ole as a barrier
against the escaping crude. All through the night he fought impotently
against this giant that had burst loose from its prison two thousand feet
below the surface of the earth.

With the first faint streaks of day men came galloping across the desert
to the Jackpot. They came at first on horseback, singly, and later by
twos and threes. A buckboard appeared on the horizon, the driver leaning
forward as he urged on his team.

"Hart," decided the driller, "and comin' hell-for-leather."

Other teams followed, buggies, surreys, light wagons, farm wagons, and
at last heavily laden lumber wagons. Business in Malapi was "shot to
pieces," as one merchant expressed it. Everybody who could possibly get
away was out to see the big gusher.

There was an immediate stampede to make locations in the territory
adjacent. The wildcatter flourished. Companies were formed in ten minutes
and the stock subscribed for in half an hour. From the bootblack at
the hotel to the banker, everybody wanted stock in every company drilling
within a reasonable distance of Jackpot Number Three. Many legitimate
incorporations appeared on the books of the Secretary of State, and along
with these were scores of frauds intended only to gull the small investor
and separate him from his money. Saloons and gambling-houses, which did
business with such childlike candor and stridency, became offices for
the sale and exchange of stock. The boom at Malapi got its second wind.
Workmen, investors, capitalists, and crooks poured in to take advantage
of the inflation brought about by the new strike in a hitherto unknown
field. For the fame of Jackpot Number Three had spread wide. The
production guesses ranged all the way from ten to fifty thousand
barrels a day, most of which was still going to waste on the desert.

For Burns and Hart had not yet gained control over the flow, though an
army of men in overalls and slickers fought the gusher night and day. The
flow never ceased for a moment. The well steadily spouted a stream of
black liquid into the air from the subterranean chamber into which the
underground lake poured.

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. Th