The attack had two objectives.  The first was to check the outrush of oil.  The second was to save the wealth emerging from the mouth of the well and streaming over the lip of the reservoir to the sandy desert.

A crew of men, divided into three shifts, worked with pick, shovel, and scraper to dig a second and a third sump hole.  The dirt from the excavation was dumped at the edge of the working to build a dam for the fluid.  Sacks filled with wet sand reinforced this dirt.

Meanwhile the oil boiled up in the lake and flowed over its edges in streams.  As soon as the second reservoir was ready the tarry stuff was siphoned into it from the original sump hole.  By the time this was full a third pool was finished, and into it the overflow was diverted.  But in spite of the great effort made to save the product of the gusher, the sands absorbed many thousands of dollars’ worth of petroleum.

This end of the work was under the direction of Bob Hart.  For ten days he did not take off his clothes.  When he slept it was in cat naps, an hour snatched now and again from the fight with the rising tide of wealth that threatened to engulf its owners.  He was unshaven, unbathed, his clothes slimy with tar and grease.  He ate on the job—­coffee, beans, bacon, cornbread, whatever the cooks’ flunkies brought him—­and did not know what he was eating.  Gaunt and dominating, with crisp decision and yet unfailing good-humor, he bossed the gangs under him and led them into the fight, holding them at it till flesh and blood revolted with weariness.  Of such stuff is the true outdoor Westerner made.  He may drop in his tracks from exhaustion after the emergency has been met, but so long as the call for action lasts he will stick to the finish.

At the other end Jed Burns commanded.  One after another he tried all the devices he had known to succeed in capping or checking other gushers.  The flow was so continuous and powerful that none of these were effective.  Some wells flow in jets.  They hurl out oil, die down like a geyser, and presently have another hemorrhage.  Jackpot Number Three did not pulse as a cut artery does.  Its output was steady as the flow of water in a pipe.  The heavy timbers with which he tried to stop up the outlet were hurled aside like straws.  He could not check the flow long enough to get control.

On the evening of the tenth day Burns put in the cork.  He made elaborate preparations in advance and assigned his force to the posts where they were to work.  A string of eight-inch pipe sixty feet long was slid forward and derricked over the stream.  Above this a large number of steel rails, borrowed from the incoming road, were lashed to the pipe to prevent it from snapping.  The pipe had been fitted with valves of various sizes.  After it had been fastened to the well’s casing, these were gradually reduced to check the flow without causing a blowout in the pipe line.

Six hours later a metropolitan newspaper carried the headline: