America 1881: They Call Me Legend

Chapter 173

Vaughan, as always, rode at the head of the line.

He was in a great mood.

The geologist is already under his control, and as for his followers in the fort, he has already made arrangements.

As soon as you find oil, hehe...

Thinking of this, he couldn't help showing a smug expression on his face.

Roswell is still my Roswell, with these bastards who want to fight with me, are they worthy?
However, after walking west for a while out of the stone fortress, he suddenly realized that something was wrong.

"Sir, which direction are we going?" asked the soldier behind Vaughan.

Vaughan couldn't answer. According to his usual experience, he drilled in whichever direction the wind blows.

As a result, shepherds near Roswell occasionally found their sheep stuck in holes for no apparent reason or simply disappeared when they drove their sheep to new pastures.

At first they thought the woodrat was doing a good job, until they heard the rumble of machinery.

The same situation also occurs in different terrain locations such as nearby deserts and mountain feet.

Five years of waste and countless useless holes in the ground around Roswell had proved his experience wrong.

Holmes and Chen Jianqiu rode their horses and walked slowly in front of him.

When passing by Vaughan, Chen Jianqiu did not forget to glance at him, licked his tongue, and shook his head.

Vaughn was so angry that he almost didn't curse out loud.

What are you, a little miner, talking to me about?Okay, I see you can still play for a few days.

Holmes dug his precious notebook out of his bag, and pulled out a map.

This map looks a bit old, but there are still many marks densely marked on it.

"This was hand-painted when I came last time." Holmes said to Chen Jianqiu.

He studied the map carefully, then turned his horse's head and pointed in the direction of the small town of Roswell.

"Go there."

This is the completely opposite direction from what they were traveling just now, that is to say, they need to turn around, and the distance they just traveled is completely in vain.

It was very troublesome for the carriage loaded with the steam drill to turn around, and the soldiers driving the carriage dared not speak out.

"Are you sure?" Vaughan asked Holmes, "It's a small town, people have been coming and going for so many years, how could there be crude oil?"

"That's because you are blind." Holmes showed his arrogance as an intellectual, and he drove past Vaughan again.

"You can really delay things." Chen Jianqiu added.

Vaughn endured it.

The team turned around and headed towards the small town all the way.

Holmes did not lead the team into the town, but passed by the edge of the town.

Only then did Chen Jianqiu get a closer look at the specific situation of the town.

In the town, there was really no one else.Except those who live in pastures outside the town,

On the edge of the town, there are only a few people with faces of Latin ethnicity, sitting in front of their houses, watching their procession pass by.

The broken signs on the closed houses indicated that someone might have been here.

After passing the town, they turned southeast.

Not far away, Chen Jianqiu saw the pasture that Holmes mentioned.

Compared with the Chihuahua desert in the west, this place can be regarded as an oasis. However, the grass on the ground looks like it has been gnawed. It seems that this place is often visited by grazing people.

Holmes had already dismounted. After comparing his map, he began to beat the stones along the way with a pickaxe hammer, and then observed the traces of the stone sections.

After a while, they came to the edge of the grassland, near an irregular terrain that vaguely resembled a river.

With the help of Chen Jianqiu, Holmes beat here for more than half an hour.

And Vaughan and his soldiers stood there with their hips akimbo, watching the two chisel for half an hour.

After repeated confirmations, Holmes straightened up, pointed to the surrounding area, and said to the bewildered Vaughan and his soldiers:

"That's it! Drill here."

"Uh, where exactly is it?" Vaughn was still at a loss.

"Why are you so stupid?" Holmes scolded, "This area is fine, there is an oil spring below."

Upon hearing this, Vaughan quickly asked the soldiers behind him to unload the carriage.

They have a lot to do, they need to use the wood to build a frame, and they need to assemble the bulky real steam turbine to drive the drill.

But these things were all done by a dozen soldiers, and Vaughn put a pocket in his pocket and watched intently from the sidelines.

Chen Jianqiu and Holmes walked aside.

Chen Jianqiu took out two cigars from the saddle bag, lit one of them, shook it twice, and handed it to Holmes.

Holmes put it in his mouth and took a puff, then put the cigar in his hand to his eyes and looked at it:
"Huh? Isn't this the box I bought in Lincolnshire last time? I have been wondering since then, where did the box of cigars go?"

"It was scattered by the bullets. I picked up a few and brought them back." Chen Jianqiu lit one for himself, his face flushed, and he didn't mention anything about bribing the town police with cigars.

"Are you sure there is crude oil down here?" Chen Jianqiu took a drag on his cigarette.

"Not sure, let's try it." Holmes passed the inhaled smoke in his mouth for a while, and then spit it out from his mouth, "I found this place before, don't let this thing go down , never know if there is."

"Is it going to be deep? Will it come out?" Chen Jianqiu searched for the memories of the oil field before crossing, which he saw on TV or the Internet.

His impression of oil drilling is: the drilling rig hits and beats, and black liquid gushes out.

"No, according to my experience, if you can find them, they are shallow crude oil on the surface, a little deeper than those exposed on the ground in Pennsylvania, and there is less pressure, so they won't spew out." Holm Si smoked a cigar and shook his head, spreading the knowledge about oil in this era to Chen Jianqiu.

Vaughn didn't notice that the two were smoking cigars at the same time, his attention was all on the busy soldiers.

As their commander said, these soldiers are very skilled in their business.

By evening they had erected racks and camps, assembled steam engines and drills.

Two strong-looking soldiers are shoveling coal into the boiler. They are about to start the steam turbine and start drilling.

Holmes watched from the side. He didn't know anything about machinery, and Chen Jianqiu, a geologist's assistant, was also pretending to record something.

"How deep?" The soldiers looked at Holmes.

However, the geologists have not yet answered this question, and Vaughan next to him has already told them the answer first.

"Drill for me until crude oil comes out!"

What Holmes said before gave Vaughan full confidence. At this time, he is full of pride, and the five-year wait will finally come to fruition.

So, the drilling rig started like this.

In this era, the efficiency conversion of the steam engine was not high, and the efficiency of the drilling rig it drove was even lower.

By midnight on the first day, they had drilled about fifteen feet down.

Vaughn and Holmes are getting ready for bed.

But the soldiers on the drilling rig and the night shift could not rest. Firstly, there was no reason to stop the steam engine after it was started. Secondly, Vaughn, who was full of enthusiasm, hoped that his soldiers could keep fighting until the crude oil was drilled.

Chen Jianqiu found a tent, got in and slept with his clothes on, but the steam turbine outside made a huge noise, which was a disaster for Chen Jianqiu who would wake up when there was any movement.

Fortunately, he didn't need to rest for long.

The next morning, when he came to the drilling well in good spirits, Vaughan and Holmes were already standing there.

Both had dark circles around their eyes, but they both looked excited.

The next day, forty feet (about 12 meters), nothing.

In the early morning of the third day, Vaughn and Holmes were still standing on the edge of the drilling well early.

The dark circles under the two of them deepened.

When the depth of the drilling rig reached fifty feet, Holmes, who had begun to lose his mind, suddenly ran to the drilling hole like a madman.

"Water! Water!" He pointed to the surrounding of the drill hole, and everyone leaned over to see that liquid overflowed from around the drill pipe.

Vaughn dipped his finger in some liquid, sniffed it in front of his nose, looked at it again, and cursed: "It's really fucking water, what do we need water for? Keep drilling!"

But Chen Jianqiu's heart suddenly skipped a beat.

Holmes rushed in front of Chen Jianqiu and said excitedly: "Let me just say that there is an aquifer here. Thank God, New Mexico has too rich groundwater resources. This is just a surface dive."

But these obviously have little to do with Vaughn.

So the rig continued to run.

In the afternoon, the sky began to gather dark clouds for some reason. The dry place here seems to be the same as Lincolnshire, which has one of the few rainfalls in a year.

About sixty feet (about 18 meters) into the drill bit, the rig stopped suddenly.

Seeing the machine stop, Vaughan immediately cursed: "What the hell are you doing? Why don't you keep drilling?"

The soldier manipulating the machine looked nervous, and said to Vaughn with a look of embarrassment: "Our,,, the drill seems to have fallen into a gap."

"Are you pigs? Huh? Have you been doing this for so many years? Can this kind of thing happen?" Vaughan hugged his head frantically.

Now that the drill bit fell off, there was no way to continue. The soldiers operating the drill had to put the drill pipe up.

"Everyone, let's rest for a while." Holmes said to the soldiers, while Vaughan squatted in the corner alone, not knowing what he was thinking.

Chen Jianqiu hung a jar down from the borehole.

All the water he brought went into the boiler, and he was going to get some water to wash his face.

However, when he just poured the water from the jar into the basin, he was stunned.

On the water in the basin, there was a viscous, black, liquid floating.

oil!

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(End of this chapter)