halls. Some of the cribs and gambling houses were already beginning to move in from Kiefer. Grant was reminded of Dodge City on the wrong side of the deadline—but not even Dodge had run as wide open as Sabo and Kiefer.
Bud Muller hauled the buckboard around to the east of Sabo to escape some of the congestion. He looked at Grant, grinning. “What do you think of it?”
“I don't know. I never saw anything like it before.” He reached inside his windbreaker for tobacco and was comforted at the touch of the .45 in his waistband. “How far is it to this lease of yours?” he asked.
Bud pointed to a stand of blackjack in the distance. “That's Slush Creek. Our place is just on the other side.”
They moved away from Sabo into a man-made wilderness of half-completed derricks. The sound of hammering jarred the winter air as skeleton rigs rose slowly against the sky. Heavy freighters tore and slashed the ground with their big wheels until the red earth appeared to be bleeding. Grant stared about in fascination but always aware of Rhea Muller sitting close beside him.
Bud Muller forded the oil-spotted waters of Slush Creek and whipped the horses up the gentle incline. When they broke through the brush Grant saw a partly finished cellar, a small dugout shack, and a dirty tent. Two men working with shovels waved to them, and Bud and Rhea waved back.
This was the Muller lease. Grant stared out at that bleak expanse of red clay and scrub oak and felt his enthusiasm sink with disappointment. It was impossible to believe that riches might be found in such a place.
Rhea Muller looked at him as though she could read his mind. “The oil is
Young Muller nodded and vaulted out of the buckboard. Grant took the lines and nodded uncertainly toward the half shack of blackjack logs and mud plaster. “Is that where you live?”
She smiled. “That is the Muller home, Mr. Grant. You and the other hands will bunk in the tent until a bunkhouse can be built.”
Grant half-opened his mouth, then closed it. He cracked the lines and moved the buckboard to the dugout. “Miss Muller,” he said stiffly, “I think maybe we ought to talk before this goes any further.”
Her eyes widened. “Talk about what?”
“Well, I don't think I'm the man you want; I don't know anything about the oil business.” He felt uncomfortable, and the words sounded awkward. He decided it was best not to look at her as he talked.
“You can learn about the oil business,” she said. “My brother and father can teach you.” Surprisingly, she laughed.
“Anyway, it makes no difference. We want you to see that Ben Farley doesn't get a chance to wreck our well before we're spudded in; you don't have to know anything about the oil business.”
Grant swallowed. “It isn't that exactly. I ought to be moving on.”
She studied him for a moment, her eyes clear and calculating. “You're afraid of the law, is that it?”
He shrugged. As she had said, they understood each other.
For another long moment she was silent, then she dropped her head and gazed at the ground. “Would it make any difference if I said I wanted you to stay?”
He wasn't sure how she meant it. “To watch after the well, you mean?”
She lifted her head and looked at him. “Not just the well, Mr. Grant.”
Suddenly she turned and fled down the sod steps and into the dugout, and Joe Grant stood uneasily in the mud, wondering if her words actually meant what he had taken them to mean. Several minutes passed and he tried to tell himself that this was the time to leave.
But he kept remembering the way she had looked at him. Could a girl like Rhea Muller have a personal interest in him —an outlaw?
At last he called, “Miss Muller.”
There was no answer from the dugout.
He descended the sod steps and knocked on the plank door. Still there was no answer. He pulled the latchstring and stepped inside.
The dugout was one large room, the lower half dug into the earth, the upper half built up of logs and mud plaster. There was only one small high window in the room, but the walls had been plastered with clay and whitewashed, so it was almost as light as any other room. The furniture was mostly boxes and packing crates, all whitewashed. An iron cookstove stood against one wall; a folding cot fitted into the corner of the opposite wall, the bedding rolled neatly at one end.
Rhea Muller stood rigidly beside the stove, her back to Grant. “Why don't you go?” she said tightly. “That's what you want, isn't it?”
“I guess I don't really know what I want,” Grant said. “Once I thought I wanted to be a cowhand, then a farmer.”
“Then a bank robber?” she asked stiffly.
“No. I didn't want that; it was forced on me.”
She turned then, and he was surprised to see that she had been crying. She did not seem the kind of girl who would cry very often.
“Miss Muller...” The words sounded thick. “Is anything wrong?”
“No!” she said bitterly, “nothing is wrong. Just get out and leave me alone!” She turned away quickly when Grant didn't move, and after a moment she said quietly, “My whole life is bound up in this small piece of red clay and blackjack... in a lease that has just thirty days to run.” She made a quick gesture with one hand that indicated the entire room. “Do you think I like this, Mr. Grant? Living in a hole in the ground like a wild animal, living out the good years of my life in towns like Kiefer and Sabo? Well, I don't like it, Mr. Grant, but I can live with it for a few more months if it will help my father get his well.”
She wheeled back to face Grant and her eyes were hard with resolution. “I mean to have this well! Nothing is going to stop me from having it!” And Grant had the uneasy feeling that she had forgotten that he was in the room... that she was making the vow to herself alone. Then she looked at him and some of the hardness went out of her eyes. After a brief pause she went on, “I want to live like other people. I want to live in a decent town, I want to forget the smell of oil and the feel of mud.”
Grant was seeing a side of Rhea Muller that he had not known existed. She seemed tired and defeated; her mask of self-sufficiency had fallen away, leaving the evidence of fear in her expression. He moved awkwardly. “You can have all those things when the well comes in. There'll be plenty of money then for anything you want.”
Surprisingly, she laughed, and the sound was bitter. “There have been other wells, but something always went wrong. Fires, explosions, lost tools. This time it's Ben Farley.”
“He can't hurt you. You've got the money to start the well, what could he do to stop it?”
She smiled thinly, “A million things. You don't know Farley.”
For one long moment they stood there looking at each other, and Grant could feel his resolutions deserting him. Without her mask she was even more attractive than before; no longer was she cold and ambitious, but she was afraid.
“Joe.” It was the first time she had used his first name and the sound was little more than a whisper. She came toward him slowly, and said his name again. “Joe, we need you! We need a man who's able and not afraid to fight—with guns, if necessary. My father's too old. Bud's too young....” She came closer, her chin tilted, her eyes looking directly into Grant's. “Joe, we need you!”
He did not know how it happened, but suddenly she was in his arms, her face pressed hard against his chest. For one brief moment he held her gently, as if she were a child. But Rhea Muller was no child. She was storm and fire, like no other woman Joe Grant had ever known, and suddenly he held her hard against him.
“Joe, will you help us?”
“Have I got a choice?”
He had the brief impression that she was smiling, but the moment he found her mouth with his all other impressions fled his brain. Almost too late they heard the tramp of boots near the dugout, and Rhea pushed away, breathless, with high color in her cheeks.
“Rhea, you down there?” It was Bud Muller, and his voice was quick and edgy. Then the door burst open and young Muller shoved inside, looking directly at Grant. “Have you decided whether or not you're working for
