by John Jakes
He pedaled along through the bedlam of thudding tool strings, pumping engines, cursing roughnecks, children playing, Mrs. Summers giving piano lessons. The cratered streets were afloat with standing oil and the usual noxious haze clouded the air. The derricks loomed dimly against the stars like crouching beasts from prehistory. Several times Mack nearly fell off his wheel. The streets were unfit for bicycles. Wheelmen all across the nation were demanding better pavements, in town and countryside.
When he reached the site of the original well, he discovered that Doheny had a new crew working, men he didn’t know. Doheny himself had moved on to other wells. He and Mack had parted friends, and Mack’s royalty was deposited every week in a special account he kept for that purpose at Los Angeles National. He parked his yellow-gold wheel and visited with the new men for ten minutes. All was going well.
He was striding back to his wheel when a voice out of the dark said, “Hey.”
He spun around, surprised and alarmed. There at the edge of the lot was a tall man, standing still. Strap Vigory—
Even as he shot his hand under the tail of his coat, he thought, No, absurd. That was fortunate; there was no holster riding on his hip. He didn’t carry the Shopkeeper’s Colt when he dressed like a businessman.
The man in the dark stepped forward. He wore a black hat and long frock coat the same color with a brilliant green bandanna streaming out in the hot night wind. Lanterns on the well illuminated his face.
“Johnson. God almighty. Don’t sneak up on a man that way.”
“That’s the way I come and go. Quick. Saves trouble with sheriffs an’ jealous husbands.”
“You scared me. For a minute you looked like the Reaper himself standing there—”
“Sorry,” Hugh Johnson said; it was his entire apology. “Potter told me you was out here. I hear you’re doin’ good.”
“Doing fine.”
“I wore out Kern County. I could use a square meal. Nobody cooks as good as you.”
Mack smiled. “You back to stay?”
“Till the itch to drift comes again. I’m ready to go partners if you are.”
“San Solaro?”
“San Solaro.”
“Yes, sir!” Mack said, breaking into a grin. “Let’s have a drink and talk about it. Got a horse?”
“ ’Course I got a horse. You don’t think I’d ride a sissy thing like that, d’you? My God, you’re gettin’ as crazy for new gadgets as the rest of these Californians.”
Mack packed away his city clothes and put on dungarees, strapped on his pistol, and together with Johnson rode over the mountains to Bakersfield. Johnson had seen a secondhand water-well rig in storage at the Harron-Rickard Supply Company. They bought it and hauled it back to San Solaro.
At the Newhall lumberyard they put in their order for rig timber, having decided to save money by building the derrick themselves. They located two thousand feet of drilling cable and sand line in Los Angeles and a supply of casing pipe in several sizes at an iron merchant’s. Then, with Mack’s cash almost depleted, they called at the Vines Coal Company.
Vines, a rabbit-toothed man with a defensive air, showed them a price sheet. “Right there, same for everybody. In town here, twenty-two dollars and fifty cents a ton. Delivered to your site it’s thirty-two dollars.”
“Jesus J. Christ,” Johnson said, smacking the price sheet on the counter. “Is this here a coal yard or the headquarters of road agents?”
Offended, Vines said, “It’s the freight charges. You don’t think the SP will cart to Newhall for nothing, do you?”
Mack said, “I don’t know a lot about your business, but I know your price is too high. You’ve got more in the freight than you do in the coal.”
“Is that a surprise?” Vines said with a sneer. “You run a big company, the SP gives you preferential rates. Small operations like this”—he tapped the price sheet—“the customer pays.”
Johnson picked a fleck of tobacco from the corner of his mouth, then wiped his hand on his long sea-blue bandanna. He had a whole rainbow wardrobe of them, Mack had discovered; it was Johnson’s only vanity.
“What y’think?” Johnson asked.
Mack figured in his head. “We can afford two, maybe three loads.” To Vines: “We’ll haul from here and save the extra. We have a wagon.”
“Loading hopper’s out back.”
The partners left the office. Mack thought of C. P. Huntington dining in the opulence of his Palace suite. He thought of Leland Stanford’s vast ranch; it had passed to his widow when he died in June. He thought of Walter Fairbanks’s fine clothes and fine airs. All of it infuriated him all over again.
“You know,” he said as they climbed up opposite front wheels of the wagon, “I calculate that over the next couple of months, three big loads of coal will run us clean out of cash. My royalties don’t mount up fast enough to cover big outlays.”
“Potter’ll advance you something, won’t he?”
“Potter carried me once. I don’t want to ask again.”
“The banks—”
“The panic’s dried up loan money. Especially loans for wild-catting. I went to Los Angeles National last week. Went to Security Loan too. They weren’t so friendly. When we burn the last load of coal, there won’t be any more.”
“Somebody ought to fix those railroad gougers.”
“One of these days we will. Drive.”
In the light of a cool misty morning—January 1, 1894—they finished nailing down the derrick floor and framed in the belt house. They had sited the well at the bottom of a hill where a ten-foot pool of brea showed. Lumber, pipe, coils of line, and the tarp-covered coal wagon littered the work area. Johnson sawed a board and Mack painted the black letters.
CHANCE-JOHNSON NO. 1
They nailed it to a post and stood back. Winter sun pierced the mist and brightened the steep hillsides of the dead, silent valley. Most of the lot markers had rotted or blown away and except for the distant depot where they lived, there was no sign of human habitation.
“Mighty impressive,” Johnson said of the sign. “Name has a fine, proper ring to it.”
Mack grinned. “That it does. Since it’s New Year’s Day, I suggest we open a jug, fry up some oysters, and celebrate. We won’t be taking holidays once we start spudding in.”
“One thing I feel bad about,” Johnson said as they walked toward the depot. “I ain’t putting much into this deal.”
“Your experience. Your sweat. Your company. You don’t think I’d stay out here and do all this alone, do you?”
“Listen, just so’s you understand—I’ll take wages if we hit, but I don’t expect anything more.”
“I don’t care what you expect, you get one third of anything the oil company earns. I’m a big man with percentages. That’s how I got this place, on percentage.”
“You’re a crazy bastard. Maybe that’s why I like you.”
This time Mack kept the logbook.
Jan. 9—8 5/8” casing—down 88ft.
Winter rain streamed over the page and blurred the words as fast as he wrote them. He crouched in the lee of the belt house, eyed the turbulent sky, and shivered.
Jan. 22—376 ft. cased—hard drilling—many crooked holes.
Hours dissolved into days, days into weeks, darkness into daylight, sunshine into cloud and back to sun again. Unspoken between the partners was the need for a roughneck to spell them, but they couldn’t afford an extra man, so instead of quitting at the end of a tour, they worked until their eyelids fell shut, or their muscles burned with blowtorch pain, or they began to forget details and stagger into things when they walked. Many a night they never returned to the depot, simply fell under a blanket on the derrick floor and snored.
Feb. 13—1,338 ft. —through the oil rock—sulfur water showing.
The little steam engine broke down; Johnson repaired it.
Feb. 27—pumping 5th day. Still sulfur water but also 2 bbls. oil.
At 1
,672 feet, Southern California’s unpredictable geology undid them again. They drilled into another black slate layer, punched on through 100 feet of it, 200 feet, 300—The cable broke, the tool disappearing into the depths. After three days of fishing, they snarled and yelled at each other for half an hour, walked off in opposite directions to sulk, walked back when they calmed down, offered awkward apologies, and thought about what to do next.
March 10, 1894. Chance-Johnson 1 abandoned.
Filthy with grease and mud, the partners manhandled a suspended bit over a new hole, Chance-Johnson No. 2, half a mile from the first site. It had taken two weeks to salvage timber and erect a new derrick. Then some muscle in Mack’s back seized up. Working now, he was in constant, exquisite pain.
Johnson grimaced as they struggled. “I got a feeling about this one, a good feeling.”
Apr. 9 ’94—abandoned. Lost 200 ft. 8 5/18” casing.
Mack looked up from the logbook as Johnson returned from the coal wagon. The walking beam shunted the No. 3 tool string up and down, up and down. Spurred by the balmy spring weather, both men had taken most of their clothes off; they worked in greasy long underwear unbuttoned to the navel.
Johnson tossed something that glittered in the sunshine. Mack dropped the logbook to catch it. It was a lump of coal.
“Last load’s more’n half gone. Our luck damn well better improve. Quick.”
May 1 ’94. Another dry hole. Abandoned.
Mack had a strong feeling about No. 4, punched down near the canal. It was the same kind of feeling Johnson had had about the second duster: a baseless confidence that this time, they’d hit. Only a quarter of the original load of coal remained. But Mack was wildly confident—maybe because they were desperate.
May 17—1,055 ft. Water—some oil. Have not seen anybody but H.J. for 3 wks.
“Don’t think this one’s going to pay out,” Johnson said at half past ten the following night. They’d worked since five in the morning.
“Shut up,” Mack said. He was splicing sand line.
Johnson stiffened, glared, then folded his arms and left.
May 18—1,106 ft.—rock again. SON OF A BITCH.
He scratched out the intemperate note. But he’d written it large, and it stayed visible under the horizontal slashes, accusing and further discouraging him. It was 10:40 P.M.
Six hours later, under the feeble glow of lanterns on the derrick, Johnson mopped the sweat accumulated in his scraggling beard. Neither partner had touched a razor for days; both smelled to heaven. The night was still, every chuff and squeak and thud of the well machinery magnified. A sticky evil haze blurred the stars. Johnson stared unhappily at his bandanna, one of his good ones, buttercup yellow, ruined by oil and sweat.
With an oath, he threw it in his hat lying nearby. “These damn underground slate beds got us whipped. Ain’t an oilman west of the Divide who can tell where they are, ’cept by bustin’ or losin’ tools.” He yawned, then groggily sat down on a barrel, getting an oil stain on the drop seat of his union suit. “It must be almost morning. Let’s give it up and sleep. This here’s just another dry hole.”
Mack stared at the well with a fixed, almost fanatic expression. “No. We’ve been drawing some oil for the past two hours. I have a hunch about this one.”
“Lord you’re persistent. Must be because we’re starvin’ to death out here.”
Dawn came, pale and still. The gas smell had thickened steadily. The walking beam lifted and dropped the drill line. Lifted and dropped it. Mack and Johnson sat watching the equipment, fatigue-glazed eyes not really seeing anything but some inner vision of failure.
Suddenly, a different sound at the well head brought Mack to his feet. Mud-brown water burbled from the casing.
“Johnson,” he whispered without looking around. The little engine chugged with maddening persistence, then, deep in the earth, he heard another sound. A subterranean rushing. Mack gigged his partner with his bare toe. “Johnson.”
Filthy dirty and complaining, Hugh Johnson finally struggled up. He heard it too—the rushing that deepened to a rumble. He stared at Mack, his green eyes full of warring hope and skepticism.
“I wouldn’t want to get too excited, because if it ain’t—”
Liquid spurted from the well head, quickly rising under pressure to a three-foot column. The muddy brown flow changed to black, the rumbling becoming a roar. It shot up to a six-foot column, and then exploded at the sky, rising like the black barrel of some enormous howitzer aiming at God. Above the derrick’s crown block the oil spread in a great fan, and fell back.
“Gusher!” Mack shouted. “We got a gusher, Hugh!”
“Jesus God, I think so!” Johnson shouted over the roar of the hundred-foot-high column of oil. It slicked the boards under their feet, dotted and then blackened their union suits. Johnson ran his hands through his hair and stared at them. Black as patent leather.
He threw his head back and crowed like a rooster. Mack tilted his head and opened his mouth and spread his hands and let the oil soak his skin, his forehead, his eyelids, his tongue.
May 19, 1894—No. 4 pumped 27 bbls. crude.
May 20—62 bbls. crude.
May 21—114 bbls.
Next day the steam engine stopped and the pump fell silent. The coal was gone.
The single lump Johnson had brought in lay between them on the depot desk, seeming to mock them with its rough, glistening beauty. Johnson speculated aloud. “We can sell the crude in the storage tanks and buy more—”
“No.” Mack jumped up, pounding the desk. “Not another penny. We buy coal from Vines, we’re pouring cash into the railroad’s pocket. I’m tired of enriching those bastards.”
“Well, I reckon we can always lift the oil out by hand, a teaspoon at a time—”
Mack ignored him. “There’s got to be a better way.”
“Good luck, then. I’m going to catch a snooze.”
Johnson wandered off to his cot in the back room. Mack flung the front door open and leaned there, chewing his knuckle, staring at the lemon-colored evening sky above the steep hills. He stared at the silent derrick farther back in the tract. Stared at it, and through it, to the larger problem.
All at once his brow puckered up. “Johnson,” he said in a tentative voice. “Hugh Johnson. Come here a minute.”
Grumbling and scratching, Johnson shuffled from the back.
Mack spoke slowly, testing the idea that had hit him. “Maybe we’re overlooking the obvious. I told Ed Doheny that poor people around here burned brea because it was cheap. I told him the oil market had to be expanded with a product other than kerosene and axle grease.” He paused. “Fuel. What we’re pumping in that well is fuel, just like coal. Why the hell can’t we burn it instead of coal?”
“Yes, sir. Why not? I’ll tell you why not. Got to have some contraption to make it ignite proper. A special—I dunno— special-design firebox, maybe?”
“Well, you’re the mechanic,” Mack said. “Build it.”
Johnson talked a Newhall hardware merchant into selling him a kerosene burner on credit. Quickly finding that the heavy crude clogged it too badly for combustion, he rigged a metal-pan with rocks in the bottom, and a nozzle to drip a steady flow of oil onto them, but that didn’t work either. Next he snipped and hammered and jerry-rigged a special nozzle, wide and flat, which diffused the crude into something approximating a spray. There was a momentary flame when Johnson touched a match to it, then it fizzled out.
He was ebullient. “If I can get a spray under pressure, don’t y’see—a steady fine spray—I think we can get a flame in that there kerosene burner. I need tools and more coal. You got to ask Potter for a loan.”
Mack hated doing that, but he did, and he ate some more of his pride and bought enough coal to run the engine for a short period. On June 12, Johnson was ready. Mack fired up the boiler and started the little engine. Apprehensively, Johnson crouched over his contraption. He struck a match, then turned a valve
and oil hissed through a line into the special nozzle, now concealed within the housing of the cleaned-out kerosene burner. When Johnson slipped the match to the burner ring, a loud bang and spurting flame threw him back on his heels.
“Valve it down,” Mack exclaimed.
“Thanks, never would have thought of that,” Johnson snarled, fingering his left eyebrow, which the blowback had burned away almost totally. He twisted the valve.
The flame settled to a constant level above the burner ports. Johnson jumped to his feet and covered the burner with a ventilated housing of battered metal, then stepped back, awaiting congratulations.
“You did it, Hugh,” Mack said with an enormous grin. “That’s a hell of a burner.”
The pale-green eyes danced. “Say. That’s a hell of a name too.”
Mack didn’t get it.
“Hell-burner Johnson. Hello, Hellburner. So long, Hugh.” He certified his approval with a rebel yell.
Chance-Johnson No. 4 pumped 825 barrels a day. Soon all the wooden storage tanks were full, and Mack signed a temporary agreement with Lyman Stewart’s 14,000-barrel-capacity refinery in Santa Paula to take all the crude. Stewart personally inspected the burner Johnson built. Enthusiastic, he dickered with Mack for two hours over a licensing agreement before they came to terms.
The following week, Stewart’s machine shop started construction of forty burners, Mack taking ten as part of the payment to Chance-Johnson. Stewart was elated over the burners and visited San Solaro again to report that he had his shop draftsman working to modify the principle for a locomotive firebox. “I’m going to install one aboard a Southern Pacific locomotive to show those gentlemen they never need coal again. Think of the market if that happens.”
“I’ve thought of it,” Mack said.
“Will you go with me to sell them?”
“No, I won’t.” He didn’t explain and Lyman Stewart didn’t press. Macklin Chance had a reputation as a peculiar hermitlike maverick. Of course, now, with No. 4 a gusher and the capital coming in to punch new holes all over San Solaro, overnight Macklin Chance had become a man with money and prospects. The foibles of a man like that could be forgiven.