Boomer

Boomer

Clay Randall

Ben Farley's Word Was Law!

No man challenged his gun or his oil-field roustabouts. Those who tried it saw their rigs burned, their supplies stolen, their men beaten.

Joe Grant knew this. But when his boss was killed and young Bud Muller was clubbed senseless, he had to fight back.

Farley's roustabouts rushed him, smashed his head with a gun butt, crashed their steel-capped boots against his ribs. Barely conscious, Grant rolled and went for his gun.

Farley smiled down at the prostrate man. Then he leveled the muzzle of his .38 at Grant's head.

CHAPTER ONE

A LIGHT SNOW had fallen the night before and Missouri had lain for a little while under a veil of white. Now the roads were glistening ribbons of black mud, churned up by farm wagons making their weekly pilgrimage to Joplin.

It was Saturday, and the streets of Joplin were crowded with farmers' teams and wagons, as they were every Saturday; the sidewalk was a mass of pink-cheeked, frost-breathing humanity. The invigorating tang of winter was in the air.

One man stood alone, apart from the crowd, oblivious to the activity that surrounded him. A fair, square-built man in his early thirties, he hunched into his sheep-lined wind-breaker, staring hard at the blank stone face of the bank building on the other side of the street. At last he reached into his windbreaker, took out a silver railroad watch and glanced with bleak satisfaction at the dial. “Almost four o'clock,” he told himself. “Well, there's no use putting it off.”

He waded through the ankle-deep mud of the street, stepped up to the sidewalk, and pushed his way toward the stolid stone building.

A breath of heated air struck him as he stepped inside the bank and closed the door. He raked the place with sober eyes, noting that most of the customers had become aware of the time and were leaving before the bank closed its doors.

The fair-haired man stepped up to a teller's cage and said, “I want to talk to Abel Ortway.”

“I'm afraid Mr. Ortway is...

“Tell him it's important.”

There was something about the voice that made the teller frown. “Well, I'll see...”

But at that moment a stout, florid-faced man came up front from the vault. “What is it, Ransom?” Then, looking at the fair-haired man: “Oh, so it's you again.”

“I want to talk to you, Mr. Ortway. Private.”

“You know the banking hours,” Ortway said with some irritation. “We close at four.”

“But this is important. I just got to town.”

The banker's eyes narrowed. “Did you get the money?”

“Let's talk about it in your office.”

Ortway hesitated, looking vaguely worried. Thoughtfully, he drew a cigar from his vest pocket and rolled it unlighted from one side of his mouth to the other. “All right,” he said at last. “But make it quick.”

Ortway's office was bare of ornaments but comfortable in a solid, mannish fashion. He sat at a roll-top desk and nodded for the other man to take a chair. “All right. Now what is it that's so important?”

“I want to ask you for an extension on my loan.”

Abruptly the banker laughed, the sound rolling out free and easy. “Now that's the damnedest thing I've heard all day! Why on earth should I give you an extension?”

The fair-haired man smiled. “No reason, I guess, except that you promised me one. Remember when you came out to my farm last spring and told me the place needed fencing on the south boundary? And a new windmill for the livestock? You told me to go ahead and make the improvements, and if I needed an extension on my loan you'd give it to me.”

“That was last spring.” Ortway smiled with heavy satisfaction. “Conditions change.”

“But there've been hard dry-ups two years running. These things almost never run in threes. Next year I'll make a crop and pay off the loan, plus any fair interest you want to name.”

Ortway shook his head, still smiling. “What kind of businessman would I be to listen to a story like that? I hear the same yarn fifty times a year from you hard-scrabble farmers. You can't make a go of it and you want somebody else to stand good for your failure.”

For some strange reason the fair-haired man never lost his even temper. “I see. You're going to foreclose. You're going to take my farm.”

“Put yourself in my shoes. It's the only sensible thing to do.”

“Maybe...” He sat quietly for a moment, his thoughts turned inward. Then, “I want to tell you about that farm, Mr. Ortway. It's not so much, but it's something I worked five years to get and two years to improve. I trailed cattle, Ortway. Maybe five thousand miles I trailed them back and forth across Indian Territory. I saved my money and told myself that someday I'd stop killing myself working for other people and be my own boss. Seven years of my life, Ortway, that's how much I've got in that farm. I never would have gone into debt for those improvements if you hadn't promised to help.”

“As time goes on,” Ortway said easily, “you'll learn that promises don't mean a thing unless they're on paper.”

The man sat lost in contemplation. “I didn't want to do this,” he said finally, “but I guess there's no other way.” Slowly, almost wearily, he reached into his windbreaker and drew out a well-used .45 revolver.

Ortway made a startled sound and then stared mutely into the deadly muzzle. “I've got it all figured out,” the man said quietly. “I paid three thousand for the farm and borrowed another thousand from you to make the improvements. Now, I figure if you take the place over you'll be making two thousand dollars clear on the deal, plus the cost of the windmill and fencing. To say nothing of the two years' work I've put in the land. Twenty-five hundred dollars, that's about what you stand to make on the foreclosure, isn't it, Ortway?”

The banker could not take his eyes from the muzzle of the revolver. He licked his lips nervously. “What... what do you mean to do?”

“I mean to take that twenty-five hundred dollars. That's what your broken promise cost me.”

Behind the fear in his eyes, the working of Ortway's brain was almost a visible thing. “Look,” he said quickly, “I'll keep my promise! I'll give you any kind of extension you want! I'll put it on paper!”

“It's a little late for that, Ortway. I'll take the money.”

“You'll never get away with this!” Ortway almost whined. “I won't be bullied!”

There were two metallic clicks as the fair-haired man thumbed the hammer back on the .45. “Call the teller,” he said coldly. “The one named Ransom. Tell him to bring the money—that you've just made a loan.”

“I won't do it!”

For a moment Ortway locked his jaws in stubbornness, but he began to swallow nervously when he saw the man's hand tightening on the butt of the revolver. Several seconds must have passed. Sweat formed in glistening beads on the banker's forehead as the hand drew tighter and tighter, the trigger starting to give under the pressure. A drop of sweat fell on Ortway's desk and the sound could be heard clearly in the silence of the room.

“All right!” the banker said hoarsely. “Only put that gun away!”

The man smiled slightly, then took off his battered Stetson and covered the revolver. But the muzzle was still leveled at Ortway's chest.

“Ransom!” the banker called. And when the teller appeared in the doorway, Ortway said, “Get twenty-five hundred dollars out of the vault and bring it to me.”

The teller looked surprised, but evidently he was not one to question Ortway's wishes. “Very well, sir. How do you want it?”

The fair-haired man raised his head and said thoughtfully, “Bills, not too large. That will be all right, won't it, Mr. Ortway?”

The banker swallowed hard, his florid face almost crimson. “Yes, that will be all right.”

The teller was well trained. He brought the money, placed it in front of his employer, and left quietly, closing the door behind him. “You'll never get away with this!” Ortway started. “You'll never...”

The fair-haired man stopped the banker's words quickly and expertly with a sudden blow to Ortway's flabby jaw. Quickly he stuffed one blue bandanna into the lax mouth and secured the gag with another handkerchief. He took a length of pigging cord from his windbreaker and tied the banker hand and foot to his chair. At last he stood back and viewed his work professionally.

Not bad, he thought. He'll be good for an hour at least, if nobody finds him. He unbuttoned his shirt and put the bundle of bills next to his body, then he opened the door, nodding pleasantly to the teller on his way out of the bank. “Mr. Ortway's busy,” he said. “He asked not to be disturbed.”

“Thank you,” the teller said gratefully.

The fair-haired man stepped outside and stood for a moment on the sidewalk, thinking. From this moment on, he thought, I am a different man. Never again can I be the man who just left Ortway's office.

This posed a minor problem, one that he hadn't anticipated. He had to have a name. A new name. One that would connect him in no way to the past—he smiled—or the present. It was almost like being born again, except this time he was allowed to choose for himself any name he wanted.

Grant, he thought, picking the name out of the air. He liked it. Joe Grant. That is my name. He was pleased with this decision. The name was short and comfortable, easy to get used to....

So it was Joe Grant who walked casually to the end of the block, swung lazily atop a shaggy bay mare, and rode with brazen unconcern out of Joplin that day. It was Joe Grant who grinned easily to a few acquaintances and pointed the bay north at a quiet, unhurried gait, until the town lay well behind. Then he nudged his shaggy mount to an easy lope, quartering cross-country along a well-used trail to the northwest.

Everything had gone just the way he had planned it, right down to the last detail. Ortway had refused the loan extension—just the way Joe Grant had figured he would. Grant felt the uncomfortable bulge of twenty-five hundred dollars next to his body and grinned to himself. Ortway was going to raise a holler that could be heard clear to the Cherokee border when he finally got loose from that chair, but Grant had anticipated this, too, and was not worried.

After about thirty minutes Grant reined the bay up beside the road and let the animal blow. Maybe, he thought, Ortway was already hollering. Maybe a posse was already forming.

Calmly, he took a sack of makings from his windbreaker and methodically built a thin, compact cigarette, no trace of concern or worry in his lean face. All roads leading to Joplin were well trampled that day, and tracking would be a slow, tedious job at best. Sooner or later, though, he knew the posse would pick up the trail and head this way, so there was no sense being overly confident.

He rode for another mile along the muddy road, then swung abruptly across open country, leaving tracks in the snow that the greenest sort of dude could follow with perfect ease. He spurred the bay once more to a rocking lope, and his face sobered for a moment as he gazed straight ahead to the north. His thoughts sped far in advance of the grunting pony, across Boggy Creek and through the wild-plum thickets and over a familiar rise that he never expected to see again. And finally, in his mind, he was riding down the other side of the rise to where his farm lay in the shallow draw.

He smiled a bit thinly. “Ortway's farm,” he corrected himself.

But this man who called himself Joe Grant was not one to dwell on unpleasantness. The past, he reasoned, was the past. No use for a man keeping himself stirred up over a thing that couldn't be helped. Maybe he wasn't cut out to be a farmer anyway. Sometimes a cowhand could get some pretty queer ideas about what he wanted out of life.

Joe Grant shook his head, faintly puzzled at his own thoughts. By rights I ought to hate Ortway's guts, he thought. Another man would have squealed like a stuck pig if he'd been robbed the way Ortway tried to rob me. Maybe, he reasoned, it's just as well that I'm not the kind to get too attached to a piece of ground, like some men. If I was...

He let the thought drop. He had drifted from place to place, from job to job, all his life. Oh, he had liked the farm well enough, but it was a lonely life. To be perfectly truthful, he was beginning to get a little tired of being staked out in one place all the time.

Suddenly he grinned, exhilarated by the knowledge that he was no longer tied to anything. Maybe he and Ortway had actually done each other a favor! After all, the banker had got himself a good farm at a good price, and Grant had got back most of the money he'd put into it, not counting the two years of work and worry. What could be fairer than that?

Fair or not, he knew that the banker's reasoning would not run along the same lines as his own, and Grant kneed the bay to a faster gait as he raised Boggy Creek in the distance.

Carefully he put the bay down the sloping bank of the creek, reining up in midstream. Then he jumped out of the saddle, grunting at the shock of icy water. Quickly he stripped his rig from the animal's back. “This is where we part company, boy!” he said, cracking the bay sharply across the rump.

He stood for a moment watching the animal streak up the opposite bank and cut sharply toward the west. This, too, was part of the plan. Only the day before he had traded a strong mule for that stunted bay, hoping that the animal, set free, would head for his old home to the west. It was exactly what the bay was doing.

Grant smiled, then shouldered his rig and headed downstream through the hip-deep water. Soon his legs were numb and without feeling. He stumbled on rocks and stirred up mud, but he knew that the stream would settle by the time the posse reached it. The bite of the cold water almost took his breath away, but he waded on for several minutes, keeping always in the middle of the stream.

At last he spotted the shale outcropping where a sturdy little dun was tethered in a clump of willows. Grant climbed stiffly to the outcropping, rubbing his legs until feeling began to return, then hobbled to the horse and slapped the animal good-naturedly. “Don't look so smug, boy. You'll get a taste of it before long.” He limped to the willows and drew a blanket roll from under a pile of dead leaves.

The dun cocked its head curiously as Grant stripped himself of shoes, trousers, underwear, and rubbed himself dry with a spare shirt from the roll. Puffing and grunting, he climbed into dry clothes, exchanged his soaked work shoes for riding boots. “That's better!” he said aloud, walking in a tight circle, stamping his feet to wedge them into the snug vamps.

There was just one more thing to be done. Joe Grant was a new man with a new name—it logically followed that such a man would need to look different.

First he propped a small metal mirror against a willow trunk, then from the roll he took out a pint jar filled with dark liquid—water in which he had boiled walnut hulls and wild berries. This, too, was part of his plan.

With a small brush he began applying the liquid to his hair and eyebrows. He worked fast but cautiously; he had practiced it carefully. He knew exactly what the result would be. At last he held the mirror at arm's length, inspecting first one side and then the other. The fair-haired man now had glistening dark brown hair with a reddish cast. He knew from experience that the color would become dull and more natural upon drying.

All in all he was satisfied with the result. Perhaps his eyes looked a bit pale beneath the dark eyebrows, but he didn't expect to keep this stuff on his head forever. Just until he was safely out of Missouri. Soon he'd be headed for the Indian country, or Texas, or maybe Mexico, where the color of his hair would make no difference.

Now he repacked the roll and tied it. He threw his rig on the dun and lashed the roll behind the saddle. “Now it's your turn,” he told the horse and he swung up to the saddle and reined into the middle of the stream.

Everything was working perfectly. Not even the most expert sign reader could find anything on that hard shale where the dun had been tethered. The posse, when it came, would follow the bay's tracks miles to the west. By the time they figured out what had happened, their man would be well out of Missouri.

CHAPTER TWO

BY SUNDOWN GRANT was well east of Joplin, heading south with the eye of his mind on Arkansas. From Arkansas he'd head into the Cherokee Nation where it should be a simple thing to get himself lost in the crowds and excitement. Oklahoma was preparing for statehood, Indian lands were being cut up for individual allotments, there had been talk of oil strikes near Bartlesville and Dewey. With all those things to keep people worked up, Grant thought, it's not likely they'll pay much attention to another saddle tramp riding through.

Several times he had held up in draws and gullies while farm wagons rattled along the muddy roads. At last he felt that he was comparatively safe and decided to wait till dark to make his run for Arkansas.

In a gully, a few miles north of Monett, he opened a can of beans and ate with fine appetite. He chuckled to himself, enjoying the feel of twenty-five hundred dollars next to his body. It was a lot of money. His money. He had worked hard for it.

Maybe, he dreamed, I'll buy in on a small cow outfit in Texas. Or lease some Indian land and run my own brand. One thing he was sure of, he wasn't going to try farming again. Cows he understood. But bankers and crop failures and droughts were not for him.

He hunched into his windbreaker, chuckling again as he remembered Ortway's expression of outrage. “I'll bet he's still hollering,” he said aloud. “His kind always holler.”

Not until it was full dark did he set his rig and head south, skirting wide to the west in order to miss Monett. It would be an easy ride to Arkansas, even at night....

Perhaps he had been out of the saddle too long. Perhaps his hands and his mind had been too long occupied at plowing and his horseman's instinct had become dulled. Or perhaps it simply was the way that luck would have it when the sturdy little dun stepped into a gopher hole that night and snapped a foreleg.

It happened suddenly and without warning, the way hard luck usually happens on a man. One minute he had been riding peaceably across the snow-patched prairie gazing up at the pale moon and stringy clouds, and the next moment he was on his back gasping for breath. The stocky little dun lay on its side, kicking weakly, and a hard knot of sickness grew in Grant's stomach when he saw the animal's left foreleg hanging awkward and useless.

This thing he had not foreseen. A downed horse had not been a part of his plan.

Grant shoved himself to his feet. He knelt beside the dun and stroked the animal's neck, trying not to look at the swimming hurt in those dark brown eyes. For the moment he was more concerned with the animal than with himself, and he spent several valuable minutes stroking and calming the dun, crooning to it in a voice that was surprisingly gentle. “It's going to be all right, boy. Everything's going to be fine...”

The nervous quivering along the horse's withers began to subside slowly. The dun lay quiet for a moment, almost as though it knew what the inevitable end must be. Grant drew his revolver reluctantly from his waistband and aimed carefully.

The explosion mushroomed over the prairie, and Grant heard his own voice saying quietly, “I'm sorry, boy.” He ejected the used cartridge methodically and reloaded from a carton that he kept in his windbreaker. He stood there for one long moment, vaguely bothered. “Arkansas's out,” he said aloud. “Without a horse, I sure won't be able to make the border before morning.”

Almost as though he were afraid of awakening the dead animal, Grant gently stripped the saddle from the dun's back. With a shrug of acceptance he slung the forty-odd pounds of wood and leather over his shoulder. He walked south.

It was about an hour past sunup when Grant sat down beside a deep-rutted wagon road to rest. He had only a vague idea where he was—somewhere inside a triangle formed by Joplin, Monett, and Neosho. His feet, encased in tight riding boots, ached all the way to his knees, and he cursed himself for leaving his heavy work shoes in the saddle roll beside the dun.

The late-December wind was cutting, and he hunched deeper into his windbreaker as he tried to decide on what to do. He wondered where the posse was. He even began to wonder how he had ever let himself in for a fool mess like this in the first place.

It'll be five years behind bars if they catch you! he warned himself. Maybe more.

He shoved himself to his feet wearily and was beginning to hoist the saddle when he saw the wagon headed toward him from the north. His heart pounded once, like a hammer striking an anvil, and then seemed to stop. “It's too late to run!” he told himself. “That farmer's already seen me by this time.”

It was a flat wagon loaded high with baled hay. Grant tried to reassure himself as the wagon drew nearer. It seemed better to hold his ground and trust to some kind of brazen lie than to arouse the farmer's suspicions by running.

The farmer, it turned out, was a young man in his early twenties. He hauled on the lines and called, “Give you a lift, mister?”

“That depends. Where're you headed?”

“Neosho,” the boy said, beating his mittened hands together. “Takin' this hay down to some feeders.” He glanced curiously at Grant's saddle.

“Lost my horse a piece back,” Grant said.

“Oh. That's hard luck. You must be one of the cowhands that was drivin' beef through here yesterday. I guess you're headed for Neosho, now that you're afoot.”

“Neosho?”

“Sure. That's where most cattlemen catch the train for the Cherokee country.”

The seed of an idea took root in Grant's mind.

“You're absolutely right! The sooner I can catch a train for the Nations the better I'll like it. I'll catch that ride with you, if you don't mind.”

The youth took the saddle and Grant climbed atop the stacked hay bales. “What time do you figure to raise Neosho?”

“With a little luck I'll get you there in time to catch the one o'clock to Vinita. Your outfit run cattle in the Nations?”

Grant nodded. “That's right.”

They rode along in comfortable silence for several minutes, and Grant smiled to himself, pleased with this unexpected turn of events. A cowhand with a saddle would attract no attention in Neosho; riders for the Indian-country outfits often drove beef to Missouri, sold their horses at a profit, and took the A & P back to home range. It was all so simple that Grant wondered why he hadn't thought of it before. While the posse scoured the vicinity of Joplin, he'd be boarding the Pacific at Neosho. At Vinita, in the Cherokee Nation, he could change to the Katy and ride clear to Mexico if he felt like it.

Joe Grant leaned back in the clean-smelling hay and admired the wide blue sky over Missouri. He felt fine.

Then the young farmer said, “Guess you didn't hear about the bank holdup over at Joplin, did you?”

A chill walked up Joe Grant's spine. “I guess I didn't.”

“Posse came around to my pa's place last night,” the boy said, chewing placidly on a straw. “Some farmer held up the banker and got off with five thousand dollars.”

Five thousand dollars! Grant felt himself go rigid with anger. Ortway, that lying, thieving...!

“Hard to know what gets into folks,” the boy went on. “Take this farmer; what good's all that money goin' to do him? The posse'll get him sure if he stays in Missouri. He hasn't got a chance of gettin' away!”

“Maybe,” Grant said, “he's headed for Arkansas.”

“Hard luck if he is. The sheriff's got a passel of deputies patrollin' the border down that way.”

Grant swallowed with some difficulty. “What about the Indian country? The sheriff doesn't have any authority down there.”

“Maybe not, but the sheriff didn't forget it, either. They wired the U. S. marshal's office in Tahlequah to be on the lookout.”

Despite the cutting wind, Grant felt a cold sweat on his forehead. Yet there was little real danger. It would take a deal of time for the marshal's office to get the word and put deputies on the job, and by that time Grant would have changed to the Katy and be headed toward Red River. Anyhow, in the confusion of statehood and oil strikes deputy marshals would be spread pretty thin in the Territory.

Grant made himself relax and tried to convince himself that he was worrying over nothing. He raised himself on one elbow and asked, “Did the posse say what this farmer looked like, the one that robbed the bank?”

The youth frowned. “Guess I didn't pay much attention. Good-sized man, I think, with yellow hair. That's about all I remember.”

Grant brushed one hand over his temple and studied the brownish stain that came off on his palm. Yellow hair?

Around midmorning the blue sky took on a grayish cast and dark, flat clouds slipped in from the north. A light snow was falling when the hay wagon reached Neosho.

“Well,” Grant said, “thanks for the ride.”

“It beat walkin', I guess.” The young farmer grinned. “The depot is over that way.”

Grant was pleased to see several cowhands lounging around the big iron wood burner in the middle of the depot waiting room. Most of them had saddlesacks on the bench beside them.

Grant bought a ticket to Red Fork, although he meant to go only as far as Vinita, where the A & P crossed the Katy. He figured the extra money would be well spent if the federal marshals ever started checking on who bought tickets for where. He found a dark corner in the gloomy waiting room, pulled his hat down over his face, and pretended to doze until train time.

Shortly after one o'clock they heard the shrill whistle and raucous huffing as the glistening tall-stacked locomotive pulled into the station with its two daycoaches and string of freight and cattle cars. Most of the cowhands made straight for the smoker, but Grant pushed on through to the regular coach, hoisted his saddle to the baggage rack, and settled down to see the last of Missouri.

A girl and her grips occupied the two seats directly across the aisle: a fair-haired girl with sober blue eyes. Grant glanced briefly in her direction, then around the car. There were a few cattlemen, three or four drummers, two austere Creek Indians, and several workers in soiled corduroy who appeared to be oilfield laborers. Grant pulled his hat over his face again and pretended to doze until the train began to move.

He rode for several minutes with his face hidden. I've made it! he thought, rejoicing to himself. They'll never catch me now, no matter how they try! He tilted the hat from his face, enjoying to the fullest this new sense of freedom.

As the train rocked on he stared for several moments at this bleak, cold country of rolling hills and scattered timber and definitely made up his mind to change to the Katy at Vinita and head for Texas. The sight of this frosted land chilled him and made him long for the warm spaces along the Mexican border.

At last he turned his attention to the other passengers. The girl across the aisle especially interested him, for it was not the usual thing for girls her age to be traveling in this country alone. There was something strangely foreign about her— somehow she looked out of place, but Grant didn't know exactly why. She sat erect on the red plush seat, her back ramrod straight, her blue eyes staring straight ahead. Her dress was of heavy black material and severe in its simplicity; a plain pillbox of a hat sat squarely atop her yellow hair.

If she doesn't learn to relax, Grant thought, she'll fly all to pieces before she gets to wherever she's going!

From time to time his glance returned to the girl and he wondered where she was going and what was bothering her. Well, he decided at last, I guess it's none of my business. And he tilted his hat over his face again and went to sleep.

When he awoke, the first thing he noticed was that the sun had slid far to the west. Then he realized that the train had stopped and most of the passengers were out stretching their legs. Grant frowned. He and the girl were the only ones left in the coach.

“What's the matter?” he asked.

The girl turned her head just enough to indicate that she had heard the question. “I believe the train has stopped for fuel and water.”

“Where are we?”

“We have just entered the Cherokee Nation,” the girl said, then turned to gaze out the window on her side of the car.

Joe Grant grinned to himself. Not exactly the most sociable woman I ever saw, he thought. He stood up to stretch his legs, and that was when he saw the small band of horsemen headed toward the train from the north, and for a moment his heart stopped beating. There were six horsemen and all of them were outfitted with saddle guns and revolvers.

Grant swallowed hard, started to run toward the rear of the coach, and then realized that that would be a fool thing to do. Through the window he could see one of the horsemen talking to the conductor, and then all the other passengers came trooping back into the train. Sweat beading on his forehead, he realized that he was trapped. He had misjudged the speed with which the marshal's office could swing into action, and now he was trapped!

The conductor said, “Everybody take your places.”

Grant realized that the girl across the aisle was staring at him. Then she turned to the trainman. “Who are those men out there, conductor?”

“Deputies from the U. S. marshal's office, ma'am. Seems like there was a bank holdup at Joplin.”

“Do they think the robber is on this train?”

“Can't say, ma'am. They just want to look the passengers over; it won't take long.”

Grant sank back into his seat. There was a roaring emptiness inside him; the sensation of defeat sagged like a weight in his stomach. It was now a matter of minutes before they caught him, and there was nothing he could do. In a coach full of passengers he couldn't start a gun fight. He couldn't run because there was no place to go.

He hadn't noticed that he had dropped his hat until the girl across the aisle picked it up and handed it to him. She smiled a sudden brilliant smile, but on a second surprised glance Grant saw that it wasn't a smile at all. It was like a mask smiling.

“My name is Rhea Muller,” she said quietly, as though it were the most natural thing in the world.

Joe Grant blinked his surprise. “Grant, ma'am. Joe Grant.” He took the hat. “Thank you.”

“You might as well go back to sleep,” she said blandly.

Back to sleep? He frowned, wondering what had suddenly got into her. Then he heard the deputies coming into the coach from the smoker, and the thought hit him. Sleep! Quickly, he lay back in the seat and dropped the hat over his face.

It was a one-in-a-million chance that made absolutely no sense, but at that moment Joe Grant was in no position to demand logic. He froze in a position of sleep and prayed. Then he heard the measured clamor of spur rowels as one of the deputies moved down the aisle. From under the brim of his hat Grant could see that the lawman was a squat, stone-faced man in his early forties. He raked the coach with a flat glance, then nodded at Grant. “What about this one?” he said to the conductor.

“Got on at Neosho. Cowhand, I guess.”

Then the girl said lightly, “His name's Joe Grant, Marshal. He works for my father. We've got an oil lease in Kiefer.”

“I see.” The deputy turned again to Grant, and Grant could see the snub-barreled Remington cradled in the officer's arm. “Well, his hair's not the right color anyway. No sense waking him, I guess.”

Slowly, very slowly, Joe Grant started to breathe again. But he remained very still until he heard the deputies leave the train—until he heard them get on their horses and ride away—until he heard the conductor give the signal to the engineer and the train started to move. Only then did he allow himself to change his cramped position.

Why the girl had lied he did not know. How she had known that he was the man they were looking for he could not guess. He did not care. A girl with that kind of nerve, he thought, I'm just glad she's on my side.

Gently, he tipped his hat off his face and glanced at the girl. She was staring straight ahead, just as she had been doing the whole trip. Tentatively, Grant cleared his throat, but she did not look around.

Grant wiped his forehead on his sleeve. Well, he thought, if this is the way she wants it, this is the way she'll have it! The least I can do is let her alone, if that's the way she wants it.

He lay back in the comer against the car window and pretended to doze, but it was not possible to dismiss this girl from his mind as easily as that. What if that marshal had searched him? The dark hair wouldn't have fooled the lawman long if he had given any reason for suspicion. Grant felt himself go weak when he thought of doing five years in a Missouri prison. That is what he owed the girl for what she had done. Five years of his life!

Once more he looked in her direction, and she seemed even more distant than before. She would not even consent to look at him, or even admit that he was in the car.

CHAPTER THREE

IT WAS WELL past midnight when the train reached Vinita. The conductor called, “Southbound passengers change trains for McAlester's and the Choctaw Nation.”

The girl across the aisle said, “Conductor, is the lunchroom open?”

“No, ma'am, but passengers can get coffee in the station.” The girl took up a small leather satchel as Grant moved into the aisle. “Can I give you a hand, ma'am?”

She looked at him briefly and coldly. “No, thank you.”

For a moment Grant stood puzzled and frowning as she moved up the aisle and was handed down to the ground by the conductor. All women are puzzles of one kind or another to most men, but Grant had never met the equal of this one. He noted that she had left all her grips on the seat, with the exception of the leather satchel, which meant that she was continuing on toward Tulsa or Red Fork. He guessed he'd never find out what had prompted her to lie for him, as he meant to change to the Katy and head south as soon as possible.

With a shrug Grant hauled his saddle down from the baggage rack and headed toward the end of the car with the other passengers. He dropped stiff-legged to the cinders into a cutting night wind peppered with sleet. Drawing his head into the collar of his windbreaker, he shouldered his saddle and headed toward the yellow lamplight that flowed from the depot's windows.

He could see the other passengers on the inside, huddled around a big wood burner, drinking coffee from tin cups. The aroma of coffee was a welcome smell in the night and Grant hurried his pace a bit. Then he heard the warning chatter of a telegraph key inside the station, and his steps slowed and finally stopped. No telling what would be coming over the telegraph. News of the robbery, maybe. Possibly they had found his dead horse by this time, and his saddle roll. Maybe they'd even talked to the farmer who'd brought him to Neosho.

On second thought Grant decided that he'd rather not be where the lights were too bright or the crowds too thick. He slung his saddle to the ground beside a baggage cart and pressed into a niche beside the semaphore tower. Anyway, he thought, I'm out of the wind. He could wait here till the crowd thinned out and then he could get his coffee and a ticket for Texas.

After a while two cowhands came out of the station and hunched against the depot to light cigarettes. Their heads ducked against the wind, they talked for a moment, then moved off into the shadows on the other side of the depot.

Grant frowned, faintly puzzled as to why the two should prefer to stand in the cold rather than stay in the depot or return to the train.

Fairly soon the westbound passengers began coming out, one at a time, hurrying back to the coaches. Instinctively, Grant hunched deeper into the shadows when he saw the girl come out of the depot, and he smiled faintly. He'd never seen a woman just like this one, and he guessed he'd never see one again. Just the same, he thought, watching her hurrying toward the coaches, I appreciate what you did for me. More than you'll ever know, probably.

He started to step out of his hiding place when he saw the two cowhands racing out of the shadows toward the girl. “Just a minute, ma'am!” one of them called. The girl paused for just an instant, turning toward the man, then she wheeled and ran toward the orange-lighted windows of the coaches.

A short sound of surprise tore itself out of Grant's throat. He shoved himself away from the depot and started running as the girl tripped on her long skirts and fell into the gravel and cinders along the tracks. Grant and the two cowhands arrived at her side at the same instant.

One of the men, Grant noticed, was tall, long-faced, and gangly. The other was almost as tall as his partner, but thick and heavy. The heavy one lunged at Grant with both fists swinging.

Grant saw the ham-sized fist looming in his face. The blow to the side of his face numbed him and he went reeling back against one of the cattle cars. His mouth tasted of salt and blood, his knees felt ready to buckle, but he shoved himself aside in time to escape the big man's second rush. He grabbed blindly, caught the man's sleeve, and with savage satisfaction pumped his own hard right fist into the man's stomach.

He glimpsed the thin man and the girl scrambling on the snow-patched ground for possession of the leather satchel, and then the heavy man came in again. Grant went reeling back under another blow to his face.

For an instant he was dazed; the world tilted sharply and he fell back on his side. All fight had been knocked out of him for the moment. He wanted to quit. Then he heard the girl scream and saw the thin man tear the satchel from her grasp, and suddenly Joe Grant remembered how much he owed her.

“Let's go, Bat!” the thin man yelled. “I've got it!”

But Bat was concentrating at the moment on something else. Suddenly Grant's world stopped its spinning, and he looked up and saw the man's big face grinning down at him. He saw the kick coming but could not move away in time to escape it. Instead, he grabbed at the big square-toed boot, pulled and twisted, and the big man came crashing down in the gravel.

The girl was still screaming. From the corner of his eye Grant glimpsed the thin man racing for the shadows at the end of the depot, and he thought: I guess this is no time to insist on fair play! He grabbed his heavy revolver out of his waistband and hit the big cowhand across the back of the head while he was still falling.

The man called Bat was tough. He grunted, cursed, and started to push himself up to his hands and knees. Grant brought the revolver back again, but the girl shouted, “Let him go! The other one has my money!”

Still dazed, Grant staggered to his feet and leaned for a moment against the cattle car.

“Catch him!” the girl shouted again. “You've got to catch him!”

Grant stared at her. He looked up and saw the racing thin man. I owe it to her, he thought. I'll catch him if it kills me!

He began to run. His legs felt wobbly and he couldn't drag enough air into his lungs, but he kept running. The thin man rounded the corner of the depot and disappeared into the darkness, and Grant knew that he would never catch him this way. He lifted his revolver and fired once, twice, three times into the air.

Almost immediately the thin man returned the fire, and Grant felt himself grinning weakly. This was somewhat better. It might get him killed, but at the moment that possibility seemed better than running. He fired again, then ducked behind a baggage cart to reload.

The thin man was out there somewhere, waiting. At least he wasn't running. Suddenly a shot punctuated the darkness and Grant saw the cowhand's hunched figure briefly against the outline of a loading chute. He breathed deeply. All right, he told himself, it's time for more running.

He swung wide around the chute and opened fire again, hoping that the cowhand's revolver was empty and that he hadn't had time to reload.

He knew that he had guessed right when he heard the man climbing the pole cattle pen behind the chute. “Stay where you are!” Grant yelled. The man cursed as something hit the ground with a heavy thud. It was either his revolver or the satchel—either way, the cowhand wasn't stopping to recover it. He dropped on the other side of the loading pen with another curse and ran into the darkness.

It was the satchel. Grant breathed heavily with relief as he picked it up and headed back toward the depot.

The noise of the shooting had emptied the coaches, and now the passengers stood huddled at the end of the depot staring anxiously into the darkness as Grant returned.

“What's goin' on here?” the ticket agent called.

“Two cowhands tried to grab Miss Muller's bag,” Grant said, surprised that he remembered her name so easily.

Rhea Muller came forward quickly, her eyes wide with panic. “Did... did they get away?”

“The thief got away but he left the bag.” He handed it to her and saw the anxiety go out of her face. She took the bag, held it hard in her hands, and looked at him.

“Thank you,” she said coolly.

“I'm sure you're welcome, ma'am,” Grant said stiffly. She wouldn't bend, she wouldn't smile. It was clear that she hated his guts, yet she had lied for him and had accepted his help.

The ticket agent shot anxious glances at both of them and said, “Lucky you got the satchel back, lady. But I better call the sheriff anyway.”

“No!” Rhea Muller said quickly. “The thieves got away; there's nothing we can do about it now.” Then her face brightened with a brazenly artificial smile. “Thank you just the same, sir, but Mr. Grant and I must go back to the train.”

Grant made a small sound of surprise as she took his arm. When they were a few paces away from the curious passengers, Grant hissed, “I'm not taking this train; I'm waiting for the Katy!”

The false smile disappeared. “Very well, Mr. Grant, if you want to wait and talk to the sheriff.”

He glanced quickly at the ticket agent who was hurrying into the depot and knew that she was right. He couldn't afford to talk to a sheriff; there were too many questions that he couldn't answer. Still, he didn't like the idea of heading west toward the Oklahoma country—civilization was too strong there, law enforcement too rigid for his liking.

“Well?” she asked when they reached the coach.

Grant looked cautiously into her blue suspicious eyes. “I can't say this was in my plans, but it looks like we'll be taking the same train after all.”

She nodded. “I thought we would.”

Grant handed her up to the coach and moved away from the excited crowd of passengers. “How long before the train pulls out?” he asked the conductor.

“Right away. We're behind schedule now. Say.” He grinned. “That was some scrap! The young lady ought to be real proud of you.”

Grant then went back to the depot to recover his saddle.

The train started moving again as Grant hefted his saddle into the rack overhead. Rhea Muller was watching him now, coolly and speculatively, and as he settled into his seat she said, “May I talk to you, Mr. Grant?”

It seemed that she never ran out of surprises. He frowned, then stood up to let her move in next to the window. “I'd like to talk to you, too, Miss Muller. First of all, I'd like to know why you lied to that deputy marshal today.”

She sat very erect as usual and stared straight ahead. “Perhaps,” she said quietly, “it was my woman's intuition.” She indicated the black satchel with a nod. “It was no surprise when those men tried to take this. I was afraid some such thing would happen and I needed the protection of a... a man like you.”

“A favor for a favor. Is that it?”

“Yes.”

But Grant was not satisfied. “I still don't understand it. It's clear that you don't like me, so why did you pick me to protect you?”

“Sometimes,” she said blandly, “it takes a thief to catch a thief.”

Grant felt the heat of anger rushing to his face. Sure, he had robbed Ortway at the point of a gun but he had never thought of himself as a thief. He had simply taken by force what Ortway was trying to cheat him out of. “How,” he asked stiffly, “can you be so sure I'm a thief?”

I saw your face. I saw the fear in your eyes when you learned the deputy marshal was making an inspection of the train.”

And maybe she was right. Maybe everybody could have seen it if they had bothered to look. They rode in strained silence for several minutes, and then Grant looked at her. “Would you mind telling me what's so important about that satchel you're carrying?”

For a moment he thought she was not going to answer. Then she said, “Money, Mr. Grant. A great deal of money, and it is very important to me.” Then she looked straight at him, her eyes perfectly sober. “I want to hire you, Mr. Grant, to see that nothing else happens to it.”

Grant started. “I'm a thief. Remember?”

“But we understand each other,” she said evenly. “Do you want the job?”

“No.”

“The pay is not very good,” she continued. “But there is very little law where I am going, which should prove attractive to a man like yourself.”

It suddenly occurred to Grant that Rhea Muller was a very handsome young woman. Stiff and distant, but in her way almost beautiful. “You think you've got me pegged, don't you? Bank robber, gun shark, thief....” He leaned back on the seat and nudged his hat forward on his forehead. “Where is this place that has no law?”

“A place called Kiefer, in the Creek Nation. Until a few days ago it was a Pacific flag stop. Then a wildcat on the Glenn ranch blew in a gusher and...” She saw the puzzled look on Grant's face and allowed herself a small, tight smile. “Oil, Mr. Grant.”

He shoved his hat back and came erect. “What would a girl like you know about oil?”

She appeared to give the question serious thought before answering. At last she turned to the window and seemed to speak to the night. “I was not born on a derrick floor, as my father is apt to tell you, but I did grow up in the oil fields of Pennsylvania—and Ohio—Tarport, Petrolia, Grease City. My father is a wildcatter, Mr. Grant; that's how I know about oil.”

Grant had already noticed the strangeness of her speech and dress, and now he realized that Rhea Muller came from German stock, or Pennsylvania Dutch. Well, she's a long way from home, he thought. But Rhea Muller had that look of determined self-sufficiency about her; her own independence threw up a barrier against sympathy. Something in the back of his mind warned Grant to keep his distance. Here was a girl with ambition, and too much ambition always meant the same thing—trouble.

Still, Rhea Muller had the power and the looks to attract men, and Joe Grant was not immune to the attraction of pretty young women. He said at last, “You still haven't told me about the satchel, except that it has money in it.”

“That's all you need to know.”

“Not if I'm going to protect it,” Grant said. “How do I know the money isn't stolen?”

Her face colored but her words were controlled when she spoke. “Perhaps you have the right to know. The money is borrowed—five thousand dollars. Everything my father owns went up for collateral: his leases, a small producing well near Bartlesville. But we had to have the money to buy tools and a rig; we were in no position to bargain.”

Grant whistled softly. “It sounds like a big gamble.”

“Wildcatting is always a gamble. But Glenn Pool is going to be the biggest oil strike in history; it's the once-in-a-lifetime chance that all oilmen look for.”

Grant frowned, but the talk of oil interested him, if only because he knew nothing about it. “Well, maybe it isn't such a gamble. If your father's going to drill where he's sure there's oil, that seems like a pretty safe proposition.”

The girl turned and fixed her cool blue eyes on Grant's face. “It isn't as safe as it seems. Our lease expires in thirty days unless we get a well spudded in within that time. That's plenty of time now that we have the money, provided we're able to get rig timbers, machinery, tools...” She paused for a moment, and Grant thought he saw worry in the faint lines about her eyes. Suddenly she looked away. “Mr. Grant,” she said, “do you know what a 'top lease' is?”

“I never heard of it.”

“It's used by land speculators, especially around new oil fields. Sometimes a man has a good lease but can't promote the money to drill. If it looks like he won't be able to get his well started in time to fulfill the contract, a speculator will buy a lease on top of his. Do you understand?”

“I think so; it sounds the same as betting against the shooter in a crap game. If the first man doesn't get his well started in time, the speculator takes over the lease.” Then he thought of something else and suddenly understood why Rhea Muller was worried. “Does somebody have a 'top lease' on your father's land?”

She nodded, still looking the other way. “A man by the name of Ben Farley.”

“Do you think this Farley had anything to do with what happened in Vinita?”

She did not have to answer. A drilling lease in a new oil field was at stake—a fortune for the speculator if he could stop the Muller well. Derricks and machinery cost money-even Joe Grant knew that much about the oil business. If the speculator could somehow get his hands on the money that the Mullers had borrowed...

Grant breathed deeply, frowning hard. He didn't like it; it smelled of trouble. And he was in enough trouble as it was.

CHAPTER FOUR

SUCH TOWNS AS Dodge, Wichita, and Abilene had not prepared Joe Grant for Kiefer. The depot was a shunted boxcar. The week-old town was a churning sea of black mud, working with animals and humanity. Mule skinners turned the air blue with profanity as heavy freighters dragged through the axle-deep mud. The main street 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 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 under the ground, Mr. Grant,” she said wryly. Then she turned to her brother. “Bud, you go over and keep Morphy and Calloway busy on the cellar. We want it ready to lay the foundations as soon as the rig timbers get here. Mr. Grant can drive me to the dugout.”

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 us?”

Grant shot a quick glance at Rhea, but she had donned her mask again and he could read nothing in her eyes. “I guess so, Bud. For a while, anyway.”

“Then your job has already started. Come with me.”

Rhea's eyes widened. Grant frowned, then nodded quickly and followed Bud up the sod steps. “What's the trouble?”

“You'll see soon enough. He's over at the bunk tent.”

They heard Rhea coming after them but neither man slowed his quick pace toward the flapping, clay-spattered side walls of the bunk tent. Grant threw back the flap and drew up for a moment staring at the man sitting on one of the half-dozen canvas cots. “Who is he?”

“Name's Robuck. Pa hired him yesterday to help dig the derrick cellar.”

The man looked at them briefly, his eyes still dull and slightly glazed. There was a cut along the side of his head above the left ear, his left eye was blue and puffed, dried blood was caked on the left side of his face, and his nose was humped in the bridge where it had been broken. Grant turned to Rhea, who had pushed into the tent.

“You'd better get some water, iodine, and clean cloths.” Then to the man, “What happened?”

The roustabout laughed harshly. “What does it look like?”

“Was it a fight?”

“Call it that if you want to.” He got unsteadily to his feet, dragged a kit bag from under his cot, and began throwing his few belongings into it. “You can get my pay ready,” he said to Bud. “I'm not working for you and your pa any more.”

“You'd better lie down,” Grant said quietly. “From the looks of that nose, you could use a doctor.”

“I don't need a doctor. All I need is a one-way ticket out of the Territory, and that's what I aim to get!” He held his hand out to Bud. “I'll take my pay.”

The man was more scared than hurt and Grant could see that he would be of no use to anybody until he got away from the men who had beaten him. Bud peeled off four dollars from a small roll and handed them to the roustabout. “Can you tell us who did it? And why?”

The man touched his nose gently and winced. “There were four of them; that's all I know. They said if I worked on the Muller lease again they'd kill me. I like you and your old man fine, but...” He left the word hanging, then picked up the kit bag and walked unsteadily out of the tent.

Grant grinned tightly and turned to Bud. “Is that a sample of Ben Farley's work?”

“It has to be Farley,” the boy said angrily. “Nobody else has any interest in what happens to our lease.” He dropped to one of the cots, clinching and unclinching his lean, work-roughened hands. “We've got two drillers that have been with us since Bartlesville; they won't scare easy. But we've got to have rig builders and roustabouts to get the derrick set up. That won't be easy, with Farley's men beating up every hand that comes on our lease.”

The last thing Joe Grant wanted was trouble, and now he could feel trouble gathering around like thunderheads. At first it had seemed so simple—he'd just wanted to get his money from Ortway and settle down somewhere quiet and peaceful. Maybe, he thought, he just wasn't the peaceful kind. Maybe he was the kind that was dogged by trouble wherever he went....

Then Rhea Muller, without the bandages and medicine, came into the tent and Grant felt the sensation of strange excitement go over him when he looked at her. She said everything there was to say with one word. “Farley?”

Her brother nodded.

She looked at Grant. “We don't have to worry about Farley now. Mr. Grant is going to take care of everything.”

CHAPTER FIVE

IT WAS WELL past dark when old Zack Muller got back to his lease that night. Pat Morphy and Lon Calloway, the two drillers, had gone to Sabo; Grant and Bud Muller were getting ready for bed in the bunk tent when the old man came in.

“You stop off at Sabo?” young Muller asked. The old man nodded heavily, warming himself at the oil-barrel stove in the center of the tent. “I heard about our roustabout. But that's only the beginning of the trouble; we can't get our tools and machinery in Kiefer; we'll have to go to Tulsa after them.”

Bud swore harshly. “That'll mean a two-, three-day waste! Didn't Kurt Battle have the equipment?”

“Maybe.” Zack Muller smiled weakly. “But he's not selling anything to the Muller lease.” He turned to Grant. “Ben Farley's a big man in the Territory; he's got maybe a dozen locations and as many wells. If he pulled that much business away from Battle—well, you can see where that would leave an equipment dealer.”

The picture of Ben Farley was growing clearer in Grant's mind, and it was a picture that he didn't like. “I can hire a wagon and go to Tulsa after the equipment. I think I could make it in two days.”

But the old man shook his head. “I'd better do it. I know the dealers, and tools are hard to get. I'll take Bud with me, though, if you'll stay and look after Rhea and the lease.”

Grant nodded, although he wasn't sure just how a man would go about “looking after” Rhea Muller if she didn't want to be looked after.

Within an hour the old man and the boy began walking back toward Sabo, leaving the one Muller saddle horse on the lease. Grant stood outside the bunk tent watching the two figures disappear into the dark brush along the banks of Slush Creek, and he saw Rhea Muller standing in the orange lamplight in front of the dugout. After her father and brother had disappeared she did not look in Grant's direction. He thought of calling to her, but by that time she had gone back into the shack.

Grant had no idea how much work went ahead of building an oil derrick, but the next morning he began to learn. A cellar had to be dug, then came the slush pit and provisions for storage. A line had to be laid to the creek, for oil wells had to have water; a bunkhouse had to be built, and a place for the crew to eat.

Grant and Rhea Muller were standing in front of the dugout watching Calloway and Morphy work on the cellar. “They're drillers,” Rhea said, “and good ones, too. Digging cellars is not their work but they know it's got to be done. Are you beginning to see what we're up against, Joe?”

She used his first name again, deliberately, and he could not forget that moment of excitement when he had held her hard against him. He looked away. “I could give Calloway and Morphy a hand.”

But she shook her head. “We need a dozen hands—carpenters, rig builders, roustabouts.”

“Somewhere in Sabo or Kiefer there must be that many men who aren't afraid of Farley.”

“Maybe. But that isn't the whole problem. Labor is always at a premium in a new field; some of the promoters are even shanghaiing cowhands from the Cherokee country and turning them into tool dressers and carpenters. Even if we could find men willing to work for a Muller, we'd have to pay them a bonus, and we can't afford it. Still...”

She drew the word out, looking up at Grant. “When Bud and my father get back from Tulsa we've got to have everything ready to start building. Somewhere in Sabo or Kiefer there's a man named Turk Valois; he's a 'runner.' Do you know what a runner is?”

Grant nodded. “At end-of-track towns, when the railroad was hard up for labor, a runner acted as go-between for the railroad and the workers.”

“It's the same in an oil field; it's Turk Valois' business to round up labor for the lease owners, collecting a commission for each man that's hired. I want you to find Valois and talk to him. We've got to have workers and he's the only man who can get them for us.”

There was something in her voice that made Grant frown. “Do you know this Valois very well?”

After a moment she nodded.

“Maybe it would be better if you talked to him. I could drive you over to Sabo...”

“No!” Grant was startled at the sudden viciousness. She stood ramrod straight, staring straight ahead. “I don't like Turk Valois, and he doesn't like me. But he's not tied to Farley, either, and he might be willing to help us if you talk to him.”

There were other questions that Grant wanted to ask but he knew that he would get no answers. A coolness veiled her eyes as she turned toward him. “You'd better get started,” she said brittlely. “I'll be all right on the lease with Calloway and Morphy.” She wheeled and disappeared into the dugout.

Puzzled, Grant stood for a moment in front of the dugout. The name of Valois had thrown up a barrier of ice between them. Now, stronger than ever, he felt his instincts warning him of trouble ahead—and at the same time his notion of clearing out was getting weaker. When the idea occurred to him he remembered the day before when Rhea had been soft and willing in his arms. It was a thing he could not forget. At one time or another in every man's life he toys with the thought of love—and Joe Grant guessed that was what he was doing now.

The Muller saddle horse was a claybank stallion that they kept in the dry grass along the banks of Slush Creek. Grant brought the animal up to the bunk tent, dragged his rig from under his cot and cinched it down on the claybank's back. The puzzle of Turk Valois still bothered him as he swung up to the saddle.

It was midmorning when Grant rode into the noise, mud, and confusion of Sabo. More tents and cardboard huts had sprung up overnight and the traffic of heavy freighters was heavier than ever. Grant swung over to the side of the road and called to a teamster. “I'm looking for a man named Valois, a runner. You know him?”

“Mister, everybody knows Turk Valois, but you won't find him in Sabo. You better try the Wheel House in Kiefer.”

Grant lifted a hand in a vague salute and swung to the west on the main road to Kiefer. He rode along the edge of the congested road watching the endless chain of wagons headed for the Glenn ranch, and he began to notice how the men and even the horses looked alike in their urgency and greed. No one looked in his direction; they were too preoccupied to bother with strangers.

He had wanted to run for Texas, but now he knew that right here in the Creek Nation was the safest place he could possibly be. As he entered Kiefer, he observed the crowds working like ants along the stilted sidewalks. This man could be a killer, that one a thief—nobody cared.

He felt relief wash over him and suddenly had the impulse to laugh out loud. Nobody cared!

He rode the length of Kiefer's mile-long Main Street of shanties and shacks, stores and dance halls, illegal saloons and cribs, all wide open and brazen and noisy. They would never find him here!

For the first time in many hours he felt completely free and unhunted. He could let himself be caught up in this new kind of excitement and forget that he had ever known a man named Ortway or had robbed a bank in Joplin.

The Wheel House was part hotel, part gambling house and saloon. Grant tied up in the street and stepped up to the raised sidewalk; he shoved through the flow of humanity and into the interior of the Wheel House. The lobby was a mill of oilmen, strange men speaking strange languages, men clad in dirty corduroys and high-laced boots. The hotel desk was against the back wall; off to one side there was a long counter where cooks ladled steaming stew from an iron kettle; on the other side there were tables for gambling and drinking. The building was heated by several big oil-drum stoves against the walls and the air was rank and steamy.

Grant stood for a moment in the doorway thinking that this was Dodge all over again, except nowadays men wore their guns under their arms or in their waistbands instead of on their hips. He noticed the expressionless faces at the card tables—they were the same. And the easy-going drifters with the quick eyes. Everything was the same except for the dress and hidden guns, but it was on a larger scale than Dodge had ever known.

Grant moved inside and made his way back to the hotel desk where a blunt-faced man said, “No vacancy, mister,” without bothering to look at him.

“I'm looking for Turk Valois.”

“He ain't here. You hirin' or lookin' for work?” It was a fair question; lease owners and roustabouts dressed alike in Kiefer.

“Hiring,” Grant said, and nodded at a table. “I'll be over there.”

He took the table and a waiter brought rotgut in a crock mug. Liquor was illegal in the Indian country, but that didn't bother the Kiefer businessmen; they served it from granite pots and called it coffee. It was a perfect example of boom-town law, and Grant smiled to himself.

But the smile froze. At first he didn't know what it was, he was only aware of a sudden uneasiness. He sat for a moment, wondering, then he shoved back in his chair and looked around. And there he was—the marshal.

The deputy marshal that had searched the train.

The marshal that Rhea had lied to.

And he was looking straight at Grant.

A squat, stone-faced man with a crooked nose and glazed blue eyes, the marshal shouldered through the crowd of oilmen and walked toward Grant's table. “I was trying to peg you,” the lawman said bluntly. “I knew I'd seen you somewhere but I couldn't set the time or place.”

Grant made himself grin, but words grew solid in his throat.

“I've got you now,” the marshal said soberly. “You were on the train, the one we searched yesterday in the Cherokee Nation. You were asleep with your hat over your face, but I spotted that hair right off. You've got a peculiar-colored head of hair, mister, did anybody ever tell you that?”

Grant felt his belly fall and shrink. “Well...”

“You were with a girl. Her name was Malloy, wasn't it?”

Was this a trick? Was the marshal merely amusing himself before arresting him? Grant swallowed. “Muller,” he said. “I work for her father.”

“That's right; she told me. And your name's Grant.”

Grant felt the rapid pumping of his heart. His hands were cold but there was sweat on his forehead. “That's right, Marshal, Joe Grant. Is there anything I can help you with?”

There was just a chance that this scare was for nothing. There was a chance that this was all coincidence and the best thing to do was to bluff it out.

The marshal smiled, but even then his face looked sour and the expression never reached his eyes. “I guess not... unless you happen to know a man named Fennway, Morry Fennway.”

Stay calm! Grant told himself. Bluff it out, he might not know a thing. “Morry Fennway?”

“A farmer up Joplin way. Before that he was a cowhand, a drover.” He leaned heavily on the table, gazing bleakly into the liquor-filled mug. “A big fellow—about your size, I'd say, only this Fennway had light hair.”

Grant had an almost irresistible urge to pull his hat down over his ears to hide his hair. But he sat quietly and was surprised to hear his voice come out calm and unruffled. “Well, Marshal, if I happen to see such a man I'll let you know.”

The corners of the lawman's smooth mouth turned up but the expression was as unreal as a smiling mask. “You do that. The name's Dagget; likely you'll be able to find me here in Kiefer.” He nodded and turned away.

Slowly—very slowly—Grant felt his breathing come back to normal, but an iciness gripped him. The impulse to run was almost irresistible. “He doesn't know a thing!” Grant tried to tell himself. “He's just guessing!”

But the guessing was too close for comfort. Dagget was suspicious of all big men who fit Morry Fennway's general description, and suspicious men were dangerous. I've got to get away from here, he thought. Out of the Indian Nations, out of the whole Territory!

But thoughts of running were born in panic. He took control of his instincts and looked at his situation coolly, as an outsider would look at it. As Dagget would look at it.

Running, he knew, would be the worst mistake he could make. A show of panic would bring the marshal down on him so fast he wouldn't know what hit him. His big mistake had been the day before when he'd let Rhea Muller talk him into coming to Kiefer—but it was too late to change that now.

He was here. He'd have to make the best of it.

All right, he thought, as the chill began to leave. I'll bluff it out. After all, what did the marshal really know? Grant had been on the train, and now a coincidence had brought him and the marshal together again in Kiefer and that had started the wheels to turning in Dagget's steel-trap brain. But what did he actually know?

Nothing.

This knowledge made Grant feel better—he felt almost good as he downed part of the rotgut from his coffee cup. Probably Dagget had a dozen men lined up that would fit Fennway's general description; it didn't mean a thing. The lawman was groping in the dark, grabbing at anything he could find....

Still, Grant hadn't expected the marshal's office to work quite so fast on a Missouri bank robbery. It was something to think about.

From the comer of his eye he saw Dagget leave the Wheel House, and Grant sat quietly for another hour before another man shoved through the crowd toward the table.

“I'm Turk Valois. The clerk said you want to talk.”

He was a big man but most of his weight was in his shoulders and chest; his face was weathered and clean-shaven; he wore a gaudy mackinaw and the usual laced boots. “You want workers?” he said, kicking out a chair and sitting across the table from Grant. “Well, I'm the man to come to. You got your outfit spudded in?”

“No, we need rig builders.”

Valois whistled softly. “Rig men are hard to come by these days. What lease you working for?”

“The Mullers,” Grant said carefully.

For a moment Valois said nothing, showed nothing. It seemed almost that blinds had been drawn behind his eyes to shut out what he was thinking. “The Mullers,” he said thoughtfully. “Well, the old man's a fine old Dutchman and a pretty good wildcatter. The boy's all right, too. But Rhea...” He grinned thinly, showing a row of amazingly white teeth. “I'm sorry...”

“Grant. Joe Grant.”

“I'm sorry, Grant, I'm afraid I can't help you.” He started to get up and Grant reached out a hand and stopped him.

“Look, Valois, the Mullers need those rig builders pretty bad. Rhea says you're the only man that can help us—I want to know why you won't do it.”

Small circles of color appeared high on the runner's cheeks. “It's none of your business, Grant.”

“I'm making it my business.”

Latent violence lay over the table like an electrical storm. Grant felt the rippling of thick muscles as he held Valois' forearm above the wrist, and he knew instinctively that the runner was not the kind to run from a fight. Strangely, he found himself liking the big man, even as he prepared to block the blow that he could see coming.

But in an instant something subtle happened, the electricity disappeared, and with calm deliberateness Valois took Grant's hand in his and removed it from his arm. “Maybe I was wrong,” the runner said. “Maybe it is your business.”

He settled back in his chair, his shaded eyes flicking about at Grant's face. “All right, I'll tell you why I won't help you. The Mullers are poison in Kiefer; Ben Farley's got his mind set to take the Muller lease, and that's the way it's going to be. If I tried to help, my business would be ruined overnight. Anyway, the word is out that Muller's on Farley's black list-do you think rig builders are going to take a job that'll pay off in cracked skulls? You might as well forget it, Grant; you can't fight Farley on his home grounds.”

“I've heard all that,” Grant said. “It's funny, you didn't strike me as the kind of man to take bullying.”

But in some quiet way they had come to understand each other, and Valois refused to be ruffled. “Call me a businessman. Going against Farley is bad business.”

“I think it's more than that,” Grant said gently. “I think it has something to do with Rhea Muller.”

They looked at each other, quietly meshing their thoughts, judging each other's potential. At last Valois shook his head. “I'm sorry for you, Grant. I'm sorry for any man unlucky enough to fall in love with Rhea—I did it once myself.”

Grant made a small sound of surprise and came erect in his chair.

“That was in Bartlesville,” Valois went on calmly, “not so long ago. I was a land man then with a string of leases. Everybody thought I was going to be a millionaire, and Rhea was sweeter than clover honey—until all my wells came in dusters.” He laughed, and the sound was not pleasant. “We were going to be married. We were going to move to Oklahoma City, and when statehood came we'd be one of the first families in Oklahoma.” He pulled his hat down on his forehead. “But a few dry holes changed all that.”

Grant did not move. He wanted to be angry but he could see that Turk Valois was telling the truth. The truth as he knew it.

“What does she want from you, Grant? Money? You don't look like you have enough money for Rhea, so it must be something else.”

Mentally, Grant closed his ears, for he didn't want to hear any more. But he could not forget the day before when Rhea had come so willingly into his arms. What had she wanted? His protection? The use of his strength and his gun? Was that the way she got the things she wanted?

He got up and walked out of the Wheel House.

Hunching his shoulders into the bite of that December wind, he tramped numbly up the crowded boardwalk, past the noisy gambling houses and dance halls, past the shacks where the painted 49er girls lived and plied their calling, past clusters of tents and sheet-iron shanties. He cursed himself, and thanked Valois for showing him the truth.

He had known the truth all along, of course, but because of a pretty face and a softly rounded feminine form he had chosen to ignore it. He could ignore it no longer. He was an outlaw. What would a girl like Rhea Muller want from an outlaw?

Abruptly he stopped his pacing, turned, and headed in the opposite direction. He left the sidewalk and tramped through the mud toward the shunted boxcar that served as a depot. “When's the next train to Vinita?” he called up to the ticket agent.

The agent pointed to a chalked schedule on the side of the boxcar. “Nine o'clock tomorrow mornin'.”

Tomorrow morning. Well, he could wait. Let Dagget think what he would about his leaving—there were worse things than jail, and being made a fool of was one of them.

It was Dagget who shook him awake that night, or early morning. Grant, sleeping at one of the Wheel House's corner tables, felt the hard hands on his shoulders shaking him steadily. He heard the toneless voice chanting as monotonously as a machine:

“Come out of it, Grant. Come out of it.”

Grant opened his eyes and slowly unfolded himself from his cramped position. The lobby was as bright as day with gasoline lanterns, and somewhere in the town a voice yelled and a piano sounded harshly against the noisy background of the Kiefer night. The glare of the lanterns made him blink.

“Who is it?”

“Jim Dagget. Come out of it, I say.”

It was the marshal. Vaguely, Grant wondered if he had somehow learned the truth and had come with gun and handcuffs to take him back to Joplin.

“You want some black coffee?” the marshal asked.

“I'm not drunk, I was just sleeping.”

Dagget fixed a steady gaze on his face. “Seems to me you ought to be back at the Muller lease, if that's where you're workin'.”

Grant started to tell him that he wasn't working for the Mullers any more, but then decided there was no sense making things worse. He licked his dry lips, wondering how much longer he had to wait till nine o'clock. How much longer before he could put Kiefer and its brief memories behind him. Providing, of course, that Dagget didn't take him away first.

“What is it?” he asked, staring up at the marshal's expressionless face.

“You work for Zack Muller. Is that right?”

Frowning, Grant nodded.

“The old man's dead,” Dagget said bluntly. “He was killed tonight while bringing some drilling equipment back from Tulsa.”

CHAPTER SIX

GRANT WOULD NOT soon forget the day they buried old Zack Muller in the lonely hillside plot to the north of “Tulsy Town,” as some still called it. There was the bite of steel in the wind and flurries of sleet slashed intermittently at the small group of mourners. The Methodist preacher was a small, thin man, thin-blooded and blue-lipped, and Grant could hear the chattering of his teeth as he rushed headlong through the final graveside service.

The sky that day was as dark as oil smoke, boiling in the north, and the ground was as hard as iron. All morning long Grant and Morphy and Calloway had hacked and gouged at the frozen ground, building Zack Muller's final resting place in a hard land. Now it was almost over. The wind howled along the hillside, whipping the tall grasses, snatching the words from the preacher's mouth.

Grant, hat in hand, ducked his head a little deeper into the collar of his windbreaker and let his gaze sweep over the hard blue faces that surrounded the grave. Morphy and Calloway had been Muller's friends, and their loss showed starkly in their eyes. There were several men whose names were unknown to Grant; they were strong, square-built men in ill-fitting blue serge suits and sheep-lined coats with the smell of black oil and wild gas about them. They were foreign men, the wildcatters; they were men of Zack Muller's own creed.

These were the wanderers, the restless ones, the gamblers and the dreamers. Muller had been one of them, had faced the same dangers, had wandered with them from Pennsylvania to Ohio to Indian Territory, had tasted with them oil scum from many unnamed creeks and ponds, had followed the doodle bugger's bewitched hickory switch from one strange place to the other. And now...

Grant set his jaw and gazed hard at the boiling sky. The old man was dead. Grant hadn't known Muller long, but he could feel the loss.

The preacher closed his book. “The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away. Blessed be the name of the Lord.” And like two huge, awkward puppets, Morphy and Calloway took up their shovels and began filling the grave. So, Grant thought bitterly, this is where Zack Muller's wandering ends. With a bullet in his back he died. In foreign ground he is buried....

Carefully—very carefully—Grant had guided his thoughts around Ben Farley. He warned himself that he must be sensible and stay out of it. No matter what he had thought of Zack Muller, this fight was between the Mullers and Farley.

He would go back to Kiefer with them. He would see that the drilling equipment got to the lease, but there his obligation ended. With Dagget watching, he couldn't afford to stay in Indian Territory any longer than he had to.

But when he looked at Rhea Muller all his sensible resolutions grew soft and spineless. She stood there at the graveside, her eyes as bleak as the day itself, as cold and passionless as some beautiful piece of ice statuary. And, as Grant looked at her, he forgot all the things that Turk Valois had said, and he wished only that there was something that he could do or say that might erase some of the chiseled bitterness from her face.

Grant watched as Bud Muller took his sister's arm and led her away toward the spring buggy that would take them back to Kiefer. Her expressionless face did not change. She shed no tear.

The rest of the small congregation began to break up. Grant turned stiffly and started toward the bottom of the hill when he saw a thick, squat figure coming toward him. It was the marshal.

“I want to talk to you, Grant.”

That familiar sensation of uneasiness sank heavily in Joe Grant's belly. Was Dagget following him? Why else would the marshal make a trip to Tulsa on a day like this?

Dagget rubbed his hands vigorously and then plunged them into the pockets of his canvas windbreaker. “You going back to the Muller lease?” he asked.

Self-consciously, Grant pulled his hat down on his forehead and nodded.

“Keep an eye on young Muller. Don't let him do anything crazy.”

“What makes you think he'll do something crazy?”

Dagget was studying him carefully without appearing to do so. He pulled up his collar and ducked his head into the wind. “I've seen it happen before,” he said shortly, “after the shock wears off.”

Then Grant saw Pat Morphy getting in the buggy with Rhea, and Bud was climbing the hill again heading in their direction. He stopped in front of the marshal and said bluntly, “Have you arrested Farley?”

Dagget narrowed his eyes, then shook his head.

“Are you going to?” There was something in the boy's eyes that Grant didn't like: a wildness straining to be unleashed.

“That depends on how the evidence turns up against him,” the marshal said carefully. “Farley claims he was on one of his leases when the killing took place, and he's got witnesses to back him up.”

“Witnesses can lie,” Bud Muller said flatly. “Or Farley could have hired somebody to do it. It was Farley, all right, one way or the other.”

“If it was, I'll get him.”

The wind howled around them, and a scattering of snow appeared in the flurry of sleet. “You'd better get him, Marshal,” Bud Muller said tightly, almost hissed, “before I do!”

It was near noon when Grant, Lon Calloway, and Bud Muller pulled out of Tulsa with a new team and a hired freighter. The town—a scattering of frame buildings and houses spread out along the banks of the Arkansas—fell behind them. They traveled in hard, bitter silence as the minutes and miles stretched out behind them, and at last Lon Calloway made an abrupt sound as they came in sight of an overturned freighter.

The big wagon was over on its side and heavy derrick timbers and machinery were strewn over the ground. This, Grant thought, was where it happened. This was where Zack Muller died.

Another big freighter loaded with boiler, donkey engine, and drill pipe stood unharmed in some timber. This was the wagon that Bud had been in.

In his mind Grant pictured the action as Bud had related it. The night had been black, and the two wagons had just begun to enter the stand of timber. From the high ground a voice had called out—a rifle spoke. The team of the lead wagon had bolted in panic; the freighter crashed into the deep ruts and overturned. Zack Muller, leaping away from the wagon, grabbed his shotgun and tried to fight the shapeless figures that milled in the darkness. The rifle spoke again.

That's all there was to it, the way Bud Muller told it. There had been four horsemen planted there to block them and destroy the equipment, but probably they hadn't expected a fight. And probably their instructions hadn't called for murder.

But the old man was dead. The fight went out of the attackers; they vanished in the darkness without bothering the other wagon. And that was the way Bud Muller had found his father, with a length of drill pipe across his chest, a bullet in his back.

Joe Grant could see it clearly in his mind's eye as they drew nearer to the overturned freighter. The vague shape of a nightmare snapped into focus and became reality, and he felt for himself some of the grief and rage that stared out of Bud Muller's pale blue eyes.

Three oilmen from Kiefer—friends of Muller—huddled around a small fire, guarding the scattered equipment. They got up and walked stiffly to the rutted road when they saw the wagon coming. Shotguns cradled in their arms, they stood for a moment looking at Bud, but they did not ask about their friend or the funeral which they knew was over. Lon Calloway climbed down from the freighter and stamped some feeling into his feet.

“Well, I guess we might as well get this stuff loaded.”

When they reached Kiefer the next day, they were stiff, red-eyed from want of sleep and half-frozen. Bud Muller pulled the lead wagon up in front of the Wheel House and motioned the other one on toward Sabo.

For several hours Grant had wondered about the bulge of a revolver under the boy's windbreaker, and now he looked at the cold savagery in Bud Midler's eyes and understood why the marshal had issued his warning.

“Since we're this close to the lease,” Grant said, “don't you think we might as well keep going?”

“You can take the wagon if you want to.”

Bud rose stiffly from the wagon seat and climbed over the wheel, leaving the lines in Grant's hands. There was trouble in the air, in the cutting wind; it had the taste of iron. Grant felt his brain numb with fatigue. Where Bud went, trouble was sure to follow. This much Grant knew instinctively, and he was afraid of it. The harder a man tried to steer clear of trouble, the harder it seemed to hound him.

With a weary shrug of defeat, Grant whipped the lines around the brake lever and climbed down to the frozen mud. He caught Bud Muller at the Wheel House door.

“This is my fight, Grant,” young Muller said tightly. “Let me handle it myself.”

Grant had the discomforting feeling that all his future was crumbling under his feet, but he was too exhausted and numb to care. “It may be more fight than one man can handle. Have you thought of that?”

Bud looked at him for a moment, then nodded. “All right, suit yourself.”

They stepped into the hot, steamy interior of the Wheel House lobby and a kind of uneasy silence fell over the crowd of oilmen. Grant raked the room with a cautious glance and noticed Turk Valois sitting against the wall studying the scene thoughtfully. Then one of the oilmen, an old-timer with a full beard and a worried face, shouldered his way up to young Muller.

“We know how you feel, Bud. All of us were friends of your pa, but it won't help to go lookin' for trouble.”

“I'm looking for justice,” Bud Muller said shortly. “Where's Farley?”

The old man's eyes grew cautious. “What do you want with Ben Farley?”

“Is he here?”

Then, as if they had acted with one mind, all eyes turned toward the back of the lobby where a flight of plank stairs led up to the hotel half of the Wheel House. A man stood on the first landing gazing blandly down at the crowd, and somehow Grant knew that this was Ben Farley.

Bud Muller stiffened like a hunting dog catching its first scent of prey. Grant moved a bit to one side and tried to make himself inconspicuous as he loosened his windbreaker. Eyes darted from Bud to the man on the stairs, but for one brief moment there was almost complete silence. Gamblers forgot their cards. Drinkers paused with cups halfway to their mouths.

A strange calm settled over Grant and thoughts of his own safety slipped from his mind as he studied Ben Farley.

Farley was not a man to be liked on first sight, if ever. There was an air of cold superiority about him that Grant found easy to hate; he smiled only with his mouth, his eyes never seemed to focus completely on any single point. For some reason Grant had expected a big man; Farley was short, compact, and bullish. With a show of polished arrogance he selected a thin cigar from his vest pocket and rolled it between his full lips.

“Did I hear someone mention my name?” he asked quietly.

Now something else happened that Grant didn't like. Two oil-field roustabouts began moving casually toward the back of the lobby and took their places near the foot of the stairs. These were Farley's men—there was no mistake about it.

Grant moved closer to Bud and said quietly, “This is the wrong time and wrong place. If you've got to have it out with Farley, choose your own ground.”

Bud Muller didn't even hear him. He began moving forward, his gaze of rage never leaving Farley's face. He said hoarsely:

“I'm going to kill you, Farley!”

The oilman's expression didn't change, he didn't even blink. He bit the end of his cigar between amazingly white teeth and casually puffed until it was burning evenly. Then he sauntered down the stairs and stood between his two roustabouts. “Get out of Kiefer, son,” he said lightly, “before you find more trouble than you can handle.”

A slow, ragged sound like a wolf's snarl escaped from young Muller's throat and he sprang at Farley before Grant could stop him. Strangely, Grant was not dismayed. Without his knowing it, a violence had been building up inside him, and his mouth stretched in a thin, bitter grin as the boy grabbed at Farley's throat.

Almost instantly the crowd parted, pressing back against the walls. Farley stepped back quickly and knocked Bud to one side with a violent chopping of his right hand. One of the roustabouts grabbed the boy and sent him sprawling at Grant's feet.

The oilman looked at Grant. “I've got nothing against you, stranger. Take your young friend and get out of Kiefer.”

Possibly it was the brazen arrogance in Farley's voice that struck the spark. Even as Grant lunged forward, he knew that it was a fool thing to do. He and Bud had no chance against Farley and his two roustabouts—besides, there was no way of knowing how many more of Farley's men were in the lobby. But in the back of his consciousness he stood once again on that windy, snow-swept hill outside of Tulsa. He saw Rhea Muller's face as they lowered her father into the rock-hard grave. Suddenly—for the first time—he actually connected the face before him with the man who had killed Zack Muller.

The anger that had lain cold inside him suddenly burst into violence. He lunged to Farley's left, driving his fist into the man's middle. He experienced a savage satisfaction on hearing the oilman's breath whistle between his teeth—but the satisfaction was short-lived. One of the roustabouts stepped in quickly and clubbed Grant to one side with a hamlike fist. The other roustabout spun him around and hammered him to the floor.

Grant fell, dazed, his violence gone. There was a ringing of a thousand iron bells in his head. The lobby roared. A blunt, steel-capped boot slammed in his ribs as he attempted to gain his feet, and he went sprawling again.

He lay breathless for an instant wondering if Farley and his two roustabouts were armed.

It didn't matter. Farley and his men didn't need guns; they were equipped to do their job to perfection with fists and heavy oil-field boots. Now Bud Muller was on his feet again, snarling like a cougar, a small river of blood flowing from his nose and mouth. Grant rolled quickly, escaping another slashing kick of a steel-capped boot. He got to his feet, swaying, and met the roustabout head-on.

But the odds against them were too great. Farley himself, calm and unruffled, stepped in to furnish the quick, finishing blows to Bud Muller while the two roustabouts lunged for Grant.

For a moment a bright, futile savagery took hold of him and he felt the strength of two men flow through him. He jerked his knee hard into the groin of the nearest roustabout, then, turning, he whirled to meet the attack on the other side. For that instant, in his anger, he felt that he could whip the world—but the instant was soon over. Something hard, solid, crashed into the back of his head and he fell forward into blackness.

The blackness was lighted with bright pain that shot this time through his side and he knew that the roustabouts were again at work with their steel-capped boots. He tried to roll away, but the boots followed him. He tried to block the kicks with his arm and felt a blunt numbness spread over his shoulder.

He saw that Bud was down again, fighting for the revolver in his waistband. Unhurriedly, Ben Farley stepped up and kicked it out of the boy's hand.

Farley himself was holding a blunt double-action .38—and Grant knew instantly what had struck him from behind. Instinctively, he started to grab for his own revolver, then realized that the oilman was waiting for him to do just that. Farley smiled and leveled the muzzle at Grant's head, waiting quietly for some slight excuse to pull the trigger.

It would not be called murder. Farley had not asked for this fight—it was a clear case of self-defense and he was waiting for Grant to make the wrong move.

Then something happened—something so surprising that Farley blinked and lost his smile. A voice said:

“That's enough!”

It was a harsh, edgy voice that cut through the uproar. The roustabouts stopped their methodical kicking, Farley turned his head slightly, a shade of anger falling over his eyes. Then Turk Valois stepped to the center of the lobby, holding a single-action .45 on Farley and the two roustabouts.

“Stay out of this, Valois!” Farley said shortly.

“I'm already in it,” the runner said, advancing. Then, quickly, “And don't get the idea you can outshoot me, Farley. You can't.”

Evidently the oilman believed him. After a brief hesitation, he shrugged, then casually slipped the .38 into a holster under his left arm. Only the tightness of his mouth and his shaded eyes betrayed his rage.

“You're making a bad mistake, Valois,” he said quietly.

“I've made them before.” He motioned for the roustabouts to get back. “Get out, both of you.”

They looked to Farley for orders, but the oilman said nothing. After a moment they turned and shoved their way toward the door. The corners of Farley's mouth twitched as he regained his expressionless smile. He looked for a long while at the runner, then at Grant and the boy. “Well all be meeting again,” he said quietly, “one way or another.”

Ramrod-straight, proud as Beauregard, he turned and walked out of the Wheel House lobby.

CHAPTER SEVEN

VALOIS KNEELED BESIDE Grant. “How do you feel?”

“All right. You'd better look after the boy.”

An uneasy hum, a buzz of trouble, hung over the Wheel House lobby as the runner turned to Bud Muller and helped him sit up. “You're all right.” Valois grinned. “You'll have to be careful how you sleep, and maybe eat out of the side of your face, but that's all.” He looked at Grant. “I've got a room upstairs. You and the kid can come up there and wash up.

They made a sorry sight limping across the Wheel House lobby. Grant grasped a banister, staring up at the second-floor landing, and the top of those stairs seemed higher than the Rockies. Trouble! he thought wryly. Well, he was in it now, up to his neck!

His ribs ached from the kicking they had taken from the roustabouts' boots. His shoulder was still numb, and he tried to rub some feeling into it as they dragged up the rickety stairs.

Valois' room was a bleak, naked box of raw pine planking with a folding cot and an unpainted washstand as its only furniture. But in Kiefer, where an eight-hour rental of a flophouse cot cost five dollars or more, this bare room amounted to a royal suite. The runner poured water from a pitcher into a chipped granite washpan and gave them a dirty shirt to dry on.

Grant and Bud Muller took their turns at the washpan, and the shock of cold water was a help; it made the world a little more real and a little less nightmarish than it had been before. Valois leaned against a plank wall, vaguely amused.

“That was a fool thing to do,” he said, “jumping Farley here in the Wheel House.”

Grant felt the knot on the back of his head. “It wasn't my idea.”

Bud Muller turned slowly, his smooth young face set like concrete. “I should have killed him!” he said hoarsely. “I should have shot him before saying a word!”

“Do you think that would have been smart?” Valois asked quietly.

“He killed my father!”

But now that some of his anger had burned itself out, Grant was beginning to wonder about other things. He sat carefully on the edge of the runner's cot and fixed his gaze on Valois. “I guess we owe you a good deal for lending us a hand down there. Next time I'll be acquainted with Farley's rules and maybe I can handle my own trouble.” He frowned. “Why did you do it, Valois?”

Bud Muller looked puzzled, too, and was waiting for an answer.

Surprisingly, Valois laughed. “Why does anybody make a fool of himself? Take yourself,” nodding at Grant. “What good reason do you have for getting mixed up in this kind of trouble?”

Grant nodded but he was not satisfied. “You've got more to lose than I have. You said yourself that Farley could ruin your business, if you turned him against you. Did you think of that when you threw down on him?”

The runner's eyes narrowed. “I've got no cause to like Farley; not many people have. Yes, I thought about my business before I stepped in.” He strode to the room's small single window and gazed down at Kiefer's muddy street. “If I had it to do over again, I don't know as I would do the same thing—but I'm not going to have that chance. I'll have to take my business where I can find it, whether Farley likes it or not. Do you still want those rig builders and roustabouts for the Muller lease?”

Grant and young Muller made small sounds of surprise.

“I think I might be able to rake up some men who'd be willing to work against Farley,” Valois went on. “But they won't be the kind of men you want; they'll be hard cases, drunkards, the scrapings of the barrel.”

Grant glanced at Bud Muller, and the boy nodded.

“How soon can you get them to the lease?”

“Tomorrow morning maybe. It depends on how big a scare Farley throws into this town.”

“Get them,” Bud Muller said, but his face showed that he was worried. “There's just one thing, Valois, that you ought to know. I don't think it's going to do you any good with Rhea.”

The runner smiled. “I hope you're right,” he said dryly. “I'm fighting Farley now—that's all the trouble one man can rightly handle.”

The crowd in the lobby parted and stared curiously as Grant and Bud made their way down the stairs and out to the sidewalk. They were marked men. Every glance in their direction was a speculative one. How long would it be before Farley finished them? Suddenly they had become untouchables; their names were on Ben Farley's black list. Grant was just beginning to realize how strong a man Ben Farley was.

They climbed stiffly over the freighter's wheel and dropped heavily to the driver's seat. Grant breathed deeply, and as bright needles of pain shot through him he experienced the exhilaration of a new kind of anger.

For the first time he saw that fight with Farley as a personal matter. The throbbing at the base of his skull, the pain in his side, and the numbness of his arm—they would be with him for a long time to remind him of Farley.

And after they were gone he would still remember.

Silently, he took up the lines, and the horses strained obediently in the harness. Bud Muller rode like some mute stone god of hate, and Grant could only guess what went on inside the boy's mind. The freighter dragged slowly through the slush of Kiefer, forming another bulky link in the endless chain of wagons along that deep-rutted road between Kiefer and the Glenn ranch. The town had grown overnight; it was even noisier and dirtier than Grant remembered it from the day before, yet many of the business places were already leaving Kiefer, especially the dance halls, the crib girls, the gamblers. They were picking up and moving on to Sabo.

Grant was getting used to it, the way he had got used to trail towns and end-of-track towns of the past. Still he didn't like it—and suddenly he remembered something that Rhea had said to him. Do you think I like living out the good years of my life in towns like Kiefer and Sabo?

Now, thinking calmly, he felt that he understood Rhea Muller a little better than before. Even the fire of her ambition and greed became more understandable.

Then caution stepped in to guide his thinking. It was all right to understand her, if he could, but nothing more. He must keep one thing clear in his mind—any argument he had with Farley was a personal one, it had nothing to do with Rhea Muller.

They rode on in silence, the jolting freighter starting new pains in Grant's head and side, then he saw a horseman coming toward them, quartering across an open field from the direction of Kiefer. Grant stared, then shrunk a bit into his windbreaker, as though he hoped to make his identity unknown.

Marshal Jim Dagget reined alongside the freighter, his eyes hard, his mouth a cruel slash across his blunt face. With a jerk of his head he motioned Grant to pull off the road, and then he sat for a moment, his anger fixed on Bud Muller.

“So you wouldn't listen, would you?” he snarled. “The law wasn't fast enough for you, was it! You had to take it on yourself to see that justice was done!”

The color of outrage mounted steadily in the lawman's face, and for the moment Bud Muller was his sole target. “There's one thing I want you to listen to and I want you to get it straight: from now on I'll see that justice is done. I intend to catch the man who murdered your father, but I'll do it my own way, with no help from you. Do you understand?”

Young Muller hadn't been prepared for this outburst. He looked surprised, then angry.

“I said,” the marshal's voice cracked, “do you understand?”

There was a savagery there that not even Bud Muller in his state of grief could fail to understand. Jim Dagget was a lawman; the law and its enforcement were his life. He was letting it be known beyond all doubt that he would allow no man to ride over him.

Bud understood. The marshal's anger was the only thing that had penetrated the hard core of his bitterness, and at last he nodded.

“I hope you do,” Dagget said, and this time his voice was not quite so harsh. “Farley could have shot you dead on the Wheel House floor and he would have gone scot free, because he had the law on his side. That's what he would have done, too, from what I hear, if it hadn't been for Turk Valois.”

Now he fixed his anger on Grant. It was more than just a look—it was something else as well, a look of suspicion. “And you,” Dagget said thoughtfully, almost as if his mind were somewhere else. “I thought I told you to see that this kind of thing didn't happen.”

“I didn't have much to say about it.”

But a subtle shift of attention had taken place in the marshal's eyes. Then, abruptly, “You planning to stay on at the Muller lease?”

Grant nodded. There was nothing else to do.

Dagget's mouth turned up slightly in that smiling expression that was not a smile at all, and suddenly he reined his horse around. As suddenly as he had come, he was gone. Grant's mouth was dry, and beneath his windbreaker he was sweating. What was going on in that mind of Dagget's? What was he thinking, what did he suspect, and how much did he know? He couldn't know so very much, Grant reasoned, or he would have taken him back to Joplin.

Just the same, something was going on behind the marshal's shaded eyes; Grant could see the wheels begin to turn every time Dagget looked in his direction, and he didn't like it. He had the feeling that Dagget was amusing himself, toying with him like a cat toying with a crippled sparrow. If he ran, it would only focus the marshal's suspicions. If he stayed, Dagget would finally work out the answer in that methodical brain of his.

Grant smiled wryly, without humor. Damned if I do, he thought, and damned if I don't. Then he realized that Bud Muller was looking at him.

“Grant...” The word hung for a moment as the boy wrestled with his thoughts. “Now that my father is... gone, it's up to me to run the lease. Me and Rhea. We're going to need your help.” He looked away, staring down at his big hands. “I guess I lost my head back at the Wheel House, and what Dagget said was right. He's a good man. Sooner or later he'll get Farley, but it will have to be done his way. That might not be quick enough to save the lease.”

“Dagget strikes me as a man who doesn't overlook much. He won't forget the lease.”

“But Farley won't be easy to break, not even for a man like Dagget. He wants the lease bad and he'll stop at nothing to get it. But if Valois gets us the rig builders we'll have a chance. It'll be dangerous...” He paused and looked up. “I'm trying to say I want you to go on working for us.”

“I haven't been much help so far.”

“You were a help to Rhea back at Vinita.” He smiled bitterly. “I guess we didn't do much against Farley and his two roustabouts, but I learned one thing, Grant—you were on my side. I guess that's what we need most, somebody like you that we can trust.”

It would have been amusing if the joke hadn't had such a bitter twist. Grant became aware of the money belt under his shirt—twenty-five hundred dollars that legally belonged to a bank in Joplin. He wondered how long Bud would want him if he knew the whole story.

But that was in the past. He said, “Do you think you can depend on Valois to deliver the workers?”

Bud Muller nodded. “He's declared himself now; he'll have to fight Farley or be run out of Kiefer.”

“How much does your sister have to do with Valois' decision to throw in with us?”

The question didn't surprise the boy, but he sat for a long while, his face blank, before he answered. “I'm not so young,” he said finally, “that I don't know that my sister's attractive to men. I've seen you look at her... and others. I guess Turk had it pretty hard in Bartlesville.”

“Did he get over it?”

Bud smiled thinly and shook his head. “I guess you'll have to ask Turk about that.”

A thousand questions crowded into Grant's mind, but he could see that Bud had said all he was going to say about his sister. The boy asked, “Will you stay on the job, Grant?”

With Dagget looking over his shoulder, what choice did he have? He said dryly, “We'll try it awhile and see how it works out.”

The next morning Turk Valois came with the workers and grinned when he saw the look on Grant's face. “They don't look like much, do they? Well, I warned you they'd be the scrapings from the barrel, and that's just what they are. I expect most of them are dodging the law in Missouri or Kansas. The rest of them are drunkards or thieves that nobody else would hire—not even in Kiefer—so that gives you an idea what you've got.”

Valois had brought the workers from Sabo in a livery wagon, and a hard knot of caution formed in Grant's stomach as he looked at them. There were eight of them—bleary-eyed, whisky-soused, filthy, and mean. There was not a man among them who looked as if he had ever done a day's work.

Calloway and Morphy had stopped work on the cellar to stare at the disheveled crew. Bud Muller came toward them from the bunk tent, looking at the runner.

“Is that the best you could do?”

“They're the only men in the Creek Nation who don't know this lease is on Farley's black list, and that's only because they were too drunk to hear when I got them.”

“Do they know anything about carpentering or derrick building?”

“I didn't ask them,” Valois said dryly.

Bud frowned and looked at Grant. “What do you think?”

“They can't be as useless as they look; they'll have to do. Thanks for doing what you could, Valois. How much do we owe you?”

The runner grinned. “It's my pleasure. I've been waiting a long time to take a swing at Farley.” Then he stared at something over Grant's shoulder, and when Grant turned he saw Rhea Muller coming out of the dugout. She wore baggy corduroy trousers, laced boots, and a canvas windbreaker, but not even the men's work clothes could disguise the fact that she was an attractive woman.

Valois nodded quickly to Grant and the boy. “I'd better head back to Sabo. If I can give you a hand, let me know.” He turned on his heel and strode quickly to the wagon as though he were in a hurry to escape before Rhea came up from the dugout.

Rhea chose not to notice Valois' flight but called to her brother, “Send them over to the bunk tent. I'll feed them before they go to work.”

If they go to work, Grant thought. Rhea was not dismayed but seemed pleased that they had workers of any kind, and Grant was amazed at the great stacks of flapjacks that she brought out of the dugout. “You'll have to eat in the open,” she said, “until we get the bunkhouse built. Bud, bring the tin plates and syrup from the dugout; side meat and eggs will be ready in a minute.”

There was a note of authority in her voice but she did not speak to the workers as if they were the “scrapings of the barrel.” The men did not seem to notice or care how she treated them. They used the dugout as a windbreak, hunkering down against the log walls to wolf whatever was put on their plates.

Grant regarded the scene with interest. In some mysterious way Rhea had locked her grief away in some secret compartment of her mind and, watching her now, it was difficult to believe that the day before she had seen her father buried, businesslike, manlike, she went about her job of seeing that the men were fed. When that job was done, she said, “Now there's work to be done. Follow me.”

Surprisingly, the motley crew got to their feet and followed her to where Morphy and Calloway were working. “This is the cellar,” she said briefly. “Here the derrick foundations will be laid and the derrick will be built. Over there is where the belt house goes, and beyond that the engine house. A slush pit will have to be dug over there and a pipe laid from the derrick to the creek. Are any of you carpenters?”

Halfheartedly, four men raised their hands.

“Have any of you had experience at building derricks?”

Two of the four raised their hands again. It was better than Grant had expected.

Rhea nodded to her two drillers. “Pat, the rest is up to you and Lon. What they don't know about derricks, teach them. Bud, you take the ones who say they're not carpenters and get a bunkhouse started. They can learn to saw and hammer well enough for that.”

The air was charged with her energy, and there was no doubt in Grant's mind as to which of Zack Muller's two offspring had inherited control of the lease. She should have looked ridiculous in those men's clothes, but she didn't. She looked cool, businesslike, ruthless. She looked like a woman who knew exactly what she wanted and meant to have it.

She turned on her heel, sure that her orders would be carried out just as she had given them. “Mr. Grant, I want to talk to you in the dugout.”

Her voice was commanding, and she turned her back to Grant and strode toward the shack. Grant felt a prickle of irritation that she had spoken to him with that same note of authority that she had used with Valois' derelicts.

After a moment of hesitation he followed her into the warm, whitewashed interior of the dugout. There was a dress hanging on a wall rack beneath the small window and Rhea Muller stood stroking it gently, almost as if she were caressing it, when Grant came in. It was a white dress with layers on layers of sheer organdy; it was some kind of ball dress or party dress, beautiful and feminine and expensive, and completely out of place in this mud hut.

Apparently she had forgotten that she had asked him there until he quietly announced himself by clearing his throat. She turned from the dress quickly, as though it had stung her, and vivid color mounted her cheeks for just a moment.

“It's a pretty dress,” Grant offered.

“I didn't ask you here to talk of dresses, Mr. Grant.” It was “Mr. Grant” now, not “Joe.” Quickly, she took the dress from the rack and hung it behind a gingham-screened wardrobe against the far wall.

“Are you working for the Muller lease?” she asked briskly.

He frowned. “That's up to you, I guess.”

“When you didn't come back to the lease the night my... father was killed, I thought you had run away.” She choked for an instant, then quickly looked away. “You were going to run away, weren't you?”

“I can't say the notion didn't enter my mind. But there's no place to run, I guess. If you still want a hand that knows nothing about the oil business, I guess I'm ready to work.”