The Wildcatters

by John Benteen

  He dressed, had breakfast, sipped his coffee with enjoyment. He was on his third cup when somebody pulled out the chair across from him. Fargo looked up and saw Ross Friday seated across the table. “Mornin’, Neal.”

  “Mornin’.”

  Friday took out his smoke pouch, rolled a cigarette, lit it. “Made a deal with Brasher last night. Thought I ought to tell you.”

  “What deal?”

  “Took the job he offered you. I’m going to ramrod his men. More money than I ever thought I’d get my hands on. But there’s room for both of us, Brasher says. Come on in with me.”

  “I’ll think about it,” Fargo said. “Like I told you, it’s too early to make a decision right now.”

  “Sure. But Brasher wants you to make one quick.”

  “Brasher wants me—?” Fargo put down his cup, looked at Friday.

  The other met his eyes through smoke. “Yeah,” he nodded. “That’s the way he put it. He told you about this feller Russell.”

  “Yes,” Fargo said.

  “Well, there’s two sides here—Brasher s and Russell’s. Brasher’s is the winner, Russell’s is the loser. And the way it works with Brasher, either you’re with him or you’re against him. No middle ground. So, since we’re old friends, he asked me to talk to you.” Friday broke off. His voice was soft when he continued. “Way he puts it, Neal, is go to work for him or get out of town.”

  ‘Well, now,” said Fargo. He took out a cigar, bit off its end. “Well, now.”

  “I told him not to crowd you.” Friday looked down at the cup the waitress put in front of him. “He’ll give you a couple of days to make up your mind.”

  “That’s damned big of him.” Fargo’s voice was edged.

  “Well, you’ve got to look at it Brasher’s way. You’re not working for him, that means you’re working for Russell. Or will be.”

  “Haven’t seen Russell, he’s made me no offer.”

  “But he will. He’s bound to.” Friday sipped his coffee. “You don’t want to take it when he does, Neal.”

  Fargo sighed. “Ross, I think that’s my affair.”

  “No. No, it’s mine.” Friday put down the cup.

  “I see. You re Brasher’s man, now.”

  “I’m Brasher’s man. I want you on my side; so does Brasher. But we can’t have you on the other side, we can’t stand still for that. So that’s how it is, Neal; Brasher’s orders. Join or drift.”

  “And what if I decide not to do either one …?”

  “Then,” said Friday tonelessly, “I’ll have to take you.”

  “Ross, you don’t want to try that,” said Fargo easily.

  “Hell, no, I don’t want to try it. Last thing I want to try.” He laughed. “Might be the last thing I did try.”

  “That’s right.” Fargo’s voice was even. “Might be.”

  Friday was silent for a moment. Then he said, “On the other hand, Neal. It might fall the other way.”

  “That’s true, too.”

  “Let’s not fight each other. Come on in with Brasher.”

  Fargo shoved away his cup. “I don’t want to fight you, Ross. I came to Golconda to make some money. Maybe I will make it with Brasher, maybe I won’t. But nobody’s going to tell me how I make it and how I don’t. And nobody’s going to tell me how long I can stay in town and when I’ve got to leave.”

  “I know,” Friday said simply. “Fact remains, you got forty-eight hours, Neal.”

  “And I’m telling you, Ross, neither you nor anybody else better try to take me.”

  “If I take Brasher’s money and he tells me to roust you, I’ll roust you.”

  “Somebody’ll get hurt.”

  Friday shrugged. Then he got to his feet. “I expect. See you, Neal.” And he went out.

  Fargo watched him go, his lips formed a soundless curse. He shoved aside his plate, got up, paid his bill, and went back to his room. There he took the sawed-off shotgun from its case and slung it over his shoulder. He did not put on the bandolier of ammo, but thumbed six rounds from it and distributed them in his pockets. Men looked curiously at him as he went down the street toward the livery stable, Winchester in hand.

  While the hostler saddled his mount Fargo asked him: “Curt Russell—where’ll I find him?”

  The livery stable man turned, holding the latigo strap. He was old, wizened, and Fargo saw hesitation and fear in his eyes. “Russell” Fargo said again, harshly.

  “I... I don t know.”

  “He’s got a quarter-section under lease. Where is it?”

  “Southwest of town. Three, four miles. The Erickson place. They say he stays there. I don’t know.”

  “Road out take me to it?”

  The man nodded. “It’s fenced. Watch for the gate. That’s where you turn off.”

  “Obliged.” Fargo gave him a dollar, knotted the cinch himself, swung up lithely. Then he touched spurs to the sorrel and rode out of town.

  ~*~

  Rested, the animal held a high lope willingly and easily. As always, Fargo kept his head up alertly, searching the terrain. The town fell behind; ahead stretched level country, treeless and dreary—for ranching or farming, the worst land in Oklahoma; but oil made it the richest. He saw two derricks under construction. Another was finished, the well just being spudded in. The drillers and roughnecks stared at the weapon-hung rider who loped by.

  Fargo soon found the gate. It bore a sign: POSTED! KEEP OUT! C. RUSSELL. He opened it, let the sorrel through, closed it behind him with the instinctive care of the ranchman. He rode along a narrow track rutted by wagon wheels and the tires of a Model T. Ahead of him was a rickety, unpainted house. Not very large, it was surrounded by equally tumbled-down outbuildings. It was a poverty-stricken layout, he thought. Nothing stirred; it appeared lifeless except for a couple of horses in the small corral. A car was parked in the yard.

  He rode into the dooryard and dismounted. He looped the reins around a hitch rack and went up the porch steps. He raised his hand to knock on the front door when it squeaked open. A woman stood in the doorway holding an old Ballard .45-70 rifle pointed at Fargo’s belly. “Don t move, stranger,” she said, her voice trembling.

  Fargo lifted his hands. “You’re Mrs. Erickson?”

  “That’s right. Who’re you?” She moved into the light. Fargo saw that she was young, not much over twenty-five, and she would have been pretty if she had not worn her coal-black hair pulled back so severely. Her figure was good, better than good, lush beneath her gingham dress, which was clean and patched.

  “My name’s Neal Fargo. I’m looking for Curt Russell. Want to talk to him. To Mr. Erickson, too, if he’s home.”

  “Mr. Erickson’s been dead for a year.”

  “What about Russell?”

  “I’m here, Fargo,” a voice said; and Fargo turned his head to see a man holding a pistol step around from behind the parked Ford. He held the gun as if he knew how to use it, its barrel steady on Fargo.

  “You people are touchy,” Fargo said.

  “It pays to be touchy when one of Brasher’s men comes calling.”

  “I’m not one of Brasher’s men.”

  “Gossip in town last night said you were.” Russell came up to the steps. Fargo liked the looks of him. He was tall, well built, not over thirty. His face was tanned, clean-shaven except for a small, blond mustache that matched his sun-bleached hair. He wore a battered Stetson, a flannel shirt, and blue jeans tucked into laced engineer’s boots.

  “Sometimes gossip’s wrong,” said Fargo.

  “We’ll see. Unload that hardware. Slow, easy, and careful. This was my daddy’s gun and he filed the sear on it. All I got to do is let the hammer drop.”

  “All right.” Exactly as ordered, Fargo unslung the shotgun, put it carefully on the porch.

  “The pistol in that shoulder holster, too,” Russell said. He had sharp eyes, Fargo thought, impressed. Carefully he pulled it back, drew the gun with only two fingers on the grip, laid i
t beside the shotgun.

  “That’s better,” Russell said. “Now, Fargo, suppose you tell us what it is you want out here. Did Brasher send you?”

  “I just told you. I’m not Tull Brasher’s man yet. Let’s go inside.”

  Russell nodded. “Stand back, Lily, and let him through.”

  Lily Erickson moved aside, the gun still ready, and Fargo passed into a two-room house, shabby, but scrupulously clean. With the Colt, Curt Russell prodded him into the back room, the kitchen, and motioned him to a chair at an oilcloth-covered table. Russell sat down opposite Fargo and eased up on the hammer, still holding it in Fargo’s direction. “All right,” he said. ‘What do you want?”

  “I’m not sure yet. Maybe just information. I understand you hold the lease on this quarter section. Mrs. Erickson owns it?”

  “Everybody knows that. I got here about the same time Tull Brasher did. He and I both made Lily offers. She accepted mine.” His mouth twisted. “She might have been better off taking Brasher’s.”

  “Don’t talk like that, Curt,” Lily said from the corner of the room, her voice intense.

  “Well, I’ve done nothing with it! You should have been a rich woman by now. You would have been, if you’d dealt with Tull.”

  Fargo said, “There is oil here, though?”

  Russell laughed harshly. “Oil? Down there, Fargo—” he pointed “—it’s swimming in oil. This whole region used to be one big prehistoric sea. There are thousands, maybe millions, of barrels down there under Lily’s property.”

  “Then why haven’t you drilled?” Fargo took out a cigar, bit off its end.

  Again Russell gave that short, bitter laugh. “Why? Money, of course! It’ll take a rig, Fargo— preferably a rotary rig. And rotary rigs cost money. I’d need a rig and ten, maybe fifteen thousand to boot to get low enough to bring in a well.”

  ‘With a lease like this, you shouldn’t have much trouble getting it financed.”

  “It’s not that simple. Brasher’s got me blocked off.” Caught up in the conversation, Russell laid the gun on the table, still keeping it in hand. “He don’t want me to drill here, and he draws enough water to keep me from getting the money I need. He’s bringing in a big field, and everybody wants a piece of it, wants to stay on the good side of him. The banks, the big combines, people like Rockefeller—until they see who he’s going to do business with, none of them will cross him. Besides, you’ve got to be careful who you take in as a partner in a deal like this. Brasher’s not the only bastard in this business. Take in the wrong man, the wrong interests, they’ll figure a way to freeze you out, eat you alive.”

  “What about out-of-state? Back in Texas—”

  “The Russell name is mud in Texas—not worth a plugged dime. Do you know about Brasher and my father?”

  “Sort of.”

  “They were partners in a leasing operation down there. They held damned good leases and borrowed a lot of money to drill. Brought in one dry hole, and Brasher lost his nerve. Instead of using the rest of the borrowed money to keep drilling, he cleaned out the company of all its cash and rigged things to make it look like my father did it. A lot of people got hurt, and Dad got the reputation of a deadbeat con man. That’s why... well, he killed himself. Anyhow, you mention the name Russell in Texas, oil people hold their nose. I’m tarred with the same brush, thanks to Brasher, and dead broke from trying to pay off Dad’s debts and reclaim his good name. That’s one reason why bringing in this field is so important to me; damned important. But I’ll get no money from Texas.”

  “Then what do you plan to do?”

  “Hang on,” Russell said with determination, “Just hang on, Lily and me. Sooner or later, I’ll find the partner I want. Somebody with a rig and some money, who won’t drive me against the wall when we make a deal and who ain’t afraid of Brasher.” Then he broke off, raised the gun slightly. “I’ve done a lot of talking to you, Fargo, Suppose you do some to me?”

  “That’s fair enough.” Fargo paused, ordering his words. “I came to Golconda to make some money. Brasher propositioned me. It seems he’s building a private army of his own, a bunch of gun hands. He’s trying to get his paws on every lease around here he doesn’t already own— including yours.”

  “I know about that. It’s the way he operates.” There was hatred in Russell’s voice.

  “Okay. Well, he laid it on the line to me. Either I work for him or I get tossed out of Golconda.” Fargo grinned, and it was like a wolf’s snarl. “I don’t like people telling me what I got to do. Besides, I don’t work for wages. I work for a cut, a percentage. Maybe I could make a lot of money with Brasher. But maybe I could make a lot more with somebody else. Anyhow, that’s a decision I reserve for myself, and nobody makes it for me. So I thought I’d at least size up your layout here.”

  Something flared in Russell’s eyes. “You mean you want in?”

  “I might.”

  “You got any money?”

  Fargo shook his head. “Nope. But if I decided to come in, I could get some. I could lay my hands on a rotary rig and twenty thousand dollars.”

  The flare in Russell’s eyes was a fire, now. “You line that up and you’ll be buying yourself a fortune.” Then his mouth quirked. “You’ll be buying yourself a mess of trouble, too. Brasher will come down on us like a ton of bricks the minute he sees we’re really gonna begin operations.”

  Fargo’s evil grin never altered. “Trouble will be my department. That’s how I’ll earn my cut.”

  “What kind of cut do you want?” Russell’s eyes narrowed.

  “What’s the eventual value of this field?”

  “Who knows? Millions.”

  “I’d want the twenty thousand back, with six per cent. A flat ten per cent interest in everything that’s pumped out. And another five for the man who brings in the rig.”

  “Fifteen per cent; those are hard terms.”

  “Nothing like the big people would demand They’d take you for fifty, maybe more.”

  Russell sat in silence for a moment. “How do I know I can trust you?”

  “You want letters of recommendation? I’ve saved a few.” Fargo fished his inside coat pocket, threw a couple of folded sheets across the table.

  Cautiously, Russell opened them and read, his hand still on the gun. Fargo saw his face change; there was awe on it when he looked up. “These are real?”

  Fargo nodded. “I served under him in the Rough Riders. We’ve been friends ever since. I’ve done a little work for him from time to time.”

  Russell stared. “While he was President?”

  “Then and since. Secret assignments, where a fighting man was needed. The Army or the Secret Service couldn’t do the trick.”

  Russell slowly handed back the letters. “If Teddy Roosevelt trusts you ...” he whispered, “Is that where you’d get the money?”

  “I’m not at liberty to say.”

  “No. What about the rig?”

  Fargo put the letters in his coat. “You ever hear of Uncle John Morris?”

  “Uncle John? Hell, yes; most famous high-rolling, hell-bending oil wildcatter in Texas. But ... I thought he’d gone to Mexico.”

  “He did. Trying to get in on the development near Tampico. But the revolution down there ruined it for him, froze him out. He managed to get out with his rig just ahead of a firing squad. I saw him last week in San Antonio; he was trying to scrape up the money to get up here.”

  “My God, if we could get Uncle John up here—” Then the young man frowned. “He wouldn’t work with me. Not with anybody named Russell.”

  “Maybe not. He’ll work with a man named Fargo, though.”

  “What about Brasher? Wouldn’t he be afraid of him?”

  Fargo laughed. “Uncle John Morris is seventy years old. He’s driven trail herds, been a Texas Ranger, fought Comanches, and been an oil wildcatter for twenty-five years. He’s been scared by experts. It’ll take more than a Tull Brasher to bother Uncle John.”
>
  Suddenly, decisively, Russell stood up and holstered his Colt. “Fargo, you don’t know me. I could be lying about the oil under here. Or mistaken. I’ve been in this business all my life. I cut my teeth on a string of tools, and I’m a graduate geologist to boot. I’d stake my skin on this being the richest quarter section in Oklahoma. But I could be wrong. You can never be sure about oil. Drill one hole, you got a gusher. Drill again right next to it, you got a duster. Nobody can guarantee, nobody can swear ...”

  “I know all that,” said Fargo.

  “You’d go on the hook for twenty thousand on that basis? And fight Brasher?”

  “If I stay in Golconda, I’m gonna have to use my gun sometime. I’d rather use it on my own behalf than on Brasher’s.”

  “Well, if you want a deal, you got one.” Russell’s eyes gleamed and he struck his thigh. “Do you want it?”

  “Yes,” said Fargo, also standing.

  “My hand on it!” Russell thrust it out.

  Fargo took it.

  Russell laughed jubilantly. “By God, we’re in business! Fargo, six months from now, well either be rich or dead!”

  Fargo’s wolf-grin was cold.

  “I aim to be rich,” he said.

  Chapter Four

  An hour later Fargo mounted his sorrel, the double-barreled riot gun slung down behind his back, his Colt restored to its holster. He reined the horse with a grave face, his eyes alert. He’d committed himself now; maybe a foolhardy play. But he didn’t like being crowded—and Brasher had crowded him. Besides, this might be the biggest score he’d ever get a chance at. The payoff might be a million—several millions.

  Anyhow, he was in. Curt Russell and Lily Erickson had both stacked up well. And his word was given—Neal Fargo never went back on that.

  He’d learned more about Russell and Lily. The woman had married unwisely, her husband a wastrel, a loser. He’d thrown away an inherited fortune and wound up on the scrubby quarter section. For farming purposes it was useless, its fertility ruined by all the oil beneath it. Lily hadn’t been terribly grieved when her husband, too lazy to sideline a rank horse before trying to cold-shoe it, had been kicked into Kingdom Come. When young Russell appeared on the scene they’d immediately struck sparks; that’s why Brasher wasn’t offered the lease. Russell and Lily were living together now, but he refused to marry her until a strike was made. He wasn’t going to saddle her with his debts, or tie up the lease that could make her wealthy. Russell was playing it straight with Lily, and Fargo liked that.