or at least one that could be cleared up with a few legal dance steps. Family trees often had a few crooked limbs and split branches that the family chose not to speak about, not in public anyway. When Max Williams decided that he wanted land in a certain region, however, Randy Stewart had a knack for finding enough old records to make sure he got it. The search for a title often began like a wild goose chase, but Stewart considered himself to be a pretty decent goose hunter.
Stewart drove immediately to Giddings, booked a room at the Sands Motel, and headed directly to the County Clerk’s office at the courthouse. He carefully checked through the records, which, he said, were poorly organized and kept in a cramped vault. It might not be impossible to find the information he wanted, but, then again, it might take him a lifetime to track down the data he needed.
Stewart quickly glanced through the telephone book and discovered that Lee County was at least large enough to have it own abstract company with records, the yellow pages ad said, that dated “back to the sovereign.” The company might be a godsend, and it was located directly across the street from the courthouse.
Stewart remembered, “That evening I went scouting. Having come up from Pearsall, which had a bustling oil play, I expected to find some activity around Giddings as a result of the City Well. I kept looking for the sight of rigs. Nothing. As darkness fell, I looked for rig lights. Again, nothing. It was after eight o’clock, night lay around the city, and Giddings had gone to bed. I drove past the city well on county road 448 and eased out into the country toward Serbin. A few miles out of town, I turned around and headed back. My car window was down, and suddenly I heard the clanking of iron, the squeal of turning metal. It was a Eureka moment. At last, I thought, someone is drilling just off to the west, just past a tree and brush line.”
Randy Stewart parked, climbed out of his car, cloaked by the darkness of night, and waded into the tall grass. He pushed through the brush, ducked beneath low-hanging tree limbs, and stumbled out onto the open. He expected to find a drilling pad, a rig, maybe even a pump jack. Instead, he found himself standing alongside the railroad right-of-way. And in front of him was a work car with workmen pounding their hammers into metal spikes as they repaired the tracks. To Randy Stewart, it sounded for all the world like a working drilling rig. Without a word, he turned back into the tall grass, walked to his car, and drove sheepishly back into the sleeping town.
The next morning, he walked into the Lee County Land and Abstract Company and met the Knox brothers, identical twins, John and Bob. Stewart introduced himself as a landman for a small oil company and said, “I’m looking for leases in certain areas in and around town.”
The Knox brothers glanced at each other. It was about time. No one had come looking for leases or oil in a long time.
Randy Stewart knew Giddings was small. He knew the town moved at a slow place. He quickly learned that morning business in Giddings took place over coffee, and no one was in a hurry. He sipped coffee for two hours with the Knox brothers, talked about oil, discussed the fortunes and misfortunes of the chalk, and, somewhere between the first and second pot, they all became lifelong friends.
The title plant consisted of land maps that covered the length and breadth of Lee County, as well as copies of all recorded instruments affecting the land. The documents were organized and entered by survey and abstract, which were critical for any landman. The county records, on the other hand, had only been filed by name, and if Stewart did not happen to know the right name, which he didn’t, he would never find the right survey or abstract. The Knox brothers had given him access to a gold mine, provided there was more than a single reservoir of oil beneath Giddings.
John and Bob Knox were petroleum geologists by profession, educated at The University of Texas, and they had prospected for oil, gold, and copper throughout the four corners of the American Southwest. They had returned to Giddings, their hometown, to take over the land and abstract business for their father, John Knox, Sr., who had also served as Lee County surveyor until his death.
On numerous occasions, the brothers had been hired to lease acreage for various oil companies that had tried and failed to find oil in various formations of chalk beneath the town. Their going rate was a dollar an acre, and they always enjoyed seeing another landman walk through their front door. A landman meant the potential for new business.
The Knox brothers may have believed there was indeed oil beneath their town, but they had never bothered to drill for it. They were quite content to lease the surface and let somebody else pour good money down holes that, for the most part, always came up dry. One of their clients happened to be Hughes and Hughes Petroleum down in Beeville, Texas. When news of the City of Giddings well had reached him, Dan Hughes immediately called the Knox brothers and told them to keep leasing acreage on trend until he told them to stop.
The Knox brothers had no problem leasing land. For hardscrabble farmers, it was easy money. They had managed to lease seventeen thousand acres before Dan Hughes called it quits. His company had been led to drill a well on one of the tracts, which was owned, coincidentally, by John and Bob Knox. But it was just an old chalk well. Came in quick. Played out quick. Nothing more.
As John Knox explained to Randy Stewart, “Dan Hughes was left holding a disappointment and seventeen thousand acres of dog ass land.”
Randy Stewart looked at his map. He checked Ray Holifield’s fault lines. They were scrawled across the same land where Dan Hughes had drilled. Holifield’s marks had been scribbled smack dab in the heart of those seventeen thousand acres. Dog ass acreage. That’s all it was. But Randy Stewart had a job to do.
“How well do you know Dan Hughes?” he asked the brothers.
“We’re pretty good friends,” came the reply.
Stewart nodded and asked, “Will you call him and tell him that the company I’m working with would like to discuss a farm out on his Giddings acreage?”
“Sure. No problem.”
Randy Stewart stood to leave.
Bob Knox stopped him. “There’s one more thing to discuss,” he said.
“What’s that?”
“When we did the leasing for Dan,” he said, “we took a one-sixty-fourth override in the acreage instead of our usual dollar per acre. And we think we should get a one-sixty-fourth from you boys as well, provided, of course, you put this deal together.”
“Done, “ Stewart said.
He didn’t even have to think it over. He knew Max Williams and Irv Deal would agree. No money up front. Everybody gambling on the back end. In the oil business, that was simply good business. Before the afternoon ended, Randy Stewart had scheduled an appointment in Beeville with Hughes and Hughes.
The company had drilled a few locations in the Giddings area with hardly any degree of success. Dan Hughes, when he took the call from John Knox, was sitting in his office with the rights to several thousand acres of farmland stuffed back in his files, and he had little if any interest at all in them. It had all been a waste of money, Hughes thought. He might as well have gone down to the bank, borrowed a couple of hundred thousand dollars, gone out to a barrow ditch on the south side of Giddings, and thrown it away among the weeds.
Randy Stewart placed a call to Max Williams back in Dallas. “How much acreage do you want in Giddings?” he asked.
“As much as you can lease.”
“An oil company named Hughes and Hughes has most of it.”
“They willing
