Sometimes I'm afeerd she's goin' crazy--or something."

CHAPTER IX

No industry can boast a history more dramatic, more exciting, than that of oil. From the discovery of petroleum, on through the development of its usefulness and the vast expansion of its production, the story is one of intense human interest, and not even the story of mining has chapters more stirring or more spectacular.

The average man has never stopped to consider how close he is to the oil business or how dependent he is upon it; from babyhood, when his nose is greased with vaseline, to the occasion when a motor hea.r.s.e carries him on his last journey, there is not often a day when he fails to make use of mineral oil or some of its by-products. Ocean liners and farmers' plows are driven by it; it takes the rich man to his office and it cleans the shopgirl's gloves; it gives us dominion over the air and beneath the waters of the sea. We live in a mechanical age, and without oil our bearings would run hot and civilization, as we know it, would stop. It is the very blood of the earth.

Oil production is a highly specialized industry, and it has developed a type of man with a type of mind quite as characteristic as the type of machinery employed in the drilling of wells. The latter, for instance, appears at first glance to be crude and awkward, but as a matter of fact it is amazingly ingenious and extremely efficient, and your oil-field operator is pretty much the same. Nor is there any business in which practical experience is more valuable. As a result, most of the big oil men, especially those engaged in production, are graduates of the school of hard knocks; they are big-fisted, harsh-handed fellows who are as thoroughly at home on the "thribble board" of a derrick as at a desk or a directors' table, and they are quite as colorful as the oil fields themselves. Their lives are full and vigorous.

Of all the oil excitements, that which occurred in North Texas was perhaps the most remarkable; at any rate, the world has never witnessed such scenes as were enacted there. The California gold rush, the great Alaskan stampede, the diamond frenzies of South Africa and of Australia, all were epic in their way, but none bred a wilder insanity than did the discovery of oil in the Red River district.

For one thing, the time was ripe and conditions were propitious for the staging of an unprecedented drama. The enormous wastage of a world's war, resulting in a cry for more production, a new level of high prices for crude, rumors of an alarming shortage of supply, the success of independent producers, large and small--all these, and other reasons, too, caused many people hitherto uninterested to turn their serious attention to petroleum. The country was prosperous, banks were bulging with money, pockets were stuffed with profits; poor men had the means with which to gamble and rich men were looking for quicker gains.

Inasmuch as the world had lived for four years upon a steady diet of excitement, it was indeed the psychological moment for a spectacular boom.

The strike at Ranger lit the fuse, the explosion came with the first gush of inflammable liquid from the Fowler farm at Burkburnett. Then, indeed, a conflagration occurred, the comprehensive story of which can never be written, owing to the fact that no human mind could follow the swift events of the next few tumultuous months, no brain could record it. Chaos came. Life in the oil fields became a phantasmagoria of ceaseless action and excitement--a fantastic stereopticon that changed hourly.

"Burk" was a sleepy little town, dozing amid parched wheat fields. The paint was off it; nothing much more exciting than a crop failure ever happened there. The main topic of conversation was the weather and, as Mark Twain said, everybody talked about it, but nothing was done.

Within sixty days this soporific village became a roaring bedlam; every town lot was leased, derricks rose out of chicken runs, boilers panted in front yards, mobs of strangers surged through the streets and the air grew shrill with their bickerings. From a distance, the sky line of the town looked like a thick nest of lattice battle masts, and at night it blazed like Coney Island.

The black-lime territory farther south had proven too expensive for individual operators and small companies to handle, but here the oil was closer to the surface and the ground was easily drilled, hence it quickly became known as a poor man's pool. Then, too, experienced oil men and the large companies who had seen town-site booms in other states, kept away, surrendering the place to tenderfeet and to promoters. Of these, thousands came, and never was there a harvest so ripe for their gleaning.

Naturally a little country town like this could not hold the newcomers, therefore Wichita Falls became their headquarters. Here there were at least a few hotels and some sort of office quarters--sheds beneath which the shearing could take place--and there the herd a.s.sembled.

Of course, the cougars followed, and, oh, the easy pickings for them! A fresh kill daily. Warm meat with every meal. Such hunting they had never known, hence they gorged themselves openly, seldom quarreling among themselves nor even bothering to conceal the carca.s.ses of their prey. It was easier to pull down a new victim than to return to the one of the day before.

Rooming houses slept their guests in relays, canvas dormitories sprang up on vacant lots, the lobbies of the hotels were packed with shouldering maniacs until they resembled wheat pits, the streets were clogged with motor cars, and the sidewalks were jammed like subway platforms. Store fronts were knocked out and the floor s.p.a.ce was railed off into rows of tiny bull-pen brokers' offices, and in these companies by the hundred were promoted. Stock in them was sold on the sidewalks by bally-hoo men with megaphone voices. It seldom required more than a few hours to dispose of an entire issue, for this was a credulous and an elated mob, and its daily fare was exaggeration. Stock exchanges were opened up where, amid frenzied shoutings, went on a feverish commerce in wildcat securities; shopgirls, matrons, housemaids gambled in shares quite as wildly as did the unkempt disreputables from the oil fields or the newcomers spilled out of every train. People trafficked not in oil, but in stocks and in leases, the values of which were entirely chimerical.

But this speculative frenzy was by no means local. Burkburnett became a name to conjure with and there was no lack of conjurers. These latter spread to the four points of the compa.s.s, and the printing presses ran hot to meet their demands. A flood of money flowed into their pockets.

While this boom was at its height a new pool, vaster and richer, was penetrated and the world heard of the Northwest Extension of the Burkburnett field, a veritable lake--an ocean--of oil. Then a wilder madness reigned. Daily came reports of new wells in the Extension with a flush production running up into the thousands of barrels. There appeared to be no limit to the size of this deposit, and now the old-line operators who had shunned the town-site boom bid feverishly against the promoters and the tenderfeet for acreage. Farms and ranches previously all but worthless were cut up into small tracts and drilling sites, and these were sold for unheard-of prices. Up leaped another forest of skeleton towers some ten miles long and half as wide.

But this was the open range with nothing except the sky for shelter, so towns were knocked together--queer, greasy, ramshackle settlements of flimsy shacks--and so quickly were they built that they outran the law, which is ever deliberate. The camps of the black-lime district, which had been considered h.e.l.l holes, were in reality models of order compared with these mushroom cities of raw boards, tar paper, and tin.

Gambling joints, dance halls, and dens more vicious flourished openly, and around them gathered the sc.u.m and the flotsam that crests a rising tide.

Winter brought the rains, and existence in the new fields became an ugly and a troublesome thing. Roads there were none, and supplies became difficult to secure. The surface of the land melted and spinning wheels churned it; traffic halted, vehicles sank, horses drowned.

Between rains the sun dried the mud, the wind whirled it into suffocating clouds. Sandstorms swept over the miserable inhabitants; tornadoes, thick with a burden of cutting particles, harried them until they cursed the fate that had brought them thither.

But in Wichita Falls, where there was shelter overhead and pavements underfoot, the sheep shearing proceeded gayly.

Of the men engaged in this shearing business, none, perhaps, had gathered more wool in the same length of time than the two members of the firm of McWade & Stoner. Mr. Billy McWade, junior partner, was a man of wide experience and some accomplishments, but until his arrival at Wichita Falls he had never made a conspicuous success of any business enterprise. The unforeseen invariably had intervened to prevent a killing. Either a pal had squealed, or the postal authorities had investigated, or a horse had fallen--anyhow, whenever victory had perched upon his banner something always had happened to frighten the bird before its wings were fairly folded.

Mr. McWade had finally determined to wipe off the slate and commence all over. Accordingly, he had selected a new field, and, in order to make it a real standing start, he had likewise chosen a new name. He had arrived at Wichita Falls with one suit of clothes and nothing more, except an a.s.sortment of contusions ranging in color from angry red to black-and-blue, these same being the direct result of repeated altercations with roughshod members of a train crew. These collisions McWade had not sought. On the contrary, when, for instance, outside the yards at Fort Worth his un.o.btrusive presence on the blind baggage had been discovered, he had done his best to avoid trouble. He had explained earnestly that he simply must leave the city by that particular train. The circ.u.mstances were such that no other train would do at all, so he declared. When he had been booted off he swung under and rode the trucks to the next stop. There a man with a lantern had searched him out, much as a n.i.g.g.e.r shines the eyes of a possum, and had dragged him forth. He was dragged forth at the second stop, and again at the third. Finally, the train was halted far out on a lonely prairie and a large brakeman with gold teeth and corns on his palms held a knee upon Mr. McWade's chest until the train started. Ignoring the hoa.r.s.e warning breathed into his dusty countenance, along with the odor of young onions, the traveler argued volubly, but with no heat, that it was vitally necessary to his affairs that he continue this journey without interruption; then, when the brakeman rose and raced after the departing train, he sprang to his feet and outran him. McWade was lithe and nervous and fleet; he managed to swing under the last Pullman at the same instant his captor reached its rear platform.

It is probable that a blithe determination even such as this would have eventually succ.u.mbed to repeated discouragements, but at the next stop, a watering tank, aid came from an unexpected quarter. From the roof of the car another knight of the road signaled, and thither McWade clambered, kicking off the clutching hand of his former enemy.

The second traveler was a robust man, deliberate but sure of movement, and his pockets were filled with nuts and bolts. This ammunition he divided with his companion, and such was their unerring aim that they maintained their sanctuary for the remainder of the journey.

On the way in to Wichita Falls the stranger introduced himself as Brick Stoner. He was a practical oil man, a driller and a sort of promoter, too. It was his last promotion, he confided, that had made it necessary for him to travel in this fashion. He had many practical ideas, had Mr.

Stoner, as, for instance, the use to be made of a stick with a crook in it or a lath with a nail in the end. Armed thus, he declared, it was possible for a man on the roof of a sleeping car to pick up a completely new wardrobe in the course of a night's ride, provided the upper berths were occupied and the ventilators were open. Mr. Stoner deeply regretted the lack of such a simple aid, but agreed that it was better to leave well enough alone.

McWade warmed to his traveling companion, and they talked of many things, such as money and finance, sudden riches, and ways and means.

This led them back naturally to a discussion of Stoner's latest promotion; he called it the Lost Bull well, and the circ.u.mstances connected therewith he related with a subtlety of humor rare in a man of his sorts. The nature of the story appealed keenly to McWade, and it ran like this: Stoner had been working in the Louisiana gas fields near the scene of a railroad accident--three bulls had strayed upon the right of way with results disastrous to a freight train and fatal to themselves. After the wreckage had been cleared away, the claim agent settled with the owner of the bulls and the carca.s.ses were buried in an adjoining field. This had occurred some time prior to Stoner's arrival; in fact, it was only by chance that he heard of it.

One day in pa.s.sing the spot Stoner noticed a slight depression in the ground, filled with water through which occasional bubbles of gas rose.

Being of an inquisitive turn of mind, he had amused himself with some experiments and found that the gas was inflammable. Moreover, it gave off an odor not unlike that of natural gas. It was a phenomenon of decomposition new to the driller, and it gave him a great idea. He went to town and very cautiously told of his discovery--a gas seepage, with traces of oil. His story caused a sensation, and he led several of the wealthiest citizens to the spot, then watched them in all gravity while they ignited the gas, smelled it, tasted the soil. They were convinced.

They appointed Stoner their agent to buy the farm, under cover, which he did at a nice profit--to himself. This profit he spent in riotous living while a rig was being moved upon the ground. Not until the derrick was up and the crew, in the presence of the excited stockholders, came to "spud in," was the true source of that gas discovered--then the enterprise a.s.sumed such a bad odor that bystanders fled and Mr. Stoner was forced to leave the state without his baggage.

This had been the nature of McWade's and Stoner's meeting; on the roof of that swaying Pullman they laid the corner stone of their partnership.

Arrived at Wichita Falls, Stoner went into the field and McWade obtained employment in a restaurant. It was a position of trust, for upon him developed the entire responsibility of removing the traces of food from the used dishes, and drying them without a too great percentage of breakage. It kept McWade upon his feet, but, anyhow, he could not sit with comfort, and it enabled him, in the course of a week, to purchase a change of linen and to have his suit sponged and pressed. This done, he resigned and went to the leading bank, where he opened an account by depositing a check drawn upon a Chicago inst.i.tution for fifty thousand dollars. McWade made it a practice always to have a few blank checks on hand. Airily, but in all earnestness, he invited the Texas bank to verify the check at its convenience.

So many were the strangers in Wichita Falls, so great the rush of new customers, that the banks had no means of investigating their accounts except by wiring at their own expense. This was Sat.u.r.day afternoon, which gave McWade two days of grace, so he pocketed his new pa.s.s and check books, then mingled with the crowd at the Westland Hotel. He bought leases and drilling sites, issuing local checks in payment thereof--n.o.body could question the validity of those checks with the evidence of fifty thousand dollars deposited that very day--and on Sunday he sold them. By the time the Wichita Falls bank opened its doors on Monday morning he had turned his last lease and had made ten thousand dollars.

A few days later he and Stoner incorporated their first company. This was at the height of the town-site boom, and within a few hours McWade had sold the stock. Thereafter prosperity dogged the pair, and before long they had made reputations for themselves as the only sure-fire wildcat promoters in town. McWade possessed the gift of sidewalk oratory; Stoner posed as the practical field man whose word upon prospects was final. He it was who did the investigating, the "experting"; his partner was the bally-hoo.

But compet.i.tion grew steadily keener, other promoters followed their lead, and it became necessary to introduce new and original methods of gathering an audience. Mere vocal persuasiveness did not serve to arrest the flow of pedestrians, and so McWade's ingenuity was taxed.

But he was equal to the task; seldom did he fail of ideas, and, once he had the attention of a crowd, the rest was easy.

One morning he and his partner provided themselves with some dice and several hundred dollars in gold coin. With these they began shooting c.r.a.ps on the sidewalk in front of their office. Now gambling was taboo, hence the spectacle of two expensively dressed, eminently prosperous men squatting upon their heels with a stack of double eagles before them caused a sensation, and people halted to witness their impending arrest. Soon traffic was blocked.

The gamblers remained engrossed in their pastime, as well they could, having thoughtfully arranged the matter with the policeman on duty; gravely they breathed upon the cubes; earnestly they called upon "Little Joe," "Long Liz," "Ada," and the rest; silently they exchanged their stacks of gold pieces as they won or lost.

Calvin Gray, but just arrived from Dallas, looked on at the game with some curiosity, not divining its purpose, until McWade pocketed the dice, then mounted a box at the curb and began, loudly:

"Now, gentlemen, that is one way of making money, but it is a foolish and a hazardous way. There is a much saner, safer method, and I'm going to tell you about it. Don't pa.s.s on until you hear me, for I have a most incredible story to relate, and you'll be sorry you missed it."

There was a ripple of appreciative laughter, but the crowd pressed closer as the orator continued:

"You've all heard about these 'doodlebugs' who go around locating oil with a divining rod, haven't you? And you don't believe in them. Of course you don't. Neither do I. I can't put any trust in willow twigs, but--we'll all admit that there are forces of nature that we don't understand. Who can explain the principle of magnetic attraction, for instance? What causes the glowing splendor of the Aurora Borealis? What force holds the compa.s.s needle to the north? What makes a carpet tack jump onto a magnet like"--the speaker paused and stared hard at a member of his audience who had pa.s.sed a humorous remark at his expense--"just like I'll jump you, stranger, if you don't keep your trap closed. I say who can read those secrets, who can harness those forces? The man who can has got the world by the tail and a downhill pull. Now then, for the plot of my story, and it will pay you to do a week of listening in the next five minutes. Awhile ago an eminent scientist, unknown to me or to my partner, Mr. Stoner, came into our office, which is at your backs, one flight up, second door to the right, and showed us an electrical device he has been working on for the last eight years. He claimed he had it perfected and that it would indicate the presence of oil on the same principle that one mineral attracts another. 'Oil is a mineral,' said he, 'and I think I've got its magnetic complement. I believe my invention will work.'

"'I'll bet a thousand dollars it won't,' I told him. But what do you think that pilgrim did? He took me up. Then he bet Stoner another thousand that I'd made a bad bet." McWade grinned in sympathy with the general amus.e.m.e.nt. "We arranged a thorough test. We took him, blindfolded, through the field, and, believe me or not, he called the turn on forty-three wells straight and never missed it once. Call it a miracle if you choose, but it cost Brick and me two thousand iron men, and I've got ten thousand more that says he can do the trick for you.

I'll let a committee of responsible citizens take a dozen five-gallon cans and fill one with oil and the rest with water and set them in a row behind a brick wall. My ten, or any part of it, says his electric wiggle stick will point to the one with the oil. What do you say to that? Here's a chance for a quick clean-up. Who cares to take me on?"

From the edge of the crowd Gray watched the effect of this offer.

Divining rods, he well knew, were as old as the oil industry, but he was surprised to see that fully half of this audience appeared to put faith in the claim, and the other half were not entirely skeptical. A man at his side began reciting an experience of his own.

McWade now introduced the miracle worker himself, and Gray rose on tiptoe to see him. A moment, then he smiled widely, for the eminent scientist was none other than Mr. Mallow--Mallow, a bit pallid and pasty, as if from confinement, and with eyes hidden behind dark goggles. With a show of some embarra.s.sment, the inventor displayed his tester, a sufficiently impressive device with rubber handles and a resistance coil attached to a dry battery, which he carried in his pocket.

Gray looked on as the comedy was played out. It transpired that Professor Mallow had tested, among other properties, the newest McWade-Stoner lease, a company to drill which had just been formed under the t.i.tle of "The Desert Scorpion," and he really judged from the behavior of his machine that a remarkable pool underlaid the tract. He was willing to risk his reputation upon the guaranty that the first well would produce not less than three thousand barrels a day. He was interested in the out-come only from a scientific standpoint; he owned not one single share of stock. Then McWade resumed his sway over the crowd, and soon shares in "The Desert Scorpion" were selling rapidly.

Shortly after lunch, Mallow and the two partners were seated in the office upstairs, their work done for the day. Another successful promotion had gone to the credit of McWade and Stoner; all three were in a triumphal mood. Mallow was recounting a story that had just come to his ears.

"Remember that old silver tip that took a stand in front of the Owl Drug Store a few days back? He called his company 'The Star of Hope.'"

Stoner nodded. "He had a good piece of ground, right adjoining the Moon Petroleum tract--three wells down to the sand. I wondered how he ever got hold of it."

"He didn't. That's the big laugh. He didn't own that land at all. He just had himself a map drawn, with the numbers changed. His ground was a mile away. He sold his stock in two days, thirty-five thousand shares, then he blew. Some Coal-oil John, who had plunged for about three shares, got to studying his own map, found there was something wrong and let up a squawk. But Silver Tip had faded like the mists of early morn--thirty-five stronger than he was. Snappy work, eh?"