There had been a time when I thought of little else but her. All those years, and I had never found another like her. Carmelita reminded me of her a little sometimes, and I wondered if that was why I married her. It shamed me, but I didn’t feel about Carmelita like I used to about Juanita.
It was the first time I had been alone with Juanita in years. I had made a point of that; she had made a point of that. Papa was always around, and that was best. I knew she hadn’t forgotten the last time we were alone together when I had tried to kiss her. What was I, twenty-five then? It wasn’t a planned thing. I had come up to the house looking for Papa and she had been there alone, standing so close to me that I could feel her breath and those smoky eyes looking like something you could swim in. She had shoved me away before I barely touched those lips, and waved her pointer finger slowly at me and shook her head.
“No bueno. Es no bueno. No somos malas personas,” she had said. We aren’t bad people.
And I went away. I know she never told Papa. It was our bad secret; my bad secret. We never spoke more than a few words to each other after that.
“I miss him, too,” she said behind me.
“Did you see who it was?”
“I was inside. All I heard was the shot. Miguel found boot tracks down at the corner of the bunkhouse. Big tracks.”
It wouldn’t have been an easy shot, but not a difficult one, either. It was only maybe two hundred yards from the bunkhouse to the porch. I was no rifle shot, but I had hit targets farther away than that, especially if I had something to rest my gun on, like one of those logs ends at the corner of the bunkhouse. No shot at all, especially for someone with one of those old buffalo guns with a telescopic German sight on it like Moon used to use.
“Do you think it was Moon?” she asked.
“It was him.”
She stepped beside me, but I didn’t look up at her.
“Take care of Carmelita,” I said. “She’ll need some help with the new baby when it comes. Hamish and Tiffany will help. You won’t have to ask them.”
“I will look out for your family.”
“I can’t let it lie.”
“I know,” she whispered. “Kill him. Kill him for your papa. Kill him for me.”
Her hand was hanging beside mine on the arm of the chair. For an instant, our fingers clasped each other’s and then she let go and went back into the house.
Chapter Fifty-two
Hamish’s horseless carriage, “automobiles” those that had them called them, raised a trail of dust that I could see for two miles. I was holding the bay while Miguel did a bad job of nailing a horseshoe on. The horse didn’t want to stand still, and my father-in-law was too old to be standing under a horse.
Hamish didn’t slow down until he was right on top of us, covering us in dust and causing the horse to shy sideways and jerk its back leg loose from Miguel. Hamish should have known better, and there should have been a law against those horseless carriages. Anything that will scare a horse like that was a danger to society.
Hamish sat in the automobile long enough for us to admire it. It was one of those open-topped Oldsmobiles with a curved dashboard like a buggy and a brass carriage light on either front corner of it. He steered it with some kind of rod sticking up out of the floorboard, but watching him come up the rutted track to the corrals, the front wheels ducked back and forth and the whole thing looked like it rode rougher than a cob. Hamish bounced so high over a couple of bumps that I saw daylight between his rear end and the seat. Tiffany said Hamish couldn’t go two miles without having to dig it out of some rut or mud hole, and carried a shovel and a pry pole tied on the back for those occasions.
I waited for him to shut the noisy, stinking thing off. I never could stand even the sound of a steam engine, much less a gasoline contraption like that. Horses are quiet and give a man time to think.
“That leg of yours looks like it still hasn’t healed,” Hamish said as he climbed out of the automobile, leaving it running. “And you’ve been out of that cast for a month.”
“It’s getting better.” I leaned against a fence post, my leg throbbing like it had been hit with a hammer.
“That’s not what Carmelita told Tiffany. She said you can barely get around on it, and that you haven’t been sleeping an hour or two a night. You ought to have the doctor look at that again.”
“He’s looked at it three times. Break your leg and see how you hobble around.”
He noticed the crutch that I had left leaning against the side of the barn while I tried to help shoe the horse. “I’d say something’s keeping the bone from knitting right, or that you tore some muscles or something.”
“You’re a doctor now, are you?”
“How’s the new baby?”
“Joseph’s fine. Fit as a fiddle.”
“Good.” Hamish seemed to have something on his mind other than my leg and my new son, but he never went straight at a thing.
I knew it had something to do with the other dust cloud worming its way to the ranch, coming from town.
He saw me looking. “That’s some freight wagons I’ve got hauling equipment.”
“Five freight wagons’ full of equipment? Has Tiffany got you adding on to the house again?”
“It stuff for a drilling rig.”
“You’re kidding me.”
Hamish brushed at a something on his khaki pants and frowned. I noticed that he was wearing a pair of brogan, lace-up work boots like those oil field workers wore.
The whole damned country had gone crazy over oil, ever since that Spindletop strike down on the Gulf at Beaumont. “Black gold” they called it. Then some fool had to go and drill an oil well north of Destiny. They said they hit a gusher, whatever that was. It was big money, and that was all it took to have wooden rig derricks sprouting up all over the northern end of the county.
“I would have thought you were busy enough without wildcatting for oil,” I said.
“We might be sitting on a fortune,” Hamish said. “You’re always saying how you want to see this ranch built back up.”
I’d seen all I wanted of the oil business. Petrolia was only a bit north of us, the little town practically booming overnight and full of men wearing stained work clothes and smelling of tar and grease. Not only were the noisy drilling rigs everywhere you looked, sometimes five or six of them in a single quarter section, but you could sit on the porch at night and hear the steam and gasoline engines running and the creak of drilling cables working up and down.
“I’m going to try a test hole on the north end of the ranch,” Hamish said. “Straight across the river from where that big buffalo wallow used to be.”
“In that cottonwood grove?”
“Close to it.”
“Leave those trees alone. That’s always been my favorite place on the ranch.”
“I won’t bother them.”
The wagons pulled to a stop, great big things, hauling lumber and equipment that I didn’t even recognize. A stocky man on the front seat of the lead wagon got down and came over to us. He was wearing those lace-up boots like Hamish’s and a pair of overalls, but he had on a clean white shirt and a tie, of all things, cinched around his collar. He took hold of the short, pencil-rolled brim of his hat and lifted it away and mopped at his brow with a red handkerchief he pulled from his bib pocket.
“DB Jackson, I want you to meet my brother, Gunn,” Hamish said.
The man had a grip like a vise when I shook his hand. I’d seen his kind before when I had gone to see a doctor in Petrolia to get a second opinion on my leg the week before. The whole town was a madhouse, the streets crowded with wagons, and the combination of spring rains and traffic had turned the place into a shin-deep mud hole. Two crews of those oil field boys, roughnecks they liked to call themselves, were drunk and fist fighting in the street. Straight-up fist and skull didn’t last for long, and they were soon using pipe wrenches or anything else they could lay their hands on. I’d seen wild cow towns, but that oil tow
n was more wide-open than any of those. Word had spread that money was flowing out of the ground, and the whores and gamblers and a host of shady sorts had flocked to the town like flies on a cow patty. I had heard stories of mining boomtowns back in the old days that were like that, but never laid eyes on anything of its kind.
“I had DB out last month to look over our ground,” Hamish said. “He likes the look of things.”
“Pay a fellow enough and he’s liable to tell you anything,” I said.
The roughneck didn’t like what I had to say, but Hamish cut him off before he could get started. “DB comes highly recommended, and I stole him away from Texaco.”
I never did trust a man who went by his initials. My experience was that they usually thought too much of themselves. And poking holes in the ground was no recommendation to me.
“You didn’t ask me about this,” I said.
“We’ll drill one test hole and see how it looks.”
“This is a ranch, last time I looked. I don’t recall you ever mentioning that we were going into the oil business.”
“You don’t have to be like that.”
“I don’t like you sneaking up on me with this.”
“If you had been here instead of going off on some cattle drive like a kid cowboy, I would have talked to you about it.”
“I don’t guess I have any say. My name may be on the deed with you, but you’re the moneyman.”
“I saved this ranch. If it wasn’t for my money somebody else would own this place.”
“Does that make you feel good?”
“We aren’t arguing about oil wells, are we?”
“Dig where you want to. Hell, drill a hole right in the front yard if you want to, but don’t tear up that cottonwood grove. I like to lay under the shade of one of those trees when I’m feeling lazy.”
Hamish’s driller and the line of wagons continued north through the headquarters. Hamish started to get in his automobile, but paused there. “You really ought to get that leg looked at again. I know a good doctor in Dallas.”
“I’ve been to Dallas, and I didn’t like it.”
“I never knew you to wear a beard,” he said. “Never recall you going a day without shaving.”
“Anything else you want to change about me?”
“You ought to eat more. You look puny.”
“I had a full glass of whiskey for breakfast. Forgot to pack a lunch, so I’ll have two for supper when I get home tonight.”
“Joke all you want, but that leg worries me. I’d hate to see you . . .” Hamish hung up on what he had started to say.
“What? You’d hate to see me a cripple?”
Hamish climbed in and throttled up his motor, but didn’t take off. I could tell he was weighing what he was about to say.
“The grand jury looked at Papa’s murder, but they didn’t charge anyone,” he said. “The county prosecutor won’t bring charges against Moon, either.”
“That’s too bad.”
Chapter Fifty-three
Hamish’s driller and a crew of two other men had the rig up and running in a week. I still couldn’t ride a horse, so I told Carmelita we were going for a picnic on the river. I hitched a team to Papa’s buggy and drove her and the kids up to the cottonwood grove and we had lunch on a blanket. Of course, I made a point to swing by Hamish’s well site on our way back home. I was curious to see what Hamish was wasting his money on and what all the racket they were making was about.
The crew had built a wooden derrick that looked like a windmill tower, only bigger. The thing must have been eighty or ninety feet tall. There were all kinds of pulleys and cables and a steam engine powering the whole thing.
Hamish was standing on the plank floor beneath the derrick, talking to that driller and looking down the hole they were drilling. He saw me before I could leave and waved at me to hold up while he walked to the buggy.
“Hello, Carmelita. Hello, Pancho.” He ruffled the boy’s hair and lifted the blanket Carmelita had Joseph wrapped in and tickled his cheek with one finger. “Fine-looking family, Gunn.”
“Struck it rich yet?” I asked.
“Get down and come take a look.”
I tried to dodge out, but he wouldn’t hear of it. He was prouder of that rig than anything I had ever seen him own. I took up the mesquite stick that I had peeled for a walking cane and followed him to where the crew was working. I could get along without the crutch anymore, but my leg was still iffy and apt to buckle on me.
Hamish glanced at my improvised cane. “You look better. How’s the leg?”
“Tolerable. I’ll be running footraces with the kids in another week,” I said. “Quite a job you’ve got going here.”
“See that big wheel there in front of the engine? That’s the band wheel. And see that crossbeam on top of that samson post that’s rocking like a teeter-totter? That’s what works the drilling line up and down.” He sounded like a kid in a candy shop. It was the same look on his face he got when we were kids and he was reading a book he liked or talking about what he’d read.
I had seen water well drilling rigs, but never really paid attention to how they worked. “How do you drill a hole with nothing but that cable?”
“We’ve got a bit on the end of that cable.”
“Bit?”
“It’s really just a big heavy chisel. Lift it and drop it over and over and the point on it pulverizes what’s below it. See that sheave or big pulley on the opposite side of the drill floor? That’s the sand wheel.” He shaded his eyes with one hand and pointed up at the top of the derrick with the other. “Got another cable that runs through the sand wheel and up through the crown block there on top of the derrick. There’s a bail on the end of that sand wheel line that we can lower down in the hole and pull out the cuttings and clean out the well.”
“Cuttings?”
“Bits of rock and debris, shale and sand. We have to do that about every two or three feet, depending on the formation we’re drilling in. DB keeps a close eye on the cuttings to tell what kind of formation we’re drilling in.”
“Must be a slow way to dig a hole. How deep are you?”
“Six hundred feet, but we’ve hit some hard stuff. We’ve wore out two bits this morning, and we’re about to work our tool hand to death sharpening them.” He pointed to one of his crew working with a portable blacksmith forge and hammering on the point of a chunk of red-hot steel with a shop hammer.
“Why has that driller got his hand on the drilling cable while he’s looking down in the well?”
“He’s feeling for when there isn’t any slack in the line. That will let him know when he needs to let out a little more cable. If he lets out too much the cable can get a kink in it.”
“What do you need with those other guys, if that’s all there is to it?”
“One of them is the motorman. He tends the engine,” Hamish said. “And we’re about to run our first string of casing, and that’s a job for three men.”
I looked a question at him.
“Casing—steel pipe barely smaller than the hole that we put down to line the walls. You lower one joint of it down the hole with that set of blocks hanging inside the derrick, and thread the next joint of casing to it and lower again.”
“Quite a toy you’ve got.”
The crew was taking a lunch break, and the driller walked over to join us. He wasn’t wearing his tie anymore and was filthy from head to toe. He pulled off his gloves and offered a handshake. He was the handshakingest man I ever saw.
“What’s it looking like?” Hamish asked.
“No sand yet,” the driller said. “But I don’t expect it for another hundred feet. Maybe a little more.”
“What’s the deal with sand?” I asked.
“The oil doesn’t flow out of rock very well, and most pools lie in sand,” Hamish said. “Find black sand and you might be onto something.”
“How many of these oil wells have you drilled?” I asked the drill
er.
“I’ve lost count,” the driller said. “Started when I was a boy in the Corsicana field. Drilled my first well when I was nineteen up in the Bartlesville pool in the Indian Territory. Gulf Oil hired me and I went to Beaumont and then to Jennings, Louisiana. Been working for one company and then the other since, and wildcatting in between when I couldn’t find the backers.”
“And how many times have you found oil?”
“Brought in a well down at Beaumont that produced a thousand barrels a day.”
“That’s not what I asked.”
The driller looked a little bothered by my question. “Three times. The rest of them were dusters.”
“Long odds.” I looked at Hamish.
Hamish shrugged. “Remember what Papa used to say? You don’t get eggs without spending the money to buy the hens.”
“Papa had the good sense to know that the only real riches are land and cattle.”
“Papa could have used a few oil wells. Oil is sixty cents a barrel and climbing.”
“Don’t spend your money before you make it.” I waved good-bye and went back to my buggy.
I snuck a snort of whiskey from the flask in my vest pocket as I was going around the back of the buggy. I smiled at Carmelita when I climbed onto the seat beside her.
“You look in fine spirits,” she said.
“I was thinking I might drive into Destiny.”
“Joseph is getting cranky. I think he’s got the colic again.”
Joseph was squirming against her chest and fighting his blanket. His little face was red and twisted in a fury that told me he was about to cry.
“Boy’s got a temper.”
“His belly hurts. That’s all.”
“No, he’s definitely a Dollarhyde. Temper like a longhorn bull.”
“You won’t mind if I don’t go to town with you? Joseph kept me up all night, and I could use a nap.”
“I’ll drop you off at the house. I was thinking I might go look up somebody in town.”
“An old friend?”
“I wouldn’t say that. Just somebody I need to have a few words with.” We drove a little farther. “Honey, if something ever happens to me, trust Hamish. He’ll look after you. He’s a good man.”
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