Buddy's booted legs were thrown high, he was tossed aside like a thing of paper, but blind, half stunned, he scrambled back to his post. By this time the whole structure of the derrick was rocking to the mad gyrations of the bull wheel; the giant spool was spinning with a speed that threatened to send it flying, like the fragments of a bursting bomb, but the youth understood dimly the danger of stopping it too suddenly--to fetch up that plunging weight at the cable end might snap the line, collapse the derrick, "jim" the well. Buddy weaved dizzily in his tracks; nevertheless, his hand was steady, and he applied a gradually increasing pressure to the brake. Nor did he take his eyes from his task until the drum had ceased revolving and the runaway bailer hung motionless in the well.

When he finally looked about it seemed to him that he had lived a long time and was very old. Gray lay motionless where he had fallen, and his body was twisted into a shockingly unnatural posture. He was bleeding.

Allie Briskow was bending over him. Other dim, dreamlike figures were swarming out of the gloom and into the radiance of the derrick lights; there was a far-away clamor of shouting voices. Buddy Briskow felt himself growing deathly sick.

They carried Gray to the bunk house, and his limbs hung loosely, his head lolled in a manner terrifying to Buddy and his sister. As they stumbled along beside the group, the girl cried:

"Oh, my G.o.d! Oh, my G.o.d!" She repeated the cry over and over again in a voice strange to her brother's ears.

"It--it wasn't my fault," he told her, hoa.r.s.ely. "I aimed to save him."

"You killed him!"

"He ain't--" Buddy choked and clung to her. "He's just stunned like. He ain't--that!" The youth was amazed when Allie turned and cursed him with oaths that he himself seldom ventured to employ.

But Gray was not dead. Buddy's blow had well-nigh broken his neck, and he had suffered a further injury to his head in falling; nevertheless, he responded to such medical aid as they could supply, and in time he opened his eyes. His gaze was dull, however, and for a long while he lay in a sort of coma, quite as alarming as his former condition. They brought him to at last long enough to acquaint him with what had happened, and although it was plain that he understood their words only dimly, he ordered the work resumed.

When for a second time he lapsed into semiconsciousness, it was Allie Briskow who put his orders into execution. "You ain't doing any good standing around staring at him and whispering. Bring in that well, as fast as ever you can, and bring it in _big_. Now, get out and leave him to me."

Buddy was the last to go. He inquired, miserably: "Honest, he ain't hurt bad, is he? You don't think--"

"Get out!"

"He won't--die? Ain't no chance of him doin' that, is there?"

"If he does, I'll--" The speaker's face was ashen, but her eyes blazed.

"I'll fix you, Buddy Briskow. I will, so help me G.o.d!"

It was late that night when the well came in. It came with a rush and a roar, drenching the derrick with a geyser of muddy water and driving both crew and spectators out into the gloom. Up, up the column rose, spraying itself into mist, and from its iron throat issued a sound unlike that of any other phenomenon. It was a hoa.r.s.e, rumbling bellow, growing in volume and rising in pitch second by second until it finally attained a shrieking crescendo. Ten thousand safety valves had let go, and they steadily gathered strength and shrillness as they functioned.

A shocking sound it became, a sound that carried for miles, rocking the air and stunning the senses. It beat upon the eardrums, pierced them; men shouted at each other, but heard their own voices only faintly.

Calvin Gray had recovered his senses sufficiently to understand the meaning of that uproar, and he tried to get up, but Allie held him down upon his bed. She was still struggling with him when her brother burst into the house, shouting:

"It's a ga.s.ser, Mr. Gray! Biggest I ever seen."

"Gas?" the latter mumbled, indistinctly. "Isn't there any--oil?" His words were almost like a whisper because of the noise.

"Not yet. May be later. Say, she's a h.e.l.ler, ain't she? I'll bet she's makin' twenty million feet--"

"Ga.s.ser's no good."

"Can't tell yet. We gotta shut her down easy so she don't blow the casing out--run wild on us, understand?" Buddy was still breathless, but he plunged out the door and back into that sea of sound.

With a tragic intensity akin to wildness, Gray stared up into Allie Briskow's face. "Worthless, eh? And they told me ten thousand barrels."

He carried a shaking hand to his bandaged head and tried vainly to collect his wits. "What's matter?" he queried, thickly. "Everything whirling--sick--"

"You had an accident, but it's all right; all right--No, no! Please lie still."

"Running wild, eh? Tha's what hurts my head so. Blown the casing out--Bad, isn't it? Sometimes they run wild for weeks, years--ruin everything." He tried again to rise, then insisted, querulously: "Goto get oil in this well! I've got to! Last chance, Allie. Got to get ten thousand barrels!"

"Please! You mustn't--" Allie had her strong hands upon his shoulders; she was arguing firmly but as gently as possible under the circ.u.mstances, when something occurred so extraordinary, so unexpected, as to paralyze her. Of a sudden the interior of the dim-lit, canvas-roofed shack was illuminated as if by a searchlight, and she turned her head to see that the whole out-of-doors was visible and that the night itself had turned into day.

With a cry that died weakly amid the chaos of sound beating over her, the girl ran to the window and looked out. What she beheld was a nightmare scene. The well was afire. It had exploded into flame. Where, a moment before, it had been belching skyward an enormous stream of gaseous vapor, all but invisible except at the casing head, now it was a monstrous blow torch, the flaming crest of which was tossed a hundred feet high. Nothing in the nature of a conflagration could have been more awe-inspiring, more confounding to the faculties than that roaring column of consuming fire. It was a thing incredibly huge, incredibly furious, incredibly wild. Human figures, black against its glare, were flying to safety, near-by silhouettes were flinging their arms aloft and dashing backward and forward; faces upturned to it were white and terrified. The scattered mesquite stood against the night like a wall, spotted with inky shadows, and, above, the heavens resembled a boiling caldron.

It was a h.e.l.lish picture; it remained indelibly fixed upon Allie Briskow's mind. As she looked on in horrid fascination, she saw the derrick change into a latticelike tower of flame, saw its upper part begin slowly to crumble and disintegrate. The force with which the gas issued blew the blaze high and held it dancing, tumbling in mid-air, a phenomenon indescribably weird and impressive. The men who stood nearest bent their heads and shielded their faces from the heat.

Allie tore her eyes away from the spectacle finally. She turned back to the bed, then she halted, for it was empty. The door, still ajar from Buddy's headlong exit, informed her whence her patient had gone, and she flew after him.

She found him not half a dozen paces away. In fact, she stumbled over his prostrate body. With an amazon's strength, she gathered him into her arms, then staggered with him back to his couch, and as she strained him to herself she loudly called his name. Amid that demoniac din, amid the shrieking of those million devils, freed from the black chasms of the rock, her voice was as feeble as the wail of a sick child.

When she had laid her inert burden upon the bed, Allie knelt and took Gray's head upon her bosom. Then, for the first time, those forces imprisoned deep within her being ran wild, and under the red glare of that flaming geyser she kissed his hair, his eyes, his lips. Over and over again she kissed them with the hungry pa.s.sion of a woman starved.

CHAPTER XXVI

A subdued but continuous whispering irritated Calvin Gray. When it persisted, minute after minute, he opened his eyes, asking himself, dully, why it was that people couldn't let a fellow sleep. He lay, for some time, trying to recognize his unfamiliar surroundings; oddly enough, he could not discover the origin of that low-pitched murmur, since there was n.o.body in his bedroom. Evidently he had slept too hard, for his eyes were heavy, his vision was distorted, and an unaccustomed la.s.situde bore down his body and stupefied his brain. A thousand indistinct memories were moving about in the penumbral borderland of consciousness, but they refused to take shape. They would emerge into the light presently, of course. Meanwhile, it was restful to remain in this state of semi-stupefaction. He was pretty tired.

That whispering, he realized after a while, was nothing more than the monotonous murmur of rain upon a shingle roof, and the gurgle from dripping eaves. Oh yes! It had been pouring for several days; raining buckets, barrels--Ten thousand barrels a day!

Yonder was something familiar; a patent, spring rocking-chair. Gray knew it well. It creaked miserably when you sat in it, and when you got up to look at diamond rings it snapped its jaws at you like an alligator. Odd that they'd let an alligator into the Ajax Hotel.

Nelson's doings, probably. Always up to some deviltry, that Nelson.

But, thank G.o.d, the fire was out, and that ear-splitting racket that hurt his head had changed into the soothing patter of raindrops. There couldn't be any fire with ten thousand barrels of rain falling.

Gray closed his eyes and dozed briefly. But he had dreams; calamity haunted him; he awoke to the realization of some horror. Slowly his brain began to function, then more swiftly, until, like a flood released, memory returned. He groaned aloud.

Allegheny Briskow appeared out of nowhere and laid a soothing hand upon his brow. When she saw the light of sanity in his eyes, her face brightened and she cried, eagerly:

"You're coming around all right, aren't you?"

"Ten thousand barrels!" he mumbled. "They said it would be a big well and I counted on it."

"Don't try to think--"

"But it came in a ga.s.ser. I remember it all now--nearly all. I--I'm about ruined, I guess."

"No, no!"

"It caught fire."

"You mustn't talk. Everything is all right--all right, honestly. I'll tell you everything, but just you rest now until Buddy comes." There was magnetism to the girl's touch and comfort in her voice.

It was some time later that Gray opened his eyes and spoke in a more natural voice, saying, "How do I happen to be here in your house, Allie?"

"We brought you over at daylight. Buddy's gone for a doctor, but he'll be back." The girl averted her face quickly and moved toward the window.

"I remember being hurt in some way--derrick fell on me, or something.

Then the well caught fire. What time is it?"

"It's afternoon. About four o'clock. Buddy 'll be back--" Allie's voice caught queerly. "He'll get back somehow."