“That’s the Gallup Pay.” Donovan was dancing with excitement. “I knew we’d hit it. Let’s take a sample and see what we’ve got.”
The big old diesel roared for a moment. It dragged a bar of iron called a “kelly” out of the square hole in the turntable until the top of the first section of drillpipe appeared.
After the pipe had been securely locked in the turntable so that it could neither fall back into the well nor shoot upward if the underground pressure increased suddenly, two floormen clamped their six-foot-long tongs, or monkey wrenches, around the kelly and unscrewed it from the pipe with great care.
They had eased it off only two or three turns when a frothy mixture with the foul odor of rotten eggs began to squirt from between kelly and pipe.
Donovan caught some of this in his cupped hands. He smelled it, rubbed it between his fingers and thentastedit.
“Beautiful!” the geologist crooned. “This is good, high-gravity oil. The sulphur content is high, as you can smell, but refiners know how to take that out. I’ll tell you more when I’ve run a full analysis, but it sure looks as if we’ve licked the law of averages. Two flowing wells in two tries is ’way above par.”
The crewmen, who had been holding their breaths for his verdict, let out wild rebel yells and spun their battered hats into the air. Jack Boyd and the night foreman hoisted Hall on their shoulders and marched him around the derrick in triumph.
“All right, fellows,” the oilman shouted to stop the riot. “You all get new hats, new shoes and bonuses!” As they started another cheer he mounted the drill platform and held up his hand for attention.
“But I’m going to ask you not to wear those hats and shoes, or bank your bonuses, for a few weeks yet. This has got to be a tight well.”
“Glory, Mr. Hall,” somebody called from the edge of the crowd. “No celebration? That’s a lot to ask.”
“I know it is, Bill. But look at it this way: With this well under my belt, I can get a big bank loan and hire several more rigs to work this property. That will take me at least a month. If news gets out about this strike in the meantime, what will happen?”
“Cavanaugh and the oil companies that hold adjoining leases will rush in and drill offset wells just outside your boundaries before you can get started,” Bill answered glumly. “They’ll drain most of the oil out from under your land, like they did up at Cortez last year.”
“Right!” said Hall. “I know things have been tough these last few months. I’ve had to hold up your pay several times, to make ends meet. But you all hold stock in our company. If you hang on a little longer, we’ll all be in clover. So I’m sure you’ll keep your mouths shut when the spies come prowling, as they will.”
A roar of agreement went up, but then someone said, “How about the kid? He don’t own no stock, does he?”
“I know Sandy, and I know his dad,” Hall answered. “Also, his bonus is going to be twenty shares of stock. I’ll vouch for him.” He slapped the surprised boy on the back and added, “All right, gang. Back to work. We’ll pull the string and get the well cemented and closed in. Then we’ll shut down here till I get that bank loan arranged. Some of you have vacations coming. Take them now. Don will put the rest of you to work running surveys and drilling test wells on our downriver lease. Tell any snoopers that John Hall ran out of cash—which is no lie. I closed out my balance at Farmington last week so I could meet the payroll!”
After the drillpipe was withdrawn and stacked, the combined crews spent the rest of the day mixing an untold number of bags of cement with water. This mixture was pumped down the well to replace the mud that had filled it to the brim.
Once, when they heard a plane approaching, most of the men faded into the trailers while the others tried to look as unbusy as possible. The ship was Cavanaugh’s Bonanza! It circled twice and roared away.
When Salmon estimated that the hole was full of cement, the diesel began pumping mud again. This forced the cement out of the well and up to the surface between the earth walls and the heavy steel casing inside which the drillpipe had rotated.
“How do you ever reach the oil again?” Sandy asked when the operation was completed.
“Easy.” Ralph yawned tiredly. “After the cement has hardened, we’ll pump out the mud. That will leave a cement plug twenty feet or so thick in the well bottom to keep the pressure under control. When we want to start producing, we just drill through the plug and away we go. Say, why don’t you go to bed instead of asking foolish questions? You look as if you had been dragged through a dustbin.”
“I was just thinking, Ralph. Since we’ll be having some time off, why don’t we visit Miss Gonzales’ school?”
“You go,” yawned the driller. “I’ve got to get this well capped good and tight tomorrow and then drive to Farmington and try to rent a portable test rig—on the cuff. I’m going to act so poor-boyish that it will break your heart. Casehardened drillers will weep in their beer when they hear my tale of woe.”
“Is that exactly honest?” Sandy tried to smooth down his cement-whitened cowlick, as he always did when he was thinking hard. “I mean—wehavestruck oil.”
“We’ll have struck it for somebody else’s benefit if we don’t play our cards close to our chests and keep a close guard over our wellandour tongues.” Ralph looked at him shrewdly. “You’ll see what I mean in a day or two. And here’s some good advice: Watch your step, Sandy. There are some mighty curly wolves in this oil game. Don’t try playing Red Riding Hood with them.”
Learning that Jack Boyd was one of the men assigned to guard the well from all intruders, Sandy borrowed the engine man’s car the next day and headed in the direction of Kitty’s school. The going was rough, as usual, but the machine was equipped with a heavy-duty transmission and rear axle, double shock absorbers, an oversized gasoline tank and other features which defied the chuckholes. He made good time and found the school trailer during the noon recess.
Twenty Navajo children of all ages were playing what looked like a fast game of baseball as he drove up. They flew into the trailer like a flock of frightened chickens, and came out trying to hide behind their teacher’s skirts.
Kitty greeted her visitor with considerable reserve, but when he told her that Ralph had asked him to come, she became much more friendly and invited him to share her lunch.
He found that the roomy trailer was well equipped for its purpose, with plenty of desks, books, a blackboard and other facilities. It was parked under tall pine trees near the first brook that he had found since he left the well.
“A good place to study,” he said to make conversation as he looked out of the big windows at the nearby Chuska Mountains.
“But it’s the shower that attracts the children at first,” she admitted. “I have a little pump in the creek, you see, so we have all the water in the world. They’ve never seen anything like it. Most of them live in gloomy hogans where the only light comes through the door and the smoke hole in the center of the room, and where water has to be brought in in buckets.Hotwater is the greatest luxury they’ve ever known. They’d stay under the shower all day long, except that they are so eager to learn their lessons.”
“Navajos really like to study?” He tried to keep the surprise out of his voice.
“Of course they do. They’re bright as silver dollars. Now that they have schools, they’re going to surprise everybody with the speed at which they learn.”
“Do you ever teach them about Kit Carson?” he took the plunge.
“Why ...” she stared at him uncertainly. “I mention his name when I have to.”
“I think you’re being prejudiced.” Sandy smoothed his cowlick desperately. Would she throw him out of the trailer for being so bold?
“So that’s why you came!” She startled him by bursting into a merry peal of laughter. “That was brave, after the—after the nasty way I treated you at Farmington. Very well, teacher. Tell me why you think Great-uncle Kit was a friend of the Navajos.”
Sandy began haltingly, but soon warmed to his subject while the Navajo children came in from their play, gathered around him, and listened intently. Remembering old stories his mother had told him, Sandy related how Kit, an undersized, sickly boy of fifteen, had learned to make saddles so he could get a job with a wagon train that was heading west from his home town in Missouri.
He went on to tell how his great-uncle had overcome endless hardships to become famous as a hunter, trapper and scout with Frémont’s expedition. He described how Kit had driven a flock of 6,500 sheep across the Rockies to prevent a famine that threatened the early settlers in California. He explained the happy ending to the blockade of the Navajos in the Canyon de Chelly, and wound up by telling how Carson had left his deathbed to go to Washington and make one more plea for government help for “his Indians.”
“That’s about all,” he concluded, “except that a town and a river in Nevada, and an oil field in New Mexico are named after Kit Carson. Hemusthave been a good man.”
“Perhaps he was,” the girl said softly while her pupils smiled and nodded their dark heads. “I’ll be kinder to him when I teach a history lesson after this. He sounds a lot nicer than some of the people I have met recently. That Mr. Cavanaugh, for instance....” She turned up her snub nose and let her voice trail off.
“Cavanaugh!” Sandy cried. “Has he been prowling around here too?”
“Yes. He drove through here this morning in a truck. Said he was making some sort of ax minerals survey of school lands. Also said he’d stop by again after school. Will you stay here until he has gone, Mr. Cars—Mr. Steele? I can’t bear him.”
“I will if you’ll call me Sandy,” the boy said bashfully.
“All right, Sandy. And you may call me Kitty.”
“Cavanaugh certainly gets around,” Sandy said. “Did he have anyone with him?”
“Yes, a young man who seemed to worship the ground he walked on.Hewas nice enough, but, well, sort of dewy-eyed, if you know what I mean.”
“I know,” Sandy grunted, “and not quite dry behind the ears, either. That was Pepper March.”
“Well, time to get classes started.” Kitty jumped up with a flutter of skirts and shooed her children to their desks. For the next two hours, while Sandy listened admiringly, she was an efficient, understanding schoolma’am. As he followed the recitation he had to admit that, as she had said, the Navajo children were “bright as silver dollars.” They displayed an eagerness to learn that almost frightened him. Very few youngsters showed that hunger for knowledge back at Valley View High.
That got him to thinking about poor old Quiz. How he would have enjoyed this visit. What tough luck! But maybe he’d have a chance to get some sort of line on Cavanaugh, the big lug.
The roar of an approaching truck jerked him out of his reverie. Kitty quickly dismissed her pupils and she and Sandy were alone in the trailer when Cavanaugh strode in, closely pursued by Pepper.
“Oh!” The big man frowned at the unexpected visitor until Pepper rushed forward, shouting Sandy’s name, and shook hands as though his school rival were the best friend he had in the world.
Then Cavanaugh turned on a smile as bright as a neon sign and insisted on shaking hands too.
“I’ve heard a lot about you from Pepper,” he boomed. “Wish you were on my team instead of John Hall’s. Say! I heard you had a bit of luck at your well. Is that right?”
“Luck?” Sandy stammered, wondering how on earth he was going to get out of this one.
“Oh, sure. Everybody knows about the telegram that brought you all tearing back from Chinle. Did the well come in?”
“It.... We....” Sandy almost swallowed his Adam’s apple and his face went white under its tan. What on earth could he say?
Cavanaugh misunderstood the reason for his hesitation and lost his momentary advantage by rushing on.
“Oh, come on, son.” He pounded the boy’s shoulder with a great show of affection. “You don’t owe a thing to that old skinflint Hall. Give me the real lowdown on the well and I’ll make it very much worth your while.”
Sandy jerked away, his fists clenched in fury, but Kitty stepped quickly between him and his tormentor.
“Mr. Cavanaugh,” she said in a voice that dripped ice water, “you’re new around the oil regions, aren’t you?”
“What do you mean?” The electronics man pulled in his dimpled chin as though the girl had slapped him.
“Out here in the Southwest,” she said slowly, “folks don’t pry into other folks’ business if they know what’s good for them.”
“Well.... I.... You....” His face turned scarlet. “You can’t talk to me....”
“I can, and will.” Her black eyes flashed fire. “Your truck is trespassing on school property belonging to the state of Utah. Remove it at once!”
Cavanaugh opened and closed his mouth several times, like a fish out of water.
“You’ll both be sorry for this,” he gritted like a stage villain. “Come along, Pepper.”
“Do you....” Sandy spoke through a dry throat after Cavanaugh’s truck had thundered away. “Kitty, do you live here in the trailer?”
“Why, of course.” She looked at him oddly. “There’s not the slightest danger.”
“I’m not so sure, now. Couldn’t you stay with one of the Navajo families in the neighborhood for a while?”
“Then who would protect the school? It’s more important than I am.”
“But....”
“Don’t you worry, Sandy Carson Steele.” She patted his arm. “The Navajos are my friends, and they’re no friends of Cavanaugh. I’ll tell them what’s happened and they’ll take good care of me. Now you had better get back to the well as fast as you can. The roads are completely impossible after dark.”
When he got back to the well Sandy found that Hall had already set out on his fund-raising campaign while Donovan had locked himself in his trailer laboratory and was running analyses on oil samples he had taken before the cement was poured. Ralph had just finished welding a heavy cap to the top of the casing.
“I defy anybody to find out what’s down there until we’re ready to let them know,” he said as he grinned at the tired and dirty boy. The grin changed to a frown. “What have you been up to this time, Sandy? You look like something the cat refused to drag in!”
When he learned about the events at Kitty’s school, the driller nodded grimly.
“I warned you about the curly wolves,” he said. “Go get cleaned up and have some supper. Then come over to the lab. We’ll talk to Don about this.”
The geologist smoked thoughtfully while Sandy reported. Then he knocked out his pipe and said, “He’s impossible.”
“Who’s impossible?” Ralph asked.
“This man Cavanaugh. No man can spread himself as thin as he has been doing. Look at it this way.” He held up a long finger stained with chemicals. “First, he’s bidding for helium leases on land where he wouldn’t be allowed to drill. Second—” another finger went up—“he’s bidding for uranium leases although the government isn’t buying ore from companies that don’t have mills. Third, he’s spying on our well. Fourth, he’s trying to lease land in the disputed San Juan River bed. Fifth, he’s prospecting on school lands without asking anyone’s permission. Hmmm! I’ll run out of fingers pretty soon. Sixth, he’s peddling electronic exploration equipment that isn’t worth a hoot when used by itself. Seventh, he’s operating an unlicensed light beam communications network. Eighth—and here’s something I learned when I drove over to Farmington with John and we called Lukachukai to find out how Chief Ponytooth is getting on—Cavanaugh flew down there yesterday and almost pulled the hospital apart trying to get permission to talk to the old man.”
“That means he hopes to get in on the ground floor if the Navajos and Hopis settle their dispute,” said Ralph.
“Either that or he wants to hurt John by convincing the Chief that the tribes shouldn’t get together.”
“How is the Chief feeling?” Sandy asked.
“Just fine, the nurse told me. He’s tough as shoe leather. Now, is there anything else about Cavanaugh’s activities that we should consider?”
“Why does he work day and night to convince people that he’s a heel?” Ralph contributed.
“Quiz thinks there’s something wrong with the football stories he’s always telling,” said Sandy.
“All right,” Donovan went on thoughtfully. “I suggest that a lot of the things Cavanaugh is doing are meant to be camouflage. He’s throwing up some sort of smoke screen to get people confused about his true intentions. And, since we’re the ones most likely to get hurt by whatever he’s really up to, I also think we had better do a little investigating. Does either of you have any suggestions?”
“If he were sending up smoke signals instead of talking on a light beam, I’ll bet I could soon find out,” the Indian said.
“That’s an excellent idea, Ralph.” The geologist fired up his pipe and sent clouds of smoke billowing through the crowded lab. “Eavesdroppers never hear anything good about themselves, they say. Nevertheless, I think we should fight fire with fire by listening in on him and learning the worst.”
“But howcanwe listen in?” Sandy objected. “Even if we got high enough to intercept his beam—in a helicopter, let’s say—he would know something had gone wrong when his receiving station didn’t reply. He’d stop talking.”
“There’s another way to go about it,” Donovan replied. “I’m a pretty good geophysicist as well as a geologist, Sandy. I have to be out here, where I may go out looking for oil and find a uranium lode if I keep my eyes peeled and my Geiger counter turned on.
“Over on that table—” he nodded toward a small electric furnace and a collection of retorts, chemicals and test tubes on one corner of his work bench—“I have equipment so sensitive that I can burn the branch of a pine tree, or even a bunch of loco weed and find out whether the roots of that tree or weed reach down into a uranium ore deposit. With it, I can detect in the ash as little as one part in a million of any radioactive ore the plant has sucked up from underground in its sap. Which reminds me that any time you run across a patch of loco weed, let me know immediately. The poisonous stuff seems to like to grow on ground in the vicinity of uranium.
“All right. Any physicist understands the principles of electronics, the properties of light, and so on, doesn’t he?”
Sandy nodded with growing excitement.
“Also, you may have heard that the FBI has an electronic gadget so sensitive that it can eavesdrop on the conversations of crooks, even though they may be sitting in a boat half a mile from shore.”
“I’ll bet the Shoshonean water spirits take a dim view of that,” said Ralph, grinning.
Donovan waved him to silence with his pipe and continued.
“Now my guess is that Cavanaugh is using a lot of power from a portable generator to produce a beam bright enough to be seen a hundred or so miles away. And it’s a lot easier for him to modulate that current so it will modulate the beam than to use revolving mirrors or some other mechanical means to do the job. There is bound to be considerable leakage in a circuit of that kind. I think I can go to one of the radio supply stores in Farmington tomorrow and pick up enough parts to make an electronic ‘ear’ that can tune in on that leakage if we get it within a hundred feet of Cavanaugh’s transmitter.”
“Sherlock Donovan,” said Ralph, “I take off my hat to you.”
The haywire “ear” that Donovan built during the next several days with what little assistance Sandy was able to supply didn’t look like much. It was just a collection of transistors, fixed and variable condensers, coils and verniers mounted on an old breadboard. But it had the advantage of being light and portable. And, when they tried it out with the help of their radio receiving set, it worked!
They found that, with the set’s loudspeaker disconnected, they could place their gadget several hundred feet away and hear the programs perfectly, either on the short-wave or regular broadcasting channels.
“That does it,” Donovan finally said after a careful series of night tests. “We don’t know the frequency that Cavanaugh is using as a modulator, but this thing is flexible enough to tune in on practically any wave band. Now the question becomes, when do we try it out?”
“Why not right now?” Ralph asked.
“Boyd has gone in to town, so I’m in charge of keeping an eye on the well,” said the geologist. “I can’t go with you tonight.”
“Sandy and I can handle it,” said the driller. “We’ll take the jeep. If we get in a jam we’ll send up a rocket or something.”
On the slow, twenty-mile drive to Elbow Rock, Ralph spun old tales about Ute scouting expeditions and buffalo hunts, but Sandy scarcely listened. He was feeling miserable, and wished for the first time that he was back home in Valley View.
“You don’t like what we’re doing, do you?” Ralph said at last.
“Well, gee. Eavesdropping seems sort of sneaking.”
“I know it does, but don’t forget that we’re dealing with a sneak. Tell you what: you stay in the car. I’ll take the ear in.”
“No,” Sandy said firmly. “I’ll do anything I can to help Mr. Hall. Besides, I helped build the ear and know just how it works. I’ll carry it.”
They parked as close to Cavanaugh’s brightly lighted trailer as they dared. Then Sandy strapped the detector on his chest and walked slowly up the mountain in darkness so intense and silent that it could almost be felt. Remembering the lay of the land from the time that he and Quiz had visited the spot with Pepper, he managed to stay mostly on the trail.
He was still several hundred yards from the trailer when the night exploded in a blare of savage noise. Several large dogs had started baying furiously near the trailer. A door opened. Cavanaugh shouted angrily at a pack of long-legged animals that leaped and whined in the shaft of light.
When quiet had been restored, Sandy inched forward once more. But it was no use. The chorus of barks rose louder than before and several of the dogs started in his direction. With mixed emotions of annoyance and relief, he returned to the jeep and reported.
“Dogs!” Ralph growled. “That means Cavanaugh really has something to hide. What did they look like?”
“They had long legs, sharp noses and big white teeth.”
“Doberman pinschers, I’ll bet. Say! Tim Robbins breeds Dobermans over in Bluff. They make better sheep tenders than shepherds, he claims. Let’s pay him a visit, even if it is late.” He started the jeep.
“What are you planning to do?” Sandy asked sharply.
“If Utes could behave like buffalo, there’s no reason why I can’t be a dog,” Ralph answered.
“But you don’t have a dog skin,” Sandy objected.
“I’m going to get one.”
Old man Robbins was in bed when they arrived at his home on the outskirts of the little mining town. He came downstairs in his nightshirt when he recognized Ralph’s voice, made coffee for his visitors, and listened to their request without surprise.
“Why, sure, I’ve got a few skins,” he said. “Here’s one that belonged to poor Maisie. She died of distemper last year. I was going to upholster a chair with her, but you can have her for a dollar.”
“Mind if I take a look around your runways and kennels, Dad?” Ralph asked.
“Go ahead, but don’t get yourself bit, young feller.” The old man shook his head at the strange ways of all Indians.
Five minutes later they were headed back toward Elbow Rock.
“Phooey!” said Sandy. “You smell like dog, all right.”
“I rolled around a bit in the kennels.” Ralph’s grin was just visible in the light from the dash bulb. “Now I’ve got to start thinking like a dog. Don’t bother me, human!”
When they arrived at their destination the driller took a brief lesson in the operation of the ear, slipped its harness over his shoulders, and draped Maisie’s hide around his hips.
“Keep your fingers crossed and say a prayer to the water spirits,” he whispered just before he faded into the velvety darkness.
For long moments Sandy held his breath, expecting a renewal of that wild barking. But it didn’t come. High on the Elbow Rock the aluminum trailer glowed undisturbed in the soft light pouring from its picture windows.
A trout, leaping in the stream nearby, caused the boy to start violently. He tried to relax but that only made him listen harder. Once he thought he heard a strain of music coming from the trailer. Hours later, it seemed, an owl’s hoot made his hair stir on his scalp. He smoothed down his cowlick and then gripped the wheel of the car with both hands to stop their trembling. What if Dobermans didn’t always bark before they attacked? What if Ralph was up there....
“I’m back.”
Sandy almost yelled with relief as his friend materialized out of nowhere and climbed nonchalantly into the car. “Wha ... what happened?” gasped the boy, gripping the Indian’s arm to see if he really was real. “You fooled the dogs?”
“Nothing happened. And your little friends never batted an eyelash. I’m good, I guess.” He removed the skin and tossed it into the rear of the jeep.
“What do you mean, nothing happened? Didn’t the ear work?”
“It worked perfectly.” He started the motor and jammed the car into gear.
“What did you hear?”
“Music,” said the Ute disgustedly. “Highbrow music. Bach and stuff.”
“Was it code of some kind?”
“Nah!” Ralph spat into the night. “Your friend Pepper would say, ‘Come in, Gallup. I’ve got something here that you’d like: the umpteenth symphony by so-and-so.’ Then he’d play a record and say, ‘How did that sound, Gallup?’ And Gallup would answer, ‘Clear as a bell, kid. Keep it up.’ Or Window Rock trailer would come in, ask for a Belafonte number, and then say it was fuzzy and to sharpen up the beam. Craziest performance I ever heard.”
“Maybe they’re just lonesome, way up here,” Sandy said with great relief.
“Maybe. But it’s a mighty expensive way to be lonesome.”
“Or they could be testing,” the boy went on with less assurance.
“That sounds more like it.”
“Or they’re killing time while they wait for a message of some kind?”
“Now you’re cooking with LP gas. The question remains: where is that message going to come from? I don’t like this business, Sandy. It gets screwier. I wish we could monitor his station every night, but that’s impossible, of course. Well, at least we know our ear works and that Cavanaugh keeps a kennel. I wonder what John and Don will make of this one.”
“When will Mr. Hall be back?” Sandy was glad for a chance to change the subject.
“Next week, I think. Keep this under your hat, but he has got his loan, and has flown down to Houston to put some more rigs under contract. Also, I wangled a portable drill rig when I was in Farmington today. That means we’ll soon be heading for the other lease to run some surveys. Andthat’sa job that separates the men from the boys, I can tell you.”
“After what happened tonight I feel as if I’d already been separated.” Sandy yawned. “Gee, don’t oilmen ever get any sleep?”
A huge truck carrying a light folding drill rig and motor rumbled into camp from Farmington two days after the Elbow Rock episode. Donovan then set about organizing an exploration crew. Since the need for secrecy had lessened, only five of the older men were selected to act as a token guard for the property. Ten others, who had had experience in survey work, were directed to take tarpaulins off the long-unused instrument and “shooting” trucks, tune up their motors, and get the trailers set for travel. After Ralph had checked every item on the rented truck and Donovan had made sure that his seismograph, magnetometer, gravimeter and other scientific apparatus were all in perfect working order, the little caravan rolled westward toward Hall’s other San Juan River lease.
“We may be going on a wild-goose chase,” the geologist told Sandy, who was riding with him in the jeep that now had the laboratory in tow. “I had an aerial survey run on the property last fall. It shows one anticline thatmaycontain oil, but I’ll have to do a lot of surface work before I recommend that John spends money on a wildcat well.”
“How do you make an aerial survey, Mr. Donovan?”
“I’d like you to call me Don, if you will, Sandy,” the geologist said. “And you ought to call John by his first name, too. Oilmen don’t go in for formality after they get acquainted.”
“Yes, sir ... Mr.—Don, I mean.” Sandy felt a warm glow at this mark of friendship.
“One method of making an aerial survey is by means of photographs taken from a plane or helicopter,” the geologist explained. “A stereoscopic color camera is used to provide a true three-dimensional picture of the area in which you are interested. Such photographs show the pitch and strike of surface rock strata and give you some idea of what formations lie beneath them. In addition, prospectors use an airborne magnetometer. You know what a magnetometer is, don’t you?”
“It measures small differences in the earth’s magnetic field.”
“Right! I see that you listened when your dad talked about geology. Well, you fly a magnetometer back and forth in a checkerboard pattern over any area where photographs have shown rock formations favorable for oil deposits. Heavy basement strata are more magnetic than the sedimentary rocks that cover them. So, when those igneous basement rocks bulge toward the surface of the earth, your magnetometer reading goes up. That gives you a double check because, if the basement bulges, the sedimentary rocks that may contain oil have to bulge too. And such a bulge, or anticline, may trap that oil in big enough quantities to make it worth your while to drill for it.
“Then, if your money holds out—aerial surveys cost a young fortune—you may run a triple check with a scintillation counter to see whether there’s a radiation halo around the anticline. One complication with that is that you have to remove the radium dials from the instrument panel of your plane to keep leakage from interfering with your scintillation readings.”
A loud honking from the rear of the column caused Donovan to stop the jeep. Going back, they found that the new drill truck had slipped into a ditch and was teetering dangerously.
Although they had been traveling through such wild and arid country that it seemed impossible that even prairie dogs could live there, quite a crowd collected while they struggled and sweated for half an hour to get the machine back on what passed for a road. First came a wagon pulled by two scrawny horses and carrying a whole Navajo family—father, mother, two children and a goat. An ancient truck with three more Indians aboard pulled up in a cloud of dust. Then came two Navajos on horseback.
Ralph recognized one of the riders and gravely offered him a cigarette which he held crosswise between his first and second fingers.
“Hosteen Buray, we need your help,” said the driller after his gift had been accepted.
The rider said a few words to the other bystanders and things began to happen. The riders galloped away and came back dragging a small tree trunk that could be used to raise the truck axle. The children gathered sagebrush to stuff under the wheels. The woman milked her goat into a pan and presented the steaming drink to the thirsty oilmen. Finally, everyone got behind the machine and pushed with many shouts and grunts.
With Ralph’s expert hand at the wheel, the truck struggled back onto the trail.
After receiving “thank yous” from all concerned, the Navajos stood aside and waved in silence as the column drove away.
This time, Sandy asked to ride with the driller because, as he explained, “I’ve got a lot of questions about things.”
“Shoot,” said Ralph.
“Why didn’t anyone offer to pay those people for helping us?”
“They would have been insulted. That’s how Cavanaugh got in bad with them in the first place—by insisting that they take money for everything. Navajos are proud. Next question.”
“Why did you hand out cigarettes in that funny way, instead of just offering your pack?”
“You never point anything at an Indian. It might be a gun.”
“Oh....”
“Anything else on your mind, Sandy?”
“Are all Navajos named Hosteen something-or-other?”
“Hosteen means ‘Mister.’ Most white men don’t use the term. The Navajos resent that, too.”
“I guess I’ve got a lot to learn,” the boy sighed.
“You’re doing all right.” Ralph slapped him on the knee.
They made camp in a forest of pines not far from a dry wash that ran into the San Juan River gorge, and started work at once. Donovan split the party into two groups. One, which he headed, loaded the heavy magnetometer and gravimeter equipment into a truck and set out to check formations revealed by the aerial studies. Ralph and Sam Stack, a burly surveyor who had arrived with the portable drill rig, took charge of a transit, plane table and Brunton compass. They named Sandy and three others to carry stadia rods and help them make a careful surface survey of the vicinity where the oil anticline was believed to be.
Then began one of the hardest weeks of grinding labor that Sandy had ever put in. All day long he climbed over rocks and fought briary thickets while moving his rod to spots where it could be seen from the various transit positions. His experience on Boy Scout geology field trips kept him from getting lost and enabled him to chip a number of rock formations for analysis. But it was only after he returned to camp at night and propped his tired eyes open with his fingers while watching Don, Ralph and Stack plot lines on a topographical map of the region, that he could form any idea of what was being done.
Hall joined them on the third evening and watched without comment as the work went on. He looked gray and tired.
“You seem bushed, John,” said Donovan after they had added the day’s data to the map. “Any trouble?”
“Plenty, Don. At the last minute the bank refused a loan. It said that two wells didn’t make a profitable field, out here in the middle of nowhere. I had to trade a two-thirds interest in the other lease to Midray before I got my money!”
“That’s the way the oil squirts,” Ralph said philosophically. “So we’re in partnership with a big company.”
“I’m solvent, anyway.” Hall shrugged. “But we won’t make our fortunes unless that first lease turns out to have the largest field in San Juan County. Of course, if this one pays off, too....” His voice trailed away.
“I don’t know about that, John.” Donovan bit his thin lips. “We’re finding some underground anomalies, but, confound it, I don’t feel right about the situation. For one thing, the plants that usually grow in the neighborhood of a deposit just aren’t in evidence. We’ve found an anticline, all right, but I have a hunch there’s mighty little oil in it.”
“Excuse me,” Sandy interrupted from his seat at the end of the map table, “but if you find a dome, or anticline, doesn’t it just have to hold oil?”
“Not at all,” the geologist answered with a wave of his pipe. “The oil might have escaped before the bulge was formed by movements of the earth’s crust. Or perhaps the top of the anticline had a crack, or fault, through which the oil seeped to the surface ages ago.”
“You are going to run a seismic survey, aren’t you?” Hall asked.
“Yes, we’ll start tomorrow if the weather holds out. The radio says thunderstorms are brewing, though.”
“Do the best you can.” Hall rose and stretched. “I’m going to turn in now. I feel lousy.”
Sandy didn’t sleep well, although he, too, was so tired that his bones ached. He was up at sunrise—except that there was no sunrise. The sky looked like a bowl of brass and the heat was the worst he had met with since his arrival in the Southwest.
After a hurried breakfast they drove the portable drill rig, instrument truck and shooting truck to the anticline which lay, circled by tall yellow buttes, about three miles from the camp site.
Once there, Ralph used a small diamond drill to make a hole through surface dirt and rubble. The rest of the crew dug a line of shallow pits with their spades. These were evenly spaced from “ground zero” near the hole Ralph had drilled to a distance from it of about 2,000 feet. While two men tamped a dynamite charge into the “shot hole,” other crew members buried small electronic detectors called geophones in the pits, and connected them, with long insulated wires, to the seismograph in the instrument truck.
Just as the job was finished, a roaring squall sent everyone dashing for cover.
“We’re going to set off a man-made earthquake in a moment, Sandy,” Donovan said when the dripping boy climbed into the instrument truck. “Watch carefully. When I give the word, Ralph will explode the dynamite. The shock will send vibrations down to the rock layers beneath us. Those vibrations will bounce back to the line of geophones and be relayed to the seismograph here. Since shock waves travel through the ground at different speeds and on different paths, depending on the strata that they strike, they will trace different kinds of lines on this strip of sensitized paper. I can interpret those lines and get a pretty good picture of what the situation is down below.”
“You mean you can make an earthquake with dynamite?” Sandy cried.
“A mighty little one. But it will be big enough for our purposes. This seismograph measures changes of one millionth of an inch in the position of the earth’s surface.” He started the wide tape rolling, and picked up a field telephone that connected the three trucks.
“All ready, Ralph?” he asked. “Fine! I’ll give you a ten-second countdown. Ten. Nine. Eight. Seven. Six. Five. Four. Three. Two. One. Shoot!”
There was a subdued roar deep underground. A geyser of earth and splintered rock spouted from the shot hole. The seismograph pens, which had been tracing steady parallel lines on the paper, began tracing jagged lines instead.
“All right, Ralph,” Donovan spoke into the phone. “If the rain lets up, have the boys string another line of geophones and we’ll cross-check.”
They got in one more shot before the increasing thunderstorm made further work impossible. Then Ralph and Hall sprinted over from the shooting truck and spent the next hour listening while Donovan explained the squiggles on the graph.
“So you’re not too happy about the situation, Don?” the producer asked at last.
“I hate to say so, John,” the geologist answered, “but things don’t look too good. We’ve found a dome, all right, but I’m afraid it has a crack in its top. Look at this.” He put away his magnifying glass, lighted up, and pointed his pipe stem at a sharp break in the inked lines. “I can’t take the responsibility for telling you to spend a hundred thousand dollars or so drilling five thousand feet into a cockeyed formation like that.”
“Once a poor boy, always a poor boy, I guess.” Hall shrugged.
“Oh, I haven’t given up yet,” said Donovan grimly. “The aerial survey shows another possible anomaly about three miles west of here. I’ll do some work on that before we call it quits.”