"Yes. I saw him a minute ago in the crowd. Sorry I had to make promises for you, but the fire chief wouldn't let me keep the crowd waiting. Some one had to talk."
"Suits me. I'll run you for Congress one o' these days." Then, "I'll send the grocery-men over to you. Tell them to get the grub out to-night. If the restaurant-men don't buy it I'll run my own chuck wagon outfit. See you later, Dave."
For the next twenty-four hours there was no night in Malapi. Streets were filled with shoutings, hurried footfalls, the creaking of wagons, and the thud of galloping horses. Stores were lit up and filled with buyers. For once the Gusher and the Oil Pool and other resorts held small attraction for the crowds. The town was moving out to see the big new discovery that was to revolutionize its fortunes with the opening of a new and tremendously rich field. Every ancient rig available was pressed into service to haul men or supplies out to the Jackpot location. Scarcely a minute passed, after the time that the first team took the road, without a loaded wagon, packed to the sideboards, moving along the dusty road into the darkness of the desert.
Three travelers on horseback rode in the opposite direction. Their destination was Cottonwood Bend. Two of them were Emerson Crawford and David Sanders. The third was an oil prospector who had been a passenger on the stage when it was robbed.
CHAPTER XXIII
THE GUSHER
Jackpot number three had come in with a roar that shook the earth for half a mile. Deep below the surface there was a hiss and a crackle, the shock of rending strata giving way to the pressure of the oil pool. From long experience as a driller, Jed Burns knew what was coming. He swept his crew back from the platform, and none too soon to escape disaster. They were still flying across the prairie when the crown box catapulted into the sky and the whole drilling superstructure toppled over. Rocks, clay, and sand were hurled into the air, to come down in a shower that bombarded everything within a radius of several hundred yards.
The landscape next moment was drenched in black petroleum. The fine particles of it filled the air, sprayed the cactus and the greasewood. Rivulets of the viscid stuff began to gather in depressions and to flow in gathering volume, as tributaries joined the stream, into the sump holes prepared for it. The pungent odor of crude oil, as well as the touch and the taste of it, penetrated the atmosphere.
Burns counted noses and discovered that none of his crew had been injured by falling rocks or beams. He knew that his men could not possibly cope with this geyser on a spree. It was a big strike, the biggest in the history of the district, and to control the flow of the gusher would necessitate tremendous efforts on a wholesale plan.
One of his men he sent in to Malapi on horseback with a hurry-up call to Emerson Crawford, president of the company, for tools, machinery, men, and teams. The others he put to salvaging the engine and accessories and to throwing up an earth dike around the sump hole as a barrier against the escaping crude. All through the night he fought impotently against this giant that had burst loose from its prison two thousand feet below the surface of the earth.