two wells didn’t make a profitable field, out here in the middle of
nowhere. I had to trade a two-thirds interest in the other lease to
Midray before I got my money!”
“That’s the way the oil squirts,” Ralph said philosophically. “So we’re
in partnership with a big company.”
“I’m solvent, anyway.” Hall shrugged. “But we won’t make our fortunes
unless that first lease turns out to have the largest field in San Juan
County. Of course, if this one pays off, too....” His voice trailed
away.
“I don’t know about that, John.” Donovan bit his thin lips. “We’re
finding some underground anomalies, but, confound it, I don’t feel right
about the situation. For one thing, the plants that usually grow in the
neighborhood of a deposit just aren’t in evidence. We’ve found an
anticline, all right, but I have a hunch there’s mighty little oil in
it.”
“Excuse me,” Sandy interrupted from his seat at the end of the map
table, “but if you find a dome, or anticline, doesn’t it just have to
hold oil?”
“Not at all,” the geologist answered with a wave of his pipe. “The oil
might have escaped before the bulge was formed by movements of the
earth’s crust. Or perhaps the top of the anticline had a crack, or
fault, through which the oil seeped to the surface ages ago.”
“You are going to run a seismic survey, aren’t you?” Hall asked.
“Yes, we’ll start tomorrow if the weather holds out. The radio says
thunderstorms are brewing, though.”
“Do the best you can.” Hall rose and stretched. “I’m going to turn in
now. I feel lousy.”
Sandy didn’t sleep well, although he, too, was so tired that his bones
ached. He was up at sunrise—except that there was no sunrise. The sky
looked like a bowl of brass and the heat was the worst he had met with
since his arrival in the Southwest.
After a hurried breakfast they drove the portable drill rig, instrument
truck and shooting truck to the anticline which lay, circled by tall
yellow buttes, about three miles from the camp site.
Once there, Ralph used a small diamond drill to make a hole through
surface dirt and rubble. The rest of the crew dug a line of shallow pits
with their spades. These were evenly spaced from “ground zero” near the
hole Ralph had drilled to a distance from it of about 2,000 feet. While
two men tamped a dynamite charge into the “shot hole,” other crew
members buried small electronic detectors called geophones in the pits,
and connected them, with long insulated wires, to the seismograph in the
instrument truck.
Just as the job was finished, a roaring squall sent everyone dashing for
cover.
“We’re going to set off a man-made earthquake in a moment, Sandy,”
Donovan said when the dripping boy climbed into the instrument truck.
“Watch carefully. When I give the word, Ralph will explode the dynamite.
The shock will send vibrations down to the rock layers beneath us. Those
vibrations will bounce back to the line of geophones and be relayed to
the seismograph here. Since shock waves travel through the ground at
different speeds and on different paths, depending on the strata that
they strike, they will trace different kinds of lines on this strip of
sensitized paper. I can interpret those lines and get a pretty good
picture of what the situation is down below.”
“You mean you can make an earthquake with dynamite?” Sandy cried.
“A mighty little one. But it will be big enough for our purposes. This
seismograph measures changes of one millionth of an inch in the position
of the earth’s surface.” He started the wide tape rolling, and picked up
a field telephone that connected the three trucks.
“All ready, Ralph?” he asked. “Fine! I’ll give you a ten-second
countdown. Ten. Nine. Eight. Seven. Six. Five. Four. Three. Two. One.
Shoot!”
There was a subdued roar deep underground. A geyser of earth and
splintered rock spouted from the shot hole. The seismograph pens, which
had been tracing steady parallel lines on the paper, began tracing
jagged lines instead.
“All right, Ralph,” Donovan spoke into the phone. “If the rain lets up,
have the boys string another line of geophones and we’ll cross-check.”
They got in one more shot before the increasing thunderstorm made
further work impossible. Then Ralph and Hall sprinted over from the
shooting truck and spent the next hour listening while Donovan explained
the squiggles on the graph.
“So you’re not too happy about the situation, Don?” the producer asked
at last.
“I hate to say so, John,” the geologist answered, “but things don’t look
too good. We’ve found a dome, all right, but I’m afraid it has a crack
in its top. Look at this.” He put away his magnifying glass, lighted up,
and pointed his pipe stem at a sharp break in the inked lines. “I can’t
take the responsibility for telling you to spend a hundred thousand
dollars or so drilling five thousand feet into a cockeyed formation like
that.”
“Once a poor boy, always a poor boy, I guess.” Hall shrugged.
“Oh, I haven’t given up yet,” said Donovan grimly. “The aerial survey
shows another possible anomaly about three miles west of here. I’ll do
some work on that before we call it quits.”
“Take your time,” said his employer.
“Hey!” Ralph, who had been standing at the trailer window, staring
glumly into the sheets of rain that swept toward them across the San
Juan gorge, spoke up sharply. “Take a look at that river, will you?”
They joined him at the window and found that the stream had doubled in
size since the rain had started. Now it was a raging yellow torrent that
filled the gorge from border to border.
“It beats me,” said Hall, “how it can rain cats and dogs in this country
one day and flood everything, but be dry as dust the next. When the
government finishes building its series of dams around here and all this
water is impounded for irrigation, you’ll see the desert blossom like
the rose, I’ll bet.”
“The rain all runs off and does no good now, that’s a sure thing,”
Donovan agreed.
“Look,” Ralph interrupted. “There’s a boat or barge or something coming
down the river.”
“You’re crazy,” said Donovan. “Nothing could live in that—Say!” He
rubbed mist off the window and peered out into the downpour. “Something
_is_ coming down. You’re right!”
They stood shoulder to shoulder and stared in horror. Around a bend in
the stream a heavily laden homemade barge had plunged into view. A vivid
flash of lightning showed one man standing upright in the stern. Blond
hair flying, he was struggling to steer the bucking craft with a long
sweep.
“That’s Pepper March!” Sandy shouted as another flash spotlighted the
craft. “He must be trying to prove that the San Juan is navigable.”
“He won’t last five miles,” Ralph snapped. “I’ve got to go after the
young fool. Grab some rope, Sandy, and come along.”
There was no rope in the truck, so Sandy snatched up a coil of heavy
wire cable used to lower electric logs into test wells. With it over his
shoulder, he tore out into the storm after the driller.
They got the jeep going after considerable cranking and headed
downstream. It was a nip and tuck race since there was no trail along
the gorge. But Ralph put the car in four-wheel drive and tore along over
rocks and through flooded washes while Sandy hung onto the windshield
frame for dear life. Finally they managed to pull ahead of the tossing
barge.
“There’s a rapids about five miles downstream,” Ralph shouted above the
thunder that rolled back and forth like cannon shots among the buttes
and cliffs. “He’ll never go farther than that. The only thing I can do
is to stand by there and try to throw him a line. It’s a long chance.
Thank heaven and the water spirits that I learned to rope horses when I
was a kid.”
They reached the rapids with only seconds to spare. The Indian fastened
one end of the cable to the power takeoff at the rear of the jeep and
coiled the rest of it with great care at the edge of the gorge. Then he
stood, braced against the howling wind, swinging the heavy log in his
right hand.
“Here he comes,” Ralph said. “What a shame that damned fools often look
like heroes. Your friend is probably thinking he’s Lewis, Clark and Paul
Revere rolled into one. Stand by to start the takeoff and reel him in if
I hook him, Sandy.... There he goes. There he goes! Stand by!”
Pepper was fighting the rapids now, like some yellow-haired Viking out
of the past. It was no use. Halfway through, the awkward barge hit a
submerged rock. Slowly its bow reared into the air. The heavy pipe with
which it had been loaded started cascading into the boiling water.
Pepper had enough presence of mind to drop the useless sweep, and
scramble out of the path of the lengths of pipe as they flew like
jackstraws. As he managed to grab the uptilting rail, Ralph’s mighty arm
swung back and forward. The end of the cable carrying the log paid out
smoothly. Out and down it sped in a long arc.
It struck the boat and slid slowly along the rapidly sinking rail. After
one wild look upward, Pepper understood what had happened. He snatched
the wire as it went by and looped it twice around his waist.
“Haul away,” Ralph whooped to Sandy. “We’ve caught our fish.”
As the jeep’s motor roared and the takeoff spun, Pepper was snatched
from his perch and dragged helter-skelter through the wild waters.
Minutes later Ralph dragged him over the edge of the cliff, choking and
half drowned.
“No real damage except a few nasty bruises,” the driller grunted after
he had applied artificial respiration with more vigor than was really
needed. “How do you feel, bud?”
“Awful!” Pepper groaned. Then he amazed them by sitting up and glaring
at them.
“That was ... a stinking trick,” he croaked after he had spat out a
mouthful of dirty water. “Stringing cable ... capsizing my barge ... I’d
have made it.”
“Whaaat?” Sandy hardly believed his ears.
“I’d have made it, I tell you! I would have!” Pepper wailed
hysterically. “Then you ... then you ...” He retched miserably.
“Listen, kid,” Ralph snapped as he half-carried the boy to the jeep.
“Your Red Cavanaugh ought to be strung up for egging you on to try a
stunt like that.”
“No!” Tears dripped down Pepper’s dirty cheeks. “My idea. He didn’t
know.”
“Bunk! You mean he didn’t know you had built a barge and loaded it with
pipe? Don’t lie! Your boss is a stinking, no-good, lowdown louse.”
“Oh, no!” Pepper tried to pull free, then leaned against the side of the
car and clung there like a half-drowned monkey. “Red’s best boss a man
ever had. He’s ... he’s wonderful.... Likes good music ... dogs ...
Indians. I’d die for Red.”
“That’s the point.” Ralph rummaged in the back of the jeep, found
Maisie’s mangy hide, and wrapped it around the shivering boy. “You
almost did die. Cavanaugh’s next door to a murderer.”
Pepper stared at them as if he were waking from a dream.
“You really believe that, Sandy?” he gulped weakly.
“I know it, Pepper.” Torn between pity and anger, Sandy gripped the
blond boy’s arm. “Cavanaugh’s a crook!”
“Crook?” Pepper babbled. “No, no!” His knees sagged and they just
managed to catch him as he fell.
“A strange boy,” said Ralph as they drove back to camp with the would-be
Viking sleeping the sleep of exhaustion between them. “He’s in trouble,
some way. Maybe he was trying to prove himself, like young Indians once
did before they could become braves.”
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Serendipity
Pepper was black, blue, stiff and somewhat chastened when he ate
breakfast with Ralph and Sandy the next morning. Also, he was disturbed
by the fact that Cavanaugh’s plane had come over at dawn, circled the
wrecked barge in the rapids for several minutes, and then scooted
eastward without landing.
“He must have known I planned to run the river,” the blond boy admitted.
“But why do you suppose he didn’t stop to ask whether you folks had seen
me?”
“Probably was afraid to.” Ralph attacked a big plate of ham and
scrambled eggs. “Figures he may be blamed for letting you drown, so he’s
gone home to frame an alibi. Won’t he be surprised when you show up in
one of our supply trucks!”
“Gee whiz! Do you really think he’s that bad, Mr. Salmon?”
“I think he’s worse. See here, kid. Why don’t you stop working for that
heel and come over here? I’m sure John will give you a roustabout job.”
“No.” Pepper shook his head stubbornly. “I signed a contract and I can’t
go back on my word. Besides, I haven’t seen him do anything really bad.
I’ll admit that some of the things he does seem, well, sort of queer.
But maybe you’re just too suspicious.”
“Maybe.” Ralph washed down a hunk of Ching Chao’s good apple pie with
half a cup of steaming coffee. “Well, it’s your funeral.”
“I’ll keep my eyes open after this.” Pepper rose as a honk from the
truck told him it was time to get going. “Thanks for everything. And I
really do mean for everything.”
The Indian stood up and stretched like a lazy panther as he watched
their visitor depart. “Crazy kid,” he said. “Well, it’s time for us to
be getting back to the mines, Sandy. Don’s staying here for a few days
to run some final tests. He has assigned our group to start surveying
the other structure. So pick up your rock hammer and stadia rod. Hike!”
The new location proved to be several miles north of the river in a
tumbled and desolate region of weathered buttes and washes that already
were dry as bone.
“Geologists call those buttes ‘diatremes,’” Stack, the surveyor,
explained to the crew as they unloaded equipment at a central spot.
“They stick up like sore thumbs because they’re really vents from
ancient volcanoes. The lava they’re made of doesn’t erode much although
the surrounding sedimentary rocks have been worn away in the course of
ages. There are at least 250 diatremes scattered through this Colorado
Plateau area, and some of them are rich in minerals. So keep your eyes
open while you’re prowling.”
“Prowling” was exactly the word for what the crew did, Sandy decided
after a few days in the broiling sun. He had to admit that the territory
was beautiful, in its wild way, but he decided that it was more fit for
mountain goats than human beings. More and more, as he slowly worked his
way from one rod location to another, measured the slope of exposed
strata with his Brunton compass, or chipped rock samples for analysis
back at camp, he began to dream of the soft green hills and winding
streams near Valley View.
His homesickness grew worse when Hall brought him a letter from Quiz.
Dear Sandy,
I sure do envy you, out there in God’s country. Things are mighty dull
around here, although I do get some time for swimming and tennis, now
that Dad is able to hobble around in his cast and help out at the
restaurant.
Last Sunday we had a picnic out by the lake. The fishing was swell.
And there was a dance at the pavilion afterward. I’m not much for
dancing, but I know you like to. Still, you must be having plenty of
fun out at the well.
“Fun!” Sandy exploded as he reread that paragraph. He was bathing his
blistered feet in the first spring he had found that day and batting at
deer flies that seemed determined to eat him alive. Then he read on:
I haven’t forgotten about Cavanaugh. Dad says he’s a lone wolf and
that nobody knows much about him. He came here about two years ago,
flashed a lot of money around, and built his lab. Joined the Country
Club, Rotary, and so on. Impressed a lot of people with his football
talk. Makes good equipment and has several research contracts that
take him to Washington quite frequently. His employees think he’s a
stuffed shirt, too.
I tried to look up his sports record at the library, but the
newspapers that should tell about his big game are missing from the
files. When Dad gets better, he says I can take a day or two off and
see what I can find in the San Francisco library. I’ll let you know.
Funny about those newspapers, isn’t it?
Give my regards to the gang. I sure do wish I was there instead of
here.
As ever,
Quiz
After he had finished reading Sandy sat for a long time with his chin in
his hands, thinking. The survey wasn’t going well, he knew. Yesterday,
Hall and Donovan had paid them a visit and shaken their heads at the map
that Ralph and Stack were drawing.
“This isn’t an anticline, John,” the geologist had said. “What we have
here is fault that has caused a stratigraphic trap. That is, layers of
rock on one side of the fault line have been lifted above those on the
other side of the crack by some old earthquake. The slip sealed off the
upper end of what may be an oil-bearing layer with the edge of a layer
of hard, impervious rock. If you drill here—” he pointed with his pipe
stem—“you may hit a small pool. Nothing spectacular, you understand, but
it ought to more than pay expenses.”
“I don’t know whether I should take the chance.” Hall had shaken his
gray head. “I need something better than this to gamble on, the way
things are. Tell you what, Don. There’s going to be a bid session at
Window Rock next Monday. Keep the crew working here for a few days
longer while I drive down and see if I can shake loose a better lease.
Ralph, you’d better come along. I hear that the Navajo and Hopi Councils
will have some sort of joint powwow at the Rock and I’ll want you to
keep an eye on it. You come along too, Sandy, and bring the ‘ear.’ I
have a hunch that a lot of things are about to pop.”
“Will we have room for Kitty?” Ralph asked. “I dropped over to see her
after work yesterday and she told me the school is closing Monday and
Tuesday because there’s going to be a big Squaw Dance in the
neighborhood. She wants to go home and get her best clothes to wear to
it. She could drive her own car, of course....”
“Kitty’s good company,” Hall had replied. “I’d be glad to have her
along.”
A distant hail jerked Sandy out of his reverie. He put on his shoes,
picked up his rod, hammer and compass, and started climbing over jagged
rocks to the top of a crumbling low butte that was to be the next survey
location. The going wasn’t too bad because one side of the cone had
collapsed, thus providing a slope of debris up which he could clamber
with fair speed.
When Stack’s transit came in sight, Sandy placed the stadia rod upright
so that it could be seen against the skyline and started the slow
business of moving it about in response to the surveyor’s hand signals.
Several times he stopped and listened intently. Off to his right, hidden
in the underbrush that choked the crater, he thought he heard some large
animal moving. A deer, probably, he tried to reassure himself, although
he remembered that one of the other crewmen had had a nasty brush with a
bobcat several days previously.
“That’s it, Sandy,” the surveyor in the valley bellowed through cupped
hands at last. “Call it a day.”
The boy was beating a quiet retreat down the slope when a tired bleat
stopped him in his tracks. The animal in there was either a sheep or a
calf, and it seemed to be in trouble.
“Better take a look,” said Sandy. (He had got into the habit of talking
to himself these last few lonely weeks. The noise seemed to keep the
homesickness away.)
It was a calf, he found, when he had fought his way into the thicket.
And it seemed to be sick. First it would nibble at some plants where it
stood, then, lifting its feet high and putting them down gingerly, it
would move slowly to another location and repeat the performance. Every
so often it let out that piteous bleat.
“Poor thing,” Sandy murmured. “Maybe I ought to take it back to camp.”
He fished a length of cord out of his knapsack, looped it around the
calf’s neck and tugged. The animal gave him a glassy stare and wobbled
forward.
“Probably a Navajo stray,” he said. “Its owners will be looking for it.”
When he reached the temporary camp half an hour later, Ralph took one
look at the calf and let out an astonished whoop.
“Loco,” he shouted. “Hey, gang! Come look what Sandy found.”
Men came running from all directions.
“Where did you find it?” Stack demanded.
“Up there. On top of that butte.” Sandy pointed.
“Was it eating anything at the time?” Ralph snapped.
“Yes. Some plants that looked sort of like ferns, only they had little
bell-like blossoms hanging from stalks in their centers.”
“Locoweed,” the Indian crowed. “_Astragalus Pattersoni_, Donovan calls
it. Sandy, you may have found just what the doctor ordered to get John
out of his pinch. I’ll get a Geiger counter. The rest of you round up
some flashlights, sacks and spades. We’d better take a look at this
right away.”
“What about my calf?” Sandy objected.
“Oh, stake it out somewhere and give it some water. It may recover. It’s
just drugged. Indians used to chew locoweed when they went down in their
kivas, you know. They said it made them see visions in which they talked
to the spirits. Eat too much of the stuff, though, and you’re a goner.”
Two hours later, after having dug up most of the crater, the men tramped
wearily back to camp in the light of the rising moon. The sacks they
carried on their backs bulged with loads of black earth mixed with
yellow carnotite crystals that made the Geiger chatter madly.
Hall was just driving into camp as they arrived.
“We’ve found a rich uranium lode or lens, I think, John,” Ralph shouted
to him. For once he had lost his Indian calm and was almost dancing with
excitement.
“You don’t say,” yawned the producer as he dragged himself out of the
car.
“Well!” Ralph stared, openmouthed, at this cool reception. “What’s the
matter, boss? Don’t you care?”
“Where are we going to sell the ore?” Hall asked gently.
“Oh!” Ralph wilted. “I hadn’t thought of that. The government only buys
from people who have mills.”
“Sure. A uranium strike these days is just like money in a safe for
which you have lost the combination.”
“Excuse me, Mr. Hall,” Stack interrupted, “but doesn’t Midray own an
interest in a uranium mill?”
“Oh, yes.” Hall smiled grimly at the surveyor. “Midray owns an interest
in most everything. It will be delighted to help me develop the lode—in
exchange for three-fourths of the profits.
“That’s better than nothing, though.” He straightened his shoulders. “A
uranium strike will shorten the odds enough so I can take a chance on
drilling a well here. Why, what am I grousing about? This could be a
real stroke of luck. How did you happen to find it?”
When he had heard the story, Hall slapped Sandy on the back.
“That’s what’s called serendipity,” he said, chuckling. “You remember
the three Princes of Serendip in the fairy story: on their travels they
always found things they weren’t looking for. Congratulations, Sandy.
You have the makings of a real wildcatter.”
But, as the boy went off to take care of his sick calf, he knew that his
employer had been putting on an act. Serendipity or no, John Hall was
still running a poor-boy outfit.
CHAPTER TWELVE
Cavanaugh Makes a Mistake
Hall had completely recovered his good spirits by the time that Ralph
brought Kitty to camp at dawn. Just as the sun rose the little party set
out for Window Rock in a holiday mood. Hall made one stop for a brief
conference with Donovan. Then he drove on to his base camp, arriving in
time for breakfast.
Sandy could hardly recognize the place where he had worked such a short
time before. Number Two well had been opened and connected to the feeder
pipeline through a Christmas tree, while its derrick had been moved to a
new location. Three big new Midray rigs were being erected at other
spots on the property. Still more derricks were going up on surrounding
leases. This was rapidly becoming an important field.
Hall had a short talk with the Midray superintendent, a big man who
reminded Sandy of Cavanaugh and who acted as if he owned the place. Then
they were on their way again.
“The lease looks like Times Square,” Hall grunted as he headed the jeep
toward Shiprock. “Makes me uncomfortable. I like to work where there’s
plenty of room to swing a wildcat.”
“I bet you still prefer to use a burro when you go prospecting, you old
sourdough,” Kitty teased him.
“Well, a burro never runs out of gas or breaks a spring, and it has a
better horn than a jeep,” Hall said, grinning. “When a burro brays, even
the mountains have to listen. That’s why he’s called a Rocky Mountain
canary, I suppose.”
They reached Route 666 in good time, turned south between Shiprock Peak
and Hogback Mountain, and sailed down through the picturesque Chuskas
past road signs that beckoned toward far-off, mysterious places like
Toadlena, Beautiful Mountain, Coyote Wash, Nakaibito, Pueblo Bonito
(Lovely Village) and Ojo Caliente (Hot Eye).