Gunsmoke over Texas Read Online Free PDF

rigger.
    “Uh-huh, and he ended up busted,” replied Ayers.
    “Sure, because he got into things he didn’t know anything about,” said Quales. “After all, Jasper Kent was just a driller who got on top. He didn’t have no book learnin’ to speak of. He got mixed up in business deals and got skun, naturally. Young Bob is different. He’s educated some. Don’t forget, he finished high school and had a year in college.”
    “That’s just the trouble,” Ayers declared. “Uh-huh, he goes plasterin’ those hifalutin’ college notions on the drilling business. Calls it scientific analysis of natural conditions, or some such durn foolishness. And what’s he got to go on? Nothing but those danged hills up there he claims were the banks of a big sea once, and a salt spring he found in a cave. Nothing here to indicate an oil pool. No domes, no shale, no seepage. Scientific analysis! Blooey!”
    “Suppose you’d prefer a witchin’ stick,” chuckled Quales.
    “Don’t go throwing off on witchin’ sticks,” Ayers returned seriously. “Remember old Rice Haggard down in the Neuces country? Haggard was ambling around with his forked stick one day, witchin’ for water, and the stick dipped and dipped. Haggard said there was oil or something like it under the section. Folks laughed at him and said he was loco, but quite a few years later Haggard got Dunn of the Gladwell Company interested. They drilled right down where Haggard had done the witchin’. And what happened? One of the biggest production fields in Texas.”
    “Just happened,” replied Quales. “And I’m willing to bet that Dunn saw indications there before he set a bit to the soil. Nothing much Dunn don’t know about the oil business. He’s smart. And so is young Bob. You wait and see.”
    Ayers snorted and glared at the great walking beam of the rig doing its slow and ponderous dance as it drew the suspending rope back and forth across the pulley at the top of the tall derrick, churning the heavy bit into the ground far beneath the surface. From the bore came a soft and muffled sound as the drill pounded its way through the yielding sand.
    “After all, Bill, it was you who was first to agree to Bob’s proposition that we go into this thing on shares, receiving a percentage of any strike for our work instead of wages,” Quales remarked.
    Ayers grinned a trifle sheepishly. “I can’t help but like the young devil,” he said, almost apologetically. “And I don’t forget that it was his dad who risked his life to get me out from under that walking beam when the well blew and caught fire up north of Beaumont. Jasper Kent had the burn scars he got that day on his face when he died.
    “But just the same I still think Bob’s plumb loco,” he added.
    Quales winked at Curly Nevins who lounged comfortably in his saddle near the door of the cook shack, smoking a cigarette.
    “Old Tom still on the prod?” he asked.
    “Oh, he’s still sort of ringey, but he’s feeling better lately, seeing as you fellers ‘pear to be sinking a dry hole,” Nevins replied. “He figures you’ll pull out soon and leave this section like it was.”
    “He may get a surprise,” said a slender, pleasant-faced young man who stepped out of the cock shanty in time to hear Nevins’ remarks. “Anyhow, there’s no sense in him pawing sand like he has been just because I bought this little strip down here from the state. He doesn’t need it for his cows.”
    “The Old Man is open range,” Nevins replied. “This section down here south of the crik has always been open range and, he figures it should stay that way. And anyhow, he don’t want to see oil wells cluttering up the grassland. He says they mean ditches and pipe lines and bad smells and cows poisoned by gas. He figures it’ll be the ruination of this section if you jiggers do happen to strike oil.”
    “He’s all wrong,” Kent said earnestly. “When we strike it’ll be the best thing ever happened to the