“Fifteen hundred dollars!” Betty stared aghast.
“Well, think of the barrels of oil burning up,” returned her uncle. “The fire’s been going since yesterday afternoon. The normal output of that well is round about three thousand barrels a day. Every twenty-four hours she burns, that much oil is lost to us. So we count the fifteen hundred cheap.”
The Watterby household had the farm habit of retiring early, and tonight Betty and Bob were anxious to get to sleep early, too, that they might have a good start in the morning. Mr. Gordon was glad to turn in when the rest did and make up for lost sleep, so by nine o’clock the house was wrapped in slumber.
An hour or two later Betty was awakened by what sounded like a shot. Startled, she listened for a moment, and then, hearing no further commotion, went to sleep again.
She was the first one down in the morning, barring Mrs. Watterby, who, winter and summer, rose at half-past four or earlier. Going out to the pump for a drink of water she saw Ki bending over something beside the woodshed.
“Hey!” he hailed her, without getting up. “Come see what I got.”
Ki and Betty were now excellent friends, the taciturn Indian apparently recognizing that her interest in his stories and Indian tales was unfeigned.
“Why, what is it?” she asked, stopping in amazement as her foot touched a furry body. “Is it a dog? Oh, Ki, you didn’t kill a dog?”
“No, not a dog,” said the Indian showing his white teeth in a grin which was the nearest he ever permitted himself to come to a laugh. “Not a dog—a fox. I shot him last night. He would eat Mis’ Watterby’s chickens.”
“So that was what I heard,” Betty said, recalling the noise that had wakened her. “Bob, come and see the fox Ki shot.”
Bob came running over to the woodshed, and appraised the reddish yellow body admiringly.
“Gee, he was a big one, wasn’t he?” he murmured. “When’d you shoot him, Ki? Last night? I didn’t hear anything. Stealing chickens, I’ll bet a feather.”
Ki nodded, and displayed a shining knife.
“You watch,” he told them. “I skin him, and cure the fur—then I give it to Miss Betty. Make her a nice what you call neck-piece next winter.”
“Oh, don’t skin him!” Betty involuntarily shuddered. “I couldn’t bear to watch you do that. He will bleed, and I’ll think it hurts him. Poor little fox—I hate to see dead things!”
Her lips quivered, and Ki looked hurt.
“You no want a neck-piece?” he asked, bewildered. “Very nice young ladies wear them. I have seen.”
Betty smiled at him through the tears that would come.
“I would love to have the fur,” she explained. “Only I’m such a coward I can’t bear to see you skin the fox. I heard a man say once that women are all alike—we don’t care if animals are killed to give us clothes, but we want some one else to do the killing.”
Somewhat to her surprise, Ki seemed to understand.
“Bob help me skin him,” he announced quietly. “You go in. When the fur is dry and clean, you have it for your neck-piece.”
Betty thanked him and ran away to tell Mr. Gordon and Grandma Watterby of her present. A handsome fox skin was not to be despised, and Betty was all girl when it came to pretty clothes and furs.
Ki and Bob came in to breakfast, and the talk turned to the oil fire. Mr. Gordon generously invited as many as could get into his machine to go, but Mrs. Price could not stand excitement and the Watterbys were too busy to indulge in that luxury. Will Watterby offered to let Ki go, but the Indian had a curious antipathy to oil fields. Grandma Watterby always insisted it was because he was not a Reservation Indian and, unlike many of them, owned no oil lands.
“I’d go with you myself,” she declared brightly, “if the misery in my back wasn’t a little mite onery this mornin’. Racketing about in that contraption o’ yours, I reckon, wouldn’t be the best kind of liniment for cricks like mine.”
So only Mr. Gordon, Betty and Bob started for the fields.
“I saw a horse that I think will about suit you, Betty,” said her uncle when they were well away from the house. “I’m having it sent out to-morrow. She is reputed gentle and used to being ridden by a woman. Then, if we can pick up some kind of a nag for Bob, you two needn’t be tied down to the farm. All the orders I have for you is that you’re to keep away from the town. Ride as far into the country as you like.”
“But, Mr. Gordon,” protested Bob, “I don’t want you to get a horse for me! I’d rather have a job. Isn’t there something I can do out at the oil fields? I’m used to looking out for myself.”
“Look here, young man,” came the reply with mock severity, “I thought I told you you had a job on your hands looking after Betty. I meant it. I can’t go round on these inspection trips unless I can feel that she is all right. And, by the way, have you any objection to calling me Uncle Dick? I think I rather fancy the idea of a nephew.”
Bob, of course, felt more at ease then, and Betty, too, was pleased. The boy found it easy to call Mr. Gordon “Uncle Dick,” and as time went on and they became firmer friends it seemed most natural that he should do so.
They were approaching the oil fields gradually, the road, which was full of treacherous ruts, being anything but straight. Whenever they met a team or another car, which was infrequently, they had to stop far to one side and let the other vehicle pass. Betty was much impressed with her first near view of the immense derricks.
“What a lot of them!” she said. “Just like a forest, isn’t it, Uncle Dick?”
Her uncle frowned preoccupiedly.
“Those are not our fields,” he announced curtly. “They’re mostly the property of small lease-holders. It is mighty wasteful, Betty, to drill like that, cutting up the land into small holdings, and is bound to make trouble. They have no storage facilities, and if the pipe lines can’t take all the oil produced, there is congestion right away. Also many of the leases are on short terms, and that means they’ve the one idea of getting all the oil out they can while they hold the land. So they tend to exhaust the sands early, and violate the principles of conservation.”
They were following the road through the oil fields now, and presently Mr. Gordon announced that they were on his company’s holdings. At the same time they saw a column of dense black smoke towering toward the sky.
“There’s the fire!” cried Betty. “Do hurry, Uncle Dick!”
Obediently the little car let out a notch, and they drew up beside a group of men, still some distance from the fire.
“Chandler’s come,” said one of these respectfully to Mr. Gordon. “The five-ton truck brought up a load of sand, and they’re only waiting for you to give the word.”
The speaker was introduced to Betty and Bob as Dave Thorne, a well foreman, and at a word from Mr. Gordon he jumped on the running board of the car and they proceeded another mile. This brought them to the load of sand dumped on one side of the road and the powerful high-pressure hose that had been brought up on the train that morning. The heat from the burning well was intense, though they were still some distance from the actual fire.
“Now, Betty, watch and you’ll see a fire put out,” commanded her uncle, getting out of the car and going forward, first cautioning both young people to stay where they were and not get in any one’s way.
A half dozen men lifted the heavy hose, turned the nozzle toward the column of smoke, and a shower of fine sand curved high in the air. For perhaps five minutes nothing could be noticed; then, almost imperceptibly, the smoke began to die down. Lower, lower, and lower it fell, and at last died away. The men continued to pump in sand for an extra ten minutes as a matter of precaution, then stopped. The fire was out.
“That fire wasn’t no accident, Boss,” proclaimed Dave Thorne, wiping his perspiring face with a red handkerchief. “She was set. And, believe me, where there’s one, there’ll be others. The north section keeps me awake nights. If a fire started there where that close dr
illing’s going on, it couldn’t help but spread. You can fight fire in a single well, but let half a dozen of ’em flare up and there’ll be more than oil lost.”
“What a croaker you are, Dave,” said Mr. Gordon lightly. “Don’t lose sleep about any section. A night’s rest is far too valuable to be squandered. These young folks want to see the sights, and I’ll take them around for an hour or so. Then I’ll go over that bill of lading with you. Come, Betty and Bob, we’ll leave the machine and take the trail on foot. Mind your clothes and shoes—there’s oil on everything you touch.”
CHAPTER XII
IN THE FIELDS
“I always thought oil was for lamps,” said Betty, as she picked her way after her uncle and Bob, “but there aren’t enough lamps in the world to use all this oil.”
They were walking toward a pumping station still in the distance, and Mr. Gordon waited for her to come up with him.
“Perhaps lamps are the least important factor in the whole big question,” he answered earnestly. “Oil is being used more and more for fuel. Oil burners have been perfected for ships. And schools, apartment houses and public buildings are being heated with oil in many cities. And, of course, the demand for gasolene is enormous. I rather think the engine of the train that brought you to Flame City was an oil burner.”
“I wish we’d gone and looked, don’t you, Bob?” said Betty. “Oh, what a big derrick! How many quarts of oil does that pump in a day, Uncle Dick?”
Mr. Gordon laughed heartily.
“Little Miss Tenderfoot!” he teased. “I thought you knew, goosie, that we measured oil by barrels. That well is flowing slightly over five thousand barrels a day. Altogether our wells are now yielding well over fifty thousand barrels of oil a day.”
“I read in one of the papers about a man who paid three thousand dollars for one acre of oil land,” said Bob thoughtfully. “How did he know he was going to find oil here?”
“He didn’t know,” was the prompt answer. “There is no way of knowing positively. Many and many a small investor has lost the savings of a lifetime because he had a ‘hunch’ that he would bring in a good well. Right here in Oklahoma, statistics show that in one section, of five thousand two hundred and forty-six wells driven, one thousand three hundred and fifty-six were dry. Now it takes a lot of money to drive a well, between twenty and thirty thousand dollars in fact, so you may count up the loss.”
“But there is oil here—just look!” Bob waved comprehensively toward the beehive of industry that surrounded them.
“Right, my boy. And when they do strike oil, they strike it rich. Huge fortunes have been made in oil and will be made again. If the crooks who pose as brokers and promoters would keep their hands off, it might be possible to safeguard some of the smaller speculators.”
Bob was minded to speak again of the two sharpers he had overheard on the train, but they had reached the pumping station, and he and Betty were immediately interested in what Mr. Gordon had to show them.
There was a long bunk house at one side where the employees slept and ate and where a comfortable, fat Chinese cook was sweeping off the screened porch. The pumping station was another long, one-story building, with eight tall iron stacks rising beside it. Inside, set in a concrete floor, huge dynamos were pumping away, sending oil through miles and miles of pipe lines to points where it would be loaded into cars or ships and sent all over the world. The engineer in charge took them around and explained every piece of machinery, much to the delight of Bob who had a boy’s love for things that went.
From the station they walked to one of the largest storage tanks, a huge reservoir of oil, capable of holding fifty-five thousand barrels when full, Mr. Gordon told them. It was half empty at the time, and three long flights of steps were bare that would be covered when the storage capacity was used.
“If there isn’t a laundry or a hotel in Flame City,” observed Betty suddenly, “there is everything to run the oil business with, that’s certain. Is it all right to say you have very complete equipment, Uncle Dick?”
“Your phrase is correct,” admitted her uncle, smiling. “Poor tools are the height of folly for any business or worker, Betty. As for Flame City, the place is literally swamped. People poured in from the day the first good well came in, and they’ve been arriving in droves ever since. You can’t persuade any of them to take up the business they had before—to run a boarding house, or open a restaurant or a store. No, every blessed one of ’em has set his heart on owning and operating an oil well. It was just so in the California gold drive—the forty-niners wanted a gold mine, and they walked right over those that lay at their feet.”
They took the automobile after inspecting the storage tank and went several miles farther up the field to the gasolene plant that was isolated from the rest of the buildings. Here they saw how the crude petroleum was refined to make gasolene and were told the elaborate precautions observed to keep this highly inflammable produce from catching fire. Seven large steel tanks, built on brick foundations, were used for storage, and there was also a larger oil tank from which the oil to be refined was pumped.
“I’d like to see a ship that carries oil,” remarked Betty, as they came out of the gasolene plant and made their way to the automobile.
One of the men had happened to mention in her hearing that an unusually large shipment of oil had been ordered to be sent to Egypt.
“Well, that’s one request we can’t fill,” acknowledged her uncle regretfully. “You’re inland for sure, Betty, and the good old ocean is many miles from Oklahoma. However, some day I hope you’ll see an oil tanker. The whole story of oil, from production to consumption, is a fascinating one, and not the least wonderful is the part that deals with the marketing side of it. We have salesmen in South America, China, Egypt, and practically every large country. Who knows but Bob will one day be our representative in the Orient?”
They had dinner, a merry noisy meal, with the men at the bunk house. It was a novelty Bob and Betty thoroughly enjoyed and they found the men, mostly clerical workers, a few bosses and Dave Thorne, the well foreman, a friendly, clever crowd who were to a man keenly interested in the work at the fields. They talked shop incessantly, and both Betty and Bob gained much accurate information of positive value.
After dinner Mr. Gordon drove them back to the Watterby farm, promising another trip soon. He had to go back immediately, and slept at the fields that night. Thereafter he came and went as he could, sometimes being absent for two or three days at a time. The horse he had ordered for Betty arrived, and proved to be all that was said for it. She was a wiry little animal, and Betty christened her “Clover.” For Bob, Mr. Gordon succeeded in capturing a big, rawboned white horse with a gift of astonishing speed. Riding horses were at a premium, for distances between wells were something to be reckoned with, and those who did not own a car had to depend on horses. Bob even saw one enthusiastic prospector mounted on a donkey.
As soon as they were used to their mounts, Betty and Bob began to go off for long rides, always remembering Mr. Gordon’s injunction to stay away from the town.
“How tanned you are, Betty!” Bob said one day, as they were letting their horses walk after a brisk gallop. “I declare, you’re almost as brown as Ki. I like you that way, though,” he added hastily, as if he feared she might think he was criticising. “And that red tie is awfully pretty.”
“You look like an Indian yourself,” said Betty shyly.
But Bob’s blue eyes, while attractive enough in his brown face, would preclude any idea that he might have Indian blood. Betty, on the other hand, as the boy said, was as brown as an Indian, and her dark eyes and heavy straight dark hair, which she now wore in a thick braid down her back, would have enabled her to play the part of Minnehaha, or that of a pretty Gypsy lass, with little trouble. Her khaki riding suit was very becoming, and today she had knotted a scarlet tie under the trim little collar that further emphasized her vivid coloring and the smooth tan of her cheeks. Althou
gh the sun was hot, she would not bother with a hat, and Bob, too, was bareheaded. They looked what they were—a healthy, happy, wide-awake American boy and girl and ready for either adventure or service, or a mixture of both, and reasonably sure to call whatever might befall them “fun”.
“Why don’t we go to that north section Dave Thorne is always talking about?” suggested Bob. “He is forever harping on the subject of a fire there, and I’d like to look it over.”
“But it must be five miles from here,” said Betty doubtfully. “Can we get back in time for dinner?”
“If we can’t, we’ll get some one of the Chinese cooks to give us a lunch,” returned Bob confidently. “Let’s go, Betty. I know the way, because I studied the map Uncle Dick had out on the table night before last. The north section is shut off from the others, and it’s backed up against the furthest end of that perfect forest of derricks we saw the first time we went to Uncle Dick’s wells—remember? I think that is what worries Dave—some of those small holders have tempers like porcupines and they always think some one is infringing on their rights. Let one of ’em get mad and take it out on Dave, and there might be a four-alarm fire without much trouble.”
“Do you know what I miss more than anything else?” asked Betty, when the horses’ heads were turned and they were on their way to the north section. “You’ll never guess—ice-cream soda! I haven’t had one for weeks—not since we left Chicago.”
“And I guess it will be some more weeks before you get another,” said Bob. “Ice doesn’t seem to be known out here, does it? Did you see how the butter swam about under that hot kitchen lamp last night? We used to think the Peabodys were stingy because they wouldn’t use butter, but I’d rather have none than have it so soft.”
They reached the north section and found Dave Thorne directing the drilling of a well which he told them was expected to “come in” that morning.
“Bob, I wonder if you’d do an errand for me?” he inquired. “I have to go back to the pumping station, and I want to send a record book back to one of the men here. Will you ride back with me and get the book? Betty will be all right, and she’ll get a chance to see the well come in. MacDuffy will look after her.”
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