inded to speak again of the two sharpers he had overheard on
the train, but they had reached the pumping station, and he and Betty
were immediately interested in what Mr. Gordon had to show them.

There was a long bunk house at one side where the employees slept and
ate and where a comfortable, fat Chinese cook was sweeping off the
screened porch. The pumping station was another long, one-story
building, with eight tall iron stacks rising beside it. Inside, set
in a concrete floor, huge dynamos were pumping away, sending oil
through miles and miles of pipe lines to points where it would be
loaded into cars or ships and sent all over the world. The engineer
in charge took them around and explained every piece of machinery,
much to the delight of Bob who had a boy's love for things that went.

From the station they walked to one of the largest storage tanks, a
huge reservoir of oil, capable of holding fifty-five thousand barrels
when full, Mr. Gordon told them. It was half empty at the time, and
three long flights of steps were bare that would be covered when the
storage capacity was used.

"If there isn't a laundry or a hotel in Flame City," observed Betty
suddenly, "there is everything to run the oil business with, that's
certain. Is it all right to say you have very complete equipment,
Uncle Dick?"

"Your phrase is correct," admitted her uncle, smiling. "Poor tools
are the height of folly for any business or worker, Betty. As for
Flame City, the place is literally swamped. People poured in from the
day the first good well came in, and they've been arriving in droves
ever since. You can't persuade any of them to take up the business
they had before--to run a boarding house, or open a restaurant or a
store. No, every blessed one of 'em has set his heart on owning and
operating an oil well. It was just so in the California gold
drive--the forty-niners wanted a gold mine, and they walked right
over those that lay at their feet."

They took the automobile after inspecting the storage tank and went
several miles farther up the field to the gasolene plant that was
isolated from the rest of the buildings. Here they saw how the crude
petroleum was refined to make gasolene and were told the elaborate
precautions observed to keep this highly inflammable produce from
catching fire. Seven large steel tanks, built on brick foundations,
were used for storage, and there was also a larger oil tank from
which the oil to be refined