“Whe-e-ew!” Sandy panted when an hour had passed and he had peeled out of his coat, shirt, and finally his undershirt. “How can it get so hot at this altitude?”
“Call this hot?” jeered Salmon. “Last time I was down in Phoenix it was 125 degrees in the shade, and raining cats and dogs at the same time. I had to park my car a block from the hotel, so I ran for it. But when I got into the lobby my clothes were absolutely dry. The rain evaporated as fast as it fell!”
“That,” said Hall, “is what I’d call evaporating the truth just a leetle bit.”
“Mr. Salmon....” Quiz hesitated. “Could I ask you a personal question?”
“You can if you call me Ralph,” answered the tall driller as he slowed to let a Navajo woman drive a flock of goats across the trail. She was dressed in a brightly colored blouse and long Spanish skirt, as if she were going to a party instead of doing a chore, and she did not look up as they passed.
“Well, how is it you don’t talk more—like an Indian?” Quiz asked.
“How do Indians talk?” A part of the Ute’s smile faded and his black eyes narrowed ever so slightly.
“Why, I dunno—” the boy’s face turned red with embarrassment—“like Chief Quail, I guess. I mean ... I thought....”
“When you’ve served a hitch in the Navy, Quiz, you get to talking just like everyone else, whether you’re an Indian or an Eskimo.”
“Were you in Korea, Ralph?” Sandy asked to break the tension.
“I was not! I served my time working as a roustabout on oil wells in one of the Naval Reserves.”
“And, since that wasn’t enough punishment,” Hall said as he grinned, “Ralph came home and took advantage of the GI bill to go to school in Texas and became a driller.”
“Yep,” Salmon agreed. “And I soon found out that an Indian oil driller is about as much in demand as a two-headed calf.” He threaded the car through the narrow crevice between two tall buttes of red sandstone that stuck up out of the desert like gnarled fingers. “I was just about down to that fried caterpillar diet that Chief Quail keeps kidding me about when a certain man whose name I won’t mention gave me my first job.”
“And you turned out to be the best all-round oilman I ever hired,” said Hall as he slapped the other on his bronzed, smoothly muscled back. “I figured that if Iroquois Indians make the finest steelworkers in the construction business, a Ute should know how to run a drill rig. I wasn’t mistaken.”
Salmon was at a loss for words for once. His ears turned pink and he concentrated on the road, which was becoming almost impassable, even for a jeep.
“That’s my reservation over there across the Colorado line,” he said at last, turning his head and pointing with outthrust lips toward the north and east.
“Nice country—for prairie dogs. Although the southern Utes are doing all right these days from royalties on the big oil field that’s located just over that ridge. They tell me, too, that the reservation holds one of the biggest coal deposits in the western United States.”
“Why didn’t you stay on the reservation, then?” Quiz wanted to know.
“I like to move around. People ask me more questions that way.”
“Oh.” Quiz stopped his questioning.
“Up ahead and to the left,” Ralph went on, “is the actual Four Corners, the only place in the country where the boundaries of four states meet. It also is the farthest point from a railroad in the whole United States—one hundred and eighty miles or so, I understand. How about stopping there for lunch, boss, as soon as we cross into Utah? Nice and quiet.” He winked at Quiz to take any sting out of his earlier words.
After they had eaten every one of the Misses Emery’s chicken and ham sandwiches, Hall took over as their driver and guide.
“My lease is up near the village of Bluff, on the north side of the river,” he explained. “I’m convinced, though, that most of the oil and uranium is in Navajo and Hopi territory south of the San Juan. I’ve had Donovan down there running seismographic surveys and he says the place is rich as Croesus. That’s why I’ve been talking turkey to Chief Quail—trying to get him to get the Navajo and Hopi councils together so we can develop the area.”
“Is Quail chief of all the Navajos?” Sandy asked. “He didn’t seem to be exactly....” He stammered to a stop while Ralph chuckled.
“Oh, no,” Hall answered. “Quail is just a chief of one of the many Navajo clans, or families. The real power is held by the tribal council, of which Paul Jones is chairman. But Chief Quail swings a lot of weight on the reservation.”
“Hah!” Ralph snorted. “Chief Quail’s a stuffed shirt. They made a uranium strike on his farm last year, so what does he do?... Buys himself a new pickup truck! I’d have celebrated by getting a Jaguar.”
“A Jaguar is like a British Buick,” said Quiz, suddenly coming into his element as the talk got around to cars. “A Bentley would have been better.”
“I know, I know,” Ralph answered. “Or a Rolls Royce if he could afford a chauffeur. I read the ads too.”
They followed the river, now deep in its gorge and getting considerably wider, for another twenty miles. They were out of the reservation now and passed a number of prosperous farms. The road remained awful, however, being a long string of potholes filled to the brim with yellow dust. The holes couldn’t be seen until the jeep was right on top of them. Hall had to keep slamming on his brakes at the risk of dislocating his passengers’ necks.
“You should travel through this country when it rains,” he said cheerfully. “Cars sink into the mud until all you can see is the tips of their radio antennas.”
“We’d get to the well before sunset if you drove as well as you tell tall stories,” Ralph commented dryly.
They finally made the field headquarters of the Four Corners Drilling Company with two hours of sunlight to spare. The boys looked at the place in disappointment. An unpainted sheet-iron shack with a sign readingOfficeover its only door squatted close to the top of the San Juan gorge. Not far from it was an odd-looking contraption of pipes, valves and dials about as big as a home furnace. There was no sign of a well derrick as far as they could see across deserted stretches of sand, sagebrush, and rust-colored rock.
“There she is—Hall Number One,” said their employer. He walked over to the contraption, patted it as though it was his best friend, and stood, thumbs hooked in the armholes of his worn vest, while he studied the dials proudly. “This is my discovery well. It’s what buys the baby new shoes.”
“But where are the derricks and everything?” Quiz tried unsuccessfully to keep the disappointment out of his voice.
“Shhh!” whispered Sandy. “They’ve skidded the derrick to the new well site. This thing’s called a Christmas tree. It controls the flow of oil out of the ground.”
“Smart boy,” said Hall. “We’ve got our wildcat hogtied and hooked into this gathering line.” He pointed to a small pipe that snaked southward across the desert. “The gathering line connects with the big new pipeline to the West Coast that passes a few miles from here. Number One is flowing a sweet eight hundred and fifty barrels a day.”
“But I don’t see any other well,” Quiz persisted.
“It’s over behind that butte.” Hall pointed again. “Oh, I know what’s bothering you. You’re remembering those old pictures that show derricks in an oil field standing shoulder to shoulder, like soldiers. We don’t do things that way any longer. We’ve got plenty of room out here, so we space our wells. Only drill enough of them to bring up the oil without waste. Come on. I’ll take you over and introduce you to the gang.”
A short ride brought them to a scene of whirlwind activity. Drilling had stopped temporarily on Hall’s second well so that a worn bit could be pulled out of the hole and replaced with a sharp one. But that didn’t mean work had stopped!
The boys watched, spellbound, while dripping lengths of pipe were snaked out of the ground by a cable which ran through a block at the top of the tall derrick and was connected to a powerful diesel engine. As every three lengths arrived at the surface, two brawny men wielding big iron tongs leaped forward and disconnected them from the pipe remaining in the well. Then the 90-foot “stand” was gently maneuvered, with the help of another man, wearing a safety belt, who stood on a platform high up on the derrick. When a stand had been neatly propped out of the way, the next one was ready to be pulled out of the well.
The crew worked at top speed without saying a word until the mud-covered drill finally came in sight. They unscrewed the bit from the end of the last stand of pipe, and replaced it with a sharp one. Then the process was reversed. Stand after stand of pipe was reconnected and lowered until all were back in the well. Then the engine began to roar steadily. A huge turntable under the derrick started spinning the pipe at high speed. Down at the bottom of the hole the bit resumed chewing into the rock.
“Nice teamwork, Ralph,” said Hall. “You certainly have trained as good a crew as can be found in the Regions.”
“Nice team to workwith,” answered the driller as he looked proudly at his men, who were about equally divided between Indians and whites. “Now let’s see if there’s any work for our two tenderfeet before it’s time to knock off for supper. Come on, fellows. The mud pit is slurping for you.”
Two hours later, when the cook began hammering on his iron triangle, Sandy and Quiz looked like mud puppies.
“You’re a howling fright,” said the tall boy as he climbed out of the big pit where a new batch of goo was swirling and settling. He plastered down his unruly cowlick with a slimy hand. For once the hair stayed in place.
“And you look like a dirty little green man from the swamps of the planet Venus.” Quiz spat out a bit of mud and roared with laughter. “Lucky thing we don’t have to get this muck off with compressed air. Come on. I’ll race you to the showers.”
Dinner was eaten in the same dogged quiet that they had noted at the motel. It was a good dinner, too, although it came mostly out of cans.
The boys were introduced all around after the apple pie had been consumed to the last crumb, but they were too tired and sleepy to sort out names and faces. They did gather that four-man shifts—or “towers,” as they seemed to be called—kept the drill turning day and night until the drill struck oil or the well had to be abandoned as a “duster.”
The only person present who made a real impression was Harry Donovan, Hall’s geologist. He was an intense, bald, wiry fellow in his thirties who kept biting his lips, as though he was just about to impart a deep secret. But all he seemed to talk about were mysterious things like electronic log readings, core analyses, and the distance still to be drilled before something called the “Gallup Pay” would be reached.
Hall and Salmon were intensely interested in Donovan’s report. Try as they would to follow it, Sandy and Quiz soon found themselves nodding. Finally they leaned their elbows on the oilcloth-covered dinner table and snored gently.
Ralph shook them partially awake and showed them their beds in a battered trailer. They slept like logs despite the fact that, bathed in brilliant white light provided by a portable electric generator, the rig roared and clanked steadily throughout the night as its bit “made hole” more than a thousand feet underground.
Sandy and Quiz spent the next two weeks picking up a working knowledge of drilling, getting acquainted with Hall’s outfit, and learning to keep out from under the feet of the crew. Ralph saw to it that their jobs varied from day to day as they grew lean and brown under the desert sun.
“Used to have a lot of trouble keeping fellows on the job out here next to nowhere,” he explained with a grin. “The boys would get fed up after a few weeks. Then they’d quit, head for town, and I’d have to spend valuable time rounding up replacements. Now I switch their work around so they don’t have so much chance to become bored. Let’s see ... you mixed mud yesterday, didn’t you? Well, today I want you to help Jack Boyd keep his diesel running.” Whereupon the boys would spend a “tower” cleaning the engine room, or oiling and polishing the powerful but over-age motor that Boyd nursed like a sick child to make it keep the bit turning steadily.
On other days they were assigned to drive to Shiprock or Farmington for supplies, to help Ching Chao in the cookhouse, or to learn the abc’s of oil geology from Donovan. Sandy preferred to do chores around the derrick and was very proud when he finally was allowed to handle one of the huge tongs used to grip the stands of pipe so that they could be removed from the well or returned to it.
Quiz, on the other hand, never tired of studying the wavering lines marked on strips of paper by the electric log that Donovan lowered into the well at regular intervals. He soon got so that he could identify the different kinds of rock layers through which the bit was drilling, by the slight changes in the shapes of those lines. Or he would train a microscope on thin slices of sandstone sawed from the yard-long cores that were hauled out of the well from time to time. With his usual curiosity, he had read up enough about geology to recognize the different marine fossils that the cores contained. He would become as excited as Donovan did when the geologist pointed to a group of minute shells in a slice of core and whispered, “Those are Foraminifera, boys! We must be getting close to the oil.” And he would become as discouraged as his teacher when careful study of another core showed no indication of ancient sea creatures.
“I don’t get it,” Sandy would mutter on such occasions. “How come those shells got thousands of feet underground in the first place? And what have they got to do with finding oil?”
Then the geologist would mop his bald head with a bandanna handkerchief, take off his thick horn-rimmed glasses and use them as a pointer while he lectured the boys on his beloved science.
“All of this country has been deep under water several times during the last few million years,” he would explain patiently. “In fact, most of the center of the North American continent has been submerged at one time or another. When the Four Corners region was a sea bottom back in the Carboniferous era, untold generations of marine plants and animals died in the water and sank to the bottom.
“As the ages passed, those life forms were buried by mud and silt brought down from surrounding mountains by the raging rivers of those days. The weight of the silt caused it to turn into sandstone or limestone layers hundreds of feet thick. This pressure generated a great deal of heat. Geologists think that pressure and heat compressed the dead marine creatures into particles of oil and gas.
“Every time the land rose to the surface and sank again, another layer or stratum of dead fish and plants would form. All this heaving and twisting of the earth formed traps or domes, called anticlines, into which the oil and gas moved. That’s why we find oil today at different depths beneath the surface.”
“I understand that water and gas pressure keeps pushing oil toward the surface,” Sandy said on one occasion, “but then why doesn’t it escape?”
“Usually it gets caught under anticlines where the rock is too thick and hard for it to move any farther,” Quiz cut in, eager to show off his new knowledge of geology. “But it does escape in some places, Sandy. You’ve heard of oil springs. George Washington owned one of them. And the Indians used to sop crude petroleum from such springs with their blankets and use it as a medicine or to waterproof their canoes. Sometimes the springs catch fire. Some of those still exist in parts of Iran. I read an article once which said that Jason really was looking for a cargo of oil when he sailed theArgoto the Caucasus Mountains in search of the Golden Fleece. The fleece was just a flowery Greek term for a burning spring, maybe.”
“Maybe,” Donovan agreed as he stoked his pipe and sent clouds of smoke billowing through the laboratory. “There’s also a theory that Job was an oilman. The Bible has him saying that ‘the rock poured me forth rivers of oil,’ you remember. If you read the Book of Job carefully, it almost sounds as if the poor fellow’s troubles started when his oil field caught fire. However that may be, we know that the Greeks of Jason’s time used quite a bit of oil. The Arabs even refined petroleum and lighted the streets of their cities with something resembling kerosene almost a thousand years ago.”
“Golly,” said Sandy. “It’s all too deep for me—several thousand feet too deep. I think I’ll go help Chao get dinner ready! Idoknow how to cook.”
The one job around the derrick that the boys never got a chance to handle was that of Peter Sanchez, the platform man who worked on their shift, or “tower.” Whenever the time came to replace a bit, Peter would climb to his perch halfway up the rig, snap on a safety belt, and guide the upper ends of the ninety-foot stands of pipe into their rack. There they would stand upright in a slimy black bunch until it was time to return them to the well.
Peter, who boasted that he had been an oilman for a quarter of a century, worked effortlessly. He never lost his footing on the narrow platform, even when the strongest wind blew. Platform men on the other shifts were equally sure-footed—and very proud of their ability to “walk” strings of pipe weighing several tons. And they took things easy whenever they climbed down from their dizzy perches.
Peter, in particular, was fond of amusing the other crew members by telling them stories about the oil fields in the “good old days.” His favorite character was a driller named Gib Morgan. Gib, he said, had come down originally from the Pennsylvania regions when the first big strikes were being made in Texas and Oklahoma, around 1900.
“You never heard of Gib?” Peter said one night as the off-duty crews were sitting around a roaring campfire after dinner. “Well, I’ll tell you....” He rolled a cigarette with one hand, cowboy fashion, while studying the young greenhorns out of the corner of his eye. “Gib was a little feller with a big mustache but he could put Davy Crockett and Paul Bunyan in the shade when he had a mind to. When he first came to Texas he had a run of bad luck. Drilled almost a hundred dry holes without hitting a single gusher. Got down to his last silver dollar. Then do you know what he did to make a stake?”
“No. What?” Quiz leaned forward eagerly.
“He pulled up all those dusters, sawed ’em into four-foot lengths, and sold ’em to the ranchers for postholes. That’s how it happens that all the Texas ranges got fenced in with barbed wire, son.”
When the laughter had died down and Quiz’s ears had returned to their normal color, the platform man went on: “That wasn’t the only time that Gib helped out his fellow man. Back around 1900, just before the big Spindletop gusher came in, oilmen in these parts were having a lot of trouble with whickles—you know what a whickle is, don’t you, Sandy?”
“It’s a cross between a canary bird and a bumblebee, isn’t it?” Sandy was dimly remembering a story that his father had told him.
“Well! Well!” Peter looked at him with more respect. “That’s exactly right. Pretty little varmints, whickles, but they developed a powerful taste for crude oil. Soon as a well came in, they’d smell it from miles away. That’s no great feat, I’ll admit, for crude oil sure has a strong odor. Anyway, they’d descend on the well in swarms so thick that they’d darken the sky. And they’d suck it plumb dry before you could say Jack Robinson, unless you capped it quick.
“Well, Gib got one of his big ideas. He went out to one of his dusters that he hadn’t pulled up yet, poured several barrels of oil down it, and ‘salted’ the ground with more oil. Pretty soon, here came the whickles. They lapped up all the oil on the ground. Then a big whickle, probably the boss, rose up in the air and let out a lot of whickle talk about how he personally had discovered the biggest oil highball on earth. After that he dived into the well, and all the others followed him, like the animals that went into the ark. Soon as the last one was down the hole, Gib grabbed a big wooden plug and capped the well. We haven’t had any whickle trouble since.”
“Then all the poor whickles died?” Quiz rose to the bait.
“Oh, no,” Peter answered with a straight face. “They’re still buzzing around in that hole, mad as hops. Some day a greenhorn like you will come along and let ’em out.”
“Wonder what ever became of Gib,” said Donovan, between puffs on his pipe.
“Last I heard he was up Alaska way,” Ralph said. “Here’s a story about him that you may want to add to your repertoire, Pete. Gib was drilling near Moose Jaw in December when it got so cold the mercury in the thermometer on the derrick started shivering and shaking so hard that it knocked a hole right through the bottom of the tube. During January it got colder yet and the joints on the drill pipe froze so they couldn’t be unscrewed.
“Now Gib had a bet he could finish that well in four months and he wasn’t going to let Jack Frost faze him. He just rigged up a pile driver that drove that frozen pipe on down into the ground as pretty as you please. Soon as one stand of pipe was down, the crew would weld on another and keep driving. Course the pipe got compressed a lot from all that hammering, but Gib couldn’t see any harm in that.
“Time February came around it got real chilly—a hundred or so below zero. He was using a steam engine by that time because the diesel fuel was frozen solid, but no sooner would the smoke from the fire box come out of the chimney than it would freeze and fall back on the snow. Wading through that black stuff was like pushing through cotton wool, and besides, the men tracked it all over the clean bunkhouse floor. So Gib had to get out a bulldozer and shove it into one corner of the clearing where he had his rig set up.
“They were down about four miles on March 15 when an early spring thaw set in. First thing that happened was that the smoke melted and spread all over the place. Couldn’t see your nose on your face. Fire wardens came from miles around thinking the forest was ablaze. Gib was in a tight spot so he did something he had never done before—he looked up his hated rival, Bill McGee, who was in the Yukon selling some refrigerators to the Eskimos. He had to give skinflint McGee a half interest in the well to get him to help out. McGee just borrowed those refrigerators, stuffed the smoke into them, and refroze it.
“No sooner was the smoke under control than all that compressed drill pipe down the well started to thaw out. It began shooting out of the hole like a released coil spring. First it humped up under the derrick and pushed it a hundred feet into the air. Then it toppled over and squirmed about the clearing like a boa constrictor.
“That was where Bill McGee made his big mistake. Gib had told him the drill bit, which had been dragged out of the well by the thrashing pipe, had cuttings on it which showed there was good oil sand only a few feet farther down. But Bill figured that with the derrick a wreck, the well was a frost. So he sold his half interest back to Gib, who didn’t object, for a plug of good chewing tobacco.
“Soon as McGee was out of sight, Gib headed for the nearest U.S. Assay Office. He got the clerk to lend him about a quart of the mercury that assay men use to test the purity of gold nuggets.
“Morgan went back to camp, sat down beside the derrick, lit his pipe and waited for the freeze-up which he knew was bound to come before spring actually set in. It came all right! Puffing his pipe to keep warm Gib watched the new alcohol thermometer he had bought in town go down, down, and down until it hit a hundred and ten below. Right then he dropped his quart of solidified mercury into the well.
“Just as he figured, it acted the way the mercury in the old thermometer had done—went right to the bottom and banged and banged trying to escape from that awful cold. Yes, sir, that hunk of mercury smashed right through to the oil sand. Pretty soon there was a rumble and a roar. Up came a thick black column of oil.”
“Wait a minute,” cried Sandy, thinking he had caught the storyteller out on a limb. “Why didn’t the oil freeze too?”
“It did, Sandy. It did,” Ralph answered blandly. “Soon as it hit the air, it froze solid. But it was slippery enough so it kept sliding out of the ground a foot at a time. Gib got his men together and, until spring really came, they kept busy sawing hunks off that gusher and shipping them out to the States on flatcars!”
“You win, Ralph,” sighed the platform man as he heaved himself to his feet. “I can’t even attempt to top that tall one, so I guess I’d better go to bed. Your story should keep us cool out here for at least a week.”
After that mild hazing session, Sandy and Quiz found themselves accepted as full-fledged members of the gang. The crew members, who had kept their distance up to that point, now treated them like equals. Each boy soon was doing a man’s work around the rig and glorying in his hardening muscles.
As the end of June approached, Hall, Donovan and Salmon got ready for their monthly trip to Window Rock, Arizona, to submit bids for several leases in the Navajo reservation.
“There’s room in the jeep, so you might as well go along and learn something more about the oil business,” Hall told the boys. “I’m pretty sure our bids won’t be accepted, but the only thing we can do is try.”
At that point trouble descended on the camp in the form of a Bonanza bearing Red Cavanaugh and Pepper March.
The husky electronics man clambered out of his machine and came forward at a lope. He was dressed only in shorts, and the thick red hair on his brawny chest glinted in the sunlight. Pepper trotted behind him like an adoring puppy.
“Howdy, Mr. Hall. Howdy, Donovan,” Cavanaugh boomed as he reached the rig. “Heard you’d been exploring down in the Hopi butte section. Thought I’d bounce over and sell you some equipment that has seismographs, magnetometers and gravimeters beat three ways from Sunday. The very latest thing. You can’t get along without it.”
“Can’t I?” said Donovan mildly.
“Of course you can’t!” Cavanaugh clapped the little man on the back so hard that he almost dislodged Donovan’s glasses. “This is terrific! The biggest thing that’s happened to me since I ran those three touchdowns for State back in 1930. I developed it in my own lab. You know how a Geiger counter works...?”
“Well, faintly,” answered the geologist, who had three of them in his own laboratory. “I wasn’t born yesterday,Mr.Cavanaugh.”
“Well, don’t get sore,Mr.Donovan.” Cavanaugh bellowed with laughter. “All I wanted to say was that my new device uses scintillation counters, which are—”
“—a thousand times more sensitive to atomic radiation than Geiger counters,” Donovan interrupted. “And you’re going on to tell me that you can take your doodlebug up in an airplane and spot a radiation halo surrounding any oil deposit. Right? I read the trade papers, too, you know. May I ask you a question?”
“Why, of course.” Cavanaugh’s chest and neck had begun to sweat.
“Do you have a Ph.D. degree in electronic engineering?”
“Why, uh, naturally.”
“Well, I don’t, unfortunately, Mr. Cavanaugh. But I know enough about the science to understand that the gadget you are selling isn’t worth a plugged nickel unless it’s operated by an expert, and unless it’s used in connection with other methods of exploration. I have told you several times at Farmington that this outfit can’t afford another scientist at present, so I wish you would please go away.”
“Now, Mr. Hall—” Cavanaugh turned to the grinning oilman—“can’t you make your man listen to reason?”
“He’s not my man. He’s my partner,” Hall answered mildly. “What he says goes. Now, if you and your, ah, man will have a bite of lunch with us, I’d be mighty pleased, providing you stop this high-pressure salesmanship.”
“Well ...” Cavanaugh seemed on the verge of an explosion. “Well, thanks for your invitation, but Mr. March and I are due up at Cortez in half an hour. We’re delivering several of my gadgets, as you call them, to smart oilmen. Come on, Pepper.”
“John,” said Donovan after they had watched Cavanaugh’s plane roar away, “I think I’ll have to sock that big lug the next time I meet him.”
“He’d make mincemeat of you,” Mr. Hall warned.
“I doubt it. He’s soft as mush. Anyway, I don’t like him and I’ll have nothing to do with the equipment he peddles. He knows that, so I think the real reason he came here was to spy on us—to find out whether our well had come in yet.”
“Oh, he’s not that bad,” Hall objected. “Boys, you know something about him. What’s his reputation in Valley View?”
“He acts rich,” Sandy answered after a moment of deep thought.
“The people who work in his lab say he’s not as smart as he makes out,” Quiz added. “I agree with Mr. Donovan. There’s something phony about him. I’ve a hunch it’s connected with those three touchdowns he’s always bragging about. If I could only remember.... Some day I will, I bet.”
“Well, let’s all simmer down and forget him,” said Hall. “It’s time for lunch.”
The morning after Cavanaugh’s unwelcome visit, Hall, Donovan, Salmon and the boys set out on their 150-mile drive south to the town of Window Rock. The jeep wallowed and bounced as usual over the dusty trail to Shiprock. There Ralph turned right onto US 666, pushed the accelerator toward the floor board and relaxed.
“We don’t have a Bonanza, boss,” he said, “but a loaded jeep on a good paved road is the next best thing.”
“I’d prefer a helicopter, equipped with a supercharger that could lift it over the ranges,” Hall answered. “Maybe, if Number Two comes in, we can buy a whirlybird, along with a portable drill rig truck.”
“A portable rig sure would come in handy for drilling test wells,” Ralph agreed. “Maybe we could make it come true by putting an offering on that Navajo wishing pile.” He nodded toward a mound of small brightly colored stones that stood where an Indian trail crossed the highway.
“Nuh uh,” the oilman said sharply. “And don’tyouever try that stunt, boys. The Navajos don’t want white men thinning out their luck by putting things on their wishing piles. By the same token, never take any object from the piles that you will see scattered through the reservation. If you’re caught doing that, you’ll be in for real trouble.”
“Yep. The braves will get mad as wet hens,” Salmon said, chuckling.
“Ralph,” said Quiz, “why do you poke fun at the Navajos?”
“Well, pardner, did you ever hear a UCLA man say anything good about the Stanford football team?”
“Oh, but that’s different. It’s just school rivalry,” Sandy objected as he crossed his long legs the other way in an effort to keep his knees from banging against the dash.
“Well, you might say that the Navajos and Utes have been traditional rivals since the beginning of time. Nothing very serious, you understand. We’ve raided each other’s cattle, and taken a few scalps now and then, when a Navajo stepped on a Ute’s shadow, or vice versa. The Navajos are Athapascans, you see. They’re related to the Apaches, and think they’re the lords of creation. But Utes are Shoshoneans. We belong to one of the biggest Indian ‘families’ in North America. The state of Utah is named in our honor and there are Shoshones living as far north as Alaska. Maybe you’ve heard of Sacagawea, the Shoshone ‘Bird Woman,’ who guided the Lewis and Clark Expedition all the way to the Pacific Coast.
“The Hopis are our brothers, and the Piutes are our poor relations. The Piutesdideat fried caterpillars and roots in the old days, I guess, but that was only because they lived out in the western Utah desert where there wasn’t much else to eat. We southern Utes lived mostly on buffalo meat. We were great hunters. Our braves would creep right into the middle of a herd of buffalo and kill as many as they wanted with their long knives, without causing the animals to take fright and stampede.”
“How could they do that?” Sandy asked.
“When they went on a hunt, they dressed in buffalo hides, and made themselves smell like, walk like and even think like buffalo. The animals didn’t believe they were men.”
“Can you still do that—think like a buffalo, I mean?” Quiz gasped.
“Oh, sure. Just find me a herd of wild ones and I’ll prove it.”
“Ralph’s talents sure are being wasted on drilling for oil,” Donovan said, knocking out his pipe against the jeep’s side for emphasis.
“All very amusing,” Hall grunted. “But crooked white men have taken advantage of your sporting rivalry with the Navajo to rob both of you blind during the past century. The same thing will happen again, I warn you, if you don’t stop playing Indian and begin working at it.”
“Yes, boss,” Ralph agreed shamefacedly. “You’re absolutely right. But—I forget everything you’ve said when that Quail character starts getting under my buffalo hide!”
The car whined merrily down the road past the little towns of Newcomb and Tohatchi while Ralph sulked and Hall and Donovan talked shop which the boys couldn’t understand. They turned left on Route 68 in the middle of the hot afternoon, crossed the line from New Mexico into Arizona, and a few minutes later pulled into Window Rock.
The town, made up mostly of low, well-kept adobe and stone buildings, lay in a little valley almost surrounded by red sandstone cliffs. It had received its name, obviously, from one huge cliff that had a round hole in it big enough to fly a plane through. One of its largest buildings was occupied by the Indian Service. Another, built like a gigantic hogan, was the Navajo Tribal Council, Hall told the boys. They passed a brand-new hospital and a school and pulled up at a motel where a large number of Cadillacs and less imposing vehicles were parked.
“Looks as if everybody in the Southwest had come to bid on or sell equipment,” said Mr. Hall as he studied the array of cars and trucks. Some of the latter bore the names of well-known companies such as Gulf, Continental, Skelly and Schlumberger. Others belonged to smaller oil and uranium firms that Sandy had never heard of.
“Donovan, Ralph, and I had better go in and chew the rag with them awhile,” the oilman continued. “Why don’t you fellows look the town over until it’s time for dinner? You’d just get bored sitting around.”
The boys were drifting over toward the Council Hall for a better look at the many Navajos in stiff black hats and colorful shirts who clustered around its doorway when they heard a familiar shout.
“Wait up!” Pepper March dashed across the dusty street and pounded them on their backs as if they were his best friends. “Gee, it’s good to see a white man you know.”
“You saw us only yesterday,” Sandy pointed out rather coldly.
“Oh, but that was business. Come on. I’ll buy a Coke. What have you been up to? How do you like working for an old crank? What’s biting Hall’s geologist? Boy, isn’t it hot? Did you know that I’m learning to fly Red’s Bonanza? How’s your well coming along?”
“Whoa!” cried Quiz. “Relax! We’ve been working like sin. We like Mr. Hall. His geologist is going to bite your Mr. Cavanaugh pretty soon, I’m thinking. It is exactly 110 degrees in the shade. We did not know you were learning to fly a plane. And the situation at the well is strictly our own affair.”
“Uh—” said Pepper, “you’re not sore about what happened yesterday, are you? Red was only trying to make a sale.”
“Nope. We’re not sore,” Sandy answered. “But we’re beginning to take a dim view of your boss.”
“Why, Red’s the grandest guy you ever met. Do you know what he’s got me doing?”
“There you go again, asking personal questions,” said Quiz.
“I’m helping him set up a string of light beam transceivers that will keep his camps here and at Shiprock in constant communication with his agent down at Gallup.”
“What on earth for?” Sandy almost choked on his Coke in amazement. “What’s the matter with the telephone, telegraph and short-wave radio stations that are scattered all over this territory? And how come Cavanaugh has to have a permanent camp at Window Rock, and an agent in Gallup?”
“Now who’s asking the questions?” Pepper said smugly. “Have another Coke?”
“No, but we’ll buy you one,” Quiz replied, and added with a wink at his pal, “It must be quite a job, setting up one of your stations.”
“Sure is!” The blond boy expanded at this implied praise. “It’s never been done before over such long distances, Red says. You have to focus the beam perfectly, or it’s no good. But, after you do that, nobody can eavesdrop on you unless....” He stopped short, and jumped off the diner stool as though it had suddenly become hot. “Well, so long, fellows. I’ve got to be getting back to camp. See you around.” And he departed as abruptly as he had come.
“Now what kind of business was that?” Sandy asked as he paid the entire bill.
“Monkey business, I guess,” Quiz answered. “I think Mr. Hall ought to know about those stations, and maybe Mr. White, the Indian Agent, should be told too.” He kicked at the dust thoughtfully as they walked slowly down Window Rock’s main street.
“Hmmm. You have to get a license from the government to operate a short-wave station,” said Sandy. “But I don’t suppose you need one yet for a light-beam job. Now, just supposing that Cavanaugh wanted to—”
“Wanted to what?”
“That’s what I don’t know. But I sure would like to find out. Let’s be getting back to the motel.”
They found themselves in the middle of a tense scene when they entered the motel patio. Twenty or thirty oil and uranium men were gathered there, their chairs propped comfortably against the adobe walls, while they listened to Cavanaugh and Donovan argue the merits of the big man’s electronic explorer.
“You all know, my friends, that uranium ore can be, and has been, found with a one-tube Geiger,” Red was booming. “But that’s like throwing a lucky pass in a football game. To win the game, you need power in the line—power that will let your ball carrier cross the line again, and again, and again, the way I became an All-American by scoring those three touchdowns against California back in 1930.”
“Oh, no!” Quiz whispered as he and Sandy founds seats in a far corner. “This is where we came in last time.”
“In searching for oil, or even for uranium under a heavy overburden of rock,” Cavanaugh went on, “you need at least the simplest scintillation counter because it is sixty times as sensitive as a one-tube Geiger. Better yet is the really professional counter—as much as 600 times more sensitive than the best Geiger built. Best of all is my multiple scintillator—100 times more sensitive than the best single tube. Even you won’t disagree with that, will you,Mr.Donovan?”
“Not at all,” answered the bald man after several furious puffs on his pipe. “I only say that, in addition to the best possible electronic instrument, you need an operator who thoroughly understands radiation equipment. Also, you should have a crew of geologists and geophysicists who know how to balance radiation findings against those established by other methods.”
“Nonsense,” shouted the ex-football player. “Many of my customers have located oil-containing faults and stratigraphic traps with my detector where all other instruments had failed. You’re just old-fashioned.”
“Maybe I am,” said Donovan, “and then maybe I just don’t like to have wool pulled over my eyes, or the eyes of men I consider to be my friends.”
“I’m not pulling wool. Halos or circles of radiation can be detected on the surface of the earth around the edges of every oil deposit. That’s a proven fact.” Cavanaugh pounded on the arm of his chair with a fist as big as a ham.