by Texas
Hector Garza revealed to no one his role in this legerdemain, but Horace Vigil, in a show of righteous morality, did issue a pious statement deploring the carelessness of the men, whose ineptness had allowed aspersions to be cast upon the fine officials of Precinct 37: 'I personally regret the loss of that box because had its contents been counted by the federal judge, the results would have proved what I have always claimed. The election officials of Precinct 37 are honest. They're just a mite slow.'
This time their tardiness enabled a good man to go to Washington.
On a gray morning in October 1922, schoolboys sitting near the window cried: 'Look at what's comin'!' and their classmates ran to see three large trucks moving down the Jacksboro road. They carried long lengths of timber, piles of pipe, and ten of the
toughest-looking men Larkin County had seen in a long time. Two lads who had been reading science magazines shouted: 'Oil rig!' and in that joyous, frenzied cry the Larkin boom was born.
The trucks rolled into Courthouse Square, pulled up before the sheriff's office, and asked where Larkin Tank was. Then, consulting the maps they had been given, they headed north toward the land whose surface was owned by the Yeagers but whose mineral rights were still controlled by Floyd Rusk.
No sooner had the three trucks left town than Rusk appeared in his pickup, accompanied by Dewey Kimbro, and when the new newspaper editor shouted: 'What's up?' Rusk cried back: 'We're spudding in an oil well.'
Much of the town followed the trucks out to a marked depression east of the tank where Rusk # 1 was to be dug, and what they saw became the topic of conversation for many days, because when Paul Yeager, forty-nine years old and soft-spoken, saw the three men on the lead truck preparing to open his gate and drive onto his land, he ran forward to protest: 'This is Yeager land. Keep off.'
'We know it's Yeager land. We've been lookin' for it,' and the truck started to roll toward the opened gate.
'I warned you to stop!' Yeager cried, his voice rising.
'Mister, it ain't for you to say.' And in the next frantic moments, with Yeager trying to halt the trucks, the people of Larkin learned a lot about Texas law.
'Mr. Yeager,' the man in charge of the drilling rig explained, 'the mineral rights to this here land reside with Mr. Floyd Rusk, and he's asked us . . .'
'Here's Rusk now. Floyd, what in hell . . .?'
'Drillin' rig, Paul. We think there may be oil under this land.'
'You can't come in here.'
'Yes, we can. The law says so.'
'I don't believe it.'
'You better check, because we're comin' in.'
'You can't bring those big trucks through my crops.'
'Yes we can, Paul, so long as we compensate you for any damage. The law says so.' And with that, huge Floyd Rusk gently pushed his brother-in-law aside, so that the three trucks could drive in, make a rocky path through the field, and come to a halt at the site decided upon intuitively by the creekologist Dewey Kimbro.
A lawyer hired by Yeager did come out to contest Rusk's right to invade another man's property and destroy some of its crop, but reference to Texas law quickly satisfied him that Rusk had every right to do just what he was doing: 'He's protected, Paul. Law's clear on that.'
So the town watched as Rusk # 1 was started in the hollow, and the efficiency of the crew dazzled the watchers, for the men, using an old-style system popular in the 1910s, set to work like a colony of purposeful ants, digging the foundations for the rig, lining the tanks into which the spill would be conserved for analysis, and erecting the pyramidal wooden derrick which would rise seventy feet in the air, that consoling feature of the Texas landscape which proclaimed: There may be oil here.'
When the pulley sheaves were fixed atop the derrick and the cables rove through them, the men were ready to affix one end of the cable to the huge drum that raised and lowered it, the other end to the cutting bit that would be dropped downward with considerable force to dig the hole. The rig, when set, would not drill into the earth in any rotary fashion; by the sheer force of falling weight the bit would pulverize its way through rock.
And how was this repetitive fall of the two-ton bit assembly controlled? 'See that heavy wooden beam that's fixed at one end, free at the end over the hole? We call it the walking beam, and every time it lifts up, it raises all the heavy tools in the hole. When it releases— Bam! Down they crash, smashing the rock to bits.'
The townspeople could not visualize the force exerted at the end of that drop, nor the effectiveness of the tools used to crush the rock, but after the walking beam had operated for about two hours, the man in charge of the rig signaled for the cutting bit to be withdrawn from the hole, and now the ponderous process was reversed, with the cables pulling the heavy tools up out of the hole, so that the worn bit at the end which had done the smashing could be removed to be resharpened while a replacement, keen as a heavy knife, was sent down to resume the smashing.
'What do they do with the old one?' a garage mechanic asked, and he was shown a kind of blacksmith's shed in which two strong men with eighteen-pound sledges heated the worn bit and hammered it back into cutting shape.
And that was the basic process which the people of Larkin studied with such awe: sharpen the bit, attach it to the string of tools, raise it high on the cable, lower it into the hole, then work the walking beam and allow the sharp edge to smash down on the rock until something gave; then undo the whole package, fit on a new bit, resharpen the old, and hammer away again.
To the newspaper editor who wanted to share with his readers the complexity of the process, the rig boss said: 'One bit can drill thirty feet, more if it encounters shale. But when it hits really hard sandstone or compacted limestone . . . three feet, we have to take it out and resharpen.'
'Where does the water come from that I see going into the tank?'
if we're lucky, the hole lubricates itself. If not, we pump water in. The bottom has to be kept wet so that the bit can bite in. Besides, we have to bring up samples.' And he showed the newsman how a clever tool called the bailer was let down into the hole from which the drilling bit had been removed: it has this trick at the bottom. Push it against the bottom, and water swirls inside. Let it rise, it closes off the tube. Then pull it up on the cable and dump it into the slush pit.' When the newsman looked at the big square hole the crew had prepared, thirty feet on a side, ten inches deep, he thought that the waste water was being discarded.
"Oh, no! Look at that fellow. One of the most important men we have. He samples every load of water. What kind of rock? What consistency? What kind of sand?'
'Why?'
'It's his job to paint a picture of the inside of our well. Every different layer, if he can do it. Because only then do we know what we have.'
The operation of the rig, twenty-four hours a day, was so compelling—with men delving into the secrets of earth, lining the hole with casing to keep it open, cementing sections of the hole, fishing like schoolboys for parts which had broken and lodged at the bottom, calculating the tilt of the rocks and their composition— that it became a fascinating game which preoccupied all of Larkin and much of Texas, for it was known throughout the oil industry that 'Rusk # 1 west of jacksboro is down to eighteen hundred feet, stone-dry.' Spectators learned new words, which they bandied deftly: They're undereaming at two thousand.' 'They've cement-ed-in at two thousand two.' And always there was the hope that on this bright morning the word would flash: 'Rusk # 1 has come in!'
But the town was also involved in something equally colorful, for the ten roughnecks who had come with the rig were proving themselves to be of a special breed, the likes of which Larkin had never before seen. Rugged, powerful of arm, incredibly dirty from the slop of the rig, impatient with anyone who was not connected with the drilling business, they were among the ablest professionals in the country. The three top experts had come down from the oil fields of Pennsylvania, where their forebears had been drilling for oil since 1859, when Colonel Drake
brought in that first American well at Titusville; he had struck his bonanza at a mere sixty-nine feet. The next echelon were Texas men who had worked in Arkansas and Louisiana in years when activity focused there. But
the men who gave the crew character were Texans who had worked only in this state. They were violent, catlike men who knew they could lose a finger or an arm if they dallied with the flashing cable or did not jump quickly enough if something went wrong with the walking beam.
On the job they were self-disciplined, for if even one man failed to perform, the safety of all might be imperiled, but off the job they wanted things their way, and what they wanted most was booze, women and a good poker game. This brought them into conflict with the Ku Klux Klan, which had disciplined Larkin along somewhat divergent lines, and the trouble started when three of the men imported high-flying ladies from Fort Griffin and set them up at Nora's place, where the creekologist Dewey Kimbro and his girl Esther still maintained quarters.
Within two nights the Klansmen learned of the goings-on, and in their hoods three of them marched out to Nora's to put a stop to this frivolity, but they were met by the three roughnecks, who said: 'What is this shit? Take off your nightshirts.'
'We're warning you, get those girls out of town by Thursday night or face the consequences.'
'You come out here again in those nightshirts, you're gonna get your ass blown off. Now get the hell out of here.'
The Klansmen returned on Thursday night, as promised, but the three sponsors of the girls were on the night shift, so the protectors of morality satisfied themselves by having the three girls arrested and hauling them off to jail. When the oilmen reached Nora's after a hard night on the rig, they expected a little companionship, but instead found Nora weeping: 'They warned me that if the girls ever came back, and that included Esther, they was gonna burn the place down.'
The oilmen, collecting the other two from their shift, marched boldly to the jail and informed the custodian there, not the sheriff, that if he didn't deliver those girls in three minutes, they were going to blow the place apart. He turned them loose, and with considerable squealing and running, the eight rioters—three girls, five oilmen—roared back to Nora's, where they organized a morning party with Esther.
The Klan met that night to decide what to do about the invaders, and many of the men looked to Floyd Rusk for guidance: 'What I say is, let's get the well dug. If we find oil like Kimbro assures me we will, we'll all have enough money to settle other questions later.' W r hen there was grumbling at such temporizing, he said: 'You know me. I'm a law-and-order man.'
There ain't much law and order when a gang of roughnecks can raid our jail and turn loose our prisoners.'
'Oilmen are different,' Rusk said, and there the matter rested, for in Texas, when morality was confronted by the possibility of oil, it was the former which had to give ... for a while.
Dewey Kimbro had guessed wrong on Rusk #1. It went to three thousand feet, and was still stone-dry. So the great Larkin oil boom went bust, but it was not a wasted effort, for at two thousand three hundred feet Dewey had spotted in the slush pond indications of the Strawn Sand formation, which excited him enormously. Sharing the information only with Rusk, he said: 'Let them think we missed. Then buy up as many leases as we can west of our dry Number One, because Strawn is promising.'
So, wearing his poor mouth, Rusk went to one landowner after another, saying: 'Well, looks like the signs deceived us. But maybe over the long haul .'He offered to take their mineral leases off their hands at twentv-five cents an acre, and when he had vast areas locked up, he asked Kimbro: 'Now what?'
'I'm dead certain we have a major concentration down there. I see evidences of it wherever I look. It's got to be there, Mr. Rusk.' 'But where 7 '
'That's the problem. East of Number One or west? I can't be sure which.'
'Your famous gut feeling 7 What's it say?' Kimbro drove Rusk out to the area and showed him how Rusk # 1 had lain at the bottom of a dip: 'It's the land formations west of here that set my bells ringing. Damn, I do believe our field is hiding down there, below the first concentration of Strawn Sand, like maybe three thousand feet.'
'We have money for only one more try. Where should it be?' 'I am much inclined toward the tank,' and he indicated a spot close to the statue which sentimentalists had erected to mark the spot where the lovers Nellie Minor and Jim Logan had committed suicide by drowning—that was the legend now—but Rusk objected to digging there: The women in town would raise hell if we touched that place.' So they moved farther west, and finally, on a slight rise, Dewey scraped his heel in the dust: 'Rusk Number Two. And I know it'll be good.' When he said this, Rusk asked: 'If you know so much, why don't the big boys 7 They have their spies here, you know.'
The big companies depend on little men like me to find oil for them. Then they move in, fast. We get our small profit. They get their big haul.'
'I want the big haul, Kimbro.'
'So do I. So let's drill over here where I've marked Rusk Number Two.'
'That's on Yeager's land '
'But it's in your mineral rights.'
'We'll have trouble if we go back again.'
'Law's on our side.'
So Rusk #2 was started, with the same drilling team and the same girls staying at Nora's; when there was still a good chance for oil, even the Klan had to adjust.
With scouts from nine large companies watching every move Dewey Kimbro made, Floyd Rusk drilled a second dry hole at three thousand one hundred feet, and now his money began to run out He had invested most of his ready cash in hiring the drilling crew, and a good portion of his savings in buying up leases.
But when the crunch came, Dewey Kimbro, like a true wildcatter, wanted to risk more money: 'Mr. Rusk, so help me God, what we must do is acquire more leases. If you have to pawn your wife's wedding ring, do it and get those leases. They'll be dirt cheap now. People are laughing at us. But they don't know what we know.'
'And what's that?'
'More signs of oil, I saw them myself when I took the samples at twenty-nine hundred feet.'
'Was that significant 7 '
'Significant? My God, don't you realize what I'm saying? On Rusk Number One we found indications at twenty-three hundred feet. Now, over here, at Rusk Number Two, we find it at both twenty-three hundred and twenty-nine hundred. Means that oil is down there somewhere. My judgment is our next well has got to hit. I know the field must lie between Number One and Number Two, and we've got to get those leases.'
'You find the money. I don't have any more.'
So Dewey Kimbro set out to con the entire state of Texas into supporting his wild dream of an oil field north of Larkin, in an area which had never produced a cup of oil. He hectored his friends from his student days at A&M, and young men who specialized in the practical courses offered there often did well, so they had money, but they refused to risk it. He badgered his oil acquaintances from the eastern fields, but they knew from their own studies that Larkin held no promise. And he buttonholed any gambler who had ever taken a chance on Texas oil, traveling as far as Nevada and Alabama to trace them.
He was, of course, only one of several hundred visionaries who were flogging the Texas dream that year. Some crazies were trying to convince their friends that there had to be oil in unlikely places
like Longview, Borger and Mentone. Others claimed that the area north of Fort Stockton had to have oil, and a hundred others lobbied for places of their choice, where oil would never be found. It was a time of oil fever, and no one had the malady more virulently than Dewey Kimbro.
Except, perhaps, Floyd Rusk, for when the fat man realized that all his savings and even his ranch were committed to this adventure, he became monomaniacal about bringing in the field that Dewey kept assuring him existed under the leases which he already controlled. He was determined to see this exploration through, for he had convinced himself that he could recognize the formations when Kimbro pointed them out. Millions upon mill
ions of years ago a lake of oil had been trapped down there among the sandstone and the limestone tilts, and he wanted it.
But he had no money. Digging the two dry holes had exhausted his funds, and with Kimbro finding little success in borrowing replacements, he did not know where to turn, but one morning when the drillers said they wanted to haul their rig back east to more promising sites, and would do so unless paid promptly, he went to the one person in whom he did not wish to confide.
Emma Larkin Rusk, the onetime prisoner of the Comanche, was sixty-six that year, a frail shadow weighing not much over a hundred pounds. The stubs of her ears showed beneath the wisps of hair that no longer masked her deformity, and her balsa-wood nose seemed to fit less properly, now that she had lost so much weight. But she was alert and already knew that her difficult son was in trouble.
'My first two wells were dry,' he said.
i know.'
'But we're sure the next one will hit.'
'Why don't you drill it?'
'No money.'
'None?'
'Not a dime.'
'And you want me to lend you some?'
'Yes.'
She sat with her hands folded, staring at her unlovely son, this glutton who had never done anything right. When she had hoped to make a man of him, through R. J. Poteet, he had fumbled the opportunity, and when in 1901 after her husband's death she had turned over the operation of the ranch to him, he had bungled it so badly that she had to step back in and save it. Now he wanted to borrow her life savings, the funds which allowed her to live in her own house rather than impose on him and Molly.