VII
Christmas was coming; and Bunny had his program all laid out. He was going to take Dad to the Christmas Day foot-ball game, and next morning they would leave for Paradise, and stay there until it was time to go back for the New Year's Day foot-ball game. The well was going fine; they were down over two thousand feet, in soft shale, and having no trouble. Then, a couple of weeks before Christmas, Bunny came home from school, and Aunt Emma said, "Your father just phoned; he's got some news about Excelsior Peter." That was a joke they had in the family—"Excelsior Peter"; Aunt Emma had guessed that "Pete" was a nickname, and she would be real lady-like and use the full name! So, of course, they teased the life out of her. "What is it?" cried Bunny. "They've struck oil." "At Paradise?" Bunny rushed to the phone, in great excitement. Yes, Dad said, Dave Murgins had just phoned down; "Excelsior-Carter No. 1," as the well was called, had been in oil sands for several days, and had managed to keep it secret. Now they were cementing off, something you couldn't hide. Bunny jumped into the car and rushed down to the office. Everybody was excited; the afternoon papers had the news, and some of Dad's oil friends dropped in to talk about it. It meant a new field, of course; there would be a rush to Paradise. Dad was the lucky one—to think he had got twelve thousand acres up there, owned them outright! How had it happened? Dad said it wasn't his doings; he had spent a hundred thousand dollars just to amuse his boy, to get him interested in the business, and perhaps teach him a lesson. But now, by golly, it looked as if the boy had done the teaching! Mr. Bankside, who had got to be quite an oilman now, and was drilling a well of his own, said that he always hoped his sons would lose when they started gambling, so they'd not get the habit; Dad said yes, but he'd risk Bunny's soul this once, there was too much money at stake! After that, of course, Bunny was on pins and needles to get to Paradise; he wanted to quit school, but Dad said no. Bunny decided he didn't care about that old Christmas Day foot-ball game; what did Dad think? To which Dad answered that he'd managed to get along to the age of fifty-nine without ever seeing a foot-ball game! So Bunny said he'd write and tell Ruth, they'd run up on Christmas eve, starting after school, and have dinner late, in regular society style. It would be hard for Ruth to believe that fashionable people in the cities ate their dinner at eight or nine o'clock at night! Meantime, the bit was grinding away in the well; they were down to 2300 feet, and it was known that Excelsior-Carter No. 1 had struck the sands at 2437 feet. Bunny was so much excited that he would run to the phone in between classes at school, and call up his father's secretary at the office, to ask if there was any news. And so, three days before Christmas, he got the magic word; Dad was on the phone, and said that Bunny's well was in oil-sands. It was too early yet to say any more, they were taking a core, that was all. As soon as he got free from class, Bunny went flying over to the office, and there he listened to a conversation— Dad had put in a long distance call, and was talking to the man from whom he got his machinery. He was ordering a patent casing-head, the biggest made, to be shipped to the well; it was to be put on a truck and start tonight. And then Dad was talking to Mur-gins again, telling him at what hour the casing-head was due, and they must set to work and break out the drill-stem, and put that casing-head on tight, with lugs on the side, and just bury it with cement, not less than fifty tons, Dad said; they were away off from everything, out there at Paradise, and if they was to have a blowout, it would be the very devil. Well, they got their core, eight feet of it, and it was high gravity oil—a fortune waiting for them, down underneath those rocky hills, where the feet of goats and sheep had trod for so many years! Dad ordered his "tankage," and then he ordered more. Then they learned that the casing-head had arrived; it was screwed on, and the "lugs" were on, and when the cement had set, all the gas under Mount Vesuvius couldn't lift that there load, said Dad. They started drilling again, and took another core, and found the oil heavier yet. So finally Dad gave way, and said it was too important, he guessed Bunny would have to beg off a day in school. Dad gave orders to "wash" the well, and he called up the cement man, and arranged for the big truck to set out for Paradise; Dad would meet them there, and they would do the job the day before Christmas, and if they got their shut-off, they'd celebrate with the biggest turkey in that famous turkey-raising country. So, early the next morning, Dad and Bunny chucked their suit-cases into the car, and set out to break the speed records to Paradise. Three hours later they stopped to telephone, and the foreman said they were "washing;" also that the Excelsior Pete well had got a water shut-off, and had drilled through the cement, and was going down into the oil sands, the final stage of making a well. They got to San Elido; and Dad said, "We'll just stop and shake hands with Jake Coffey." They drove up to the store, and Bunny jumped out, and there was a clerk and he said, "Jake's gone up to Paradise to see the well. Have you heard the news? Excelsior Pete has got a gusher, there's oil all over the place!" Bunny ran out and shouted to Dad, and leaped into the car, and gosh-amighty, the way they did burn up that road across the desert! Dad laughed, and said the speed-cops would all be up at the well. They got to Paradise, and the town was deserted, not a soul on the streets, and not a car, except those that were hurrying through, like the Rosses. A burglar could have made off with the whole place—but any burglar would have been watching the gusher, along with the speed-cops! You had to park your car a quarter of a mile away from the well, and you could hear the gusher roaring like Niagara Falls! And then, walking, you came round a turn in the road, and you could see the valley, and everything in sight was black; there was a high wind blowing, and it was a regular thunder cloud, a curtain of black mist as far as you could see. The derrick was hidden altogether—you had to make a detour, behind a little ridge, and come over the top to windward, and there the crowds were gathered, staring at the great black jet that came rushing up out of the ground, a couple of hundred feet into the air, with a sound like an endless express train going by. You could see men working, or trying to work, under the derrick; you could see a bunch of them with picks and shovels, throwing up a sort of dam to hold the oil; they wouldn't save much, Dad said, it evaporated too fast. Dad could watch this scene philosophically; it wasn't his "funeral." If it had been one of the independents, like himself, he'd have offered to help; but this was a dirty crowd, Excelsior Pete, they didn't think the little fellows had any business on earth, there was nothing too mean for them to do. Of course, it was a shame to see all that treasure going to waste; but you couldn't be sentimental when you were playing the oil game. What you had to watch out for was that the wind didn't shift suddenly and ruin your good suit of clothes!
VIII
They watched for a while, and then they remembered they had a well of their own, and drove back to Paradise, and across the valley to the Watkins ranch. They had a long talk with the foreman; Dad examined the core, and the report of the chemist who had tested the oil; he saw that the "washing" was going all right, they would be ready for the cementing off in the morning. Everybody was on tiptoe; they were going to. do their job better than the "Excelsior Pete" crowd, and not smear all the landscape with crude petroleum. The tankage was at the railroad depot, and they inspected the foundations, just completed for the tanks. Everything "hunky-dory," said Dad. They drove over to the Rascum place and saw Ruth, and Bunny got on his hunting clothes, and got a few quail before sun-down; and then they had supper, and Paul told them all the gossip about the well, also how much money Eli had collected for his temple. After supper they went back to the well—they just couldn't keep away! It was a crisp cold evening, a new moon in the sky, a big white star just over it— everything so beautiful, and Bunny so happy, he owned a "wildcat," and it was "coming in," it was going to yield him a treasure that would make all the old-time fairy tales and Arabian Nights adventures seem childish things. They were lifting the "water-string" now—a process necessary to cementing off; the casing at the bottom had to be raised, so that the cement could be forced under. It was difficult, for the casing was wedged, and they had to put down a tool known as a "jar," which struck heavy blows and shook the casing loose. Standing on the derrick platform, Bunny listened to these blows, far down in the earth; and then suddenly came a sound, the like of which had never assailed his ears in all his life, a sound that was literally a blow on the side of his head; it seemed as if the whole inside of the earth suddenly blew out. That tremendous casing-head, with its mass of cement, which Dad had said would hold down Mt. Vesuvius, went suddenly up into the air; straight up, with the big fourteen inch casing following it, right through the top of the derrick, smashing the crown block and tackle as if these had been made of sugar candy! Of course Bunny turned and ran for his life, everybody scattered in every direction. Bunny looked once or twice as he ran, and saw the casing-head and a long string of casing up in the air, for all the world like a Dutchman's pipe, only it was straight. When this pipe-stem got too long, it broke off, and crashed over sideways, taking part of the derrick with it; and out of the hole there shot a geyser of water, and then oil, black floods of it, with that familiar roaring sound—an express train shooting out of the ground! Bunny gave a yell or two, and he saw Dad waving his arms, and presumably calling; he started toward his father—when suddenly, most dreadful thing of all, the whole mass of oil up in the air burst into flame! They were never to know what did it; perhaps an electric spark, or the fire in the boiler, or a spark made by falling wreckage, or rocks blown out of the hole, striking on steel; anyhow, there was a tower of flame, and the most amazing spectacle—the burning oil would hit the ground, and bounce up, and explode, and leap again and fall again, and great red masses of flame would unfold, and burst, and yield black masses of smoke, and these in turn red. Mountains of smoke rose to the sky, and mountains of flame came seething down to the earth; every jet that struck the ground turned into a volcano, and rose again, higher than before; the whole mass, boiling and bursting, became a river of fire, a lava flood that went streaming down the valley, turning everything it touched into flame, then swallowing it up and hiding the flames in a cloud of smoke. The force of gravity took it down the valley, and the force of the wind swept it over the hill-side; it touched the bunk-house, and swallowed it in one gulp; it took the tool-house, everything that was wood; and when there came a puff of wind, driving the stream of oil and gas to one side, you saw the skeleton of the derrick, draped with fire! Bunny saw his father, and ran to join him. Dad was rallying the men; was anybody hurt? He got the crew together, one by one; they were all there, thank God! He told Paul to run down to the ranch-house and get his family up into the hills; he told Bunny to go with him, and keep away from the fire—a long way, you never could tell in which direction it would explode. So Bunny went flying down the arroyo at Paul's heels; they found the family down on their knees, praying, the two girls hysterical. They got them up, and told them where to go; never mind their few belongings, cried Bunny, Dad would pay for them. Paul shouted to see to the goats, and they ran to the pen, but they weren't needed; the panic-stricken creatures flung themselves against the side of the pen and broke through, and away they went down the arroyo; they would take care of themselves! Bunny started back; and on the way, here came Dad in his car. He was going after dynamite, he called to them; they were to keep away from the fire meantime; and off he went in the darkness. It was one time in his life that Bunny knew his father to be caught without something he needed; he hadn't thought to carry any dynamite around with him on his drives! Of course Bunny had heard about oil fires, which are the terror of the industry. He knew of the devices ordinarily used to extinguish them. Water was of no use—quite the contrary, the heat would dissolve the water into its constituents, and you would merely be feeding oxygen to the flames. You must have live steam in enormous quantities, and for that you needed many boilers, and they had only one here, this fire would go on burning all the while they were fetching more; Bunny had heard of a fire that burned for ten days, until they made a great conical hood of steel to slide over the well, with an opening in the top through which the flames rushed out, and into which was poured the live steam. And meantime all the pressure would be wasted, and millions of dollars worth of money burned up! Bunny realized that, as a desperate alternative, Dad was going to try to plug up the hole by a dynamite blast, even at the risk of ruining the well. The two boys skirted the slopes, and got back to the well, on the windward side, away from the flames. There they found the crew engaged in digging a shaft, as close to the fire as they could get; Bunny understood that it was in preparation for the dynamite. They had set up a barrier against the heat, a couple of those steel troughs in which they mixed cement; upon this they had a hose playing, the water turning to steam as it hit. A man would run into the searing heat, and chop a few strokes with a pick, or throw out a few shovelfuls of dirt, and then he would flee, and another man would run in. Dave Murgins was working the hose, lying flat on the ground with some wet canvas over his head. Fortunately, they had pressure from the artesian well, for their pump was out of commission, along with everything else. Dave shouted his orders, and the hole got deeper and deeper. Paul ran in to help, and Bunny wanted to, but Dave shouted him back, and so he had to stand and watch his "wild-cat" burning up, and all he could do was to bake his face a little! They got down below the surface of the ground, and after that it was easier; but the man who worked in that hole was risking his life—suppose the wind were to shift, even for a few seconds, and blow that mass of boiling oil over him! But the wind held strong and steady, and the men jumped into the hole and dug, and the dirt flew out in showers. Presently they were tunneling in towards the well—they would go as close as they dared, before they set the dynamite. And suddenly Bunny thought of his father, coming with the stuff; he wouldn't be able to drive up the road, he'd have to come round by the rocky hill-side, carrying that dangerous load in the darkness. Bunny went running, as fast as he dared, to help. There were cars down on the road; many people had seen the glare of the fire, and come to the scene. Bunny inquired for his father; and at last there came a car with much tooting, and there was Dad, and another man whom Bunny did not know. They drove as far up as they dared—the Watkins house had been long ago swallowed by the flames. They stopped and got out, and Dad told Bunny to take the car back to a safe place, and not come near him or the other man with the dynamite; they would make their way to the well, very carefully. Bunny heard Dad telling the other man to go slow, they'd not risk their lives just to save a few barrels of oil. When Bunny got back to the well again, Dad and the man were already there, and the crew was setting the dynamite. They had some kind of electric battery to explode it with, and presently they were ready, and everybody stood back, and the strange man pushed down a handle, and there was a roar and a burst of flame from the shaft, and the geyser of oil that was rushing out of the well was snubbed off in an instant—just as if you stopped a garden hose by pinching it! The tower of oil dropped; it leaped and exploded a few times more, and that was the end. The river of fire was still flowing down the arroyo, and would take a long time to burn itself out; but the main part of the show was over. And nobody was hurt—that is, nobody but Bunny, who stood by the edge of the red glare, gazing at the stump of his beautiful oil derrick, and the charred foundations of his home-made bunk-house, and all the wreckage of his hopes. If the boy had been a little younger, there would have been tears in his eyes. Dad came up to him and saw his face, and guessed the truth, and began to laugh. "What's the matter, son? Don't you realize that you've got your oil?" Strange as it may seem, that idea came to Bunny for the first time! He stared at his father, with such a startled expression that the latter put his arm about the boy and gave him a hug. "Cheer up, son! This here is nothin', this is a joke. You're a millionaire ten times over." "Gosh!" said Bunny. "That's really true, isn't it!" "True?" echoed Dad. "Why, boy, we got an ocean of oil down