Latest / The American Trail Collection / The American Trail - The Rich Desert
Transcript
- The American Trail, The American Trail blazed in blood, defended in blood. Chapter ten. The rich Desert, Arizona, the year eighteen hundred and seventy nine. The desert endless, thousands of square miles, yellow red sandstone, rock formations, cactus, The desert graveyard of legends, been here one hundred and fifty million years, hasn't changed much in the last million. Graveyard of men too. Water, water, white water, sunburn a white man sunburned, almost black water. Water. There's water in the desert if he can find it there, somewhere in the purple, shimmering haze. Water. It'll be over pretty soon. Verse, we'll drive him mad. The sun will do the rest. What how you can hear it? Water? The man scoops the water up with his hands. What is stuff? What is it? What help to me? Now? I found oil? What I want water? How are you killing? Boy? Well? My range house, I'm pink kitchen. Some of my man found you wandering about the desert. So the man is alive, safe and peak kitchen is adobe house. What's your name? Son, Charlie Smith? You tah how long you been down here in the desert? About a year? Me and another Suh had a running with a patches. He got killed. You. Uh, you were raving about oil when they brought you in. I found some recaller rock spring somewhere oils. Keep it running into it. Gotta find it again. Might be lucky, son, might find it again. I'll find it. Hey, what are you doing here in the desert? Oh? I came here from Kentucky twenty five years ago, claimed a thousand acres of Landlord. Look out the window there with green cabbages, green vegetables, farm land out here in this desert lands in a fertile valley. Summer rains take care of it. I've licked the desert sun and pays me ten thousand a year. Clear profit. Must have been hard working. I have known fellas spent a lifetime in the desert looking to get rich quick and dyed broke. Who' sat over there by the fence, And that's Mary, Mary Hawkins. She's like my own daughter. Well, isn't she raised Hersn't she was three years old? I had to take it from the patches of folks were massacred, wagon train wiped out. Now married, golden hair, blue eyes, white sombrero, rose colored riding steady. The girl walks over to them, smiling. She says, you look much better now. He says, I feel better too. Are you gonna stay with us? I'd like to, But what? But I found oil. The desert's a big place. I'm not scared of the desert. Yes, oil is out there in the desert, somewhere in the hot sand, some somewhere among the rotting bones, the pitiful hopes of other men who were not afraid of the desert. He found it once, he can find it again. The man searches for it in the glare of the sun and drifting columns of heat. The desert knows how to swallow a man. The desert knows how to keep a secret. The oil's here among these rocks. It must be in the night, the incredibly beautiful desert. Night stars so close overhead that a man feels he can touch them by merely raising his hand. The man who feels the firmament only a fingertip away, makes no more than a tiny spark of light with his sage brush fire. And the secret of the desert stays there, somewhere in the limitless darkness. Oil. I'll find it. I'll find it. I'll have millions, I'll find the oil, oil, oil, But the merciless heat of a billion candle power sun beats and bakes the man until it changes the very words in his mind. Water, water, and a pitiful creature once more crawls back to the kitchen ranch to die, or perhaps to live finally, to live. You try it, Son, Yeah, I tried. That's all a man can do, Charlie Tay. I land up near Tucson. I'll start it for you wedding gift. I want you and Mary to have a good start. Two years. They're settled on their own range, now, tending cattle, feeding hogs, raising crops to sell in Tucson. But up there beyond the farm, still there the desert. Stop it stop it. What standing there in the door looking out there. I watched you for weeks, you lay awake nights, you get up in the night. I've seen you standing there at the window looking out that oil. There's nothing there but desert, and that desert will kill you. Mary. Lately I seem to be remembering certain landmarks. Maybe if I made one more trip, the desert has come to light. It's spring. Yes, yes, this is the place I've found it somewhere here, so this is where his oil is. At last, Mary, I'm gonna drew the money. We've got the money. Then hired a quickman set up a forty foot derick. The whole season's crop of sickless paid for this. The big skeleton Howard will operate the cable weight, the steam engine that will drive it, caverns for men to live in, huts, the store machinery. And it all costs money. What ambitious man ever stopped to think of money when the mortgage could be signed with two cents with it in The hole is done, the first steel bit is lowered into the Cablewight is ready to start driving the bif downwards, downward into the yurk midsummer now blazing merciless sun. The drilling goes on. Men fall sick, they're sent home, fresh men come out. Drillings stop the more set it come this heaven cos there's no while here. If you better off, driller in Texas, stop that more. It's all that talking about up in Tucson. One of the new men was talking about it. Oil all over Texas. Quit here, go somewhere else, Admit failure, abandon all this billing equipment in the desert, go to Texas to start all over again. What will Mary say? Mary, It's true. I've kicked their finding oil all over Texally. I won't listen to anymore. You might stand anymore. Every penny we had gone. We're in debt. We've had to sell good cattle to paint. Mary. Listen this time, I know where the oil is. Crazy. If you don't stand, tell this ranch use the money to buy land in Texas. We'll start ruling there. We've got to we sell this ranch, will have nothing left. I can't stand this anymore. The man doesn't know when to give up. Well, if oils to be found, Texas is the place. He's acquired some land in Texas, drilling equipt to set up. Now, leet I go. He would it take? You think we would drill deep in the next there without a twenty beat, thirty feet drilling, drilling, still drilling. Oil has coming not twenty miles away, thirty five three forty forty five. Now whyo, who? But he had a black smoky fluid shoots up oot of the ground skywards, But dusher has come in. It's tall. You look at the oil where rich all over there. They look at his face. He can't believe what I see. And the man kneels there and the dirty pressure that he has wrenched from the desert with his hands and his heart and almost his life. The man has cracked the desert's secret. And he prays and he cries, and his men will when they have fooled the mighty desert. The man laughs and try, Oh, mister, I knew I could do it. I found oil and got it out of the desert. Well, mister, what do you think of my oil? What only water? Water mount? Why? Johnny Weill? He said, I don't believe it. I don't believe it. And the man is sitting in the stuff now or even he can see that this is not oil, just his desperate hope that the desert would fulfill a great promise. But the desert had given no promise. No, there's no oil. And the man who felt that he had found a great destiny, now contemplates the long years of failure ahead. A sulfur, You got good sulfur deposits? I think, So, what good is Sofi than me? What good is sulfur? It'll probably make you a very rich man. So the man has won, challenged the desert and beatment. This sulfur of his needed for making newsprint, phosphates, textiles, and within his lifetime for the products of another century, new medicines, rubber tires, gasoline for aeroplanes. No question of it, Charlie Smith has won. There were others in the years since then, a thousand Charlie Smiths, a thousand thousands. Lured by the riches of the great Southwest, they dared the desert time and time again. Some found oil, gold, silver, copper, zinc, salt, and took them for industrial America. And some found nothing, And the desert just laid there, silent, watching, still watching, half amused, brooding on its secret, knowing man, with all his speed means, with all his work, has found less than one million of the wealth beneath its sands, and the rest the desert holds. Who knows? You have just heard the tenth chapter in the Story of the American Nation, brought to you by the Ladies auxiliary to the veterans of foreign Wars.