who would protect the school? It’s more important than I am.”
“But…”
“Don’t you worry, Sandy Carson Steele.” She patted his arm. “The Navajos are my friends, and they’re no friends of Cavanaugh. I’ll tell them what’s happened and they’ll take good care of me. Now you had better get back to the well as fast as you can. The roads are completely impossible after dark.”
CHAPTER NINE
Fighting Fire with Fire
When he got back to the well Sandy found that Hall had already set out on his fund-raising campaign while Donovan had locked himself in his trailer laboratory and was running analyses on oil samples he had taken before the cement was poured. Ralph had just finished welding a heavy cap to the top of the casing.
“I defy anybody to find out what’s down there until we’re ready to let them know,” he said as he grinned at the tired and dirty boy. The grin changed to a frown. “What have you been up to this time, Sandy? You look like something the cat refused to drag in!”
When he learned about the events at Kitty’s school, the driller nodded grimly.
“I warned you about the curly wolves,” he said. “Go get cleaned up and have some supper. Then come over to the lab. We’ll talk to Don about this.”
The geologist smoked thoughtfully while Sandy reported. Then he knocked out his pipe and said, “He’s impossible.”
“Who’s impossible?” Ralph asked.
“This man Cavanaugh. No man can spread himself as thin as he has been doing. Look at it this way.” He held up a long finger stained with chemicals. “First, he’s bidding for helium leases on land where he wouldn’t be allowed to drill. Second”—another finger went up—“he’s bidding for uranium leases although the government isn’t buying ore from companies that don’t have mills. Third, he’s spying on our well. Fourth, he’s trying to lease land in the disputed San Juan River bed. Fifth, he’s prospecting on school lands without asking anyone’s permission. Hmmm! I’ll run out of fingers pretty soon. Sixth, he’s peddling electronic exploration equipment that isn’t worth a hoot when used by itself. Seventh, he’s operating an unlicensed light beam communications network. Eighth—and here’s something I learned when I drove over to Farmington with John and we called Lukachukai to find out how Chief Ponytooth is getting on—Cavanaugh flew down there yesterday and almost pulled the hospital apart trying to get permission to talk to the old man.”
“That means he hopes to get in on the ground floor if the Navajos and Hopis settle their dispute,” said Ralph.
“Either that or he wants to hurt John by convincing the Chief that the tribes shouldn’t get together.”
“How is the Chief feeling?” Sandy asked.
“Just fine, the nurse told me. He’s tough as shoe leather. Now, is there anything else about Cavanaugh’s activities that we should consider?”
“Why does he work day and night to convince people that he’s a heel?” Ralph contributed.
“Quiz thinks there’s something wrong with the football stories he’s always telling,” said Sandy.
“All right,” Donovan went on thoughtfully. “I suggest that a lot of the things Cavanaugh is doing are meant to be camouflage. He’s throwing up some sort of smoke screen to get people confused about his true intentions. And, since we’re the ones most likely to get hurt by whatever he’s really up to, I also think we had better do a little investigating. Does either of you have any suggestions?”
“If he were sending up smoke signals instead of talking on a light beam, I’ll bet I could soon find out,” the Indian said.
“That’s an excellent idea, Ralph.” The geologist fired up his pipe and sent clouds of smoke billowing through the crowded lab. “Eavesdroppers never hear anything good about themselves, they say. Nevertheless, I think we should fight fire with fire by listening in on him and learning the worst.”
“But how can we listen in?” Sandy objected. “Even if we got high enough to intercept his beam—in a helicopter, let’s say—he would know something had gone wrong when his receiving station didn’t reply. He’d stop talking.”
“There’s another way to go about it,” Donovan replied. “I’m a pretty good geophysicist as well as a geologist, Sandy. I have to be out here, where I may go out looking for oil and find a uranium lode if I keep my eyes peeled and my Geiger counter turned on.
“Over on that table”—he nodded toward a small electric furnace and a collection of retorts, chemicals and test tubes on one corner of his work bench—“I have equipment so sensitive that I can burn the branch of a pine tree, or even a bunch of loco weed and find out whether the roots of that tree or weed reach down into a uranium ore deposit. With it, I can detect in the ash as little as one part in a million of any radioactive ore the plant has sucked up from underground in its sap. Which reminds me that any time you run across a patch of loco weed, let me know immediately. The poisonous stuff seems to like to grow on ground in the vicinity of uranium.
“All right. Any physicist understands the principles of electronics, the properties of light, and so on, doesn’t he?”
Sandy nodded with growing excitement.
“Also, you may have heard that the FBI has an electronic gadget so sensitive that it can eavesdrop on the conversations of crooks, even though they may be sitting in a boat half a mile from shore.”
“I’ll bet the Shoshonean water spirits take a dim view of that,” said Ralph, grinning.
Donovan waved him to silence with his pipe and continued.
“Now my guess is that Cavanaugh is using a lot of power from a portable generator to produce a beam bright enough to be seen a hundred or so miles away. And it’s a lot easier for him to modulate that current so it will modulate the beam than to use revolving mirrors or some other mechanical means to do the job. There is bound to be considerable leakage in a circuit of that kind. I think I can go to one of the radio supply stores in Farmington tomorrow and pick up-enough parts to make an electronic ‘ear’ that can tune in on that leakage if we get it within a hundred feet of Cavanaugh’s transmitter.”
“Sherlock Donovan,” said Ralph, “I take off my hat to you.”
* * * *
The haywire “ear” that Donovan built during the next several days with what little assistance Sandy was able to supply didn’t look like much. It was just a collection of transistors, fixed and variable condensers, coils and verniers mounted on an old breadboard. But it had the advantage of being light and portable. And, when they tried it out with the help of their radio receiving set, it worked!
They found that, with the set’s loudspeaker disconnected, they could place their gadget several hundred feet away and hear the programs perfectly, either on the short-wave or regular broadcasting channels.
“That does it,” Donovan finally said after a careful series of night tests. “We don’t know the frequency that Cavanaugh is using as a modulator, but this thing is flexible enough to tune in on practically any wave band. Now the question becomes, when do we try it out?”
