Chapter 27 - Page 2

gotta get through!"

"How you going to get through, kid?" one of the drillers inquired. "Our men had to swim in places."

"I guess I can swim, if I try. Feller can do 'most anything if he has to. How about you, Doc?" Buddy turned to his traveling companion.

The latter shook his head positively. "You're crazy, Briskow. We'd probably drown. If we didn't, we'd be burned alive when that loose oil catches fire."

"Looks like it's bound to catch if this lightning keeps up," some one declared. "Listen to that!"

Buddy cursed furiously and lurched toward the door. It took force to restrain him from going.

That was indeed a night of terror in the oil fields, for destruction was wholesale, and to those who were fortunate enough to be in no danger it was scarcely less trying than for the luckless ones out in the flooded area. Buddy Briskow was half demented. At one time it seemed certain that the surface oil was aflame near his father's farm, and the pictures he conjured up were unbearable.

The rain ceased with the passing of the electrical storm, but the late hours of the night were thick and the fires continued to burn. It seemed as if morning would never come. With the first light Buddy mounted one of his horses, and, regardless of admonitions, set out. In miles he had no great distance to go; nevertheless, it was midday before he came in sight of his father's unpainted farmhouse, and when he dismounted at the front porch he fell rather than walked through the door.

He broke down and blubbered weakly when he saw Calvin Gray up and around and apparently well. He collapsed into a chair and huddled there in a wet heap, the while he sobbed and laughed hysterically. He was considerably ashamed of his show of feeling.

Even after he had been helped into the kitchen and his wet clothes had been stripped from him, he could tell little about his trip, but hot food and drink brought him around and then, indeed, his story was one that deeply touched the elder man.

Already the waters had ceased to rise, but Buddy's difficulty in getting through proved the folly of attempting escape for the time being; his horse had been forced to swim with him in more than one place; in others he had waded waist deep, stumbling through thickets, hauling the animal after him by main strength. There was nothing to do, it seemed, but await a subsidence of the flood. Then, too, the boy was half dead for sleep.

Under the circumstances it was not easy for the elder man to face this delay. His affairs were in a precarious condition and more in need of his immediate attention than ever before; to be cut off, therefore, to be lost for several days at this particular time was more than a misfortune--it was a catastrophe. Such vague plans as he had considered he was now forced to abandon. He could see ruin ahead.