The Wildcatters

by John Benteen

  Then those pink points were rubbing against him, and she put her hand behind his head, drew his face down to hers. Beneath his lips, hers opened; and he felt the hungry thrust of her tongue, as her loins rubbed against him. “Fargo—” she breathed.

  “Yes,” he said, and pushed her down on the bed. He raised the skirt; she wore nothing beneath it. Her long, white thighs scissored, waiting for him, moving in yearning. Fargo’s hand went to his belt. A moment later, and she was straining upward, receiving him, her teeth clamped in the flesh of his shoulder.

  She was neither innocent nor inexperienced. Her body was eager, hungry, deft, adept. Her legs were strong, her mouth greedy. For long minutes, Fargo forgot Brasher, Friday, forgot Tess, forgot everything.

  Then, at last, it was over, and sanity returned. In the lamp-lit room, he was first solemn; then he grinned slowly and knowingly; and she could not see his grin. Presently, he rolled aside.

  She lay by him, gasping. “Oh,” she whispered. “Oh, you’re so good—”

  “Yeah,” he said. “Yeah, you’ve been around enough to know how good I am, huh?”

  Maggie stiffened. “Fargo—”

  “You made Tess believe—”

  “That I was a virgin? I was afraid she wouldn’t take me in. No, I’m not what they call pure. But I’m not a whore like Tess, either, and I don’t want to be one.”

  “What do you want to be?” Fargo asked.

  “I want to be a lady.” Her voice was dreamy; she stared at the ceiling. “I want to have a lot of money and be married to a rich man and live in a fine house and have servants. I want to be—I want to be a lot of things.” Her hand caressed the nape of his neck. “If this well comes in, Fargo, you’ll be a rich man.”

  So now he was beginning to understand her. “Uh-huh,” he said. “Yeah. But not a rich married man.” Then he sat up, took her arm, and pulled her upright beside him, and his eyes gleamed in the light as he stared coldly, cruelly at her.

  His voice was harsh. “Listen,” he rapped. “What you want to be or what you don’t want to be doesn’t concern me. Neither does how many men you’ve had or how many you will have. But I’ll tell you one thing now—a woman on the make around this place is like a flask of that nitroglycerin out there; it’ll blow this whole deal sky-high.” He put his finger under her chin, tipped her frightened, astonished face up so that she had to look into his eyes. “And so I’m telling you now, baby, from here on in, you keep your legs together around this place, you understand? Otherwise, Tess or no Tess, you go out—and I mean flat out, on your butt! You behave yourself, you’ll get a cut of this well, enough to give you a start, anyhow; you cause trouble around here, you’ll get the hell beat out of you. Do I make myself clear?”

  Her mouth dropped open. Then her face turned red. She sprang to her feet, buttoning her dress,, “Why, you ... you ...” She began to curse him, expertly, with imagination.

  Fargo arose. “Hush,” he said coldly.

  The words dwindled off under his threatening gaze.

  “I went to bed with you to find out what you’re up to. I think I know, now. You can be useful here, and if you are and mind your manners and do your work, you’ll come out ahead of the game. Otherwise, you leave—now!”

  The room was silent as they stared at one another.

  Fargo said, cruelly, “You understand?”

  Now Maggie’s face was pale. Her eyes blazed. “I understand,” she said thinly. For a moment, Fargo thought she was going to unloose another string of curses. Instead, she whirled, strode out. He watched her go, his own features set hard, his gray eyes cold. If ever he had seen trouble moving on two legs, there it went now.

  He grunted an oath, poured more coffee, dowsed some whiskey into it. He drank it at a gulp; then, tired, satiated, lay down to sleep.

  ~*~

  Three days later, at four hundred feet, Uncle John lost a drill bit.

  The old man swore and sweated for twenty-four hours as he tried to fish the wrenched off bit and drill collar out of the hole. Finally he gave up. “I’ll have to whip-stock around that goddamn fish, Fargo.”

  Fargo nodded, knowing what that entailed. The whip-stock was a specially shaped instrument that would route the next drill bit around the obstruction in the hole. It took careful, skillful drilling to get around the “fish,” as oilmen called a lost tool, and back in line again; but Uncle John could do it if anyone could. The thing about it was this meant going to Tulsa.

  In addition, it meant a delay of days in the drilling.

  “I’ll have to have a new rock bit,” Uncle John grumbled. “New drill collar, more drill pipe. Might as well shoot the works, get everything we’ll need. I’ll give you a list.”

  Fargo nodded. “The tail goes with the hide. I’ll bring everything back this time, even if it leaves us broke.”

  “Probably will. But no way around it. That’s the hell of it with wildcatting. You spend your last dollar; then it takes fifty cents more to bring in the well. I’ll have the list ready for you in the morning. Burn the goddamn breeze gettin’ to Tulsa and gettin’ back, you hear?”

  “Sure,” said Fargo.

  That night, he called them all together: Russell, the three women, Uncle John, and the drillers. Maggie, he noticed, sat apart from the others, and she would not look at him. Nor did he blame her.

  “Listen,” he said. “I’m gonna try to sneak out and get back before Brasher ever knows I’m gone. But if he does find out, that’s when he and Friday will hit this well. I don’t give a damn whether you put down a foot of bore while I’m away or not, but you’ve got to guard this place, you understand? You’ve got to guard it! I want all the roughnecks armed, and you can promise them fighting pay for the time I’m gone; but there’s got to be a watch kept around the clock, and I mean a real watch. Ross Friday’s an expert, a professional, and he won’t miss a trick.”

  Curt Russell fingered the butt of his Colt. “I’ll take responsibility for the guard,” he said, face grim. “I won’t close an eye until you get back.”

  “You do that,” Fargo said. “And if there’s any trouble, you let Uncle John call the shots. He was dealing with people like Friday and Brasher before either one of us was born.”

  “That’s the God’s truth!” the old man snorted and bit off a plug of tobacco.

  Having had his say, Fargo got ready for the trip. Meanwhile, he watched Maggie; the opportunity came at last to get her alone in the kitchen. “You,” he said, as she bent over the stove.

  “I don’t want to talk to you,” she muttered.

  “You goddamn will, whether you want to or not. Listen. If you cause any trouble while I’m gone, it’ll be your neck. I’m not what they call a gentleman, you understand? A gentleman wouldn’t hurt a lady; I’ll knock you silly if you cause any trouble. You keep those pretty legs of yours tight together and you act like a Sunday school teacher while I’m away, or you’ll wish you had. Tess thinks you’re a virgin and a sweet young thing. You’d better behave like one until I get back.”

  “I’m not afraid of you,” she said without looking up.

  Fargo went to her, wrenched her around, stared wolfishly down into her face.

  “You’d better damned well be,” he rasped. His fingers dug savagely into her flesh.

  She paled. “I won’t ...” she husked. “I won’t cause any trouble.”

  “Remember that promise. Remember mine, too.” Fargo released her and strode away.

  With saddlebags full of Roosevelt’s money, he rode the sorrel mercilessly to Tulsa. There, in that booming town, nourished as it was by the black, thick blood of petroleum pumped from its own wells; the new, big Cushing field in Creek County; the Brasher field not far away; everything an oil man needed was available, for a hell of a price. Fargo made up another train of freight wagons, loaded so full their axles creaked. By then, his moneybags were almost empty; only enough remained to pay the roughnecks for three weeks. Uncle John had soon better hit pay sand. If he didn’t,
the Colonel at Oyster Bay, Fargo thought, would have to be tapped again.

  He hired fighting men to ride with him back to the Erickson place: an additional expense. He did not begrudge it; he’d lucked up. Just as the oilfields had brought Fargo to Oklahoma, just as they’d brought Ross Friday, they had brought Lin Gordon and his twelve gunslingers.

  Gordon, tall, gaunt, cadaverous, was another professional Fargo had known for years. Unlike Fargo or Friday who always hired out individually, Gordon had his own wild bunch, tough, leathery, gun swift men who depended on Lin to line up the fighting wages. Then they’d lay their life on the line. Fargo made a quick judgment; it would clean him out to take them on at their regular wages, but he could sacrifice a percent or two of his share in the well for their services.

  Over a bottle of whiskey, he made his deal with Gordon. “The oil’s there. We’re gonna get it, if Brasher doesn’t balk us. You want in, Lin, the strike’s not forty days off. We’ll feed you until then, you and your men, and any that don’t get killed in the meantime will live high off the hog after we bring in the first well.”

  Gordon looked at him with cold eyes on either side of a nose like an eagle’s. “Fargo, one well won’t pay these men.”

  “One well will finance a dozen others. A dozen oil wells will pay ’em more than if they hired out for a hundred dollars a day apiece. This is a rich field, Lin, a bonanza.”

  Gordon looked doubtful. “You’re talkin’ about goin’ up against Ross Friday. He plays rough.”

  “I’ll take care of Friday. Talk to your men; let me know.”

  “I’ll do that,” Gordon said; and he disappeared. Two hours later, he met Fargo again and said: “Their answer is yes.”

  “Good,” Fargo said. “We’ll ride in an hour.”

  And yet, it seemed as if it were money down the drain. They made it to the bluffs without difficulty; Gordon and his men scouted those. Lin came galloping back to where Fargo waited and reined in his tall bay. “They’re clean. So’s that hollow down the road.”

  Fargo frowned. “Funny. I figured Friday would have an ambush set up somewhere along the line.”

  “Nothing there. I’ll swear to it.”

  Fargo rubbed his chin. “If you say so, Lin ...” He turned, standing up in his stirrups, motioned to the wagons, bringing his arm down in the universal signal to move out. The wagons rolled, Fargo, Gordon, and their gunfighters spread out around them, dangerous outriders.

  ~*~

  Gordon had been right. They encountered no opposition. Just before twilight, Fargo reined in, signaling the train to halt. On a rise above the Erickson place, he surveyed the terrain with his binoculars.

  Then he went tense in the saddle. Stood up in the stirrups, ran the glass by again. He let out a long, rasping breath and dropped the glasses, letting them dangle by the strap around his neck.

  “We been lookin’ in the wrong place for Friday,” he said to Gordon, his thin Ups biting off the words. “He’s already hit.”

  For, down below, at Lily’s, where the laced web of the derrick’s hundred and fifty feet should have been silhouetted against the sky, there was— nothing.

  Fargo kept his horse tight reined for a second longer. Then he unslung the shotgun. “Let’s ride down,” he said; but the bitterness of defeat was already in his voice.

  What met their eyes was a catastrophe. Even Fargo had not expected it to be this bad.

  The oil rig, Uncle John’s cherished rotary rig, had been blown to hell. Its steel framework lay twisted and warped on the ground, the kelly bent, the turntable uprooted, the hole plugged tight with the severed drill stem. Beyond it, not a house, not an outbuilding of Lily’s spread remained. Only char and ashes, still sending up wisps of smoke. Nothing else. Past that the tatters of demolished tents whipped in the wind.

  Destruction, desolation. Fargo’s heart sank. He stood in the stirrups. His voice was a bellow. “Curt! Uncle John!”

  Nothing moved.

  Beside Fargo, Lin Gordon’s voice was sardonic. “This the layout we were all gonna git rich off of?”

  “Shut up,” Fargo rasped. He spurred the sorrel. The only thing still intact, it seemed, was the earth covered bunker built to house the nitroglycerin. He rode toward that. “Uncle John!” he bawled again.

  Then a woman’s voice answered, hesitantly, from within the bunker, as its door cracked. “Fargo—is it you?”

  “Tess.” Fargo raced the horse, pulled it to a skidding stop, swung down. The bunker door cracked wider; Tess Kendall emerged, face smoke-blackened, dress torn and singed, hair hanging in a tangled mat around her shoulders. Her eyes were huge, yet dull. “Oh, God, Fargo,” she said, and she threw herself into his arms.

  He held her. “Tess. Tess, what the hell happened here?”

  She clung to him. “Brasher. His men. They hit us last night. Came out of nowhere. Shot Curt, blew up the well, burned the buildings ... ran off all the drillers...”

  “Uncle John. Where’s he?”

  “I’m here, goddamnit.” The old man stumped out of the nitro bunker. “We’re all in here: me, Tess, Lily, Curt—” He shook his head. Never, until now, had Fargo seen him look his age. But despair and fatigue seemed to have shriveled him. He was truly old now.

  Something caught in Fargo’s mind. “You’re all there? Maggie. Where’s Maggie?”

  Tess pulled loose, backed off. Her eyes blazed. “That bitch,” she whispered. “That lousy bitch. My own flesh and blood and I trusted her. She’s gone. She went off with Brasher.”

  Fargo made a sound in his throat. “I should have known, should have figured. Russell, how is he?”

  Uncle John Morris rubbed a dazed face. “He took a bullet through the leg. Bad. He’ll gimp the rest of his life. But he’s alive. In there.” He jerked his head. “We all hid in there, except the roughnecks; they took off to the four points of the compass. Bad hiding with the nitro, but it was the one place they couldn’t find us.”

  Fargo pushed past him, entered the bunker. In one corner were packed, very carefully, the flasks of nitroglycerin. In the other, Curt Russell lay on a dirty blanket, only half-conscious. Lily Erickson held his head in her lap, stroked his temple. She looked up at Fargo with huge, dark, lovely, despairing eyes.

  “It was his fault,” she said tonelessly. “No way around that. It was his fault. But I don’t blame him. Don’t you blame him, either, Fargo ...”

  Fargo disregarded her, dropped to one knee beside Russell. “Curt. Goddamn it, Curt, can you hear me?”

  “I hear you,” Russell mumbled. His eyes opened.

  “What happened? You were supposed to keep guard ...”

  “I did. Until she—” Russell broke off.

  “She? Who?”

  “Maggie.” His pale lips moved. “Last night. I was patrolling, same way you did. Ready to give the alarm minute there was trouble. Stopped in to get a cup of coffee. Nobody up but Maggie—”

  Lily looked at Fargo with burnt, terrible eyes. “Don’t condemn him too much,” she whispered. “She was beautiful ...”

  “Was a fool,” Russell breathed. “Maggie was hot. Made play for me ... shouldn’t have ... but she was so ready. And I couldn’t say no. She and I—we went out there in the grass. I should have been keeping watch. But I was with her instead. That was when Brasher hit us.”

  “Nobody to give the alarm,” Uncle John said. “That slut had Curt tied up. I was dog-tired, asleep. So was everybody else. Only the men on the rig; and when the shooting started, they took off like big birds, fighting pay or no.” He rubbed his face. “Friday led the bunch; there must have been two dozen men with him. Couldn’t fight him. Curt tried to, got plugged. I dragged him, herded the women in here. They tore the place to shreds, blasted—” his voice broke “—my rig.” He sat down on the doorstep of the bunker, hard. “It’s all finished, Fargo. All.”

  “No,” said Fargo.

  “They got my rig,” Uncle John said tremulously. “I’m too old to start again. I’ll ne
ver get the money for another one together. It’s finished, I tell you.”

  “No,” said Fargo again. He looked through the open door toward Golconda. “No,” he said. “I told Brasher that if he touched this well, it would cost him five of his. I aim to see that it does.”

  Russell said, painfully, “You can’t. Give up, Neal.”

  “I’ve got thirteen fighting men out there,” Fargo said. “A wagon train of supplies. I’m still alive and I got my guns. And the ground’s still here and the oil underneath it. No. No, we ain’t finished.”

  Uncle John raised his head slowly. “What are you driving at?”

  Fargo jerked a hand. “All right, that rig out there’s blasted. But there’s enough potential in this lease to buy a new one.”

  “Not with Brasher alive,” Curt Russell breathed. “You can’t get no money on this lease with him in the way.”

  “I know that,” Fargo said. He was still looking toward Golconda. “But come tomorrow, he ain’t going to be in the way.”

  Chapter Nine

  For a moment, the bunker was silent. Then Lin Gordon, from its doorway, said, “What you got in mind, Neal?”

  Fargo turned. “Lin, you can deal yourself and your men in or out. I’ll put it this way. If you deal yourself out, you’re where you were in Tulsa. If you deal yourself in, come morning, some of you are gonna be dead. But the rest of you are gonna be rich.”

  Gordon said, “My men will do what I tell them’s best. But you’ve got to convince me. What you driving at?”

  Fargo shrugged. “I don’t know. All I know is that somehow I’m going to pay Brasher back. I’m going to kill him. I’ll have to kill Ross Friday, too. It’ll take help. Brasher’s got an army. But if I can do it, the way’s clear. This lease is rich enough to finance a new rig once Brasher’s gone. With a new rig, we’ll start over again. Everybody who helps us has got a piece of the pie; everybody who won’t better get out now.” He turned, looked at the carefully packed and barricaded flasks of nitroglycerin. “We’ll have to handle some nitro; Uncle John, I hope you’ll pull yourself together and show us how.”