“The oil business pays big for expert advice, no matter whether it’s legal or technical.  What you did was worth fifty times what the board voted you.  If we make a big strike you’ve saved the company.  If we don’t the stock’s not worth a plugged nickel anyhow.  You’ve earned what we voted you.  Hang on to it, Dave.”

Dave had thanked the board and put the stock in his pocket.  Now he felt himself drawn into the drama represented by the thumping engine which continued day and night.

After his shift was over, he rode to town with Bob behind his team of wild broncos.

“Got to look for an engineer for the night tower,” Hart explained as he drew up in front of the Gusher Saloon.  “Come in with me.  It’s some gambling-hell, if you ask me.”

The place hummed with the turbulent life that drifts to every wild frontier on the boom.  Faro dealers from the Klondike, poker dealers from Nome, roulette croupiers from Leadville, were all here to reap the rich harvest to be made from investors, field workers, and operators.  Smooth grafters with stock in worthless companies for sale circulated in and out with blue-prints and whispered inside information.  The men who were ranged in front of the bar, behind which half a dozen attendants in white aprons busily waited on their wants, usually talked oil and nothing but oil.  To-day they had another theme.  The same subject engrossed the groups scattered here and there throughout the large hall.

In the rear of the room were the faro layouts, the roulette wheels, and the poker players.  Around each of these the shifting crowd surged.  Mexicans, Chinese, and even Indians brushed shoulders with white men of many sorts and conditions.  The white-faced professional gambler was in evidence, winning the money of big brown men in miner’s boots and corduroys.  The betting was wild and extravagant, for the spirit of the speculator had carried away the cool judgment of most of these men.  They had seen a barber become a millionaire in a day because the company in which he had plunged had struck a gusher.  They had seen the same man borrow five dollars three months later to carry him over until he got a job.  Riches were pouring out of the ground for the gambler who would take a chance.  Thrift was a much-discredited virtue in Malapi.  The one unforgivable vice was to be “a piker.”

Bob found his man at a faro table.  While the cards were being shuffled, he engaged him to come out next evening to the Jackpot properties.  As soon as the dealer began to slide the cards out of the case the attention of the engineer went back to his bets.

While Dave was standing close to the wall, ready to leave as soon as Bob returned to him, he caught sight of an old acquaintance.  Steve Russell was playing stud poker at a table a few feet from him.  The cowpuncher looked up and waved his hand.

“See you in a minute, Dave,” he called, and as soon as the pot had been won he said to the man shuffling the cards, “Deal me out this hand.”