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.