Gunsmoke over Texas Read Online Free PDF Page B

section. It’ll bring folks in and money, too, plenty of it.”
    “That’s just what the old man is scairt of,” Nevins explained. “He ‘lows all sorts of unsavory jiggers will be troopin’ in. He says Proctor up to the north of here is a nice cowtown and he don’t want it spoiled.”
    “He needn’t worry about that,” Kent chuckled. “When we strike there’ll be a town down here in no time.”
    “Uh-huh, when we strike,” grunted Ayers.
    Bob Kent chuckled again and did not directly answer his pessimistic driller.
    “But we’ll have to make good mighty soon or Mawson won’t have anything to worry about,” he told Nevins. “I’ve just about scraped the bottom of the barrel; no money to buy more casing, and the bank won’t let me have any more. They say at Proctor that they’ve gone as far as they can with the land here for security. I’ve a notion if Mawson hadn’t been swearing he’s going to get title to the whole section as quick as he can they wouldn’t have gone as far as they have.”
    “He’s talking about it but he ain’t done anything about it,” observed Nevins.
    “He’s being foolish if he really wants the land down here,” said Kent. “When we strike there’ll be a quick grab for every foot between here and the desert and Mawson will find himself out of luck.”
    “I tried to tell him that myself, and young Clate agreed with me,” admitted Nevins, “but he’s bull-headed as an old shorthorn and says he’ll get title to everything as soon as you fellers pull out.”
    Ayers suddenly cocked his head in an attitude of listening. The sound coming from the bore had changed. The silky chuffing had been replaced by a heavy thudding. The suspending rope danced and quivered.
    “Rock!” grunted Ayers. “We got through that sand bank and hit rock again. Now we’ll jiggle along forever and get nowhere.”
    Bob Kent rose from squatting on his heels. “Shut her down,” he ordered. “We’ll change the bit and sink new casing. Might as well eat first; chuck’s about ready. Let’s go wash up. Come on, Curly, and have a bite with us.”
    The engineer closed his throttle; the jiggling of the rope ceased, the walking beam hung motionless. The silence that followed could be felt. Curly Nevins dismounted and joined the drillers moving toward the cook shanty. They had almost reached the door when without warning there was a deafening roar.
    “Look out!” yelled Kent and dived for the shelter of the shack.
    The roar was followed by a terrific rattling and crashing. Tons of pipe were projected through the rig floor, up and out of the hole and high into the air. The derrick went to pieces in a rain of falling iron and timbers. Then there was a black geyser that spouted two hundred feet in a wind-frayed, greasy plume. Crude oil sprayed the vicinity.
    “She’s in!” howled Ayers, dancing in the door of the shack. “Boys, she’s in! I knew it all the time! Look at her spout! That’s a gusher what is a gusher!”
    The driller’s excitement was contagious. The crew members howled and bellowed. Curly Nevins jerked his six-shooter and sent bullets splitting the air in every direction.
    No tanks had been built for storage, Kent lacking the money for their construction, but he had shrewdly set his rig on the edge of a wide and deep hollow. Now oil was flowing a river into the depression, a natural reservoir.
    While the crew cursed and toiled at the gigantic task of capping the gusher, Kent saddled his horse, which was tethered under a lean-to back to the shanty, and went racing to Proctor, the cowtown twenty miles to the north.
    Two days of wild excitement followed before the gusher was brought under control by a firmly anchored valve. The great hollow was brimful of “black gold.”
    Meanwhile the activity around the well was nothing to what was taking place on the flats west of the drilling. At dawn of the day following the strike a grader was cutting streets through the mesquite and