They strolled along, noticing the new stores and office buildings, the modern high school. Farmington would never become a ghost town. It was building solidly for the future.
Suddenly Quiz grabbed his friend’s arm.
“Look at that oilman who’s just made a strike,” he said. “We’ll ask him if he knows Mr. Hall.”
“How do you know that he is, and has?” Sandy demanded as they approached a lanky stranger.
“Because he’s wearing a brand-new Stetson and new shoes, of course,” Quiz explained, as to a child. “Drillers always buy them when their well comes in.”
“Trust you to know something like that,” Sandy said in mock admiration.
“Well now,” drawled the Farmingtonian when they put their question, “you’d have to get up earlier than this to catch John Hall in town. John keeps his office in his hat. Might as well spend the day seeing the sights, and look him up at his motel when he gets back from the Regions tonight.”
“What sights?” asked Sandy when the oilman, obviously a transplanted Texan, had stumped away in high-heeled boots that must have hurt his feet. “Those mountains, maybe? They look close enough to touch. Let’s walk out to them.”
“Don’t let this clear, thin air fool you,” Quiz warned. “Those mountains are probably twenty miles away. We’d need a car to—”
A great honking and squealing of brakes behind them made the boys jump for safety. As they turned to give the driver what-for, Pepper March stuck his curly head out the window of a new jeep that was towing an equally new aluminum house trailer as big as a barn.