Courting Trouble (12 page)

————

Mother took great pains to look after Mr. Baumgartner’s dietary restrictions. She prepared the biscuits without lard and kept the milk well away from the meat.

Essie swallowed her bite, then dabbed each corner of her mouth with a cloth. ‘‘How much oil is coming out of the well?’’

‘‘It’s all over the place,’’ Papa answered. ‘‘The ground is so saturated it caught fire twice already.’’

‘‘How?’’ she asked.

‘‘Umphrey dropped his match on the ground after lighting his cheroot. We’d barely extinguished that blaze when a spark from the forge started up another one.’’

‘‘Mercy me,’’ Mother said.

‘‘The boys are digging a massive sump a few yards away from the well so they’ll have someplace to drain the oil. Hopefully that will help.’’

Mother began to collect platters from the table. Essie stood to help.

‘‘Is the water well ruined?’’ the peddler asked.

‘‘No, we just need to keep drilling. Once we get past this oil-bearing stratum, we should find water. It’ll slow things down, though.’’

‘‘Are you finished, Mr. Baumgartner?’’ Essie asked.

He leaned back and patted his stomach. ‘‘Yes, shiksa. It was excellent, as always.
Dank
.’’

She removed his plate while Mother stepped to the sideboard and spooned peach cobbler into some bowls.

‘‘Everyone’s up in arms over the delay,’’ Papa continued, ‘‘but I’m going to send a sample of our crude to Pennsylvania for evaluation.’’

Mr. Baumgartner twirled his finger in his beard. ‘‘Are you thinking to drill for oil instead of water?’’

‘‘I think it’s worth investigating.’’

‘‘And if the oil is good, what will you do?’’

Papa shared a smile with the peddler.

‘‘Isn’t it election year?’’ Mr. Baumgartner asked.

‘‘It is.’’

‘‘Are you thinking to hang up your robe and become an oil tycoon?’’

Mother paused in serving dessert.

‘‘Oh, that might be a bit premature at this point,’’ Papa answered.

But Essie wasn’t fooled. The men dipped their spoons into the warm peach cobbler, its sweet fragrance filling the dining room.

‘‘You’re going to drill for oil, aren’t you, Papa?’’

He didn’t answer and she wasn’t sure if it was because his mouth was full or because Mother was in the room. But his eyes shone when he looked up at Essie.

She served herself a bowl and sat down.

‘‘What happened to your chin?’’ Papa asked.

‘‘I took a bit of a tumble this afternoon.’’

‘‘In the store?’’

‘‘No.’’

‘‘Off your bicycle?’’

‘‘No.’’

‘‘Then where?’’

She glanced at Mr. Baumgartner. He paid particular attention to his dessert.

‘‘Out by the creek,’’ she said. ‘‘We were freeing Colonel and I, um, stumbled.’’

Mother tsked. ‘‘For heaven’s sake, Essie.’’

‘‘You never could get the snake to eat?’’ Papa asked.

‘‘I’m afraid not.’’

‘‘A shame. He was a beauty.’’

————

Essie hunched over the massive mahogany desk, adding the column of figures one more time. Papa was knee deep in campaigning for another term, which left her with the task of gathering information on oil production.

The ‘‘water’’ well was producing 150 gallons of oil a day, and the analysis from Pennsylvania came back pronouncing the crude as having ‘‘definite commercial value.’’ So Papa had organized the Sullivan Oil Company and made extensive leases for mineral rights near the water well. Essie had tried to persuade him to call the company Spreckelmeyer Oil, but he thought his first name sounded better.

He entered the office, loosened his four-in-hand tie and collapsed into a chair opposite Essie. His jovial face showed signs of fatigue and his blue eyes had lost a bit of their sparkle.

‘‘Long day?’’ she asked.

‘‘My mouth hurts from smiling so much,’’ he answered. ‘‘What about you?’’

‘‘I finally got those estimates you were waiting for.’’ She slid the papers she was working on toward him. ‘‘Excavating the oil would be fairly simple. You could drill a well with two men. It’s what to do with the crude afterward that’s the problem.’’

He studied her figures. ‘‘This says we could complete a well for about five hundred dollars.’’

‘‘That’s my best guess, anyway, but that doesn’t include storage tanks, pipelines, a refinery, and the manpower that goes along with it.’’

He handed the papers back to her. ‘‘All we need to do is hit a gusher or two. Once that happens, word will get out and the oilmen will come running.’’

‘‘And what will you do with the oil in the meantime?’’

‘‘Put it in whatever we can find or dig some more sumps. Too bad we can’t find some way to store it in Neblett’s old seed house.’’

‘‘Papa, there’s no guarantee you’ll find more oil.’’

‘‘True. But let’s assume we do. Think of what it would mean for our town—our entire state.’’

Essie leaned back in the huge leather chair. ‘‘Oil is useless unless it can be turned into kerosene. All the refineries are up north.’’

‘‘I know.’’ He wound the tie around his hand. ‘‘The whole thing appeals to me, is all. Working outside. Getting my hands dirty. Striking that big one.’’

She propped her arms on the desk. ‘‘But you’re going to be sixty soon. You can’t be taking on something like this at your age.’’

‘‘Says who? Noah was five hundred before he went into shipbuilding.’’ He shrugged. ‘‘Besides, I think the discovery on Twelfth Street bears looking into.’’

They were kindred spirits, the two of them. She understood his desire to take a risk, to challenge the odds, to try something new.

‘‘This is a bit more serious than betting a little pocket money on Mr. Mitton’s horses,’’ she said.

‘‘A bit.’’

‘‘How are you going to do all this and still fulfill your civic duties?’’

‘‘Maybe God has something else in mind for us both.’’

He said nothing further, just held her stare.

She began to shake her head. ‘‘Oh no. I’m a woman. Working in a mercantile is one thing. Running an oil company is something else altogether. Mother would have a fit.’’

‘‘You’re the best man for the job. I’ll handle Mother.’’

‘‘And the men in town?’’

‘‘I’ll handle them, too.’’ He nodded toward her chin. ‘‘You want to tell me what really happened while you were releasing Colonel?’’

She touched the scab that had started to form. ‘‘I tried out some wheeled feet that Mr. Baumgartner had in his wagon.’’

He absorbed that bit of information, and the twinkle that had been absent when he’d entered the office was back in full force. ‘‘You trading in your bicycle?’’

‘‘No. Just supplementing.’’

He chuckled. ‘‘You better not let your mother catch you.’’

She raised a brow. ‘‘I thought you could handle Mother?’’

‘‘I can . . . up to a point.’’ He stood and walked to the door. ‘‘I’ve arranged for a man by the name of Davidson to come down and look the oil field over.’’

‘‘Where’s he from?’’

‘‘Pennsylvania. He’ll be here within the week.’’

————

If Mr. John Davidson was surprised to see Essie accompanying him and Papa to the fields, he didn’t say so. Nor did he include her in any of the conversation.

But Essie preferred it that way. Being invisible had its uses. It allowed her to size him up as they walked the one block from the railway station to Twelfth Street, and Papa always appreciated the unguarded impressions she collected due to being ignored.

The oil scout wore no suit, coat or tie, but simply a cotton shirt and belted trousers. Mud frosted his boots and hat, while a neatly trimmed moustache made him look older than she suspected he truly was.

‘‘Will you be doing sample digs or running tests in the ground?’’

Papa asked.

‘‘Neither. I’ll just be looking.’’

‘‘For what?’’

‘‘Well, there’s no real science to it. I personally use a little geology, a little doodlebugology, and a little common sense.’’

‘‘Doodlebugology?’’

‘‘That’s a method oil scouts employ by using wiggle sticks, forked limbs, doodlebugs, that sort of thing.’’ He smiled. ‘‘There’s one man by the name of Griffith who puts this platelike thing in his mouth that has coiled springs protruding from it. I can’t tell you much about its workings, but when he stands over oil, there’s a little lever that turns around. And that’s where he recommends his customers drill.’’

Essie and Papa exchanged a glance.

‘‘I mostly look at the surface of the field and the vegetation in the area. You go to any oil field and you’ll see it differs a little bit from the surrounding territory.’’

A strong, unpleasant odor coming from the oil began to pervade the air about the time they reached the intersection of Dallas and Twelfth. Turning south on Twelfth, they continued down the plank sidewalk, past the Poker Palace and Rosenburg’s Saloon.

Men wove around them, horses waited patiently at hitching rails, and someone on a piano played ‘‘Do, Do, My Huckleberry, Do.’’ Mr. Riddles came out of a domino parlor, gave her a sidelong glance and tipped his hat. Most decent women wouldn’t be seen east of Beaton Street, but she was with Papa, and folks were used to her coming and going as she pleased.

The sidewalk ended, and several yards later the field began. Mr. Davidson tramped right across the oil-covered ground. A giant earthen pit on the east side of the field held thousands of gallons of oil, with more trickling in.

Mr. Davidson walked the perimeter of the field, then picked up a piece of wood the size of a broom handle. He peeled off the bark and started jabbing it into the ground, working it down as far as he could before moving to the next spot.

The water well at this location had been finished, finally breaking through the oil-bearing strata and into water at around 2,500 feet. Adam and the rest of the crew had moved on to drill the second and third wells on the other side of town.

Mr. Davidson tossed down his stick and headed toward Essie and Papa.

‘‘What do you think?’’ Papa asked.

The oilman looked out on the field like a mother hen preening over her chicks. ‘‘Well, Judge, if it were mine, I’d be drilling on it before the week was out.’’

chapter NINE

ESSIE BUMPED DOWN Beaton Street, pedaling Pegasus— Peg, for short—over the old bois d’arc blocks paving the street. The wooden surface alleviated one problem—dust—and created another— discomfort for every vehicle traveling down the jarring road.

Turning east onto Jefferson Avenue, she waved at Mr. Mitton as she passed his wagon yard. She longed to pull over and admire the thoroughbreds he boarded in stables so fine the locals referred to them as ‘‘Mitton’s Hotel,’’ but she needed to speak with the artesian well drillers. She continued on past the icehouse, the county jail, and the Anheuser-Busch Beer Depot, the smell of horses from the wagon yard still lingering in the air.

At the edge of town she spotted two men kicking down a well while Adam watched, wiping the back of his neck with a bandanna. Sweat rolled off the cable-tool boys as they each placed a foot in the stirrups hanging from a fifteen-foot log.

The rig sat underneath a high tripod of poles and looked like a child’s seesaw made with a tree trunk instead of a flat piece of wood. She noted the fulcrum was way off-center, and one end of the log was fastened to the ground.

The other end of the log—where the men in the stirrups were— projected up into the air at about a thirty-degree angle and was so far away from the fulcrum that it held a surprising amount of spring. The men grabbed on to the tree and threw their weight into the stirrups, forcing a heavy iron bit, which dangled from a cable between them, into the ground to break up a little of the earth.

They quickly repeated this motion over and over until one man took a break and Adam replaced him. Moisture stained Adam’s blue shirt beneath his arms and between his shoulder blades. Essie stopped Peg and laid her on the ground. Brushing dust from her calf-length split skirt, she advanced on the men. ‘‘Good afternoon,’’ she called.

The drilling stopped, and Adam jumped from the stirrup to approach her. ‘‘Miss Essie. Aren’t you as purty as a little red wagon?’’

She smiled. ‘‘I don’t believe I’ve ever been compared to a wagon before, Mr. Currington.’’

He made no effort to hide his perusal of her, from her redtrimmed Benwood hat all the way down to her bicycle boots. ‘‘You ever seen a little red wagon?’’ he asked.

‘‘Of course.’’

‘‘Then you know there ain’t nothin’ purtier.’’

‘‘I know no such thing,’’ she said, shaking her head and passing him by without pause.

He hastened his stride to keep up with her. ‘‘You ride that thing all the way from your house?’’ he asked, glancing over his shoulder at her riding machine.

‘‘I most certainly did.’’ She stopped a few feet away from the rig. ‘‘How do you do?’’

The other two men doffed their hats.

‘‘Miss Essie, this is Mr. Pugh and Mr. Upchurch. Fellas, this is Miss Spreckelmeyer, the judge’s daughter.’’

Mr. Upchurch’s whip-thin body surprised Essie. She would have thought drilling required more muscle. Perhaps his legs, hidden in the folds of his waist-overalls, were thicker than the rest of him. The removal of his hat revealed a head shaped like an egg and just as smooth. What hair he lacked on top he made up for with his moustache.

Mr. Pugh, a stocky and solid man, scowled, bringing his black eyebrows together in such a way that she couldn’t tell where one brow ended and the other began.

‘‘Gentlemen,’’ she said, ‘‘I’m sorry to interrupt, but I wanted to contract you for another job when you are finished with this one.’’

They glanced at one another.

‘‘I would like you to drill a well about two hundred yards south of the one on Twelfth Street. This one would not be for water, however, but for oil.’’

A beat of silence. Mr. Pugh recovered first. ‘‘We have us another job already scheduled. Over in Waco. Besides, we drill water wells, not oil wells.’’ He crammed his hat back on and began bailing loose rock and dirt out of the boring hole.

‘‘How long will you be in Waco?’’ she asked.

‘‘Longer than you wanna wait,’’ Pugh answered.