THE GUSHER
Jackpot number three had come in with a roar that shook the earth for
half a mile. Deep below the surface there was a hiss and a crackle, the
shock of rending strata giving way to the pressure of the oil pool. From
long experience as a driller, Jed Burns knew what was coming. He swept
his crew back from the platform, and none too soon to escape disaster.
They were still flying across the prairie when the crown box catapulted
into the sky and the whole drilling superstructure toppled over. Rocks,
clay, and sand were hurled into the air, to come down in a shower that
bombarded everything within a radius of several hundred yards.
The landscape next moment was drenched in black petroleum. The fine
particles of it filled the air, sprayed the cactus and the greasewood.
Rivulets of the viscid stuff began to gather in depressions and to flow
in gathering volume, as tributaries joined the stream, into the sump
holes prepared for it. The pungent odor of crude oil, as well as the
touch and the taste of it, penetrated the atmosphere.
Burns counted noses and discovered that none of his crew had been injured
by falling rocks or beams. He knew that his men could not possibly cope
with this geyser on a spree. It was a big strike, the biggest in the
history of the district, and to control the flow of the gusher would
necessitate tremendous efforts on a wholesale plan.
One of his men he sent in to Malapi on horseback with a hurry-up call to
Emerson Crawford, president of the company, for tools, machinery, men,
and teams. The others he put to salvaging the engine and accessories
and to throwing up an earth dike around the sump hole as a barrier
against the escaping crude. All through the night he fought impotently
against this giant that had burst loose from its prison two thousand feet
below the surface of the earth.
With the first faint streaks of day men came galloping across the desert
to the Jackpot. They came at first on horseback, singly, and later by
twos and threes. A buckboard appeared on the horizon, the driver leaning
forward as he urged on his team.
"Hart," decided the driller, "and comin' hell-for-leather."
Other teams followed, buggies, surreys, light wagons, farm wagons, and
at last heavily laden lumber wagons. Business in Malapi was "shot to
pieces," as one merchant expressed it. Everybody who could possibly get
away was out to see the big gusher.
There was an immediate stampede to make locations in the territory
adjacent. The wildcatter flourished. Companies were formed in ten minutes
and the stock subscribed for in half an hour. From the bootblack at
the hotel to the banker, everybody wanted stock in every company drilling
within a reasonable distance of Jackpot Number Three. Many legitimate
incorporations appeared on the books of the Secretary of State, and along
with these were scores of frauds intended only to gull the small investor
and separate him from his money. Saloons and gambling-houses, which did
business with such childlike candor and stridency, became offices for
the sale and exchange of stock. The boom at Malapi got its second wind.
Workmen, investors, capitalists, and crooks poured in to take advantage
of the inflation brought about by the new strike in a hitherto unknown
field. For the fame of Jackpot Number Three had spread wide. The
production guesses ranged all the way from ten to fifty thousand
barrels a day, most of which was still going to waste on the desert.
For Burns and Hart had not yet gained control over the flow, though an
army of men in overalls and slickers fought the gusher night and day. The
flow never ceased for a moment. The well steadily spouted a stream of
black liquid into the air from the subterranean chamber into which the
underground lake poured.
The attack had two objectives. The first was to check the outrush of oil.
The second was to save the wealth emerging from the mouth of the well and
streaming over the lip of the reservoir to the sandy desert.
A crew of men, divided into three shifts, worked with pick, shovel,
and scraper to dig a second and a third sump hole. The dirt from the
excavation was dumped at the edge of the working to build a dam for the
fluid. Sacks filled with wet sand reinforced this dirt.
Meanwhile the oil boiled up in the lake and flowed over its edges in
streams. As soon as the second reservoir was ready the tarry stuff was
siphoned into it from the original sump hole. By the time this was full a
third pool was finished, and into it the overflow was diverted. But in
spite of the great effort made to save the product of the gusher, the
sands absorbed many thousands of dollars' worth of petroleum.
This end of the work was under the direction of Bob Hart. For ten days he
did not take off his clothes. When he slept it was in cat naps, an hour
snatched now and again from the fight with the rising tide of wealth
that threatened to engulf its owners. He was unshaven, unbathed, his
clothes slimy with tar and grease. He ate on the job--coffee, beans,
bacon, cornbread, whatever the cooks' flunkies brought him--and did not
know what he was eating. Gaunt and dominating, with crisp decision and
yet unfailing good-humor, he bossed the gangs under him and led them
into the fight, holding them at it till flesh and blood revolted with
weariness. Of such stuff is the true outdoor Westerner made. He may drop
in his tracks from exhaustion after the emergency has been met, but so
long as the call for action lasts he will stick to the finish.
At the other end Jed Burns commanded. One after another he tried all the
devices he had known to succeed in capping or checking other gushers. The
flow was so continuous and powerful that none of these were effective.
Some wells flow in jets. They hurl out oil, die down like a geyser, and
presently have another hemorrhage. Jackpot Number Three did not pulse as
a cut artery does. Its output was steady as the flow of water in a pipe.
The heavy timbers with which he tried to stop up the outlet were hurled
aside like straws. He could not check the flow long enough to get
control.
On the evening of the tenth day Burns put in the cork. He made elaborate
preparations in advance and assigned his force to the posts where they
were to work. A string of eight-inch pipe sixty feet long was slid
forward and derricked over the stream. Above this a large number of steel
rails, borrowed from the incoming road, were lashed to the pipe to
prevent it from snapping. The pipe had been fitted with valves of various
sizes. After it had been fastened to the well's casing, these were
gradually reduced to check the flow without causing a blowout in the pipe
line.
Six hours later a metropolitan newspaper carried the headline:
BIG GUSHER HARNESSED;
AFTER WILD RAMPAGE
Jackpot No. 3 at Malapi Tamed
Long Battle Ended