Читать книгу The Sandy Steele Mystery MEGAPACK®: 6 Young Adult Novels (Complete Series) - Roger Barlow - Страница 9

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 ABCs 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.”

“John,” said Donovan after they had watched Cavanaugh’s plane roar away, “I think I’ll have to sock that big lug the next time I meet him.”

“He’d make mincemeat of you,” Mr. Hall warned.

“I doubt it. He’s soft as mush. Anyway, I don’t like him and I’ll have nothing to do with the equipment he peddles. He knows that, so I think the real reason he came here was to spy on us—to find out whether our well had come in yet.”

“Oh, he’s not that bad,” Hall objected. “Boys, you know something about him. What’s his reputation in Valley View?”

“He acts rich,” Sandy answered after a moment of deep thought.

“The people who work in his lab say he’s not as smart as he makes out,” Quiz added. “I agree with Mr. Donovan. There’s something phony about him. I’ve a hunch it’s connected with those three touchdowns he’s always bragging about. If I could only remember… Some day I will, I bet.”

“Well, let’s all simmer down and forget him,” said Hall. “It’s time for lunch.”