Flowing Gold Part 33

By now the roads were quagmires, and the unceasing current of traffic had thickened and slowed down until Gray's car rocked and plunged through a hub-deep channel of slime. There was but one route to the Extension, and it led through the very heart of Burkburnett; there were no detours around the town, no way of beating the traffic, therefore vehicles, no matter how urgent their business, were forced to fall in line and allow themselves to be carried along like chips in a stream of tar.

"Burk" was a one-story town, or at least most of its buildings projected only one story above the mud, and that mud was mixed with oil. Leakage from wells, pipe lines, storagetanks, had made the ma.s.s underfoot doubly foul and sticky, and where it was liquid it shone with iridescent colors. Mud was everywhere; on the sidewalks, inside the stores, on walls and signboards, on the skins and clothing of the people.

Through the main street the procession of cars plowed, then out across the railroad tracks and toward the open country beyond. When it came to a halt, as it frequently did, above the hum of idle motors could be heard the clank of pumps, the fitful coughing of gasengines, the hiss of steam. This, of course, was soon drowned in a terrific din of impatient horns, a blaring, brazen snarl at the delay. The whole line roared metallic curses at the cause of its stoppage.

Even the railroad right of way had been drilled. Switch engines shunted rows of flats almost between the straddling derrick legs.

Gray's driver had been dumb thus far, now he broke out abruptly: "Speaking about mud; I was crossing this street on a plank the other day when I saw a bran'-new derby lying in the mud and picked it up.

Underneath it was a guy's head.

"'Hullo!' I said. 'You're in pretty deep, ain't you?'

"The feller looked up at me and said: 'This ain't bad. You'd ought to see my brother. I'm standing on his shoulders!'"

The chauffeur laughed loudly at his own humor. "_Some_ country, I call it! But the sun's out, so it will be blowing sand to-morrow."

When Burkburnett had been left behind, another and a vaster island of derricks came into view. It marked the Burk-Waggoner pool, part of the Northwest Extension, so called.

The car was waiting its turn to cross a tiny toll bridge spanning a sluggish creek, the bed of which ran seepage oil from the wells beyond, when the driver grumbled aloud:

"Four bits to cross a forty-foot bridge. There's a graft for you! One old nester above here tore a hole in his fence opposite a wet place in the road and charged us half a dollar to drive through his pasture. But it was cheaper than getting stuck. He had to carry his coin home in an oat sack. After a few weeks somebody got to wondering why that spot never dried out, and, come to investigate, wha' d'you think?"

"I seldom think when I am being entertained," his pa.s.senger declared.

"Well, that poor stupid had dammed the creek, and every night he shut the gate and flooded his road."

If the cl.u.s.tered derricks of the town-site pool were impressive, there was something positively dramatic about the Extension. Burkburnett had been laid out in lots and blocks, and the drilling had followed some sort of orderly system; but here were no streets, no visible plan. This had been a wheat field, and as well after well had come in, derricks, drilling rigs, buildings, tanks, piles of timber, and casing had been laid down with complete disregard of all save the owner's convenience.

Overnight new pipe lines were being laid, for hours counted here and the crude had to find outlet--fuel had to be brought in. These pipe lines were never buried, and in consequence the ceaseless flow of traffic was forever forced to seek new channels. The place became a bewildering maze through which teams floundered and motor vehicles plunged at random.

Towns had sprung up, for this army of workers was isolated in a sea of mud, but whereas "Burk" was more or less permanent, Newtown, Bradley's Corners, Bridgetown, were cities of canvas, boards, and corrugated iron. By day they were mean, filthy, grotesque; by night they became incandescent, for every derrick was strung with lights, and the surplus supply of gas was burned in torches to prevent it from acc.u.mulating in ravines or hollows in explosive quant.i.ties. They were Mardi Gras cities.

Day by day this field spread onward toward the Red River; the whole region smelled of oil.

Fire, of course, was an ever-present menace. Newtown, for instance, had been wiped out several times, for it lay on a slope down which a broken pipe line could belch a resistless wave of flame, and even yet the place was a litter of charred timber, twisted pipe, and crumpled sheets of galvanized iron. Owing to this menace the residents had taken the only possible precaution. They had dug in. Behind each place of business was a cyclone cellar--a bomb-proof shelter--into which human bodies and stocks of merchandise could be crowded.

Gray drove directly to the lease he had come to examine, and was disappointed to learn that the owner had just left. This was annoying; "Bob" had a.s.sured him that he was expected. Inquiry elicited from the surly individual in charge no more than the reluctant admission that Jackson had been called to the nearest telephone, but would be back sometime.

There was nothing to do but wait. Gray let his car go, then made a cursory examination of the property. He could see little and learn less. The caretaker agreed that the well was pumping one hundred and fifty barrels a day.

Some evasiveness in this fellow's demeanor awoke Gray's suspicion. A sudden telephone call. The owner's absence when he expected a purchaser. Probably somebody else was after the property. It was decidedly worth while to wait.

Gray was unaccustomed to inattention, incivility, and had anybody except "Bob" Parker put him in this position he would have resented it.

Under the circ.u.mstances, however, he could do nothing except cool his heels. As time pa.s.sed he began to feel foolish; by late lunch time he was irritable; and as the afternoon wore on he grew angry. Why didn't "Bob" come, as she had promised? He had lost a day, and days were precious.

Evening found him wandering about aimlessly, in a villainous mood, but stubbornly determined to see this thing through at whatever cost. He had no wish to spend a night amid these surroundings, for respectable people shunned these oil-field camps after dark, and he knew himself to be conspicuous. It would add a ridiculous climax to a trying day to be "high-jacked"--to be frisked of his jewelry.

During the early dusk he returned to the lease, only to find even the greasy caretaker gone. By this time Gray was decidedly uncomfortable, and, to add to his discomfort, he conceived the notion that he was being followed. On second thought he dismissed this idea, nevertheless he took a roundabout course back toward the main street.

It seemed odd to be floundering through inky shadows, feeling a way through this miry chaos, when aloft, as far as the eye could see, the sky was lit. This phantom city of twinkling beacons gave one a sense of acute unreality, for it was an empty city, a city the work of which went on almost without the aid of human hands. The very soul of it was mechanical. Only here and there, where a drill crew was at work, did an occasional human figure move back and forth in the glare of low-hung incandescents, nevertheless the whole place breathed and throbbed; it was instinct with a tremendous vigor. From all sides came the ceaseless rhythmic clank of pumps, the hiss of gas and steam, the gurgling flow of liquid--they were the pulse beats, the respirations, the blood flow of this live thing. And its body odor stung the nostrils. All night long it panted with its heavy labors--as if the jinns that lifted those giant pump beams were vying with one another in a desperate endeavor.

They were, for a fact. Haste, avarice, an arduous diligence, was in the very air.

Gray stared and marveled, for imagination was not lacking in him. Those derricks with their fires were high altars upon which were heaped ten thousand hopes and prayers. Altars of Avarice! Towers of Greed! That is what they were.

He marvelled, too, at the extremes these last few days had brought him; at the long cry from the luxurious Burlington Notch to this primitive land of fire worshipers. Here, only a few hours by motor from paved streets and comfortable homes, was a section of the real frontier, as crude and as lawless as any he had ever seen. Yonder, for instance, was the Red Lion, a regular Klondike dance hall.

He looked in for a moment, but the sight of hard-faced houris revolving cheek to cheek with men in overalls and boots was nothing new. It did remind him of the march of progress, however, to notice that the bartenders served coca-cola instead of "hootch." Hygienic, but vain, he reflected. Not at all like the brave old days.

Farther up the street was a flaming theater decorated with gaudy lithographs of women in tights. That awoke a familiar echo. The grimy figures headed thither might well be miners just in from Eldorado or Anvil Creek.

Gambling was practically wide open, too, and before long Gray found himself in a superheated, overcrowded back room with a stack of silver dollars which he scattered carelessly upon the numbers of a roulette table. Roulette was much like the oil game. This was a good way in which to kill an hour.

Absorbed in his own thoughts, Gray paid little heed to those about him, until a large hand picked up one of his bets. Then he raised his eyes.

The hand was attached to a muscular arm, which in turn was attached to a burly stranger of unpleasant mien. Gray voiced a good-natured protest, but the fellow scowled and refused to acknowledge his mistake.

Noting that the man was flushed, Gray shrugged and allowed the incident to pa.s.s. This bootleg whisky from across Red River was of a quality to scatter a person's eyesight.

For some time the game continued before Gray won again, and the dealer deposited thirty-five silver dollars beside his bet. Again that sun-browned hand reached forth, but this time Gray seized it by the wrist. He and the stranger eyed each other for a silent moment, during which the other players looked on.

Gray was the first to speak. "If you're not as drunk as you seem," he said, easily, "you'll excuse yourself. If you are, you need sobering."

With a wrench the man undertook to free his hand; he uttered a threatening oath. The next instant he was treated to a surprise, for Gray jerked him forward and simultaneously his empty palm struck the fellow a blinding, a resounding smack. Twice he smote that reddened cheek with the sound of an explosion, then, as the victim flung his body backward, Gray kicked his feet from under him. Again he cuffed the fellow's face, this time from the other side. When he finally desisted the stranger rocked in his tracks; he shook his head; he blinked and he cursed; it was a moment before he could focus his whirling sight upon his a.s.sailant. When he succeeded it was to behold the latter staring at him with a mocking, threatening smile.

The drunken man hesitated, he cast a slow glance around the room, then muttering, hoa.r.s.ely, he turned and made for the door. He was followed by a burst of derisive laughter that grew louder as he went.

Gray was in a better mood now than for several hours; he had vented his irritation; the air had cleared. After a while he discovered that he was hungry; no longer was he too resentful to heed the healthy warning of his stomach, so he left the place.

CHAPTER XIX

Newton's eating places were not appetizing at best, but a meal could be endured with less discomfort by night than by day, for at such times most of the flies were on the ceilings. The restaurant Gray entered was about what he had expected; along one side ran a quick-order counter at which were seated several customers; across from it was an oilcloth-covered table, perfectly bare except for a revolving centerpiece--one of those silver-plated whirligigs fitted with a gla.s.s salt-and-pepper shaker, a toothpick holder, an unpleasant oil bottle, and a cruet intended for vinegar, but now filled with some mysterious embalming fluid acting as a preservative of numerous lifelike insect remains. Here, facing an elderly man in a wide gray-felt hat, Gray seated himself.

Gray's neighbor was in no pleasant mood, for he whacked impatiently at such buzzing pests as were still on the wing, and when a perspiring Greek set a plate of soup before him he took umbrage at the presence of the fellow's thumb in the liquid. The argument that followed angered the old man still further, for it arrived nowhere except to prove that the offending thumb was the property of the proprietor of the restaurant, and by inference, therefore, a privileged digit.

When a departing customer left the door open, the elderly diner grumbled bitterly at the draught and draped his overcoat over his bent shoulders.

"Dam' Eskimos!" he muttered. "----raised in a chicken coop--Windy as a derrick!"

Gray liked old people, and he was tolerant of their crotchets.

Irascibility indicates force of character, at least so he believed, and old folks are apt to accept too meekly the approach of decay. Here was a spirit that time had not dulled--it was like wine soured in an old cask. At any rate, wine it had been, not water, and that was something.

Most of the counter customers had drifted out when, without warning, the screen door banged loudly open and Gray looked up from his plate to see his recent acquaintance of the gambling table approaching. This time purpose was stamped upon the man's face, but whether it was deliberate or merely the result of more drinking there was no telling.

He lurched directly up to the table and stared across at Gray.

"Slapped my face, didn't you?" he cried, after a menacing moment.

"I did, indeed," the speaker nodded, pleasantly.

"You ain't going to slap it again. You ain't going to slap anybody's--"