Without a Trace Read online

  "What's up, guys?" he asked. "Anything new on Jerry?"

  "Afraid not, Nat," Frank said. "We'd like to see Mr. Owens."

  At that moment the door behind Nat opened and an older man stepped out. He wore jeans and a work shirt, with a bandanna tied neatly around his throat. "Well, now you're seeing him," he said. "Nobody can call me unneighborly."

  Oscar Owens smiled at the Hardys. "So you're the guys asking all those questions all over Armstrong County." He opened the door and led the boys down a wide hall and into a spacious room furnished with several leather armchairs and a large oak desk. "Now, what can I do for you two?" he asked, settling into the chair behind his desk.

  "You know that Jerry Greene is still missing, of course," Frank began cautiously.

  "Sure, I know," Owens said, with what sounded like genuine sympathy. "Too bad. My guess is that he got thrown, wandered around, and then the next day lost his bearings in that dust storm." He shook his head. "It was a bad one - one of the worst in a couple of years."

  "But why would he still be wandering the next day in the storm?" Joe wanted to know. "Also, Ray says Jerry was a good rider."

  Owens nodded. "Even a good rider can get thrown if his horse gets spooked. He was like his father - a good man. It doesn't seem likely that he'd wander off, the way some do."

  "The Circle C has been pretty well searched," Frank said. "We wondered if you'd mind if we had a look on the Triple O."

  Owens lost some of his good humor. "I don't see any harm in it. But you'd better let me know so I can have one of my hands go with you. It's awful easy to get lost around here if you don't know the country." He gave them a measured look. "No point in us having to go on another search - for you two."

  Frank wondered briefly whether that was a threat, but the man's eyes still seemed friendly. "Maybe we could start in the morning."

  Owens nodded. "No need to hurry," he said regretfully. "If Greene's out there, there's not much chance that he's alive." He pushed the chair away from his desk and started to stand up.

  "Have you had any truck traffic down here lately?" Joe asked, carefully casual.

  Owens sat back down, giving Joe a long, hard look. "As a matter of fact, my hands say they've seen some tracks. Maybe a stock truck took a wrong turn. Why do you ask?"

  Frank shrugged, his eyes on Owens's face. "It was a big truck that dumped salt water into that tank," he said quietly.

  Owens just nodded. "You know, I've had some trouble with Roy Carlson," he said. "That nonsense with the fences is just the latest. But things have been going worse for Roy. His horses pulled up lame, and after that came the dead cows."

  He shook his head. "I can't see Roy hauling in a tanker load of salt water to kill his own stock." A slow, angry red flush moved up his face. "And I know I had nothing to do with it."

  The silence was thick. "Well, I guess we got what we came for," Frank finally said. He stood up.

  Owens didn't even show them to the door.

  On the way out Frank spotted a gun rack on the wall by the door, filled with a variety of shotguns and deer rifles. Something about one rifle caught Frank's attention. The gun had a polished wooden stock that extended halfway down the shiny black barrel - and an odd magazine. It was wedge shaped, tapered sharply from the back to the front.

  Frank stepped over and picked up the rifle. As he hefted it, he saw a stamp, just in front of the bolt action. It was the broad arrow, the British governmental sign.

  "What are you doing with that?" a sharp voice came from behind them.

  Owens came up to the door and snatched the gun from Frank. "I brought this home from the war," he said angrily. "It's my favorite gun - and I'm not going to have some kid steal it." He raised his voice. "Nat!"

  The foreman appeared in the doorway as Owens pointed at the Hardys. "See these two off the ranch."

  Joe glanced at Frank curiously as they were escorted to their truck. "What's the story about that gun?"

  "I guess you didn't get a chance to see it clearly," Frank answered in a low voice. "It's a British Three-oh-three, Mark Three Lee-Enfield." He glanced over his shoulder to where Owens was standing on the porch, holding the rifle.

  "That's the gun that shot me out of the air."

  Chapter 10

  "Guys, I don't know what happened in there," Nat Wilkin said as the Hardys got into their pickup. "But I do want to apologize for Mr. Owens. He just hasn't been himself lately."

  "It's his ranch," Joe said, starting the engine. "And we're getting off it."

  As the Triple O ranch house disappeared behind them, Joe shook his head. "The way Owens blew up over that rifle - he'd have to be a complete nut case to call attention to it if he'd used it on you." He swerved to miss a steer that had wandered onto the road and stood watching them with what looked like antagonism. "On the other hand," he added, "how many of those souvenir guns would there be in this area?"

  Frank looked out the window. Nat Wilkin was following them in another truck. "Yet the man's reaction to the dirty tricks sounded genuine. I can't see him taking target practice on the ultralight." He sighed. "It just doesn't jibe - all we really know about Owens is that he has a violent temper."

  Joe was momentarily distracted by a roadrunner, big as a rooster, that jumped out of the ditch. It zoomed down the road ahead of them, going as fast as the pickup. "What would Owens's motive be? Drive Roy out of business? Get control of the federal land?"

  "A grazing lease for near-desert? That doesn't wash," Frank said thoughtfully.

  "What about the mineral leases? Suppose Owens knows something nobody else knows?"

  "It doesn't seem likely," Frank said doubtfully. "The big oil companies must have surveyed this area years back." He frowned. "Although - maybe Barbara knows something about those mineral leases. She cut the conversation off when I brought them up."

  Joe glanced at his watch, then pushed the accelerator down. "Speaking of Barbara, we'd better head back and change - if we want to get to the dance tonight, that is."

  ***

  Barbara's house was a small, yellow-painted frame house in a well-kept, older part of Armstrong. As the Hardys drove up the quiet street, they saw a red four-wheel-drive pickup parked in front.

  "Well, looks like she's home," Joe said, turning off the ignition. He gave his brother a slow smile. "So, do we kick in the door and interrogate her?"

  Frank grinned back. "What are you asking me for? I'm just riding shotgun. You're the one with the date." He settled back in the seat and settled his new cowboy hat over his eyes. "I'll wait here. But if you're not out in ten minutes, I'm calling the sheriff."

  Joe laughed. "Ten minutes, huh? I guess I can handle that." He got out of the truck, giving his boots a quick rub, and started up the walk.

  "I'm coming," a voice called in response to Joe's knock. The door opened and Barbara stood there, giving him a look. "Just like a real cowboy," she said, grinning at Joe's clothes.

  He looked down at his fancy plaid shirt, fresh jeans, and new cowboy boots, then at Barb's plain T-shirt and comfortable jeans. "A little overdressed, huh?" he asked.

  "Oh, you'll be fine. Every girl in town will want to dance with you."

  Barbara's excited face showed she had something more important on her mind than a dance. "There's something I want to show you - " She looked around. "Where's Frank? I want him to see this, too."

  "He's out in the truck, waiting for us," Joe said, puzzled. "See what?" He glanced past her. On one side was the living room, which seemed empty. At the end of a short hallway was the kitchen, empty, too, as far as he could tell.

  "But he'll want to see this," Barbara insisted, sounding impatient. "Really, Joe, I think this is something you both-"

  "Why don't you show me first," Joe suggested, beginning to feel faintly uneasy. He knew this couldn't be a trap, but if it was, it was better to have Frank out in the truck.

  Barbara stood back and opened the door wider. "Okay," she said, sounding resigned. "Come on. I'll sh
ow you." She reached for his hand and pulled him quickly into the house.

  Nervously, Joe threw a quick glance behind the door as she shut it. Nothing. And definitely nothing in the living room, either.

  Barbara pulled him down the hall and into the kitchen, where the table was piled with yellowing chart paper, like the kind he'd seen used in a polygraph machine. The paper was covered with rows and rows of weird-looking squiggly lines.

  Suddenly Joe had a flash of the strange symbols he'd seen at Charlie's shack. Stacks of wiggly lines - these were very similar to the ones Charlie had painted.

  "What's all this stuff?" he asked.

  "This is what I want to show you," Barbara said, sounding excited again. "I've been working all afternoon on them, ever since I left you and Frank at the restaurant."

  She spread out the papers. "After Frank asked about the mineral leases, something clicked. So I went down to the basement at the Bureau of Land Management office and dug out these old logs. Most of them date back to the 1930s. From the looks of them, I'd guess that nobody's examined them in years." She gave him a modest smile. "You can call me brilliant, if you want to."

  "Brilliant?" Joe laughed. "Maybe I'd better call you cross-eyed. What's this mess of old paper? And what are all these squiggles?"

  "This 'mess of old paper,' " Barbara told him with a little annoyance, "is a batch of ancient seismograph logs." She ran a finger along the wavy lines. "And those squiggles are records of soundings that indicate where certain mineral deposits are located."

  Joe shook his head. "I still don't get it."

  Barbara's dark eyes were dancing with excitement. "Unless I'm dead wrong, Joe, the Circle C is floating on an ocean of oil!"

  Chapter 11

  "This is incredible!" Joe wrapped an arm around Barbara's shoulder and gave her a huge hug.

  Suddenly he remembered that Frank was waiting in the truck.

  "Hang on a sec," he said, and hurried to the front door. He stepped outside and closed the door behind him to show Frank that nobody had the drop on him. Then he beckoned his brother to come in and stepped back inside, leaving the door open. In a moment Frank had joined them in the kitchen.

  "Look what Barbara found in the basement of the BLM." Joe pointed to the piles of paper on the kitchen table. He shot him a triumphant what-did-I-tell-you look. "She thought of them when you mentioned the mineral leases this morning."

  "What are they? Old seismograph logs?" Frank asked, picking up one of the long sheets and studying it. His face was expressionless, but Joe could tell that it was excitement that was tensing the muscles in his brother's jaw. "Somebody's already explored for oil in the area, then?"

  "Yes." Barbara nodded. "These logs were made in the Caprock area, back around 1930. I'm not exactly sure of the coordinates, but as far as I can tell, the exploration took place on the south end of the old Circle C, near the sand hills."

  "Can you read these?" Frank asked, still studying them.

  "I took a geology course last year, and we did a lot of work with seismograph reports." Barbara pointed to the set of squiggles that Frank was looking at. "Those wavy lines, for instance - they indicate a big salt dome."

  "What's salt got to do with oil?" Joe asked.

  "A lot," Barbara told him. "Under great heat and pressure, salt deposits ooze around, sort of like molasses. When the salt finds a weak spot underground, it rises up like a giant bubble until it's stopped by harder rock. As the salt bubble heads upward, oil can flow up too, collecting around the top of the dome. So when you find a formation like this, you'll often find a pool of oil at the top."

  Frank grinned. "As I recall, Spindletop was a salt dome."

  Joe frowned. "Spindletop?"

  Barbara nodded. "The first - and the biggest - oil field discovered in the Southwest, back in 1901. It was a salt dome formation."

  Joe thumped the pile of yellowing logs. "But if they found this dome back in 1930," he asked, "why didn't they sink any wells?"

  "Look at these notes," Barbara said, pointing to a faded pencil scribble in the margin of the log Frank was looking at. "The top of the dome is about eleven thousand feet below ground level."

  Frank whistled. "There's your answer, Joe. Back in the thirties, nobody could drill that deep. The technology was still pretty primitive."

  "Right," Barbara chimed in. "And even if they could've sunk a well that deep, the price of oil was so low that it wouldn't have justified the cost."

  "But the price of oil is a lot higher now." Joe leaned back thoughtfully against the refrigerator.

  "And they're drilling that deep, and deeper, if the formation looks good enough," Barbara said. "Especially in the U.S., with this push to find domestic oil."

  "These seismographs" - Frank tapped the log on the table - "they're made by exploding subsurface charges and measuring the shock waves. Right?"

  "You mean, bombs?" said Joe.

  "These logs were probably made that way," Barbara told them. "Nowadays, geologists generally use large, specially equipped trucks. They drop heavy weights that cause the vibrations."

  With growing excitement, Joe looked at Frank. He could see what his brother was getting at.

  "But they could still use the old method, couldn't they?" Joe asked. "And the people who were setting the charges would have to know how to use dynamite, wouldn't they?"

  Barbara nodded. "If you didn't have the new equipment, I guess you'd have to do it the old way." She looked puzzled. "Why?"

  Joe grinned triumphantly. Barbara couldn't be faking this kind of innocence. Whatever dirty dealing was going on, she wasn't involved in it.

  "Oh, we've just been getting a lot of dynamite lately," he said casually. "Somebody stuck some in the stove at the old homestead on the Circle C, where we were camping. Then they wired it to blow up our pickup when the door opened."

  Barbara's dark eyes widened in horror.

  "You mean, somebody's been trying to kill the two of you?"

  Joe laughed. "Either that, or they just like the noise dynamite makes when it blows up.

  "Speaking of the noise dynamite makes, Frank broke in, "do you remember the thunder we heard that first night at the homestead shack? I'll bet we were hearing somebody setting off an explosive charge."

  Barbara let out her breath. "Somebody must be looking for oil!"

  "Sounds that way," Joe said. He frowned. "What would a seismography site look like? A bunch of big holes blasted in the ground?"

  Barbara shook her head. "Not at all. The bore holes are only about three inches in diameter, maybe a hundred feet deep or so, and about a hundred feet apart. But on the surface, all you'd see is the hole, with a small pile of drill tailings - dirt the drill rig brought up."

  "What about the drill rig?" Frank wanted to know. "Would they need to bring in a big one?"

  "Not to drill small test holes - they can drill them dry, with a rig that can be hauled on a truck."

  Joe scratched his head. He could see that they were getting somewhere. But there was a big hole in their logic. "But what good would it do somebody to find out about the oil?" he asked. "It would still cost them a fortune to get it out, wouldn't it?"

  "But you could get plenty rich without drilling," Barbara pointed out. "Once you've got reliable evidence that the oil is there, you buy the mineral rights or leases for next to nothing. Then you take your evidence to any big oil company and watch the value of your leases shoot sky-high."

  "That explains the secrecy, but it still doesn't explain all the nasty tricks," Joe said. "Roy owns the middle part of the Circle C - that's where you're saying most of the oil is. He leases the northern end from the state - "

  "And the southern end from the federal government," Frank finished for him. "All the trouble has been on the federal land - to keep him from renewing his grazing lease."

  "But why?" Barbara said. "Oil drilling isn't like strip mining. There'd be lots of room for the cattle to graze around the oil wells."

  "Unless," - J
oe snapped his fingers - "they don't want Roy to know about the oil wells!" He swiveled around to face Frank and Barbara. "Try this out. Part of the oil deposit extends onto the federal land. If nobody's grazing out there, who'd know that somebody was drilling for oil?"

  "And maybe sucking it up from someone else's land!" Frank nodded. "That would fi nally nail down a motive. I think we'd better check this out. Pronto."

  "Right," Joe said.

  "Hold on, cowboys!" Barbara said, grabbing them both by the arm. "If you're running around out there in the desert tonight, who's taking me to the dance?"

  The brothers exchanged reluctant looks.

  "You won't find anything out there in the dark, except for a few coyotes," Barbara said, bullying them good-naturedly. "And, anyway, you're going to need my help."

  "Your help?" Frank asked. "Hey, wait a minute. I don't think - "

  Barbara planted her feet firmly. "You don't know your way around that desert. I do. You'd get lost in a minute. I won't." She gave them a pitying look. "You've never even seen a seismography site. I have. I know what we're looking for, and you don't."

  "The girl's got a point," Joe admitted to Frank, trying to keep from laughing.

  "Sounds like blackmail to me," Frank muttered.

  Barbara gave them both an angelic smile. "It's called compromise," she said sweetly. "Tomorrow we search. Tonight we party! You guys haven't lived until you've danced the cotton-eyed Joe."

  Frank grinned in mock surrender. "Okay," he said. "Tonight we party. First thing in the morning we look for bad guys."

  ***

  It was just before dawn when Joe heard the sound of a jeep outside the bunkhouse. The horn honked twice.

  Frank lifted the curtain. "She's here," he announced. "Right on time, too."

  "She would be," Joe grunted, trying to overcome his sleepiness with a second cup of coffee. He wiggled his toes. His feet were still sore from dancing the cotton-eyed Joe.

  While Frank called the Circle C ranch house to tell Roy where they were going, Joe stepped outside into the chill, predawn dark. He rubbed his eyes, wondering if he was still dreaming. Barbara's jeep was painted a bright candy-apple red, with fancy black stripes and a black roll bar. Barb herself looked as if she were dressed for work, in a khaki jumpsuit and hiking boots, with a soft hat mashed down over her hair. A pair of binoculars were slung around her neck.