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“Then you mix the water with all sorts of fancy chemicals to make something that’s called mud but really isn’t,” said Sandy, remembering tales of the oil country that his father had told him.

“You’re forgetting that we’re a ‘poor boy’ outfit,” said Hall. “Chemicals cost money. We dig shale from the river bed and grind it up and use it for a mix. You’ll both have a nice new set of blisters before this day is over.”

They followed a good paved road to the little town of Shiprock, which got its name from a huge butte that looked amazingly like a ship under full sail. Crossing the San Juan over the new bridge that Pepper had pointed out the day before, they turned northwest onto a badly rutted trail. Here and there they saw flocks of sheep, watched by half-naked Indian children and their dogs. Occasionally they passed a six-sided Navajo house surrounded by a few plowed acres.

“Those huts are called hogans,” Ralph explained, placing the accent on the last syllable. “Notice that they have no windows and that their only doors always face toward the rising sun. Never knock on a hogan door. That’s considered bad luck. Just walk in when you go to visit a Navajo.”

“Whe-e-ew!” Sandy panted when an hour had passed and he had peeled out of his coat, shirt, and finally his undershirt. “How can it get so hot at this altitude?”

“Call this hot?” jeered Salmon. “Last time I was down in Phoenix it was 125 degrees in the shade, and raining cats and dogs at the same time. I had to park my car a block from the hotel, so I ran for it. But when I got into the lobby my clothes were absolutely dry. The rain evaporated as fast as it fell!”

“That,” said Hall, “is what I’d call evaporating the truth just a leetle bit.”

“Mr. Salmon....” Quiz hesitated. “Could I ask you a personal question?”

“You can if you call me Ralph,” answered the tall driller as he slowed to let a Navajo woman drive a flock of goats across the trail. She was dressed in a brightly colored blouse and long Spanish skirt, as if she were going to a party instead of doing a chore, and she did not look up as they passed.

“Well, how is it you don’t talk more—like an Indian?” Quiz asked.

“How do Indians talk?” A part of the Ute’s smile faded and his black eyes narrowed ever so slightly.

“Why, I dunno—” the boy’s face turned red with embarrassment—“like Chief Quail, I guess. I mean ... I thought....”

“When you’ve served a hitch in the Navy, Quiz, you get to talking just like everyone else, whether you’re an Indian or an Eskimo.”

“Were you in Korea, Ralph?” Sandy asked to break the tension.

“I was not! I served my time working as a roustabout on oil wells in one of the Naval Reserves.”

“And, since that wasn’t enough punishment,” Hall said as he grinned, “Ralph came home and took advantage of the GI bill to go to school in Texas and became a driller.”

“Yep,” Salmon agreed. “And I soon found out that an Indian oil driller is about as much in demand as a two-headed calf.” He threaded the car through the narrow crevice between two tall buttes of red sandstone that stuck up out of the desert like gnarled fingers. “I was just about down to that fried caterpillar diet that Chief Quail keeps kidding me about when a certain man whose name I won’t mention gave me my first job.”

“And you turned out to be the best all-round oilman I ever hired,” said Hall as he slapped the other on his bronzed, smoothly muscled back. “I figured that if Iroquois Indians make the finest steelworkers in the construction business, a Ute should know how to run a drill rig. I wasn’t mistaken.”

Salmon was at a loss for words for once. His ears turned pink and he concentrated on the road, which was becoming almost impassable, even for a jeep.

“That’s my reservation over there across the Colorado line,” he said at last, turning his head and pointing with outthrust lips toward the north and east.

“Nice country—for prairie dogs. Although the southern Utes are doing all right these days from royalties on the big oil field that’s located just over that ridge. They tell me, too, that the reservation holds one of the biggest coal deposits in the western United States.”

“Why didn’t you stay on the reservation, then?” Quiz wanted to know.

“I like to move around. People ask me more questions that way.”

“Oh.” Quiz stopped his questioning.

“Up ahead and to the left,” Ralph went on, “is the actual Four Corners, the only place in the country where the boundaries of four states meet. It also is the farthest point from a railroad in the whole United States—one hundred and eighty miles or so, I understand. How about stopping there for lunch, boss, as soon as we cross into Utah? Nice and quiet.” He winked at Quiz to take any sting out of his earlier words.

After they had eaten every one of the Misses Emery’s chicken and ham sandwiches, Hall took over as their driver and guide.

“My lease is up near the village of Bluff, on the north side of the river,” he explained. “I’m convinced, though, that most of the oil and uranium is in Navajo and Hopi territory south of the San Juan. I’ve had Donovan down there running seismographic surveys and he says the place is rich as Croesus. That’s why I’ve been talking turkey to Chief Quail—trying to get him to get the Navajo and Hopi councils together so we can develop the area.”

“Is Quail chief of all the Navajos?” Sandy asked. “He didn’t seem to be exactly....” He stammered to a stop while Ralph chuckled.

“Oh, no,” Hall answered. “Quail is just a chief of one of the many Navajo clans, or families. The real power is held by the tribal council, of which Paul Jones is chairman. But Chief Quail swings a lot of weight on the reservation.”

“Hah!” Ralph snorted. “Chief Quail’s a stuffed shirt. They made a uranium strike on his farm last year, so what does he do?... Buys himself a new pickup truck! I’d have celebrated by getting a Jaguar.”

“A Jaguar is like a British Buick,” said Quiz, suddenly coming into his element as the talk got around to cars. “A Bentley would have been better.”

“I know, I know,” Ralph answered. “Or a Rolls Royce if he could afford a chauffeur. I read the ads too.”

They followed the river, now deep in its gorge and getting considerably wider, for another twenty miles. They were out of the reservation now and passed a number of prosperous farms. The road remained awful, however, being a long string of potholes filled to the brim with yellow dust. The holes couldn’t be seen until the jeep was right on top of them. Hall had to keep slamming on his brakes at the risk of dislocating his passengers’ necks.

“You should travel through this country when it rains,” he said cheerfully. “Cars sink into the mud until all you can see is the tips of their radio antennas.”

“We’d get to the well before sunset if you drove as well as you tell tall stories,” Ralph commented dryly.

They finally made the field headquarters of the Four Corners Drilling Company with two hours of sunlight to spare. The boys looked at the place in disappointment. An unpainted sheet-iron shack with a sign reading Office over its only door squatted close to the top of the San Juan gorge. Not far from it was an odd-looking contraption of pipes, valves and dials about as big as a home furnace. There was no sign of a well derrick as far as they could see across deserted stretches of sand, sagebrush,