Читать книгу Oil! - Upton Sinclair - Страница 25

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Mr. Benzinger had sent two truck-loads of Mexicans and fixed up the roads; and Mr. Ascott had kept his promise and delivered the lumber for the derrick; and Dad’s boss-carpenter had got his gang, and they had cut mortise-joints in the sills, and drilled holes through them, and set them with bolts; then stage by stage the towering derrick had come into being, 122 feet high, straight and true and solid. There was a ladder, and a platform half-way up, and another place to stand at the top; it was all nice and clean and new, and Dad would let you climb, and you could see the view, clear over the houses and the trees, to the blue waters of the Pacific—gee, it was great! And then came the fleet of motor-trucks, thundering in just at sunset, dusty and travel-stained, but full of “pep”—judging by the racket they made, tooting a greeting to J. Arnold Ross and his son. The ditch by the roadside had been filled with crushed rock, making a place where they could drive in to the field; and there they stood, twelve of them lined up in a row.

There were bright electric lights on the derrick, and men waiting, the sleeves of their khaki shirts rolled up. They went to it with a will; for they were working under the eye of the “old man,” the master of the pay-roll and of their destinies. They respected this “old man,” because he knew his business, and nobody could fool him. Also they liked him, because he combined a proper amount of kindliness with his sternness; he was simple and unpretentious—when the work was crowded, you would have him eating his beans and coffee on a stool in the “eats” joint alongside you. He was a “real guy”; and with this he combined the glamour of a million dollars. Yes, he had “the stuff,” barrels of it—and what is a magician who pulls rabbits and yards of ribbon out of his sleeves, compared with one who can pull out a couple of dozen oil-derricks, and as many miles of steel casing, and tanks, and fleets of motor-trucks, and roads for them to run on?

Also they liked the “kid,” because he put on no more airs than his Dad, but was jolly, and interested in what you were doing, and asked sensible questions and remembered your explanations. Yes, a kid like that would learn the business and carry it on; the old man was teaching him right. He knew all the crew by their first names, and took their joshing, and had a suit of old clothing, duly smeared with grease, which he would put on, and tackle any job where a half-sized pair of hands could get a hold.

But there was no joshing now; this was a time for breaking records. There was a big cement block for the engine, and a wooden block on top of that, to take up the vibration; and now the truck with the engine on was backed into place, and blocked firm, and the skids made solid, and in a jiffy the engine was slid into place and ready for business. At the same time another crew had got the big steam boiler ready. There was a tank of fuel oil at hand, and the feed-pipe was hitched up, and she was ready to make steam. And meantime the next truck was backed into place, and the skids put under the “draw-works”; when Bunny came back the next morning he found the big “drum” bolted into place, and the running tackle up in the derrick, and they were unloading the “drill-stem.” They would fit a steel chain about three of the heavy pipes at once, and a pulley with a steel hook would come down and seize the chain; the engine would start thumping, and the chain and the steel cable would draw tight, and the pipe would slide off the truck. These pipes were twenty feet long, and weighed nineteen pounds to the foot, and when you had your well a mile deep, you could figure it for yourself, there was fifty tons of steel, and your derrick had to carry that weight, and your steel cables had to lift it, and your drum and engine had to stand the strain. People kicked at the price of gasoline, but they never thought about the price of drill-stem and casings!

All these things Bunny had heard a hundred times, but Dad never tired of telling them. He was never entirely content unless the boy was by his side, learning the business. You mustn’t fool yourself with the idea that you could hire experts to attend to things; for how could you know that a man was an expert, unless you knew as much as he did? Some day your foreman might drop dead, or some other fellow would buy him away from you, and then where would you be? Be your own expert, said Dad!

The machinery which did the turning was called a “rotary table”; it was connected with the engine by a steel chain, exactly like the sprocket-chain of a bicycle, except that the links were as big as your fist. The rotary table had a hole through the centre, where the drill-stem went through; there was a corresponding hole in the derrick-floor—and soon there would be one in the ground! The hole in the rotary-table was square, and the top drill-stem, known as your “Kelly joint,” was square, and fitted this hole; you lowered it through—but first you screwed in your “collar” and “bit,” the tool which did the actual cutting. They were starting with a “disc-bit”—it had two steel things like dinner-plates, set opposite each other, and as they went round and round, the weight of the pipe caused them to chew their way into the earth. You started with an eighteen-inch “bit,” and as it flopped round, it cut you a hole two feet across.

Well, the time came when the last tool was on hand, and the last bolt made tight, and the drilling tools ready for their long journey into the bowels of the earth. This was a great moment, akin to the launching of a ship, or the inauguration of the first president of a republic. Your friends gathered, and the workers from nearby jobs, and a crowd of sightseers. The crew had been hustling for three weeks, with this as their goal, and now they stood, both the day shift and the night shift, proud of their past, and eager for their future. The engineman had his hand at the lever, and his eye on Dad; Dad gave him a nod, and he shoved the lever, and the engine started, and the gears made a roaring racket, and the bit hit the ground—“Spud! Spud!” At least that is what men imagine they hear, and so they call the operation “spudding in.” “All aboard for China!” sang the foreman; and everybody who had clean hands shook hands with Dad—including Mr. Bankside, whose land they were drilling, and Mrs. Bankside and the whole Bankside family. They carried Dad and Bunny to their home, which was on the lease, and they opened a bottle of champagne, and drank a wee sip to the health of the Ross-Bankside Number 1, which was already a half-dozen feet down in the ground.