The summer before, while the armies of North and South were battling in one corner of Pennsylvania, in another there had sprung up excitement over oil. John Denny had returned from Gettysburg with his right arm shot off at the shoulder, and had found this excitement at its height.
He could make a living, one-armed as he was, on the farm. But instead, he mortgaged the place and drilled for oil. The hole was a dry one; and Denny faced the world in debt as well as crippled.
Fortunately, the great Drasnoe wells began to flow at about that time, and teamsters were needed to transport the oil to the railroad eight miles away. The prices of oil and labor were high; and after six months of hard teaming, Denny had paid off his debt. And his fellow teamsters, who had mostly drifted in from “outside,” yielded him grudgingly a certain admiration. It was not diminished by the fact that he held them all at a distance—all but the boy, Elmer Todd, who was the youngest of the teamsters, and whom he took under his protection.
At a turn in the road they saw a wagon backed up into a field. Two men were unloading sections of pipe. A third, a young man in high boots, such as the teamsters wore, stood by, giving directions. He looked up at Denny and the boy, and his face brightened pleasantly.
“Morning!” he said. “We’ll get the last of our pipe laid to-day.”
Denny stopped his team. “That so?” he said, grimly. “You expect when it’s laid it will stay, Mr. Ross?”
The young man’s eyes narrowed together into a frown; his clean-cut face assumed a more determined expression. “That’s what I expect,” he said.
“There’s some talk to indicate it won’t,” said Denny. He was in a black mood, and this young superintendent, who was making his fortune instead of hearing arms, came in for a share of his contempt.
“When you hear any such talk, Mr. Denny, discourage it,” said Ross. “The men won’t gain by fighting with us over this matter.”
“I guess,” observed Denny, brutally, “that if you were any good for fighting you would be elsewhere, Mr. Ross. Get up, boys!” He cracked his whip and walked on beside his horses.