Эптон Синклер - Oil!

The matter was made easier for Bunny by the fact that he very soon fell severely in love. There were such swarms of charming young feminine things in the school, it was simply not possible to escape them, especially when your possessions and social standing were such that so many of them set out after you! Some young misses were too bold in their advances, or too obviously coy, and repelled the shy lad; the one who secured him was very demure and still, so that his imagination could endow her with romantic qualities. Rosie Taintor was her name, and she had hair that made a tail halfway down her back, and was fluffy on her forehead, with golden glints; she was even more shy than Bunny, and had little conversation, but that was not necessary, for she had a great power of admiration, and had a phrase by which she expressed it: things were “wonderful”; they grew more and more “wonderful,” with soulful, mysterious whispers; the oil business was especially “wonderful,” and Rosie never tired of being told about it, which pleased Bunny, who had much to tell. Rosie’s father, and also her mother, were dentists, and this is not an especially romantic occupation, so naturally the child thought it thrilling to dash about the country as Bunny did, and direct armies of labor, and command vast treasures to flow out of the earth.

Bunny would take her for rides; and when they were out in the country, where it was safe, Bunny would drive with one hand, and the other hand would rest on Rosie’s, and truly “wonderful” were the thrills that would steal over both of them. They were content to ride that way for hours; or to get out and wander in the hills, and gather wild flowers, and sit and watch the sunset. Bunny was full of reverence, and when one or twice, he dared so far as to place a kiss upon his adored one’s cheek, it was with almost religious awe. When the weather was not suitable for outdoor courtship, he would visit her home, where the mother and father had a hobby, the collecting of old English prints; these were framed on all the walls, and there were stacks of them you could look at, quaint eighteenth-century scenes of hunting gentlemen in red coats with packs of hounds, and red-cheeked barmaids serving pots of ale to topers with big pipes. Bunny would look at these for hours—for it took only one hand to turn them over. What is there that is not “wonderful,” when you are so young, and at the same time so good? It made Bunny walk on air, just to buy a new straw-hat, and meet his chosen one upon the street, and anticipate her comments!

When Dad took his business trips now he took them alone; that is, unless he could arrange them for week-ends and holidays. He didn’t like going alone; and Bunny for his part, always had a part of his mind on Dad, and when Dad got back, he would hear all the details of how things were going.

There were six wells now at Lobos River, and they were all “paying big.” Dad had four more drilling, and had deepened eleven of his old Antelope wells, and had a pipe line there, through which a river of wealth was flowing to him. On the Bankside lease he had six wells, all on production, and he had paid Mr. Bankside something over a million dollars of royalty, and had only got started, so he said. He had a good well on the next lease, the Ross-Wagstaff, and three more drilling, and out about half a mile to the north he was opening up new territory with the Ross-Armitage No. 1.

It was amazing to see what had happened to the Prospect Hill field. All over the top of the hill and the slopes a forest of oil derricks had arisen, and had started marching across the fields of cabbages and sugar beets. Seeing them from the distance, in the haze of sunset, you could fancy an army of snails moving forth—the kind which have crests lifted high in the air. When you came near, you heard a roaring and a grumbling, as of Pluto’s realm; at night there was a scene of enchantment, a blur of white and golden lights, with jets of steam, and a glare of leaping flame where they were burning gas that came roaring out of the earth, and which they had no way to use.

Yes, when you drove past, sitting in a comfortable car, you might mistake it for fairyland. You had to remind yourself that an army of men were working here, working hard in twelve hour shifts, and in peril of life and limb. Also you had to remember the pulling and hauling, the intrigue and treachery, the ruin and blasted hopes; you had to hear Dad’s stories of what was happening to the little fellows, the thousands of investors who had come rushing to the field like moths to a candle-flame. Then your fairyland was turned into a slaughter-house, where the many were ground up into sausages for the breakfast of the few!

Dad had a big office now, with a manager and half a dozen clerks, and he sat there, like the captain of a battle-ship in his conning tower. Whatever might happen to the others, Dad took care of himself and his own. He had come to be known as the biggest independent operator in the field, and all sorts of people came to him with propositions; new, wonderful, glowing schemes—with Dad’s reputation for solidity, he could organize a ten or twenty million dollar company, and the investing public would flock to him. But Dad turned all such things down; he would wait, he told Bunny, until Bunny was grown up, and through with this here education business. They would have a pile of cash by that time and would do something sure enough big. And Bunny said all right, that suited him. He hoped the “something big” might be at Paradise, for then he would have a real share in it. Dad said, sure, the Watkins ranch was his discovery, and when they come to drill there, the well would be known as the Ross Junior.

They had made no move there; they were waiting, because of an unfortunate slip-up in the negotiations for the land. An unkind fate had willed that Mr. Bandy, owner of the big Bandy tract, had been away from home on the day that Mr. Hardacre had collected his options; and when Mr. Bandy got back, and learned about all the sudden purchases, he became suspicious, and decided that he would hold onto his land. At least, it amounted to that, for he raised his price from five dollars an acre to fifty! What made this especially bad, the Bandy tract lay right next to the Watkins section; it was over a thousand acres, and ran near to where Dad and Bunny had found the oil—in fact, Dad thought the streak of oil was on Mr. Bandy’s land, he couldn’t be sure without a survey. They would wait, Dad said, and let Mr. Bandy stay in pickle for a few years. It was like a cat watching a gopher hole, and which would get tired first. Bunny asked which was Mr. Bandy, the cat or the gopher; and Dad replied that if anybody ever mistook Jim Ross for a gopher, he would jist try to show them their mistake.

So they were waiting. Some day that mythical relative of Dad’s, who was an invalid, was coming into those rocky hills and tend a few thousand goats; and meantime most of the ranches were rented to the people who had formerly owned them. Three or four were vacant, but Dad didn’t worry about that; he would leave them to the quail, he said, and told Mr. Hardacre to put up a thousand “No Trespassing” signs over the whole twelve thousand acres he had bought, so as to impress Mr. Bandy with Dad’s gluttonous attitude toward small game.

The greater part of the civilized world had gone to war. The newspapers which Dad and Bunny read turned themselves into posters, with streamer-heads all the way across the page, telling every day of battles and campaigns in which thousands, and perhaps tens of thousands of men had lost their lives. To people in California, so peaceful and prosperous, this was a tale of “old, unhappy far-off things,” impossible to make real to yourself. America had officially declared neutrality; which meant that in the “current events” class, where Bunny learned what was going on in the world, the teacher was expected to deal with the war objectively, and to rebuke any child who expressed a partisanship offensive to any other child. To business men like Dad it meant that they would make money out of both sides; they would sell to the Allies direct, and they would sell to the Central powers by way of agents in Holland and Scandinavia, and they would raise a howl when the British tried to stop this by the blockade.