Boomer

by Clifton Adams

  Grant felt the knot on the back of his head. “It wasn't my idea.”

  Bud Muller turned slowly, his smooth young face set like concrete. “I should have killed him!” he said hoarsely. “I should have shot him before saying a word!”

  “Do you think that would have been smart?” Valois asked quietly.

  “He killed my father!”

  But now that some of his anger had burned itself out, Grant was beginning to wonder about other things. He sat carefully on the edge of the runner's cot and fixed his gaze on Valois. “I guess we owe you a good deal for lending us a hand down there. Next time I'll be acquainted with Farley's rules and maybe I can handle my own trouble.” He frowned. “Why did you do it, Valois?”

  Bud Muller looked puzzled, too, and was waiting for an answer.

  Surprisingly, Valois laughed. “Why does anybody make a fool of himself? Take yourself,” nodding at Grant. “What good reason do you have for getting mixed up in this kind of trouble?”

  Grant nodded but he was not satisfied. “You've got more to lose than I have. You said yourself that Farley could ruin your business, if you turned him against you. Did you think of that when you threw down on him?”

  The runner's eyes narrowed. “I've got no cause to like Farley; not many people have. Yes, I thought about my business before I stepped in.” He strode to the room's small single window and gazed down at Kiefer's muddy street. “If I had it to do over again, I don't know as I would do the same thing—but I'm not going to have that chance. I'll have to take my business where I can find it, whether Farley likes it or not. Do you still want those rig builders and roustabouts for the Muller lease?”

  Grant and young Muller made small sounds of surprise.

  “I think I might be able to rake up some men who'd be willing to work against Farley,” Valois went on. “But they won't be the kind of men you want; they'll be hard cases, drunkards, the scrapings of the barrel.”

  Grant glanced at Bud Muller, and the boy nodded.

  “How soon can you get them to the lease?”

  “Tomorrow morning maybe. It depends on how big a scare Farley throws into this town.”

  “Get them,” Bud Muller said, but his face showed that he was worried. “There's just one thing, Valois, that you ought to know. I don't think it's going to do you any good with Rhea.”

  The runner smiled. “I hope you're right,” he said dryly. “I'm fighting Farley now—that's all the trouble one man can rightly handle.”

  The crowd in the lobby parted and stared curiously as Grant and Bud made their way down the stairs and out to the sidewalk. They were marked men. Every glance in their direction was a speculative one. How long would it be before Farley finished them? Suddenly they had become untouchables; their names were on Ben Farley's black list. Grant was just beginning to realize how strong a man Ben Farley was.

  They climbed stiffly over the freighter's wheel and dropped heavily to the driver's seat. Grant breathed deeply, and as bright needles of pain shot through him he experienced the exhilaration of a new kind of anger.

  For the first time he saw that fight with Farley as a personal matter. The throbbing at the base of his skull, the pain in his side, and the numbness of his arm—they would be with him for a long time to remind him of Farley.

  And after they were gone he would still remember.

  Silently, he took up the lines, and the horses strained obediently in the harness. Bud Muller rode like some mute stone god of hate, and Grant could only guess what went on inside the boy's mind. The freighter dragged slowly through the slush of Kiefer, forming another bulky link in the endless chain of wagons along that deep-rutted road between Kiefer and the Glenn ranch. The town had grown overnight; it was even noisier and dirtier than Grant remembered it from the day before, yet many of the business places were already leaving Kiefer, especially the dance halls, the crib girls, the gamblers. They were picking up and moving on to Sabo.

  Grant was getting used to it, the way he had got used to trail towns and end-of-track towns of the past. Still he didn't like it—and suddenly he remembered something that Rhea had said to him. Do you think I like living out the good years of my life in towns like Kiefer and Sabo?

  Now, thinking calmly, he felt that he understood Rhea Muller a little better than before. Even the fire of her ambition and greed became more understandable.

  Then caution stepped in to guide his thinking. It was all right to understand her, if he could, but nothing more. He must keep one thing clear in his mind—any argument he had with Farley was a personal one, it had nothing to do with Rhea Muller.

  They rode on in silence, the jolting freighter starting new pains in Grant's head and side, then he saw a horseman coming toward them, quartering across an open field from the direction of Kiefer. Grant stared, then shrunk a bit into his windbreaker, as though he hoped to make his identity unknown.

  Marshal Jim Dagget reined alongside the freighter, his eyes hard, his mouth a cruel slash across his blunt face. With a jerk of his head he motioned Grant to pull off the road, and then he sat for a moment, his anger fixed on Bud Muller.

  “So you wouldn't listen, would you?” he snarled. “The law wasn't fast enough for you, was it! You had to take it on yourself to see that justice was done!”

  The color of outrage mounted steadily in the lawman's face, and for the moment Bud Muller was his sole target. “There's one thing I want you to listen to and I want you to get it straight: from now on I'll see that justice is done. I intend to catch the man who murdered your father, but I'll do it my own way, with no help from you. Do you understand?”

  Young Muller hadn't been prepared for this outburst. He looked surprised, then angry.

  “I said,” the marshal's voice cracked, “do you understand?”

  There was a savagery there that not even Bud Muller in his state of grief could fail to understand. Jim Dagget was a lawman; the law and its enforcement were his life. He was letting it be known beyond all doubt that he would allow no man to ride over him.

  Bud understood. The marshal's anger was the only thing that had penetrated the hard core of his bitterness, and at last he nodded.

  “I hope you do,” Dagget said, and this time his voice was not quite so harsh. “Farley could have shot you dead on the Wheel House floor and he would have gone scot free, because he had the law on his side. That's what he would have done, too, from what I hear, if it hadn't been for Turk Valois.”

  Now he fixed his anger on Grant. It was more than just a look—it was something else as well, a look of suspicion. “And you,” Dagget said thoughtfully, almost as if his mind were somewhere else. “I thought I told you to see that this kind of thing didn't happen.”

  “I didn't have much to say about it.”

  But a subtle shift of attention had taken place in the marshal's eyes. Then, abruptly, “You planning to stay on at the Muller lease?”

  Grant nodded. There was nothing else to do.

  Dagget's mouth turned up slightly in that smiling expression that was not a smile at all, and suddenly he reined his horse around. As suddenly as he had come, he was gone. Grant's mouth was dry, and beneath his windbreaker he was sweating. What was going on in that mind of Dagget's? What was he thinking, what did he suspect, and how much did he know? He couldn't know so very much, Grant reasoned, or he would have taken him back to Joplin.

  Just the same, something was going on behind the marshal's shaded eyes; Grant could see the wheels begin to turn every time Dagget looked in his direction, and he didn't like it. He had the feeling that Dagget was amusing himself, toying with him like a cat toying with a crippled sparrow. If he ran, it would only focus the marshal's suspicions. If he stayed, Dagget would finally work out the answer in that methodical brain of his.

  Grant smiled wryly, without humor. Damned if I do, he thought, and damned if I don't. Then he realized that Bud Muller was looking at him.

  “Grant...” The word hung for a moment as the boy wrestled with his t
houghts. “Now that my father is... gone, it's up to me to run the lease. Me and Rhea. We're going to need your help.” He looked away, staring down at his big hands. “I guess I lost my head back at the Wheel House, and what Dagget said was right. He's a good man. Sooner or later he'll get Farley, but it will have to be done his way. That might not be quick enough to save the lease.”

  “Dagget strikes me as a man who doesn't overlook much. He won't forget the lease.”

  “But Farley won't be easy to break, not even for a man like Dagget. He wants the lease bad and he'll stop at nothing to get it. But if Valois gets us the rig builders we'll have a chance. It'll be dangerous...” He paused and looked up. “I'm trying to say I want you to go on working for us.”

  “I haven't been much help so far.”

  “You were a help to Rhea back at Vinita.” He smiled bitterly. “I guess we didn't do much against Farley and his two roustabouts, but I learned one thing, Grant—you were on my side. I guess that's what we need most, somebody like you that we can trust.”

  It would have been amusing if the joke hadn't had such a bitter twist. Grant became aware of the money belt under his shirt—twenty-five hundred dollars that legally belonged to a bank in Joplin. He wondered how long Bud would want him if he knew the whole story.

  But that was in the past. He said, “Do you think you can depend on Valois to deliver the workers?”

  Bud Muller nodded. “He's declared himself now; he'll have to fight Farley or be run out of Kiefer.”

  “How much does your sister have to do with Valois' decision to throw in with us?”

  The question didn't surprise the boy, but he sat for a long while, his face blank, before he answered. “I'm not so young,” he said finally, “that I don't know that my sister's attractive to men. I've seen you look at her... and others. I guess Turk had it pretty hard in Bartlesville.”

  “Did he get over it?”

  Bud smiled thinly and shook his head. “I guess you'll have to ask Turk about that.”

  A thousand questions crowded into Grant's mind, but he could see that Bud had said all he was going to say about his sister. The boy asked, “Will you stay on the job, Grant?”

  With Dagget looking over his shoulder, what choice did he have? He said dryly, “We'll try it awhile and see how it works out.”

  The next morning Turk Valois came with the workers and grinned when he saw the look on Grant's face. “They don't look like much, do they? Well, I warned you they'd be the scrapings from the barrel, and that's just what they are. I expect most of them are dodging the law in Missouri or Kansas. The rest of them are drunkards or thieves that nobody else would hire—not even in Kiefer—so that gives you an idea what you've got.”

  Valois had brought the workers from Sabo in a livery wagon, and a hard knot of caution formed in Grant's stomach as he looked at them. There were eight of them—bleary-eyed, whisky-soused, filthy, and mean. There was not a man among them who looked as if he had ever done a day's work.

  Calloway and Morphy had stopped work on the cellar to stare at the disheveled crew. Bud Muller came toward them from the bunk tent, looking at the runner.

  “Is that the best you could do?”

  “They're the only men in the Creek Nation who don't know this lease is on Farley's black list, and that's only because they were too drunk to hear when I got them.”

  “Do they know anything about carpentering or derrick building?”

  “I didn't ask them,” Valois said dryly.

  Bud frowned and looked at Grant. “What do you think?”

  “They can't be as useless as they look; they'll have to do. Thanks for doing what you could, Valois. How much do we owe you?”

  The runner grinned. “It's my pleasure. I've been waiting a long time to take a swing at Farley.” Then he stared at something over Grant's shoulder, and when Grant turned he saw Rhea Muller coming out of the dugout. She wore baggy corduroy trousers, laced boots, and a canvas windbreaker, but not even the men's work clothes could disguise the fact that she was an attractive woman.

  Valois nodded quickly to Grant and the boy. “I'd better head back to Sabo. If I can give you a hand, let me know.” He turned on his heel and strode quickly to the wagon as though he were in a hurry to escape before Rhea came up from the dugout.

  Rhea chose not to notice Valois' flight but called to her brother, “Send them over to the bunk tent. I'll feed them before they go to work.”

  If they go to work, Grant thought. Rhea was not dismayed but seemed pleased that they had workers of any kind, and Grant was amazed at the great stacks of flapjacks that she brought out of the dugout. “You'll have to eat in the open,” she said, “until we get the bunkhouse built. Bud, bring the tin plates and syrup from the dugout; side meat and eggs will be ready in a minute.”

  There was a note of authority in her voice but she did not speak to the workers as if they were the “scrapings of the barrel.” The men did not seem to notice or care how she treated them. They used the dugout as a windbreak, hunkering down against the log walls to wolf whatever was put on their plates.

  Grant regarded the scene with interest. In some mysterious way Rhea had locked her grief away in some secret compartment of her mind and, watching her now, it was difficult to believe that the day before she had seen her father buried, businesslike, manlike, she went about her job of seeing that the men were fed. When that job was done, she said, “Now there's work to be done. Follow me.”

  Surprisingly, the motley crew got to their feet and followed her to where Morphy and Calloway were working. “This is the cellar,” she said briefly. “Here the derrick foundations will be laid and the derrick will be built. Over there is where the belt house goes, and beyond that the engine house. A slush pit will have to be dug over there and a pipe laid from the derrick to the creek. Are any of you carpenters?”

  Halfheartedly, four men raised their hands.

  “Have any of you had experience at building derricks?”

  Two of the four raised their hands again. It was better than Grant had expected.

  Rhea nodded to her two drillers. “Pat, the rest is up to you and Lon. What they don't know about derricks, teach them. Bud, you take the ones who say they're not carpenters and get a bunkhouse started. They can learn to saw and hammer well enough for that.”

  The air was charged with her energy, and there was no doubt in Grant's mind as to which of Zack Muller's two offspring had inherited control of the lease. She should have looked ridiculous in those men's clothes, but she didn't. She looked cool, businesslike, ruthless. She looked like a woman who knew exactly what she wanted and meant to have it.

  She turned on her heel, sure that her orders would be carried out just as she had given them. “Mr. Grant, I want to talk to you in the dugout.”

  Her voice was commanding, and she turned her back to Grant and strode toward the shack. Grant felt a prickle of irritation that she had spoken to him with that same note of authority that she had used with Valois' derelicts.

  After a moment of hesitation he followed her into the warm, whitewashed interior of the dugout. There was a dress hanging on a wall rack beneath the small window and Rhea Muller stood stroking it gently, almost as if she were caressing it, when Grant came in. It was a white dress with layers on layers of sheer organdy; it was some kind of ball dress or party dress, beautiful and feminine and expensive, and completely out of place in this mud hut.

  Apparently she had forgotten that she had asked him there until he quietly announced himself by clearing his throat. She turned from the dress quickly, as though it had stung her, and vivid color mounted her cheeks for just a moment.

  “It's a pretty dress,” Grant offered.

  “I didn't ask you here to talk of dresses, Mr. Grant.” It was “Mr. Grant” now, not “Joe.” Quickly, she took the dress from the rack and hung it behind a gingham-screened wardrobe against the far wall.

  “Are you working for the Muller lease?” she asked briskly.

&nb
sp; He frowned. “That's up to you, I guess.”

  “When you didn't come back to the lease the night my... father was killed, I thought you had run away.” She choked for an instant, then quickly looked away. “You were going to run away, weren't you?”

  “I can't say the notion didn't enter my mind. But there's no place to run, I guess. If you still want a hand that knows nothing about the oil business, I guess I'm ready to work.”

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  GRANT'S JOB WAS to ride the boundaries of the lease, armed with carbine and revolver, and see that Ben Farley's men were kept away from the derrick. He built a windbreak of brush and blackjack logs to the north of the derrick site and from this piece of high ground he could watch the lease in the daytime. The nights were more difficult. Two riders had to circle line continuously; this job was divided up between Grant and Bud Muller, Morphy and Calloway.

  It was now five days since Zack Muller had been laid away in Tulsa, and a lot had happened. The year 1905 had died a noisy death in Sabo and Kiefer, although the entrance of a new year meant just another workday on the Muller lease. Talk was growing that Indian Territory and the Oklahoma country would soon be admitted as a single state. New gushers came in every day on the Glenn ranch. New derricks were going up so fast that from a distance this shallow basin looked like some strange, outlandish forest. There was great excitement in the air that winter. This was the new Land of Promise, and every day the trains brought in fresh loads of eastern businessmen, drifters, organizers, harlots, politicians, gamblers.

  Joe Grant did not like it. Boom towns and fast money attracted outlaws, and outlaws attracted more deputy marshals, and with every extra marshal in the territory his own chances for survival grew slimmer.

  Why he stayed, he could not say. He had a strong horse and a good saddle; he would stand a fair chance of escaping to Texas, in spite of Marshal Jim Dagget.

  He wondered about this, hunkering down by his small fire in front of the windbreak. He could see the Muller derrick taking shape near the banks of Slush Creek, the intricate structure of girts and sway braces casting lacelike patterns over the barren ground. A long sheet-iron enclosure had been built to house the big band wheel and engine; and where the tent used to be there was now a new bunkhouse also sided with sheet iron. Working with a green, derelict crew was a slow business, but Rhea kept them on the job. Somehow she managed to keep them on the lease and away from the saloons of Sabo.