Betty Gordon in the Land of Oil: or, The Farm That Was Worth a Fortune

CHAPTER I
BREAKFAST EN ROUTE

“There, Bob, did you see that? Oh, we’ve passed it, and you were looking the other way. It was a cowboy. At least he looked just like the pictures. And he was waving at the train.”

Betty Gordon, breakfasting in the dining-car of the Western Limited, smiled happily at Bob Henderson, seated on the opposite side of the table. This was her first long train trip, and she meant to enjoy every angle of it.

“I wonder what kind of cowboy you’d make, Bob?” Betty speculated, studying the frank, boyish face of her companion. “You’d have to be taller, I think.”

“But not much thinner,” observed Bob cheerfully. “Skinny cowboys are always in demand, Betty. They do more work. Well, what do you know about that!” He broke off his speech abruptly and stared at the table directly behind Betty.

Betty paid little attention to his silence. She was busy with her own thoughts, and now, pouring golden cream into her coffee, voiced one of them.

“I’m glad we’re going to Oklahoma,” she announced. “I think it is heaps more fun to stop before you get to the other side of the continent. I want to see what is in the middle. The Arnolds, you know, went direct to California, and now they’ll probably never know what kind of country takes up the space between Pineville and Los Angeles. Of course they saw some of it from the train, but that isn’t like getting off and staying. Is it, Bob?”

“I suppose not,” agreed Bob absently. “Betty Gordon,” he added with a change of tone, “is that coffee you’re drinking?”

Betty nodded guiltily.

“When I’m traveling,” she explained in her defense, “I don’t see why I can’t drink coffee for breakfast. And when I’m visiting – that’s the only two times I take it, Bob.”

Bob had been minded to read her a lecture on the evils of coffee drinking for young people, but his gaze wandered again to the table behind Betty, and his scientific protest remained unspoken.

“For goodness sake, Bob,” complained Betty, “what can you be staring at?”

“Don’t turn around,” cautioned Bob in a low tone. “When we go back to our car I’ll tell you all about it.”

Bob gave his attention more to his breakfast after this, and seemed anxious to keep Betty from asking any more questions. He noticed a package of flat envelopes lying under her purse and asked if she had letters she wished mailed.

“Those aren’t letters,” answered Betty, taking them out and spreading them on the cloth for him to see. “They’re flower seeds, Bob. Hardy flowers.”

“You haven’t planned your garden yet, have you?” cried the astonished boy. “When you haven’t the first idea of the kind of place you’re going to live in? Your uncle wrote, you know, that living in Flame City was so simplified people didn’t take time to look around for rooms or a house – they took whatever they could get, sure that that was all there was. How do you know you’ll have a place to plant a garden?”

Betty buttered another roll.

“I’m not planning for a garden,” she said mildly. “You’re going to help me plant these seeds, and we’re going to do it right after breakfast – just as soon as we can get out on the observation platform.”

Bob stared in bewilderment.

“I read a story once,” said Betty with seeming irrelevance. “It was about some woman who traveled through a barren country, mile after mile. She was on an accommodation train, too, or perhaps it was before they had good railroad service. And every so often her fellow-passengers saw that she threw something out of the window. They couldn’t see what it was, and she never told them. But the next year, when some of these same passengers made that trip again, the train rolled through acres and acres of the most gorgeous red poppies. The woman had been scattering the seed. She said, whether she ever rode over that ground again or not, she was sure some of the seeds would sprout and make the waste places beautiful for travelers.”

“I should think it would take a lot of seed,” said the practical Bob, his eyes following two men who were leaving the dining-car. “Did you get poppies, too?”

“Yellow and red ones,” declared Betty. “The dealer said they were very hardy, and, anyway, I do want to try, Bob. We’ve been through such miles of prairie, and it’s so deadly monotonous. Even if none of my seed grows near the railroad, the wind may carry some off to some lonely farm home and then they’ll give the farmer’s wife a gay surprise. Let’s fling the seed from the observation car, shall we?”

“All right; though I must say I don’t think a bit of it will grow,” said Bob. “But first, come back into our coach with me; I want to tell you about those two men who sat back of you.”

“Is that what you were staring about?” demanded Betty, as they found their seats and Bob picked up his camera preparatory to putting in a new roll of film. “I wondered why you persisted in looking over my shoulder so often.”

Bob Henderson’s boyish face sobered and unconsciously his chin hardened a little, a sure sign that he was a bit worried.

“I don’t know whether you noticed them or not,” he began. “They went out of the diner a few minutes ahead of us. One is tall with gray hair and wears glasses, and the other is thin, too, but short and has very dark eyes. No glasses. They’re both dressed in gray – hats, suits, socks, ties – everything.”

“No, I didn’t notice them,” said Betty dryly. “But you seem to have done so.”

“I couldn’t help hearing what they said,” explained Bob. “I was up early this morning, trying to read, and they were talking in their berths. And when I was getting my shoes shined before breakfast, they were awaiting their turn, and they kept it right up. I suppose because I’m only a boy they think it isn’t worth while to be careful.”

“But what have they done?” urged Betty impatiently.

“I don’t know what they’ve done,” admitted Bob. “I’ll tell you what I think, though. I think they’re a pair of sharpers, and out to take any money they can find that doesn’t have to be earned.”

“Why, Bob Henderson, how you do talk!” Betty reproached him reprovingly. “Do you mean to say they would rob anybody?”

“Well, probably not through a picked lock, or a window in the dead of night,” answered Bob. “But taking money that isn’t rightfully yours can not be called by a very pleasant name, you know. Mind you, I don’t say these men are dishonest, but judging from what I overheard they lack only the opportunity.

“They’re going to Oklahoma, too, and that’s what interested me when I first heard them,” he went on. “The name attracted my attention, and then the older one went on to talk about their chances of getting the best of some one in the oil fields.

“‘The way to work it,’ he said, ‘is to get hold of a woman farm-owner; some one who hasn’t any men folks to advise her or meddle with her property. Ten to one she won’t have heard of the oil boom, or if she has, it’s easy enough to pose as a government expert and tell her her land is worthless for oil. We’ll offer her a good price for it for straight farming, and we’ll have the old lady grateful to us the rest of her life.’

“If that doesn’t sound like the scheming of a couple of rascals, I miss my guess,” concluded Bob. “You see the trick, don’t you, Betty? They’ll take care to find a farm that’s right in the oil section, and then they’ll bully and persuade some timid old woman into selling her farm to them for a fraction of its worth.”

“Can’t you expose ’em?” said Betty vigorously. “Tell the oil men about them! I guess there must be people who would know how to keep such men from doing business. What are you going to do about it, Bob?”

The boy looked at her in admiration.

“You believe in action, don’t you?” he returned. “You see, we can’t really do anything yet, because, so far as we know, the men have merely talked their scheme over. If people were arrested for merely plotting, the world might be saved a lot of trouble, but free speech would be a thing of the past. As long as they only talk, Betty, we can’t do a thing.”

“Here those men come now, down the aisle,” whispered Betty excitedly. “Don’t look up – pretend to be fixing the camera.”

Bob obediently fumbled with the box, while Betty gazed detachedly across the aisle. The two men glanced casually at them as they passed, opened the door of the car, and went on into the next coach.

“They’re going to the smoker,” guessed Bob, correctly as it proved. “I’m going to follow them, Betty, and see if I can hear any more. Perhaps there will be something definite to report to the proper authorities. From what Mr. Littell told us, the oil field promoters would like all the crooks rounded up. They’re the ones that hurt the name of reputable oil stocks. You don’t care if I go, do you?”

“I did want you to help me scatter seeds,” confessed Betty candidly. “However, go ahead, and I’ll do it myself. Lend me the camera, and I’ll take my sweater and stay out a while. If I’m not here when you come back, look for me out on the observation platform.”

Bob hurried after the two possible sharpers, and Betty went through the train till she came to the last platform, railed in and offering the comforts of a porch to those passengers who did not mind the breeze. This morning it was deserted, and Betty was glad, for she wanted a little time to herself.

CHAPTER II
THINKING BACKWARD

Betty leaned over the rail, flinging the contents of the seed packets into the air and breathing a little prayer that the wind might carry them far and that none might “fall on stony ground.”

“If I never see the flowers, some one else may,” she thought. “I remember that old lady who lived in Pineville, poor blind Mrs. Tompkins. She was always telling about the pear orchard she and her husband planted the first year of their married life out in Ohio. Then they moved East, and she never saw the trees. ‘But somebody has been eating the pears these twenty years,’ she used to say. I hope my flowers grow for some one to see.”

When she had tossed all the seeds away, Betty snuggled into one of the comfortable reed chairs and gave herself up to her own thoughts. Since leaving Washington, the novelty and excitement of the trip had thoroughly occupied her mind, and there had been little time for retrospection.

This bright morning, as the prairie land slipped past the train, Betty Gordon’s mind swiftly reviewed the incidents of the last few months and marveled at the changes brought about in a comparatively short time. She was an orphan, this dark-eyed girl of thirteen, and, having lost her mother two years after her father’s death, had turned to her only remaining relative, an uncle, Richard Gordon. How he came to her in the little town of Pineville, her mother’s girlhood home, and arranged to send her to spend the summer on a farm with an old school friend of his has been told in the first volume of this series, entitled “Betty Gordon at Bramble Farm; or, The Mystery of a Nobody.” At Bramble Farm Betty had met Bob Henderson, a lad a year or so older than herself and a ward from the county poorhouse. The girl and boy had become fast friends, and when Bob learned enough of his mother’s family to make him want to know all and in pursuit of that knowledge had fled to Washington, it seemed providential that Betty’s uncle should also be in the capital so that she, too, might journey there.

That had been her first “real traveling,” mused Betty, recalling her eagerness to discover new worlds. Bob had been the first to leave the farm, and Betty had made the trip to Washington alone. This morning she vividly remembered every detail of the day-long journey and especially of the warm reception that awaited her at the Union Station. This has been described in the second book of this series, entitled If Betty should live to be an old lady she would probably never cease to recall the peculiar circumstances under which she made friends with the three Littell girls and their cousin from Vermont and came to spend several delightful weeks at the hospitable mansion of Fairfields. The Littell family had grown to be very fond of Betty and of Bob, whose fortunes seemed to be inextricably mixed up with hers, and when the time came for them to leave for Oklahoma, fairly showered them with gifts.

No sooner did word reach Betty that her uncle awaited her in the oil regions than Bob announced that he was going West, too. He had succeeded in getting trace of two sisters of his mother, and presumably they lived somewhere in the section where Betty’s uncle was stationed.

“I’ll never forget how lovely the Littells were to us,” thought Betty, a mist in her eyes blurring the sage brush. “Wasn’t Bob surprised when Mr. Littell gave him that camera? And Mrs. Littell must have known he didn’t have a nice bag, because she gave him that beauty all fitted with ebony toilet articles. And the girls clubbed together and gave each of us a signet ring – that was dear of them. I thought they had done everything for me friends could, keeping me there so long and entertaining me as though they had invited me as a special guest; so when Mr. and Mrs. Littell gave me that string of gold beads I was just about speechless. There never were such people! Heigho! Four months ago I was living in a little village, discontented because Uncle Dick wouldn’t take me with him. And now I’ve made lots of new friends, seen Washington, and am speeding toward the wild and woolly West. I guess it never pays to complain.”

With this philosophical conclusion, Betty pulled a letter from her pocket and fell to reading it. Bobby Littell had written a letter for each day of the journey and Betty had derived genuine pleasure from these gay notes so like the cheerful, sunny Roberta herself. This morning’s letter was taken up with school plans for the fall, and the writer expressed a wish that Betty might go with them to boarding school.

“Libbie thinks perhaps her mother will send her, and just think what fun we could have,” wrote Bobby, referring to the Vermont cousin.

Betty dismissed the school question lightly from her mind. She would certainly enjoy going to school with the Littell girls, and boarding school was one of her day-dreams, as it is of most girls her age. After she had seen her uncle and spent some time with him – he was very dear to her, was this Uncle Dick – she thought she might be ready to go back East and take up unceremoniously. But there was the subject of the probable cost – something that never bothered the Littell girls. Betty knew nothing of her uncle’s finances, beyond the fact that he had been very generous with her, sending her checks frequently and never stinting her by word or suggestion. Still, boarding school, especially a school selected by the Littells, would undoubtedly be expensive. Betty wisely decided to let the matter drop for the time being.

Sage brush and prairie was now left behind, and the train was rattling through a heavy forest. Betty was glad that the rather nippy breeze had apparently kept every one else indoors, or else the monotony of a long train journey. The platform continued to be deserted, and, wondering what delayed Bob, she took up the camera to try again for a picture of the receding track. She and Bob had used up perhaps half a dozen films on this one subject, and the gleaming point where the rails came together in the distance had an inexhaustible fascination for the girl.

“How it does blow!” she gasped. “I remember now when we stopped at that water-station Bob spoke of – I didn’t notice it at the time, I was so busy thinking, but the breeze didn’t die down with the motion of the train. I shouldn’t wonder if there was a strong wind to-day.”

As a matter of fact, there was a gale, but Betty, accustomed to the wind from the back platform of a train in motion, thought that it could be nothing unusual. To be sure, the branches of the tall trees were crashing about and the sky over the cleared space on each side of the tracks was gray and ominous (the sun had disappeared as Betty mused) but the girl, comfortable in sweater and small, close hat, paid slight attention to these signs.

“I can’t see what is keeping Bob,” she repeated, putting the camera down. “Maybe I’d better go back into the car. How those trees do swish about! I don’t believe if I shouted, I’d be heard above the noise of the wind and the train.”

This was an alluring thought, and Betty acted upon it, cautiously at first, and then, gaining confidence, more freely. It is exhilarating to contend with the rush of the wind, to pitch one’s voice against a torrent of sound, and Betty stood at the rail singing as loudly as she could, her tones lost completely in a grander chorus. Her cheeks crimsoned, and she fairly shouted, feeling to her finger tips the joy and excitement of the powerful forces with which she competed – those of old nature and man’s invention, the thing of smoke and fire and speed we call a train.

Suddenly the brakes went down, there was an uneasy screeching as they gripped the wheels, and the long train jarred to a standstill.

“How funny!” puzzled Betty. “There’s no station. We’re right out in the woods. Oh, I can hear the wind now – how it does howl!”

She picked up her belongings and made her way back to the car. As she passed through the coaches every one was asking the cause of the stop, and an immigrant woman caught hold of Betty as she went through a day coach.

“Is it wrong?” she asked nervously, and in halting English. “Must we get off here?”

“I don’t know what the matter is,” answered Betty, thankful that she was asked nothing more difficult. “But whatever happens, don’t get off; this isn’t a station, it is right in the woods. If you get off and lose some of your children, you’ll never get them together again and the train will go off and leave you. Don’t get off until the conductor tells you to.”

The woman sank back in her seat and called her children around her, evidently resolved to follow this advice to the last letter.

“She looks as if an earthquake wouldn’t blow her from her seat,” thought Betty, proceeding to her own car. “Well, at that, it’s safer for her than trying to find out what the matter is and not being able to find her way aboard again. I remember the conductor told Bob and me these poor immigrants have such trouble traveling. It must be awful to make your way in a strange country where you can not understand what people say to you.”

No Bob was to be seen when Betty reached her seat, but excited passengers were apparently trying to fall head-first from the car windows.

“I think we’ve run over some one,” announced a fussy little man with a monocle and a flower in his buttonhole.

With a warning toot of the whistle, the train began to move slowly forward. It went a few feet, apparently hit something solid, and stopped with a violent jar.

“Oh, my goodness!” wailed a woman who was clearly the wife of the fussy little man. “Won’t some one please go and find out what the matter is?”

Betty looked toward the car door and saw Bob pushing his way toward her.

CHAPTER III
WHAT BOB HEARD

When Bob entered the smoking-car he saw the two men he had pointed out to Betty seated near the door at the further end of the car. The boy wondered for the first time what he could do that would offer an excuse for his presence in the car, for of course he had never smoked. However, walking slowly down the aisle he saw several men deep in their newspapers and not even pretending to smoke. No one paid the slightest attention to him. Bob took the seat directly behind the two men in gray, and, pulling a Chicago paper from his pocket, bought that morning on the train, buried himself behind it.

The noise made by the train had evidently lulled caution, or else the suspected sharpers did not care if their plans were overheard. Their two heads were very close together, and they were talking earnestly, their harsh voices clearly audible to any one who sat behind them.

“I tell you, Blosser,” the older man was saying as Bob unfolded his paper, “it’s the niftiest little proposition I ever saw mapped out. We can’t fail. Best of all, it’s within the law – I’ve been reading up on the Oklahoma statutes. There’s been a lot of new legislation rushed through since the oil boom struck the State, and we can’t get into trouble. What do you say?”

The man called Blosser flipped his cigar ash into the aisle.

“I don’t like giving a lease,” he objected. “You know as well as I do, Jack, that putting anything down in black and white is bound to be risky. That’s what did for Spellman. He had more brains than the average trader, and what happened? He’s serving seven years in an Ohio prison.”

Bob was apparently intensely interested in an advertisement of a new collar button.

“Spellman was careless,” said the gray-haired man impatiently. “In this case we simply have to give a lease. The man’s been coached, and he won’t turn over his land without something to show for it. I tell you we’ll get a lawyer we can control to draw the papers, and they won’t bind us, whatever they exact of the other fellow. Don’t upset the scheme by one of your obstinate fits.”

“Call me stubborn, if you like,” said Blosser. “For my part, I think you’re crazy to consider any kind of papers. A mule-headed farmer, armed with a lease, can put us both out of business if the thing’s managed right; and trust some smart lawyer to be on hand to give advice at an unlucky moment. Hello!” he broke off suddenly, “isn’t that Dan Carson over there on the other side, smoking a cigarette?”

Bob peeped over his paper and saw the dark-eyed man spring from his seat and hurry across the aisle where a large, fat, jovial-looking individual was puffing contentedly on a cigarette.

“Cal Blosser!” boomed the big man in a voice heard over the car. “Well, well, if this isn’t like old times! Glad to see you, glad to see you. What’s that? Jack Fluss with you? Lead me to the boy, bless his old heart!”

The two came back to the seat ahead of Bob, and there was a great handshaking, much slapping on the back, and a general chorus of, “Well, you’re looking great,” and “How’s the world been treating you?” before the man called Dan Carson tipped over the seat ahead and sat down facing the two gray-clad men.

“I’m glad to see you for more reasons than one,” said Blosser, passing around fresh cigars. “Who’s behind us, Dan?” He lowered his voice. “Only a kid? Oh, all right. Well, Jack here, has been working on an oil scheme for the last two weeks, and this morning he comes out with the bright idea of giving some desert farmer a lease for his property. Can you get over that?”

Three spirals of tobacco smoke curled above the seats, and when Bob lifted his gaze from the paper he could see the round, good-natured face of the fat man beaming through the gray veil.

“What you want to go to that trouble for?” he drawled, after a pause. Clearly he was never hurried into an answer. “Seems to me, Jack, this is a case where the youngster shows good judgment. Where you fixing to operate?”

“Oklahoma,” was the comprehensive answer. “Oil’s the thing to-day. There’s more money being made in the fields over night than we used to think was in the United States mint.”

“Oil’s good,” said the fat man judicially. “But why the lease? Plenty of farms still owned by widows or old maids, and they’ll fairly throw the land at you if you handle ’em right.”

There was an exclamation from the dark-eyed man.

“Just what I was telling Jack this morning,” he chortled. “Buy a farm, for farming purposes only, from some old lady. Pay her a good price, but get your land in the oil section. Old lady happy, we strike oil, sell out to big company, everybody happy. Simple, after all. Good schemes always are.”

Jack Fluss grunted derisively.

“Lovely schemes, yours always are,” he commented sarcastically. “Only thing missing from the scenario, as stated, is the farm. Where are you going to pick up an oil farm for a song? Old maids are sure to have a nephew or something hanging round to keep ’em posted.”

“Now you mention it – ” Carson fumbled in his pocket. “Now you mention it, boys, I believe I’ve got the very place for you. I’ve been prospecting around quite a bit in Oklahoma, and this summer I ran across a farm that for location can’t be beat. Right in the heart of the oil section. Like this – ”

He took an envelope from his pocket and, resting it on his knee, began to draw a rough diagram. The three heads bent close together and the busy tongues were silent save for a muttered question or a word or two of explanation.

Bob began to think that he had heard all he was to hear, and certainly he was no longer in doubt as to the character of the men he had followed. He had decided to go back to Betty when the older of the two gray-suited men, leaning back and taking off his glasses to polish them, addressed a question to Carson.

“Widow own this place?” he asked casually.

“No, couple of old maids,” was the answer. “Last of their line, and all that. The neighbors know it as the Saunders place, but I didn’t rightly get whether that was the name of the old ladies or not.”

The Saunders place!

Bob sat up with a jerk, and then, remembering, sank back and turned a page, though his hands shook with excitement.

“Faith Henderson, born a Saunders – ” The words of the old bookshop man, Lockwood Hale, who had told Bob about his mother’s people, came back to him.

“I do believe it is the very same place,” he said to himself. “There couldn’t be two farms in the oil section owned by different families of the name of Saunders. If it is the right farm, and they’re my aunts, perhaps Betty’s uncle will know where it is.”

He strained his ears, hoping to gather more information, but having heard of this desirable farm, Fluss and Blosser were apparently unwilling to discuss it further. In reality, had Bob only known, they were mulling the situation over in their respective minds, and Carson knew they were. That night, over a game of cards, a finished proposition would doubtless be perfected, and a partnership formed.

“What about you?” Fluss did say.

“Who? Me?” asked Carson inelegantly. “Oh, I’m sorry, but I can’t go in with you. I’m going right on through to the coast. Oklahoma isn’t healthy for me for a couple of months. All I’ll charge you for the information is ten per cent. royalty, payable when your first well flows. My worst enemy couldn’t call me mean.”

“Got something to show you, Carson,” said the man with eye-glasses. “Come on back into the sleeper and I’ll unstrap the suitcase.”

The three rose, tossed away their cigar butts, and went up the aisle. Bob waited till they had gone into the next car, intending then to go back to Betty. His intentions were frustrated by a lanky individual who dropped into the seat beside him.

“Smoke?” he said in friendly fashion, offering Bob a cigarette. “No? Well, that’s right. I didn’t smoke at your age, either. Fact is, I was most twenty-three before I knew how tobacco tasted. Slick-looking posters went up the aisle just now, what?”

Bob admitted that there was something peculiar about them.

“Sharpers, if I ever saw any,” said the lanky one. “We’re overrun with ’em. They come out from the East, and because they can dress and know how to sling language – Say,” he suddenly became serious, “you’d be surprised the way the girls fall for ’em. My girl thinks if a man’s clothes are all right he must be a Wall Street magnate, and the rest of the girls are just like her. They’re the men that give the oil fields a shady side.”

In spite of his roughness, Bob liked the freckle-faced person, and he had proved that he was far from stupid.

“You’ve evidently seen tricky oil men,” he said guardedly. “Do you work in the oil fields? I’m going to Oklahoma.”

“Me for Texas,” announced his companion. “I change at the next junction. No, the nearest I ever come to working in the oil fields is filling tanks for the cars in my father’s garage. But o’ course I know oil – the streets run with it down our way, and they use it to flush the irrigation system. And I’ve seen some of the raw deals these sharpers put through – doing widows and orphans out of their land. Makes you have a mighty small opinion of the law, I declare it does.”

As he spoke the train slowed up, then stopped.

“No station,” puzzled the Texan. “Let’s go and find out the trouble.”

He started for the door, and then the train started, bumped, and came to a standstill again.

“You go ahead!” shouted Bob. “I have to go back and see that my friend is all right.”