“That pile of expensive junk?” sniffed the little man. “All the kid did was to borrow some apparatus from Red Cavanaugh’s Valley View Laboratory. If I know Red—and I do know the big fourflusher well—he didn’t make the boy do a lick of real research on it.... Oh!” Again that wide grin. “You think I’m crazy and want to get rid of me, don’t you? Here.”
He dug into his jeans and came up with a greasy card which read:
The Four Corners Drilling Company
John Hall, President
Farmington, N. M.
“Guess I should have got dressed up for this shindig,” Hall apologized, “but I just got in from Farmington. I read about your analyzer in the Valley View News when you won first prize at your high-school science fair last month. Used to live there. That’s why I still get the paper. Your dingus should have received first prize here too, instead of that voice-cast thing.”
“Say! You came all this way just to see our exhibit? Thanks!” was all Sandy could think of to say.
As the auditorium lights blinked to indicate that the fair was closing, Hall added, “Got time for a bite? I have a proposition I’d like to sound you out on.”
At a nearby diner, the oilman ordered full meals for all of them.
“Here’s my proposition,” he said when the boys couldn’t eat another mouthful. “I’m a small wildcat operator. That means I hunt for oil in places that are so wild and woolly that only wildcats can live there. Once or twice I’ve struck it rich. Should have retired then, but there’s something about oil exploration that gets in a feller’s blood. So I went out, drilled some dry holes, and lost my shirt.
“Right now I’m strapped until my new field pays off—if it does. But I think I’m onto something big in the Four Corners and I need help. You boys must have a working knowledge of geology to build an analyzer as good as that. How about working for me this summer?”
“Sandy’s the rock hound,” Quiz said and hesitated. “I ... I’ve only read up on it in books.”