Читать книгу All in the Day's Work: An Autobiography онлайн

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Soon after we went to the home on the hill the oil country, at that moment suffering a depression, was stirred by the news that a great well had been struck ten miles from Rouseville at Pithole, an isolated territory to which the veterans in the business had never given a thought. The news caused a wild scramble. A motley procession of men with and without money, with and without decency, seeking leases, jobs, opportunity for adventure, excitement and swindling travelled on foot or horseback up the Valley of Cherry Run in full view from our house.

Father was one of the first to take advantage of the Pithole discovery, putting up his tank shops there and doing a smashing business during the short life of the field. Its “bottom fell out” in 1869. He rode back and forth from his shop on a little saddle horse—Flora, beautiful creature—usually with considerable sums of money in his pocket. The country was full of ruffians, and stories of robbery were common. When he was very late in returning mother would walk the floor wringing her hands. I could never go to bed those nights until he had returned, not because I felt her anxiety but because of the excitement and mystery of it. I carried a dramatic picture of him in mind, a kind of Paul Revere dashing along the lonely road, the rein on Flora’s neck, his pistol in hand. But he always came home, always brought the money he had collected, which he must keep in the tiny iron safe in his office annexed to the house until he could carry it to Oil City where he banked.