been good to a lot of people, but only if they knew where it was, how deep it lay, and were able to find it. Someone had once asked the legendary J. Paul Getty the secret of his success in discovering oilfields. “It’s simple,” Getty said. “I just keep drilling holes.”
Max Williams was already exploring the idea of branching off into the oil business when geologist Clayton Childress came to him, looking for some investors to back a few wells in the heralded Fort Worth Basin, particularly on some promising ranchlands tucked away within the tableau of knolls in Palo Pinto County. Good idea, Williams thought. Probably a good area. At least, Childress thought it was. And the timing could not have been better.
Williams had known the geologist since their boyhood days in the West Texas oil patch and had no reservations about working with a man whom, he remembered, was as honest as the day was long. But money throughout the marketplace was as tight as it had ever been. Those who still had cash were generally hanging onto to it for fear they might never find it again, and none of them had any idea about a precarious and unpredictable future looming before them like an ominous thunderhead. As a rule, the rich knew they were one bad and costly gamble removed from being poor.
Childress wasn’t having any luck at all raising the money, and he turned to the only man he knew who had been involved in high-finance deals before. Max Williams, it was said, ran in the right circles with the right crowd and rubbed shoulders with the real players of Dallas. Mostly in real estate. Seldom if ever in oil. To Childress, it did not matter. Money was money. Childress needed it, and someone else had possession of it. Max Williams would probably know who did. Childress drove to Dallas and explained his plight to the man he had always called Little Exxon because of his childhood days in the Humble Oil camp.
“I’ve been around a few years, drilled some wells, and seen my share of good locations,” Childress said. “The basin looks to be a solid bet and a good prospect to drill.”
“How much money do you need to raise?” Williams asked.
“Well, Little Exxon,” the geologist told him, “I think we can drill several shallow wells for two hundred and sixty thousand dollars. We may even be able to drill them for less. Raise what you can. Any money we have left over is yours.”
“How deep?”
“I’m figuring about four thousand feet.”
“I don’t know much about oil,” Williams admitted.
“You know money.”
Max Williams nodded. If anything, he knew money. He had watched it flood Dallas, then leak out like the last drop of rain in a West Texas drought.
To Childress, especially during hard times when men were as depressed as their bank accounts, two hundred and sixty thousand dollars seemed like a lot of money, and the challenge of raising it loomed over him like a formidable if not an impossible task.
In reality, Williams knew, it wasn’t that much money at all. Not really. Long ago, Bob Folsum had given him the secret to fundraising. Line up a bunch of investors, take a few dollars from each of them, not enough to hurt anybody, and get them all involved in a deal that potentially offers a nice return. Williams knew immediately what he needed. Twenty-six investors. Ten thousand dollars each. And he had his money. Of course, nothing was ever as easy as it looked when brainstorming an idea. But he thought he had a good strategy that might just work in far-ranging field known as the Fort Worth Basin.
Chapter 6
Even with most of the serious investment dollars being pigeon-holed away within the holy inner sanctum of the Dallas rich, Max Williams still had his share of influential friends. One of them was Irv Deal, who had been an old friend, a real estate developer who had made a fortune lining the nation’s suburban streets with shopping centers and apartments, large and small. Deal had gone to Stanford University on an academic scholarship, and, Williams knew, he owned a brilliant, incisive, and decisive mind. He was an astute businessman blessed with common sense, which, in most high-finance circles, was a rarity.
Irv Deal wasn’t a big man, standing only about five inches short of six feet. He was slightly built, and at a quick glance, he appeared to be frail. But, as Williams was quick to point out, “Irv might not have been particularly strong physically, but mentally, he was a giant.” He was sophisticated and charming, a gentleman and a scholar, and Deal was always attuned to everything going on in Dallas, around the country, and across the globe, generally in the world of high-dollar real estate.
There were even rumors circulating that Deal, for the last few weeks, had been looking for one more good business opportunity. He didn’t particularly care what the deal was as long as it could be played for big stakes. There was no reason for Deal to waste his time on any venture where the risks were small and the profits smaller. He had even made a few overt and oblique inquiries about the oil business.
Max Williams decided that, with real estate in the throes of death, he would give Deal a chance to find out what the quest for oil was all about. Why not? They did not have to dig, drill, tromp around in the mud, or kick the dust off their boots or, in Deal’s case, their loafers. They would simply remain as moneychangers. Bring it in. Throw a few dollars in a barrel. Hope that oil would fill it up.
Irv Deal may have appeared to be fragile to some, but he was a tough-minded, left-handed competitor, especially on the tennis courts. He and Max Williams played tennis together, and, for years, between sets at the club, they had talked about prospective business ventures, always wondering if they might some day partner up on a project at the far end of the rainbow. Williams had sold Deal land in the past, and Deal had turned the land into a valuable commodity.
Now, as Max Williams talked, Irv Deal was gazing down at a worn-out land map, ragged, torn, and threatening to fall apart. He was staring at a myriad of possible drilling locations carefully marked in ink, and learning about a chance to strike it rich, or at least parlay a fistful of dollars into a handful of cash, somewhere out West in the Fort Worth Basin, which was nowhere near Fort Worth but in the middle of some ranch in the god-forsaken wasteland of Palo Pinto County.
The map meant absolutely nothing to him, Deal said. Oil and its terminology were a foreign and unfamiliar territory where he had never before traveled. And when it came to the technology of drilling a well, Deal, by his own admission, was clueless and trapped in the dark.
One thing was for certain. There might or might not be oil in the ground. Irv Deal had been given no guarantees. But Max Williams was a hell of a salesman.
One man, Irv Deal believed, might be able to enlighten him. He sat down with Frank West, a good friend, a respected petroleum engineer, who worked with Santa Fe Minerals and was the genius behind the Hanover Drilling Funds.
If anybody understood the good, the bad, and the ugly of the oil business, Frank West did. Deal was sure of it. He did not want an education. It was not important for him to understand the geological and geophysical nuances associated with drilling for oil or finding it. He could hire trained people to do the field work. Irv Deal was simply on the outside, looking on the inside, and searching for direction.
West patiently listened while Deal outlined the basic skeleton of the proposal that Williams had given him. West did not hesitate. “Go for it,” he said. “It has controls.”
Deal frowned. He was still in the dark. “What does that mean?” he asked.
“Do you want the technical
