The landscape next moment was drenched in black petroleum.  The fine particles of it filled the air, sprayed the cactus and the greasewood.  Rivulets of the viscid stuff began to gather in depressions and to flow in gathering volume, as tributaries joined the stream, into the sump holes prepared for it.  The pungent odor of crude oil, as well as the touch and the taste of it, penetrated the atmosphere.

Burns counted noses and discovered that none of his crew had been injured by falling rocks or beams.  He knew that his men could not possibly cope with this geyser on a spree.  It was a big strike, the biggest in the history of the district, and to control the flow of the gusher would necessitate tremendous efforts on a wholesale plan.

One of his men he sent in to Malapi on horseback with a hurry-up call to Emerson Crawford, president of the company, for tools, machinery, men, and teams.  The others he put to salvaging the engine and accessories and to throwing up an earth dike around the sump hole as a barrier against the escaping crude.  All through the night he fought impotently against this giant that had burst loose from its prison two thousand feet below the surface of the earth.

With the first faint streaks of day men came galloping across the desert to the Jackpot.  They came at first on horseback, singly, and later by twos and threes.  A buckboard appeared on the horizon, the driver leaning forward as he urged on his team.

“Hart,” decided the driller, “and comin’ hell-for-leather.”

Other teams followed, buggies, surreys, light wagons, farm wagons, and at last heavily laden lumber wagons.  Business in Malapi was “shot to pieces,” as one merchant expressed it.  Everybody who could possibly get away was out to see the big gusher.

There was an immediate stampede to make locations in the territory adjacent.  The wildcatter flourished.  Companies were formed in ten minutes and the stock subscribed for in half an hour.  From the bootblack at the hotel to the banker, everybody wanted stock in every company drilling within a reasonable distance of Jackpot Number Three.  Many legitimate incorporations appeared on the books of the Secretary of State, and along with these were scores of frauds intended only to gull the small investor and separate him from his money.  Saloons and gambling-houses, which did business with such childlike candor and stridency, became offices for the sale and exchange of stock.  The boom at Malapi got its second wind.  Workmen, investors, capitalists, and crooks poured in to take advantage of the inflation brought about by the new strike in a hitherto unknown field.  For the fame of Jackpot Number Three had spread wide.  The production guesses ranged all the way from ten to fifty thousand barrels a day, most of which was still going to waste on the desert.

For Burns and Hart had not yet gained control over the flow, though an army of men in overalls and slickers fought the gusher night and day.  The flow never ceased for a moment.  The well steadily spouted a stream of black liquid into the air from the subterranean chamber into which the underground lake poured.