Chapter III: The Drilling (1)

I

Once more the valleys and gorges of Guadalupe Grade resounded to the flying echoes of honking horns. This time it was not one car, but a whole fleet of them, a dozen seven-ton trucks, broad and solid, with broad and solid double wheels, and trailers on behind, that carried even more tons. The first load towered high, a big stationary engine, held in place by heavy timbers bolted fast at the sides; that truck went carefully round the curves, you bet! Behind it came the “mud-hogs” and the “draw-works”; and then the “string” of drilling tools, hollow tubes of the best steel, that were screwed end to end and went down into the earth, a mile or more, if need be. These tubes extended over the end of the trailers, where red flags waved in warning; on the short curves they swept the road, and if you met a car coming in the opposite direction, you had to stop while the other car crept carefully by; if there was not room enough, the other car would have to back up to a place where the road was straighter. All this required continuous clamor of horns; you would have thought some huge flock of prehistoric birds—did the pterodactyls make noises?—had descended upon Guadalupe Pass, and were hopping along, crying: “Honk! Honk! Honk!”

What they were really saying was: “Dad is waiting for us! Dad has signed his lease, and the derrick is under way, and his ‘rig’ must be on time! Clear the road!” Dad would not trust to railroads for a rush job like this; they switched your stuff onto sidings, and you spent a week telephoning and interviewing dumb officials. But when you hired motor-trucks, you owned them for the time being, and they came right through. There was insurance to cover all possible accidents—including the value of any man you might chance to send rolling down a mountain-side in a Ford car!

So here came the dozen valiant tooters, toiling slowly up the grade, at far less than the ordained speed of fifteen miles per hour. Their radiators were hissing with steam, and every mile or so they would have to stop and cool off. But they got to the summit all right; and then came the slow crawl downwards, a man going ahead with a red flag, warning other cars into safe pockets on the road, to wait till the whole fleet had got by. So they got out of the pass, and onto the straight road, where they could go flying like any other cars; then it was a mighty roaring and a jolly sight. “Honk! Honk! Get out of the way! Dad is waiting!”

Perched on top of the drilling tools were young fellows in blue-jeans and khaki, giving abundant evidence that their last well had not been a dry hole, but had given its due yield of smeary treasures. However, they had got their faces clean, and they met the sunny landscape with no less sunny smiles. They sang songs, and exchanged jollifications with the cars they passed, and threw kisses to the girls in the ranch-houses and the filling-stations, the orange-juice parlors and the “good eats” shacks. Two days the journey took them, and meantime they had not a care in the world; they belonged to Old Man Ross, and it was his job to worry. First of all things he saw that they got their pay-envelopes every other Saturday night—and that the envelopes contained one dollar per day more than anybody else nearby was getting; moreover, you got this pay, not only while you were drilling, but while you were sitting on top of a load of tools, flying through a paradise of orange-groves at thirty miles an hour, singing songs about the girl who was waiting for you in the town to which you were bound.

II

Dad had signed up with the man on the North slope, Mr. Bankside, a gentleman who knew what he wanted, and didn’t waste your time. It was not so close to the discovery well, therefore Dad would have to pay only a sixth royalty, and a bonus of five thousand dollars on the two and one-half acres.

Dad and Bunny called at the offices of the Sunset Lumber Company, and had a very special private interview with the president of this concern. Mr. Ascott was a heavy gentleman with flushed cheeks and a manner of strenuous cordiality; he rumpled Bunny’s hair, and swapped cigars in gold-foil, and discussed the weather and the prospects of the new field, so that you’d have thought he and Dad were life-long chums. Until at last Dad got down to business, and said that he positively had to have the lumber for a derrick delivered on the ground within three days; whereupon Mr. Ascott threw up his hands and declared that such an order could not be filled for God Almighty himself. The demand for derrick material had simply emptied all the yards, and orders were piling up a score a day. But Dad interrupted—he knew all that, but this was something special, he had jist got himself into a contract with a big forfeit posted at the bank, and he didn’t believe in steel derricks, but the lumber men would sure have to help him, unless they wanted to lose him for good. He wanted to place an order for half a dozen more derricks, to be delivered in the course of the next three months; and moreover, Mr. Ascott must understand that this well Dad proposed to drill was going to extend the field, and lead to new developments, and a big increase in the lumber business, so it was really a public service Dad was performing, and they must all stand together and help him. Moreover, Dad was forming a little syndicate to handle a part of this first well—jist a quiet affair for a few people that knew a good thing when they saw it, and would appreciate getting in on the ground floor; and Mr. Ascott knew Dad for a man of his word, and no piker.

Mr. Ascott said that yes, he did; and Dad said that he had come to that field to give most of his time to it, and he was a-goin’ to make a big thing there, and he wanted to get a little organization together—they would all stand by one another, and that was the way to make things go in this world. Mr. Ascott said that of course, co-operation was the word in modern business, he granted that; and he wrinkled up his forehead, and studied some papers on his desk, and did some figuring on a pad, and asked at just what hour Dad had to have that lumber. And Dad explained that his cement-man had the cellar and the foundations half done, and his boss-carpenter was a-gettin’ a crew together—in a matter like this he wouldn’t trust no contractor. It would suffice if Mr. Ascott would have the sills there by Thursday night.

Mr. Ascott said they were having a lot of trouble because the roads about Prospect Hill were in such bad condition; and Dad said he knew that, and something would have to be done about it quick, he was jist a-goin’ to see the county superintendent of roads. So then Mr. Ascott said all right, he would do his part; and Dad invited him to come down and look the field over, and let Dad put him onto a few good things down there; and they shook hands, and Bunny had his hair rumpled again—something which in the course of business he had to pretend that he didn’t mind.

So that was that. And as they got into their car and drove away, Dad repeated his maxim that grease is cheaper than steel. Dad meant by that, you must let people have a share of your profits, so they would become a part of your “organization,” and do quickly whatever you said. And meantime they had come to the office of the superintendent of roads, where they had another very special private interview. This official, Mr. Benzinger, a sharp little man with nose-glasses, was not dressed like a man of money, and Bunny knew it by the difference in the tone Dad took. There was no exchanging of gold-foil cigars, and no talk about the weather; but Dad got right down to business. He had come to Beach City to put through a job that would employ hundreds of men, and mean millions of dollars to the community; the question was, would the road authorities co-operate to make this possible.

Mr. Benzinger answered that of course, the authorities wanted to do everything to that end—it was the purpose for which they were in office; the trouble was that this “strike” at Prospect Hill had caught them without any funds for rush work. Dad said that might be, but there must be some way to handle such a situation, everybody’d ought to get together.

Mr. Benzinger hesitated, and asked just what it was that Mr. Ross wanted. So Dad explained that he was jist about to drill on such and such a tract, and he drew a little map showing the streets that he needed to have graded, and the holes filled up with crushed rock, so his sills could be delivered on Thursday night. Mr. Benzinger said that might be arranged, perhaps, and asked his secretary, the only other person in the room, to step out and ask Mr. Jones to come in; Dad caught the meaning of that, and as soon as the secretary was gone, he pulled a little roll of bills out of his pocket, remarking that Mr. Benzinger would have to work overtime on the matter, and be put to extra trouble and expense, and it was only fair that Dad should make it up to him; he hoped Mr. Benzinger would understand that they would have many dealings in future, as Dad believed in taking care of his friends. Mr. Benzinger put the bills quietly into his pocket, and said that he understood fully, and the county authorities wished to give every help to men who came in to build up the community and its industries; Dad might count upon it that the work on those streets would start in the morning.

So then they shook hands, and Dad and Bunny went out, and Dad told Bunny that he must never under any circumstances mention what he had seen in that office, because every public official had enemies who were trying to take his job away, and would try to represent it that Dad had paid him a bribe. But of course it wasn’t anything of the sort; it was the man’s business to keep the roads in repair, and what Dad gave him was jist a little tip, by way of thanks, so to speak. You wouldn’t feel decent not to give him something, because you were going to make a lot of money yourself, and these here poor devils had to live on a beggar’s salary. No doubt Mr. Benzinger had a wife and children at home, and they were in debt; maybe the wife was sick, and they had no way to pay the doctor. The man would have to stay late at his office, and go out tonight and hustle up some men to do that job, and maybe get scolded by his superiors for having acted without authority; the superiors were doubtless in the pay of some of the big companies, which didn’t want roads built except to leases of their own. There was all kinds of wires like that being pulled, said Dad, and you had to be on the watch every minute. Never imagine that you’d be allowed to come into a new place and take out several million dollars worth of wealth from the ground, and not have all kinds of fellers a-tryin’ to get it away from you!

That all sounded reasonable, and Bunny listened while Dad impressed his favorite lesson: take care of your money! Some day an accident might happen to Dad, and then Bunny would have the whole thing on his shoulders; so he could not begin too early to realize that the people he met would be trying, by devices more or less subtle, to get a hold of his money. Bunny, not thinking of opposing his father’s arguments, but merely getting things straight in his own mind, was moved to remark: “But Dad, you remember that boy Paul? He certainly wasn’t trying to get our money, for I offered him some, and he wouldn’t take it; he went away without my seeing him again.”

“Yes, I know,” said Dad; “but he told you his whole family is crazy, and he’s jist crazy a little different, that’s all.”

III

This was a moral problem which Bunny debated within himself: was Paul Watkins crazy, because of the way he behaved? If so, there must be a crazy streak in Bunny also, for he had been enormously impressed by Paul, and could not help thinking about him. He had paid a tribute to Paul’s sense of honor, by resolving that he, Bunny, would permit himself the luxury of not being a liar—not even in trivial things. Also, the meeting with Paul had caused Bunny to become suddenly aware what an easy time he was having in life. The very next morning, when he opened his eyes, lying in the deep soft mattress of the hotel-bed, with its heavy linen sheets so smooth and white, and its warm blankets, soft as fleece, and striped the color of ripe strawberries—at once his thought was: how had Paul slept that night, without shelter and without cover? Had he lain on the ground? But grandmother, if she saw you even sitting on the ground in the evening, would cry out that you would “catch your death!” And down in the spacious dining-room of the hotel, the thought of Paul without breakfast had quite ruined the taste of grape-fruit in crushed ice, and cereal and thick cream, and bacon and eggs, and wheat-cakes with maple syrup. Paul would be going hungry, because he was too proud to eat food until he had earned it; and some strange perversity caused Bunny, in the midst of comfort, to yearn toward this fierce anchorite who spurned the flesh!

The morning after the meeting at Mrs. Groarty’s, Bunny had sat under a palm-tree in front of the hotel, hoping that Paul would come by. Instead, there had come Mrs. Groarty and her husband, bringing Mr. Dumpery, and followed by Mr. and Mrs. Bromley, with their temporary friends the Jewish tailors. It was a deputation from the “medium lots,” explaining that they had continued their meeting until one o’clock that morning, and had decided to rescind their community agreement, and go each man for himself; now the “medium lots” wanted Dad to take their lease. Bunny told them that Dad was out in the field with the geologist; they might wait for him, but Bunny knew how emphatic Dad was about offset wells, so there was no chance of his taking a small lease.

After which Bunny took a seat on the bench next to Mrs. Groarty, for the purpose of finding out whether Paul had revealed himself to her. Bunny confessed to her that he had done something very wrong the previous evening; he had failed to lock the kitchen door after looking out on the porch. Following his program of telling the exact truth, he stated that somebody had gone into her kitchen and taken some food; Bunny had promised not to tell who it was, but it was someone who was very hungry, and Bunny had felt sorry about it. If Mrs. Groarty would let him—and he hauled out his little purse.

Mrs. Groarty was all aglow with pleasure at the delicacy of feeling of the aristocracy; she had quite fallen in love with this strange little fellow, who was so pretty to look at, with sensitive red lips like a girl’s, and at the same time had the manners of an elderly marquis, or something like that, as Mrs. Groarty had come to know such persons in moving pictures. She refused his money, at the same time thinking what a shame her own fortune had not been made earlier in life, so that her children could have worn such lovely clothes, and learned to express themselves with old-fashioned elegance!

Two or three days later, while Bunny was poking about the “field,” watching the interesting sights, he happened to pass the Groarty home, and saw the future oil-queen feeding her rabbits. “Oh, little boy!” she called; and when Bunny had come near, she said: “I had a letter from Paul.”

“Where is he?” cried Bunny, in excitement.

“The letter was mailed in San Paulo. But he says not to look for him, because he’s hitch-hiking, and he’ll be gone.”

“And how is he?”

“He says he’s all right and not to worry. The poor child, he sent me two-bits in stamps, to pay for that food he took! He says he earned the money—bless him!” Tears ran down the lady’s ample cheeks; and Bunny learned the difficult lesson that human nature is a complicated thing, so that the same fat lady can be at one moment a hyena of greed, and at the next a mater dolorosa.

These two sat down on a rabbit-hutch, and had a good talk. Bunny told Mrs. Groarty just how it had happened, and it was a relief to get it off his conscience. Mrs. Groarty in turn told him about the Watkins family, and how they had moved from Arkansas, traveling in the old fashion, by wagon, when Mrs. Groarty was a girl; before that, she had been driven, as a baby in arms, from the mountains of Tennessee. Their place at Paradise, in the San Elido country, was a goat-ranch, with a spring in a little rocky valley; there was only a couple of acres you could cultivate, and for part of that you had to pump irrigating water by hand. It was a desert country, and she didn’t see how they could possibly get along without Paul’s work; she would send them a little of her oil money, but she didn’t know whether Abel—that was her brother, Paul’s father—would take anything from her, he was so crazy with his religion.

Bunny asked whether he had always been a “roller”; and the other answered no, it was a notion he had taken up, just a few years ago. As for Mrs. Groarty, when she had married her present husband, three years back, she had found her home in the one true faith which had never changed through the ages; it was a comfortable faith, and let you alone, and you weren’t always getting crazy new notions and splitting up into sects. They had a lovely church in Beach City, and Father Patrick had such a kind heart and a big, splendid voice—had Bunny ever been to a Catholic service? Bunny said he hadn’t; and Mrs. Groarty might perhaps have found a handsome and wealthy convert, had it not been that she was just then being so sorely tempted by the powers of this world.

Yes—Satan had brought her there, and set her on a rabbit-hutch, and was showing her all the kingdoms of the earth! Right across the street, at number 5743 Los Robles Boulevard, the Couch Syndicate had set up a big tent, plastered with red signs, and there were automobiles driving up all day, with people to buy “units” at ten dollars each. Mrs. Groarty’s group of “medium lots” had not yet leased, she explained; they had several offers—the best from Sliper and Wilkins, and had Bunny ever heard anything about these operators? And was Dad really quite decided that the best oil prospects lay on the north side? Mrs. Groarty and her husband were thinking of putting their bonus money, when they got it, into some units of “Eureka Pete”—the Eureka Petroleum Company—which was promising a quick drilling on the north slope. And Bunny found himself suddenly recollecting Dad’s warning: “Look out for people who mistake you for an oil well, and try to put you on the pump!”

IV

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.

V

It was cool at the beach in summer, and back at Lobos River it was hot as the original fires; so the family was going to move. Dad wasted very little time on such a matter; he dropped in at a real estate agent’s, and asked for the best furnished house in town, and drove out to an imitation palace on the ocean-front, and looked it over, and went back to the office and signed a six month’s lease for twenty-five hundred dollars.

Outside, this house was plaster applied to chicken-wire, or something that looked like it; inside, it was shiny like the home of Mrs. Groarty, only it was imitation mahogany instead of imitation oak. There was a big entrance hall, and a drawing-room on one side, and on the other a dining-room, with elaborate up-to-date “built-in” features. To these the owner had added furniture regardless of expense or period: spindley-legged gilded French things, done in flowered silk; mid-century American black walnut, with roses and rosettes; black Chinese teak-wood, carved with dragons. There were statues of nude ladies, in highly polished marble, and also a marble clergyman in a frock coat and a string tie. Upstairs were six bed-rooms, each done in a different color by a lady from the best department-store in town. Some people might have found the place lacking in the elements of home, but Bunny never thought of such a thing—he had learned to be happy in a hotel room, with the use of the lobby. All his life that he could remember, home had been a place which you rented, or bought with the idea of holding it as a real estate speculation. As the Indians in the Hudson Bay country kill a moose in the winter-time, and move to the moose, so Dad started an oil well, and moved to the well.

First came Mr. Eaton, the tutor; he was used to getting a telephone call, informing him where the carcase of the moose was to be found. He would pack his two suit-cases and his steamer-trunk, and take the train or the motor-bus to his pupil. He was a rather delicate young man, very retiring, with pale blue eyes, and pockets that bagged because he put books in them. He had been engaged with the express restriction that oil was to come before culture; in other words, he was to teach his pupil at such times as Dad was not doing it. Dad was not quite clear on the subject of book knowledge; at times he would say it was all “bunk,” but at other times he would pay it a tribute of embarrassment. Yes, he was a “roughneck,” of course, and Bunny would have to know more than he; but at the same time he was jealous of that knowledge, troubled by fear it might be something he would disapprove of. He was right in this, for Mr. Eaton told Bunny quite shamelessly that there were things in the world more important than oil.

Then came the family limousine, with grandmother and Aunt Emma, driven by Rudolph, who was a combination of chauffeur and gardener, and would put on a frock coat and be a butler at parties. Beside him on the front seat rode Sing, the Chinese cook, who was too precious to be trusted to motor-bus or train. Nellie, the house-maid, could be more easily replaced, so she brought herself. A truck brought the trunks and miscellaneous belongings—Bunny’s bicycle and Aunt Emma’s hat-boxes, and grandmother’s precious works of art.

Old Mrs. Ross was seventy-five years of age, and her life had been that of a ranch-woman, in the days before automobiles and telephones and machinery. She had slaved in poverty, and raised a family, and seen one daughter die in child-birth, and a son of typhoid in the Spanish war, and another son as a drunkard; now “Jim” was all she had left, and he had made a fortune late in his life, and lifted her to leisure at the end of hers. You might have been a long time guessing what use she would make of it. Out of a clear sky she announced that she was going to be a painter! For sixty years, it appeared, she had cherished that dream, while washing dishes, and spanking babies, and drying apricots and muscat grapes.

So now, wherever they lived, grandmother had a spare room for a “studio.” A wandering artist had taught her the handling of crude and glaring colors. This artist had painted desert sunsets, and the mountains and rocky coasts of California; but old Mrs. Ross never painted anything she had ever seen. What she was interested in was gentility—parks, and lawns, and shady avenues with ladies in hoop-skirts, and gentlemen with wide-bottomed trousers. Her masterpiece was six feet by four, and always hung in the dining-room of the rented home; it showed in the background an extremely elegant two-story house, with two-storied porches having pillars on which you could see every curlicue. In front ran a circular drive, with a fountain in the middle, and water which was very plainly splashing. Around the drive rolled a victoria—or maybe it was a landau or a barouche—with a lady and a gentleman being driven by a Negro coachman. Behind the vehicle raced a little dog, and playing on the lawn were a boy, and a girl in wide skirts, having a hoop in her hand. Also there were iron deer on the lawn—you never got tired of looking at this picture, because you could always find something new in it; Dad would show it to visitors, and say: “Ma painted that; ain’t she a wonder, for an old lady seventy-five?” Agents who had come with leasing propositions, or lawyers with papers to be gone over, or foremen coming for orders, would examine it carefully, and never disagreed with Dad’s judgment.

Aunt Emma was the widow of the son who had died a drunkard; and to her also prosperity had come late in life. Dad set no limits—the ladies charged anything they wanted, and even drew checks on Dad’s account. So Aunt Emma went to the fanciest shops and got herself raiment, and went out to uphold the prestige of the Ross family in the town or city where they were staying. There were ladies’ clubs, and Aunt Emma would attend their functions, and listen to impressive personalities who rose and said, “Madam Chairman,” and read papers on the Feminine Element in Shakespeare’s Plays, and the Therapeutic Value of Optimism, and What Shall We Do for Our Youth? Once every month the two ladies gave a tea-party, and Dad always managed to be “spudding in” a new well, or seeing to a difficult job of “cementing off” on that afternoon.

Aunt Emma particularly patronized the drug-store counters where they sold cosmetics, and she knew by name the fashionable young ladies who presided there; also she knew the names of the latest products they handled, pronouncing these names in quite naive and shameless American—“Roodge finn dee Theeayter” and “Pooder der Reeze ah lah corbeel flurry”—which, it must be added, was the only way she could have got the sales-ladies to know what she meant. Her dressing-table was covered with rows of delicate little boxes and jars and bottles, containing paints and powders and perfumes and beauty clays and enamels, and she alone knew what else. One of Bunny’s earliest memories was of Aunt Emma, perched on a chair, looking like an enlarged parokeet in a harness. She was only half dressed, paying no attention to him, because he was so little; so he observed how she was laced and strapped up in armor—tight corsets and dress-shields and side-garters and tightly laced little boots. She sat, erect and serious, putting things on her cheeks and eye-brows, and dabbing herself with little puffs of pink and white powder; and at the same time telling Bunny about her husband, deceased many years ago. He had had many virtues, in spite of his one tragic weakness; he had had a kind heart, so sweet and generous—“yes, yes,” said Aunt Emma, “he was a good little man; I wonder where he is now.” And then, dab, dab, she was patting the tears away from her cheeks and making them pink again!

VI

Far down in the ground, underneath the Ross-Bankside No. 1, a great block of steel was turning round and round. The under surface of it had blunt steel teeth, like a nutmeg-grater; on top of it rested a couple of thousand feet of steel tubing, the “drill-stem,” a weight of twenty tons pressing it down; so, as it turned, it ate into the solid rock, grinding it to powder. It worked in the midst of a river of thin mud, which was driven down through the center of the hollow tubing, and came up again between the outside of the tubing and the earth. The river of mud served three purposes: it kept the bit and the drill-stem from heating; it carried away the ground-up rock; and as it came up on the outside of the drill-stem, it was pressed against the walls of the hole, and made a plaster to keep the walls rigid, so that they did not press in upon the drill-stem. Up on the top of the ground was a “sump-hole,” of mud and water, and a machine to keep up the mixture; there were “mud-hogs,” snorting and puffing, which forced it down inside the stem under a pressure of 250 pounds to the square inch. Drilling was always a dirty business; you swam in pale grey mud until the well came in, and after that you slid in oil.

Also it was an expensive business. To turn those twenty tons of steel tubing, getting heavier every day as they got longer—that took real power, you want to know. When the big steam engine started pulling on the chain, and the steel gears started their racket, Bunny would stand and listen, delighted. Some engine, that! Fifty horsepower, the cathead-man would say; and you would imagine fifty horses harnessed to an old-fashioned turn-table with a pole, such as our ancestors employed to draw up water from a well, or to run a primitive threshing-machine.

Yes, it took money to drill an oil well out here in California; it wasn’t like the little short holes in the East, where you pounded your way down by lifting up your string of tools and letting them drop again. No siree, here you had to be prepared to go six or seven thousand feet, which meant from three hundred to three hundred and fifty joints of pipe; also casing, for you could not leave this hole very long without protection. There were strata of soft sand, with water running through, and when you got past these you would have to let down a cylinder of steel or wrought iron, like a great long stove pipe; joint after joint you would slide down, carefully rivetting them together, making a water-proof job; and when you had this casing all set in cement, you would start drilling with a smaller bit, say fourteen inches, leaving the upper casing resting firmly on a sort of shelf. So you would go, smaller and smaller, until, when you got to the oil-sands, your hole would have shrunk to five or six inches. If you were a careful man, like Dad, you would run each string of casing all the way up to the derrick-floor, so that in the upper part of the hole you would have four sets of casing, one inside the other.

All day and all night the engine labored, and the great chain pulled, and the rotary-table went round and round, and the bit ate into the rock. You had to have two shifts of men, twelve hours each, and because living quarters were scarce in this sudden rush, they kept the same bed warm all the time. A crew had to be on the job every moment, to listen and to watch. The engine must have plenty of water and gas and oil; the pump must be working, and the mud-river circulating, and the mixing-machine splashing, and the drill making depth at the proper rate. There were innumerable things that might go wrong, and some of them cost money, and some of them cost more money. Dad was liable to be waked up at any hour of the night, and he would give orders over the telephone, or perhaps he would slip into his clothes and drive out to the field. And next morning, at breakfast, he would tell Bunny about it; that fellow Dan Rossiger, the night-foreman, he sure was one balky mule; he jist wouldn’t make any time, and when you kicked, he said, “All right, if you want a ‘twist-off’.” And Dad had said, “‘Twist-off’ or no ‘twist-off,’ I want you to make time.” And so, sure enough, there was a “twist-off,” right away! Dad vowed that Dan had done it on purpose; there were fellows mean enough for that—and, of course, all they had to do was to speed up the engine.

Anyhow, there was your “twist-off”; which meant that you had to lift out every inch of your two thousand feet of pipe. You pulled it up, and unscrewed it, four joints at a time—“breaking out,” the men called that operation; each four joints, a “stand,” were stood up in the derrick, and the weary work went on. You couldn’t tell where the break was, until you got to it; then you screwed off the broken piece, and threw it away, and went to your real job, “fishing” for the remainder of your drill-stem, down in the hole. For this job you had a device called an “overshot,” which you let down with a cable; it was big and heavy, and went over the pipe, and caught on a joint when you pulled it up—something like an ice-man’s tongs. But maybe you got it over, and maybe you didn’t; you spent a lot of time jiggling it up and down—until at last she caught fast, and up came the rest of your stem! Then you unscrewed the broken piece, and put in a sound piece, and let it all back into the hole, one stand at a time, until you were ready to start again. But this time you went at the rate Dan Rossiger considered safe, and you didn’t nag at him for any more “twist-offs!”

Meantime Dad would be spending the day at his little office down in the business part of the town. There he had a stenographer and a bookkeeper, and all the records of his various wells. There came people who wanted to offer him new leases, and hustling young salesmen to show him a wonderful new device in the way of an “under-reamer,” or to persuade him that wrought casing lasts longer than cast steel, or to explain the model of a new bit, that was making marvelous records in the Palomar field. Dad would see them all, for they might “have something,” you never could be sure. But woe to the young man who hadn’t got his figures just right; for Dad had copies of the “logs” of every one of his wells, and he would pull out the book, and show the embarrassed young man exactly what he had done over at Lobos River with a Stubbs Fishtail number seven.

Then the postman would come, bringing reports from all the wells; and Dad would dictate letters and telegrams. Or perhaps the phone would ring—long distance calling Mr. Ross; and Dad would come home to lunch fuming—that fellow Impey over at Antelope had gone and broke his leg, letting a pipe fall on him: that chap with the black moustache, you remember? Bunny said, yes, he remembered; the one Dad had bawled out. “I fired him,” said Dad; “and then I got sorry for his wife and children, and took him back. I found that fellow down on his knees, with his head stuck between the chain and the bull-wheel—and he knew we had no bleeder-valve on that engine! Jist tryin’ to get out a piece of rope, he said—and his fingers jammed up in there! What’s the use a-tryin’ to do anything for people that ain’t got sense enough to take care of their own fingers, to say nothing of their heads? By golly, I don’t see how they ever live long enough to grow black moustaches on their faces!” So Dad would fuss—his favorite theme, the shiftlessness of the working-class whom he had to employ. Of course he had a purpose; drilling is a dangerous business at best, and Bunny must know what he was doing when he went poking about under a derrick.

There came a telegram from Lobos River; Number Two was stuck. First, they had lost a set of tools, and then, while they were stringing up for the fishing job, a “roughneck” had dropped a steel crowbar into the hole! They were down four thousand feet, and “fishing” is costly sport at that depth! Seemed like there was a jinx in that hole; they had “jammed” three times, and they were six weeks behind their schedule. Dad fretted, and he would call up the well every couple of hours all day, but nothing doing; they tried this device and that, and Dad phoned them to try something else, but in vain. The hole caved in on them, and they had to clean out and fish ahead, run after run. They had caught the tools and jarred them out, but the crowbar was still down there, wedged fast.

The third evening Dad said he guessed he’d have to run over to Lobos River; it was time to set a new casing anyhow, and he liked to oversee those cement fellows. Bunny jumped up, crying, “Take me, Dad!” And Dad said, “Sure thing!” Grandmother made her usual remark about Bunny’s education going to pot; and Dad made his usual answer, that Bunny would have all his life to learn about poetry and history—now he was going to learn about oil, while he had his father to teach him. Aunt Emma tried to get Mr. Eaton to say something in defense of poetry and history, but the tutor kept a discreet silence—he knew who held the purse-strings in that family! Bunny understood that Mr. Eaton didn’t mind about it; he was preparing a thesis that was to get him a master’s degree, and he used his spare time quite contentedly, counting the feminine endings in certain of the pre-Elizabethan dramatists.

VII

Well, they made the trip back to the old field; and Bunny remembered all the adventures of the last ride, the place where they had had lunch, and what the waitress had said, and the place where they had stopped for gas, and what the man had said, and the place where they had run into the “speed-cop.” It was like fishing—that is, for real fish, like you catch in water, not in oil wells; you remember where you got the big fish, and you expect another bite there. But the big fish always come at a new place, said Dad, and it was the same with “speed-cops.” A cop picked them up just outside Beach City, passing a speed-trap at forty-seven miles; and Dad grinned and chaffed the cop, and said he was glad he hadn’t been really going fast.

They got to Lobos River that evening; and there was the rig, fishing away—screwing the stands of pipe together and working down into the hole with some kind of grabbing device on the end, and then hauling up and unscrewing—stand after stand, fifty or sixty of them, one after another—until at last you got to the bottom one, only to find that you had missed your “fish!”

Well, Dad said his say, in tones that nobody could help hearing. If he couldn’t find men who would take care of their own bones, it was doubtless too much to hope they would take care of his property. They stood there, looking like a lot of school-boys getting a birching—though of course the “roughneck” who was wholly to blame had been turned loose on the road long ago.

There was a salesman from a supply house there with a patent device which he guaranteed would bring up the obstacle the first run; so they tried it, and left the device in the hole—it had held on too tight! Evidently there was a pocket down there, and the crowbar had got wedged crossways; so they’d have to try a small chunk of dynamite, said Dad. Ever listen to an explosion four thousand feet under the ground? Well, that was how they got the crowbar loose; and then they had a job of cleaning out, and drilling some more, and setting a casing to cover the damaged place in the hole.

Thus, day by day, Bunny got his oil lessons. He wandered about the field with Dad and the geologist and the boss driller, while they laid out the sites for future wells; and Dad took an envelope and pencil, and explained to Bunny why you place your wells on the four corners of a diamond, and not on the four corners of a square. You may try that out for yourself, drawing a circle about each well, to indicate the territory from which the oil is drained; you will see that the diamond shape covers the ground with less overlapping. Wherever you overlap, you are drilling two holes to get the same barrel of oil; and only a dub would do that.

They drove back to Beach City, and found that Bertie had come home. Bertie was Bunny’s sister, two years his senior, and she had been visiting the terribly fashionable Woodbridge Rileys, up north. Bunny tried to tell her about the fishing-job, and how things were going at Lobos River, but she was most cruelly cutting—described him as a “little oil gnome,” and said that his finger-nails were a “dead give-away.” It appeared that Bertie had become ashamed of oil; and this was something new, for of old she had been a good pal, interested in the business, and arguing with Bunny and bossing him as any older sister should. Bunny didn’t know what to make of it, but gradually he came to understand that this was a part of the fashionable education Bertie was getting at Miss Castle’s school.

Aunt Emma was to blame for this. She had granted Jim’s right to confine Bunny’s training to the making of money, but Bertie at least should be a young lady—meaning that she should learn how to spend the money which Dad and Bunny were going to make. So Aunt Emma got the name of the most expensive school for young female money-spenders, and from that time on the family saw little of Bertie; after school she went to visit her new rich friends. She couldn’t bring them to her home, there being no real butler—Rudolph was a “farm-hand,” she declared. She had picked up some wonderful new slang; if she didn’t like what you said, she would tell you that you were “full of prunes”—this was away back in history, you understand. She would give a pirouette and show off her fancy lingerie, with violet-colored ribbons in it; she would laugh gleefully: “Aren’t I a speedy young thing?”—and other phrases which caused grandmother to stare and Dad to grin. She would be pained by her father’s grammar: “Oh, Dad, _don’t_ say ‘jist’!” And Dad would grin again, and reply: “I been a-sayin’ it jist fifty-nine years.” But all the same, he began a-sayin’ it less frequently; which is how civilization progresses.

Bertie condescended to drive out to the field, and see the new derricks that were going up. They went for a walk, and whom should they meet but Mrs. Groarty, getting out of her elderly Ford car in front of her home. Bunny was naively glad to see her, and insisted upon introducing Bertie, who displayed her iciest manner, and, as they went on, scolded Bunny because of his horrid vulgar taste; he might pick up acquaintance with every sort of riff-raff if he chose, but certainly he need not make his sister shake hands with them! Bunny could not understand—he never did succeed in understanding, all his life long, how people could fail to be interested in other people.

He told Bertie about Paul, and what a wonderful fellow he was, but Bertie said just what Dad had said, that Paul was “crazy.” More than that, she became angry, she thought that Paul was a “horrid fellow,” she was glad Bunny hadn’t been able to find him again. That was an attitude which Bertie was to show to Paul all through Paul’s life; she showed it at the very first instant, and poor Bunny was utterly bewildered. But in truth, it was hardly reasonable to expect that Bertie, who was going to school in order to learn to admire money—to find out by intuition exactly how much money everybody had, and to rate them accordingly—should be moved to admiration by a man who insisted that you had no right to money unless you had earned it!