When Dick Rover came back he was more filled than ever with a desire to get down to Texas to look over the land which had been left to him by Lorimer Spell.
“I’ve found out that it is right in a territory where a number of well-paying oil wells have been located,” said he. “But I’m not altogether certain that his claim is a sure one, and it might be just possible that some prospectors might try to jump it, now that word has gone forth that he was killed in battle. They may think he died without leaving any heir.”
“Well, Dad, you know what I said,” cried Jack quickly. “If you went to Texas I’d like first rate to go along. Maybe I could help you with your claim.”
“Oh, Uncle Dick! won’t you take us all with you?” pleaded Fred. “It would be a grand outing for this Summer. We’ve been working very hard at school, you know.”
“A trip to Texas would put us in A, Number One condition for Colby Hall this Fall,” added Andy, with a grin.
“We wouldn’t interfere with your business in the least,” commented his twin.
At first Dick Rover was rather doubtful about taking four lively boys with him on the trip. But then he felt that they deserved something for applying themselves so diligently to their studies during the Winter, and also for helping matters to run smoothly while he and his brothers had been in France.
“You can go,” he announced the next day, after a consultation with his brothers and their wives. “But I am going very quickly—by to-morrow night at the latest. Can you boys get ready so soon?”
“Can we get ready!” exclaimed Andy. “Say, Uncle Dick, just let me run upstairs and get an extra pair of socks and a toothbrush and I’ll be ready to go to the North Pole if you say so!” And at this sally there was a general laugh.
After that matters moved with incredible swiftness. It was decided that the boys should take no baggage but what would go in their suitcases for the trip, and these were speedily packed. In the meanwhile, Dick Rover obtained the necessary railroad tickets and sleeping-car accommodations.
“Hurrah! we’re off for Texas and the oil fields!” cried Fred.
“Off for the land of luck!” exclaimed Dick Rover, with a smile.
“The land of luck?” questioned Jack. “Is that what they call it, Dad?”
“Yes, Son. And it’s truly the land of luck for some. For others it is the land of bitter disappointment.”
“Then I would call it the land of luck—good or bad,” announced Andy.
They were to leave from the Pennsylvania Terminal late in the evening. The whole family had dinner together, and those to be left behind did not hesitate to give the boys a great deal of advice.
“I hope you don’t fall in with any rough characters down there,” said Mrs. Dick Rover. “They tell me there are some men in the oil fields who are anything but nice.”
“You may find you will have to rough it,” said Tom Rover. “I understand some of the oil fields are ten or fifteen miles away from the nearest town.”
“Well, we’ve roughed it before,” answered Jack.
The mothers of the boys might have been more upset, but they felt relieved to think that Dick would be with the lads.
Soon the time came for parting, and all drove quickly to the railroad terminal. Then finally good-byes were said, and those bound for Texas hurried downstairs to the big underground train station. Porters with their bags took them to the proper car, and they soon found themselves settled. A few minutes later they were off.
The trip during the night was uneventful, and, strange as it may seem, all of the boys slept soundly. But they were up early and ready for their breakfast just as soon as that meal was announced from the diner.
“I’m afraid we’re going to have a rainy day of it,” said Dick Rover, as the four boys sat down to a large table while he took his place at a smaller one opposite. “But as we’ll be on board all day, it won’t matter.”
During the meal Jack noticed that his father was reading a letter very attentively, and when the party walked back to their Pullman he mentioned this fact.
“This is a letter from an oil well promoter,” said Dick Rover. “I don’t exactly know what to make of it. He makes a proposition which on the face of it looks rather good, but somehow or other I have got it in my head that he is a crook.”
“In that case, Dad, I’m sure you won’t want to have anything to do with him.”
“Is he a New York man or one from down in Texas?” questioned Fred, who overheard this conversation.
“He operates mostly in Texas, although he has some connection in New York. He is very anxious to form a new company, and, of course, sell the stock. Well, I am willing to go into a new thing and take stock for myself and try to dispose of some to others, provided the company is really a good one. But I don’t want to get mixed up in any shady transaction.”
“I should say not!” cried Jack. “The Rover name has always been a clean one.”
“What is the name of this promoter?” questioned Fred.
“Carson Davenport.”
“What’s that?” exclaimed Jack, somewhat startled.
“Carson Davenport. Did you ever hear that name before?”
“I certainly did, Dad. This Carson Davenport has a son Perry, and this Perry Davenport and Nappy Martell were great chums, and unless I am mistaken, Mr. Martell and Carson Davenport were once partners in some mining scheme. I heard Perry and Nappy talking about it several times.”
“Humph! if this Carson Davenport was a partner of Nelson Martell, I don’t know as I want anything to do with him. That whole bunch is tarred with the same stick. Not one of them is honest,” declared Dick Rover bluntly.
CHAPTER XIX
IN THE LAND OF LUCK
“Well, here we are in Texas at last.”
“And what immense stretches of country there seem to be, Jack. Miles and miles without a house or any other building.”
“You must remember, boys, that Texas is the largest State in the Union,” came from Dick Rover. “Some of the farms, or ranches, down here cover thousands of acres.”
“How much farther have we to ride?” questioned Randy.
“Ten miles, that’s all,” replied his uncle.
They had made two changes since leaving New York City, but each stop had been less than an hour in duration; so to these boys so used to outdoor activities it felt as if the whole journey had been continuous. They were bound for a small town which in years gone by had been known as Steerville, but the name of which since the oil boom had been changed to Columbina. This, so far as Dick Rover could ascertain, was the nearest point to where the Lorimer Spell tract was located.
“We’ll take a look around Columbina first,” Jack’s father had said. “I want to see how that claim looks. Then I’ll take a run over to Wichita Falls and get those documents belonging to Spell from the safe deposit box in the bank.”
“I see an oil well!” shouted Fred presently, and he pointed out of the car window to where the huge derrick could be seen over a distant rise of ground.
“There is another! And another!” added Andy, a few minutes later.
“Now we must be coming into the oil fields,” announced Dick Rover, and his face showed that he was just as eager as the boys. “Just think of how some of these wells have made a great many comparatively poor people almost millionaires over night!”
“It sounds like a fairy tale, doesn’t it, Dad?” exclaimed Jack. “No wonder they call this the land of luck.”
“But don’t forget the disappointments, Son. Many a man has put his all into sinking a well only to find it absolutely dry.”
“And wells cost so much to sink, too!” put in Fred. “Ten to forty thousand dollars each! It’s an awful amount to gamble away.”
“Not all of the wells cost that much, Fred. In some places they strike oil at a distance
of a few hundred feet. But here they have to go down much deeper. Many good wells are down three thousand feet or more.”
The train had stopped at one or two towns, and now the porter announced that the next stop would be Columbina, and he took their suitcases to the platform for them. Presently they rolled up to a small wooden station, and the travelers alighted. Then the heavy train rolled westward.
“Welcome to Columbina!” cried Andy jestingly. “Some big city, I must declare. I wonder where the Waldorf-Vanderbilt Hotel is located?”
“What’s the matter with going to the Ritz-Copley Square?” added his twin, with a grin.
“Perhaps we’ll be thankful to get any kind of a shake-down, boys,” announced Dick Rover. “This certainly is worse than I anticipated, although I knew that we couldn’t expect much in one of these boom towns.”
To a newcomer Columbina certainly offered no special attractions. Only a few years before it had been nothing but a point where the ranchmen had shipped their steers on the railroad, with a tiny stockyard and a small ranchmen’s hotel and saloon combined. Now the boom city, if such it might be called, consisted of a long straggling main street with a much dilapidated boardwalk on one side only. In the middle of the street the mud was all of a foot deep, and through this wagons and automobiles plowed along as best they could. All of the buildings were of wood, and none of them more than three stories in height. There were half a dozen general stores, the same number of eating and drinking places, and two buildings which were designated as hotels, O’Brian’s being one and Smedley’s the other. There was also a long, shed-like moving picture theater advertised to be open twice a week, in the evening.
“I was advised by a man on the train to try the Smedley Hotel first,” said Dick Rover. “He thought I’d find a better class of people there than at the O’Brian place. Wait till I ask the station master where the hotel is located.”
“You can’t miss it,” said the station man, when applied to. “It’s down at the end of that boardwalk. If you go any further you’ll sink into mud up to your knees,” and he smiled feebly.
“Any chance of our getting in there?”
“Just as good a chance as getting in anywhere. They tell me O’Brian’s place is so full they’re falling out of the windows,” and the station master chuckled over his little joke.
“Anything in the way of a taxicab around here to take us and our baggage up there?”
“Taxicab? The last man to run a taxicab was Jim Lumpkins, and now Jim’s struck oil and he’s so rich he won’t do nothing. If you want to get up to Smedley’s I reckon you’ll have to hoof it.”
“Come on, Dad, let’s walk up there,” said Jack.
“But your suitcases are pretty heavy,” answered his father, with a smile.
“Oh, we won’t mind those,” declared Fred. “We’ve hiked around with just as much to carry many times.”
“I sha’n’t mind it myself,” declared his uncle. “Campaigning in France was a splendid thing to harden one’s muscles.”
They set off down the one business street of which Columbina boasted. They had to pick their way carefully along the dilapidated boardwalk. At one point they came opposite O’Brian’s Hotel. Downstairs was a saloon, and in this a noisy bunch were talking and singing.
“I don’t know as I would care to stop there,” remarked Randy. “It looks like rather a tough hole to me.”
“You are right,” responded Jack. “I’d rather go to some private house, if I could find one, or else buy a tent and hire a place where we could pitch it.”
“Gee, that’s an idea!” cried Andy. “I’d much rather go camping out and do my own cooking than put up with just any old thing.”
At length they came to Smedley’s Hotel. It was a new building, three stories in height, with a restaurant occupying one-half of the lower floor. Half a dozen men were occupying chairs on the front piazza, and they eyed the newcomers curiously.
“Looks fairly clean, anyway,” whispered Fred to his cousins. “I wouldn’t want to get into some old ranch that was full of bugs.”
The office of the hotel was about twelve feet square, with a sanded floor. On one side was a plain wooden settee, and on the other an equally plain counter on which rested a register and a bell. Behind the counter was a tall, freckle-faced man with a shock of red hair.
“Good afternoon, gentlemen,” he said hospitably. “What can I do for you?”
“We want to know if we can be accommodated here,” answered Dick Rover. “There are five of us.”
“How long do you want to stay?”
“I don’t know exactly. Several days at least, and maybe a week or two.”
“I see.” The hotel proprietor scratched his head thoughtfully. “I’ve got one big room left and one small room directly opposite. The small room has only a single bed in it, but the other room has a double bed and I could easily put two cots in there besides that.”
“Would you mind showing us the quarters?” questioned Jack’s father. Experience had taught him when in out-of-the-way places not to accept hotel accommodations until he had inspected them.
“Sure thing, Brother. Just follow me.”
The boys waited below while Dick Rover and the hotel man went upstairs. A minute later they came down, and then Jack’s father registered for the entire crowd.
“You pay for your meals in the restaurant when you get ‘em,” announced the hotel man. “The rooms are separate. Three dollars each per day.”
The rooms to which they had been assigned were on the third floor of the hotel. One was amply large for all of the boys, and the other, while much smaller, had good ventilation and Dick Rover said it would suit him very well.
“The whole outfit is better than I was afraid it might be,” he announced. “Some of these boom towns have wretched quarters for newcomers. In fact, I’ve read in the newspapers that in many places the newcomers had to roll themselves in blankets and sleep out in the fields.”
“I was reading about one place where they set up cots on the floor of a general store at night and sold the right to sleep on a cot until seven o’clock in the morning for one dollar,” said Randy.
There was no running water, but each room was supplied with a bowl and pitcher, and after the extra cots were placed in the larger apartment an extra bucket of water was also brought up by a maid.
Although they did not know it, the Rovers had no sooner disappeared upstairs than two of the men sitting on the veranda of the hotel came into the office and looked over the register.
“Five Rovers, and all from New York City,” muttered one of the men, and gazed knowingly at his companion.
“Four of them were nothing but kids,” returned the other. “It’s only the man who counts, and his name seems to be Richard Rover.”
“Do you think he is the same Rover?”
“I shouldn’t wonder, Tate. That name isn’t a common one. However, we had better make sure before we make another move.”
Andy and Fred were the first to get through washing up, and then they came downstairs to take a look around before going into the dining-room with the others for supper. They came out on the hotel porch, and were surveying the scene before them when the two men who had inspected the hotel register lounged up to them.
“Well, what do you think of our town?” questioned one of them pleasantly.
“I haven’t seen enough of it to form an opinion,” answered Fred.
“It will take us a week or two, I suppose, to take in all the sights,” came from Andy, with a grin.
“It might take you a week or two if you went on foot through the mud,” answered the second man. And then he continued: “I suppose you came from a distance, eh?”
“We came from New York.”
“Going to invest in some oil wells, I suppose?” remarked the first man who had spoken, and he sm
iled broadly.
“That depends on how we find things here,” answered Fred. “You see, my uncle is interested in a tract of land they say has oil on it. Of course he’ll want to make an investigation before he goes ahead.”
“Is that man who is with you your uncle?”
“Yes.”
“Is the tract of land he is interested in near here?” questioned the second man.
“I don’t know how close it is to this town.”
“What’s the tract called? If you don’t know exactly where it is, perhaps we can help you locate it.”
“It’s the Lorimer Spell tract,” answered Fred innocently. He thought the men were just asking out of idle curiosity.
“Oh, I see.” The man frowned and looked at his companion.
“Do you know anything about that tract?”
“Oh, I’ve heard of it. It’s up on the north side of the town. I understand Spell was shot during the war,” the man continued, looking at the boys.
“He was,” answered Andy. “And he left all his property to my Uncle Dick, who once saved his life.”
“Oh, that’s it, is it!” cried one of the men. “Seems to me I heard something about that. Your uncle played the regular hero act.”
“As I said before, he saved Lorimer Spell’s life, and did it at the risk of his own. It was in the midst of one of the fiercest fights.”
At this moment Jack and Randy came rushing down the stairs and out on the porch of the hotel in great excitement.
“We just saw somebody up the street!” exclaimed Jack. “And who do you think it was? Gabe Werner!”
CHAPTER XX
PLOTTING AGAINST DICK ROVER
“Gabe Werner!”
“Where is he?”
“Up the street,” answered Randy. “Come on after him.”
“Who’s the man you are after?” questioned one of the men who had been interviewing Andy and Fred.
“He’s a young fellow who once went to a military academy with us. He’s a regular bully and did something for which he ought to be locked up,” was Fred’s reply, and then he rushed down into the street, following his three cousins.
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