but weariness was forgotten when the girls caught sight of the wild scene.
The spurt of crude oil shot into the air in a column as thick as a man’s body. Straight up it surged for a hundred feet or more before the wind caught it and whipped the high-pressure fluid into yellow spume.
“I’m glad the wind is blowing the other way from us,” Kitty said.
The bowl-like valley from whose center the oil spouted was littered with lumber, shattered remains of the drill rigging, and dotted with what seemed to be the entire population of the county.
“There is Moon’s car,” Doris pointed.
“How do they catch the oil?” Kitty wondered. “It will all be wasted, it seems to me,”
Her curiosity was shortly satisfied. Under the bellowed orders of a straw-boss, scarcely heard above the roar of the spouting oil, a gang of men dragged gigantic mats toward the gusher. Others advanced with what seemed to be the world’s biggest wrenches. It was all very confusing to the two girls, and to most of the other spectators, too.
All that they knew was that a fascinating battle was being fought between puny men and one of Nature’s greatest forces, unleashed.
Time and again the men advanced, only to have their tools whirled high into the air.
Then, as suddenly as it had started, the oil ceased to spout.
A cheer arose from the workers and spectators alike.
“They capped itl Hooray!?’
Another gang was busy throwing up walls of earth to conserve the oil flooding the ground.
“Well, that was thrilling,” Doris said. “Even if it just means another setback for us. Oil! That is really why they want the land.”
“Why, Doris! Would you believe it,” Kitty exclaimed, “it is way after three o’clock. We’ve been here hours and hours.”
“I guess we had better go back to the ranch,” Doris said.
They were halted by a “hello” from the milling crowd around the capped well.
“Hi, Doris! Kitty!”
“It sounds like Dave and Marshmallow,” Doris exclaimed. “But I don’t see them. Oh, can that be they?”
Two inky-faced figures on black ponies were spurring up the slope toward the girls.
“What is this, an Uncle Tom’s Cabin show or a minstrel?” Doris laughed, as Dave and Marshmallow, bathed in oil, galloped up on oil-soaked ponies.
“Boy, what a bath!” Dave shouted. “We were just over the hill there when the well went off with a roar that seemed to lift the ground from under our feet. Just as we got there the oil came down on top of us.”
“Nothing will ever taste the same to me again,” Marshmallow mourned.
“We’d better get back to the ranch,” Doris said when she had recovered her breath. Kitty was holding fast to the high pommel of her saddle, weak from laughter.
“I’m sort of wary about turning in the horse and my borrowed clothes in this shape,” Dave admitted.
“Anyhow, crude oil is good for your hair,” Doris said. “Let’s go!”
It was a long jaunt back to the ranch, and as they jogged along the boys told of their experience.
“That well is on some of the land they can’t find an owner for,” Dave said. “It’s the far corner of the three sections Plum took us over yesterday.”
“I thought it looked familiar,” Doris said thoughtfully.
“That man Moon was awfully mad,” Marshmallow chuckled. “We—Dave and I and all the cowboys except the one who was wrestling a steer and didn’t know what was going on—were the first ones on the scene. Moon was there with three other men, all of ’em oil-soaked, ordering the drillers around. When we got there he tried to chase us away.”
“By the time he had us backing off,” Dave laughed, “everybody else was swarming in from the other side.”
“Do you know who the three men with him were?” Doris asked.
“Of course not,” Dave answered.
“You have met one, more or less socially,” Doris said with a wry smile. “The other two are not unknown to my family.”
“Oh, lay off the riddles,” Marshmallow said. “Are you just fooling, Doris?”
“No,” came the answer. “One of them was the stowaway, and the others were the men who robbed Uncle Wardell!”
“Honest!” exclaimed Marshmallow. “Let’s go back and tackle them!”
CHAPTER XVI
Plans
Marshmallow’s rash proposal about fighting was voted down.
It was a droll cavalcade that trotted into the yard of Crazy Bear Ranch later.
Yellow dust had settled thick over the oil on the boys. The girls were only a little less covered. Altogether they were a queer-looking crowd.
“What has happened?” Mrs. Mallow cried, as she ran out to meet them.
“Is—are you—you?” she demanded. “Marshall! The only way I could recognize you was by your shape.”
“We’re all right, Mother,” Marshmallow responded. “Just got a little crude oil on us. Doris said it was good for freckles or something.”
“We’ll explain as soon as we have bathed,” Dave said.
“We’ll have plenty to tell,” Doris cried over her shoulder, as she darted for her room.
There, in tubs of cold water filled by hand, the girls scrubbed themselves clean and with real relief changed into airy, fluffy afternoon frocks that would have graced the veranda of any country dub, and were particularly charming in the rough-and-ready surroundings of the ranch.
The boys were tardy in appearing, and when they made their entrance in linen knickers and white shirts open at the throat they still exhaled an aroma of oil.
“Let’s sit under the trees,” Mrs. Mallow suggested. “Then you can tell me everything.”
Marshmallow first interviewed Mrs. Saylor, and successfully, for he returned with a large pitcher of milk, glasses for all, and a plate of sliced cake.
“Now we can talk comfortably,” he grinned.
“But do talk,” Mrs. Mallow urged. “I’m still all at sixes and sevens. Tell me what happened.”
The boys told their story first.
Then Doris related her surprising share of
