Читать книгу Gamble in The Devil's Chalk - Caleb Pirtle III - Страница 9

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 definition?”

“No.”

“Simply put, it means you can drill it.”

Irv Deal nodded. He called Max Williams. “Let’s go for it,” he said.

Irv Deal was suddenly in the oil business, and he had never before changed the oil in his own automobile. He was, however, aware of the fact that oil, as often as not, had big sums of money with a lot of zeros attached to it. The business he thought wasn’t that much different from his years in real estate. It dealt with raw land. He had put apartments on top of it. He could dig holes beneath it. He had employed good contractors to build. He would hire good oilmen to drill. He had operated a big business before. And oil was definitely a big business. The only thing that would change was his business card.

He smiled. Pat Holloway had once told him that the oil business would eat him alive. Well, Pat Holloway did not know Irv Deal, not as well as he probably thought he did. Oil was a gamble. He would never argue that point. Any business deal with six or more zeroes attached was a big gamble. Irv Deal had played the game and faced the odds before. They did not frighten or concern him.

For most of his life, Irv Deal had been strongly attracted to money. What it could buy was inconsequential to him. But the ability to make it and a lot of it proved a man’s worth in the hierarchy of a frantic Dallas business climate where too much, no matter how large it might be, was never quite enough.

Max Williams had brought him a proposal. He went back to Williams with another. Deal said, “I’ve got a little money to play with, and I’ve got some friends who still have a little money to play with. I’m not for sure what it will take for us to get started in the basin, but I doubt that raising the money will be much of a problem for either one of us. Who knows? If there’s any oil to be found down there, we’ve got as good a chance of finding it as anyone.”

“What kind of arrangement are you thinking about?” Williams wanted to know.

“Let’s put our two companies together,” Deal said. “You raise half the money, and I’ll raise the rest of it. Then when we hit something, we’ll split the profits fifty-fifty.” The arrangement was nice clean, and simple.

Max Williams went back to his office and thought it over. He would lose half of the profits if the wells happened to be good enough to earn any profits. Deal, on the other hand, would be shouldering half of the financial burden and fifty percent of the risk. It was definitely give and take, and Williams wondered if he were giving more in the long run than he would be able to take. He finally took a deep breath, called Irv Deal back, and told him, “All right, we’ll join up our two companies and do it.”

The two men could have developed a new and single company. Irv Deal, however, didn’t like the idea. He would say, “I anticipated from the beginning that there would one day be animosity rising up between two entrepreneurs who were strong-willed, stubborn, and used to doing business there own way. We could probably work together for little while. But I knew it wouldn’t last. One of us would make a decision or a deal, and the other one wouldn’t like it. That was simply the bitter end of human nature. I thought that Max and I would both be better off with our own companies. In reality, I was preparing to get divorced before we got married.”

Irv Deal established Windsor Energy with less than a half million dollars of his own money. He named it after the street where he lived. Max Williams founded U.S. Operating and sold a third of the company to collect the revenue he would need to make his own set of footprints in the oil patch.

Both men were wheeler-dealers. It’s just that they wheeled and dealed in different ways. They drilled jointly. They would argue separately. They fumed inwardly. Neither was the kind of man who took orders. They gave orders. Each liked to be in charge. They marched to their own drumbeat. Neither owned the same drummer.

But, at the moment, with the wake never ending for real estate and a new day dawning in the oil business, they needed each other – two novices embarking in the turmoil and turbulence of a brave new world. Irv Deal and Max Williams squared their shoulders and readied themselves to confront the sprawling and empty ranchlands that would hold the shallow wells of Palo Pinto County. A few barrels of oil could salve a lot of wounds, even before they were carved into a man’s flesh or his soul.

In real estate, men like Max Williams and Irv Deal had gone from riches to ruin between the rise and fall of a single day. Both were innocent strangers to the whims and wicked ways of the oil business. But it was tattooed with dollar marks. It couldn’t be all bad. They realized that there was no future in looking back or wallowing in regret, so they picked up the dice and rolled them again. Williams promptly placed a call to Randy Stewart, who no longer had any real estate deals to close.

“I’d like to talk to you about a job,” Williams said.

Stewart paused on the other end of the phone. He was out of work. There was no money coming in from anywhere. He was contemplating moving to Colorado to see if he could find a position teaching. Tomorrow had never looked so bleak.

“Sure,” he said. “I’m interested.” He tried not to sound desperate.

“How much money would you need to come work for us?” Williams asked.

“Who is us?”

“Irv Deal and myself.”

Stewart knew that Williams and Deal, whatever the job might be, were starting from scratch, and their cash flow was non-existent. He tried to be fair. In his head, he figured out his house payment, car payment, and living expenses. He gave Williams a number. It was just enough dollars to cover his basic costs.

He heard a long pause on the phone before Williams spoke softly. “That’s more money than I make,” he said. “At the moment, I can’t even afford to buy us lunch.”

He and Randy Stewart came to an agreement. Williams would pay him his expenses and a day rate. Nothing more.

“Here’s what I want you to do,” Williams said when the two men finally met. “I want you to go out to Graham, just on the other side of Fort Worth, and look over some oil and gas leases for us. Make sure they are clean and legitimate. If we drill on them, I want to be sure that the land titles are good.”

Stewart nodded, but he had a look of concern in his eyes. “Frankly, I don’t even know what an oil and gas lease looks like,” he said.

“Don’t worry.” Williams grinned. “They print them, and they’re all alike.” He pulled a blank form from his desk drawer and handed it to the young attorney. “Welcome to the oil business,” he said.

Randy Stewart headed west. He said, “I learned early that if you wanted to find some land to lease, you simply walked into the courthouse and threw yourself at the mercy of the oldest lady you could find. Chances were, she had worked there for a long time and knew which chunks of land were available and which had already been tied up by some other oil company.”

The land across Young County had been heavily drilled, and only a few patches of scattered acreage remained. Stewart was growing desperate. He had to find land. He had to keep his job. The money wasn’t much, but it was better than going home broke at the end of the day.

Armed with all the pieces of information he had gleaned from the oldest lady he could find in the courthouse, Randy Stewart drove down a narrow country road until he came to a farm that no one had bothered to lease. In the heat of the day, he saw the farmer astride his tractor down in a pecan tree bottom. Since Stewart was driving a four-wheel- drive pickup truck, he cut across a corner of land and drove up to the farmer.

The old man idled his tractor, leaned across the steering wheel, frowned, pushed his hat back on his head and asked, “What do you think I’m doing down here?”

“I have no idea.”

“I’m shaking the pecans out of the trees.”

“That’s pretty damn clever,” Stewart said.

The farmer’s frown deepened. “Do you know how many pecans you just ran over coming out here with that damned truck?” he asked.

Stewart shuddered inside. It was not a good beginning. The farmer laughed. The beginning just got a little better. Stewart drove back to Dallas with the lease, and the farmer was richer by two dollars an acre. Max Williams and Irv Deal had a place to drill.

It did not take long for the financial package to be pieced together, and it took even less time for the drilling bit, under the guidance of Red Livingston, to cut its way into oil bearing sands. Williams and Deal earned a little money on the front end for raising the funds and took a quarter interest in the well.

The investors all got their money back, made a little profit, tasted the potential riches of oil, and lined up to participate in the drilling of another seven wells. Each came in as profitable as the first. The number of dollars spilling wildly across an oil patch was staggering, and, if an oilfield gambler were smart, diligent, and spent his money wisely, he could beat the odds or at least stand a better than average chance of winning as many dollars as he threw away. In the oil game, breaking even was for losers. Red Livingston drilled eight wells for Windsor Energy and U.S. Operating. Clayton Childress had chosen eight good locations. Williams and Deal banked eight winners.

Natural gas had become as prevalent as the oil. It was blowing wide open, and Irv Deal realized that he and Williams were losing a small fortune to the flares that were burning escaping gas throughout the days and nights. A pipeline had not yet come to the forlorn backcountry of Palo Pinto County. It did not matter. Deal recalled, “At an oil supply house in the area, I saw miles of red pipe just lying stacked up on the ground. It wasn’t doing anybody any good. It was just gathering rust. I talked it over with Max, and we bought as much of the pipe as anybody could locate and had it delivered out to the ranch. We strung red pipe on top of the ground, tied our wells together, gathered our own natural gas, sold it, and immediately had revenue.”

The money in oil and gas was as good as in real estate, maybe even better. But, in the midst of those harsh, unforgiving days while Red Livingston was battling the good earth for oil, the relationship between Irv Deal and Max Williams was already beginning to show faint signs of unraveling. There were no confrontations. No accusations. No open conflict. But, privately, each man had his own concerns.

As far as Max Williams was concerned, Irv Deal had not brought as much money to the table as he should have. And Deal was angry to learn that he and his partner were not on equal footing. He believed that Williams had gone behind his back and secretly made a separate deal with their driller. It seemed to Irv Deal that, until the well reached a certain depth, both men were responsible for paying the drilling costs. If Livingston had to go any deeper to find oil, Windsor and Windsor alone paid the bill. At least, that was his fear. Williams, for the life of him, couldn’t figure out how his partner could come with such outlandish ideas.

Irv Deal didn’t like the arrangement. He knew he should split the blanket with Max Williams, but he didn’t. Williams was more than ready to dissolve his business deal with Windsor Energy. If he raised the most money, he reasoned, he deserved a bigger share of the earnings. But he didn’t walk away. The trust between both men was rapidly withering away. But they had known each other too long. They may not have liked each other during the heat of searching for oil. But they respected each other. They would keep their personal and their business relationship patched together until the patches finally burst at the seams and flew apart. In the meantime, they worked together and grew rich together. They sold their field of eight wells on the ranchlands of Palo Pinto to a German Company, and it would be a long time before either man would ever again be tempted by real estate. A lot of bitterness between them dissolved away with money in the bank. Now they were only interested in raw land that had oil beneath it.