Wichita Falls's facilities for public entertainment reflected perhaps as correctly as anything else the general chaos consequent upon its swift expansion into a city. Such hotels as had been capable of caring for the transient trade of pre-petroleum days were full and carried waiting lists like exclusive clubs; rooming houses and private dwellings were crowded. A new and modern fireproof hotel was stretching skeleton fingers of steel skyward, but meanwhile the task of sheltering, and especially of feeding three times a day, the hungry hordes that bulged the sides of the little city was a difficult one. To wrest possession of a cafe table for two at the rush hour was an undertaking almost as hazardous as jumping a mining claim, but Calvin Gray succeeded and eventually he and "Bob" found themselves facing each other over a discolored tablecloth, reading a soiled menu card to a perspiring waiter. It was in some ways an ideal retreat for a tete-a-tete, for the bellowed orders, the rattle of crockery, the voice of the hungry food battlers, and the clash of their steel made intimate conversation easy. Gray noted with approval the ease with which his dainty companion adapted herself to the surroundings and remarked upon it. "After four years in the East it took me a little while to get used to it," she confessed. "The Wichita I left was a quiet town; the one I came home to was a madhouse. At first the excitement frightened me, for I felt as if I were being run over, tossed aside. But now that I've fallen in with the chase, why--I think it is splendid." "Just what are you doing and how do you do it?" Gray wanted to know. Barbara was glad to tell him about her brief but eventful experience since that morning at the Nelson bank when she had executed her coup, and she recited the story with enthusiasm. "Having no capital to go on," she explained, "I've merely bought and sold on commission so far, but I'm not always going to be a broker. I'm making good, and some day dad and I will be big operators. I've been able to buy a car, and most of my time I'm out in the field. They tell me I'm as good an oil scout as some of the' men working for the big companies; but, of course, I'm not. I merely have an advantage; drillers tell me more than they'd tell a man." "Of course, with your father along you're safe in going anywhere, but to go through the fields alone--" "Oh, dad doesn't go!" "What?" Gray looked up incredulously, but "Bob" nodded her head vigorously. "Dad hates automobiles; they frighten him. So I go out alone while he runs the office." "Extraordinary! But, my dear girl, it's dangerous."