SEVENTEEN

That Monday morning I ran into my first real snag in the oil business. The week before I’d made a verbal agreement to lease 217 acres that lay about five miles from what oilmen call the fairway, by which they mean the centerline of the field where the oil is most abundant. The tract was something of a long shot, but the geologist’s report indicated that the extremity of the field was probably at least a mile beyond the place I was interested in.

I’d made an offer of three hundred an acre as a lease bonus, and it was quickly snapped up by the owner, a small, prim, retired bookkeeper from Odessa named Meese. The previous year he’d inherited the land from his wife, who in turn had inherited it from her grandfather. The only problem was that Meese wouldn’t take either a draft or a personal check. I promised him that if the title checked out I’d bring him a certified check Monday.

I went back into town where Della had one of her assistants do a quick emergency search on the title. Then I took her findings to Andy and prevailed upon him to give me a fast opinion. He pronounced Meese’s title good. I was at the bank when it opened Monday to get the check, then I hurried out to Meese’s house, a small, prim structure that matched its owner perfectly. As I pulled into his driveway I almost hit a big blue Cadillac that was swinging out onto the highway. As the car flashed past me I saw that Simon Van Horn was at the wheel with Clifton Robillard beside him. They nodded at me, then looked at one another and broke out into laughter.

“Top of the morning to you, too,” I muttered and gave them an offhand wave.

Meese came out on his front porch at the sound of my arrival. “I don’t believe we can do any business today,” he said as I approached his porch.

“Why not?” I asked.

“Well…” he hedged. “Things have changed a little since you were here.”

He took a seat in a big hickory rocking chair. I came up on the porch but he didn’t ask me to sit. “They offered you a better deal, didn’t they?” I asked.

“Who offered me a better deal?”

“Those two birds in that Cadillac,” I replied with a jerk of my thumb back toward the road. “What did they give you? Twenty bucks more an acre? Fifty?”

“Now, you listen here, young fellow … a man has to look out for himself in this old world.”

“My father always taught me that a man has to keep his commitments,” I said.

“You need to remember that we didn’t have anything on paper,” he said, shaking his finger at me like a schoolmarm. “And you know that as well as I do. Just show me anything we had on paper, and I’ll rip up the other man’s check.”

I stared at him silently until he began to squirm just a little. “Three fifty,” he finally said. “I got three fifty.”

“Did you bother to mention that you and I already had a deal?”

“Sure I did! How else do you think I got them to bid up that high? Of course, if you really want this lease bad enough, then you ought to be able to beat three fifty.…” His voice died in the sound of my laughter. “What’s so funny?” he asked.

“You’ve already proven yourself to be a lying scoundrel,” I said. “So why would I want to do any more business with you? Do you really expect me to offer four hundred, shake hands again and then come out here in the morning and find out that they’ve gone four fifty? How foolish do you think I am?”

I walked down the steps and was almost to my car when he called after me, “Even the Good Book says the Lord helps those that help themselves.”

I turned and went back up on the porch. Putting my hands on the arms of his rocking chair, I leaned my six-foot-four-inch frame down until I loomed over him with our faces only a few inches apart. He cringed away, his eyes wide with fear. “No it doesn’t,” I said with a big happy grin. “That’s not in the Bible at all. But I’ll tell you what is.… ‘The Lord God of Hosts shall cast down all those who worketh iniquity, and great shall be their lamentations on the day of Judgment.…’”

A half hour later I was back in the office. “No lease?” Della asked. “What happened?”

“Van Horn and Robillard,” I said. “They slid in under us.”

“How did they know we were after that tract?”

“They may not have,” I said. “It could have been just a little unethical business competition, or it could have been Robillard trying to get even for the poker game this past weekend.”

“What happened at the poker game?” she asked.

“Just what I came here to make happen,” I said. “I humiliated him good.”

“So you think?…”

“Who knows. But please stress to the girls that they need to keep quiet about what goes on here.… Okay?”

“I’ll do more than that,” she said. “I’ll have Mona start keeping an eye on them.”

*   *   *

Two mornings later I was just about to leave the house when the phone rang. When I lifted the receiver I heard Col. Homer Garrison’s deep voice rumbling ponderously across the miles between me and Austin. “How’s things going out there?” he asked.

“Well, there’s a lot of oil coming out of the ground these days,” I replied.

“So they tell me. Say, son … Are you still hooked up with the New-nited States gumment?”

I paused before answering, my senses suddenly alert. “I’ve maintained a few contacts in the government, if that’s what you’re asking,” I finally replied.

“Hmmmm…” he mused. “I sure do wish I could get a straight answer these days. I’m sort of a yes-or-no kind of man, you understand. Older generation and all that.”

I couldn’t help but grin. “Oh, come on, Colonel. You’ve dealt with the state legislature enough to know sometimes a man just isn’t in a position to give you a yes-or-no answer. That doesn’t stop his heart from being in the right place.”

“No, I guess it don’t. And as far as I know yours always has been.”

“Colonel Garrison, what’s on your mind?”

I heard a deep sigh. “Well, I’ve got a little inside information for you.”

“Information? About what?”

“Clifton Robillard.”

I was instantly wary. “Why would I care about Robillard, Colonel?”

“Don’t you try to shit me, boy,” he said cheerfully. “Do you remember that story in the papers about General MacArthur asking me to come over to Japan to run the MP’s for the occupation gumment and set up a civilian police force for the Japanese?”

“Yes sir, I remember it,” I replied.

“Good. My point being that there are some people in high places who occasionally value my ideas, however ignorant and countrified they might seem to you younger folks.”

“Your point is well taken, Colonel,” I said dryly. “Now, what about Robillard?”

“It all started with a young banking examiner,” he began, his voice now shorn of its bumpkin inflections. “It seems that he got his tail in a crack with some gambling debts, then he went to…”

After he’d finished ten minutes later, I asked, “How long can you hold off on this?”

“How long do you need?”

“Late November?” I asked hopefully, my fingers crossed.

I could almost hear the tiny little gears spinning in his great dome of a head as he quickly considered. “I don’t see why not,” he finally said. “The charges haven’t even been filed, but the bank examiner has already made a deal for five years probated. I don’t figure Robillard is going anywhere.”

“Thank you, sir,” I said with relief. “But will the bank examiner keep quiet?”

“Son, there’s no limit to what this young fellow will do to keep out of the pen. He’s heard some stories about this state’s correctional facilities, and he didn’t like ’em.”

“Thank you once again, Colonel,” I said.

“Don’t mention it,” he replied. “As you probably know, my main interest in this matter is Robillard’s close relationship with Will Scoggins. That man is a disgrace to law enforcement. But people like them eventually outsmart themselves, don’t they?”

“Indeed they do,” I replied.

“You take care now, you hear?” he said, all hayseed once again. “Keep ol’ Bob Crowder honest for me.”

I hung up the phone and sat there on the sofa with my mind racing. I must have stared out the window for ten minutes before I finally made up my mind and reached for the telephone again. It seemed as though it took me forever to get through to Chicken Little. “We need some more men,” I said as soon as I had him on the phone. “Not for our project, but for something else I’ve got in mind that same night.”

“Lord help my time, boy.… What kind of fellows are you talking about?”

I told him.