Of course, the Franklins were as anxious as any one to see how matters would turn out. Father and son were working for the company and doing their best to hurry matters along. d.i.c.k Rover was also on hand daily, consulting with Ogilvie and his a.s.sistants to make sure that everything was going right.

"These two wells are going to cost us about seventy thousand dollars,"

Jack's father confided to him. "It's a mint of money, isn't it?" and he smiled slightly.

"It certainly is, Dad. Especially if the wells don't pan out."

"Well, we've got to take what comes. You must remember this is the land of luck--good or bad."

At last Ogilvie announced that they were getting to the point where the first well would soon be shot off. There were some indications of oil, although not as strong as Mr. Fitch had hoped. The oil expert had put up his five thousand dollars in the company which had been formed, so he was almost as anxious as those who had larger sums invested.

"Here's news for you!" shouted Andy, bursting in on the others the next noon. "What do you know about this? Say, I guess those fellows are going to catch it all right enough!" and he began to dance around the floor.

"What are you talking about, Andy?" demanded his brother.

"They say the well on the Lorimer Spell claim has run dry!"

"Run dry!" came from the others.

"Yes, run dry--or next door to it! They got only fifteen barrels the day before yesterday, and yesterday they got not more than three."

"You don't mean it!" exclaimed Jack. "Who told you this?"

"One of the men who worked there. Carson Davenport was so mad that when the man said something to him about it he fired him. The man said he was coming over here to look for a job--that he was sure the whole thing was petering out."

The news soon circulated, and d.i.c.k Rover was so interested that he went off the next day to Columbina to ascertain the truth.

"It's so, all right enough," he said, on returning. "They didn't get more than a barrel or so to-day. It has certainly gone back on them. Of course, they can bore the well deeper. But I guess Mr. Fitch was right.

He said that there was more or less surface oil--that they hadn't tapped any real vein or pocket."

The day before the first of the wells on the Franklin farm was to be shot off the Rover boys went to Columbina on an errand to one of the stores. Just as they were coming out of this establishment they saw an automobile dash through the mud on the way to the railroad station.

Behind it came another automobile filled with a number of men, all yelling wildly for those in the first automobile to stop.

"h.e.l.lo, something is going on!" exclaimed Jack.

"Let's go after them and see what's doing," suggested Fred.

The others were willing, and all set off on a run down the main thoroughfare of the town. As they ran they heard the distant whistle of a locomotive.

"I guess the crowd in the first auto want to catch that three-o'clock express," remarked Fred.

"Yes, and evidently the second crowd want to stop them," returned Andy.

The excitement had attracted the attention of a number of people, and a crowd of a dozen or more followed the boys to the railroad station, all wondering what was the matter.

As soon as the first automobile reached the railroad platform a man sprang from the car, holding a Gladstone bag in one hand and a suitcase in the other. He looked back, and then made a wild dash for the train, which was just rolling into the station.

"Look! It's Carson Davenport!" exclaimed Jack.

"And see who are after him--Tate, Jackson and three or four other men!"

"Stop, Davenport!" yelled one of the men. "Stop or I'll shoot!" and he flourished a revolver, and another man in the crowd did the same. Then the bunch jumped from the second automobile and dashed pell-mell toward the train.

CHAPTER x.x.x

THE NEW WELL--CONCLUSION

Carson Davenport was halfway up the steps of the car when Jake Tate and another man hauled him backward to the station platform.

"They've got him!" exclaimed Jack, as he and his cousins, along with the rest of the gathering crowd, came closer.

"Hi! Hi! Let me alone!" yelled Davenport. "Don't shoot! What is the meaning of this, anyway?"

"You know well enough what it means!" bellowed Tate, still clutching him by the arm. "You come back here. You are not going to take that train or any other just yet."

"And you're not going to carry off that bag, either," put in Jackson, as he wrenched the Gladstone away.

By this time the crowd completely surrounded Carson Davenport, and the pistols which had been drawn were speedily thrust out of sight. The oil well promoter was pushed in the direction of the little railroad station, and in the midst of this excitement the train pulled out.

"What's the rumpus about, anyway?" exclaimed one man in the crowd.

"Never mind what it's about," broke in Tate hastily. "This is our affair."

"That's right--maybe we had better keep it to ourselves," muttered Jackson.

"I don't believe in shielding him," cried one man who had chased Davenport and who wore several soldier's medals on his vest. "He's a swindler, and it's best everybody knew it. He was on the point of lighting out for parts unknown with all the money that was put into his oil wells up on the Spell ranch."

"Is that right?" burst out another man.

"It is. And Tate and Jackson know it as well as I do. I guess Davenport came to the conclusion that those wells he was putting down were no good, and rather than sink any more money into them he was going to run off with it."

"I wasn't running off with anything," declared Carson Davenport. "I was going to put the money into the bank at Wichita Falls. I had a perfect right to do that," and as he spoke he glared at Tate and Jackson.

"Say, if you're going to talk that way, I won't stand in with you any longer!" cried Jackson, in a rage. "That money is going to stay right here, where I and all the rest of us can keep our eyes on it!"

"That's right--don't let him get away with a dollar of it!" burst out another man in the crowd.

"We'd better examine this bag first and make sure that we've got what we came after," declared the man who wore the medals on his vest.

Davenport tried to demur, but none of the crowd would listen to him.

Although the Gladstone bag was locked, the oil well promoter was compelled to give up the key, and then the others looked over the contents of the bag.

"Twenty-six thousand dollars here," announced Tate, as he counted the money in the presence of the others.

"What's this package?" demanded the man who wore the medals. "h.e.l.lo!

Look here!" he exclaimed an instant later, after he had glanced at one of several doc.u.ments held together by a rubber band.