. For
once the Gusher and the Oil Pool and other resorts held small attraction
for the crowds. The town was moving out to see the big new discovery that
was to revolutionize its fortunes with the opening of a new and
tremendously rich field. Every ancient rig available was pressed into
service to haul men or supplies out to the Jackpot location. Scarcely a
minute passed, after the time that the first team took the road, without
a loaded wagon, packed to the sideboards, moving along the dusty road
into the darkness of the desert.

Three travelers on horseback rode in the opposite direction. Their
destination was Cottonwood Bend. Two of them were Emerson Crawford and
David Sanders. The third was an oil prospector who had been a passenger
on the stage when it was robbed.

CHAPTER XXIII

THE GUSHER

Jackpot number three had come in with a roar that shook the earth for
half a mile. Deep below the surface there was a hiss and a crackle, the
shock of rending strata giving way to the pressure of the oil pool. From
long experience as a driller, Jed Burns knew what was coming. He swept
his crew back from the platform, and none too soon to escape disaster.
They were still flying across the prairie when the crown box catapulted
into the sky and the whole drilling superstructure toppled over. Rocks,
clay, and sand were hurled into the air, to come down in a shower that
bombarded everything within a radius of several hundred yards.

The landscape next moment was drenched in black petroleum. The fine
particles of it filled the air, sprayed the cactus and the greasewood.
Rivulets of the viscid stuff began to gather in depressions and to flow
in gathering volume, as tributaries joined the stream, into the sump
holes prepared for it. The pungent odor of crude oil, as well as the
touch and the taste of it, penetrated the atmosphere.

Burns counted noses and discovered that none of his crew had been injured
by falling rocks or beams. He knew that his men could not possibly cope
with this geyser on a spree. It was a big strike, the biggest in the
history of the district, and to control the flow of the gusher would
necessitate tremendous efforts on a wholesale plan.

One of his men he sent in to Malapi on horseback with a hurry-up call to
Emerson Crawford, president of the company, for tools, machinery, men,
and teams. The others he put to salvaging the engine and accessories
and to throwing up an earth dike around the sump h