Grant smiled wryly, without humor. Damned if I do, he thought, and damned if I don't. Then he realized that Bud Muller was looking at him.
“Grant...” The word hung for a moment as the boy wrestled with his thoughts. “Now that my father is... gone, it's up to me to run the lease. Me and Rhea. We're going to need your help.” He looked away, staring down at his big hands. “I guess I lost my head back at the Wheel House, and what Dagget said was right. He's a good man. Sooner or later he'll get Farley, but it will have to be done his way. That might not be quick enough to save the lease.”
“Dagget strikes me as a man who doesn't overlook much. He won't forget the lease.”
“But Farley won't be easy to break, not even for a man like Dagget. He wants the lease bad and he'll stop at nothing to get it. But if Valois gets us the rig builders we'll have a chance. It'll be dangerous...” He paused and looked up. “I'm trying to say I want you to go on working for us.”
“I haven't been much help so far.”
“You were a help to Rhea back at Vinita.” He smiled bitterly. “I guess we didn't do much against Farley and his two roustabouts, but I learned one thing, Grant—you were on my side. I guess that's what we need most, somebody like you that we can trust.”
It would have been amusing if the joke hadn't had such a bitter twist. Grant became aware of the money belt under his shirt—twenty-five hundred dollars that legally belonged to a bank in Joplin. He wondered how long Bud would want him if he knew the whole story.
But that was in the past. He said, “Do you think you can depend on Valois to deliver the workers?”
Bud Muller nodded. “He's declared himself now; he'll have to fight Farley or be run out of Kiefer.”
“How much does your sister have to do with Valois' decision to throw in with us?”
The question didn't surprise the boy, but he sat for a long while, his face blank, before he answered. “I'm not so young,” he said finally, “that I don't know that my sister's attractive to men. I've seen you look at her... and others. I guess Turk had it pretty hard in Bartlesville.”
“Did he get over it?”
Bud smiled thinly and shook his head. “I guess you'll have to ask Turk about that.”
A thousand questions crowded into Grant's mind, but he could see that Bud had said all he was going to say about his sister. The boy asked, “Will you stay on the job, Grant?”
With Dagget looking over his shoulder, what choice did he have? He said dryly, “We'll try it awhile and see how it works out.”
The next morning Turk Valois came with the workers and grinned when he saw the look on Grant's face. “They don't look like much, do they? Well, I warned you they'd be the scrapings from the barrel, and that's just what they are. I expect most of them are dodging the law in Missouri or Kansas. The rest of them are drunkards or thieves that nobody else would hire—not even in Kiefer—so that gives you an idea what you've got.”
Valois had brought the workers from Sabo in a livery wagon, and a hard knot of caution formed in Grant's stomach as he looked at them. There were eight of them—bleary-eyed, whisky-soused, filthy, and mean. There was not a man among them who looked as if he had ever done a day's work.
Calloway and Morphy had stopped work on the cellar to stare at the disheveled crew. Bud Muller came toward them from the bunk tent, looking at the runner.
“Is that the best you could do?”
“They're the only men in the Creek Nation who don't know this lease is on Farley's black list, and that's only because they were too drunk to hear when I got them.”
“Do they know anything about carpentering or derrick building?”
“I didn't ask them,” Valois said dryly.
Bud frowned and looked at Grant. “What do you think?”
“They can't be as useless as they look; they'll have to do. Thanks for doing what you could, Valois. How much do we owe you?”
The runner grinned. “It's my pleasure. I've been waiting a long time to take a swing at Farley.” Then he stared at something over Grant's shoulder, and when Grant turned he saw Rhea Muller coming out of the dugout. She wore baggy corduroy trousers, laced boots, and a canvas windbreaker, but not even the men's work clothes could disguise the fact that she was an attractive woman.
Valois nodded quickly to Grant and the boy. “I'd better head back to Sabo. If I can give you a hand, let me know.” He turned on his heel and strode quickly to the wagon as though he were in a hurry to escape before Rhea came up from the dugout.
Rhea chose not to notice Valois' flight but called to her brother, “Send them over to the bunk tent. I'll feed them before they go to work.”
If they go to work, Grant thought. Rhea was not dismayed but seemed pleased that they had workers of any kind, and Grant was amazed at the great stacks of flapjacks that she brought out of the dugout. “You'll have to eat in the open,” she said, “until we get the bunkhouse built. Bud, bring the tin plates and syrup from the dugout; side meat and eggs will be ready in a minute.”
There was a note of authority in her voice but she did not speak to the workers as if they were the “scrapings of the barrel.” The men did not seem to notice or care how she treated them. They used the dugout as a windbreak, hunkering down against the log walls to wolf whatever was put on their plates.
Grant regarded the scene with interest. In some mysterious way Rhea had locked her grief away in some secret compartment of her mind and, watching her now, it was difficult to believe that the day before she had seen her father buried, businesslike, manlike, she went about her job of seeing that the men were fed. When that job was done, she said, “Now there's work to be done. Follow me.”
Surprisingly, the motley crew got to their feet and followed her to where Morphy and Calloway were working. “This is the cellar,” she said briefly. “Here the derrick foundations will be laid and the derrick will be built. Over there is where the belt house goes, and beyond that the engine house. A slush pit will have to be dug over there and a pipe laid from the derrick to the creek. Are any of you carpenters?”
Halfheartedly, four men raised their hands.
“Have any of you had experience at building derricks?”
Two of the four raised their hands again. It was better than Grant had expected.
Rhea nodded to her two drillers. “Pat, the rest is up to you and Lon. What they don't know about derricks, teach them. Bud, you take the ones who say they're not carpenters and get a bunkhouse started. They can learn to saw and hammer well enough for that.”
The air was charged with her energy, and there was no doubt in Grant's mind as to which of Zack Muller's two offspring had inherited control of the lease. She should have looked ridiculous in those men's clothes, but she didn't. She looked cool, businesslike, ruthless. She looked like a woman who knew exactly what she wanted and meant to have it.
She turned on her heel, sure that her orders would be carried out just as she had given them. “Mr. Grant, I want to talk to you in the dugout.”
Her voice was commanding, and she turned her back to Grant and strode toward the shack. Grant felt a prickle of irritation that she had spoken to him with that same note of authority that she had used with Valois' derelicts.
After a moment of hesitation he followed her into the warm, whitewashed interior of the dugout. There was a dress hanging on a wall rack beneath the small window and Rhea Muller stood stroking it gently, almost as if she were caressing it, when Grant came in. It was a white dress with layers on layers of sheer organdy; it was some kind of ball dress or party dress, beautiful and feminine and expensive, and completely out of place in this mud hut.