Michener, James A. (205 page)

'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.'

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 commission.'

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 iMoses 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 amount, 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 maria-chis, 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!'

As we cheered and whistled, Rusk, in a freshly pressed blue whipcord rancher's outfit featuring a pair of special gold boots provided by Quimper, came onstage and bowed. Taking the microphone, he said, pointing to Quimper: 'Loudmouth is right. I'm getting married. And I want you to be the first to meet the bride.' From the wings he brought in Maggie Morrison, forty-nine years old, one hundred and twenty-one pounds, and the portrait of a successful Houston real estate magnate. She wore, to her own surprise but at the insistence of Quimper, the Mexican China Poblana costume, complete with Quimper boots and topped by a delightful straw hat from whose brim dangled twenty-four little silver bells. She was a warm-hearted, smiling woman of maximum charm, and I thought: Rusk is lucky to land that one.

But Quimper was not finished—indeed, he was never satisfied with anything he did, so far as I could recall, for there was always a little something he wanted to add—and this time he added a stunner: 'Good ol' Ranee is not only gettin' hisse'f a stunnin' wife, but he also gets one of the most beautiful daughters in Texas, Beth Macnab!' When Beth came onstage, Lorenzo signaled to the wings and a pretty girl of fourteen ran out with a silver baton.

'This is a surprise, folks, and I haven't warned Beth, but how about some of those All-American twirls?'

It had been some years since Beth had performed at the various half-times throughout the state—Dallas Cowboys, Cotton Bowl and the rest—and she could properly have begged off, but this was her mother's big night, so she kicked off her high heels and said: 'A girl doesn't usually twirl in an outfit like this, but if Mom is brave enough to marry Ransom Rusk after what the papers say about him, I'm brave enough to make a fool of myself.'

She threw the baton high in the air, waited with her lovely face

upturned, and was lucky enough to catch it. Bowing to the crowd, she returned the baton to the girl, then blew kisses fore and aft: 'Never press your luck. Mom, this is wonderful. Pop, welcome to the family.' And she parked a big kiss on Ransom's cheek.

When the couple returned to Texas in August after a hurried honeymoon in Rome, Paris and London, Miss Cobb called me on the phone and asked me to rush immediately to Dallas, where our disbanded Task Force was to meet with Ransom Rusk and his new wife, and when we filed into the room to meet him, she spoke bluntly: 'Ransom, my work with you on our committee and my attendance at your bull sale made me appreciate you as a real human being. And the fact that you were brave enough to marry this delightful woman from Houston confirms my feelings.'

'Sounds like an ominous preamble,' he said, and she replied: 'It is.'

None of us knew what she had in mind and we were startled when she disclosed it: 'I think your good friend Lorenzo did you a great service when he prevailed upon you to throw that bash. Best thing you ever did, Ransom. Made you human. But it's not enough.'

'What else did you have in mind?" he asked gruffly.

'You're one of the richest men in our state, maybe the richest. But you've never done one damned thing for Texas. And I think that's scandalous.'

'Now wait . . .'

'Oh, I know, a football scholarship here and there, your fund for leprosy research. But I mean something commensurate with your stature.'

'Like what?'

'Have you ever, in your pinched-in little life, visited the great museum complex in Fort Worth?'

'Not really. A reception now and then, but I don't like receptions.'

'Are you aware that Fort Worth, which people in Dallas like to call a cowtown ... do you know that it has one of the world's noblest museum complexes? A perfect gem?'

'I don't know much about museums.'

'You're going to find out right now.' And she dragooned all of us, plus Mrs. Rusk, whom she insisted upon, and we drove over to that elegant assembly of buildings which formed one of the most graceful parts of Texas: the delicate Kimbell museum, with its splendid European paintings; the heavy museum of modern art, with its bold contemporary painting; and the enticing Amon Carter Museum of Western Art, with its unmatched collection of

Charles Russell, Frederic Remington and other cowboy artists. Few cities offered such a compact variety of enticing art.

'What did you want me to do?' Rusk asked when the whirlwind trip ended, and Miss Cobb said boldly: 'Ranee, there's an excellent piece of land in that complex still open. I want you to place your own museum there. Build the best and stock it with the best.'

'Well, 1 . . .'

'Ranee, in due course you'll be dead. Remembered for what? A gaggle of oil wells? Who gives a damn? Really, Ranee, ask yourself that question, and let's meet here two weeks from today.'

'Now wait . . .'

She would not wait. Standing boldly before him, she said: 'Ranee, I'm talking about your soul. Ask Maggie, she'll know what I mean.' And she started for the door, but when she reached it she reminded him: 'Two weeks from today. And I shall want to hear your plans, because in my own way, Ranee, I love you, and I cannot see you go down to your grave unremembered and uncherished.'

No one spoke. Of course it was Quimper who finally broke the silence, for he did not like vacant air: 'She's right, Ranee. It would be a notable gesture.'

Rusk turned harshly on his friend: 'What the hell have you ever done with your money, Quimper?' and Lorenzo said: 'Get your spies to uncover how much I've given to the university. Did you know that it now has a chair of poetry in my name?'

'And forty baseball scholarships,' Garza said, and Quimper laughed: 'Each man to his own specialization.'

When the meeting broke. Rusk asked me to remain behind, and this started one of the wildest periods of my life, for he wanted me to discuss with him in the most intricate detail what would be involved if he donated a fourth museum to the Fort Worth complex, but first we had to decide what the museum would cover. He arranged with the university for me to take a six-month leave, paid for by him, and patiently we went over the options. First he suggested a cowboy museum, but I reminded him that the Amon Carter had preempted that specialty, and then when he proposed an oil museum, I reminded him that what we were talking about was an art museum: 'Besides, both Midland and Kilgore already have excellent oil museums. And what's worse, oil has never produced much art.'

He asked me if a man like him could buy enough European art to compete with the Kimbell, and I had to tell him no: 'Besides, that's already been done.'

I shall never forget the long day we spent at the Kimbell, with him trying to discover what it was that justified such a magnificent

building, a poem, really, for he wanted to know everything. I remember especially his comments on several of the paintings. The chef-d'oeuvre of the collection was the marvelous Giovanni Bellini 'Mother and Child,' and when he finished studying it he said: That's real art. Reverent.' He dismissed the great Duccio, which showed Italian watchers hiding their noses as the corpse of Lazarus was raised from the dead: 'That's a disgrace to the Bible.'

He paid his longest visit to a beautiful Gainsborough, a languid young woman in a blue gown seated beneath a tree. 'Miss Lloyd' the picture was titled, and I thought that she had awakened some arcane memory, for he returned to the portrait numerous times, in obvious perplexity. Finally he took out a ball-point pen, not to make notes but to hold it to his right eye as he made comparisons. After about twenty minutes of such study he said: 'She'd have to be eleven feet nine inches tall,' and when I restudied the delightful painting, I saw that he was right, for Gainsborough had elongated Miss Lloyd preposterously.

'Whoever painted it should be fired,' he growled, and I said: 'Too late. He died in 1788.'

But he did not miss the glory of this museum, its excellent structure and the way it fitted into its landscape: 'What would a building to match this one cost?' I told him that with current prices it could run to eighteen or twenty million, minimum, and even then, with far less square footage. He nodded.

At three a.m., three days before our scheduled meeting with Miss Cobb, my phone rang insistently, and Rusk cried: 'Come right over. I've sent my driver.' And when I reached his modest Dallas quarters in which the new Mrs. Rusk shared the lone bedroom and bath, I found both of them in nightrobes, in the bedroom, surrounded by a blizzard of newspapers.

'I've got my museum! I was reading in bed, running options through my mind, and I asked myself: "What is the biggest thing in Texas?" And this newspaper here gave me the answer.' It was a Thursday edition of the Dallas Morning News and I looked for the headlines to provide a clue, but I could not find any. Instead, Rusk had about him eight special sections which the paper had added that day, making it one of the biggest weekday papers I'd seen. He grabbed my arm and asked: 'What is the biggest thing in Texas?' and I said: 'Religion, but the cathedrals take care of that.'

'Guess again!' and I said: 'Oil, but Midland and Kilgore handle that.'

'And again?' and I said: 'Ranching, but the Amon Carter Museum covers that.' So he slapped the eight special sections of the

newspaper and said: 'Look for yourself. The Dallas News knows what really counts,' and when I picked up the sections I found that the paper, in response to an insatiable hunger among its Texas readers, had published one hundred and twelve pages of extra football news: Professional, with accent on Dallas. Professional, other teams. Colleges, with accent on Texas teams. Colleges, the others. High Schools, very thick. High Schools, how star players should handle recruiting. Sixteen full pages on the latter, plus, of course, the customary sixteen pages of current football news, or one hundred and twenty-eight pages in all.

Rusk, having made his great discovery, beamed like a boy who has seen the light regarding the Pythagorean theorem: 'Sport!' And as soon as he uttered that almost sacred word, I could see an outstanding museum added to those in the park.

Neither he nor I, and certainly not Maggie Rusk, visualized it as a Sports Hall of Fame filled with old uniforms and used boxing gloves. Every state tried that, often disastrously. No, what we saw was a real art museum, a legitimate hall of beauty filled with notable examples of how sports had so often inspired artists to produce work of the first category: 'No junk. No baseball cards. No old uniforms.' Rusk was speaking at four in the morning: 'Just great paintings, like that Madonna we saw.'

I warned him that the art salesrooms were not filled with Bellini studies of football players, but he dismissed the objection: 'It will be American art depicting American sports.' And when dawn broke we three went out to an all-night truck stop and had scrambled eggs.

By the time Miss Cobb and the others reached Dallas that weekend, the Rusks had a full prospectus roughed out, but before they were allowed to present it, Miss Cobb distributed a glossy pamphlet that had been printed in high style by the Smithsonian in Washington: 'Before we mention specific plans, I want to upgrade your horizons. I want us to do something significant, and to do that we must entertain significant thoughts.'

Holding the pamphlet in her hand, she looked directly at Rusk and Quimper: 'You two clowns thought very big with your bull sale. Glorious. Real Texas. My two Cobb senators would have applauded. They said it was important to keep alive the old traditions, and I must confess, Ranee and Lorenzo, you not only kept them alive, you added a few touches. Now look at someone else who has thought big.'

I was perplexed when I looked at my copy of the pamphlet, for it apparently recounted a gala affair at the Smithsonian in which a Texas oil and technology man had been honored by the Presi-