the hands of Steelman.
The cattleman would even lose the ranches which had been the substantial
basis of his earlier prosperity.

Everybody working on the Jackpot felt the excitement as the drill began
to sink into the oil-bearing sands. Most of the men owned stock in the
company. Moreover, they were getting a bonus for their services and had
been promised an extra one if Number Three struck oil in paying
quantities before Steelman's crew did. Even to an outsider there is a
fascination in an oil well. It is as absorbing to the drillers as a
girl's mind is to her hopeful lover. Dave found it impossible to escape
the contagion of this. Moreover, he had ten thousand shares in the
Jackpot, stock turned over to him out of the treasury supply by the board
of directors in recognition of services which they did not care to
specify in the resolution which authorized the transfer. At first he had
refused to accept this, but Bob Hart had put the matter to him in such a
light that he changed his mind.

"The oil business pays big for expert advice, no matter whether it's
legal or technical. What you did was worth fifty times what the board
voted you. If we make a big strike you've saved the company. If we don't
the stock's not worth a plugged nickel anyhow. You've earned what we
voted you. Hang on to it, Dave."

Dave had thanked the board and put the stock in his pocket. Now he felt
himself drawn into the drama represented by the thumping engine which
continued day and night.

After his shift was over, he rode to town with Bob behind his team of
wild broncos.

"Got to look for an engineer for the night tower," Hart explained as he
drew up in front of the Gusher Saloon. "Come in with me. It's some
gambling-hell, if you ask me."

The place hummed with the turbulent life that drifts to every wild
frontier on the boom. Faro dealers from the Klondike, poker dealers from
Nome, roulette croupiers from Leadville, were all here to reap the rich
harvest to be made from investors, field workers, and operators. Smooth
grafters with stock in worthless companies for sale circulated in and out
with blue-prints and whispered inside information. The men who were
ranged in front of the bar, behind which half a dozen attendants in white
aprons busily waited on their wants, usually talked oil and nothing but
oil. To-day they had another theme. The same subject engrossed the groups
scattered here and there throughout the large hall.

In the rea