Читать книгу The Sandy Steele Mystery MEGAPACK®: 6 Young Adult Novels (Complete Series) - Roger Barlow - Страница 8

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 lingers. “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 go-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.