Stringer and the Oil Well Indians

by Lou Cameron

  But as she walked him to the front door later, arm in arm, she asked when they’d ever be able to do it some more. She said she could sneak out to his hotel. But he said, “That might not be a good idea. I’ll get back in touch with you as soon as I come up with a safer place for us both.”

  CHAPTER NINE

  Some philosopher had once declared that no man was ever as sane as he was just after a really fine screwing. Stringer couldn’t come up with the old gent’s name but he felt sure the man must have screwed as well as thought a lot. Stringer knew the sanest course for him right now would be to check out of the Osage Inn, hop the first westbound at the depot, and write his feature on the way home from the notes he already had.

  Sam Barca had only sent him here to do a Sunday page or two on the novel Oklahoma rock-oil boom. That oil well still burning in the old Creek graveyard offered plenty of local color and he had enough on the odd way oil well Indians were forced to do business to bore a crusty old editor with a nasty disposition and the fastest blue pencil in the west. It was no news that the oil business was a rough business, run by men who’d peddle their own mother’s ass for an educated opinion on a good place to drill next. He knew old Sam Barca would chide him for taking it personal and there were paid lawmen here, red and white, to worry about who’d done what to whom and why. The smart thing for a newspaper man caught in the cross fire to do would be to just git, before he wound up another mystery for old Bill Tilghman to solve.

  As he once more approached the Pronghorn on his way to the hotel, Stringer saw the white Buick wasn’t parked there any more. It was likely just as well. He’d just taken a mighty dumb chance with Walter Bluefeather’s legal spouse, without half her excuse for feeling hot and bothered, and did the big tough Osage ever find out, there was just no saying how he’d take to wearing horns, even in name only. Gals were as bad as men when it came to kissing and telling and Lawyer Lacey was sure to be steamed if he ever found out another man had messed with his baby sister. Now that he was sure he wouldn’t want to even wink at a woman for at least a week, Stringer felt it was bad enough to have one set of enemies gunning for him for no good reason he could see. He didn’t really need big brothers or husbands out to clean his plow. So, yep, it was just about time to get up from the table before the game got even rougher. Irene at the hotel was likely to be mighty upset by him checking out after promising her a late supper as well as a walk home. But she was likely to be even more upset by a man who couldn’t get it up once he got her there, so what the hell.

  Meanwhile, he’d missed his noonday dinner and old Victoria had never served him the coffee and cake a more proper hostess might have. He recalled the Pronghorn served a free lunch along with booze and ragtime music. So he turned in to see what they might have on the lunch tray down at the deep end of the bar.

  The place was almost empty but the lunch tray was laden with hard-boiled eggs, pig’s knuckles, salami, and potato salad. There would have been even more if Bull Durham hadn’t been standing there stuffing his face, with a schooner of beer in his free hand and a Remington .44 hanging low on his hip. Bull’s boots were made for riding as well. It wasn’t easy to make out whether he considered himself oil or cow.

  Stringer ordered a bottle of Steamer instead of draft, since he meant to eat more than he meant to drink, and bottled beer helped pay for the overhead. Then he carried it down to the free lunch to join Bull Durham, saying, “Great minds run in the same channel. Do you mind if I ask you a personal question, Bull?”

  Durham shrugged and said, “Ask away. I got no secrets. The spud salad has gone a mite rancid, by the way.”

  Stringer bit into a boiled egg, washed it down with Steamer, and said, “I won’t eat any, then. I’ve gotten just a mite curious about just what you do for a living, Bull.”

  Durham shot him a puzzled smile and asked, “What do you suspect I am, a Chinese laundryman?” So Stringer polished off the egg, reached for a slice of salami, and replied, “So far, I’ve never seen you do anything you could make much money at. I know you say you’re an oil field man and I ain’t about to call an armed man a liar. But we’re in the middle of an oil field and this place’d be a lot more crowded if all those other roughnecks weren’t out working in said oil field right now.”

  Bull Durham laughed, easily, and said, “Oh, I follows your drift. I could be taken for a bum, lazing about saloons day and night. But as a matter of fact, I’m on call twenty-four hours a day. It saves getting dressed and undressed if I stay up most the time.”

  Durham saw that had only raised Stringer’s curious eyebrow higher. So he added, “I’m a licensed steam fitter and stationary engineer. I work for myself and they call me in, like, say, a locksmith, when there’s trouble with the pipes or machinery. I get to wear cleaner overalls and riding boots because I sort of ride hither and yon, fixing things.”

  “What sort of things?” asked Stringer, and this time Durham wasn’t smiling as he said, “I just told you. Oil field things. I fit pipes as need fitting, and who do you think they call when an engine breaks down? Most of the pumps can run untended with ball governors and automatic fuel and water feeds keeping an eye on things. A human eye has to check the gauges now and again. The regular crews worry about that. It’s when the gauges read funny or the engines act odd that they send for me. Nine outten ten times I can fix it with a good bang from a wrench. The tenth time, I earn every penny I bill the big shots. You can’t pump much oil with a broke-down engine or through a leaky pipe, you know.”

  Stringer ordered another Steamer to go with the oversalted free lunch before he said, “I stand corrected on your now more visible means of support, Bull. Seeing you get to traipse all over oil fields, though, might you be able to tell me where and how I’d be able to lay hands on, say, a chart showing all the wells and pipe lines going where?”

  Bull Durham frowned dubiously and replied, “I wouldn’t know where to begin. I know where I’ve strung pipes for clients. But I never saw fit to map ’em and, in all modesty, I ain’t the only pipe fitter in the business. The notion is to just run as few lengths of oil line from the well to the refinery by the shortest route you can manage. That’s often into a line already strung by the same producer. If there was such a map, the lines would look more like trees rooted at the refinery end and branching out ever which-ways than anything else.”

  Stringer asked, “Wouldn’t each refinery have at least a chart of the pipes feeding into them? What’s to stop a sneak from tapping the tree if nobody’s keeping track?”

  Bull Durham shook his head and said, “You don’t carry oil to market in maple syrup buckets. The lines are metered, so any serious loss of oil would be noticed. That’s how I get called in to fix leaks. As to private refinery charts, you’d play hell getting a look at one if there was one. Each company reads its own meters. They just don’t want nobody else to know their production figures. I didn’t see much sense in that, neither, ’til I was told production figures effects the price of oil stock way back East.”

  Stringer washed down another boiled egg and said, “Our financial editor might want me to pester the oil trust for such figures. I doubt my feature editor does. But as long as we’re on the subject, have you ever done any work for a wildcatter they call Tex Roberts?”

  Bull Durham hesitated, shrugged, and said, “I see no reason to fib when I don’t have to. I supervised some pipe lines out to the Osage reserve a few months back and I still check some steam pumps for Tex out that way, say, twice a week. He bought good gear to begin with, so the pipe joints don’t leak enough to care about and the pumps just about take care of themselves. I only have to tighten a bolt or adjust a gauge a notch now and again. What about old Tex?”

  Stringer shrugged and said, “Just wondering. I was out at the Rocking Tipi for ice cream, yesterday. Bluefeather seemed well satisfied with the services as well. But let’s talk some more about oil meters. I didn’t notice anything that impressive out yonder. Seemed to me the pumps just emptied in
to plain old pipe lines that ran together at the well closest to town.”

  Bull Durham nodded and said, “That’s different. I ain’t saying Indians steal slicker than the rest of us, but you are talking about a cluster of wells no white man’s likely to look at more than once or twice a week. Bluefeather’s private pipe line, or I should say Standard’s line out to that cattle spread, gets metered at the town end before it joins the main trunk line to their local refinery. It’s not that John D. don’t trust noble savages, I feel sure, but a man with plenty of time and privacy has been known to jiggle a meter and that can add to many a barrel a day.”

  Stringer asked how one might go about changing the readings on an oil line meter and Durham asked if he wanted them numerical or alphabetical, adding, “The simple way it to just unscrew the face and move the numbers with the same screw driver. They do seal the meters with embossed lead seals but, like I said, a sneak with plenty of time and privacy can take a plaster cast of the original seal, bust it, and remelt the lead with a blow torch and stamp the same impression in it whilst it’s still hot. Don’t you never say I told you Walter Bluefeather would do a thing like that, though. He couldn’t, even if he wanted to, the meters not being where he could get at ’em if he wanted to.”

  Stringer started to reach for another boiled egg, contented himself with downing the last of his second bottle, and told Bull Durham, “I never said I suspected an Indian stockman would be up to cheating John D. Rockefeller in a business deal. But wouldn’t having Bluefeather’s production figures under total and secret control give Standard Oil an easy crack at cheating him?”

  Bull Durham shook his head and said, “I’m going to tell you a trade secret. Old John D. is just as skinflint as they say he is. The story about him ordering three fried chickens for a dinner party, counting the drum sticks and raising hell when he only counted five is true. But Standard Oil don’t cheat at figures. They can’t afford to. They do too much business with too many folk to want word to get around that their word can’t be trusted.”

  He finished the last of his larger schooner and put it on the bar as he continued, “Do you ever sign a contract with old John D. make sure you have a Philadelphia lawyer go over all the small print with you. For if there’s one word about your dear old mother’s blood on the paper, Standard Oil will take it if they have to fight you all the way to the Supreme Court. But if they say they mean to deliver such and such on such a date, you won’t have to worry about it being the day after or the day before. Tex Roberts did Bluefeather a favor by signing his oil lease over to Standard. He figures to get every nickel he has coming to him until his wells run dry and, after that—tough shit.”

  Stringer sighed and said, “I’ve heard much the same about old John D., and that means another tedious trip to the BIA.”

  Durham asked, “What makes you so sure Bluefeather or any other Indian’s getting cheated?” To which Stringer could only reply, “I don’t. But somebody must be. For whoever’s doing it tried to kill me and did kill an Indian agent. I somehow doubt that could mean they were cheating Chinamen. So it’s been nice talking to you, Bull.”

  Stringer stepped back out into the dazzling sunlight alone as Bull Durham ordered another draft. Stringer thought once more of just going on back to his hotel and the hell with Tulsa as the noon day breezes blew hot dust and rock-oil fumes in his face. But somehow he found himself walking the wrong way, toward the BIA as he muttered to himself, “What do you expect to find there, save for paper cuts, you fool bulldog? They’ll have it recorded that Walter Bluefeather has a white in-law acting as his sponsor or they won’t. You already know he never could have sold his oil lease without a white man signing for him. Both Bluefeather and little Victoria told you Lawyer Lacey was that fool Indian’s brother-in-law and there’s no reason for both of them to fib to you about it. Do you really think Sam Barca cares if the BIA keeps good records or not?”

  He swung a corner and started to cross the blazing dusty street to get to the meager shade on the other side. Then a shot rang out close behind him as someone yelled, “Stringer! Duck!” So he dove to the dust on his belly and lizard crawled on to the cover of a watering trough on the far side, fast.

  But as he got rid of his hat and got out his gun to risk a cautious peek back the way he’d just come, he saw it was just about over. The blue-clad Jake Wetumpka was standing in the street with his own gun drawn, covering the dusky youth in a cow hand outfit at his feet. Stringer didn’t see why. He could tell from where he crouched that the cuss the Indian Policeman had downed was dishrag dead and leaking blood or piss out both ends.

  As he warily rose and put his hat back on, the Creek lawman called out to him, “He was throwing down on you from behind, MacKail. You got any notion how come?”

  Stringer holstered his own six-gun as he strode out to join Wetumpka and his victim. He stared down soberly at the dead youth and said, “All I can say for sure is that he seems to have grown up Indian and dressed cowboy. I still owe you, Jake.”

  Wetumpka shrugged and said, “My pleasure. I get mighty tired of hearing how big and brave Osage are. This one was out to backshoot you like the coward he was born.”

  By this time they’d been joined by others, including the sadly smiling U.S. Deputy William Tilghman, who glanced down, shook his head wearily, and said, “I sure wish you hadn’t done that, Jake. It’s not that I doubt he had it coming, for we have papers on him as well. But this here Willy Whitepony was an Osage and there’s already enough blood between his nation and your’n.”

  Wetumpka shook his head and said, “I don’t reckon the Osage Council is apt to shed their tears or my blood over this no-good young son of a bitch, Bill. I had to gun him because he was about to gun Stringer, yonder. Before that he raped Miss Sageburner of the Osage Nation, and stole her daddy’s horse while he was at it. He stole other things from his own people, too. Had the Osage lawmen caught up with him before I did they’d have gut-shot him and let him die slower. Any Indian who rats on his own people is considered lower than a shit-eating dog by his blood kin!”

  Bill Tilghman allowed, “Well, the Starr gang was about as low as I can recall and they did raid Creeks and whites instead of Cherokee. So you may be right. I sure hope so, for your sake.”

  Then Tilghman turned to Stringer to ask, “How come this outcast Osage was out to gun you, old son?”

  Stringer said, “We were just talking about that. I never saw him before in my life. Someone must have hired him to do me in. Lord knows, he had no other sensible reason.”

  Tilghman sighed and said, “Life sure was less exciting around here before you blew into town, MacKail. You did say you was about ready to go back to Frisco, didn’t you?”

  Stringer nodded, but said, “Just give me another twenty-four hours, Bill. If I haven’t figured it out by then I doubt I ever will.”

  Tilghman stared down at the body between them again as he considered, then said, “You’re as likely to wind up in this unseemly condition as you are to find out what makes you so popular in Tulsa these days. But since I like you and you asked polite, you got until the noonday westbound tomorrow to solve your fool mystery, if you can, and be on that train whether you can or can’t. Like the Indian Chief said, I have spoken.”

  Once they’d let him into the back offices at the BIA, Stringer told the branch chief, “I’m sorry to bother you again Mister Manson, but they will keep shooting at me and the back trailing seems to be taking me ever deeper into Indian country. Would you mind if I went over a few matters with the agent who mans your Osage desk?”

  Manson sighed and replied, “I only wish you could. Agent Davis isn’t with us any more. Pending his replacement his steno gal, Miss Tenkillers, would be the one for you to talk to. She handled all his paperwork, made telephone calls for him and such. Come on. I’ll show you to her cubby-hole.”

  He did. Better yet, when he introduced Stringer to the pretty young lady, Manson ordered her to cooperate with Stringer in every way be
fore he left them alone on either side of her small desk. She was blushing slightly, so Stringer figured she’d seen how Manson’s words could be taken by a strange gent dressed in dusty denims and a speckled Stetson. There was no polite way to assure her he wasn’t suffering a raging erection as they sized one another up. They said old Charles Dana Gibson used his own pretty wife as the model for the swell-looking gals he drew. He was tempted to tell this one that if anything ever happened to the original model she had a job just waiting for her, but he didn’t. Somehow Gibson Girls didn’t excite him as much as usual this afternoon. But noting the China blue eyes and elfin Irish features that went with her coal black shiny hair and olive complexion, he had to ask, “Might not Tenkillers be a sort of Cherokee name, Ma’am?”

  She smiled wryly and replied, “It’s nothing like sort of. My grandfather trod the Trail Of Tears and he said his feet still hurt until the day he died. Is there anything else you wanted to know about the Cherokee Nation, Mister MacKail?”

  He leaned back in the leather-padded visitor’s chair and told her, “Not hardly. I’ve already met some other Cherokee here in Tulsa and I’ll take their word they’re not after me. I’m more suspicious that someone was out to skin some Osage, or vice versa, and your boss was dealing with Osage matters the day he got murdered.”

  She listened intently and wise-eyed for such a pretty young she-male and by the time he’d brought her up to date on all his various close calls and suspicions, he’d gotten her to call him Stuart if he could call her Helen. She said it was all right if he smoked as well. But he liked her even better when she ducked out a minute to bring back the files on Bluefeather and some other Osage who’d had white folk sign contracts with the oil trust for them.