“You mean Trabue?” asked Spurrier, and Harrison’s head gave a decisive jerk of affirmation while the hot glow of his eyes made his companion think of smelting furnaces.
“That’s why this thing of yours interests me. That’s why I’m willing to get behind you and back you to the hilt,” the big fellow of finance went on. “A. O. and G. are trying to hold others out of this Kentucky field. That proves that they think enough of it to be hurt by having it torn from their teeth. All I need to know is what will hurt them! If you can take some teeth along with the bone, so much the better.” He paused, then in a voice that had altered to cold steadiness, commanded: “Now, give me your facts.”
“At present prices of oil,” summarized Spurrier, “the development back of Hemlock Mountain wouldn’t pay. With higher market values, it would pay, but less handsomely than other fields A. O. and G. can work. Once the initial cost is laid out, the profit will be constant. The A. O. and G. idea is to hold it in reserve and await developments—meanwhile keeping up the ‘no trespass’ sign.”
“Doesn’t the range practically prohibit railroading?”
“Possibly—but it doesn’t prohibit pipe lines.”
Spurrier opened the packet he had brought in his overcoat pocket and spread a map under the flooding light of a table lamp.
“I have traced there what seems to me a practical piping route,” he explained. “I call it the neck of the bottle. There is a sort of gap through the hills and a porous formation caused by a chain of caverns. 105 Nature is willing to help with some ready-made tunnels.”
“Why haven’t they discovered that?”
“The oil development of fifteen years ago never crossed Hemlock Mountain. It came the other way.”