"They call it weak gas when they tap it two or three hundred feet down;and anybody can sink a well in his back yard and get enough gas to light and heat his house.I remember one fellow that had it blazing up from a pipe through a flower-bed,just like a jet of water from a fountain.
My,my,my!You fel--you gentlemen--ought to go out and see that country,all of you.Wish we could torpedo this well,Mr.Dryfoos,and let 'em see how it works!Mind that one you torpedoed for me?You know,when they sink a well,"he went on to the company,"they can't always most generally sometimes tell whether they're goin'to get gas or oil or salt water.Why,when they first began to bore for salt water out on the Kanawha,back about the beginning of the century,they used to get gas now and then,and then they considered it a failure;they called a gas-well a blower,and give it up in disgust;the time wasn't ripe for gas yet.Now they bore away sometimes till they get half-way to China,and don't seem to strike anything worth speaking of.Then they put a dynamite torpedo down in the well and explode it.They have a little bar of iron that they call a Go-devil,and they just drop it down on the business end of the torpedo,and then stand from under,if you please!
You hear a noise,and in about half a minute you begin to see one,and it begins to rain oil and mud and salt water and rocks and pitchforks and adoptive citizens;and when it clears up the derrick's painted--got a coat on that 'll wear in any climate.That's what our honored host meant.Generally get some visiting lady,when there's one round,to drop the Go-devil.But that day we had to put up with Conrad here.They offered to let me drop it,but I declined.I told 'em I hadn't much practice with Go-devils in the newspaper syndicate business,and I wasn't very well myself,anyway.Astonishing,"Fulkerson continued,with the air of relieving his explanation by an anecdote,"how reckless they get using dynamite when they're torpedoing wells.We stopped at one place where a fellow was handling the cartridges pretty freely,and Mr.Dryfoos happened to caution him a little,and that ass came up with one of 'em in his hand,and began to pound it on the buggy-wheel to show us how safe it was.I turned green,I was so scared;but Mr.Dryfoos kept his color,and kind of coaxed the fellow till he quit.You could see he was the fool kind,that if you tried to stop him he'd keep on hammering that cartridge,just to show that it wouldn't explode,till he blew you into Kingdom Come.When we got him to go away,Mr.Dryfoos drove up to his foreman.'Pay Sheney off,and discharge him on the spot,'says he.
'He's too safe a man to have round;he knows too much about dynamite.'
I never saw anybody so cool."
Dryfoos modestly dropped his head under Fulkerson's flattery and,without lifting it,turned his eyes toward Colonel Woodburn."I had all sorts of men to deal with in developing my property out there,but I had very little trouble with them,generally speaking.""Ah,ah!you foundt the laboring-man reasonable--dractable--tocile?"Lindau put in.
"Yes,generally speaking,"Dryfoos answered."They mostly knew which side of their bread was buttered.I did have one little difficulty at one time.It happened to be when Mr.Fulkerson was out there.Some of the men tried to form a union--""No,no!"cried Fulkerson."Let me tell that!I know you wouldn't do yourself justice,Mr.Dryfoos,and I want 'em to know how a strike can be managed,if you take it in time.You see,some of those fellows got a notion that there ought to be a union among the working-men to keep up wages,and dictate to the employers,and Mr.Dryfoos's foreman was the ringleader in the business.They understood pretty well that as soon as he found it out that foreman would walk the plank,and so they watched out till they thought they had Mr.Dryfoos just where they wanted him--everything on the keen jump,and every man worth his weight in diamonds --and then they came to him,and--told him to sign a promise to keep that foreman to the end of the season,or till he was through with the work on the Dryfoos and Hendry Addition,under penalty of having them all knock off.Mr.Dryfoos smelled a mouse,but he couldn't tell where the mouse was;he saw that they did have him,and he signed,of course.There wasn't anything really against the fellow,anyway;he was a first-rate man,and he did his duty every time;only he'd got some of those ideas into his head,and they turned it.Mr.Dryfoos signed,and then he laid low."March saw Lindau listening with a mounting intensity,and heard him murmur in German,"Shameful!shameful!"Fulkerson went on:"Well,it wasn't long before they began to show their hand,but Mr.Dryfoos kept dark.He agreed to everything;there never was such an obliging capitalist before;there wasn't a thing they asked of him that he didn't do,with the greatest of pleasure,and all went merry as a marriage-bell till one morning a whole gang of fresh men marched into the Dryfoos and Hendry Addition,under the escort of a dozen Pinkertons with repeating rifles at half-cock,and about fifty fellows found themselves out of a job.You never saw such a mad set.""Pretty neat,"said Kendricks,who looked at the affair purely from an aesthetic point of view."Such a coup as that would tell tremendously in a play.""That was vile treason,"said Lindau in German to March."He's an infamous traitor!I cannot stay here.I must go."He struggled to rise,while March held him by the coat,and implored him under his voice:"For Heaven's sake,don't,Lindau!You owe it to yourself not to make a scene,if you come here."Something in it all affected him comically;he could not help laughing.
