Black Treasure Sandy Steele Adventures #1

“This sure isn’t my idea of a boom town!” Sandy grumbled as he and Quiz got off the eastbound Greyhound at Farmington, New Mexico, dropped their dusty bags and stood watching th...

Sandy and Quiz spent the next two weeks picking up a working knowledge of drilling, getting acquainted with Hall’s outfit, and learning to keep out from under the feet of the cr...

A huge truck carrying a light folding drill rig and motor rumbled into camp from Farmington two days after the Elbow Rock episode. Donovan then set about organizing an explorati...

Sandy had expected that the opening of bids for leases on thousands of acres in the Navajo reservation would be an exciting occasion, something like a country auction. Instead,...

The morning after Cavanaugh’s unwelcome visit, Hall, Donovan, Salmon and the boys set out on their 150-mile drive south to the town of Window Rock. The jeep wallowed and bounced...

Hall routed Ralph Salmon and the boys out of bed before dawn the next day. They ate a huge pancakes-and-sausage breakfast cooked by the sleepy-eyed but cheerfully clucking Misse...

After a hurried lunch that ended with flabby apple pie, as Sandy had discovered most lunches usually did in the Southwest, the five men climbed into Quail’s pickup truck. (The C...

Long before sunup, the screaming of a siren on the rig brought off-duty crewmen pouring out of their bunks in all stages of undress. When Sandy arrived at the brightly lighted w...

“That’s not what I mean. When Ralph went into Cavanaugh’s camp at Elbow Rock he wore a dog skin and made himself smell like a dog. But he said that wasn’t enough. He also had to...

When he got back to the well Sandy found that Hall had already set out on his fund-raising campaign while Donovan had locked himself in his trailer laboratory and was running an...

Hall had completely recovered his good spirits by the time that Ralph brought Kitty to camp at dawn. Just as the sun rose the little party set out for Window Rock in a holiday m...

Pepper was black, blue, stiff and somewhat chastened when he ate breakfast with Ralph and Sandy the next morning. Also, he was disturbed by the fact that Cavanaugh’s plane had c...

Sandy fought his way up from unconsciousness like a diver rising from the bottom of a dark sea. For a long time he lay without moving as he tried to sort out the sounds around h...

High jinks were in order as the Regional Science Fair drew to a close in the big auditorium at Poplar City, California. A board of judges had selected prize-winning exhibits ent...

At that moment, Sandy tripped over a branch, flung up his arms as he fell headlong. The rifle bullet meant for his head merely creased him instead, from shoulder to elbow.