This helped Kimbro in two ways: it verified his hunch that the field did not lie to the east of Rusk #1, and it so disheartened the Larkin landowners—three test holes, three buckets of dust—that they became determined to offload their worthless leases throughout the entire area. In a paroxysm of energy, Dewey shouted at Rusk and his two A&M buddies: ‘Now’s the time to pick up every damned lease in the district. My God, won’t somebody lend me ten thousand dollars?’ Faced by total disaster if his Rusk #3 did not come in, he spent two days committing his last penny to his belief that he would strike it rich this time. By dint of telegrams, telephone calls and the most ardent personal appeals to speculators in the Larkin-Jacksboro-Fort Griffin area, he put together a substantial kitty, which he spent on leases that encapsulated the field.
At six in the morning of 30 June 1923, Dewey Kimbro appeared at the oilmen’s café with a smile so confident and casual that a stranger might think he was about to start a well with the full weight of Gulf Oil behind him, and when Floyd Rusk came in, sweating like a pig, Dewey caught him by the wrist and whispered: ‘Dry your face,’ for he, Dewey, had been in such perilous situations before; Rusk had not.
When they rode out to the field, with Dewey commenting on the brightness of this summer’s day, Rusk was vaguely aware that if Rusk #3 did strike oil, profits would be divided in this typically Texan way, the intricate details of which had been worked out by lawyers and filed in long legal documents:
Thus, the second A&M investor was entitled to 7/8 × 15/16 × 1/4 × 1/16 of the whole, or 105/8192 (.012817), which meant that every time the well produced $100,000, he received $1281.74 for as long as the well operated.
On an August afternoon in 1923 a hanger-on who had watched the drilling of Rusk #3 as he would a baseball game, came riding back to Larkin in his Ford, screaming: ‘They got oil!’
The citizens, hoping to see a great gusher sprouting from the plains, sped out to the tank, where, on its flank, hardened men were dancing and crying and slapping each other with oil-splattered hands. They did not have a gusher; the famous field at Larkin did not contain either the magnitude or the subterranean pressure to provide that kind of spectacular exhibition, but Dewey Kimbro, seeing the oil appear and making such guesses as he could on fragmentary evidence, said: ‘Could be a hundred and ten barrels a day, for years to come.’
He was right. The Larkin Field, as it came to be known, was going to be a slow, steady producer. Spacious in extent but not very deep, it was the kind of field that would allow wells to be dug almost anywhere inside its limits with the sober assurance that at around three thousand feet in the Strawn Sand a modest amount of oil would be forthcoming, year after year after year.
‘And the glory of it is,’ Kimbro told Rusk when they were back home at midnight, ‘we know pretty well the definition of the field. Our first dry well to the east plus the dry Oklahoma wildcatter showed us where it ends in that direction. Our dry Number Two proved where it ends in the west. What we don’t know is how far north and south.’
‘Forever,’ Rusk said, ‘and by God, we control it all.’ For one glorious moment these two men who had once wanted to kill each other danced in the darkened kitchen.
In the early fall of 1923, Larkin became the hottest boom town in Texas, with oilmen from all parts of America streaming in to try their luck at the far perimeters of the undefined field. To a stranger, the Larkin Field did not look like a typical oil site, because as soon as a well was dug, the towering pyramidal structure that meant oil to the layman was quickly moved to some other location for more drilling. The actual pumping of oil from deep below the surface was turned over to an unromantic donkey engine, a small low-slung affair which could barely be seen from a distance. The donkey, powered by gasoline, worked its relatively short arm up and down incessantly, and from it poured the oil which was turning Larkin gamblers into millionaires.
Companies big and little rushed in their landmen to acquire leases, and wherever they turned they found themselves confronted by Floyd Rusk, who either owned the land, controlled the leases, or had power of attorney for handling the leases owned by his partner, Dewey Kimbro.
It was now that Rusk demonstrated both his devious managerial skill and his untamed voraciousness, for he saw quickly that he and Kimbro controlled far more land than they could ever drill. And if they didn’t act quickly, they would lose certain of their short-term leases outright and then watch as other men’s wells sucked out the oil from under their long-term ones. As if he had been in the business for generations, Rusk dealt out his leases to the major companies, scattering them so they would do his own holdings the most good, and using the money he obtained from them for the drilling of his own additional wells.
‘A man could make a good livin’,’ he told Kimbro, ‘just buying’ and sellin’ leases and never drillin’ an inch into the ground. Let some other dumb bastard do the hard work.’
Now a fundamental difference between the two partners surfaced. Kimbro loved oil itself, the endless search, even the heartbreaking failures, the lucky hit, the bringing of oil to the surface, while Rusk’s interest blossomed only when the bubbling oil came into his actual possession. He reveled in the tricky deals, the exploitation, the pyramiding of the wealth that oil provided.
If left alone, Kimbro would have ranged over all of Texas, identifying new fields, bringing them to fruition, and then turning them over to the managerial care of Floyd Rusk; his only interest in the money which his wells produced was that it enabled him to search for others. However, under Rusk’s canny leadership, Kimbro was kept close to the Larkin Field, which the partners manipulated as if it were some giant poker game, and more than one major company entered into its files a recommendation that Floyd Rusk be either shot or placed on the board of directors: ‘That son-of-a-bitch knows oil.’
They were only partly right, for if Rusk quickly mastered the intricacies of dealing in leases, he never could visualize the lake of oil which lay hidden under his ranch and under the leases he controlled. Kimbro was powerless to explain that an oil field was one of the most delicately balanced marvels of nature: ‘Floyd, goddamnit, our field has a limited life. The pressure which delivers the oil to us must be maintained.’
Kimbro drew maps of the underground reservoir, showing Floyd how the entrapment by rocks kept the lake of oil in position, and how water and gas provided the pressure which enabled the drillers to bring it to the surface: ‘Destroy that pressure, or dissipate it, and you can lose your field.’
He astounded Rusk by predicting that if wells continued to be dug so promiscuously at Larkin, the pressure would be drawn off at so many random sites that only about ten percent of the oil locked underground would ever be recovered, and when Rusk did finally understand this, it had exactly the opposite result from what Kimbro had intended.
‘By God, if it’s limited, let’s get ours now.’
So he dug numerous wells on his own property, producing vastly more raw petroleum than could be marketed, and on his better leases he encouraged everyone else to do the same, until Larkin fairly groaned with oil. When all the fuel lines were jammed and the open earthen pits were rotting with the dark stuff, whose volatile oils were thus dissipated, he watched as the price dropped from a dollar a barrel to the appalling figure of ten cents, and even then he could not comprehend the need for more disciplined measures. Like a true Texan he bellowed: ‘We don’t want no government interference. We found this field. We developed it, and by God, we’ll work it our way.’
His wasteful procedure was not preposterous, so far as he was concerned, because he had varied ways to multiply his wealth. He owned thirty-three wells outright; he shared a seventy-five-percent interest in nineteen others; and he received huge yearly rentals for leases which the big companies held on the acreage he could not himself develop. By the close of that first year he was a millionaire four times over, with every prospect of doubling and then redoubling and then quadrupling.
His tremendous good lu
ck had little effect upon him personally, for he rarely spent money on himself beyond the sheerest necessities. He still moved his huge bulk about the oil fields in a Ford truck; he wore the same rancher’s outfit, the same battered Stetson, the same cheapest-line General Quimper boots. At the morning breakfasts in the café, which now had thirty tables filled with oilmen, he never picked up the checks at his corner unless he had specifically invited someone to eat with him, which he did infrequently. He gave no money to the Baptist church, none to the school, none to the hospital. In fact, he attended only spasmodically to his income and would have been unable to tell anyone how much he had accumulated.
He did buy three good bulls, for in Texas, oil and ranching enjoyed a symbiotic relationship which no Northern oilman ever understood. If you took a thousand Texas oil wells, you could be sure that nine hundred were drilled so that some dreaming man without a dime could buy himself a ranch, for it was said in the business: ‘Ain’t nothin’ makes a steer grow better than good pasturage, a pinch of phosphorus in the soil, and freedom to scratch hisself on an oil derrick.’
With his first big check from Gulf for his leases, he purchased an additional five thousand acres for his ranch, and with his second check, he drove north to meet with Paul Yeager: ‘I think my father made a mistake promisin’ you this land, and I made a bigger mistake transferrin’ it to you legal. Paul, I want to buy it back. Name your price.’
‘I’m not selling.’
‘Paul, you got no mineral rights. You got no leasin’ rights. To you this is just so much rock and grama grass. You’ll never do anything with it. I need it.’
‘I told you, it’s not for sale.’
‘You know, we’re goin’ to put six, seven more wells on your place.’
‘I don’t think you are.’
‘Now, Paul! Law’s the law. Name your price—sixty dollars an acre? Eighty dollars?’
Rusk was unable to swing a deal, and some days after he had sent his men up to the tank to start a new well on the Yeager land, they came roaring back with a horrendous story: ‘Like you ordered, we was headed for the north end of the Yeager lease, but he met us at the gate with a shotgun. We said “We got legal right” and he said “No more laws. You come on my land, I shoot.” So we drove right in, as you said to do, and by God, he shot.’
‘Kill anybody?’
‘Elmer’s hurt bad. Doctor’s tendin’ him.’
In gargantuan fury Floyd Rusk rampaged around town looking for the sheriff, and after he found him, a posse drove north to handle Paul Yeager. They found him standing at the gate to his ranch, shotgun still in hand.
‘Don’t come in here!’ he warned.
‘Paul, the law says—’
‘Stand back, Fat Belly. No more of your trucks on my land.’
‘Yeager!’ the sheriff shouted. ‘Put down that gun and—’
Yeager fired, not at the sheriff but at Rusk, who with extraordinary nimbleness dropped to the ground, whipped out his Colts, and drilled his brother-in-law through the head.
There were seventeen witnesses, of course, to testify that Paul Yeager had aimed a shotgun at the sheriff and had nearly killed Floyd Rusk, who had fired back in self-defense. No trial was ever held, and after the burial Rusk asked the sheriff to ride out to the Yeager ranch and offer Mrs. Yeager a good price for her lands without saying who the bidder was. Before the month was out, Rusk had regained the land his father should never have given away, and the Rusk rigs were free to move about it as they wished.
If Floyd Rusk was little moved by his sudden wealth, this was not the case with Molly, for when that first check from Gulf Oil proved that prosperity was real, she went to Ed Boatright at the Chevy garage, rented a car and a driver, and posted in to Neiman-Marcus in Dallas. There she went to the most expensive salon in the store and announced, in a loud voice, that she wanted the head saleslady and a very large wastebasket.
When she was shown into a discreet area where only the best clothing was sold—fabrics from England, styling from France—she started undressing, throwing each of her old and long-worn garments into the wastebasket, and when it was filled with every item except her panties, she announced: ‘I want them burned.’
‘We’ll take them to the basement.’
‘I want them burned here. I never want to see those damned rags again.’
‘But, madam—’
‘Don’t madam me, burn them.’
The manager was called, but since Molly was nearly naked, he could not speak with her directly; he did, however, give strict orders that there would be no burning of anything on that floor, but Molly was so vociferous that he asked: ‘Who is this crazy dame?’ and Molly heard the saleswoman explain: ‘She’s the wife of that fellow who hit the big oil field at Larkin,’ and the manager said: ‘Burn them.’
Firemen were alerted, but before they could appear, Molly was covered with an expensive lounging robe, of which she said: ‘I’ll take it.’ And so draped, she watched as men with fire extinguishers supervised the burning of her old wardrobe. When the fire went out, and her applause died down, she proceeded to spend $5,600 on replacements and left an order for $3,800 worth of other items to be sent to Larkin as soon as they arrived from New York and London.
She sent Ed Boatright’s driver home alone, carrying in the back of his Chevy many of her purchases. For herself she bought a large new Packard from a Dallas dealer recommended by Neiman-Marcus and hired one of the firm’s drivers to chauffeur her back to Larkin.
In four months the population of Larkin jumped from 2,329 to more than 19,700, and this resulted in revolutionary change. Take housing, for example. The little town obviously could not accommodate such a tremendous influx in existing structures, so extraordinary solutions had to be sought, and old-time residents gaped when they saw a convoy of sixty mules on the road from Jacksboro, each four hauling on a farm flatbed a house lifted from its foundations farther east. Tents were at a premium, and any householder with a spare room could rent it at three dollars a day to each of four occupants. Many beds were used three times a day, in eight-hour shifts, and food was grabbed wherever it was provided and in whatever condition.
Every businessman saw his turnover quadrupled within the month, and by the end of the year, men who sold what the oil crews needed found themselves enormously wealthy. The Tumlinson twins maintained six trucks to haul in the long lengths of lumber required for building derricks and the associated small buildings at a site. They also imported huge supplies of coal for the winter months and almost any hardware they could find in places like Fort Worth and Dallas. One twin said: ‘All we are, really, is a turnover point. We rarely keep anything past the weekend.’
And Ed Boatright sold absolutely any car he could get his hands on and employed six new mechanics to keep the cars he had sold running: ‘The roads to an oil field are murder on cars, but my men are geniuses.’
The sudden inflow of money altered many things, because it was the very type of man who had played a major role in the reactionary Ku Klux Klan who found himself in position to make the most profit from the exploding trade, and onetime leaders like the Tumlinson twins and Boatright became so preoccupied with their expanding business that they no longer had time to monitor community morals. An older man who had taken the Klan quite seriously tried to summon his cohorts back to the continuing task of policing, but some of the younger men told him: ‘Let’s get this oil thing settled … the buildings we need and everything … and then we’ll take care of the riffraff that’s wandered in.’ The Klan did not intend closing shop; its impulses were too deep and strong for that, but it did propose to make a dollar while the chance existed.
Some activities of the boom did eventually occasion real soul-searching on the part of Larkin citizens, whether they were members of the Klan or not. The woman Nora, whom the Klan had once punished, now ran a house which contained eleven young women who had flocked in from as far away as Denver, and no one could ignore what business the young ladies were
conducting. The founder of the town’s good fortune, Dewey Kimbro, still lived in the house with his girl Esther, but he had to be indulged because he was now well on his way to becoming a millionaire, and that excused a lot.
As a matter of fact, the former puritans would have been happy if the seamier side of their town had been as quietly run as Nora’s place, but Larkin received a black eye when a reporter for the New York Times came to town to verify the rumor that ‘Larkin is the most sinful little town in America.’ He probed about for nine or ten days, picking up the usual colorful stories about ‘a saloon called The Bucket of Blood, and a gambling hall named The Missionary’s Downfall,’ but such accounts could have applied to almost any oil-boom town or any temporary railhead in the West. What made this man’s story provocative was his detailed account of how the town fathers were profiting from the boom:
Each Sunday morning, just after dawn, the sheriff and his enthusiastic men prowl the dives and the haunts, arresting any ladies of the night found therein and carting them off to jail in the Ford paddy wagon belonging to the police. This happens in any frontier town and is not remarkable.
What is remarkable is that on Monday morning these ladies, some of them extremely beautiful, are lined up on a public balcony of the fine red-and-white courthouse in the public square, and while the oilmen and the young fellows of town gather enthusiastically below, a judge of some kind steps onto the balcony, lifts the left arm of one of the young women, and announces the amount of her fine.
The men below then bid vigorously for the right to pay her fine, but the first bid must be the fine itself. Thus, if Mary Belle has been fined three dollars, the bidding must start there, but it can rise as high as the young woman’s charms justify, and calls from all parts make the bidding quite exciting.
When a winner has been determined, he pays the amount bid and then receives all rights to the young lady for the next twenty-four hours. On Tuesday through Saturday, of course, she works at her regular stand, but on Sunday she will be arrested and on Monday the auction will resume.