Boomer Page 4

  “This won't take long,” Muller said, “but you better take the buckboard back to the field, Bud. Somebody ought to be at the lease. I'll catch a ride out on one of Kurt Battle's freighters.”

  Bud Muller nodded. “Don't let Battle cheat you, just because tools and rig timbers are scarce.”

  “And watch the money,” Rhea said. “It's all we've got until we're spudded in.”

  The old man grinned, then tramped through the mud toward the supply building. Grant and Bud moved up to the driver's seat, young Muller taking the lines.

  Two heavy dray horses dragged the buckboard back into the slush of East Kiefer's main street. The road was jammed with heavy wagons headed for the Glenn ranch, big freighters loaded with derrick timbers, drill pipes, boilers, and newly dressed bits. Twelve mule hitches churned the mud axle deep in the middle of the road, so Bud kept to the side as much as possible.

  There was frenzied activity everywhere, there was urgency in the air and excitement on men's faces. Grant shook his head in disbelief. “Are all oil towns like this?”

  “At first they are,” Bud Muller said. “Bartlesville was something to see when it started, but Kiefer's already bigger. Glenn Pool will be the biggest oil strike in history before it's over.”

  Oil, in terms of money, meant little to Joe Grant. He was used to dealing in more tangible things—a herd of cattle, or a few acres of cotton. It was hard to believe that a thing like oil could cause so much excitement.

  It was a long six miles to the Glenn ranch where the discovery well had been brought in. The road was lined with hundreds of shacks and shanties, and storekeepers were building their sidewalks on stilts so that customers would not have to wade in the mud. Grant felt his face coloring as they passed a long string of cribs, but Rhea Muller gazed at them briefly, then looked away. She had seen it all before, many times in many other Kiefers.

  Most of Rhea's coolness had disappeared since they left the train. Grant felt strangely uncomfortable at the nearness of her as the three of them rode together on the buckboard's narrow board seat, yet he did not try to move away. He tried to look straight ahead, but he could not keep from glancing at her from time to time. Once she turned and smiled at him, knowing that he had been staring at her.

  “I think you will find the oil field interesting, Mr. Grant. You won't be sorry for taking the job with us.”

  For a moment Grant was too flustered to speak, and he busied himself with building a cigarette. What had she meant? He tried to tell himself that he hadn't taken a job with the Mullers—he'd just come along out of curiosity, to see what an oil field looked like. But he could feel Rhea Midler's warmth beside him... and he couldn't be very sure of anything.

  At last they topped a small rise and Grant came erect as he stared down into that strange basin. At first he saw only the hundreds of dirty flapping tents in a glistening sea of mud, and then he became aware of the derricks, scores of them, wooden skeletons being hammered together against a stark background of scrub oak and rolling hills.

  So this was Glenn Pool—to that time the richest discovery in the history of wildcatting. There was an excitement here that would not be ignored. Grant felt it. So did Bud and Rhea Muller.

  “Well, there it is!” Bud said.

  Grant turned to Rhea and he could see the flash of excitement in her eyes. And it was in her voice, too, when she spoke. “Look at the derricks—and more going up all the time! Bowling Green, Bartlesville, Cygnet—they were nothing compared to this!”

  A new town of tents and tin shanties had sprung up near the discovery well, a small replica of Kiefer. This was Sabo, a sprawling, shapeless collection of cheap boardinghouses, eating places, secretive saloons, and dance halls. Some of the cribs and gambling houses were already beginning to move in from Kiefer. Grant was reminded of Dodge City on the wrong side of the deadline—but not even Dodge had run as wide open as Sabo and Kiefer.

  Bud Muller hauled the buckboard around to the east of Sabo to escape some of the congestion. He looked at Grant, grinning. “What do you think of it?”

  “I don't know. I never saw anything like it before.” He reached inside his windbreaker for tobacco and was comforted at the touch of the .45 in his waistband. “How far is it to this lease of yours?” he asked.

  Bud pointed to a stand of blackjack in the distance. “That's Slush Creek. Our place is just on the other side.”

  They moved away from Sabo into a man-made wilderness of half-completed derricks. The sound of hammering jarred the winter air as skeleton rigs rose slowly against the sky. Heavy freighters tore and slashed the ground with their big wheels until the red earth appeared to be bleeding. Grant stared about in fascination but always aware of Rhea Muller sitting close beside him.

  Bud Muller forded the oil-spotted waters of Slush Creek and whipped the horses up the gentle incline. When they broke through the brush Grant saw a partly finished cellar, a small dugout shack, and a dirty tent. Two men working with shovels waved to them, and Bud and Rhea waved back.

  This was the Muller lease. Grant stared out at that bleak expanse of red clay and scrub oak and felt his enthusiasm sink with disappointment. It was impossible to believe that riches might be found in such a place.

  Rhea Muller looked at him as though she could read his mind. “The oil is under the ground, Mr. Grant,” she said wryly. Then she turned to her brother. “Bud, you go over and keep Morphy and Calloway busy on the cellar. We want it ready to lay the foundations as soon as the rig timbers get here. Mr. Grant can drive me to the dugout.”

  Young Muller nodded and vaulted out of the buckboard. Grant took the lines and nodded uncertainly toward the half shack of blackjack logs and mud plaster. “Is that where you live?”

  She smiled. “That is the Muller home, Mr. Grant. You and the other hands will bunk in the tent until a bunkhouse can be built.”

  Grant half-opened his mouth, then closed it. He cracked the lines and moved the buckboard to the dugout. “Miss Muller,” he said stiffly, “I think maybe we ought to talk before this goes any further.”

  Her eyes widened. “Talk about what?”

  “Well, I don't think I'm the man you want; I don't know anything about the oil business.” He felt uncomfortable, and the words sounded awkward. He decided it was best not to look at her as he talked.

  “You can learn about the oil business,” she said. “My brother and father can teach you.” Surprisingly, she laughed.

  “Anyway, it makes no difference. We want you to see that Ben Farley doesn't get a chance to wreck our well before we're spudded in; you don't have to know anything about the oil business.”

  Grant swallowed. “It isn't that exactly. I ought to be moving on.”

  She studied him for a moment, her eyes clear and calculating. “You're afraid of the law, is that it?”

  He shrugged. As she had said, they understood each other.

  For another long moment she was silent, then she dropped her head and gazed at the ground. “Would it make any difference if I said I wanted you to stay?”

  He wasn't sure how she meant it. “To watch after the well, you mean?”

  She lifted her head and looked at him. “Not just the well, Mr. Grant.”

  Suddenly she turned and fled down the sod steps and into the dugout, and Joe Grant stood uneasily in the mud, wondering if her words actually meant what he had taken them to mean. Several minutes passed and he tried to tell himself that this was the time to leave.

  But he kept remembering the way she had looked at him. Could a girl like Rhea Muller have a personal interest in him —an outlaw?

  At last he called, “Miss Muller.”

  There was no answer from the dugout.

  He descended the sod steps and knocked on the plank door. Still there was no answer. He pulled the latchstring and stepped inside.

  The dugout was one large room, the lower half dug into the earth, the upper half built up of logs and mud plaster. There was only one small high window in the room, but
the walls had been plastered with clay and whitewashed, so it was almost as light as any other room. The furniture was mostly boxes and packing crates, all whitewashed. An iron cookstove stood against one wall; a folding cot fitted into the corner of the opposite wall, the bedding rolled neatly at one end.

  Rhea Muller stood rigidly beside the stove, her back to Grant. “Why don't you go?” she said tightly. “That's what you want, isn't it?”

  “I guess I don't really know what I want,” Grant said. “Once I thought I wanted to be a cowhand, then a farmer.”

  “Then a bank robber?” she asked stiffly.

  “No. I didn't want that; it was forced on me.”

  She turned then, and he was surprised to see that she had been crying. She did not seem the kind of girl who would cry very often.

  “Miss Muller...” The words sounded thick. “Is anything wrong?”

  “No!” she said bitterly, “nothing is wrong. Just get out and leave me alone!” She turned away quickly when Grant didn't move, and after a moment she said quietly, “My whole life is bound up in this small piece of red clay and blackjack... in a lease that has just thirty days to run.” She made a quick gesture with one hand that indicated the entire room. “Do you think I like this, Mr. Grant? Living in a hole in the ground like a wild animal, living out the good years of my life in towns like Kiefer and Sabo? Well, I don't like it, Mr. Grant, but I can live with it for a few more months if it will help my father get his well.”

  She wheeled back to face Grant and her eyes were hard with resolution. “I mean to have this well! Nothing is going to stop me from having it!” And Grant had the uneasy feeling that she had forgotten that he was in the room... that she was making the vow to herself alone. Then she looked at him and some of the hardness went out of her eyes. After a brief pause she went on, “I want to live like other people. I want to live in a decent town, I want to forget the smell of oil and the feel of mud.”

  Grant was seeing a side of Rhea Muller that he had not known existed. She seemed tired and defeated; her mask of self-sufficiency had fallen away, leaving the evidence of fear in her expression. He moved awkwardly. “You can have all those things when the well comes in. There'll be plenty of money then for anything you want.”

  Surprisingly, she laughed, and the sound was bitter. “There have been other wells, but something always went wrong. Fires, explosions, lost tools. This time it's Ben Farley.”

  “He can't hurt you. You've got the money to start the well, what could he do to stop it?”

  She smiled thinly, “A million things. You don't know Farley.”

  For one long moment they stood there looking at each other, and Grant could feel his resolutions deserting him. Without her mask she was even more attractive than before; no longer was she cold and ambitious, but she was afraid.

  “Joe.” It was the first time she had used his first name and the sound was little more than a whisper. She came toward him slowly, and said his name again. “Joe, we need you! We need a man who's able and not afraid to fight—with guns, if necessary. My father's too old. Bud's too young....” She came closer, her chin tilted, her eyes looking directly into Grant's. “Joe, we need you!”

  He did not know how it happened, but suddenly she was in his arms, her face pressed hard against his chest. For one brief moment he held her gently, as if she were a child. But Rhea Muller was no child. She was storm and fire, like no other woman Joe Grant had ever known, and suddenly he held her hard against him.

  “Joe, will you help us?”

  “Have I got a choice?”

  He had the brief impression that she was smiling, but the moment he found her mouth with his all other impressions fled his brain. Almost too late they heard the tramp of boots near the dugout, and Rhea pushed away, breathless, with high color in her cheeks.

  “Rhea, you down there?” It was Bud Muller, and his voice was quick and edgy. Then the door burst open and young Muller shoved inside, looking directly at Grant. “Have you decided whether or not you're working for us?”

  Grant shot a quick glance at Rhea, but she had donned her mask again and he could read nothing in her eyes. “I guess so, Bud. For a while, anyway.”

  “Then your job has already started. Come with me.”

  Rhea's eyes widened. Grant frowned, then nodded quickly and followed Bud up the sod steps. “What's the trouble?”

  “You'll see soon enough. He's over at the bunk tent.”

  They heard Rhea coming after them but neither man slowed his quick pace toward the flapping, clay-spattered side walls of the bunk tent. Grant threw back the flap and drew up for a moment staring at the man sitting on one of the half-dozen canvas cots. “Who is he?”

  “Name's Robuck. Pa hired him yesterday to help dig the derrick cellar.”

  The man looked at them briefly, his eyes still dull and slightly glazed. There was a cut along the side of his head above the left ear, his left eye was blue and puffed, dried blood was caked on the left side of his face, and his nose was humped in the bridge where it had been broken. Grant turned to Rhea, who had pushed into the tent.

  “You'd better get some water, iodine, and clean cloths.” Then to the man, “What happened?”

  The roustabout laughed harshly. “What does it look like?”

  “Was it a fight?”

  “Call it that if you want to.” He got unsteadily to his feet, dragged a kit bag from under his cot, and began throwing his few belongings into it. “You can get my pay ready,” he said to Bud. “I'm not working for you and your pa any more.”

  “You'd better lie down,” Grant said quietly. “From the looks of that nose, you could use a doctor.”

  “I don't need a doctor. All I need is a one-way ticket out of the Territory, and that's what I aim to get!” He held his hand out to Bud. “I'll take my pay.”

  The man was more scared than hurt and Grant could see that he would be of no use to anybody until he got away from the men who had beaten him. Bud peeled off four dollars from a small roll and handed them to the roustabout. “Can you tell us who did it? And why?”

  The man touched his nose gently and winced. “There were four of them; that's all I know. They said if I worked on the Muller lease again they'd kill me. I like you and your old man fine, but...” He left the word hanging, then picked up the kit bag and walked unsteadily out of the tent.

  Grant grinned tightly and turned to Bud. “Is that a sample of Ben Farley's work?”

  “It has to be Farley,” the boy said angrily. “Nobody else has any interest in what happens to our lease.” He dropped to one of the cots, clinching and unclinching his lean, work-roughened hands. “We've got two drillers that have been with us since Bartlesville; they won't scare easy. But we've got to have rig builders and roustabouts to get the derrick set up. That won't be easy, with Farley's men beating up every hand that comes on our lease.”

  The last thing Joe Grant wanted was trouble, and now he could feel trouble gathering around like thunderheads. At first it had seemed so simple—he'd just wanted to get his money from Ortway and settle down somewhere quiet and peaceful. Maybe, he thought, he just wasn't the peaceful kind. Maybe he was the kind that was dogged by trouble wherever he went....

  Then Rhea Muller, without the bandages and medicine, came into the tent and Grant felt the sensation of strange excitement go over him when he looked at her. She said everything there was to say with one word. “Farley?”

  Her brother nodded.

  She looked at Grant. “We don't have to worry about Farley now. Mr. Grant is going to take care of everything.”

  CHAPTER FIVE

  IT WAS WELL past dark when old Zack Muller got back to his lease that night. Pat Morphy and Lon Calloway, the two drillers, had gone to Sabo; Grant and Bud Muller were getting ready for bed in the bunk tent when the old man came in.

  “You stop off at Sabo?” young Muller asked. The old man nodded heavily, warming himself at the oil-barrel stove in the center of the tent. “I heard abo
ut our roustabout. But that's only the beginning of the trouble; we can't get our tools and machinery in Kiefer; we'll have to go to Tulsa after them.”

  Bud swore harshly. “That'll mean a two-, three-day waste! Didn't Kurt Battle have the equipment?”

  “Maybe.” Zack Muller smiled weakly. “But he's not selling anything to the Muller lease.” He turned to Grant. “Ben Farley's a big man in the Territory; he's got maybe a dozen locations and as many wells. If he pulled that much business away from Battle—well, you can see where that would leave an equipment dealer.”

  The picture of Ben Farley was growing clearer in Grant's mind, and it was a picture that he didn't like. “I can hire a wagon and go to Tulsa after the equipment. I think I could make it in two days.”

  But the old man shook his head. “I'd better do it. I know the dealers, and tools are hard to get. I'll take Bud with me, though, if you'll stay and look after Rhea and the lease.”

  Grant nodded, although he wasn't sure just how a man would go about “looking after” Rhea Muller if she didn't want to be looked after.

  Within an hour the old man and the boy began walking back toward Sabo, leaving the one Muller saddle horse on the lease. Grant stood outside the bunk tent watching the two figures disappear into the dark brush along the banks of Slush Creek, and he saw Rhea Muller standing in the orange lamplight in front of the dugout. After her father and brother had disappeared she did not look in Grant's direction. He thought of calling to her, but by that time she had gone back into the shack.

  Grant had no idea how much work went ahead of building an oil derrick, but the next morning he began to learn. A cellar had to be dug, then came the slush pit and provisions for storage. A line had to be laid to the creek, for oil wells had to have water; a bunkhouse had to be built, and a place for the crew to eat.

  Grant and Rhea Muller were standing in front of the dugout watching Calloway and Morphy work on the cellar. “They're drillers,” Rhea said, “and good ones, too. Digging cellars is not their work but they know it's got to be done. Are you beginning to see what we're up against, Joe?”