Adventure Magazine Cover — page 172: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

166 just about puts your Uncle Matt on the shelf, ’im!”? They were close to the main pike, and in a moment the car had turned off on a fairly good dirt road. Downs relapsed into silence, as if brood- ing over the situation. Finally Brannon ventured to ask: “Just what did our friend do?” “Plenty!” stated Downs viciously. “Every bil of acreage and royalty I had, except that fifty acre offset, was bought from darkies. ‘They owned practically all the tract which should be in the center of the pool, if there is one. The Solar people bought their land of darkies, likewise. My stuff was bought at a fair price at the time—some of it a big price, because this was a year ago. I had information that the geological report was good. A little later, when a stranger appeared here and began leasing acreage, I’d been in the oil business long enough to know that somebody was going to drill a wildcat well. So I jumped in on the ground floor, and at the end was practically even with the Solar in land. Of course, I didn’t know what company this stranger represented, then. Well, when the Solar and Grady finally lit in here, and had no luck buying my stuff from me, this Grady mooched around and has succeeded in getting seventeen different colored men to swear that I extorted their land and part royalty shares from them through threats. I am supposed to have told ’em that I represented a lot of Lockville men who’d kill ’~em all off if they didn’t sell us their stuff. “Tt’s all bunk, of course. The deals were open and above board. It’s a fifty-fifty shot I can beat the case eventually, but it ties up all that stuff tight as a drum until it’s out of litigation. And with the Solar behind it that litigation won’t be over for two years, if I can afford to fight ’em that long, which I can’t. I can’t fight ’em at all, right now. It leaves me high and dry—my land tied up, can’t make a deal, and broke.” “Except that fifty,’’ said Brannon. “Even there they’ve got me. I’m in deep, Jim. I’ve borrowed some money, have notes to meet and haven’t five hun- dred cash in the world. Here’s the situa- tion on that fifty: The Solar, on account of Grady, is riding for a big fall. He doesn’t know the oil game, but that doesn’t help me out. Here’s what he’s doing: Adventure Instead of letting the big company scouts in on things and giving ’em every facility for getting a line on prospects, Grady is secretive as Nobody knows what the showings on the well are. The big com- panies have got their well-scouts and land men here, and Grady is treating ’em like dogs. The fool doesn’t know that if he gets a well, or ten of ’em, that he won’t know what to do with the oil that flows. - He figures maybe on building a pipe-line, getting loading-racks, getting cars to ship the oil in, and that stuff. Where’s he going to refine it? Where’s he going to sell it if the big men want to freeze him? A wildcat company makes money just one way— bringing in a field and then selling out to the big bugs at a fair price, which they’re al- ways willing to give. The big companies are within a jump or two of pulling out altogether, regardless, if Grady keeps on the way he’s going. ‘Here’s the way it affects me: I’m broke. I’ve got fifty acres in the center of what geologists are sure ought to bea field. If that well out there has had good show- ings—if the formation has run true and all that—I’d be justified, broke or not, in hang- ing on. The lease cost me a thousand dollars. I’ve got an offer from a stranger named Nillon of two thousand. If a five- hundred-barrel well comes in, my stuff is worth fifty thousand. Nillon represents Grady, I’m sure. I told Grady if he talked to me again about anything Id kick the tar out of him. We’re just that friendly. If the well comes in merely a gasser, I’m stuck cold. Being broke, I shouldn’t take a chance. ‘Another thing. I wouldn’t put it past Grady to plug up that hole for a while just to freeze me out further. I’m only a little fish, you see, but by getting in a year ago I’m the big land competitor of the Solar.” ‘“‘There’s no way you can get an idea of the showings, eh?”’ “Notaone. Why, the big company men don’t know a bit more than I do. Nobody knows anything. They guard the thing at night, while the night crew is on. They’re down nineteen hundred feet, and according to all the dope should be about to the pay sand, if any. It did leak out that they were going to take a core today. You stopped that until Monday, anyway. It’d be worth two thousand to me to get a tiny sample of that core, and maybe it’d COMGHOO Sj CO