California, Southern -- Fiction; Motion picture industry -- Fiction; Petroleum industry and trade -- Fiction; Political fiction
Dad got out of the car, and told Bunny to take their things down to the
Rascum place, and break the news to Ruth; she’d be upset, especially if
she knew the fellow. Bunny understood that Dad didn’t want him around
when that torn body came out of the hole; and since he couldn’t do any
good, he turned the car in silence, and drove away. In his mind he saw
the men screwing the “grab” onto the drill-stem—a tool which was built
to go over obstacles that fell into the hole, and to catch hold of them
with sharp hooks. They might get Joe Gundha by the legs and they might
get him by the face—ugh, the less you thought about a thing like that,
the better for your enjoyment of the oil-game!
Dad came to the cabin after a couple of hours, and lay down for a while
to rest. They had got the body out, he said, and had telephoned for the
coroner; he would swear in several of the men as a jury, and hear the
testimony of others, and look at the body, and then give a burial
permit. Paul had been to the dead man’s bunk and looked over his things,
and put them all into a box to be shipped to his wife; Dad had in his
pocket half a dozen letters that had been found among the things, and
because he didn’t want Bunny to think that money came easy, or that life
was all play, he gave him these letters, and Bunny sat off in a corner
and read them: pitiful little messages, scrawled in a childish hand,
telling how the doctor said that Susie’s heart would be weak for a long
time after the flu, and the baby was getting two more teeth and was
awful cross, and Aunt Mary had just been in to see her, and said that
Willie was in Chicago and doing good; there were cross-marks and circles
that were kisses from mamma, and from Susie and from the baby. One
sentence there was to cheer up Dad and Bunny: “I am glad you got such a
good boss.”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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