“Naw,” he said disdainfully; “I ain't gonna get tight. I just wanna look around. I'll catch that train for sure.”
“All right—but if you don't it'll be just too bad. I'm telling you, Rondora's hot. They're ready to start stringing 'em up to telephone poles.”
“That'd be swell,” Bender said; “yes, sir—that'd be swell.”
The Adjutant-General meditated a moment and then gave up trying to be serious.
“Hell,” he said, and sat down.
Chapter III
Tom Bender Unloaded at Rondora the next night an hour after sunset when the drilling rigs were ablaze with lights. The rigs were thrown around the town in an uneven circle, a glow about the floor of each derrick, a lone light gleaming up near the double board, another ninety feet in the air to light the top of the stands and another above that on a gin pole which shone dully down on the crown blocks.
It was an unearthly spectacle and looking at it Tom Bender could believe those who said there was no arrangement of lights that could look like this. His nostrils were filled with the cloying smell of a breeze that has blown over hundreds of pools of oil and his ears vibrated to a slow boom that was like the ringing of a great bell from far off. Somewhere out there they were running surface casing in the holes and beating it with sledges.
He was unconscious of the people around him until he heard a voice say: “Taxi to the hotel,” and felt somebody tug at his glad-stone. He released it and followed a man across the gravel to a flivver that was parked in front of the station. The man hoisted the bag up and slammed it down hard in the space between the hood and the fender and then started back to the train from which people were still emerging.
The way he handled the bag got Tom Bender's dander up because it was a present from the Adjutant-General and he was as careful of it as he was of his watch. He yelled: “Hey!” and the driver stopped. Bender strode over with blood in his eyes and asked him where he was going. The driver replied shortly that he was going to get some more passengers and walked away muttering to himself.