His handshake to Henry and Francis was hearty as well as dignified, as he took two full minutes ornately to state that any friend of his dear friend Enrico was his friend. When Enrico asked the haciendado about the trails up toward the Cordilleras and mentioned oil, Francis pricked up his ears. “Don’t tell me, Senor,” he began, “that they have located oil in Panama?” “They have,” the haciendado nodded gravely. “We knew of the oil ooze, and had known of it for generations. But it was the Hermosillo Company that sent its Gringo engineers in secretly and then bought up the land. They say it is a great field. But I know nothing of oil myself. They have many wells, and have bored much, and so much oil have they that it is running away over the landscape. They say they cannot choke it entirely down, such is the volume and pressure. What they need is the pipe-line to ocean-carriage, which they have begun to build. In the meantime it flows away down the canyons, an utter loss of incredible proportion.” “Have they built any tanks?” Francis demanded, his mind running eagerly on Tampico Petroleum, to which most of his own fortune was pledged, and of which, despite the rising stock-market, he had heard nothing since his departure from New York. The haciendado shook his head. “Transportation,” he explained. “The freight from tide-water to the gushers by mule-back has been prohibitive. But they have impounded much of it. They have lakes of oil, great reservoirs in the hollows of the hills, earthen-dammed, and still they cannot choke down the flow, and still the precious substance flows down the canyons.” “Have they roofed these reservoirs?” Francis inquired, remembering a disastrous fire in the early days of Tampico Petroleum. “No, Senor.” Francis shook his head disapprovingly. “They should be roofed,” he said. “A match from the drunken or revengeful hand of any peon could set the whole works off. It’s poor business, poor business.” “But I am not the Hermosillo,” the haciendado said. “For the Hermosillo Company, I meant, Senor,” Francis explained. “I am an oil-man. I have paid through the nose to the tune of hundreds of thousands for similar accidents or crimes. One never knows just how they happen. What one does know is that they do happen——” What more Francis might have said about the expediency of protecting oil reservoirs from stupid or wilful peons, was never to be known; for, at the moment, the chief overseer of the plantation, stick in hand, rode up, half his interest devoted to the newcomers, the other half to the squad of peons working close at hand. “Senor Ramirez, will you favor me by dismounting,” his employer, the haciendado, politely addressed him, at the same time introducing him to the strangers as soon as he had dismounted.