was already a mile-long double file of tents, clapboard and tin shacks. Horses and oxen bogged almost belly deep in the mud, wagons and hacks were stalled; only the long spans of mules were capable of pulling through this river of black slush.
The new town came in two parts, the railroad being the dividing fine. To the west there were a few tents and tar-paper shacks which was Kiefer's meager residential district. On the other side stretched the boggy road leading eastward to the Glenn ranch and the new oil field. Shanties and shacks and sheet-iron buildings lined the road on either side. Here were stores of cardboard, banks of canvas, clapboard cribs and livery stables, dance halls and gambling rooms, blind pigs and restaurants.
Kiefer was a boom town, born full grown, vicious and profane.
Saddle on his hip, Grant dropped down from the day-coach into the sucking mud that seemed to cover everything. He had never seen anything like it. No trail town that he had ever seen could compare with it.
Rhea Muller stood on the coach steps, gazing out at the crowds milling around. Suddenly she smiled and lifted her hand, and Grant saw a huge, square-built man and a blond boy coming toward them. He glanced up, and Rhea said, “My father and my brother. They'll take us out to the lease.”
Old Midler's face lighted up when he saw the black satchel in his daughter's arms. “Rhea, you got the money!”
“Yes, but on the banker's terms.”
“Who cares about terms!” the old man shouted. “Now we can get the well started!”
The old man and the boy made a pack saddle by clasping their hands. “Here, well carry you over to the wagon, Rhea. We'll stop by Kurt Battle's and tell him to load up our drilling tools.”
Joe Grant grinned faintly as the old man and the boy swung Rhea down from the coach and plowed through the mud toward a rickety buckboard, all of them talking excitedly at once. A bond of affection seemed to pull them together; happiness showed in their faces. Grant was surprised to hear Rhea Muller's laughter roll free and unrestrained. It was a pleasant sound.
Only after they had reached the buckboard did she remember Grant and motion for him to come over. “My father,” Rhea said. “Pa, this is Joe Grant.”
Joe took old Muller's hand. The big Dutchman grinned, but there was worry behind his pale eyes. “Rhea says you pitched in on a little trouble up at Vinita. I want to thank you. It was a big favor; bigger than you know, maybe.”
Grant looked pleased. There didn't seem to be anything to say. Then he shook hands with Bud Muller, a sober young giant with a good deal of his father in him.
“I didn't think it would start so fast,” the old man said thoughtfully, almost to himself. “Me and Bud was over in Tulsa trying to raise the money. We should have gone with Rhea.”
Rhea smiled at her father, a very different expression from the smiles that Grant had seen before. “It's all over now. We'll get the well going and let's not hear any more about Ben Farley.” She looked at Grant. “You can throw your saddle in the back.”
He hadn't meant to go any farther. He had meant to say good-by and start moving south again, but when he looked at her he knew that it would not be that easy. She was a strange girl, headstrong and ambitious. She was trouble, and he knew it. Yet, he heard himself saying “Thank you.” And he threw the saddle in and climbed up himself.
Rhea and her father rode up front; Grant and Bud Muller braced themselves in the back of the buckboard as it lurched and swayed in the mud.
“You aiming to work for us, Mr. Grant?” Bud Muller asked.
The suddenness of the question threw Grant off guard. “Why do you ask?”
“Rhea said you might.”
Grant tugged his hat down on his forehead to hide the uneasiness in his eyes. “What else did your sister say?”
“That's all. It won't be an easy job, and it might be dangerous. I guess you wouldn't want it for what we could afford to pay.”
Grant wasn't thinking about the pay, or the danger that might be involved in fighting a land speculator called Ben Farley. He was remembering how fast the marshal's office had gone into action, and thinking how much safer he would be in Texas.
He glanced at Bud and said, “I wasn't exactly looking for a job.”
He should have said no. He should have said it at the station and stuck to it. But Rhea Muller had a way about her; she was a hard girl to say no to. Well, he thought, I guess it won't hurt to go out and see what an oil lease looks like. Tomorrow I'll come back and catch a freighter for Tulsa.
A little way from the boxcar depot old Muller stopped the buckboard and climbed down in front of a sheet-iron oil-well supply building. Rhea handed him the leather satchel.
“This won't take long,” Muller said, “but you better take the buckboard back to the field, Bud. Somebody ought to be at the lease. I'll catch a ride out on one of Kurt Battle's freighters.”
Bud Muller nodded. “Don't let Battle cheat you, just because tools and rig timbers are scarce.”
“And watch the money,” Rhea said. “It's all we've got until we're spudded in.”
The old man grinned, then tramped through the mud toward the supply building. Grant and Bud moved up to the driver's seat, young Muller taking the lines.
Two heavy dray horses dragged the buckboard back into the slush of East Kiefer's main street. The road was jammed with heavy wagons headed for the Glenn ranch, big freighters loaded with derrick timbers, drill pipes, boilers, and newly dressed bits. Twelve mule hitches churned the mud axle deep in the middle of the road, so Bud kept to the side as much as possible.
There was frenzied activity everywhere, there was urgency in the air and excitement on men's faces. Grant shook his head in disbelief. “Are all oil towns like this?”
“At first they are,” Bud Muller said. “Bartlesville was something to see when it started, but Kiefer's already bigger. Glenn Pool will be the biggest oil strike in history before it's over.”
Oil, in terms of money, meant little to Joe Grant. He was used to dealing in more tangible things—a herd of cattle, or a few acres of cotton. It was hard to believe that a thing like oil could cause so much excitement.
It was a long six miles to the Glenn ranch where the discovery well had been brought in. The road was lined with hundreds of shacks and shanties, and storekeepers were building their sidewalks on stilts so that customers would not have to wade in the mud. Grant felt his face coloring as they passed a long string of cribs, but Rhea Muller gazed at them briefly, then looked away. She had seen it all before, many times in many other Kiefers.
Most of Rhea's coolness had disappeared since they left the train. Grant felt strangely uncomfortable at the nearness of her as the three of them rode together on the buckboard's narrow board seat, yet he did not try to move away. He tried to look straight ahead, but he could not keep from glancing at her from time to time. Once she turned and smiled at him, knowing that he had been staring at her.
“I think you will find the oil field interesting, Mr. Grant. You won't be sorry for taking the job with us.”
For a moment Grant was too flustered to speak, and he busied himself with building a cigarette. What had she meant? He tried to tell himself that he hadn't taken a job with the Mullers—he'd just come along out of curiosity, to see what an oil field looked like. But he could feel Rhea Midler's warmth beside him... and he couldn't be very sure of anything.
At last they topped a small rise and Grant came erect as he stared down into that strange basin. At first he saw only the hundreds of dirty flapping tents in a glistening sea of mud, and then he became aware of the derricks, scores of them, wooden skeletons being hammered together against a stark background of scrub oak and rolling hills.
So this was Glenn Pool—to that time the richest discovery in the history of wildcatting. There was an excitement here that would not be ignored. Grant felt it. So did Bud and Rhea Muller.
“Well, there it is!” Bud said.
Grant turned to Rhea and he could see the flash of excitement in her eyes. And it was in her voice, too, when she spoke. “Look at the derricks—and more going up all the time! Bowling Green, Bartlesville, Cygnet—they were nothing compared to this!”
A new town of tents and tin shanties had sprung up near the discovery well, a small replica of Kiefer. This was Sabo, a sprawling, shapeless collection of cheap boardinghouses, eating places, secretive saloons, and dance
