Chapter 7 Tom Swift and His Great Oil Gusher by Victor Appleton
TROUBLE BREWING
Ned stopped in his work of gathering up his papers and looked inquiringly at Tom.
“Hankinshaw!” he repeated. “What about him? What have you got against him outside of his smoking vile tobacco?”
“A good deal,” answered Tom emphatically. “He’s just about as popular with me as a rattlesnake at a picnic party.”
“Why the snake?” asked Ned quizzically. “I’m not much of an authority on natural history, but I’d call him an old crab and let it go at that. What has he done especially that peeves you?”
“Several things,” replied Tom, who did not care to mention Mary’s name and tell of the annoyance she had experienced. “For one thing, I’m pretty sure that he was driving a machine last night that nearly sent me to kingdom come. Hogged the road and made me go into a ditch. Then grinned like a gargoyle as he whizzed past. I tell you for a minute I saw red, and it’s a lucky thing for him that I didn’t get my hands on him.”
“I imagine that’s the type of fellow he is,” said Ned. “I don’t wonder that you felt like beating him up. Sorry that Thompson or Bragden didn’t stop over to look after the work instead of him. They may be no better than he is at heart, but at least they have the manners of gentlemen. But, after all, it will be for only a few weeks, and we’ll try to make the best of it.”
The next day Ned telegraphed to the California bank, and to his satisfaction learned that the check was good.
“It’s all right,” he told Tom.
“Then I’ll go ahead,” said the young inventor. “I’ll start in right away and order the material we need, and I’ll get busy gathering all the information on oil-well machinery and trying to improve on it. No more car rides or airplane spins, or anything else, for a while. Here’s where I shed my coat and work night and day. Watch my smoke.”
The next week was one of intense energy and application for the young inventor. He had the gift of losing himself in his work, especially when that work interested him. And the further he went into the subject the greater the grip it got upon him. His enthusiasm grew as he plunged into the fascinating study of the tremendous riches in oil that the earth held beneath its surface. Soon he was absorbed in it as in a thrilling romance. He traced the gradual steps by which men of all climes and in all ages had sought to possess themselves of this marvelous wealth stored in nature’s caverns and only yielded up reluctantly.
“Do you know,” he said one night to Ned, as they sat discussing the matter in the office, “that the Chinese were the pioneers in the matter of oil-well digging?”
“No, I didn’t,” replied Ned. “But I’m not surprised. Those old Chinamen seem to have started most of the things we’ve improved on later. There’s gunpowder and the compass and a raft of other things.”
“Well, digging for oil was one of them,” said Tom. “And the principles they applied underlie the methods we’re using to-day. Of course, they didn’t use steam power, and that’s where we’ve got the bulge on them. They worked by man power, and that apparatus was laughably crude when compared with ours, yet their methods were strikingly similar to those we’re using now or have been using very recently.”
“For instance?” said Ned, with a lifting of the eyebrows.
“Well, take their springboard arrangement,” replied Tom. “The cutting tool, or bit, was suspended in the hole by means of a rattan cable, and the required movement was given to it by a springboard. When a coolie jumped on the board, it raised the bit; when he relieved it of his weight the bit fell and cut its way downward. A drum with a vertical shaft, around which oxen traveled in a circle, coiled the cable and lifted the drill out of the hole when they wanted to bail out the hole or change tools. The bailer was made of a section of bamboo, and that material was also used for tubing and casing and pipe lines.
“Now, this springboard was very similar in action and function to the springpole which we’ve used here in America, chiefly at first for drilling brine wells. It was used, too, in drilling the first oil well of the California fields.”
“But they’ve given that up now, haven’t they?” asked Ned.
“Sure they have,” was the answer. “The walking beam, which is the biggest piece of timber in the present-day drilling rig, has taken its place. And, of course, that’s now operated by steam instead of manual labor. But my point is that the old springboard process of the Chinese and the springpole method that we’ve used till recently are fundamentally based on the same thing—the percussion process.”
“We’ve got a long way from that now, I imagine,” remarked Ned.
“We have and we haven’t,” replied Tom. “Percussion is still in common use in a great many wells, especially when they’re not supposed to go very deep and where the rocks are of comparatively soft stone. But where these conditions don’t exist, the rotary method is often employed. In that case two strings of pipe are used, one to wall up the hole, while the other with the drill attached is rotated inside of it. An important thing in connection with this method is that a circulation of thick mud pumped through the drill stem will support the walls of the hole until the well is completed, provided it isn’t too deep. It’s being used a lot now in the Texas fields, and I’m looking into it thoroughly. I tell you, old boy, it’s a fascinating study.”
“That’s the way I like to hear you talk,” said Ned, with a smile. “Once you get interested in a thing, you’ll never stop until you improve on it. I’ll bet a year’s salary that before a month’s over, you’ll have invented something that will set the country talking.”
“Don’t risk your money so recklessly,” laughed Tom.
“I’m not rash,” replied Ned. “As a matter of fact, such a wager wouldn’t be sportsmanlike, for I’d be betting on a sure thing.”
Although Tom’s time had been taken up so fully day and night with the contract he had on hand and the new invention he was evolving, he had not forgotten or neglected the unfortunate airman whom he and his friends had saved from death.
Several times each week he called up the hospital by telephone to learn how the patient was progressing. And he had requested Mrs. Baggert, the housekeeper of the Swift home, to send fruit, jellies and other delicacies to the sufferer, a task which that warm-hearted woman undertook gladly.
“Come along, Ned,” said Tom one afternoon. “Let’s jump into the roadster and go up to the hospital. I want to see for myself how the poor fellow is getting along. Those ’phone calls are usually answered by the secretary, and she’s rather hazy in her reports. I want to have a talk with Doctor Sherwood himself. Nothing like going right to headquarters.”
Ned looked rather dubiously at a pile of papers on his desk.
“I’d like to,” he said, “but——”
Tom laughed, picked up Ned’s hat, jammed it on his friend’s head, and yanked him out of his office chair.
“You’ve got such winning ways, I can’t resist you,” observed Ned, surrendering with a grin.
In a few minutes they were at the hospital. In the hall they met Dr. Sherwood, who was just coming out of one of the wards. He greeted them heartily.
“I can guess what you’ve come for,” he remarked. “I wish I had more cheerful news for you about that poor fellow you brought here. But it’s proved to be a more serious case than I thought at first it would be. The fractured leg is mending all right, but his head’s in a bad way. It’s a case of brain concussion. He must have hit his head pretty hard when he dived into the tree. Most of the time he’s unconscious or semi-conscious, and his temperature stays high.”
“You don’t think he’ll die, do you?” asked Tom anxiously.
“No-o,” replied the doctor slowly, “I hardly think so. Still, you can’t tell. He’s a mighty sick man. But come along with me and you can see him.”
They followed him on tiptoe into one of the rooms. But they did not need to be so careful, for the young man with flushed face and disordered hair who lay on the cot was wholly oblivious to their presence. He was babbling in delirium, and there was no intelligence in the eyes whose restless glances passed over the visitors as though they were not there.
It was a saddening sight, and as the boys could be of no service they quickly took their leave.
“No clue to his identity yet?” asked Tom of the doctor, who had accompanied them out on the steps of the hospital.
“No,” was the reply. “Lots of people have looked at him without recognizing him. We’ve had many letters from all parts of the country from people who had read of the accident and thought the young fellow might be a missing son or some other relative. But he doesn’t answer to any of the descriptions given. And he himself hasn’t been in a condition to tell us who he is.”
“That young fellow certainly got a rough deal,” remarked Ned, as he and Tom walked away. “Think of his suffering like that and being all alone—I mean as far as his folks are concerned.”
“Yes, Ned, and think of his folks, if he has any. How they must be worrying about him.”
“Queer he didn’t have some sort of tag on his clothing. Most aviators wear them.”
“So they do. But fellows get careless. I suppose he forgot all about it.”
The next week was a busy one for Tom. During the evenings he was engrossed in the study of everything he could find that bore in the most remote degree on the subject of oil and oil wells. He had already a very extensive scientific and mechanical library, but in addition he wrote and wired to learned societies and Government bureaus for their latest bulletins and reports. These were soon coming in to him by every mail, and he devoured them with an insatiable appetite. Any one looking over from the house could see the light burning in his office till long after midnight.
And every night when Tom at last put out the light and stepped outside, he saw either a very slight or a very massive figure waiting to accompany him over the short distance that lay between the office and the house. One night it would be Rad and the next night Koku. Those two had had many wrangles on the subject of who should guard their idolized master, and had finally compromised on taking turns.
Tom at first had laughed and then scolded, but to no purpose.
“You nebber kin tell, Marse Tom,” Rad had said, shaking his woolly head, when Tom remonstrated with him, “w’en somebuddy might cum nosin’ an spifflicatin’ roun’ here w’en you’s busy wid yo’ wuk; an’ ef dey does, dey’s goin’ to fin’ ’Radicate Sampson right on de job. Nussah, nussah, Marse Tom, dey ain’t no use argifyin’. Ah stays heah while you stays heah.”
Koku was less voluble, but no less devoted.
“Me sleep when you sleep,” he said simply.
Faced with such loyalty, Tom could do nothing but surrender.
The days were no less busy than the nights, though in another way. Tom spent hours with Garret Jackson, the manager of the mechanical department of the works. He was a first-class mechanic, clear-headed and forward looking, and had been with the Swift Construction Company for years. Tom had not only the greatest respect for his ability, but also implicit confidence in his discretion. Again and again it had been necessary for Tom to entrust him with secrets of his inventions while he was having special machinery made, and he had never betrayed his trust. Repeatedly Tom thanked his stars that he had two such faithful coworkers as Ned Newton in the financial end and Garret Jackson in the mechanical part of his business.
As a result of his conferences with Jackson, it was not long before a high fence began to be constructed in a rather remote section of the plant. Many curious glances were cast at it as it went up, enclosing an area of about a hundred feet square. What it was intended for only a few knew, and the cold stare of Jackson when any one hinted at a question soon discouraged the inquisitive.
It was just verging on dusk one night, when Tom, coming back from the post-office, passed the one large confectionery store which the town of Shopton possessed. He glanced carelessly through the window and saw that the store contained two customers, a man and a girl. The latter, who was a trifle out of the direct line of Tom’s vision, was edging away from the man, who seemed to be annoying her. The man followed and laid his hand on her arm.
The girl threw it off and faced him indignantly. As she did so, Tom saw that it was Mary!
In a flash he was in the store.