Texas

by James A. Michener

  ‘You have it wrong, Ransom. I didn’t agree to it. I wrote it. The other two support it.’

  ‘The Cobb senators will be turning in their graves. They loved Texas.’

  ‘And so do I. I will not stand by and see it converted into a Sparta.’

  ‘Quimper,’ Rusk cried, ‘help me kill this thing!’ But to everyone’s surprise, Lorenzo sided with us: ‘Ransom, it’s a proper warning. Hand it over, I’ll sign it.’

  ‘Is everyone going crazy?’ Rusk bellowed, and Quimper said: ‘I’ve been looking into the real Il Magnifico, that Medici fellow. And what do I find? In his day he led the Florentine Mafia, like my father led the Texas Mafia. But he’s remembered for his patronage of the arts. He tried to make Florence think. I feel the same about Texas.’

  ‘If you people insert that statement,’ Rusk threatened, ‘I’ll blast hell out of it in a minority disclaimer.’

  ‘You won’t,’ Miss Cobb said quietly, ‘because if you did, you’d look foolish, and you can’t afford that.’ When he continued to bristle, she soothed him until he surrendered; he’d refrain from public dissent if we’d allow him to alter a few phrases. He changed Although we believe that Texas has the capacity … to We know that Texas has the capacity … He also changed In what fields is Texas qualified to lead?’ to In what fields will Texas lead? And he changed it has bravado to something which we all preferred: it still has the courage to take great risks.

  Then Quimper made his own good change, knocking out the condescending part about popular music and substituting It has four universities which will soon be among the best in the land, Texas, Rice, A&M, SMU.

  When all was done, Rusk asked Miss Cobb: ‘Was Sparta so bad?’ and she replied: ‘It was a flaming bore, and we must avoid that in Texas,’ whereupon he growled: ‘Only an ass would call Texas boring.’

  The million dollars for my chair was the first display of obscene Texas wealth. Now to the other two. They focused on Ransom Rusk and came well after our December report had been submitted. The first was initiated by Lorenzo Quimper, the second by Miss Cobb, and each was quite wonderful in its own Texas way.

  At the amicable year-end dinner celebrating our final session, Quimper said, as the wine was being passed: ‘Ransom, you sit on all that money of yours, and you don’t do a single constructive thing with it. You’re a disgrace to the state of Texas.’

  ‘What should I do?’ Rusk asked, and this was a mistake, because Quimper had a proposal worked out in detail. He needed several months of telephone calls to flesh it out, but when he was done and all parts were in place, he produced a Lorenzo Quimper extravaganza which would be talked about for years to come.

  ‘What we’re going to do,’ he explained in my Austin office, ‘is introduce Ransom Rusk, secretive Texas billionaire, to the general public, who will be allowed to see him as the lovable and generous man we Task Force members have discovered him to be.’

  ‘What will you offer,’ I asked, ‘a mass execution of Democrats?’

  ‘No, we’re going to put on a masterful Texas bull auction. Ransom is proud of his Texas Longhorns, some of the best in America, but few people get a chance to see them. What we’ll do is sell off eighty-three of the choicest range animals you ever saw.’

  ‘That could involve a lot of people, maybe three, four hundred.’

  Lorenzo looked at me as if I had lost my mind: ‘Son, we’re talkin’ about five, six thousand.’

  ‘Why would that many come to a …?’

  Quimper put his arm about my shoulder in his confidential style, and said in a low, persuasive voice: ‘Son, half of Texas will be fightin’ to get in.’

  Excited by the prospects of a really slam-bang cattle sale, he involved me in the wild festivities he had planned on Rusk’s behalf, and I was staggered by what a Texas multimillionaire would recommend to a friend who was a Texas billionaire.

  By sunset on the Friday before the auction eleven Lear jets were lined up on the grassy field beside the Larkin runway, and next morning at least eighty smaller planes flew in, including six helicopters that ferried important guests to the ranch, eleven miles away. On Saturday eighteen huge blue-and-white Trailways buses, each with uniformed driver, moved endlessly around the motels, hotels and guest houses, stopping finally at the airport to finish loading before heading for the Rusk ranch.

  At four different barricades on the way armed security men in uniform halted us to inspect our credentials, and when we were cleared, the buses delivered us to a huge field prepared for the occasion. It was lined by thirty-six green-and-white portable toilets. ‘Experience has taught,’ Quimper said as he showed me around, ‘that the proper division is twenty-one for women, fifteen for men, because women take longer.’

  More than a hundred Rusk employees and high school students hired for the day were scattered through the vast crowd, each dressed in the distinctive colors of the ranch, gold and blue, and twenty of the more attractive young girls, in skimpy costume, manned that number of drink stands, serving endless quantities of beer, Coke, Dr. Pepper and a tangy orange drink, all well iced. What gave me great pleasure, a mariachi band of seven musicians—two blaring trumpets, two guitars, two violins, one double bass guitar—strolled amiably through the grounds, playing ‘Guadalajara’ and ‘Cu-cu-ru-cu-cu Paloma.’

  At noon four open-air kitchens operated, serving a delicious barbecue with pinto beans, salad, whole-wheat buns, cheese, pickles and coconut cake, and at one o’clock we all gathered in the huge tent, where a large stand had been erected behind a sturdily fenced-in area in which the Longhorns would be exhibited one by one as the sale progressed. Eighteen hundred interested men and women filled the tent as the two auctioneers appeared to considerable applause. They were a fine-looking pair of men in their early forties, prematurely silver-haired and possessed of leather lungs. ‘The Reyes brothers,’ Quimper said as they bowed, acknowledging the applause of spectators who were proud of them. ‘Their father was born in Durango, northern Mexico,’ Quimper said. ‘Walked to the Rio Grande, that muddy highway to salvation, and found a job. He sired fourteen children and sent them all to college. The six girls became teachers, medical assistants, what have you. The eight boys all went to A&M, doctors, accountants and these two skilled auctioneers. Shows what can be done.’

  The Reyes would be assisted, I learned, by four energetic young men who made themselves the highlight of the sale, for they remained at ground level, each wearing a big cowboy hat, and it was their job to excite the crowd, encourage the bidding, and wave frantically, shouting at the top of their voices: ‘Twenty-three thousand here!’ or ‘Twenty-four in the back.’ I asked Quimper who they were, and he smiled proudly: ‘What I do, we establish a generous budget for advertising. Maybe a dozen major cattle publications. But before I give any magazine a bundle of cash, I make a deal: “I’ll give you the advertising, Bert, but you must send me one of your editors to help.” These are the men the magazines have sent.’ They were an active, screaming lot.

  The Reyes brothers were verbal machine guns, rattling off a jargon of which I understood not one word until they slammed a piece of oak wood against a reverberating board: ‘Once, twice, sold to Big L Ranch of Okmulgee, Oklahoma.’

  Since there were eighty-three animals to be sold, each one groomed and perfect, and since the average price seemed to be about $29,000, it was obvious that the sale was going to fetch more than $2,000,000, which explained why no bidder ever sat for fifteen minutes before one of the costumed Rusk girls appeared with a tray of iced drinks. ‘We want to keep them happy,’ Quimper said, but I pointed out a curiosity of the sale: ‘Lorenzo, if you sell only eighty-three animals, and if the same bidders keep buying two and three each, there’s only thirty or forty people in this tent who are seriously participating.’

  ‘You’re right. The rest are like you. They come for the freebies … food, drinks and entertainment.’ He indicated the huge crowd of watchers, then added: ‘And to see what Ransom Rusk looks like.’

&nb
sp; He looked great. Tall, thin, dressed in complete cowboy garb, smiling wanly, nodding occasionally when a particularly fine animal was sold, he stood at the far side of the auctioneer’s stand, saying nothing unless the manager of the sale halted the bidding to ask him: ‘Mr. Rusk, this bull brought top dollar at the Ferguson Dispersal, did it not?’ and then Rusk would say, with the microphone in his face: ‘It did. A hundred and nine thousand dollars,’ and the rapid-fire chatter of the Reyes would resume.

  Quimper had a dozen surprises for the crowd. After the second bull had been sold, a roar went up, and when I looked about I saw that a remarkable man had taken his place in the middle of the screaming helpers. He was in his sixties and weighed about two hundred and sixty pounds. ‘It’s Hoss Shaw,’ Quimper informed me. ‘Imported him from Mississippi. Enthusiastic aide, best in the business.’

  If the four young men were active, Hoss was volcanic. Chewing on a long black cigar, he leaped about, roared in bullfrog voice, wheedled shamelessly, and when he elicited a bid he went into paroxysms. Throwing both arms aloft, he kicked one leg so high, he looked as if he were a crow about to take off. Watching Hoss Shaw report a bid could be exhausting.

  ‘He adds two, three thousand dollars to each animal,’ Quimper whispered. ‘Worth every penny of his commision.’

  With his arrival the serious part of the auction began, and I was perplexed by the confusing variety of cattle items for sale. An expert beside me explained: ‘We call it a bull sale, and as you can see, we do sell bulls. In various ways. You can buy a bull outright and take him home to your ranch. Or you can buy part of a bull—breeding rights and profits from the sale of frozen semen—but the bull stays here. Or you can buy a straw of frozen semen and impregnate your cow on your own ranch.’

  But it was when the cows came up for sale that I really became bewildered. The expert again explained: ‘First you have a cow, pure and simple, like this one being sold now. Then you have a cow, but she’s certified pregnant by a known bull. Then you have a pregnant cow, with a calf suckling at her side … that’s a three-fer, and you buy enough three-fers, you’ve got yourself a big start.’

  ‘That sounds simple enough,’ I said, but he laughed: ‘Son, I’m only beginning. In the old days a great Longhorn cow like Measles, best in forty years, could produce a calf a year … maybe sixteen in her lifetime, each one more valuable than gold. But now we can feed her hormones, collect her eggs as she produces them in her ovaries, inseminate them artificially, and encourage her to give us not one calf a year, but maybe thirty or forty.’

  ‘Sounds indecent!’ Then I asked: ‘But how does she give birth to them all?’ and the expert laughed: ‘That’s where genius comes in. We place each fertilized egg, one by one, in the uterus of any healthy cow …’

  ‘Another Longhorn?’

  ‘Any breed, so long as the cow is big and healthy and capable of giving good milk to her young.’

  ‘And that nothing cow produces a Longhorn calf?’

  ‘She does. But it’s the next step that tickles me. Experts can slice a fertilized egg in half, implant each half in a different recipient cow, and produce identical twins, three times out of ten.’

  ‘Aren’t you fellows playing God?’

  ‘Son, we’re doin’ with Texas Longhorns today what scientists are gonna do with people tomorrow.’

  But I was most interested in the next items, for into the auction ring came, one by one, six animals with the longest, wildest horns I had ever seen. They were steers, so in normal husbandry they would have been good only for the meat market if young or the dog-food industry if aged, but here, because of their tremendous horns, they were remarkable assets, eagerly sought by Texas ranchers. ‘We call them “walkin’-around Longhorns,” ’ the man said. ‘We buy them to adorn our ranches so women can “Oh!” and “Ah!” when they come out to see us from Houston or Dallas. They’re also very effective if you’re trying to borrow money from a visiting Boston banker.’

  How grand those horns were! ‘Real rocking chairs,’ my informant said admiringly, and when a huge, rangy beast stalked in with horns seventy-seven inches from tip to tip, he started bidding wildly, and I cheered him on, for this was a remarkable animal. Finally I winked at Hoss Shaw, as if to say: ‘You got a live one here,’ and Hoss put on his act until my man bought the magnificent steer for $11,000. ‘You got some real walkin’-around stock that time,’ I whispered, and he said: ‘Thanks for your encouragement. I might have dropped out.’

  At one point I got the impression that more than half the bidders were medical doctors, and when I asked Quimper about this, he said: ‘In Texas, never get sick during a cattle sale. Most of the doctors will be at the auction.’

  It was a dreamlike day—the dust of the great buses, the noise of the helicopters, the aromatic smoke from the mesquite logs toasting the barbecue, the soft singing of the mariachis, the whirling about of the pretty girls in their short skirts as they passed out drinks, the rapid-fire cries of the Reyes brothers: ‘Hoody-hoody-hoody-harkle-harkle-krimshaw-krimshaw twenty-six thousand,’ the figure repeated eleven times before Hoss Shaw screamed, arms waving, one foot in the air: ‘Twenty-seven thousand.’

  But when the noise was greatest, there was a solemn moment, forcing even the rowdiest participants to come to attention as a splendid Longhorn bull was brought into the pen. An expert from Wichita Refuge in Oklahoma took the microphone and said: ‘Ladies and gentlemen! As you may remember, in 1927 the United States woke up to the fact that the famed Texas Longhorn was about to vanish from this earth. Fortunately, thoughtful men and women of that period took action, and my predecessors at the Refuge scoured the West and Mexico looking for authentic animals with which to rebuild the breed. It was here in Larkin, at the ranch of our host’s grandmother, Emma Larkin Rusk, that they found that core of great Longhorns on which we rebuilt.

  ‘No name was prouder, no animal meant more to the recovery of the Longhorn than Mean Moses VI, the perfect bull that Emma Rusk sent up to the Refuge. Along with the sensational cow Bathtub Bertha, these animals launched the famous MM/BB line, and right now we’re going to bring before you the living epitome of the breed—Mean Moses XIX.’ As we cheered, the left-hand flanking gate opened and up the ramp came the stately bull, long, mean, rangy, not too fat but tremendously prepotent.

  ‘Ladies and gentlemen,’ intoned the auctioneer. ‘Mean Moses XIX, top animal in his breed, is owned by a consortium. He lives on this ranch, but he belongs to the industry. Today we are selling one-tenth interest in this greatest of the Longhorns. One-tenth only, ladies and gentlemen, and the bull stays here. But you participate fully in the nationwide sale of his semen. Do I hear a bid of fifty thousand?’

  I gasped, for if Reyes could get a starting bid of that amcunt, it meant that Mean Moses was valued at $500,000. The bid was immediately forthcoming, and before I could catch my breath it stood at $80,000, at which Hoss Shaw sprang into action, dancing and wheedling the bidders until the hammer fell at $110,000. Mean Moses, whose line had been kept extant only by the affection of Emma Larkin Rusk, was verifiably worth $1,100,000.

  • • •

  As night fell, six thousand bowls of chili were served with Mexican sweets on the side, and the visitors found seats about the place, facing the large stage which Quimper had erected for the occasion and onto which now came the first of three orchestras that would entertain till two in the morning.

  It was a beautiful night, as fine as this region of Texas provided, and the music was noisy and country. People wandered about freely, locating old friends, making appointments and closing deals. Men running for office circulated, shaking hands, and some of the most beautiful women in America moved about, lending grace to the night.

  I should have suspected that something was up when I saw among these beauties one who was especially attractive, a girl I had cheered when a graduate assistant at the University of Texas. She had been Beth Morrison then, premier baton twirler of the South West Conference and everybody
’s sweetheart. Now she was Beth Macnab, wife of the Dallas Cowboys’ linebacker. She and her husband went to New York a good deal, the gossip columns said, where they were friends with various painters, who stayed with them when the artists had one-man exhibitions in Texas.

  I could not imagine why Beth, who was now regarded as one of our Texas intellectuals, had bothered to attend a bull auction in Larkin, but I gave the matter no further thought, because Quimper took the stage to make an announcement which stunned the crowd: ‘Our brochure said we’d have four bands. The mariachis, the dance band you’ve been hearing, and the Nashville Brass, who were so sensational. What the brochure did not say was that the fourth band which we’ll now hear brings with it the immortal Willie Nelson!’

  The crowd went berserk, because many of its members had known Willie when he was a voice wailing in the wilderness, adhering to a simple statement which seemed to lack the ingredients of popular acceptance. I used to listen to him in the small Austin bars and tell my friends: ‘This cat can sing. He has a statement to make.’ And then in the 1970s the world discovered that people like me had been right, and he became not only a roaring success, but also a symbol of that stubborn Texas type which clings to a belief, ignores snubs, and survives into a kind of immortality. Willie Nelson was basic Texas, and when he came onstage in tennis shoes, beat-up jeans, ragged shirt and red bandanna about his head, some of us old-timers had tears in our eyes. What a voice! What a presence! By damn, when Lorenzo Quimper threw a bull sale, he threw it just short of Montana.

  But even Willie was not the highlight of the evening, for after he had given us a masterful rendition of ‘Blue Eyes Cryin’ in the Rain’ Quimper took the stage, drums rolled, and Willie stepped aside. ‘Friends,’ Quimper said, ‘my dear associate Ransom Rusk, who has arranged this celebration, has been just what the cartoonists pictured, a lonely, self-motivated Texas oilman of untold wealth. He was afraid of people, so I prevailed upon him to invite six thousand of his most intimate friends here tonight to share with him a moment of transcendent joy. Friends!’—Lorenzo’s voice elevated to a bellow—‘Ransom Rusk, that mean-spirited, lonely son-of-a-gun, sittin’ in his office at midnight countin’ his billions, he’s gonna get married!’