Grayson poked around at the exposed seam of black coal, picking up small chunks to study. Finally the cold temperature drove him back to the truck. He scrambled inside the cab, shivering and rubbing his hands together, then blowing on them.
“Ready?” Jessy rested her hand on the gearshift.
“Wait.” He reached inside his coat pocket and brought out a shiny black chunk. “Do you know what this is?”
“Coal.” She gave him a look which questioned his intelligence.
“It’s buried sunshine.” His voice was enthusiastic. “Coal is the sun’s energy that was trapped in ancient forests eons ago—giant ferns and trees. In an endless cycle, plants died and rotted and more grew on top of them to die and rot. Then came floods of water forming inland seas. The pressure of the water compacted the buried layers of plant life, first making peat, then coal.” He looked at her. “This piece of coal holds the energy from sunlight of four hundred million years ago.” “Let me see it.” With a frown of curiosity, Jessy took a closer look at the ordinary lump of coal.
The next morning, Leo Grayson was in the cool, air-conditioned office of E. J. Dyson, going over his final report and recommendations. In contrast to his previous day’s attire, he was dressed in a lightweight business suit and tie, his head bare and showing the thinning patch at the crown of his brown hair.
The executive office of Dy-Corp Development Ltd. was plushly luxurious, displaying Texas money from its cloud-white carpet of two-inch-thick pile to its walls paneled with genuine walnut. The furniture was thickly padded and covered in the finest-grained leather. The walnut desk was Texas-sized, and the big swivel chair behind it was designed especially for its occupant so the slightly built man wouldn’t appear dwarfed by his own desk.
Mixed in with the room’s rich appointments were the odd pieces of Texas flash—like the Meissen vase sitting atop a table supported by twisted cowhorns or the spotted horsehide blanket thrown over the back of the leather sofa. The office lived up to the image created by its occupant.
Stricklin sat tall and erect i
n the leather-covered side chair, the wire-rimmed glasses increasing his studious air. He completed his perusal of Grayson’s report and passed it to Dyson with a short nod, silently communicating his opinion to his partner.
“I can’t say I’m surprised by your findings, Grayson.” E.J. leafed through the report they had already gone over in detail. “I had a hunch we had exhausted the potential on Calder’s ranch. It’s a good thing I started buying up leases in Wyoming. We’ll go ahead and move the balance of the men and equipment down there.”
“Whatever you decide.” Leo shrugged. His only recommendation had been to abandon the Calder ranch site and not attempt any future drilling, but he hadn’t suggested where to go from there. It wasn’t his job to become involved in such decisions.
“Are you satisfied in your own mind there isn’t anything worth going after under any of the land Calder owns?” Dyson pinned the geologist with a hard look to make doubly sure Grayson didn’t have any reservations. It was a psychological trick that tested the man’s confidence in his judgment. The ones who lacked faith in themselves were rarely able to meet the challenge.
“The only thing under that ground is a mother lode of low-sulfur coal,” Leo stated with a sad shake of his head. “It’s too bad oil is so cheap. It cuts into the market for coal.”
“Coal?” Dyson lifted his head, showing mild interest and darting a short glance at Stricklin, who was meticulously cleaning his nails with a pocket knife. “What do you mean by mother lode? Is there very much of it?”
“Very much of it? I guess so.” Grayson laughed shortly. “I’d hate to have to guess how many million tons of bituminous coal are lying a few inches under the surface.”
“A few inches. You must be exaggerating,” E.J. declared with a dismissing smile and lowered his gaze to study the report again.
“It’s no exaggeration,” the geologist insisted. “In places, it’s anywhere from a couple of feet to a couple of inches from the surface. A couple of bites with a power shovel and you’d find it.”
“Is that a fact?” Dyson mused, then shrugged it off. “As you say, Leo, there isn’t much of a demand for coal these days.”
“It’s a shame when it’s so plentiful,” he replied, then asked, “Is there anything else you wanted to go over with me?”
“No. That’s all.” Dyson continued looking through the report, barely glancing up as he dismissed the geologist.
After Grayson had left his office, Dyson stared at the same page of the report. All his life he’d been a hunch player. When the rest of the country had been converging on Texas and the other Sun Belt states, he had looked north and saw the next future in the western states. For a while he’d thought his hunch was wrong when the drilling hadn’t produced the big oil discovery he had expected.
He swiveled his chair around and aimed it at Stricklin. “Maybe the fortune to be had is in black diamonds instead of black gold,” he suggested. “What do you think?”
Stricklin gave a vague shrug as he paused to brush the nail shavings from his sharply creased slacks. “There have been rumblings from the Mideast about a possible embargo.”
The gloom and doom forecasters had been saying the world would run out of petroleum if attempts weren’t made to curtail consumption. Talk had never interested Dyson much except in relation to how it might affect the price of crude. But if the supply of petroleum were reduced, it would raise the demand for coal.
“I think it’s time we started learning more about coal,” he announced to Stricklin. “Cost of shipping to eastern markets, availability of railroads. Present and potential users, and how much competition we’ll get from the Appalachian coalfields.”
“I’ll get right on it.”
At the top of Dyson’s mental list, there was a name. E.J. pushed the buzzer of his intercom.
“Place a call to Senator Bulfert, and let me know when you have him on the line,” he instructed his secretary. The senator wasn’t the source for his answers, but Dyson had other uses for the unscrupulous politician.
“Now, Chase, you have to admit our Texas winter is an improvement on the weather you left behind,” E. J. Dyson chided as he passed him a tall glass of whiskey and soda.