SANDY STEELE ADVENTURES

Black Treasure
Danger at Mormon Crossing
Stormy Voyage
Fire at Red Lake
Secret Mission to Alaska
Troubled Waters

Sandy Steele Adventures
BLACK TREASURE

BY ROGER BARLOW

SIMON AND SCHUSTER
New York, 1959

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
INCLUDING THE RIGHT OF REPRODUCTION
IN WHOLE OR IN PART IN ANY FORM
COPYRIGHT © 1959 BY SIMON AND SCHUSTER, INC.
PUBLISHED BY SIMON AND SCHUSTER, INC.
ROCKEFELLER CENTER, 630 FIFTH AVENUE
NEW YORK 20, N. Y.

FIRST PRINTING

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOG CARD NUMBER: 59-13882
MANUFACTURED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
BY H. WOLFF BOOK MFG. CO., INC., NEW YORK.

CONTENTS

CHAPTER PAGE 1 [The Man in Blue Jeans] 7 2 [Kit Carson Country] 17 3 [A “Poor Boy” Outfit] 33 4 [Learning the Ropes] 46 5 [A Light in the Window Rock] 61 6 [Cliff Dweller Country] 75 7 [Back of Beyond] 90 8 [Cavanaugh Shows His Colors] 103 9 [Fighting Fire with Fire] 116 10 [Pepper Makes a Play] 128 11 [Serendipity] 144 12 [Cavanaugh Makes a Mistake] 154 13 [Think Like a Dog] 165 14 [Showdown] 177 15 [The Fourth Touchdown] 184

CHAPTER ONE
The Man in Blue Jeans

High jinks were in order as the Regional Science Fair drew to a close in the big auditorium at Poplar City, California. A board of judges had selected prize-winning exhibits entered by high-school students from Valley View, Poplar City and other nearby communities. Now the winners were blowing off steam while teachers who had supervised the fair sat in quiet corners and fanned themselves wearily.

“Step right up, ladies and gentlemen,” Pepper March whooped like a circus barker as he strutted in front of his First Prize winner, a glittering maze of electronic equipment. “Broadcast your voice over my beam of light. The very newest thing in science. Built through the co-operation of Valley View’s own Cavanaugh Laboratories. Step right up.... Yes, miss?” A girl had approached the exhibit, wide-eyed. “Please speak into this microphone.”

“What do I say?” As she spoke, a quivering pencil of light leaped from a black box in the booth and her words thundered from a loudspeaker in the balcony.

“Oh, recite ‘Mary Had a Little Lamb,’” suggested the big blond boy, and grinned.

“‘Mary,’” boomed the girl’s voice from the rear of the hall as Pepper twiddled a mirror that deflected the light beam to a second loud-speaker, “‘had a little lamb.’” (Those words seemed to come out of the floor.) “‘Its fleece was white as snow.’” (The last phrase blared from a chandelier.)

“Good old Pepper! Grandstanding again!” muttered Sandy Steele as the crowd cheered. Sandy stared glumly at a small sign reading Honorable Mention that perched on the exhibit which he and his pal Quiz Taylor had entered in the fair. It wasn’t fancy-looking like Pepper’s, he had to admit. It was just a mound of wet cardboard sheets stuck full of pins, plus a homemade control panel and some batteries. “Ours was better,” he added.

“I agree,” Quiz sighed. “After all the work we put into this thing! Molding sheets of cardboard to the shape of underground rock layers. Soaking them with salt water so they’ll carry electric currents that imitate the direction in which oil deposits flow.” He hooked a wire to one of the pins and pressed a button. A flashlight bulb on the control panel winked at him mockingly. “We sure deserve something better than a Mention!”

“Step this way, folks,” Quiz called halfheartedly to the passers-by. “Learn how petroleum can be located, thousands of feet beneath the earth.”

Nobody paid any attention except one Valley View boy who was pushing his way toward Pepper’s booth, a phonograph record under one skinny arm.

“Sour grapes,” jeered the boy. “You and Sandy better forget that mess. Come over and watch Pepper play this stereo record over his beam. It’ll be something!”

“Shall we?” Sandy looked at his friend miserably.

“Unh-uh,” answered the short, round-faced boy. “Here comes a customer—I think.”

A suntanned little man in faded blue shirt and jeans had ambled up to their booth and was studying the exhibit with his gray head tilted to one side.

“A reservoir behavior analyzer, huh?” he said. “Represents the Four Corners area. Right?”

“Why ... yes, sir.” Sandy stared at him, openmouthed. “We built it to represent the geological structure of the country where the boundaries of Utah, Colorado, Arizona and New Mexico meet. This map and card explain—”

“I know the Four Corners,” grunted the little man as he sized up the tall, sandy-haired youngster. “Is your gadget accurate?”

“As accurate as we could make it with the survey maps we could find.”

“Hmmm.” Their visitor’s sharp eyes studied the gray mound. “What happens if I should drill an oil well here, in the northwest corner of the Navajo Indian reservation?” He pointed with a lean finger.

Sandy moved a pin to the spot he indicated, connected it to the control panel with a length of wire, and pressed a switch.

Nothing happened!

Quiz groaned. Why couldn’t the thing show off when they wanted it to?

“If you drilled there, sir, you’d just have a dry hole,” Sandy said with more confidence than he felt. “That location must be on the far fringe of the oil pool.”

“Right!” The little man grinned from ear to ear, showing a fine white set of false teeth. “I did drill a wildcat well there. She was dry as a bone. My ninth duster in a row.... Now what happens if I drill here, near the bed of the San Juan River?”

This time a bulb glowed brightly when they stuck their pin into the cardboard.

“We can’t be sure, sir,” Sandy hesitated. “We don’t know too much about geology. Besides, oil is like gold. It’s where you find it, and the only way you find it is by drilling for it. But I’d guess that, in the neighborhood you indicated, you’d stand a chance of hitting a thousand barrels per day.”

“Eight hundred and fifty barrels,” corrected the man in the blue jeans. “The well I drilled on the San Juan was the only thing that kept me out of bankruptcy.”

A blare of jazz from Pepper’s loud-speakers, now working in unison, cut off further conversation and gave the boys a chance to study their strange acquaintance.

“Why don’t you go over and take in that beam-of-light exhibit?” Sandy said when Pepper had brought the sound down to bearable levels. “It won first prize.”

“That pile of expensive junk?” sniffed the little man. “All the kid did was to borrow some apparatus from Red Cavanaugh’s Valley View Laboratory. If I know Red—and I do know the big fourflusher well—he didn’t make the boy do a lick of real research on it.... Oh!” Again that wide grin. “You think I’m crazy and want to get rid of me, don’t you? Here.”

He dug into his jeans and came up with a greasy card which read:

The Four Corners Drilling Company
John Hall, President
Farmington, N. M.

“Guess I should have got dressed up for this shindig,” Hall apologized, “but I just got in from Farmington. I read about your analyzer in the Valley View News when you won first prize at your high-school science fair last month. Used to live there. That’s why I still get the paper. Your dingus should have received first prize here too, instead of that voice-cast thing.”

“Say! You came all this way just to see our exhibit? Thanks!” was all Sandy could think of to say.

As the auditorium lights blinked to indicate that the fair was closing, Hall added, “Got time for a bite? I have a proposition I’d like to sound you out on.”

At a nearby diner, the oilman ordered full meals for all of them.

“Here’s my proposition,” he said when the boys couldn’t eat another mouthful. “I’m a small wildcat operator. That means I hunt for oil in places that are so wild and woolly that only wildcats can live there. Once or twice I’ve struck it rich. Should have retired then, but there’s something about oil exploration that gets in a feller’s blood. So I went out, drilled some dry holes, and lost my shirt.

“Right now I’m strapped until my new field pays off—if it does. But I think I’m onto something big in the Four Corners and I need help. You boys must have a working knowledge of geology to build an analyzer as good as that. How about working for me this summer?”

“Sandy’s the rock hound,” Quiz said and hesitated. “I ... I’ve only read up on it in books.”

“All I know is what Dad has told me,” Sandy remarked. “I couldn’t have built the exhibit without Quiz’s help.”

“Forget the mutual-admiration-society stuff,” said Hall. “Would you both like to spend your vacations in the Four Corners, working as roustabouts and helping me out wherever else you can? It won’t be easy. But when you get through you’ll know a lot about oil, geology, how to get along with Indians, and I don’t know what all.

“You’ll be out on the desert in all kinds of weather. You’ll chip rocks, hold stadia rods, sharpen tools and dig the trucks out of holes on those awful roads. Everything you learn will come in handy when you go to college.... You are going, aren’t you?”

Sandy nodded but Quiz shook his head miserably.

“I doubt it,” he said, “unless things at Dad’s restaurant pick up.”

“Nonsense,” Hall snorted. “You can get a scholarship in geology if you’ve had experience in the field. Tell you what: I know your father slightly—he serves mighty good victuals. I’ll go over to Valley View tomorrow and talk things over with him. I’ll bet we can work something out for you.

“Here’s another thing, though,” he went on thoughtfully. “I’ve got almost every cent I own tied up in oil leases right now. I can’t pay either of you very much—say forty dollars a week. You probably can do almost as well right at home.”

“I’d rather work with you than wait on table,” Quiz declared.

“Or cut lawns and things,” Sandy added.

“It’s settled then.” Hall shook hands gravely. “See you in Valley View.”

As they were leaving the diner, Pepper March came charging in with a flock of admiring Valley Viewers behind him.

“Wait up,” Pepper whooped, grabbing his defeated rivals as they tried to dodge past him. “My treat. Come have a Coke while I tell you about my good luck.”

“Another Coke!” Sandy groaned. He had practically lived on them during the science fair. But curiosity got the better of him and he went back to the counter, followed by Quiz. By the time he found a stool, Pepper was holding forth.

“You know Mr. Cavanaugh, the man I got some of the stuff for my voice-caster from?”

“The man from whom you borrowed all your equipment,” Sandy corrected between his teeth.

“That’s what you think, Honorable Mention.” Pepper turned to his admirers. “Anyway, he has a sideline: spends his summers hunting uranium. Also, he’s the same Red Cavanaugh who was All-American quarterback for State U. in 1930. He’s the fellow who ran three touchdowns against California in the Thanksgiving game that year.”

“There was a Cavanaugh who made All-American,” Quiz agreed as he scratched his round head, “but I thought....”

“See!” cried Pepper. “Quiz knows all there is to know about football. He’s heard about Red. Well, Mr. Cavanaugh attends all the Valley View games. Says he likes the way I run touchdowns.” Pepper leered at Sandy, who was not always the spectacular player that Pepper was. “Also, Mr. Cavanaugh appreciates the plugs I gave to his laboratory whenever I explained my voice-caster, so what do you think...?”

“He’s going to install you as a loud-speaker in one of his TV sets,” Quiz suggested.

“Nah!” Pepper stopped the laughter with a lordly, upraised hand. “He’s giving me a summer job. I’m going to help him hunt uranium.”

“Where?” Sandy gave his pal a stricken look.

“Where? Why, the place where there’s more uranium than almost anywhere in the United States. But you wouldn’t know where that is.”

“Oh, no,” groaned Quiz. “Not the Four Corners. Not there! Ain’t there no justice?”

“What do you mean?” Pepper looked at him doubtfully.

“I mean Sandy and I have jobs there too, and Four Corners is going to be awfully crowded this summer.”

“Oh.” Some of the wind went out of Pepper’s sails. Then he brightened. “I’ll buy another round of Cokes if either of you is going to get sixty dollars a week,” he crowed.

CHAPTER TWO
Kit Carson Country

“This sure isn’t my idea of a boom town!” Sandy grumbled as he and Quiz got off the eastbound Greyhound at Farmington, New Mexico, dropped their dusty bags and stood watching the early morning bustle on the little town’s wide streets.

“Yeah.” Quiz wagged his head. “The Wild West shore ain’t what she used to be, pardner. No twenty-mule-team wagons stuck in Main Street mudholes. No gambling dives in evidence. No false store fronts. No sheriff in a white hat walkin’ slowlike down a wooden sidewalk to shoot it out with the bad man in a black hat. Ah, for the good old days.”

“Oh, go fly a jet,” Sandy grinned. “Let’s look up Mr. Hall. Funny, his giving us his home address. He must have an office in town.”

They strolled along, noticing the new stores and office buildings, the modern high school. Farmington would never become a ghost town. It was building solidly for the future.

Suddenly Quiz grabbed his friend’s arm.

“Look at that oilman who’s just made a strike,” he said. “We’ll ask him if he knows Mr. Hall.”

“How do you know that he is, and has?” Sandy demanded as they approached a lanky stranger.

“Because he’s wearing a brand-new Stetson and new shoes, of course,” Quiz explained, as to a child. “Drillers always buy them when their well comes in.”

“Trust you to know something like that,” Sandy said in mock admiration.

“Well now,” drawled the Farmingtonian when they put their question, “you’d have to get up earlier than this to catch John Hall in town. John keeps his office in his hat. Might as well spend the day seeing the sights, and look him up at his motel when he gets back from the Regions tonight.”

“What sights?” asked Sandy when the oilman, obviously a transplanted Texan, had stumped away in high-heeled boots that must have hurt his feet. “Those mountains, maybe? They look close enough to touch. Let’s walk out to them.”

“Don’t let this clear, thin air fool you,” Quiz warned. “Those mountains are probably twenty miles away. We’d need a car to—”

A great honking and squealing of brakes behind them made the boys jump for safety. As they turned to give the driver what-for, Pepper March stuck his curly head out the window of a new jeep that was towing an equally new aluminum house trailer as big as a barn.

“Welcome to our fair city,” Pepper shouted. “Saw you get off the bus, so I prepared a proper reception. How about a guided tour while I run this trailer over to Red’s camp?”

“How long have you been here?” Sandy asked as they climbed aboard.

“Red flew me over last Friday in his Bonanza. I’ve got the hang of his entire layout already. Nothing to it, really.”

As he headed the jeep for the mountains, Pepper kept up a monologue in which skimpy descriptions of the countryside were mixed with large chunks of autobiography.

“Every square mile of this desert supports five Indians, fifty sheep, five hundred rattlesnakes and fifty thousand prairie dogs,” he joked as they left the pavement for a winding dirt trail. They bounced madly through clumps of sagebrush, prairie-dog colonies, and tortured hills made of many-colored rock.

“These roads wear out a car in a year, and you have to put in new springs every three months,” he added as they hit a chuckhole that made their teeth rattle.

“Look at those crazy rock formations,” he said later while the boys sweated and puffed to jack up the rear end of the trailer so it could get around a particularly sharp hairpin turn in the trail. (Now they knew why Pepper had extended his invitation for a tour!) “No telling what minerals you might find if you used electronic exploration methods on scrambled geology like this. Why, only last night, while we were sitting around the campfire at Elbow Rock, I said to Red: ‘Red,’ I said, just like that—we’ve become real pals already, you know—‘Red,’ I said, ‘why don’t we branch out? Why don’t we look for oil as well as uranium, now that we’re out here?’ And Red said to me: ‘Pepper,’ he said—”

“‘—when did you get your Ph.D. in geology?’” Sandy cut in.

“Nothing like that at all! ‘Pepper,’ he said, ‘you’re right on the electron beam. We’ll organize the Red Pepper Oil Exploration and Contracting Company and give John Hall and those other stick-in-the-muds a run for their money.’ Oops! Hope we didn’t break anything that time!”

The jeep’s front wheel had dropped into a pothole with a terrific thump.

They found that the axle had wedged itself against a rock. Thirty minutes later, while they were still trying to get it loose, a rattletrap car pulled up beside them and an Indian stuck his flat, mahogany-colored face through its window.

“Give us a hand—please,” Pepper ordered.

The newcomer started to get out. Then his black eyes settled on the lettering on the side of the trailer:

Cavanaugh Laboratories
Farmington, N.M. & Valley View, Cal.

“Cavanaugh! Huh!” snorted the Indian. He slammed the door of his car and roared off in a cloud of yellow dust.

“Those confounded Indians,” snarled Pepper, staring after him in white-faced fury. “I’d like to.... Oh, well. Come on, fellows. Guess we’ve got to do this ourselves.”

They finally got the jeep back on the trail and drove the twenty miles to Elbow Rock without further mishap. There Pepper parked beside a sparkling trout stream. They raided the trailer’s big freezer for sandwich materials and ate lunch at a spot overlooking a thousand square miles of yellow desert backed by blue, snowcapped peaks. Pepper was at his best as a host. For once in their lives, Sandy and Quiz almost liked him. At least here he seemed much pleasanter than he did at home, lording it over everyone—or trying to.

In the cool of the afternoon—85 degrees in the sun instead of the 110 degrees the thermometer had shown at noon—they rode the jeep back to Farmington by way of a wide detour that took them within sight of the San Juan River gorge.

“I wanted to show you those two oil-well derricks over yonder,” Pepper explained. “They’re a mile and a half apart, as the crow flies. But, because they’re on opposite sides of the river, they were 125 long miles apart by car until we got that new bridge finished a few months ago. Shows you the problems we explorers face.”

“The San Juan runs into the Colorado, doesn’t it?” Quiz asked as he studied the tiny stream at the bottom of its deep gorge, under the fine new steel bridge.

“Yep. And thereby hangs a tale. Mr. Cavanaugh—Red, I mean—has found state documents down at Santa Fe showing that the San Juan used to be navigable. But the confounded dumb Indians swear it can’t be navigated. If boats can go down the stream, even during part of the year, the river bed belongs to the Federal government. If the stream can’t be navigated, the Navajos own the bed. That’s the law! While the argument continues, nobody can lease uranium or oil land near the river. Red says that, one of these days, he’s going to prove that—oops! I’m talking too much!”

Pepper clammed up for the first time they could remember. He said hardly a word until he dropped them off at Hall’s motel.

“I don’t get it,” Quiz said to his chum as they walked up a graveled path from the road to the rambling adobe building.

“Don’t get what?” Sandy wanted to know.

“This uranium hunting business Pepper’s got himself into. I read in Time a while back that the Federal government stopped buying uranium from prospectors in 1957. Since then, it has bought from existing mills, but it hasn’t signed a single new contract. Cavanaugh doesn’t own a uranium mill. So why is he snooping around, digging into state documents and antagonizing the Indians?”

“I only met him once, when he snooted our exhibit as a judge at the regional science fair,” Sandy replied. “Can’t say I took to him, under the circumstances.”

“There’s something phony about that man. If only I could remember ... something to do with football, I think.” Quiz scratched his head, but no more information came out.

They found Mr. Hall, dressed as usual in faded levis and denim shirt, sitting with several other guests of the motel on a wide patio facing the setting sun.

“Well, here are my roustabouts,” the little man cried with a flash of those too-perfect teeth. “I was beginning to be afraid that you had lost yourselves in the desert.”

He introduced them to the owners of the place, two maiden ladies from Minnesota who plainly were having the time of their middle-aged lives here on the last frontier. The Misses Emery, as alike as two wrinkled peas, showed the boys to their room, a comfortable place complete with fireplace and an air conditioner.

“Supper will be served in half an hour,” said one.

“Don’t be late,” said the other.

The newcomers scrubbed the sticky dust off their bodies and out of their hair, changed into clothes that didn’t smell of jeep, and were heading for the dining room when Mr. Hall overtook them.

“You may be wondering why I live out here on the edge of the desert,” he said quietly. “One reason is that I like the silence of desert nights. Another is the good cooking. The most important reason, though, is that some of the Farmington places are pretty nasty to Indians and Mexicans. Me, I like Indians and Mexes. Also, I learn a lot from them when they let their hair down. Well, here we are. You’ll find that the Misses Emery still cook like Mother used to. I’ll give you a tip. Don’t talk during supper. It isn’t considered polite in the Southwest.”

“Why is that?” Sandy wondered.

“It’s a hang-over from cowpunching days. If a ranch hand stopped to talk, somebody else grabbed his second helping.”

After a silent meal, the guests gathered on the patio to watch the stars come out.

“Folks,” said Mr. Hall, “meet Sandy Steele and Quiz Taylor. They’re going to join my crew this summer. Boys, meet Miss Kitty Gonzales, from Window Rock, Arizona. She’s going north in the morning to teach school in the part of the Navajo reservation that extends into Utah. Her schoolhouse will be a big trailer. Too bad you can’t be her students, eh? But sixteen is a mite old for Miss Kitty’s class.”

Kitty was slim, in her late teens, and not much over five feet tall. She had an oval face, black hair and eyes, and a warm smile that made the newcomers like her at once.

“This is Kenneth White,” Hall went on. “Ken works for the Bureau of Indian Affairs. When he talks, you listen!”

The white-haired man gave the boys handshakes that they felt for an hour.

“Chief John Quail, from the Arizona side of the Navajo reservation,” Hall said next. “The chief is here to talk over an oil lease.”

Chief Quail, a dark, heavily muscled Indian, wore a light-gray business suit that showed evidence of the best tailoring. He surprised the boys by giving them the limpest of handshakes.

“And Ralph Salmon, boss of my drill crew,” Hall concluded. “Ralph’s a southern Ute from Colorado. Do exactly as he says this summer if you want to learn oil.”

The lithe, golden-skinned young Indian nodded, but did not shake hands.

“So you’re off to your great adventure in the morning, Kitty,” White said to break the conversational ice. He lighted a pipe and leaned against the patio railing where he could watch the changing evening light as it stole over the desert.

“I’m so excited I won’t be able to sleep,” the girl answered in a rich contralto voice. “It’s all so wonderful. The oil lease money pouring in like this, after long lean years when starvation for the Navajos was just around the corner and it looked as though their reservation might be taken from them. Schools and hospitals being built all over. My wonderful new trailer with books and maps and even a kitchen and a shower for the children. Oh, my Navajos are going places at last.” She gave an embarrassed laugh at her long speech.

“One place your Navajos can go is to Salt Lake City,” Hall growled. “Get the state of Utah to settle that quarrel about who owns the land your schools and hospitals are being built on. Then I can get my hands on some leases up there.”

“I thought the Navajo reservation was in New Mexico and Arizona,” Sandy said.

“A small part of it is in southern Utah,” Hall explained. “That’s the part bounded by the San Juan River.”

“The argument over school lands is less important than our other disputes,” Chief Quail said carefully. He spoke good English but his words seemed to be tied together with string. Plainly, he had learned the white man’s language not many years ago. “The real problem—the one that is, how do you say, tying up millions of dollars of lease money—is to have a correct boundary drawn around the Hopi reservation.”

“The chief means,” Hall explained for the boys’ benefit, “that the Navajo reservation forms a large rectangle that completely surrounds a smaller square of land in Arizona where the Hopi Indians live.”

“Not a square, Mr. Hall,” Chief Quail objected. “The Hopis really own only a small triangle. Those primitive, stupid cliff dwellers claim thousands of Navajo acres to which they have no right. If I had my way in our Council, I would....”

“The Navajos and the Hopis are all grandmothers,” Salmon cut in angrily. “Squabbling over money like palefaces! Spending their royalties on things like schools and hospitals! When my tribe, the southern Utes, got its first royalty check, the Council voted to have some fun with the money. We spent it to build a race track for our fast horses!”

“Digger Indian!” The Navajo sneered at Salmon without moving a muscle of his broad face. “Fish eater! Soon you will waste all your easy money. When the oil runs out you will be running about naked again, living on roots and fried caterpillars like you used to!”

“Oh, no, John.” The Ute’s grin was just visible in the gathering darkness. “Maybe we’ll go on the warpath and take what we need from you fat Navajo sheep herders, as we did in the good old days. Or—” he added quickly as the chief lunged to his feet—“we’ll sing you to death. Like this!”

Salmon began a wailing chant that set everyone’s teeth on edge. The Navajo stopped his advance as if he had struck a wall. He clapped his hands over his ears and, after a moment, stalked out into the night.

“You shouldn’t have done that, Ralph,” Hall said coldly. “Some day Chief Quail is going to take you apart if you don’t stop baiting him.”

“Can you actually sing people to death, Mr. Salmon?” Sandy said to break the tension.

“Of course not,” the Ute answered softly. “But the chief thinks I can, and I wouldn’t spoil his belief for anything. We have a set-to like this every time we meet. Some of our medicine men can sing people well, though. They chant awhile and then pull the pain right out of your tooth, ear, or stomach.”

“What does a pain look like?” Quiz asked, half convinced.

“Looks just like a fingernail about two inches long,” the Ute answered. “It’s bright red. If you strike it, it goes tinnnggg, like the reed of a saxophone.”

“Stop your nonsense, Ralph,” White commanded, “while I go out and smooth Quail’s ruffled feathers.” He followed the chief and brought him back five minutes later to receive an oily apology from his ancestral enemy.

“You Indians will be broke again, one of these days, if you keep quarreling among yourselves,” Hall said then. “Crooked white men are hanging around the Four Corners. They’re just waiting for something like that so they can trick you out of your oil and uranium rights, or even your reservations.”

Everyone had to agree that this was true, so the little party settled down in reasonable harmony to watch the giant stars come out. Salmon produced a guitar after a while. Then he and Kitty sang Indian and Mexican songs together. Sandy particularly liked one that went:

I wander with the pollen of dawn upon my trail.

Beauty surrounding me, with it I wander.

“That’s a Navajo song,” the Ute said, grinning. “We sing it in honor of Chief Quail. Here’s one by a white man that I like:

Mañana is a lovely word we all would like to borrow.

It means ‘Don’t skeen no wolfs today wheech you don’t shoot tomorrow.’

An’ eef you got some jobs to did, of which you do not wanna,

Go ’head and take siesta now; tomorrow ees mañana!”

“Guess that’s a hint we’d better take our siestas,” Hall said to the boys. “Big day ahead mañana.”

“This country sort of grows on one,” Sandy said to Kitty as they shook hands. “I’m beginning to feel at home already.”

“Oh, you haven’t really seen anything yet,” the girl answered. “If you and Mr. Taylor get up in the neighborhood of my school, look me up. I’ll show you some of the wildest and most beautiful country on earth.”

“Mother said I’d fall in love with the place.” Sandy took a last look across the sleeping desert. “She was born not far from here. Met my father when he was working for the U.S. Geological Survey.”

“How interesting,” cried the girl. “Maybe my folks know her. What was her maiden name?”

“It was Ruth Carson.”

“Oh!” Kitty snatched her hand out of his. “She’s related to Kit Carson, isn’t she?”

“The general was my great-uncle,” Sandy said proudly. “That’s why I’m so interested in this part of—”

He stopped because Kitty had backed away from him until her back pressed against the motel wall. As he stared, she spat into the dust of the patio in a most unladylike fashion before turning and running toward her room.

“What did I do to her?” Sandy gasped, openmouthed.

“Kitty’s mother is a Navajo,” Chief Quail answered. “Back in Civil War days, Kit Carson rounded up the Navajos to take us away from our reservation. We went on the warpath and retreated into the mountains. Carson followed. His soldiers shot several dozen of us, and slaughtered all our sheep so we would either have to surrender or starve. Even today, many of us would rather eat fish as the Utes do than touch one of Kit Carson’s descendants!” He turned his back and marched off.

“Ouch!” Sandy groaned. “I certainly put my foot into it that time.”

“Don’t worry too much about it,” said White. “Fact of the matter is that Kit Carson made a mighty good Indian Agent later on, and most Navajos admit it. He was the man who insisted that they all be returned to the reservation after the rebellion was over. He eventually died from overwork in behalf of ‘his Indians.’ Except for a few diehards, the Navajos won’t hold your mother’s name against you.”

“I certainly hope you’re right,” Sandy sighed as he and Quiz said good night to the others and headed for their room.

“What a mess,” his friend said. “Navajos squabbling with Utes, Hopis and the state of Utah. Crooks waiting to take advantage of them all. Pains like fingernails! Cavalry heroes who turn into villains. I suppose that’s why the biggest oil field in the Four Corners is called the Paradox Basin!”

CHAPTER THREE
A “Poor Boy” Outfit

Hall routed Ralph Salmon and the boys out of bed before dawn the next day. They ate a huge pancakes-and-sausage breakfast cooked by the sleepy-eyed but cheerfully clucking Misses Emery and climbed into the company jeep just as the sun was gilding the peaks of the mountains. Soon their teeth were chattering in the morning cold as Salmon roared off in a northwesterly direction toward the San Juan River lease.

“I wouldn’t have come down to Farmington at all this week,” Hall shouted above the wind which made the jeep top pop and crack, “except that I promised to pick up you boys, and Ralph had to get our core drill repaired. That’s the drill you hear thumping under the seat. We’re down a thousand feet with our second well and I should be riding herd on it every minute.”

“You’re a worrywart, boss,” chuckled the Indian. “You know that Harry Donovan’s on the job up there. He can handle things just as well as you can.”

“You’re right,” Hall answered. “But somehow it doesn’t seem right to have a geologist bossing the drill crew. That’s a hang-over from my days with a big spit-and-polish producing company, I guess.

“Ours is what they call a ‘poor boy’ outfit here in the oil country,” he explained to Sandy and Quiz. “We make do with secondhand drill rigs and other equipment. Sometimes we dig our engines and cables out of junk yards.”

“Now, now, boss, don’t cry,” said their driver. “It’s not quite that bad.”

“It will be if this well doesn’t come in.” Hall grinned. “But we do have to make every penny count, kids. We all pitch in on anything that needs doing. What kind of jobs have you cooked up for our new roustabouts, Ralph?”

“There’s a new batch of mud to be mixed,” the Indian answered. “How about that for a starter?”

“Mud!” Quiz exploded. “What’s mud got to do with drilling an oil well?”

“Plenty, my friend. Plenty,” Ralph answered. “Mud is forced down into a well to cool the drill bit and to wash rock cuttings to the surface. You use mud if you have water, that is. In parts of this country, water’s so short, or so expensive to haul, that producers use compressed air for those purposes. We’re lucky. We can pipe plenty of water from the river.”

“Then you mix the water with all sorts of fancy chemicals to make something that’s called mud but really isn’t,” said Sandy, remembering tales of the oil country that his father had told him.

“You’re forgetting that we’re a ‘poor boy’ outfit,” said Hall. “Chemicals cost money. We dig shale from the river bed and grind it up and use it for a mix. You’ll both have a nice new set of blisters before this day is over.”

They followed a good paved road to the little town of Shiprock, which got its name from a huge butte that looked amazingly like a ship under full sail. Crossing the San Juan over the new bridge that Pepper had pointed out the day before, they turned northwest onto a badly rutted trail. Here and there they saw flocks of sheep, watched by half-naked Indian children and their dogs. Occasionally they passed a six-sided Navajo house surrounded by a few plowed acres.

“Those huts are called hogans,” Ralph explained, placing the accent on the last syllable. “Notice that they have no windows and that their only doors always face toward the rising sun. Never knock on a hogan door. That’s considered bad luck. Just walk in when you go to visit a Navajo.”

“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 reading Office over 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 work with,” 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.

CHAPTER FOUR
Learning the Ropes

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 the Argo to 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! I do know 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.”