Stringer and the Oil Well Indians

by Lou Cameron

  Durham swallowed some beer before adding, “Like I said, the stuff you want floats on water. Hot salty water, left over from some ocean they must have had around here one time. You got to drill where the cap-rock blisters higher, full of gas and rock-oil. Drill where the blanket dips down the other way and all you drill into is wet sand, which we still call a dry hole. I don’t know why that graveyard they just drilled down through don’t seem to be above a rise instead of a dip. It sound like it ought to be, oak trees betwixt the tombstones or no. But as I discovered the one time I worked with Tiger Twain, he just hates to drill one inch deeper than he has to. So let’s hope that blast we just felt did her for him. He’d likely to bust every window in town before he’ll admit it’s a dry hole.”

  Stringer asked just what pouring nitroglycerine down the pipe had to do with finding rock oil. Bull Durham said, “Hell, you don’t pour nitro down a well. You want it to go off at the bottom. You puts it in a can or bottle with a dynamite cap and a mighty long electric fuse. The resulting explosion a mile or so down would sound a mite louder if anyone was down there to listen.”

  Stringer nodded and said, “I did feel that last blast with my feet more than I heard it with my ears. But what’s all that underground noise supposed to do for the oil industry?”

  Bull Durham explained patiently, “Bust the shit out of the formation, of course. Sometimes there’s enough oil in the rock to pay, but not enough gas to shove it into the hole. You got to understand that oil don’t sit underground in buried frog ponds. It’s there betwixt sand grains or even in the pores of harder rock. Cracking the rock all apart lets the oil seep outten the cracks and into the well, if there’s any oil there at all. You might say nitro is the last resort, unless you’re talking about Tiger Twain. He takes too many chances for this child to work with!”

  As if to prove his point, they were treated to another foot tingle just before the window glass rattled in time with the dulcet tones of another blast. The bar maid swore and Durham growled, “He’s gone just plain crazy this afternoon. There’s no way they could have test pumped since that last fool blast.”

  Stringer found the conversation interesting. But then he heard a more ominous rumble from deeper in the depths of the tough little joint and cocked an ear to hear some invisible tough complaining, “Jesus, do you have to keep feeding nickles into that fool piano? I can’t stand that nigger music they got on the damned old roll.”

  Stringer couldn’t hear the softer reply to the complaint about ragtime music. But he could guess the gist of it when the same complaining voice complained louder, “God damn it, I mean it! I’m from Texas myself, and if you start that uppity nigger music up again you’re surely going to hear Dixie, played on your Damn-yankee skull!”

  Stringer finished the last of his schooner and left before the fight started. He asked directions out front and headed for the scene of action the San Francisco Sun was more apt to find worth printing. It was getting hotter as the day wore on and the old Indian graveyard turned out a longer walk than he enjoyed in high heeled Justins.

  But he kept going when he heard another muffled explosion just as he was considering turning back. So, in time, he came to the outskirts of the little town, although the forest of oil derricks extended well out across the rolling range to the west, and since a lot of folk seemed to be standing around a raw timber derrick atop a hill near the winding Arkansas to his left, he just ambled on up it.

  Having shortcut across the slope of summer-kilt grass, he had to climb through the barbed wire fence around the old graveyard once he got to it. He was glad it was broad daylight, for the acre or more of grave markers, partly shaded by young but brooding blackjack oaks, was depressing enough as it was. Most of the graves were marked by sun-silvered wooden crosses with a slate of sandstone slab rising here and there. Some of the graves had little picket fences around them. One fence had been freshly whitewashed and there were wilted flowers on the grave of a little girl named Alice who’d have been almost grown today, had she lived. But most of the graves didn’t look as if they’d been visited in recent memory and the weeds between them grew almost knee deep. Stringer strode on to the drilling platform spread across at least four graves under the looming oil rig just in time to wonder if he hadn’t avoided one drunken brawl just to wander into another.

  For if Tiger Twain wasn’t drunk, he was making noise enough for three such gents as he cussed at that same lawyer he’d been talking to the night before, a lot more quietly.

  Stringer had to circle the platform and drift closer before he could hear what Lawyer Lacey had to say about whatever might be going on. When Stringer could make out his softer but just as stubborn words, he decided the lawyer was making the most sense. Lacey didn’t want Tiger to drop any more bombs down the pipe. He said, “You’d have never drilled this site in the first place if I hadn’t been overruled by those damned oak trees. We don’t have full clearance on some of these graves and we’re likely to be sued over the damage you’ve done up here already. I told you the Creek tribal council gave us permission to drill between the gate and the first row of markers but, all right, what’s done is done and just don’t damage any others.”

  Tiger replied as his four man crew and the curious crowd of others who’d beaten Stringer to the scene tried not to look as if they were taking sides, “Shit, I never drilled through no old Creek who could have noticed. We moved the damned markers with tender loving care afore we put up the rig. They’re piled neat as hell, over there by yonder gate.”

  Lawyer Lacey sniffed and pointed the other way with his chin as he replied, „That blasting has made leaning towers out of a good dozen more and I say we should quit while we’re ahead.”

  Tiger sneered, “It’s a good thing you ain’t in charge of this crew, then. I got me some cap-rock to punch through and the bit just won’t do it without some help.”

  Lacey protested, “Damn it, Tiger, I know you consider me a desk-bound pencil pusher. But I did start out in the Penn State fields and a man does learn a lot about oil wells settling damage claims in court. You’re not supposed to blast cap-rock open from the top. It’s too dangerous. It’s like lancing a boil with a ball peen hammer. Why don’t you just change bits and do it the regular way, damn it?”

  Tiger waved a grimy hand at a pile of what looked to be oversized crowbars to Stringer as he snapped, “I’ve worn out a dozen damn bits to no avail on that last yard of damn rock down yonder. It’s hard as granite, even if it is supposed to be shale. I’m having enough of a time cracking it with nitro. So why don’t you go back to the office and see if you can sharpen pencils neat? Us working stiffs ain’t paid to be neat. There’s an oil dome under this damned hill and I mean to punch me a hole through it. So get outten my way afore I punch a hole through your fool skull, you necktie-wearing pain in the ass!”

  Lacey blanched and took a step backward. Then he sniffed and said, “We’d best see what Mister Sinclair has to say about all this. Meanwhile, I’m ordering you not to use any more nitro up here and that’s my last word on the subject for now.”

  Tiger laughed and said, “All right. I heard you. Now get the hell outten my hair.” Then he turned around to tell one of his roughnecks, “Get the next can of nitro, Slim. Charlie, you test the battery box. I’ll fuse her to the wire once we know we have the juice to work with.”

  Lawyer Lacey swore softly and dropped off the platform. As he headed for the graveyard gate to the west, Stringer was torn between curiosities. Watching them set another charge and detonate it promised to be interesting. On the other hand, Lawyer Lacey seemed to be headed for a one horse surrey parked under the trees by the side of the only road off this hill and it was a good walk back to town. Stringer decided he already knew as much about blasting a stubborn oil well as Sam Barca would want to run in the Sun, while the lawyer had just raised another question about Indian rights. So he tagged along after the upset lawyer and caught up just as Lacey was untethering his draft horse. Stringer introdu
ced himself and said, “I know you don’t remember me. But I was at that other well in the center of town last night.”

  Lacey nodded and said, “I remember you. I thought you were just a nosy cowboy who liked to listen to the grown-ups talk. I’m not sure I like you better as a newspaper man. The oil business is a sort of secretive game, played for high stakes, and my company hands out press releases whenever it has anything it wants its rivals to read in the papers.”

  Stringer tried, “That’s likely why John D. and the other oil barons make Teddy Roosevelt so mad. The trouble with keeping secret all the moves you make from the general public is that said public just has to guess, and you know how folk gossip about things they know little or nothing about. Have you heard about that inventor who comes up with a way to make horseless carriages run hundreds of miles on one gallon, and how Standard Oil bought him out and destroyed his plans lest poor honest motorists get a fair shake at the gas pumps?”

  Lacey groaned and said, “I thought we just murdered widows and orphans to render down as motor oil. I’ll give you a ride back to town. I’ll even tell you what I think of Standard Oil. But don’t ask me any questions about my own outfit.”

  Stringer agreed and they got in the surrey. Lacey clucked his horse on up the slope to where the weedy road was wide enough to swing around the right way. Then the nag in front of them shied and took the bit in her teeth to bolt, as the earth quivered under her hooves and the roar over by the oil rig in the graveyard seemed to keep getting louder and louder instead of fading away.

  Lawyer Lacey hauled back on the reins as hard as he was able. But he wasn’t able to stop a spooked nag with other things on her dull mind. She just wanted to put some distance between them and that awful roaring to her east. So she bolted west, along the crest of the ridge and to hell with any road.

  Stringer stood up, braced one boot on the dashboard, and dove over it to land face down on the back of the spooked runaway. He grabbed the brass knobs of her horse collar and hauled himself into a sitting position with one boot braced on either wooden shaft as he hauled back on the reins with little more luck than the lawyer hauling the same from behind him. Then Stringer stretched forward enough to grab the cheek-strap of the bridle and crank the nag’s neck back to one side. That and running into a clump of Osage orange brush slowed her down enough for Stringer to roll off, brace both boot heels, and stop her entire with a palm cupped over her muzzle. She was still upset as hell, but he was able to control her now, soothing, “Take it easy, if you ever want to breathe again. Haven’t you ever heard a bitty explosion before, old girl?”

  Then he glanced back the way they’d just come to add, “Oh, Jesus H. Christ!” as the shaken Lawyer Lacey wailed, “I knew it! Look what that fool’s gone and done!”

  Stringer was looking. The top of the oil derrick had been blown to oil-soaked kindling and replaced by a twenty story column of greenish black oil and gas. Stringer forgave the spooked nag he was hanging on to when he saw the wind was from the west. For what goes up must come down and the stinky black rain of rock-oil was coming down on all those old graves in a way they’d never meant to be watered. Even as they watched, a river of the stuff had formed to run down into the nearby Arkansas, which was supposed to be a river of water to the folk down stream who used it.

  Lawyer Lacey shouted, “Get that bit back in place and let’s get back to town! I have wires to get off to the home office and it still won’t be soon enough!”

  Stringer slipped the bit back behind the nag’s teeth and ran to join Lacey in the surrey as it commenced to roll. He had a wire or two to send, now that there seemed to be a real story. As they got under way he grunted, “I see what you meant about lancing a boil with a ball peen hammer. How do you go about capping a gusher when it’s coming up through a busted open formation instead of a pipe?”

  Lacey almost sobbed, “You don’t. That son of a bitching Tiger has let it all loose at once. So we’re in about as bad a mess as I feared we might be!”

  Then they both discovered he was wrong when they were almost blown off the seat by a gust of oven-hot wind and the runaway gusher was replaced by a towering mushroom cloud of smoke and flame. Lacey wailed, “Oh, shit, it’s caught fire!” to which Stringer could only reply, “I noticed,” as he braced himself to leap off and head back to the disaster site. He knew Lacey wasn’t about to stop. Then, as they tore down the slope, he saw other rigs coming up it, while distant bells rang all over town and so, seeing as much help as he could hope to offer was on the way, he decided he’d best beat sweet little Bubbles to the Western Union office with the scoop.

  He didn’t. As they leaped down from the surrey in front of the telegraph office, he saw a familiar figure in line well ahead of them. It was hard to say why all the others wanted to send wires at the same time, but they seemed intent on doing so as soon as possible, and when Lawyer Lacey tried to shove into the line, yelling that he had important business to wire his home office, he got shoved on his ass and told in no uncertain terms where the end of the line was.

  Stringer doubted W.R. Hackman would punch a fellow member of the Fourth Estate, but the gents behind her might if she let anyone in ahead of her. As if she’d felt his eyes on the back of her head, T.R. turned demurely, spotted Stringer way behind her, and favored him with a sweet smile and a helpless shrug. Stringer muttered, “Yep, that’s life, and I’m sure Sam Barca will understand my letting her scoop us if I explain how great she is betwixt the sheets. There has to be a better way.”

  There was possibly another way, at least. Stringer knew he was sunk in any case if the L.A. Examiner beat them by the good hour’s lead she had on him at the rate this fool line seemed to be moving. So he ran for their hotel with his fingers mentally crossed and, to his relief, saw the lobby was empty and that nobody else had thought of Alexander Graham Bell, yet.

  The little breed switchboard operator behind the hotel desk was only on duty during daylight hours. But he’d noticed her board when he’d checked in the night before. He gave the desk clerk a fistful of loose change to avoid needless discussion as he rolled over the fake marble and told the gal at the hotel switchboard to ring up the San Francisco Sun for him as he plunked a silver dollar down beside her. She blinked and stammered, “Are we talking about a call to a newspaper in San Francisco, sir, long-distance?”

  He leaned against the wall beside her stool, seeing this was going to take some tedious explaining, and said, “I never said San Francisco was a short distance from Tulsa, Ma’am. You know more than I do about running this switchboard. But I do know it can be done, if you set your mind to it.”

  She said, “Gee, I don’t know. The longest distance call I’ve ever made was to Ohio and it was a real bother. There’s no line from here to there and I had to call Kansas City and ask the supervisor there for help.”

  He nodded and said, “Bueno. K.C. ought to be on the main cross-country line. Call them and say it’s a person to person collect call, MacKail to Barca at the San Francisco Sun on Montgomery Street. The Frisco operator will have their number listed but I reckon I have it written down here, somewheres, if that don’t work. Am I going too fast for you?”

  She pouted her kissable lower lip at him and said, “Pick up the house phone on that desk yonder. I know how to get through to Kansas City, at least, and why did you say bueno? Do I look Spanish to you?”

  He reached for the french phone on the fake marble counter as he soothed, “No. I do. I was raised in Spanish speaking country and I’ll bet you another dollar you can’t work those plugs any faster.”

  She sniffed, did some mysterious things with her rats’ nest of wires, got a wrong number by mistake and then she smiled smugly and said, “Hello, Tulsa Central? This is Irene at the Osage Inn. I want to put through a collect person to person call to San Francisco, California, by way of the Kansas City long lines. Can we do that?”

  They must have been able to. For as Stringer put his own hand set to one ear he heard the perky little
breed repeat her question to yet another operator, who allowed she’d try. Then there was just a lot of buzzing in his ear until a ghostly distant voice said, “San Francisco Central.” So Stringer read his paper’s office number off his press pass and asked if there was some way to get a better connection. The operator he was next to turned to give him a dirty look as the Frisco operator told him he wasn’t supposed to talk until she had his number if you please. Stringer grinned at the pretty breed and whispered, “How was I to know you gals had a guild?”

  Then, though the connection was no better, there was no way to mistake the snarl of old Sam Barca in the press room of the Sun as he snapped, “Feature editor and what’s it to you?”

  Stringer asked, “Sam?” and when Barca shot back that he was hardly the Czar Of All The Russians, Stringer explained, “I’m calling from Tulsa.” Then the operator cut in on them to say, “Not yet, you’re not. Do you accept the charges for this call, Mister Barca?” To which Sam replied, “Yeah, yeah, get out of my damned ear. You still there, Stringer? What’s going on, and it had better be good!”

  Stringer gave him a quick run down on the explosion and fire atop Missionary Ridge, as he’d heard it called when he’d asked how to get there. Then he suggested, “I’ll get back to you as soon as I can with any casualty figures and just what anyone hopes to do about it. As of now, I can only tell you gas and oil are going up in mighty expensive smoke and the Arkansas River is carrying one hell of an oil slick they won’t much like when it passes New Orleans. That ought to be worth a headline, at least.”

  Barca answered, “I’ll get it right to the news desk. But what about the feature I sent you after in the first place?”

  Stringer said, “I haven’t written it yet. There’s more local color than I’ve been able to sort out. Some of it took some shots at me last night. He was an otherwise unimportant hired gun named Holt. I thought at first he was trying to keep me from covering the news here. But, as you see, I was covering it pretty good when that oil dome burst open just now. I’ll get back to you, Sam.”