"So your luck has changed, hasn't it? That Avenger well of mine has put a good value on your property. I congratulate you, Colonel."

"Humph! I don't believe in luck," Nelson mumbled. "And the Avenger isn't enough of a well to brag about."

"So? You don't believe in luck? It seems to be our lot invariably to differ, doesn't it? Now, my dear Colonel, I'm not ashamed to confess that I am deeply superst.i.tious, and that I believe implicitly in signs and prodigies. You see, I was born under a happy star; 'at my nativity the front of heaven was full of fiery shapes,' as it were. Comfortable feeling, I a.s.sure you. Take that incident at New-town, not long ago; doesn't that prove my contention?"

"What incident?"

Gray's brows lifted whimsically. "Of course. How should you know? There was a clumsy attempt to do me bodily harm, to--a.s.sa.s.sinate me. Funny, isn't it? So ill considered and so impracticable.--But about this Avenger matter, if you find it inconvenient to offset my wells as fast as I put them down, perhaps you'd consider selling--"

"_Inconvenient?_" Nelson felt the blood rush to his face at this insufferable insult, but he calmed himself with the thought that his opponent was deliberately goading him. After all, it served him right for permitting the fellow to stop him. "Inconvenient! Ha!" He turned away carelessly.

"No offense, my dear Colonel. I thought, after your Arkansas fiasco, you might wish--"

"What Arkansas fiasco?" Nelson wheeled, and in spite of himself his voice cracked.

"Ah! Another secret, eh?" Gray winked elaborately--nothing could have been more deliberately offensive than that counterfeit of a friendly understanding. "Very well, I sha'n't say a word."

"You--" The banker was gasping. "You're doing your d.a.m.nedest to--to start something, aren't you?"

"Every day. Every hour. Every minute." The speaker bowed. "In defense of my promise to fight fair, let me a.s.sure you, however, that I did not start this. As a matter of fact, I knew nothing about it until you had been hooked. Apropos of that quixotic promise, please remember that your own actions have absolved me from it."

The men stared at each other for a moment that seemed interminable.

Gray was watchful, expectant; Nelson was plainly shaken by a desire so desperate that resistance left him weak. He was like an animal frozen in the very att.i.tude of springing.

"Foxy, aren't you?" he managed to say, at last. "Tempting me to--make the first move." With a mighty effort of will he forced his tense body to relax. "The act of a bully! Bah! Wouldn't I be a fool--"

"A bully is usually a coward," Gray said, slowly. "Neither of us is a coward. I'm not ready to--join the issue that way, especially in a place like this. The game is too exciting to--"

"You'll get all the excitement you're looking for," Nelson cried, wrathfully. "You've cost me a lot of money, but you could have cost me a lot more if you hadn't been fool enough to brag about it and give me warning. Now--I'll send you out of Texas afoot."

"On my back, perhaps, but never on my feet."

Without another word the banker pa.s.sed on, but he went blindly, for his mind was in black chaos. No chance now for secrecy; he was in for a bit of h.e.l.l. He managed to kill the story in the local papers, but it appeared in the Dallas journals, which was even worse, and for the first time in his life he found himself an object of ridicule. The Arkansas transaction was made to appear the most outrageous swindle of recent oil history, and, coming so quickly after the Jackson exposure, it excited double interest and amus.e.m.e.nt.

In truth, the facts about the salting of that Arkansas tract did make a story, for the methods employed had been both new and ingenious. Nelson had been fooled by a showing of oil in an ordinary farm well, and by a generous seepage into a running stream some distance away. Not until a considerable sum had been spent in actual drilling operations, however, did those seepages diminish sufficiently to excite suspicion sufficiently, in fact, to induce the crew to pump the water well dry.

This done, an amazing fraud had been discovered. It had been found that the vendor of the land had removed the rock curbing and behind it had packed a liberal quant.i.ty of petroleum-soaked cotton waste. Naturally, when the well had been walled up again and permitted to resume its natural level, the result was all that the unscrupulous owner could have expected.

The creek seepage had turned out to be equally counterfeit, but even more ingeniously contrived. It had manifested itself where a stratum of clean white sand, underlaid with clay, outcropped at the foot of a high bank. In the undergrowth, quite a way back from the stream, tardy investigation disclosed that a hole had been dug down to that layer of sand and into the hole had been poured several barrels of "crude." The earth from the digging had been removed and the hole had been cunningly covered up. Naturally, the oil from this reservoir had followed the sand stratum and--the resultant phenomenon at the water's edge had been well calculated to excite even the coldest-blooded observer. It had excited Henry Nelson to such an extent that he had bought not only this farm, but a lot of other farms. And Nelson was shrewd. Oh, it was a great joke! The whole mid-continent field rocked with laughter at it.

Nelson, senior, returned from Tulsa bull-mad, and he came without the money he had expected to get. What went on in his office that morning after he sent for his son none of the bank's employees ever knew, but they could guess, for the rumblings of the old man's rage penetrated even the mahogany-paneled walls.

CHAPTER XXIV

Gray had once told Barbara Parker that there was no one quite like him--a remark more egotistical in the sound than in the meaning.

Unusual in many ways he probably was, but, like most men, the discovery that his proudest virtues were linked with vices of which he was ashamed struck him as extraordinary. As if nature were not forever aiming at a balance.

In spite of the fact that he was impulsive, headstrong, swift in most things, this girl possessed the unique faculty of rendering him acutely self-conscious, and it annoyed him the more, therefore, to find how timorous he could be in putting her feelings to the test. That was the one thing he could never quite summon courage to do. She was so young, so cool, so disconcertingly straightforward that, in contrast, his own age appeared the greater, and his many counterfeit qualities were thrown into uglier relief.

Then, too, her answer meant so much that fear of refusal became an actual torture, and the mere thought of it left his arrogant spirit strangely humble. To a man in his vengeful mood, to a man whipped by one savage purpose, love had come as a blessed relief; and, in consequence, anger at his indecision was the greater. Sometimes he told himself that he deserved to lose her.

One such occasion was after he had taken her out to the Avenger lease.

There was more than one well by this time; Avenger Number Two and Three and Four were going down, and offsetting the first Avenger were three of Nelson's rigs. "Bob" studied the situation briefly, then, with a dubious shake of her head, she announced: "You are taking a big risk, Mr. Gray."

"You mean these new holes may come dry? Of course, but I believe in crowding my luck. I don't know any other way to work."

"You _have_ been lucky, haven't you?" She stared at him with a detached, impersonal interest. "Everything is coming your way, even down in the Ranger district."

"Oh, I have my share of troubles. I lost a crooked hole, recently--had to skid the derrick and start over. Then a pair of chaintongs was dropped into another hole--"

"That makes an expensive fishing job."

"The worst ever."

"Somebody must have it in for you." When Gray nodded, "Bob's" face lit up with surprise. "Really. Do you suspect someone in particular?"

"I know."

"How interesting." After a moment had pa.s.sed and he had explained no further, the girl went on: "Everybody is talking about you and your success. They say you have the golden touch."

"That is a good reputation to enjoy; but this country is full of fellows who came here knowing as little about oil as I knew and who have accomplished more sensational results. I've come up like a rocket, to be sure; it remains to be seen whether I shall fall like a stick."

"You won't fall."

"Do you really believe that?" The inquiry was eagerly put. "I'd trust your intuition, Miss--"Bob." Sometimes I have moments of uneasiness, for, you see, I'm drilling more wells than I should. It is double or quits, you understand? If my luck breaks, so do I."

"You have always impressed me as a--a man of destiny. I think fate has selected you as an instrument with which to do big things. That's why I'm always a bit overawed by you."

"Overawed?" Gray laughed. "Why, I feel the same with you. If you knew how little I am, how little it all signifies, except as a means to an end. If you only knew what it is that I want so much more than oil, or money, or--"

"I thought you were like all the others here--absorbed only in the game."

"I was, at first. I had reason to be; a very great reason, I a.s.sure you. Then I saw something far more desirable than fortune, far more absorbing than--than the motive that brought me here. Some days, like today, I think I'm going to win it, then again I grow faint-hearted."

"Faint-hearted? _You?_" There was an elaborate skepticism in "Bob's"

tone, but as the meaning of Gray's ardent gaze struck home to her, she turned her head with a lightly affected laugh. She was coloring, but she knew that her companion's agitation was so much greater than hers that he did not notice it.

"Fair lady," he said, a bit uncertainly, "you multiply my courage tenfold, and I shall retain the guerdon of your faith. But we swashbuckling fellows are proud; we must come as victors or not at all, and I am anything but victorious, yet. I've had many a fall, and my armor is dented in a dozen places. I have a record of failures that only a lasting success can wipe out. When, if ever, that record is wiped out, why--my tongue shall be my heart's amba.s.sador." This was the boldest speech that Gray had ever permitted himself.

Never had he felt "Bob" to be so close to him as on this day, and in consequence he made of it a festival. He played the lover with a respectful ardor, doubly thrilling by reason of its restraint, and that night it was not Henry Nelson's face that lingered last in his memory.

He wondered, before he fell asleep, if he had acted wisely in letting slip his hour. Opportunity has a fickle way of jilting those who ignore her, and yet--how could he speak with honor to himself?

It must not be inferred that Henry Nelson endured with patience the blows that were rained upon him. On the contrary, he fought back with every weapon he could lay hands upon, and there were many. In this he was aided by Old Bell, for father and son were much alike and their friction had been only such as results from the rubbing of two hard bodies of identical composition; now that they were put under heavy pressure, they adhered and functioned without heat.

They were handicapped, however, in that they had the bank to think about, and, in times of frenzied finance such as this, a banking business is more of a liability than an a.s.set. Under normal conditions no single individual of Gray's limited resources could have caused them more than temporary annoyance; but in the midst of a speculative frenzy, in a time of vast "paper profits" and overnight losses, at an hour when they themselves were overextended and the financial fabric of the whole oil industry was stretched to a point of inflation where a pin p.r.i.c.k was apt to cause complete collapse, the feat of warding off a lance in the hands of a destructive enemy was one that kept them in a constant state of nervous panic.

To make matters worse, the crest of the wave had pa.s.sed, the boom was nearly over, and money was no longer easy. Outside investors were cooling; mysterious and powerful influences were at work, and there were rumors of a break in the price of crude. Meanwhile, so far as the Nelsons were concerned, it was necessary to pour a steady stream of dollars into the earth in order to save that which had been accomplished at immense cost, and such oil as their producing wells gave forth was swallowed up in other holes. It became, with them, a problem of how to hold on, how to finance from day to day until production returns overtook exploitation expense--a problem that put gray hairs in their heads and lines about their eyes. They were forced to many expedients.