Chapter VII

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STRANGE FISH

Doc and Monk and Ham went into the scrub oak woods. They walked slowly. There was some doubt as to just what they had better do next. Doc was worried about the bloodhounds. The Sheriff had said he was going to put dogs on their trail, and they would have to do something to defeat the animals, if they were going to stay out of jail. Doc had noticed from the air that there was an oil field back in the hills. He was tempted to head in that direction, and trust that the smell of the oil would confuse the dogs.

Then he heard someone coming quietly from the direction of the ranch.

“Get set,” Doc warned. “One of the cowboys is following us.”

IT turned out to be the cowboy who had been working on the tractor.

He stopped in front of them, looked at them, then got papers and tobacco and made a cigarette, continuing to examine them at intervals.

“You got here pretty quick,” he said.

“As quickly as we could,” Doc agreed.

“Pretty fast traveling, to have come all the way from Denver.”

“We came from New York,” Doc said.

“That's the right answer,” the cowboy said. “Now what did the telegram that brought you here say?”

“It was a telephone call.”

“That's the right answer too.” The cowboy lighted his cigarette, broke the match, and dropped it. “I take it you're Doc Savage.”

“That's right.”

“My name's Frosty,” the cowboy said. “We weren't sure about you when you walked up that way. We weren't sure, and also we didn't know who might be looking. After you walked off like that, we figured you must be Savage.” He nodded at Monk and Ham. “We couldn't figure these two, though.”

“This is Monk Mayfair and Ham Brooks, two of my assistants,” Doc told him.

“That's good, too,” Frosty said. “Well, you'll be wanting to see Miss Stevens and Johnny Toms, won't you?”

“Didn't they go to New York?”

“Heck, no. We just said that.” Frosty jerked a thumb. “Miss Stevens and Johnny took to the brush. They're holed up in a shack on an oil lease.”

“Why?”

“To keep away from Bill Clausen. Bill is the Sheriff. He's got Johnny staked out for a little killing that happened last night. Johnny doesn't want to be in jail, so he's hiding out. And Miss Stevens is scared, so she's Chapter VII

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STRANGE FISH

hiding with him.”

“Can you take us to them?”

“No. I'll show you how to get there, though.”

He accompanied them about a quarter of a mile, then stopped and pointed at a hilltop about two miles away.

“See that oil derrick,” he said. “The wooden one. All the rest of the derricks are steel rigs. That's the only wooden one. You go there, and sit on a pile of pipe you'll find there.”

“Is that all?”

“That's all.”

Chapter VIII

THEY walked for quite a while after they left the cowboy. They reached it suddenly. They heard the oil field sounds for some time first, the chugging of pump engines and the monotonous squeak of draw−lines in guides. Then suddenly there were oil wells all around them.

The wells were in a shallow sand, evidently, because one engine was pumping four to eight wells through the medium of a turntable and long rod−lines which ran out in all directions to the wells, like the spokes of a wheel.

There was the smell of oil. The vegetation became scrawny, oil−poisoned. The earth in many places was bare and oil−soaked. In other places the grass grew tall and rank and unwholesome. They stumbled over discarded timbers lying in the grass, and into ditches.

The steel derrick was on top of a hill. It was evidently a deep test which had been drilled within the last year.

A rotary rig. Old pump mud was caked and gray around the rig floor. The sump ponds were full of water on which glistened the iridescent rainbow hues of oil film.

Oil must have been hit, and flowing naturally, because there was no pump. Just a Christmas tree, the assembly of pipes and connections at the derrick floor, by which the oil was conducted from the well. A pipe led off toward a cluster of lease tanks not far away.

Nearby was a pile of ten−inch casing. About a dozen joints, battered and obviously ruined in the process of drilling, and not yet hauled away for scrap.

They sat down on the pipe and waited. They were in plain sight. They felt conspicuous. But they were not there long.

Another cowboy sauntered up. This one was apparently a full−blooded Indian, but he was dressed like a farmer. He didn't wear cowboy boots.

He seemed uncertain as to just what he should do.

“You see anything of a friend of mine?” he asked finally.

“Frosty, you mean?” Doc said.