"Gee! one time I thought we'd all be at it tooth and nail," declared Fred.
"In my opinion that fellow Davenport is nothing but a skunk," declared George Rogers. "I've known him for years. He has been in half a dozen oil-well propositions, selling stocks and leases. One time he caught three young fellows from Chicago and sold them a lease for several thousand dollars that wasn't worth a pinch of snuff. Then he started what he called the Yellow Pansy Extension. The regular Yellow Pansy was doing very well—hitting it up for about eight hundred barrels a day—and of course lots of people, including myself, thought that the Extension belonged to the same crowd. But it didn't, and the lease was absolutely worthless; so that all of the buyers of stock got stung. I myself was hung up for fifteen hundred dollars, almost all the cash I had at that time."
"Why didn't they put Davenport and his partners in prison?" asked Fred.
"Because he is one of those slick fellows who can worm out of almost anything. One or two fellows did make some sort of charges against him, but they all fell through. There are hundreds of swindlers in the oil business, and not one out of a dozen is ever caught."
"If Uncle Dick makes up his mind to go ahead on the Franklin farm I think I know a way of helping him," said Andy, with a grin.
"What are you going to do, Andy? Take off your coat, roll up your sleeves, and grab a pick and shovel?" questioned his twin.
"Not exactly, although I might want to do that later on. But I was thinking that a good many of those workmen didn't seem to be satisfied with their job. Maybe they would be only too glad to shift."
Although they hated to do so, the boys felt it was their duty to tell the particulars of what had occurred to Jack's father as soon as they saw him.
"It's too bad you got into another mix-up with that rascal, as well as with Martell and Brown," said Dick Rover. "After this I think you had better stay away from that locality. We'll let them go ahead and sink all the money they care to."
Jack's father had been making some inquiries, and he learned that it was true that the Martells, the Browns, and Mr. Werner had contributed thirty thousand dollars towards driving two wells on the Spell claim. To this amount of money Davenport, Tate and Jackson had contributed another twenty thousand dollars.