by Texas
and spent those sixty minutes in a dream world, because this land was obviously superior. 'Look at that huisache and mesquite,' Roy Bub cried, for he was the expert. 'No tall trees, but those gorgeous low shrubs providing plenty of cover. And the mesquite aren't too close together, so the quail will have to strike open ground.' He pointed out that the fence rows had not been cut, which meant there would be plenty of protection for the quail during nesting seasons, and he was especially struck by the richness of the weed cover.
'Look at that seed supply. All the right weeds, all properly spaced. This place, to tell you the truth, is worth double what they're asking.'
The owner, eager to get top dollar but not hurting for the money, was a rancher who said frankly: 'I'd like to rent it for the full six dollars, but you're working men. If you want it during a trial period just for quail in the autumn, I'll be more than happy to rent it for the four-twenty I said. Feel it out. See if it seems like home. If so, we might have ourselves a longtime deal.'
'Have you other prospects?' the oilman asked, for the $20,160 involved was a little steep and the $28,800 for twelve months, all rights, was forbidding.
'I do, but people tell me you're four responsible men. They say you'll help keep the hunting good. For the long haul, I'd prefer someone like you.'
That night the four Houstonians held a planning session, and it was clear that the oilman and the dentist could afford rather more of the total fee than could Roy Bub and Morrison, so a deal was arranged whereby Roy Bub would continue to drive the dentist's wagon while Todd would occupy the armchair topside and also care for the land. This meant that in the off season he would lay out roadways through the mesquite, drag the earth so that weeds would prosper, and look after the quail and turkeys in general.
'We promise you this,' Roy Bub told the owner, 'when we leave, your land will be in better shape than when we came.'
'One important thing,' the oilman said, for he was an expert in j leases. 'We have the right to shoot October to January?' The | owner agreed. 'But we have the right to visit all year long. Picnics, j families?' The owner said of course. 'And we have the right, as of I now, to build ourselves a little shack?'
'You certainly do,' the man said. 'But you understand, anything i you erect on my land remains my property.'
'Now wait!' the oilman said, if we affix it to your land, digi
cellars and all that, it's yours. But if it remains movable, we can take it with us if you close us out.'
'Of course!' There was a moment of hesitation, after which he said impulsively: 'I like your approach to the land. Twenty thousand even.'
So the four young men obtained the right to hunt this magnificent land—flat as a table, few trees, no lake, no river—during the legal quail season, and permission to roam it during the other months. The elaborate division of labor they had worked out to protect the oilman and dentist who were paying more than their share of cost was unnecessary, because those two worked as hard as anyone. They built the lean-to; they planted seeds along the trails so that weeds would grow; they tended the hedgerows where the quail would nest; and they cared for the dogs.
The team's first autumn on their lease was gratifying. With the dentist running his dogs and Todd spotting from his perch atop the wagon, they uncovered quail almost every day, and with the practice they were getting, the three gunners became experts. From time to time the oilman allowed one of the other two to use his AY. A., and one day toward Christmas, when they were huddling in the lean-to after dark, he asked quietly: 'Either of you two want to buy that Spanish gun? Real bargain.'
'What about you?' Roy Bub asked.
The oilman went almost shyly to the wagon, and as if he were a young girl showing off her first prom dress, produced an item he had sequestered when they packed in Houston. Unwrapping it, he revealed one of those perfect English guns, a Purdy with a Beasley action which he had purchased for $24,000. When it stood revealed in the lantern light, it was not handsome, nor garishly decorated, nor laden with insets of any kind. It was merely a cold, sleek, marvelously tooled gun which fitted in the shoulder like a perfectly tailored suit. 'There it is,' he said proudly.
'How much for the Spanish job?' Todd asked.
'It cost me forty-six hundred, like I said. I'd like to keep it in the crowd, maybe use it now and then for old times' sake. I'll let you have it for twenty-six.'
'Time payment?'
'Why not?'
So at the end of the season, and a very fine season it had been, the quartet had both a genuine Purdy and an A.Y.A. copy, and Roy Bub also had a very good gun, because Morrison sold him the good weapon he'd been using at a comparable discount.
They were a congenial crowd that winter, for at least twice a
month, when no hunting was allowed at their iease, they left Houston at dusk on Friday, roared down to Falfurrias, and worked on their place. They turned the lean-to into a real house, with eight bunks, two temporary privies and a portable shower, and they improved the roadways through the far edges of the fields. In March everyone but Roy Bub brought wife and children down for a festival, kids in sleeping bags, older ones in blankets under the cold stars, and Maggie said to one of the other wives: 'I wouldn't want to cook like this four Saturdays a month, but it's worth every cent the men spend on it.'
In June, after a serious meeting in the bunkhouse, Roy Bub drove to the owner's house and invited him to join them. When he appeared, the oilman said: 'Mr. Cossiter, you know we like your place. We'd like to take it all year, at six dollars an acre, unrestricted. That would be twenty-eight thousand eight hundred. And we were wondering if you could shade that a little?'
'Men, you care for this place better than I do. Twenty-six thousand for as many years as you care to hold it.'
'A deal,' the oilman said, but Roy Bub cried: 'Hell, we could of got him down to twenty,' and the owner said: 'Blacktop me a four-lane road north and south through the middle so I can subdivide later on, and you can have it for twenty.'
Maggie Morrison analyzed it this way: 'I'm sure Roy Bub felt totally left out during our family stay at the hunting lease. Everyone else with a wife and kids.' At any rate, shortly after their return home, Roy Bub informed his team that they and their wives were invited to his wedding, which was to be solemnized at midnight Tuesday in Davy Crockett's, a famous Houston honky-tonk on the road to the oil fields near Beaumont.
'Do we really want to attend such a rowdy affair?' Maggie asked, but Todd said: 'Not only are we going, so are the kids.'
Maggie did not like this, not at all, and went to speak with Roy Bub: it's not proper to hold a wedding at Crockett's, you being in oil and all that.'
He looked at her in a funny way and said: 'I'm not in oil,' and she said: 'But I remember your white truck that first day. Roy Bub Hooker, Drilling.'
'That was my truck. But I don't drill for oil. I put that on so that people would think I did.'
'What do you drill?'
'Septic tanks. When your toilet clogs up, you call me. I wouldn't feel happy bein' married anywhere but Crockett's.'
So at ten in the evening the six adults and seven children drove
out to the huge unpaved parking lot that was already crowded with pickups whose owners were hacking it up inside.
The oilman, who had been here once before, assembled his crowd outside the door and warned: 'Nobody is to hit anybody, no matter what happens,' and he led the way into the massive one-story honky-tonk.
Wide-eyed, they found Davy Crockett's, the workingman's Copacabana, a riotous affair, with more than a thousand would-be cowboys in boots and Stetsons, neither of which they ever took off, dancing the Cotton-Eyed Joe and the two-step with an abandon that would have horrified any choreographer. The place had numerous bars, dance bands which came and went, and an atmosphere of riotous joy.
It was a gala place, and the Morrisons had not been inside ten minutes before a cowboy approached Beth, bowed politely, and asked her to dance. Maggie tried to object, b
ut the girl was gone, and once on the floor, she did not wish to return to her family, because one attractive young fellow after another whisked her away.
Roy Bub, rosily drunk, welcomed everyone enthusiastically. The bride appeared at about eleven-fifteen, twenty-two years old, peroxide-blond hair, very high heels, low-cut silk blouse, extremely tight double-knit jeans, and a smile that could melt icebergs. When Roy Bub saw her, he rushed over, took her hand, and announced in a bellow: 'Karleen Wyspianski, but don't let the name scare you. She's changin' it tonight.' She was, he explained, a waitress in a high-class diner: 'Honcho of the place, and I grabbed her before the boss did.'
She had grown up in one of those little foreign enclaves so numerous in Texas and so little known outside the state. In her case it was Panna Maria, a Polish settlement dating back to the 1850s whose inhabitants still spoke the native language. She had quit school after the eleventh grade and come immediately to Houston, where she had progressed from one job to another, always improving her take-home pay. Her present employment, because of the large tips she promoted, paid more than a hundred and fifty a week, and had she married the boss, as he wished, she would have shared in a prosperous business.
But she had fallen in love with Roy Bub and his white pickup, and the fact that he went hunting almost every weekend did not distress her, for those were her busiest days, and she was content to join him on Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays as a Crocket-teer. They were good dancers, liberal spenders, and never loath to join in any moderate fracas that was developing.
Karleen had for some time been aware that Roy Bub intended sooner or later proposing marriage, but she was not overly eager for this to happen, for she had an enjoyable life and did not expect marriage to improve it substantially. But she did love the energetic driller, and when he returned from the family outing at the Falfurrias ranch with the blunt statement 'Karleen, I think we better get married,' she said 'Sure.'
Neither partner considered, even briefly, getting married anywhere but Crockett's. Karleen was Catholic and intended staying so, but she cared little about church affairs. Roy Bub was Baptist, but he was willing to let others worship as they pleased, so long as he was not required to attend his own church. But each was resolved to rear their children, when they came along, as devout Christians in some faith or other.
At quarter to twelve the minister who would conduct the marriage arrived, Reverend Fassbender, an immensely fat fellow of over three hundred pounds who served no specific church but who did much good work as a kind of floating clergyman. One of his specialties was weddings at Crockett's, where the cowboys revered him. Dressed in black, with a cleric's collar size twenty-two, he exuded both sanctity and sweat as he passed through the crowd bestowing grace: 'Blessings on you, sister. Glad to see you, brother, may Christ go with you.'
The wedding was an emotional affair, for when a space was cleared beneath one of the bandstands, Reverend Fassbender put an end to the frivolity and began to act as if he were in a cathedral, which in a sense he was, for this honky-tonk was where the young working people of Houston's refineries worshipped, and when two bands struck up Mendelssohn's 'Wedding March' Maggie Morrison and other women in the audience began to sniffle.
Karleen, in her tight jeans, and Roy Bub, in his tight collar, the only one he had worn in a year, formed a pair of authentic Crocket-teers, and cheers broke out as they took their place before the minister, who quickly halted that nonsense: 'Dearly Beloved, we are gathered here in the presence of God . . .' Maggie whispered to Beth: 'Jesus attended a wedding like this at that big honky-tonk in Cana.'
When the ceremony ended, and an honor guard of cowboys fired salutes in the parking lot, Roy Bub's hunting partners watched with approval as the white pickup was delivered at the i door to serve as the honeymoon car. While the wedding was under way it had been decorated with leagues of streaming toilet paper, Mexican decorations, and a broom lashed to the cab. But what; Maggie liked best, as the pickup drove off, was the new sign Roy
Bub had added to his tailgate, for its emotion and the design of the heart seemed appropriate to this night:
IF YOU ^P NEW YORK GO TO HELL HOME
When the Rusk v. Rusk divorce proceedings revealed just how much money Ransom Rusk had, a score of beautiful women, and Texas had far more than its share, began plotting as to how each might become the next Mrs. Rusk, but the austere man directed most of his attention to multiplying by big factors the wealth he already had. He did not become a recluse, but his divorce did make him gun-shy, so he focused on the main problem, never voicing it publicly or even to himself. Intuitively he realized that if he retained, after paying off Fleurette, nearly $50,000,000, there was no reason why he could not run that figure up to $500,-000,000, which would move him into the big-rich category.
His first decision in pursuit of this goal was to shift his operations from the pleasant little town of Larkin, population 3,934, and into the heart of Fort Worth, population 393,476. He chose Fort Worth rather than Dallas because the former city was a Western town, with its focus on ranching, oil and fearless speculation in both, while Dallas was more a Texas version of New York or Boston, with huge financial and real estate operations but little touch with the older traditions that had made Texas great. In brief, an oil wildcatter and a Longhorn man like Ransom Rusk felt at home in Fort Worth; he did not in Dallas: 'Those barracuda are too sharp for me. I feel safer paddling around with the minnows.'
In Fort Worth he associated himself with many others who were risking ventures in oil, and especially the servicing of the oil industry. With his strong basic knowledge of how petroleum was found and delivered to the market, he was an asset to the men who financed those operations, and before long he was in the middle of that exciting game. The joy his father had found in Texas high school football he found in Texas big-time finance.
He was major partner in a company which built and sold drilling rigs; the wooden one that had spudded in Rusk #3 back in 1923 had cost $19,000; the ones he now built were well over a million each. He had also bought into a mud concern, that clever process whereby a viscous liquid, whose properties were modified according to the depth and character of the hole, was pumped into a hole while it was being drilled to correct faults and ensure production if oil was present. But mostly he toured Texas, like a hound dog chasing possums, looking for promising land that could be leased,
and this took him to the Austin Chalk, the petroliferous formation around Victoria, where he made a killing, and to the Spraberry Field, where he bought up seventy leases which produced dust and seven which were bonanzas.
At the end of one of the most aggressive campaigns in recent oil history, the value of Rusk's holdings had tripled, and he felt with some justification that 'I'm really just at the beginning. What 1 need now is to find that big new field.'
He was in this pattern of thought when into his modest Fort Worth office came an old man whose vision had never faded but whose capacity to capitalize upon it had. The years since 1923 had not been kind to Dewey Kimbro, now a seedy seventy-one with no front teeth and very little of the millions he had made on the Larkin Field. When he stood before the son of his former partner, he was a small, wizened man who had been married three times, each with increasing disaster: 'Mr. Rusk, my job is to find oil. I've found three of the good fields, you know that. I want you to grubstake me, because I have my eye on a real possibility north of Fort Stockton.'
'Wouldn't that put you in the Permian Basin?'
'On the edge, yes.'
'But everyone knows the good fields in the Permian have been developed.'
The men were speaking of one of the major oil fields in the world, a late discovery that had occurred in the middle of a vast, arid flatland of which it was once said: 'Any living thing in this godforsaken land has thorns, or fangs, or stingers, or claws, and that includes the human beings.' It was a land of cactus, scorpions, mesquite and rattlesnakes. Some intrepid heroes had tried running cattle on it; in a cynical dea
l the University of Texas had been given vast amounts of the barren land instead of real money, and an occasional oil well had been tried, with more dust at two thousand feet than at the surface.
Then, on 28 May 1923, when the latest dry well had sunk beyond three thousand feet, workers were eating breakfast when they heard a monstrous rumble and felt the ground shake. Down in the depths of the earth, an accumulation of oil under intense pressure broke through the thin rock which had kept it imprisoned for 230,000,000 years and roared up through the well casing, exploding hundreds of feet into the air. Santa Rita # 1 had come in, signaling a vast subterranean lake of oil in the Permian Basin. The first wells were on university lands, and hundreds of the subsequent wells would be too, providing that school with a potential revenue exceeding that of any other university in the world.
Later, when the Yates Field came in with its Permian oil, one well produced nearly three thousand barrels an hour from a depth of only eleven hundred and fifty feet: 'Drilling in the Yates, you just stick a pole in the ground and jump back.'
With its incredible millions from the Permian, the university would leverage itself into becoming a first-class school, and a thousand dry-soil farmers would find themselves to be millionaires, with a ranch in the country—the old homestead dotted with oil rigs— and a bright new home in Midland, identified by the Census Bureau as 'the wealthiest town per capita in the States,' with more Rolls-Royces than in New York.
But by 1969 those days of explosive wealth were over; the Permian had died down to a respectable field that still produced more oil than most, but did not throw up those soaring gushers whose free-flowing oil had once darkened the sky. Midland now served as husbandman to wells already in operation and was no longer in the exciting business of drilling new ones. As Ransom Rusk told his father's favorite wildcatter: 'Dewey, the Permian Basin is a discovered field.'