On the blossoming May day the wagonload pulled up before the Drakes' little rented house (they had long since moved out of the hotel), Drake was too ill to take Smith to the well, but he sat up in bed talking feverishly to the solid-as-a-barrel blacksmith. Later he said thankfully, "I could not have suited myself better if I could have had a man made to order." They must have made a strange twosome; Smith, called "Uncle Billy," was a short, broad, hefty, laconic man who might have posed for Longfellow under a spreading chestnut burr. Whether or not he really believed in the [project at first, he soon felt a protective devotion to Drake. When he was offered a smithy job in Franklin at $4 a day, he told his son, "I can't quit Drake now."

from The Great Oildorado (1959)