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CHAPTER VII
A YANKEE FRIEND

Micah Davis was a Yankee, as he proudly told Bob, “born and raised in New Hampshire,” and his shrewd common sense and dry humor stood him in good stead in the rather lawless environment of Chassada. He was well acquainted with the unlovely characteristics of the five who had chased Bob, and when he heard the whole story he promised to look up the Chinaman and see what he could do for him.

“If he’s out of a job, I’d like to hire him,” he said. “They’re good, steady workers, and born cooks. He can have the room back of the store and do his own housekeeping. I’ll stop in at Jake’s this afternoon.”

Bob was in a fever of fear that he would miss the train, and it was now a quarter of two. But Mr. Davis assured him that that special train was always late and that there was “all the time in the world to get to the station.”

“I’m expecting some canned goods to come up from Wayne,” he declared, “and I often go down after such stuff with my wheelbarrow. Transportation’s still limited with us, as you may have guessed. I calculate the best way to fool those smart Alecs is to put you in an empty packing case and tote you down. Comes last minute, you can jump out and there you are!”

Bob thought this a splendid plan, and said so.

“Then here’s the very case, marked ‘Flame City’ on purpose-like,” was the cheery rejoinder. “Help me lift it on the barrow, and then you climb in, and we’ll make tracks. Comfortable? All right, we’re off.”

He adjusted the light lid over the top of the box, which was sufficiently roomy to allow Bob to sit down, and the curious journey began. Apparently it was a common occurrence for Mr. Davis to take a shipment of goods that way, for no one commented. As the wheelbarrow grated on the crushed stone that surrounded the station, Bob heard the voice of the man called Bud.

“One-fifty-two’s late, as usual,” he called. “That young scalawag hasn’t turned up, either. Guess he’s going to keep still till the last minute and figure on getting away with a dash. The girl’s in the waiting-room.”

“I’m surprised you’re not in there looking in her suitcase for the young reprobate,” said Mr. Davis with thinly veiled sarcasm. “What happened? Did Carl order you out?”

Carl, the listening Bob judged, must be the ticket agent.

“I’d like to see that whippersnapper order me out!” blustered Bud. “There’s a whole raft of women in there, waiting for the train.”

Mr. Davis carefully lowered the wheelbarrow and leaned carelessly against the box.

“Guess I’ll go in and see the girl – like to know how she looks,” he observed a bit more loudly than was necessary.

Bob understood that he was going to explain to Betty and he thanked him silently with all his heart.

The friendly Mr. Davis strolled into the waiting-room and had no difficulty in recognizing Betty Gordon. She was the only girl in the room, in the first place, and she sat facing the door, a bag on either side of her, and a world of anxiety in her dark eyes. The groceryman crossed the floor and took the vacant seat at her right. There was no one within earshot.

“Don’t you be scared, Miss,” he said quietly. “I’m Micah Davis, and I just want to tell you that everything’s all right with that Bob boy. I’ve got him out here in a box, and when the train comes he’s a-going to hop on board before you can say Jack Robinson.”

“Oh, you dear!” Betty turned upon the astonished Mr. Davis with a radiant smile. “I was worried to death about him, because those dreadful men have been hanging around the station, and they keep peering in here. You’re so good to help Bob!”

Mr. Davis stammered confusedly that he had done nothing, and then hurried on to advise Betty to pay no attention to anything that might happen, but to let the conductor help her on the train.

“I’ve got to wheel the lad down toward the baggage car,” he explained, “so’s they won’t suspect. You see, Miss, this is an oil town and folks do pretty much as they please. If a gang want to beat up a stranger they don’t find much opposition. In a few years we’ll have better order, but just now the toughs have it. Sorry you had to have this experience.”

“I’ll always remember Chassada pleasantly because of you,” said Betty impulsively. “Hark! Isn’t that the train? Yes, it is. Don’t mind me – go back to Bob. I’m all right, honestly I am!”

They shook hands hurriedly, and Betty followed the other passengers out to the platform. She caught a glimpse of Mr. Davis placidly trundling his wheelbarrow down the platform, and then the train pulled in and the conductor helped her aboard.

“Express?” called the baggage car man as the wheelbarrow was halted beside the truck on which he was tumbling a pile of boxes.

“Sure, express,” retorted Mr. Davis. “Live stock this time. A passenger for you, with his ticket and all. Let him go through to the coaches, George. It’s all right. He’ll explain.”

He lifted the lid of the box and Bob stepped out. The baggage man stared, but he knew and trusted Mr. Davis.

“Don’t thank me, lad,” said the groceryman kindly as Bob tried to pour out his thanks. “You’re from my part of the country, and any boy in trouble claims my help. There, there, for goodness’ sake, are you going to miss the train after all the trouble I’ve taken?”

He pushed Bob gently toward the door of the baggage car and the boy scrambled in. Then, and not until then, did the vociferous Bud see what was going on. He dared not tackle the groceryman, but he came running pellmell down the platform to bray at Bob.

“You big coward!” he yelled. “Sneaking away, aren’t you? Just let me catch you in this town again, and I’ll make it so hot for you you’ll wish you’d never left your kindergarten back East.”

He was so angry he fairly danced with rage, and Bob and the baggage man both had to laugh.

“Laugh, you big boob!” howled Bud. “You wouldn’t think it so funny if I had you by the collar. ’Fraid to fight, aren’t you? You wait! Some day I’ll get you and I’ll – I’ll drown you!”

Bud had made an unfortunate choice of punishment, for his words carried a suggestion to Bob. Mail and express was still being unloaded, and beside the track was a large puddle of oily, dirty water apparently from a leaky pipe, for there were no indications of a recent rain.

With a swift spring, Bob was on his feet beside the surprised Bud, and, seizing him, whirled him sharply about. Then with a strong push he sent him flat into the puddle.

Sputtering, gasping, and actually crying with rage, the bully stumbled to his feet and charged blindly for Bob. That agile youth had turned and dashed for the train, which was now slowly moving. He caught the steps of the baggage car and drew himself up. Once on the platform he turned to wave to Mr. Davis, but that good citizen was holding back the foaming Bud from dashing himself against the wheels and did not see Bob’s farewell.

“Whew!” gasped Bob, making his way to Betty, after going through an apparently endless number of cars, “our Western adventures begin with a rush, don’t they? I’m hoping Flame City will be peaceful, for I’ve had enough excitement to last me a week.”

“I wish Mr. Davis lived in Flame City,” said Betty warmly. “I never knew any one to be kinder. Imagine all the trouble he took for you, Bob.”

Bob agreed that the groceryman was a living example of the Golden Rule, and then the sight of oil derricks in the distance changed the trend of their thoughts.

“Where do you suppose those two sharpers – what were their names? – could have gone?” said Betty. “Seems to me, there are a lot of unpleasant people out here, after all.”

“You mean Blosser and Fluss,” replied Bob. “I don’t know where they went, but I’m certain they are not up to anything good. Still, it isn’t fair to say we’ve come in contact with a lot of unpleasant people, Betty. All new developments have to fight against the undesirable element, Mr. Littell says. You see, the prospect of making money would naturally attract them, and that, coupled with the possibility of meeting trusting and ignorant souls who have a little and want to make more, draws the crooks. It has always been that way. Haven’t you read about the things that happened in California when there was the rush of gold seekers?”

Betty was not especially interested in the gold seekers, but the glimpses she had had of the oil industry fascinated her. She hoped that her Uncle Dick would have time to take them around, and she was divided between an automobile and a horse as the choicest medium of sightseeing.

“Well, I’d like to ride,” declared Bob when she sought his opinion. “I’ve always wanted to. But I don’t intend to see the sights, altogether, Betty. I want to find my aunts, and then, if possible, I’d like to get a job. There must be plenty for a boy to do out here.”

“But you’ve been working all summer,” protested Betty. “You’re as thin as a rail now. I know Uncle Dick won’t let you go to work. Why, Bob, I counted on your going around with me! We can have such fun together.”

“Well, of course, there will be lots of odd hours,” Bob comforted her. “I don’t intend to borrow any more money, Betty, that’s flat. And if I don’t get my share in the farm, that is, if it proves my mother never had any sisters and never was entitled to a share of anything, I don’t intend to let that be the end of my ambitions. I’m going to school, if it takes an arm!”

Betty gazed at him respectfully. Bob, when in earnest, was a very convincing talker. She wondered for a moment what he would be when he grew up.

“We’re coming into Flame City,” he warned her before she could put this thought into words. “Tip your hat straight, Betsey, and take the camera. I can manage both bags.”

“Oh, I hope Uncle Dick will meet us!” Betty was so excited she bumped her nose against the glass trying to see out of the window. “Look, Bob, just see those derricks! This is surely an oil town!”

The brakes went down, and the brakeman at the end of the car flung the door open.

“Flame City!” he shouted. “All out for Flame City!”

CHAPTER VIII
FLAME CITY

Bob and Betty descended the steps and found themselves on a rough platform with an unpainted shelter in the center that evidently did duty as a station. There were a few straggling loungers about, a team or two backed up to the platform, and a small automobile of the runabout type, red with rust.

“Well, bless her heart, how she’s grown!” cried a cordial voice, and Mr. Richard Gordon had Betty in his arms.

“Uncle Dick! You don’t know how glad I am to see you!” Betty hugged him tight, thankful that the worry and anxiety and uncertainty of the last few weeks, while she had waited in Washington to hear from him, was at last over. “How tanned you are!” she added.

“Oh, I’m a regular Indian,” was the laughing response. “This must be Bob? Glad to see you, my boy. I feel that I already know you.”

He and Bob shook hands heartily. Mr. Gordon was tall and muscular, with closely-cropped gray hair and quizzical gray eyes slightly puckered at the corners from much staring in the hot sun. His face and hands were very brown, and he looked like a man who lead an outdoor life and liked it.

Bob took to him at once, and the feeling seemed to be mutual, for Mr. Gordon kept a friendly hand on the boy’s shoulder while he continued to scan him smilingly.

“Began to look as though we were never going to get together, didn’t it?” Mr. Gordon said. “Last week there was a rumor that I might have to go to China for the firm, and I thought if that happened Betty would be in despair. However, that prospect is not immediate. Well, young folks, what do you think of Flame City, off-hand?”

Betty stared. From the station she could see half a dozen one-story shacks and, beyond, the outline of oil well derricks. A straggling, muddy road wound away from the buildings. Trolley cars, stores and shops, brick buildings to serve as libraries and schools – there seemed to be none.

“Is this all of it?” she ventured.

“You see before you,” declared Mr. Gordon gravely, “the rapidly growing town of Flame City. Two months ago there wasn’t even a station. We think we’ve done rather well, though I suppose to Eastern eyes the signposts of a flourishing town are conspicuous by their absence.”

“But where do people live?” demanded Betty, puzzled. “If they come here to work or to buy land, isn’t there a hotel to live in? Where do you live, Uncle Dick?”

“Mostly in my tin boat,” was the answer. “Many’s the night I’ve slept in the car. But of course I have a bunk out at the field. Accommodations are extremely limited, Betty, I will admit. The few houses that take in travelers are over-crowded and dirty. If some one had enterprise enough to start a good hotel he’d make a fortune. But like all oil towns, the fever is to sink one’s money in wells.”

Betty’s eyes turned to the horizon where the steel towers reared against the sky.

“Can we go to see the oil fields now?” she asked. “We’re not a bit tired, are we, Bob?”

Mr. Gordon surveyed his niece banteringly.

“What is your idea of an oil field?” he teased. “A bit of pasture neatly fenced in, say two or three acres in area? Did you know that our company at present holds leases for over four thousand acres? The nearest well is ten miles from this station. No, child, I don’t think we’ll run out and look around before supper. I want to take you and Bob to a place I’ve found where I think you’ll be comfortable. Have you trunk checks? We’ll have to take all baggage with us, because I’m leaving to-morrow for a three-day inspection trip, and the Watterbys can’t be expected to do much hauling.”

Bob had the checks, one for Betty’s trunk and another for a small old-fashioned “telescope” he had bought cheaply in Washington and which held his meagre supply of clothing.

“We’ll stow everything in somehow,” promised Mr. Gordon cheerily, as he and Bob carried the baggage over to the rusty little automobile. “You wouldn’t think this machine would hold together an hour on these roads,” he continued, “but she’s the best friend I have. Never complains as long as the gasoline holds out. There! I think that will stay put, Bob. Now in with you, Betty, and we’ll be off.”

Bob perched himself upon the trunk, and Mr. Gordon took his place at the wheel. With a grunt and a lurch, the car started.

“I suppose you youngsters would like to know where you’re going,” said Mr. Gordon, deftly avoiding the ruts in the miserable road. “Well, I’ll warn you it is a farm, and probably Bramble Farm will shine in contrast. But Flame City is impossible, and when everybody is roughing it, you’ll soon grow used to the idea. The Watterbys are nice folks, native farmers, and what they lack in initiative they make up in kindness of heart. I’m sorry I have to leave to-morrow morning, but every minute counts, and I have no right to put personal business first.”

He turned to Bob.

“You don’t know what a help you are going to be,” he said heartily. “I really doubt if I should have had Betty come, if at the last moment she had not telegraphed me you were coming, too. It’s no place out here for a girl – Oh, you needn’t try to wheedle me, my dear, I know what I’m saying,” he interpolated in answer to an imploring look from his niece. “No place for a girl,” he repeated firmly. “I shall have no time to look after her, and she can’t roam the country wild. Grandma Watterby is too old to go round with her, and the daughter-in-law has her hands full. I’d like nothing better, Bob, than to take you with me to-morrow, and you’d learn a lot of value to you, too, on a trip of this kind. But I honestly want you to stay with Betty; a brother is a necessity now if ever one was.”

Bob flushed with pleasure. That Mr. Gordon, who had never seen him and knew him only through Betty’s letters and those the Littells had written, should put this trust in him touched the lad mightily. What did he care about a tour of the oil fields if he could be of service to a man like this? And he knew that Mr. Gordon was honest in his wish to have his niece protected. Betty was high-spirited and headstrong, and, having lived in settled communities all her life, was totally ignorant of any other existence.

“Listen, Uncle Dick,” broke in Betty at this point. “Do you know anybody around here by the name of Saunders?”

“Saunders?” repeated her uncle thoughtfully. “Why, no, I don’t recollect ever having heard the name. But then, you see, I know comparatively little about the surrounding country. I’ve fairly lived at the wells this summer. I only stumbled on the Watterbys by chance one day when my car broke down. Why? Do you know a family by that name?”

So Betty, helped out by Bob, explained their interest in the mythical “Saunders place,” and Mr. Gordon listened in astonishment.

“Guess they’re the aunts you’re looking for, Bob,” he said briefly, when he was in possession of the facts. “Couldn’t be many families of that name around here, not unless they were related. Do you know, there’s a lot of that tricky business afoot right here in Flame City? People have lost their heads over oil, and the sight of a handful of bills drives them crazy. The Watterby farm is one of the few places that hasn’t been rushed by oil prospectors. That’s one reason why I chose it.”

They were now on a lonely stretch of road with gently rolling land on either side of them, dotted with a scrubby growth of trees. Not a house was in sight, and they had passed only one team, a pair of mules harnessed to a wagon filled with lengths of iron pipe.

“You’ll know all about oil before you’re through,” said Mr. Gordon suddenly. Then he laughed.

“It’s in the very air,” he explained. “We talk oil, think oil, and sometimes I think, we eat oil. Leastways I know I’ve tasted it in the air on more than one occasion.”

Betty had been silently turning something over in her mind.

“Isn’t there danger from fire?” she asked presently.

“There certainly is,” affirmed her uncle. “We’ve had one bad fire this season, and I don’t suppose the subject is ever out of our minds very long at a time. Sandbags are always kept ready, but let a well get to burning once, and all the sandbags in the world won’t stop it.”

“I wouldn’t want a well to burn,” said Bob slowly, “but if one should, I shouldn’t mind seeing it.”

“You wouldn’t see much but thick smoke,” rejoined Mr. Gordon. “I’ve some pictures of burning wells I’ll show you when I can get them out. Nothing but huge columns of heavy black smoke that smudges up the landscape.”

“Like the lamp that smoked one night when Mrs. Peabody turned it down too low – remember, Bob?” suggested Betty. “Next morning everything in the room was peppered with greasy soot.”

“Look ahead, and you’ll see the Watterby farm – ‘place,’ in the vernacular of the countryside,” announced Mr. Gordon. “Unlike the Eastern farms, very few homes are named. There’s Grandma Watterby watching for us.”

Bob and Betty looked with interest. They saw a gaunt, plain house, two stories in height, without window blinds or porch of any sort, and if ever painted now so weather-beaten that the original color was indistinguishable. A few flowers bloomed around the doorstep but there was no attempt at a lawn. A huddle of buildings back of the house evidently made up the barns and out-houses, and chickens stalked at will in the roadside.

These fled, squawking, when Mr. Gordon ran the car into the ditch and an old woman hobbled out to greet him.

“Well, Grandma,” he called cheerily, raising his voice, for she was slightly deaf, “I’ve brought you two young folks bag and baggage, just as I promised. I suspect they’ve brought appetites with them, too.”

“Glad to see you,” said the old woman, putting out a gnarled hand. Her eyes were bright and clear as a bird’s, and she had a quick, darting way of glancing at one that was like a bird, too. “Emma’s got the supper on,” she announced. “She’s frying chicken.”

“I’ll go in and tell Mrs. Watterby that she may count on me,” declared Mr. Gordon jovially, as Bob jumped down and helped Betty out. “I never miss a chance to eat fried chicken, never. I wonder if it will be fried in oil?”

“Emma uses lard,” said Grandma Watterby placidly.