some sort of ax minerals survey of school lands. Also said he’d stop by
again after school. Will you stay here until he has gone, Mr. Cars—Mr.
Steele? I can’t bear him.”
“I will if you’ll call me Sandy,” the boy said bashfully.
“All right, Sandy. And you may call me Kitty.”
“Cavanaugh certainly gets around,” Sandy said. “Did he have anyone with
him?”
“Yes, a young man who seemed to worship the ground he walked on. _He_
was nice enough, but, well, sort of dewy-eyed, if you know what I mean.”
“I know,” Sandy grunted, “and not quite dry behind the ears, either.
That was Pepper March.”
“Well, time to get classes started.” Kitty jumped up with a flutter of
skirts and shooed her children to their desks. For the next two hours,
while Sandy listened admiringly, she was an efficient, understanding
schoolma’am. As he followed the recitation he had to admit that, as she
had said, the Navajo children were “bright as silver dollars.” They
displayed an eagerness to learn that almost frightened him. Very few
youngsters showed that hunger for knowledge back at Valley View High.
That got him to thinking about poor old Quiz. How he would have enjoyed
this visit. What tough luck! But maybe he’d have a chance to get some
sort of line on Cavanaugh, the big lug.
The roar of an approaching truck jerked him out of his reverie. Kitty
quickly dismissed her pupils and she and Sandy were alone in the trailer
when Cavanaugh strode in, closely pursued by Pepper.
“Oh!” The big man frowned at the unexpected visitor until Pepper rushed
forward, shouting Sandy’s name, and shook hands as though his school
rival were the best friend he had in the world.
Then Cavanaugh turned on a smile as bright as a neon sign and insisted
on shaking hands too.
“I’ve heard a lot about you from Pepper,” he boomed. “Wish you were on
my team instead of John Hall’s. Say! I heard you had a bit of luck at
your well. Is that right?”
“Luck?” Sandy stammered, wondering how on earth he was going to get out
of this one.
“Oh, sure. Everybody knows about the telegram that brought you all
tearing back from Chinle. Did the well come in?”
“It.... We....” Sandy almost swallowed his Adam’s apple and his face
went white under its tan. What on earth could he say?
Cavanaugh misunderstood the reason for his hesitation and lost his
momentary advantage by rushing on.
“Oh, come on, son.” He pounded the boy’s shoulder with a great show of
affection. “You don’t owe a thing to that old skinflint Hall. Give me
the real lowdown on the well and I’ll make it very much worth your
while.”
Sandy jerked away, his fists clenched in fury, but Kitty stepped quickly
between him and his tormentor.
“Mr. Cavanaugh,” she said in a voice that dripped ice water, “you’re new
around the oil regions, aren’t you?”
“What do you mean?” The electronics man pulled in his dimpled chin as
though the girl had slapped him.
“Out here in the Southwest,” she said slowly, “folks don’t pry into
other folks’ business if they know what’s good for them.”
“Well.... I.... You....” His face turned scarlet. “You can’t talk to
me....”
“I can, and will.” Her black eyes flashed fire. “Your truck is
trespassing on school property belonging to the state of Utah. Remove it
at once!”
Cavanaugh opened and closed his mouth several times, like a fish out of
water.
“You’ll both be sorry for this,” he gritted like a stage villain. “Come
along, Pepper.”
“Do you....” Sandy spoke through a dry throat after Cavanaugh’s truck
had thundered away. “Kitty, do you live here in the trailer?”
“Why, of course.” She looked at him oddly. “There’s not the slightest
danger.”
“I’m not so sure, now. Couldn’t you stay with one of the Navajo families
in the neighborhood for a while?”
“Then who would protect the school? It’s more important than I am.”
“But....”
“Don’t you worry, Sandy Carson Steele.” She patted his arm. “The Navajos
are my friends, and they’re no friends of Cavanaugh. I’ll tell them
what’s happened and they’ll take good care of me. Now you had better get
back to the well as fast as you can. The roads are completely impossible
after dark.”
CHAPTER NINE
Fighting Fire with Fire
When he got back to the well Sandy found that Hall had already set out
on his fund-raising campaign while Donovan had locked himself in his
trailer laboratory and was running analyses on oil samples he had taken
before the cement was poured. Ralph had just finished welding a heavy
cap to the top of the casing.
“I defy anybody to find out what’s down there until we’re ready to let
them know,” he said as he grinned at the tired and dirty boy. The grin
changed to a frown. “What have you been up to this time, Sandy? You look
like something the cat refused to drag in!”
When he learned about the events at Kitty’s school, the driller nodded
grimly.
“I warned you about the curly wolves,” he said. “Go get cleaned up and
have some supper. Then come over to the lab. We’ll talk to Don about
this.”
The geologist smoked thoughtfully while Sandy reported. Then he knocked
out his pipe and said, “He’s impossible.”
“Who’s impossible?” Ralph asked.
“This man Cavanaugh. No man can spread himself as thin as he has been
doing. Look at it this way.” He held up a long finger stained with
chemicals. “First, he’s bidding for helium leases on land where he
wouldn’t be allowed to drill. Second—” another finger went up—“he’s
bidding for uranium leases although the government isn’t buying ore from
companies that don’t have mills. Third, he’s spying on our well. Fourth,
he’s trying to lease land in the disputed San Juan River bed. Fifth,
he’s prospecting on school lands without asking anyone’s permission.
Hmmm! I’ll run out of fingers pretty soon. Sixth, he’s peddling
electronic exploration equipment that isn’t worth a hoot when used by
itself. Seventh, he’s operating an unlicensed light beam communications
network. Eighth—and here’s something I learned when I drove over to
Farmington with John and we called Lukachukai to find out how Chief
Ponytooth is getting on—Cavanaugh flew down there yesterday and almost
pulled the hospital apart trying to get permission to talk to the old
man.”
“That means he hopes to get in on the ground floor if the Navajos and
Hopis settle their dispute,” said Ralph.
“Either that or he wants to hurt John by convincing the Chief that the
tribes shouldn’t get together.”
“How is the Chief feeling?” Sandy asked.
“Just fine, the nurse told me. He’s tough as shoe leather. Now, is there
anything else about Cavanaugh’s activities that we should consider?”
“Why does he work day and night to convince people that he’s a heel?”
Ralph contributed.
“Quiz thinks there’s something wrong with the football stories he’s
always telling,” said Sandy.
“All right,” Donovan went on thoughtfully. “I suggest that a lot of the
things Cavanaugh is doing are meant to be camouflage. He’s throwing up
some sort of smoke screen to get people confused about his true
intentions. And, since we’re the ones most likely to get hurt by
whatever he’s really up to, I also think we had better do a little
investigating. Does either of you have any suggestions?”
“If he were sending up smoke signals instead of talking on a light beam,
I’ll bet I could soon find out,” the Indian said.
“That’s an excellent idea, Ralph.” The geologist fired up his pipe and
sent clouds of smoke billowing through the crowded lab. “Eavesdroppers
never hear anything good about themselves, they say. Nevertheless, I
think we should fight fire with fire by listening in on him and learning
the worst.”
“But how _can_ we listen in?” Sandy objected. “Even if we got high
enough to intercept his beam—in a helicopter, let’s say—he would know
something had gone wrong when his receiving station didn’t reply. He’d
stop talking.”
“There’s another way to go about it,” Donovan replied. “I’m a pretty
good geophysicist as well as a geologist, Sandy. I have to be out here,
where I may go out looking for oil and find a uranium lode if I keep my
eyes peeled and my Geiger counter turned on.
“Over on that table—” he nodded toward a small electric furnace and a
collection of retorts, chemicals and test tubes on one corner of his
work bench—“I have equipment so sensitive that I can burn the branch of
a pine tree, or even a bunch of loco weed and find out whether the roots
of that tree or weed reach down into a uranium ore deposit. With it, I
can detect in the ash as little as one part in a million of any
radioactive ore the plant has sucked up from underground in its sap.
Which reminds me that any time you run across a patch of loco weed, let
me know immediately. The poisonous stuff seems to like to grow on ground
in the vicinity of uranium.
“All right. Any physicist understands the principles of electronics, the
properties of light, and so on, doesn’t he?”
Sandy nodded with growing excitement.
“Also, you may have heard that the FBI has an electronic gadget so
sensitive that it can eavesdrop on the conversations of crooks, even
though they may be sitting in a boat half a mile from shore.”
“I’ll bet the Shoshonean water spirits take a dim view of that,” said
Ralph, grinning.
Donovan waved him to silence with his pipe and continued.
“Now my guess is that Cavanaugh is using a lot of power from a portable
generator to produce a beam bright enough to be seen a hundred or so
miles away. And it’s a lot easier for him to modulate that current so it
will modulate the beam than to use revolving mirrors or some other
mechanical means to do the job. There is bound to be considerable
leakage in a circuit of that kind. I think I can go to one of the radio
supply stores in Farmington tomorrow and pick up enough parts to make an
electronic ‘ear’ that can tune in on that leakage if we get it within a
hundred feet of Cavanaugh’s transmitter.”
“Sherlock Donovan,” said Ralph, “I take off my hat to you.”
The haywire “ear” that Donovan built during the next several days with
what little assistance Sandy was able to supply didn’t look like much.
It was just a collection of transistors, fixed and variable condensers,
coils and verniers mounted on an old breadboard. But it had the
advantage of being light and portable. And, when they tried it out with
the help of their radio receiving set, it worked!
They found that, with the set’s loudspeaker disconnected, they could
place their gadget several hundred feet away and hear the programs
perfectly, either on the short-wave or regular broadcasting channels.
“That does it,” Donovan finally said after a careful series of night
tests. “We don’t know the frequency that Cavanaugh is using as a
modulator, but this thing is flexible enough to tune in on practically
any wave band. Now the question becomes, when do we try it out?”
“Why not right now?” Ralph asked.
“Boyd has gone in to town, so I’m in charge of keeping an eye on the
well,” said the geologist. “I can’t go with you tonight.”
“Sandy and I can handle it,” said the driller. “We’ll take the jeep. If
we get in a jam we’ll send up a rocket or something.”
On the slow, twenty-mile drive to Elbow Rock, Ralph spun old tales about
Ute scouting expeditions and buffalo hunts, but Sandy scarcely listened.
He was feeling miserable, and wished for the first time that he was back
home in Valley View.
“You don’t like what we’re doing, do you?” Ralph said at last.
“Well, gee. Eavesdropping seems sort of sneaking.”
“I know it does, but don’t forget that we’re dealing with a sneak. Tell
you what: you stay in the car. I’ll take the ear in.”
“No,” Sandy said firmly. “I’ll do anything I can to help Mr. Hall.
Besides, I helped build the ear and know just how it works. I’ll carry
it.”
They parked as close to Cavanaugh’s brightly lighted trailer as they
dared. Then Sandy strapped the detector on his chest and walked slowly
up the mountain in darkness so intense and silent that it could almost
be felt. Remembering the lay of the land from the time that he and Quiz
had visited the spot with Pepper, he managed to stay mostly on the
trail.
He was still several hundred yards from the trailer when the night
exploded in a blare of savage noise. Several large dogs had started
baying furiously near the trailer. A door opened. Cavanaugh shouted
angrily at a pack of long-legged animals that leaped and whined in the
shaft of light.
When quiet had been restored, Sandy inched forward once more. But it was
no use. The chorus of barks rose louder than before and several of the
dogs started in his direction. With mixed emotions of annoyance and
relief, he returned to the jeep and reported.
“Dogs!” Ralph growled. “That means Cavanaugh really has something to
hide. What did they look like?”
“They had long legs, sharp noses and big white teeth.”
“Doberman pinschers, I’ll bet. Say! Tim Robbins breeds Dobermans over in
Bluff. They make better sheep tenders than shepherds, he claims. Let’s
pay him a visit, even if it is late.” He started the jeep.
“What are you planning to do?” Sandy asked sharply.
“If Utes could behave like buffalo, there’s no reason why I can’t be a
dog,” Ralph answered.
“But you don’t have a dog skin,” Sandy objected.
“I’m going to get one.”
Old man Robbins was in bed when they arrived at his home on the
outskirts of the little mining town. He came downstairs in his
nightshirt when he recognized Ralph’s voice, made coffee for his
visitors, and listened to their request without surprise.
“Why, sure, I’ve got a few skins,” he said. “Here’s one that belonged to
poor Maisie. She died of distemper last year. I was going to upholster a
chair with her, but you can have her for a dollar.”
“Mind if I take a look around your runways and kennels, Dad?” Ralph
asked.
“Go ahead, but don’t get yourself bit, young feller.” The old man shook
his head at the strange ways of all Indians.
Five minutes later they were headed back toward Elbow Rock.
“Phooey!” said Sandy. “You smell like dog, all right.”
“I rolled around a bit in the kennels.” Ralph’s grin was just visible in
the light from the dash bulb. “Now I’ve got to start thinking like a
dog. Don’t bother me, human!”
When they arrived at their destination the driller took a brief lesson
in the operation of the ear, slipped its harness over his shoulders, and
draped Maisie’s hide around his hips.
“Keep your fingers crossed and say a prayer to the water spirits,” he
whispered just before he faded into the velvety darkness.
For long moments Sandy held his breath, expecting a renewal of that wild
barking. But it didn’t come. High on the Elbow Rock the aluminum trailer
glowed undisturbed in the soft light pouring from its picture windows.
A trout, leaping in the stream nearby, caused the boy to start
violently. He tried to relax but that only made him listen harder. Once
he thought he heard a strain of music coming from the trailer. Hours
later, it seemed, an owl’s hoot made his hair stir on his scalp. He
smoothed down his cowlick and then gripped the wheel of the car with
both hands to stop their trembling. What if Dobermans didn’t always bark
before they attacked? What if Ralph was up there....
“I’m back.”
Sandy almost yelled with relief as his friend materialized out of
nowhere and climbed nonchalantly into the car. “Wha ... what happened?”
gasped the boy, gripping the Indian’s arm to see if he really was real.
“You fooled the dogs?”
“Nothing happened. And your little friends never batted an eyelash. I’m
good, I guess.” He removed the skin and tossed it into the rear of the
jeep.
“What do you mean, nothing happened? Didn’t the ear work?”
“It worked perfectly.” He started the motor and jammed the car into
gear.
“What did you hear?”
“Music,” said the Ute disgustedly. “Highbrow music. Bach and stuff.”
“Was it code of some kind?”
“Nah!” Ralph spat into the night. “Your friend Pepper would say, ‘Come
in, Gallup. I’ve got something here that you’d like: the umpteenth
symphony by so-and-so.’ Then he’d play a record and say, ‘How did that
sound, Gallup?’ And Gallup would answer, ‘Clear as a bell, kid. Keep it
up.’ Or Window Rock trailer would come in, ask for a Belafonte number,
and then say it was fuzzy and to sharpen up the beam. Craziest
performance I ever heard.”
“Maybe they’re just lonesome, way up here,” Sandy said with great
relief.
“Maybe. But it’s a mighty expensive way to be lonesome.”
“Or they could be testing,” the boy went on with less assurance.
“That sounds more like it.”
“Or they’re killing time while they wait for a message of some kind?”
“Now you’re cooking with LP gas. The question remains: where is that
message going to come from? I don’t like this business, Sandy. It gets
screwier. I wish we could monitor his station every night, but that’s
impossible, of course. Well, at least we know our ear works and that
Cavanaugh keeps a kennel. I wonder what John and Don will make of this
one.”
“When will Mr. Hall be back?” Sandy was glad for a chance to change the
subject.
“Next week, I think. Keep this under your hat, but he has got his loan,
and has flown down to Houston to put some more rigs under contract.
Also, I wangled a portable drill rig when I was in Farmington today.
That means we’ll soon be heading for the other lease to run some
surveys. And _that’s_ a job that separates the men from the boys, I can
tell you.”
“After what happened tonight I feel as if I’d already been separated.”
Sandy yawned. “Gee, don’t oilmen ever get any sleep?”
CHAPTER TEN
Pepper Makes a Play
A huge truck carrying a light folding drill rig and motor rumbled into
camp from Farmington two days after the Elbow Rock episode. Donovan then
set about organizing an exploration crew. Since the need for secrecy had
lessened, only five of the older men were selected to act as a token
guard for the property. Ten others, who had had experience in survey
work, were directed to take tarpaulins off the long-unused instrument
and “shooting” trucks, tune up their motors, and get the trailers set
for travel. After Ralph had checked every item on the rented truck and
Donovan had made sure that his seismograph, magnetometer, gravimeter and
other scientific apparatus were all in perfect working order, the little
caravan rolled westward toward Hall’s other San Juan River lease.
“We may be going on a wild-goose chase,” the geologist told Sandy, who
was riding with him in the jeep that now had the laboratory in tow. “I
had an aerial survey run on the property last fall. It shows one
anticline that _may_ contain oil, but I’ll have to do a lot of surface
work before I recommend that John spends money on a wildcat well.”
“How do you make an aerial survey, Mr. Donovan?”
“I’d like you to call me Don, if you will, Sandy,” the geologist said.
“And you ought to call John by his first name, too. Oilmen don’t go in
for formality after they get acquainted.”
“Yes, sir ... Mr.—Don, I mean.” Sandy felt a warm glow at this mark of
friendship.
“One method of making an aerial survey is by means of photographs taken
from a plane or helicopter,” the geologist explained. “A stereoscopic
color camera is used to provide a true three-dimensional picture of the
area in which you are interested. Such photographs show the pitch and
strike of surface rock strata and give you some idea of what formations
lie beneath them. In addition, prospectors use an airborne magnetometer.
You know what a magnetometer is, don’t you?”
“It measures small differences in the earth’s magnetic field.”
“Right! I see that you listened when your dad talked about geology.
Well, you fly a magnetometer back and forth in a checkerboard pattern
over any area where photographs have shown rock formations favorable for
oil deposits. Heavy basement strata are more magnetic than the
sedimentary rocks that cover them. So, when those igneous basement rocks
bulge toward the surface of the earth, your magnetometer reading goes
up. That gives you a double check because, if the basement bulges, the
sedimentary rocks that may contain oil have to bulge too. And such a
bulge, or anticline, may trap that oil in big enough quantities to make
it worth your while to drill for it.
“Then, if your money holds out—aerial surveys cost a young fortune—you
may run a triple check with a scintillation counter to see whether
there’s a radiation halo around the anticline. One complication with
that is that you have to remove the radium dials from the instrument
panel of your plane to keep leakage from interfering with your
scintillation readings.”
A loud honking from the rear of the column caused Donovan to stop the
jeep. Going back, they found that the new drill truck had slipped into a
ditch and was teetering dangerously.
Although they had been traveling through such wild and arid country that
it seemed impossible that even prairie dogs could live there, quite a
crowd collected while they struggled and sweated for half an hour to get
the machine back on what passed for a road. First came a wagon pulled by
two scrawny horses and carrying a whole Navajo family—father, mother,
two children and a goat. An ancient truck with three more Indians aboard
pulled up in a cloud of dust. Then came two Navajos on horseback.
Ralph recognized one of the riders and gravely offered him a cigarette
which he held crosswise between his first and second fingers.
“Hosteen Buray, we need your help,” said the driller after his gift had
been accepted.
The rider said a few words to the other bystanders and things began to
happen. The riders galloped away and came back dragging a small tree
trunk that could be used to raise the truck axle. The children gathered
sagebrush to stuff under the wheels. The woman milked her goat into a
pan and presented the steaming drink to the thirsty oilmen. Finally,
everyone got behind the machine and pushed with many shouts and grunts.
With Ralph’s expert hand at the wheel, the truck struggled back onto the
trail.
After receiving “thank yous” from all concerned, the Navajos stood aside
and waved in silence as the column drove away.
This time, Sandy asked to ride with the driller because, as he
explained, “I’ve got a lot of questions about things.”
“Shoot,” said Ralph.
“Why didn’t anyone offer to pay those people for helping us?”
“They would have been insulted. That’s how Cavanaugh got in bad with
them in the first place—by insisting that they take money for
everything. Navajos are proud. Next question.”
“Why did you hand out cigarettes in that funny way, instead of just
offering your pack?”
“You never point anything at an Indian. It might be a gun.”
“Oh....”
“Anything else on your mind, Sandy?”
“Are all Navajos named Hosteen something-or-other?”
“Hosteen means ‘Mister.’ Most white men don’t use the term. The Navajos
resent that, too.”
“I guess I’ve got a lot to learn,” the boy sighed.
“You’re doing all right.” Ralph slapped him on the knee.
They made camp in a forest of pines not far from a dry wash that ran
into the San Juan River gorge, and started work at once. Donovan split
the party into two groups. One, which he headed, loaded the heavy
magnetometer and gravimeter equipment into a truck and set out to check
formations revealed by the aerial studies. Ralph and Sam Stack, a burly
surveyor who had arrived with the portable drill rig, took charge of a
transit, plane table and Brunton compass. They named Sandy and three
others to carry stadia rods and help them make a careful surface survey
of the vicinity where the oil anticline was believed to be.
Then began one of the hardest weeks of grinding labor that Sandy had
ever put in. All day long he climbed over rocks and fought briary
thickets while moving his rod to spots where it could be seen from the
various transit positions. His experience on Boy Scout geology field
trips kept him from getting lost and enabled him to chip a number of
rock formations for analysis. But it was only after he returned to camp
at night and propped his tired eyes open with his fingers while watching
Don, Ralph and Stack plot lines on a topographical map of the region,
that he could form any idea of what was being done.
Hall joined them on the third evening and watched without comment as the
work went on. He looked gray and tired.
“You seem bushed, John,” said Donovan after they had added the day’s
data to the map. “Any trouble?”