To Sanders, working on afternoon tower at Jackpot Number Three, the lean, tanned driller in charge of operations was wise with an uncanny knowledge the newcomer could not fathom.  For eight hours at a stretch he stood on the platform and watched a greasy cable go slipping into the earth.  Every quiver of it, every motion of the big walking-beam, every kick of the engine, told him what was taking place down that narrow pipe two thousand feet below the surface.  He knew when the tools were in clay and had become gummed up.  He could tell just when the drill had cut into hard rock at an acute angle and was running out of the perpendicular to follow the softer stratum.  His judgment appeared infallible as to whether he ought to send down a reamer to straighten the kink.  All Dave knew was that a string of tools far underground was jerking up and down monotonously.

This spelt romance to Jed Burns, superintendent of operations, though he would never have admitted it.  He was a bachelor; always would be one.  Hard-working, hard-drinking, at odd times a plunging gambler, he lived for nothing but oil and the atmosphere of oil fields.  From one boom to another he drifted, as inevitably as the gamblers, grafters, and organizers of “fake” companies.  Several times he had made fortunes, but it was impossible for him to stay rich.  He was always ready to back a drilling proposition that looked promising, and no independent speculator can continue to wildcat without going broke.

He was sifting sand through his fingers when Dave came on tower the day after the flood.  To Bob Hart, present as Crawford’s personal representative, he expressed an opinion.

“Right soon now or never.  Sand tastes, feels, looks, and smells like oil.  But you can’t ever be sure.  An oil prospect is like a woman.  She will or she won’t, you never can tell which.  Then, if she does, she’s liable to change her mind.”

Dave sniffed the pleasing, pungent odor of the crude oil sands.  His friend had told him that Crawford’s fate hung in the balance.  Unless oil flowed very soon in paying quantities he was a ruined man.  The control of the Jackpot properties would probably pass into 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.