EIGHT

“You don’t know me very well,” I told Manlow Rhodes.

“You’re right about that, son,” he replied. “In fact I don’t know you at all.”

It had been ten days since I’d given Adolph Havel the draft and I was in the Farmers and Merchants Bank trying to borrow money. I showed Rhodes my lease and my plats.

“Paying the draft is really not a problem,” I told him. “I can get the money to do that on a few hours’ notice. I’ve already had several offers from substantial men who want to front the money in exchange for a portion of the minerals I have here. But that’s the best deal I can get so far.”

“Then why do you come to the bank?” he asked.

“Because even if I sell … oh, let’s say half interest in our holdings in the Havel tract for fifty-five thousand dollars, I still have to either sublease my remaining interest to another operator or pay part of the drilling costs to get it into production. And I can’t afford to pay part of the drilling costs.”

“I understand. What exactly are you proposing to me?”

“I want you to cover my draft and give me thirty days to find a better offer. Hopefully, I can come up with an operator who will bail me out and cover the drilling costs for half interest in the lease.”

“Which would mean you want to borrow how much?”

“Twenty-five thousand dollars.”

He nodded. “I see. Well, I took your friend’s advice and hired me a young petroleum man named Wallace Reed. Let’s let him take a look at this.”

Reed was a brash, thirtyish fellow with crew-cut brown hair and intelligent eyes. He examined the plat, then skimmed over my lease, and muttered, “Damn!”

“Please, Wallace,” Rhodes said with an indulgent smile.

“Do you know what this guy has here?” Reed asked.

“Of course not,” Rhodes answered. “That’s why I called you in.”

“Millions, that’s what. This is the largest single tract anywhere around either one of those two wells that wasn’t already under lease when this thing started. It’s a gold mine. And he wants to borrow how much against this?”

“Twenty-five thousand dollars,” Rhodes said.

“If it’s that good, then let me have thirty,” I said.

“Why the extra?” Rhodes asked.

I grinned. “I haven’t had time to get in the poker game yet. I need a little money to play with.”

“Poker,” Rhodes said, and shook his head. He looked up at Reed and raised his eyebrows. “So you recommend that we lend him the money?”

“Of course we want to lend it to him,” Reed replied. “Ten times that if he needs it.”

“No thank you,” I said quickly.

“Very well,” Rhodes said. “Draw up the papers and put the funds in his account. Use the mineral rights as security.” He turned to me. “How long did you say you need the money?” he asked.

“Thirty days.”

“Give yourself three months,” he cautioned.

“Just exactly what are you trying to do with this lease, anyway?” Reed asked me.

“I want to find an operator who will pay off my note and cover all the drilling costs for half of our interest in this tract.”

“I can help you there,” Reed said. “Let me make a phone call or two back to Tyler and I’ll have somebody who’ll do all that in no time. Are you planning to lease any more tracts out in the basin?”

“Della has picked up a few small parcels here and there. Some of these speculators are running on such tight budgets that they can’t afford her fifty dollars an hour. So she lets them use her records for a percentage.”

“Della?…” Reed asked.

“She’s the young lady who is doing so well with the old abstract company,” Rhodes said serenely. “She’s been making some very nice deposits here lately.”

“We’re partners,” I explained. “She was the one who sent me out to Havel’s to get this lease in the first place. I’m new to the oil business.”

“Mr. Rhodes, we need to talk about setting these people up a line of credit,” Reed said.

“We will, Wallace. We will.” Rhodes looked across his desk at me. “Are you a college man by any chance?” he asked. “You sound educated.”

“Yes sir, I am. Harvard, class of 1925.”

Rhodes beamed. “I was Princeton, class of ’03.”

“I thought so,” I replied with a smile.

“Thought what?”

“You’re a Presbyterian.”

“My goodness,” he murmured. “Does it show that badly?”

Reed scooped the plat and my lease off Rhodes’s desk. “I’m SMU business school on the GI bill and I don’t know a damn thing about theology,” he said. “So I’ll go have one of the steno girls make up these papers.”

“I like that young man,” Rhodes remarked as Reed left the room. While we waited for my note to be drawn up, Rhodes and I had another nice visit. We talked about rowing and lacrosse and Harvard/Princeton games on snowy Saturday afternoons so far in the past that only an archeologist could have unearthed the records of them. His office was the perfect place for it—sedate and clubby with its walnut paneling and leather and brass. Who would have ever thought that in just a few days I’d be hauled in and manhandled by one of the most vicious sheriffs in Texas?