 The American Trail, the American Trail, blazed in blood, defended in blood. Chapter 10, The Rich Desert, Arizona, the year 1879. The desert, endless thousands of square miles, yellow red sandstone, rock formations, cactus. The desert, graveyard of legends. Been here 150 million years. Hasn't changed much in the last million. Graveyard of men too. Sundown. A white man sunburned almost black. There's water in the desert if you can find it. There's somewhere in the purple shimmering haze. Water! It'll be over pretty soon. First, we'll drive him mad. The sun will do the rest. The man scoops the water up with his hands. What is it? What's going on with me now? I found oil in my water! My rain shares. I'm Pete Kitchin. Some of my men found you wondering about the desert. So the man is alive. Faith in Pete Kitchin in Adobe House. What's your name, son? Charlie Smith. How long have you been down here in the desert? About a year. Me and another son. Had a run-in with the patches. He got killed. You were raving about oil when they brought you in. You recall where? Rock Spring. Somewhere. Oil's seepage running into it again. Might be lucky, son. Might find it again. I'll find it. What are you doing here in the desert? I came here from Kentucky 25 years ago. Claimed a thousand acres of land. Look out the window there. Green cabbages, green vegetables. Farmland out here in this desert. Early ends in the fertile valley. Some of the rains take care of it. I've licked the desert, son. Pays me ten thousand a year, clear profit. Must have been hard work. I've known fellas spent a lifetime in the desert looking to get rich quick. They died broke. Who's that over there by the fence? That's Mary. Mary Hawkins. She's like my own daughter. Well, isn't she? I raised her since she was three years old. Had to take it from her patches or folks were massacred. Wagon train wiped out. Now, Mary! Golden hair, white sombrero, rose-colored riding skirt. The girl walks over to them smiling. She says... You look much better now. He says... I feel better, too. You gonna stay with us? Well, 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. 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 sunbeaks and bakes the man until it changes the very words in his mouth. And a pitiful creature once more crawls back to the kitchen ranch to die. Perhaps to live. Finally to live. You tried, son. That's all a man can do, Charlie. Charlie, I've land up near Tucson. I'll stock it for you, wedding gift. I want you and Mary to have a good start. Two years, they're settled on their own ranch now, tending cattle, feeding hogs, raising crops to sell in Tucson. But out there beyond the farm, still there, the desert. Stop it! Stop it! What? Standing there in the door looking out there. Mary! I've 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. I found it! Somewhere here! So this is where his oil is, at last. Mary, I'm going to drill it. The money. We've got the money. Men hired, equipment set up, a 40-foot derrick, a whole season's crop of citrus paper this. The big skeleton tower that will operate the cable weight, the steam engine that will drive it, cabins for men to live in, huts to store machinery in, but all costs money. What ambitious man ever stopped to think of money when a mortgage could be signed with two cents worth of ink? The hole is done. The first steel bit is lowered into it. The cable weight is ready to start driving the bit downward, downward into the earth. Blazing, merciless sun, the drilling goes on. Men fall sick, they're sent home. Freshmen come out. What just happened? Oh, there's no oil here. It'd be better off drilling in Texas. Stop that motor! That's all they're 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 drilling equipment in the desert, go to Texas to start all over again. What will Mary say? Mary, it's true. I've checked. They're finding oil all over Texas. Charlie, I won't listen to any more of it. You must. I can't stand any more. Every penny we had gone, we're in debt. We've had to sell good cattle to pay for your... Mary, Mary, listen. This time I know where the oil is. I'll go crazy if you don't stop. We'll sell this ranch. Use the money to buy land in Texas. We'll start drilling there. We've got to. We sell this ranch. We'll have nothing left. I can't stand this anymore. I can't, I can't. The man doesn't know when to give up. Well, if oil's to be found, Texas is acquired from land in Texas. Drilling equipment is set up. Now... Let me go deep in the neck. Still drilling. Oil has come in not 20 miles away. 35 feet. 40. 45. Now... The dead of black smoky fluid shoots up out of the ground. Skyward, the duster has come in. And the man kneels there in 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 secret. And he prays and he cries. And as men will when they have fooled the mighty desert, the man laps and crimes. Oh, mister, I knew I could do it. I found oil. I got it out of the desert. Well, mister, what do you think of my oil? That's not oil. Only water. Water and mud. 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. And the man who felt that he had found a great destiny now contemplates the long years of failure ahead. What good is sulfur? You got good sulfur deposits, I think. What good is sulfur to me? What good is sulfur? It'll probably make you a very rich man. So the man has won. Challenged the desert and beaten it. 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 lay there silent, watching, still watching, half a muse brooding on its secret. Knowing man with all his schemes, with all his work, has found less than one millionth of the wealth that he'd been saying, and the rest the desert holds. 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.