Oil, p.19
Oil!, page 19
He told how he had lived, and how the old lawyer, his benefactor, had died just recently, and had left him a part of his library, all but the law books. It was a most wonderful treasure, a lot of scientific books, and the best old English literature. For nearly three years Paul had had the use of this library, and that had been his life, he had seldom missed an evening reading until after midnight; also he had studied a lot during the day, for he had really had very little work to do. Judge Minter had made a sort of pet of him—having no children of his own, and being stirred by the idea of a boy who wanted to educate himself. The Judge had had an old microscope, and Paul had worked with that, and had made up his mind to a career; he was going to spend a couple more years reading science, and then he would get a job in some laboratory, a janitor’s job, if necessary, and work his way up to do microscopic work.
The things that Paul had learned about! He had read Huxley and Spencer, and he talked about Galton and Weismann and Lodge and Lankester, and a lot of names Bunny had never even heard of.[7] Poor Bunny’s pitiful little high school knowledge shrank up to nothing; and how silly seemed football victories all of a sudden. Dad didn’t know about these matters either; he was a man well into his fifties, but he had never met a student of science before! It was interesting to see how quickly he took hold of these things. Paul told how investigators were trying to find out whether acquired characteristics could be transmitted by heredity; it was a most important question, and Weismann had cut off the tails of mice, to see if the next generations would have tails. But Paul said that was silly, because there wasn’t any real change in a mouse when you cut off its tail, no vital quality; the thing to find out was, how long it took the tail to heal up when you cut it off, and whether the new generations of mice could heal up quicker.
Paul said the way to settle the question of inheritance of acquired characteristics was to stimulate the animals to develop some new faculty, and see if new generations would develop it more easily. Dad got the point at once, and said you might learn something by studying trotting horses and their pedigrees; to which Paul replied, exactly. Dad would like to know more about such questions; and Paul had a book with him, which Dad was welcome to read. Ruth was washing the dishes, and Paul went out to get some more wood, and Dad looked at Bunny and said, “That’s a fine young fellow, son”; and then Bunny felt a glow of pride, right up to the roots of his hair—because, you see, Paul was his discovery, just like the Paradise oil field, that was someday going to occupy this spot!
So then Dad settled down to talk business with Paul. Dad wanted someone to occupy this ranch, and Paul said he had thought it over, and would do it if they could make a fair arrangement. Dad asked how he could get along, and Paul said he had saved up three hundred dollars from his wages, and he would get a few goats, and put in some beans this spring, and some strawberries that would bring an income next year; he would pay Dad one-half of whatever he got for the crops. They had an argument over that, for Dad thought he ought to pay Paul to act as caretaker, but Paul said he wouldn’t take it on that basis, he would insist on going shares, in the regular way they rented land in these parts. And when Mr. Ross came on hunting or fishing trips, Paul of course would move out into the tent. But Dad said no, he was planning to build himself a shack, a better place than this, and Paul might help the carpenter and earn wages if he wanted to. Paul said he could do the building himself, if Dad said so—everything but hanging the doors and windows; a fellow learned to do about all the jobs there were on a ranch. And Dad asked if Ruth would stay with Paul, and Paul said he would settle here in the house, and go easy, and Ruth would come to see him, until gradually their father got used to the idea. It wouldn’t be possible to keep Paul and Ruth apart—especially now since Eli was away from home nearly all the time.
So Dad asked about Eli, and the development of the Third Revelation. Only three or four days after Eli had made his announcement in the Paradise Church, there had come a deputation from the church at Roseville, saying that they had heard the fame of Eli’s miracles, and would he come and preach to them. And Eli preached, and the “signs” were manifested, and so the new prophet grew bolder. Now he was being driven about the country in somebody’s costly limousine, and in the back part of the car was a stack of the crutches of people who had been “healen.” These crutches would be set up in sight of each new congregation, and nearly always they were added to; and there fell over the head of the prophet a shower of silver dollars and half dollars, and coins, wrapped in banknotes. Eli had now given himself a title; he was the Messenger of the Second Coming, and the hour of Christ’s return to earth was to be made known through him. Sometimes whole congregations would be swept off their feet and converted to the True Word; or again, some would be converted, and there would be a split, and a new church in that place.
“How do you suppose he works it?” Dad asked.
“He really does cure people,” said Paul; “there are some about here you can talk to. I’ve been reading a book on suggestion; it seems that kind of thing has been going on for thousands of years.”
“Does he send any money home to his folks?” Dad asked.
And Paul smiled, rather grimly. “The money is sacred,” he said; “it belongs to the Holy Spirit, and Eli is His treasurer.”
VII
Next morning they set forth after trout; and on the way they stopped to see Mr. Hardacre. Before they went in, Dad cautioned Bunny, “Now don’t you say a word, and don’t make any faces. Jist let me handle this.” They entered, and Mr. Hardacre said that he had an offer from young Bandy, speaking for his father, to sell the ranch for twenty thousand dollars. Bunny’s heart leaped, and it was well that Dad had warned him, for he wanted to cry out, “Take it, Dad! Take it!” But he caught himself, and sat rigid, while Dad said, “Holy smoke, what does the fellow take us for?”
Mr. Hardacre explained, there was about twenty acres of good land on this tract; and Dad said all right, call that a hundred an acre, and the improvements, say four thousand, that meant young Bandy was trying to soak them fourteen dollars an acre for his thousand acres of rocks. He must think he had a sucker on his hook.
“To tell the truth, Mr. Ross,” said the agent, “he knows you’re an oilman, and he thinks you’re going to drill this tract.”
“All right,” said Dad. “You jist tell him to hunt round and find somebody to drill his own tract, and if he gets any oil, I’ll drill mine. Meantime, the land I got now will raise all the quail the law will let me shoot in a season.”
The end was that Dad said he would pay twelve thousand cash, and otherwise he’d forget it; and after they had got into the car and started the engine, Bunny whispered, “Gee whiz, Dad, aren’t you taking a chance?” But Dad said, “You let him stay in pickle a while. I got all the land I can drill right now.”
“But Dad, he might get someone else to drill it!”
“Don’t you worry! You want that land, because you got a hunch; but nobody else has got any hunches around here, and young Bandy’ll get tired after he’s tried awhile. Let’s you and me go a-fishin’.”
So they went, and drew beautiful cold shiny trout out of a little mountain lake, and late in the evening they got back to the Rascum place, and Paul fried the fish, and the three of them had a gorgeous supper, and afterward Dad smoked a cigar and asked Paul all sorts of questions about science. Dad said he wished he had-a got that kind of education when he was young, that was a sort of stuff worth knowing; why didn’t Bunny study biology and physics, instead of letting them fill his head up with Latin and poetry, and history business about old kings and their wars and their mistresses, that wasn’t a bit of use to nobody?
Next morning they said good-bye to Paul, and went back into the mountains, and spent most of the day getting fish; and then they set out for Beach City, and got in just about bedtime. Bunny went back to school, and his new duties as treasurer for the football team; and Dad set to work putting four more wells on the Armitage tract, and three on the Wagstaff tract. And meantime the nations of Europe had established for themselves two lines of death, extending all the way across the continent; and millions of men, as if under the spell of some monstrous enchantment, rushed to these lines to have their bodies blown to pieces and their lifeblood poured out upon the ground. The newspapers told about battles that lasted for months, and the price of petroleum products continued to pile up fortunes for J. Arnold Ross.
Summer was here, and Bertie had plans for her brother. Bertie was now a young lady of eighteen, a brilliant, flashing creature—she picked out clothing shiny enough for a circus dancer. Her trim little legs were sheathed in the glossiest and most diaphanous silk, and her fancy, pointed shoes were without a scratch. If Bertie got a dress of purple or carmine or orange or green, why, then, mysteriously, there were stockings and shoes, and a hat and gloves and even a handbag of the same shade; Dad said she would soon be having sports cars to match. Dad was grimly humorous about the stacks of bills, and not a little puzzled by this splendid young butterfly he had helped to hatch out. Aunt Emma said the child was entitled to her “fling,” and so Dad paid the charges, but he stood as solid as Gibraltar against Bertie’s efforts to push him into her social maelstrom.[8] By golly, no—he was scared to death of them high mucky-mucks, and especially the women, when they glared at him through their law nets, or whatever they called them—he felt the size of a potato bug. What could he say to people that didn’t know an underreamer from a sucker-rod rotator?
This vulgar attitude had been taken up by Bunny, who thought it was “smart”—so his sister jeered. Of course a young lady of eighteen hardly condescends to be aware of the existence of a kid of sixteen; but there were younger brothers and sisters of Bertie’s rich friends, and she wanted Bunny to scrape the oil from underneath his fingernails, and come into this fashionable world, and get a more worthwhile girl than Rosie Taintor. Bunny, always curious about new things, tried it for a while, and had to confess that these ineffable rich young persons didn’t interest him very much; he couldn’t see that they knew anything, or could do anything special. Their talk was all about one another, and they had so many cryptic allusions and so much homemade slang that it amounted almost to a new language. Bunny didn’t like any of them well enough to be interested in deciphering it, and he would rather put on his oil clothes and drive out to the wells that were drilling, and if there was no other job for a “roughneck,” he would help the cathead-men and the tool-dressers to scrape out the mass of sand and ground-up rock that came out with the mud, and that was forever choking the way to the sump hole.
Meantime Bunny was thinking, and pretty soon he had a scheme. “Dad,” said he, “what about that cabin we were going to build at Paradise?”
“Well, what?” asked Dad.
“Paul writes that Ruth has come to stay with him. So next fall, when we want to go after quail, there won’t be any place for us. Let’s go up there now, and have a holiday, and build that cabin now.”
“But son, it’s hot as Flujins up there in summer!” Bunny didn’t know where or what “Flujins” might be; but he answered that Paul was standing it, and anyhow it was good for you to sweat, Dad was getting too heavy, and he could sit under the bougainvillea vine in a Palm Beach suit while Bunny did carpentry work with Paul, and it would be a change, and Bunny would call up Dr. Blakiston and have him order it. Whereupon Dad grinned, and said all right, and he might jist as well adopt that Watkins pair and be done with it.
So they went up to the Rascum ranch, taking their tent along—and Paul and Ruth insisted on giving up the house, and Ruth slept in the tent, and Paul made his bed in the empty haymow. Paul had hired a horse and plow, and had a flourishing vegetable garden and big patch of beans, and had set in strawberries which he was tending with a little hand cultivator; they had half a dozen goats, and plenty of milk, and some chickens which Ruth took care of.
And most amazing of all, Paul had got the books from Judge Minter’s library. Most of them were still in boxes, because there was no place for them; but Paul had made some shelves out of a packing box, and there stood Huxley and Haeckel and Renan, and other writers absolutely fatal to the soul of any person who reads them.[9] But “Pap” had given up, Ruth said, she had got too growed up all of a sudden, too big to be “whaled”; and besides, Pap’s rheumatism was terrible, and Eli couldn’t heal it. Dad said that when they were ordering the lumber for the cabin they would get some stuff for bookshelves, and Paul could build them during the winter. Dad and Paul had another argument, and Dad said this was his house, wasn’t it, and he sure had a right to put some bookshelves in it if he wanted them; Paul could lend him some books when he come up here, and jist help him get a bit of education, even now, as old as he was.
It was a happy family, and a fine place to be, because it took Dad’s mind off his wells, and his trouble with one of his best foremen, that had gone and got married to a fool flapper, and didn’t have his mind on his work no more.[10] They got the lumber from the dealer at Roseville, and Paul was the “boss carpenter,” and Bunny was the “jack carpenter,” and Dad kind of fussed around until he got to perspiring too hard, and then he went and sat under the bougainvillea blossoms, and Ruth opened him a bottle of grape juice, that was part of the fancy stuff he had brought in.
And then in the evening they would drive into Paradise and get the mail, and there came a little local paper that old Mr. Watkins took, and Bunny began to look it over, and gosh amighty, look at this, Dad—a story on the front page, about the marvelous meeting that Eli had held at Santa Lucia, and how frenzied the worshippers had got, and Eli had made the announcement that he had been commissioned to build the Tabernacle of the Third Revelation, which was to be all of snow-white marble, with a frieze of gold, and was to occupy one entire block in Angel City, and be of exactly the dimensions which had been revealed to Eli in a dream.[11] The dimensions were given, and Dad said they were bigger than any block that Eli would find in Angel City, but no doubt they’d find a way to get round that, and call it a new Revelation. The Roseville Eagle—that was the name of the paper—was boastful of Eli, who was “putting the San Elido valley on the map,” it said. The Apostolic Church of Paradise was to be rebuilt out of the “free will offerings” at Eli’s meetings; but the old structure would be preserved, so that pilgrims might come to visit the place where the True Word had been handed down.[12]
And then came Mr. Hardacre, meeting them on the street. He said that young Bandy had got tired of his idea that Dad was going to drill; he wanted to take his parents to the city and be a businessman, so the family would take Dad’s offer if it was still open. Dad said all right, to let him know, he’d come in any time, and they’d put it into escrow. Next day Mr. Hardacre drove out to the Rascum place, and said he’d taken the escrow offer out to the Bandy place, and old Mr. Bandy and his wife had signed the agreement to deliver the deed; and so Dad and Bunny got into their car, and drove to the bank, and Dad put up four thousand dollars, and signed a contract to pay eight thousand more when the title search was completed. Then, when they were out of the bank, he grinned and said, “All right, son, now you can drill your tract!”
Of course, Bunny wanted to go right to it—wanted Dad to telephone for his head foreman, and get a road contractor at work! But Dad said they’d finish the cabin first, and meantime he’d be thinking. So Bunny went back to work, nailing shingles on the roof, and he was happy as a youngster could be—except for one uncomfortable thought that was gnawing like a worm in his soul. How could he tell Paul and Ruth about their decision to drill, and would Paul and Ruth consider that Dad had got the Watkins ranch upon false pretenses?
Fate was kind to Bunny. Something happened—you could never guess it in a thousand years! Only three days had passed since they put through the Bandy deal, and Dad was still thinking matters over, when Meelie Watkins came walking from her home—with a big blue sunbonnet to protect her from the midday sun—and brought an amazing piece of news. Old Mr. Wrinkum, driving in from town, had stopped by, and told Pap that a big oil concern, the Excelsior Petroleum Company, had leased the Carter ranch, on the other side of the valley, about a mile west of Paradise, and was going to start drilling for oil! Meelie gave this news to Dad, who was sitting under the bougainvillea; and Dad shouted to Bunny and Paul, who were up laying the floor of the cabin. The two came running, and Ruth came running from her chicken yard, and when they heard the news, Bunny cried, “Excelsior Pete! Why, Dad, that’s one of the Big Five!”
They stared at each other, and suddenly Dad clenched his hands and exclaimed, “By golly, them people don’t drill unless they know what they’re doin’. Bunny, I believe I’ll try a well here on our place, and see what we get!”
“Oh, Mr. Ross!” exclaimed Ruth. “You ought to do it—my Uncle Eby always used to say there was oil here!”
“Is that so?” said Dad. “Well, I’ll take a chance then, jist for fun.” And he looked at Bunny, with just the flicker of a smile. It told Bunny a lot, when he came to think it over; Dad had guessed that Bunny was worried, and exactly what was his dilemma with the Watkinses; and Dad had had the wit to save Bunny’s face, and avoid the need of confessing. Dear, kind old Dad, that was anxious to do everything for his boy—that would even do his lying for him! How could any boy refuse to be content with such a happy solution of his ethical problems?
CHAPTER VI
THE WILDCAT
I
Dad had thought things over, and studied his bank account, and given his decision; they would drill the Ross Junior-Paradise No. 1, and do it quick, and give the “Excelsior Pete” crowd a run for their money; there was no use letting the Big Five think they owned the whole oil industry. Dad would stick here and see things started; so he phoned for his geologist, and hunted up a contractor to figure over a well for water.
