, sat down beside the derrick, lit his pipe and
waited for the freeze-up which he knew was bound to come before spring
actually set in. It came all right! Puffing his pipe to keep warm Gib
watched the new alcohol thermometer he had bought in town go down, down,
and down until it hit a hundred and ten below. Right then he dropped his
quart of solidified mercury into the well.
“Just as he figured, it acted the way the mercury in the old thermometer
had done—went right to the bottom and banged and banged trying to escape
from that awful cold. Yes, sir, that hunk of mercury smashed right
through to the oil sand. Pretty soon there was a rumble and a roar. Up
came a thick black column of oil.”
“Wait a minute,” cried Sandy, thinking he had caught the storyteller out
on a limb. “Why didn’t the oil freeze too?”
“It did, Sandy. It did,” Ralph answered blandly. “Soon as it hit the
air, it froze solid. But it was slippery enough so it kept sliding out
of the ground a foot at a time. Gib got his men together and, until
spring really came, they kept busy sawing hunks off that gusher and
shipping them out to the States on flatcars!”
“You win, Ralph,” sighed the platform man as he heaved himself to his
feet. “I can’t even attempt to top that tall one, so I guess I’d better
go to bed. Your story should keep us cool out here for at least a week.”
After that mild hazing session, Sandy and Quiz found themselves accepted
as full-fledged members of the gang. The crew members, who had kept
their distance up to that point, now treated them like equals. Each boy
soon was doing a man’s work around the rig and glorying in his hardening
muscles.
As the end of June approached, Hall, Donovan and Salmon got ready for
their monthly trip to Window Rock, Arizona, to submit bids for several
leases in the Navajo reservation.
“There’s room in the jeep, so you might as well go along and learn
something more about the oil business,” Hall told the boys. “I’m pretty
sure our bids won’t be accepted, but the only thing we can do is try.”
At that point trouble descended on the camp in the form of a Bonanza
bearing Red Cavanaugh and Pepper March.
The husky electronics man clambered out of his machine and came forward
at a lope. He was dressed only in shorts, and the thick red hair on his
brawny chest glinted in the sunlight. Pepper trotted behind him like an
adoring puppy.
“Howdy, Mr. Hall. Howdy, Donovan,” Cavanaugh boomed as he reached the
rig. “Heard you’d been exploring down in the Hopi butte section. Thought
I’d bounce over and sell you some equipment that has seismographs,
magnetometers and gravimeters beat three ways from Sunday. The very
latest thing. You can’t get along without it.”
“Can’t I?” said Donovan mildly.
“Of course you can’t!” Cavanaugh clapped the little man on the back so
hard that he almost dislodged Donovan’s glasses. “This is terrific! The
biggest thing that’s happened to me since I ran those three touchdowns
for State back in 1930. I developed it in my own lab. You know how a
Geiger counter works...?”
“Well, faintly,” answered the geologist, who had three of them in his
own laboratory. “I wasn’t born yesterday, _Mr._ Cavanaugh.”
“Well, don’t get sore, _Mr._ Donovan.” Cavanaugh bellowed with laughter.
“All I wanted to say was that my new device uses scintillation counters,
which are—”
“—a thousand times more sensitive to atomic radiation than Geiger
counters,” Donovan interrupted. “And you’re going on to tell me that you
can take your doodlebug up in an airplane and spot a radiation halo
surrounding any oil deposit. Right? I read the trade papers, too, you
know. May I ask you a question?”
“Why, of course.” Cavanaugh’s chest and neck had begun to sweat.
“Do you have a Ph.D. degree in electronic engineering?”
“Why, uh, naturally.”
“Well, I don’t, unfortunately, Mr. Cavanaugh. But I know enough about
the science to understand that the gadget you are selling isn’t worth a
plugged nickel unless it’s operated by an expert, and unless it’s used
in connection with other methods of exploration. I have told you several
times at Farmington that this outfit can’t afford another scientist at
present, so I wish you would please go away.”
“Now, Mr. Hall—” Cavanaugh turned to the grinning oilman—“can’t you make
your man listen to reason?”
“He’s not my man. He’s my partner,” Hall answered mildly. “What he says
goes. Now, if you and your, ah, man will have a bite of lunch with us,
I’d be mighty pleased, providing you stop this high-pressure
salesmanship.”
“Well ...” Cavanaugh seemed on the verge of an explosion. “Well, thanks
for your invitation, but Mr. March and I are due up at Cortez in half an
hour. We’re delivering several of my gadgets, as you call them, to smart
oilmen. Come on, Pepper.”
“John,” said Donovan after they had watched Cavanaugh’s plane roar away,
“I think I’ll have to sock that big lug the next time I meet him.”
“He’d make mincemeat of you,” Mr. Hall warned.
“I doubt it. He’s soft as mush. Anyway, I don’t like him and I’ll have
nothing to do with the equipment he peddles. He knows that, so I think
the real reason he came here was to spy on us—to find out whether our
well had come in yet.”
“Oh, he’s not that bad,” Hall objected. “Boys, you know something about
him. What’s his reputation in Valley View?”
“He acts rich,” Sandy answered after a moment of deep thought.
“The people who work in his lab say he’s not as smart as he makes out,”
Quiz added. “I agree with Mr. Donovan. There’s something phony about
him. I’ve a hunch it’s connected with those three touchdowns he’s always
bragging about. If I could only remember.... Some day I will, I bet.”
“Well, let’s all simmer down and forget him,” said Hall. “It’s time for
lunch.”
CHAPTER FIVE
A Light in the Window Rock
The morning after Cavanaugh’s unwelcome visit, Hall, Donovan, Salmon and
the boys set out on their 150-mile drive south to the town of Window
Rock. The jeep wallowed and bounced as usual over the dusty trail to
Shiprock. There Ralph turned right onto US 666, pushed the accelerator
toward the floor board and relaxed.
“We don’t have a Bonanza, boss,” he said, “but a loaded jeep on a good
paved road is the next best thing.”
“I’d prefer a helicopter, equipped with a supercharger that could lift
it over the ranges,” Hall answered. “Maybe, if Number Two comes in, we
can buy a whirlybird, along with a portable drill rig truck.”
“A portable rig sure would come in handy for drilling test wells,” Ralph
agreed. “Maybe we could make it come true by putting an offering on that
Navajo wishing pile.” He nodded toward a mound of small brightly colored
stones that stood where an Indian trail crossed the highway.
“Nuh uh,” the oilman said sharply. “And don’t _you_ ever try that stunt,
boys. The Navajos don’t want white men thinning out their luck by
putting things on their wishing piles. By the same token, never take any
object from the piles that you will see scattered through the
reservation. If you’re caught doing that, you’ll be in for real
trouble.”
“Yep. The braves will get mad as wet hens,” Salmon said, chuckling.
“Ralph,” said Quiz, “why do you poke fun at the Navajos?”
“Well, pardner, did you ever hear a UCLA man say anything good about the
Stanford football team?”
“Oh, but that’s different. It’s just school rivalry,” Sandy objected as
he crossed his long legs the other way in an effort to keep his knees
from banging against the dash.
“Well, you might say that the Navajos and Utes have been traditional
rivals since the beginning of time. Nothing very serious, you
understand. We’ve raided each other’s cattle, and taken a few scalps now
and then, when a Navajo stepped on a Ute’s shadow, or vice versa. The
Navajos are Athapascans, you see. They’re related to the Apaches, and
think they’re the lords of creation. But Utes are Shoshoneans. We belong
to one of the biggest Indian ‘families’ in North America. The state of
Utah is named in our honor and there are Shoshones living as far north
as Alaska. Maybe you’ve heard of Sacagawea, the Shoshone ‘Bird Woman,’
who guided the Lewis and Clark Expedition all the way to the Pacific
Coast.
“The Hopis are our brothers, and the Piutes are our poor relations. The
Piutes _did_ eat fried caterpillars and roots in the old days, I guess,
but that was only because they lived out in the western Utah desert
where there wasn’t much else to eat. We southern Utes lived mostly on
buffalo meat. We were great hunters. Our braves would creep right into
the middle of a herd of buffalo and kill as many as they wanted with
their long knives, without causing the animals to take fright and
stampede.”
“How could they do that?” Sandy asked.
“When they went on a hunt, they dressed in buffalo hides, and made
themselves smell like, walk like and even think like buffalo. The
animals didn’t believe they were men.”
“Can you still do that—think like a buffalo, I mean?” Quiz gasped.
“Oh, sure. Just find me a herd of wild ones and I’ll prove it.”
“Ralph’s talents sure are being wasted on drilling for oil,” Donovan
said, knocking out his pipe against the jeep’s side for emphasis.
“All very amusing,” Hall grunted. “But crooked white men have taken
advantage of your sporting rivalry with the Navajo to rob both of you
blind during the past century. The same thing will happen again, I warn
you, if you don’t stop playing Indian and begin working at it.”
“Yes, boss,” Ralph agreed shamefacedly. “You’re absolutely right. But—I
forget everything you’ve said when that Quail character starts getting
under my buffalo hide!”
The car whined merrily down the road past the little towns of Newcomb
and Tohatchi while Ralph sulked and Hall and Donovan talked shop which
the boys couldn’t understand. They turned left on Route 68 in the middle
of the hot afternoon, crossed the line from New Mexico into Arizona, and
a few minutes later pulled into Window Rock.
The town, made up mostly of low, well-kept adobe and stone buildings,
lay in a little valley almost surrounded by red sandstone cliffs. It had
received its name, obviously, from one huge cliff that had a round hole
in it big enough to fly a plane through. One of its largest buildings
was occupied by the Indian Service. Another, built like a gigantic
hogan, was the Navajo Tribal Council, Hall told the boys. They passed a
brand-new hospital and a school and pulled up at a motel where a large
number of Cadillacs and less imposing vehicles were parked.
“Looks as if everybody in the Southwest had come to bid on or sell
equipment,” said Mr. Hall as he studied the array of cars and trucks.
Some of the latter bore the names of well-known companies such as Gulf,
Continental, Skelly and Schlumberger. Others belonged to smaller oil and
uranium firms that Sandy had never heard of.
“Donovan, Ralph, and I had better go in and chew the rag with them
awhile,” the oilman continued. “Why don’t you fellows look the town over
until it’s time for dinner? You’d just get bored sitting around.”
The boys were drifting over toward the Council Hall for a better look at
the many Navajos in stiff black hats and colorful shirts who clustered
around its doorway when they heard a familiar shout.
“Wait up!” Pepper March dashed across the dusty street and pounded them
on their backs as if they were his best friends. “Gee, it’s good to see
a white man you know.”
“You saw us only yesterday,” Sandy pointed out rather coldly.
“Oh, but that was business. Come on. I’ll buy a Coke. What have you been
up to? How do you like working for an old crank? What’s biting Hall’s
geologist? Boy, isn’t it hot? Did you know that I’m learning to fly
Red’s Bonanza? How’s your well coming along?”
“Whoa!” cried Quiz. “Relax! We’ve been working like sin. We like Mr.
Hall. His geologist is going to bite your Mr. Cavanaugh pretty soon, I’m
thinking. It is exactly 110 degrees in the shade. We did not know you
were learning to fly a plane. And the situation at the well is strictly
our own affair.”
“Uh—” said Pepper, “you’re not sore about what happened yesterday, are
you? Red was only trying to make a sale.”
“Nope. We’re not sore,” Sandy answered. “But we’re beginning to take a
dim view of your boss.”
“Why, Red’s the grandest guy you ever met. Do you know what he’s got me
doing?”
“There you go again, asking personal questions,” said Quiz.
“I’m helping him set up a string of light beam transceivers that will
keep his camps here and at Shiprock in constant communication with his
agent down at Gallup.”
“What on earth for?” Sandy almost choked on his Coke in amazement.
“What’s the matter with the telephone, telegraph and short-wave radio
stations that are scattered all over this territory? And how come
Cavanaugh has to have a permanent camp at Window Rock, and an agent in
Gallup?”
“Now who’s asking the questions?” Pepper said smugly. “Have another
Coke?”
“No, but we’ll buy you one,” Quiz replied, and added with a wink at his
pal, “It must be quite a job, setting up one of your stations.”
“Sure is!” The blond boy expanded at this implied praise. “It’s never
been done before over such long distances, Red says. You have to focus
the beam perfectly, or it’s no good. But, after you do that, nobody can
eavesdrop on you unless....” He stopped short, and jumped off the diner
stool as though it had suddenly become hot. “Well, so long, fellows.
I’ve got to be getting back to camp. See you around.” And he departed as
abruptly as he had come.
“Now what kind of business was that?” Sandy asked as he paid the entire
bill.
“Monkey business, I guess,” Quiz answered. “I think Mr. Hall ought to
know about those stations, and maybe Mr. White, the Indian Agent, should
be told too.” He kicked at the dust thoughtfully as they walked slowly
down Window Rock’s main street.
“Hmmm. You have to get a license from the government to operate a
short-wave station,” said Sandy. “But I don’t suppose you need one yet
for a light-beam job. Now, just supposing that Cavanaugh wanted to—”
“Wanted to what?”
“That’s what I don’t know. But I sure would like to find out. Let’s be
getting back to the motel.”
They found themselves in the middle of a tense scene when they entered
the motel patio. Twenty or thirty oil and uranium men were gathered
there, their chairs propped comfortably against the adobe walls, while
they listened to Cavanaugh and Donovan argue the merits of the big man’s
electronic explorer.
“You all know, my friends, that uranium ore can be, and has been, found
with a one-tube Geiger,” Red was booming. “But that’s like throwing a
lucky pass in a football game. To win the game, you need power in the
line—power that will let your ball carrier cross the line again, and
again, and again, the way I became an All-American by scoring those
three touchdowns against California back in 1930.”
“Oh, no!” Quiz whispered as he and Sandy founds seats in a far corner.
“This is where we came in last time.”
“In searching for oil, or even for uranium under a heavy overburden of
rock,” Cavanaugh went on, “you need at least the simplest scintillation
counter because it is sixty times as sensitive as a one-tube Geiger.
Better yet is the really professional counter—as much as 600 times more
sensitive than the best Geiger built. Best of all is my multiple
scintillator—100 times more sensitive than the best single tube. Even
you won’t disagree with that, will you, _Mr._ Donovan?”
“Not at all,” answered the bald man after several furious puffs on his
pipe. “I only say that, in addition to the best possible electronic
instrument, you need an operator who thoroughly understands radiation
equipment. Also, you should have a crew of geologists and geophysicists
who know how to balance radiation findings against those established by
other methods.”