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told Slade and his father. “I was coming back from Yardley on the other side of the hills after attending to that chore, Dad, when I heard a bunch riding fast behind me. As they came up I pulled aside to let them pass. Didn’t think anything of it, figured it was just some of the boys from one of the spreads. When they got opposite me I whooped to them. Somebody swore, then about a dozen guns seemed to let go at once. Something that felt like a sledge hammer slammed me and I knew I was hit. I managed to get my gun out and pulled trigger once. Then I didn’t know anything more till I found this feller bending over me and asking me what happened.”
    “You didn’t get a good look at any of them?” Slade asked.
    Clate shook his head. “No, I didn’t have time. The feller riding in front appeared to be a big gent but I didn’t notice his face. Brush on both sides of the trail there and it was rather dark. Thanks, feller, for everything; Dad told me about it.”
    Slade smiled and patted his hand. “Just take it easy now and you’ll be okay,” he said. “I’ll talk to you again later.”
    After a late breakfast, Slade got the rig on Shadow. As he was shaking hands with Tom Mawson, a wizened old cowboy appeared mounted on a sturdy bay. It was Curly Nevins, the range boss.
    “I’m heading for town, too,” he told Slade. “We’ll ride together. The boss wants some stuff from down there.”
    “They got better shops in the stinkin’ hole than up at Proctor and you can get things you can’t get there,” old Tom explained defensively.
    Slade nodded, the dancing lights of laughter in the back of his eyes, but did not otherwise comment. He and Nevins headed south on the Chihuahua.
    For several miles they passed over rolling rangeland dotted with fine fat beefs. Slade commented on the excellence of the range.
    “Uh-huh, it’s this way clear to the hills, twenty miles to the east and forty miles to the north,” Nevins replied. “After that to the north it’s a regular badland. That’s what makes the drive to McCarney and the railroad such a tough chore.”
    Slade was studying the contours of the hills walling in the wide valley on the east and west. He turned in his saddle and gazed north toward the misty blue of more hills.
    “This valley was once a great lake or inland sea,” he remarked to his companion.
    Curly Nevins shot him a quick glance. “Funny for you to say that,” he commented. “That’s just what young Bob Kent who drilled the first well said. He said the rimrock up there was once the shoreline and covered with all sorts of big growth, and that conditions were perfect for the makin’ of oil pools.”
    “He was right,” Slade replied.
    “The way things turned out, sort of looks like he was,” Nevins admitted. “Most folks and even some of his drillers, after they’d dug down better’n a thousand feet and hadn’t hit anything, said he was loco, but he sure fooled ‘em. I’ll never forget the day that well came in and what happened afterward. I was right there when she began spoutin’ and hung around the section quite a bit afterward. Was plumb interesting. Like to hear about it?”
    “I would,” Slade replied.
    Curly Nevins was an unlettered cowhand, but he had a gift of narration and a remarkable memory for details. Walt Slade’s quick imagination reconstructed the story as it fell from the old cowboy’s lips until he felt he was a spectator of the stirring events.

FOUR
    “A LL I’ VE GOT TO SAY is that it’s the locoest deal I ever got mixed up in,” declared Ayers, the head driller. “Here we are down one thousand, one hundred and sixty feet — that’s the last reading — and sloggin’ through a sand bank. About as much oil under this section as you’d find in a grindstone. Bob Kent is plumb off his mental reservation, if you ask me.”
    “His dad was one of the smartest oil men in the business and he just about raised young Bob in oil,” objected Quales, the