Texas

by James A. Michener

  When this reporter asked a Larkin official how such behavior could be justified, he explained: ‘We have to pay for the extra police somehow.’

  When this story reached New York, the editors of the Times felt, with some justice, that here was a case where the legend of the paper ought to be respected—‘All the News That’s Fit to Print’—and they decided that such a yarn, with its many implications, would have to be excluded if the legend were to be honored. They killed the story, which so angered the young reporter that he gave it lock, stock, and barrel to a reporter from Chicago, whose paper not only refrained from censoring it, but telegraphed for pictures. A professional photographer took a series of graphic shots and provided a caption explaining that the rowdy young ladies had on this Monday morning fetched an average price of $9.80, which figured to be $6.80 above their basic fines.

  Such affairs were amusing, but another aspect of the boom was more ominous. Any town which found itself the center of an oil strike, and especially one which expanded horizons with each new well that struck oil, was bound to attract the really criminal elements of society, and as the winter of 1924 started, Larkin had a plethora of gamblers, holdup men, con artists, thieves, escaped murderers, and every other kind of human refuse imaginable.

  ‘This town is becoming ungovernable,’ Floyd Rusk cried one January morning when two corpses were found in an alley near the courthouse, but when he spoke he did not yet know who one of the dead men was.

  ‘My God, Floyd! It’s Lew Tumlinson!’

  It was. There was no record of his having been involved with any of the hoodlums, and he was not robbed. True, he was some distance from his coal and lumber business, but he was in a respectable part of town and no one recalled his having been mixed up with any of the imported girls. His death was a mystery, but was soon forgotten.

  The shootings in Larkin produced an average of one murder every two and a half weeks, by no means a record for an oil town. Usually the deaths occurred as a result of gambling or fighting over women; there was almost no murder for profit, as in the old days when Rattlesnake Peavine prowled these parts. Opined the editor of the Defender: ‘It is understandable that men who have been too long restrained in less adventurous occupations will find release for their spirits in an oil town.’

  But then Ed Boatright was found shot dead, and people began to ask: ‘Is the lawlessness going to attack all of us? Have things gotten out of hand?’ Some of the old Ku Kluxers felt that maybe they would have to reconstitute the vigilantes and bring the town back under control. Affairs drifted along in this way, with a gambler or a roughneck being shot now and then, until one day in early March when the town echoed with gunfire and the other Tumlinson twin was found dead.

  Now terror gripped the area, and men working in oil began employing armed guards. Chief among those frightened by the spate of killings was Floyd Rusk, who, because of his preeminence and his new fortune, would seem to be an attractive target, and when associates suggested that he hire himself a bodyguard, he listened. But one night as he sat alone in his kitchen—he did not yet have an office—contemplating the dismal condition into which his oil town had fallen, a terrible thought attacked him: My God! Boatright! The Tumlinsons! They were with me when we whipped Dewey Kimbro.

  He began to sweat. Desperately he tried to recall anything that Dewey had said either during the flogging or next day when they made their pact about the oil field: I’m sure he didn’t speak during the flogging. Nothing. He deserved it and he knew it. But then Floyd’s assurance left him, for he could remember bits of conversation in the kitchen that next remarkable morning: He knew I hadn’t touched him. He said so. Yes, he did say that, I remember clearly. Taking hope from the fact that he had not actually whipped his future partner, he was beginning to breathe more easily, when an appalling recollection gagged him: My God, I’m sure he mentioned the names of the other three. I can hear him now: ‘But you ordered the Tumlinson twins and Ed Boatright …’

  Jesus! He discovered all our names and he’s killed three of us. As soon as he thought this, he corrected himself, eagerly, nervously: Not us. I had no part in that affair. I never touched him. He’s killed the three who did.’ Then he rose and paddled about the kitchen, a huge, sweating man: He’s my partner. We bought leases together, surely …

  He fell back onto his chair and stared bleakly at the wall. Three dead and one to go. Deceiving himself no longer, he reflected on the cleverness of this wiry little man with the sandy red hair: He waited till the town was filled with drifters. He waits till there’s action in the streets. Remember the little pistol he had that morning when we talked? God, the man’s a determined killer.

  Taking a pen from the fruit jar in which he and Molly had always kept one, he drafted a letter to the governor, whose campaign he had supported:

  The town of Larkin, in Larkin County, is no longer governable.

  Please send militia.

  Floyd Rusk

  He came into town on a horse, as his grandfather had done in 1883. Like him, he announced himself to no one, sharing a bed with the oilmen and quietly patronizing the saloons and the gambling halls. He visited the cribs in which the prostitutes lived their rowdy lives and studied the bank which had already been held up once. He walked out to the cemetery and checked the rude tombstones for any names which tallied with his printed list of desperadoes to be apprehended on sight, and at the end of five careful days, during which he alerted no one as to his identity, he gained a clear impression of how the town of Larkin functioned.

  He was twenty-five years old, about five-seven, not much over a hundred and fifty pounds, and he had the blue eyes so common among both the lawless and the lawmen on the frontier. He was quick with a gun and more prone to use it than his grandfather had been, and like him, he was fearless. He did not consider it unusual to be dispatched alone to clean up a rioting boom town, for that was his business, and on the sixth day he began.

  Presenting himself unostentatiously at the café where the oilmen met with town leaders at six each morning, he banged a glass with a spoon to attract attention, and announced: ‘I’m Oscar Macnab, Texas Ranger, sent by the governor to bring order to this town.’ Before anyone could respond, he moved like a cat, gun drawn, and arrested three men well known to be dealing in stolen oil gear. Rounding them up in a corner, he turned them over to the frightened sheriff, with the warning: ‘When I get to your place I want to see these men in jail.’

  Deputizing three well-regarded citizens, which he had no legal right to do, he asked: ‘Are you armed?’ and when one said no, an extraordinary admission in Larkin, he asked for the loan of a gun, and with his aides he left the café and started through the town.

  Fortunately, most of the desperate characters, the worst troublemakers, were in bed at that hour, so he had little trouble finding them, and in nightshirts or trousers hastily climbed into, the gamblers, the thieves and the pimps were moved to the courthouse, in whose basement he crowded some three dozen malefactors. This was not a jail, but it was reasonably secure, and he posted at the door two men with shotguns, giving them orders that chilled the captives: ‘If anybody tries to escape, don’t hesitate. Fire into the mob.’

  He then went to the sheriff’s office and demanded that he summon the town’s policemen, and when representatives of these two agencies stood before him and his new deputies, he asked scornfully: ‘Why have you let this town run so wild?’ and they said truthfully: ‘Because everybody wanted it that way.’

  Oscar Macnab, despite his youth and his bravado, was no fool, and after pumping some self-respect into the local officers he went to the telegraph station and wired Ranger headquarters, asking for a famous lawman who had faced similar situations in the boom towns back east: I NEED HELP SEND LONE WOLF. Then he quietly proceeded to consolidate his position before the rabble discovered that he was alone.

  He went to the home of Floyd Rusk and sat with him in the kitchen, no gun visible, no scowl on his face: ‘I understand it was yo
u who wrote the governor. Tell me about it.’

  Rusk was more than eager to; in fact, he blurted out such a lava-flow of information and complaint that Macnab had frequently to direct it: ‘But you were among the men who flogged Dewey Kimbro that night?’

  Later he asked: ‘Let me be sure I understand. Dewey Kimbro is now your partner? And as a partner you like him just fine?’

  Finally he bore in: ‘Have you any possible clue, any proof at all that Kimbro shot your three companions?’

  ‘They were never companions of mine, Ranger Macnab. They just happened to be assigned that job by the Klan.’

  ‘You were, I’m told, the leader of the Klan?’ He did not accuse Rusk of this; he merely asked the question, which Floyd rebutted vehemently: ‘I was never the Kleagle. We didn’t have one, really.’

  ‘But you made the decisions?’ Again it was a question, not an accusation, and again Rusk denied that he had held any position of leadership: ‘I was just another member.’

  ‘I believe you. Speaking as just another member, why did your group decide to horsewhip Dewey Kimbro?’

  ‘Well now, he was behavin’ immorally. He was livin’ with this woman. You’ve met her, Esther, and we told him he had to quit that or get out of town.’

  ‘You didn’t tell him. You flogged him.’

  ‘But we had warned him. We warned everybody. We would not tolerate immoral livin’.’

  Macnab smiled as much as he ever smiled: ‘You seem to tolerate a good deal of it right now. All those women, those cribs.’

  ‘Times have changed, Ranger Macnab.’

  Just how much they had changed, Macnab was still to learn, because he had not yet been in Larkin on a Monday morning to see the auction of the whores, and when the legal officials who had not yet adjusted to his presence proceeded with the Monday bidding, Macnab did not interrupt. He stood in the background, appalled by what he saw, and decided to take no further steps until help arrived.

  It came in the presence of a legendary member of the Texas Rangers, Lone Wolf Gonzaullas, an extremely handsome man in his thirties noted for his meticulous dress and Deep South courtesy. His greater fame, however, derived from his ever-ready willingness to use the pearl-handled revolvers given him by citizens who had profited from the law and order he had brought to their ravaged towns, and from the fact that he would be the only Ranger captain of partly Spanish descent.

  Like Oscar, he came into Larkin on a horse, and like Otto, he did not announce himself to anyone but his fellow Ranger. When he had studied the situation, checking the jail and the cellar of the courthouse, he told Oscar: ‘You’ve handled this right so far, but now we need something that will attract their attention.’

  ‘What did you have in mind?’ Macnab asked, and he said: ‘I’ve had good luck in spots like this with a snortin’ pole.’

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘Find me two shovels,’ and when he had them, he and Oscar rode to the edge of town, where they dug a deep hole, lining it with rocks. Then the two Rangers mounted their horses and dragged in a twelve-foot telephone pole, which they placed in the hole, tamping it with more rocks.

  Then, in a series of lightning-swift moves, the two Rangers stormed into one saloon after another and into all the gambling areas, grabbing unlovely characters at random, dragging them out to the edge of town and handcuffing them to chains circling the pole. ‘Now snort,’ Gonzaullas said, ‘while the decent people of this town laugh at you.’

  While he stood guard, Macnab hurried to the basement of the courthouse, where he brought forth his original three dozen prisoners. Marching them with his revolvers drawn, he drove them to the snortin’ pole, where Gonzaullas bound them to the chains.

  When the pole was surrounded by milling outlaws, he issued his orders: ‘Think things over till four this afternoon. Then we’ll reach decisions.’

  As they sweated in the blazing sun, one of the men who had been drinking beer whimpered: ‘I have to go to the toilet,’ and Lone Wolf said: ‘No one’s stopping you,’ and it was this humiliation which broke the spirit of these culprits.

  At four, Gonzaullas revealed his plan: ‘If you men are out of town by sunset, no further trouble. If you’re in town after dark, beware. Ranger Macnab, start releasing them.’ And as the handcuffs were unlocked and the ropes loosened, the prisoners started making plans to flee.

  When the field was fairly well cleared, Lone Wolf addressed the citizens: ‘People of Larkin, it’s all over.’ Turning on his heel, pearl-handled revolvers riding on his hips, he went to his horse, signaled Macnab, and rode back to town, where he wanted to meet with Floyd Rusk.

  When the two Rangers sat in Floyd’s kitchen with him, reviewing the case against Dewey Kimbro, Gonzaullas did the questioning: ‘In the period when the Tumlinson twins and Boatright were murdered, how many other men were shot in this town?’

  ‘About nine.’

  ‘What makes you think their case was something special?’

  ‘The others were drifters … no-goods.’

  This impressed Gonzaullus, and he spent two days interrogating townspeople, especially Nora and Esther, whom he met together: ‘You say, Nora, that you and Jake were tarred and feathered and later he was shot?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Do you know who did it?’

  ‘I can guess.’

  ‘And you, Miss Esther, you saw your man Kimbro horsewhipped? Did you know who did it?’

  ‘I heard names.’

  ‘What names?’

  ‘Lew Tumlinson.’

  ‘Who else?’

  ‘His brother Les.’

  ‘Anybody else?’

  ‘Ed Boatright.’

  ‘And all three are dead?’

  ‘They deserved to be.’

  ‘Did Kimbro know those names?’

  ‘He told me to remember them. After they let him go.’ She hesitated, suspecting that she was doing her man no good by these admissions: ‘He was all cut up, you know. His back …’

  ‘Do you think he shot those three men? Getting even?’

  ‘I’m glad somebody did. They came back, you know, and threatened to whip me, too, if I stayed around.’

  ‘Why did you stay?’

  ‘Dewey made a deal with Mr. Rusk. Me stayin’ was part of the deal, Dewey said.’

  ‘But if Dewey, as you call him, if he’s Mr. Rusk’s partner, he must’ve made a lot of money. Why does he still live in a house like this? Why do you live here?’

  ‘We live simple.’

  It was clear to Gonzaullas and Macnab that Dewey Kimbro had probably shot his three assailants, but there could never be any proof, so one morning when the town was pretty well subdued, and permanently, Lone Wolf suggested to Macnab: ‘I think we better deal with the principals,’ and they summoned Kimbro to Rusk’s kitchen.

  In ice-cold terms they spelled out the situation, with Macnab doing the talking, since although Gonzaullus was eight years senior, he was the man officially in charge: ‘Rusk, you led the posse that night on your partner Kimbro. Kimbro, we know that you learned the names of the men who flogged you, and we have very solid reasons to suspect that you shot those men, one by one, in revenge. But we can’t prove it.

  ‘We know something else. If you, Kimbro, have killed three men, so have you, Mr. Rusk, two in Dodge City and Paul Yeager at his ranch gate. And Ranger Gonzaullus and I have had to kill men in our day, in line of duty. So all of us in this room are equal, in a manner of speaking. Ranger Gonzaullus, will you tell them what we recommend?’

  ‘It’s simple. The flogging happened a long time ago. If you forget it, we’ll forget it. You’ve been partners for some time now, good partners we’re told, reliable. Now, Mr. Rusk, you told us that you were afraid you were going to be shot, by Mr. Kimbro, of course, although you didn’t say so in your letter to the governor. I have a surprise for you, Mr. Rusk. Did you know that Mr. Kimbro told us he was afraid you were going to shoot him? To get his share of the partnership, the way you got
Yeager’s land? And we think he had good reason to be afraid.’

  Rusk looked at his partner in dismay: ‘Dewey, my God, I’d never shoot you.’

  ‘So here it is,’ Lone Wolf said, hands on the table. ‘You two are partners, for better or worse, like they say at the wedding. Make the best of it, because when we leave, if we hear that either of you has been shot, we’re comin’ back to swear out a warrant for the survivor.’

  ‘No court in the land—’ Rusk began, but Gonzaullus cut him short: ‘Tell him, Macnab.’

  ‘It won’t go to court. Because you will be shot, by him or me, resisting arrest.’

  In this rough-and-ready way the oil town of Larkin, after eighteen months of flaming hell, was cleaned up. It was a Texas solution to a Texas problem, and it worked.

  The little town of Larkin, population reduced to a sane 3,673, now boasted seven millionaires: the richest was Floyd Rusk, whose fortune from his main wells and leases was becoming immense; he was followed by his partner, Dewey Kimbro, who shared in some of Rusk’s wells and owned others outright. The Larkin Field was proving out as shrewd Kimbro had predicted, a large, shallow field with an apparently unlimited supply of oil that seemed to dribble out of the ground, not gush. No single well was now producing much over a hundred barrels a day, but 100 barrels x 365 days x 40 wells meant a lot of oil.

  Some of the new millionaires spent their money conspicuously, and Dewey often spoke of one who had never fully appreciated the intricacies of the oil game: ‘When I went to talk him into leasing us his land, I offered him the standard one-eighth royalty, but he said: “I know you city slickers. I want one-tenth,” so after considerable pressure I surrendered. Sometime later he came to me, all infuriated: “You dirty scoundrel, you cheated me.” I said: “Hold on a minute. You set the royalty, not me,” and he said: “I know that. But Gulf offered me one-twelfth.” ’