Michener, James A. (200 page)

His figures were startling. The longest distance between two points in Texas was 801 miles, northwest Panhandle catty-corner to Brownsville at the southeast, and if you applied this dimension to the rest of the nation, you came up with some surprises:

If you stand at El Paso, you are much closer to Los Angeles than you are to the other side of Texas.

If you stand at the eastern side of Texas, you are much closer to Tampa than you are to El Paso.

If you stand in the Panhandle, you are closer to Bismarck, North Dakota, than you are to Brownsville.

And always remember, if you stand on the bridge at Brownsville, you are 801 miles to the edge of the Panhandle, but only 475 miles to Mexico City and 690 to Yucatan.

As he finished these comparisons, which showed certain Texas points closer to Chicago than to El Paso, he received an urgent phone call from Todd Morrison at the Allerkamp Exotic Game Ranch: 'If you fly down right away, I might have something rather interesting.' Accepting the challenge, he called for his Larkin pilot and within the hour was on his way to the Pedernales.

During the flight he tried to recall whether he had met Todd Morrison through Maggie or the other way around. All he knew was that he liked them both, him for his custodianship of the large game ranch, her for her aptitude in handling big real estate deals. The way she masterminded that Ramparts affair! Remarkable. She got us in at just the right time, then out three weeks before the

hurricane. I don't know whether she's bright or lucky, but she's better than most men in handling money. He could think of half a dozen situations in which he could profitably use a woman with her skills.

But he was more interested in Todd Morrison, for the man had shown determination in putting together the ranch and in stocking it with some of the best animals in Texas: I've never known how much that other fellow, Roy Bub Hooker, has contributed, and I don't care, because I don't feel easy with him. You pay big money to shoot one of his animals, and he looks at you as if you'd shot his cousin.

He thought that Todd had been wise in shifting his attention from real estate to ranch management: Anyone can make a buck in Houston, but it takes a real man to raise a buck in Fredericksburg. He chuckled: I like that. I'll use it sometime when I introduce him.

When the plane landed at the long paved strip which Morrison had built at the edge of the ranch, Rusk hurried out, called for his guns to be handed down, and joined the handsome graying fifty-two-year-old rancher: 'Hiya, good buddy. What's the big news?'

'Which animal—and maybe the best of all—have you consistently missed?'

'You mean the sable?'

'That's exactly what I mean.'

'You have one in the wild?'

i do.'

'Your Mr. Hooker told me the sables would never be turned loose.'

'He doesn't run the place. I do.'

'And you've decided that your herd . . .? How many have you?'

'We have eight now. And we can certainly spare one of the bucks.'

'Where is he?'

in the big field. With the rocks. You may search two days without finding him.'

'That's the challenge.'

They did not go out that first afternoon, because the guides warned that the light would fade so fast that no shots would be possible, and at supper in the old house that the German Allerkamps had built during the middle years of the last century, Rusk noticed that Roy Bub Hooker was not present. Rusk decided not to ask about this, for the partners might have suffered a break, or maybe Morrison had bought the lesser man's shares.

Early in the morning Rusk, Morrison and two guides carefully

opened the high iron gates protecting one of the pastures, then fastened it behind them. They were now in an area of about four thousand acres, completely fenced, in which a variety of African game animals existed in about the life style they would have followed on the veldt: the land was the same, the low trees were quite similar and similarly spaced, the occasional rocky tor was much like the kopje of South Africa, and the availability of water was identical. It was a splendid habitat, and splendid creatures roamed it, but to find them was extremely difficult.

'Believe me,' Ransom said, 'this isn't shooting fish in a rain barrel. This is work.' He looked askance when Morrison told him how many animals were in that huge enclosure: 'Sixty eland, I promise you. Big as horses, and we haven't seen one. And maybe we won't.' In fact, during the entire morning they saw only a few native Texas deer, and they were does protected from hunters except for a few days in late autumn.

At noon Morrison said: 'They'll be resting during the heat. You couldn't find a sable now with a magnet and a spyglass,' so the men went to the ranch house for chow, and in the afternoon they did see oryx and a couple of zebra, but no sign of the sable.

'You promise me he's in here?' Rusk asked, and Morrison said: 'On my oath. We checked him out before you came, helicopter. He's here.'

They did not find him that afternoon, even though they stayed within the high fencing till dusk, and when night fell they gathered at the lodge to swap yarns about hunting experiences in various parts of the world; it was the opinion of those who had been to the notable safari areas of Africa that the two big enclosures at Allerkamp provided both a terrain and a spirit almost identical with the best of the Dark Continent: 'Soil, hills, everything comparable. The fact that animals transported directly here from Kenya or the Kruger adjust with never a day's illness proves that.'

Rusk was especially interested in what one guide said: 'I wish Roy Bub was here to explain his idea, because I agree with him. It'd work and would teach us a whale of a lot about animal behavior.'

'Where is Roy Bub?' Rusk asked.

The guide ignored the question, preferring to continue with his description of the co-owner's plan: 'Roy Bub, he says: "Let's fix a field for our native whitetail deer. Less than a mile wide, five miles long. Good cover. Lots of rocky places. And we'll put a hundred deer in there, guaranteed, and we'll start you off, Mr. Rusk, with another gun at this end and let you two prowl that field from sunup to sundown, and challenge you to get one of those deer.'

'From today's experience with that sable, we'd have a hard time finding them.'

'That you would. Mr. Morrison, how about settin' up such a long narrow field?'

'Could be done. Take a lot of expensive fencing for a little area.'

'Let's talk about it, maybe,' Rusk said, and both Morrison and the guide glowed, for when an enthusiastic man with a billion dollars uttered that reassuring phrase, it meant that something might happen.

In the morning, Rusk, Morrison and the two guides stalked the big enclosure, and just as the noonday heat was becoming excessive, so that all animals but man would be taking cover, the guide who had spoken of the proposed deer test whispered: 'Movement, two o'clock!' and when Rusk looked dead ahead, then slightly to the right, he saw shadowy evidence that an animal of some size was moving there. The other three men froze as Rusk carefully worked his way into a more favorable position, and when he had done so he saw in the direction from which the wind was blowing one of nature's grandest creations, a large bull sable antelope, splendidly colored in the body, with a white-and-black-masked face and the majestic back-curved horns which were the animal's hallmark.

The sable was so perfect in both manner and appearance, that even an avid hunter like Rusk, lusting for his prize, had to watch in awe as it moved toward a patch of fresh grass: How did God fashion such a beast? Why spend so much effort to make it perfect? The horns? Who could have thought up such horns? He was sweating so copiously that if the wind had shifted only a fraction, the sable would have dodged and darted back among the deeper shadows.

'When's he gonna shoot?' the lead guide whispered to Morrison, for occasionally some Texas hunter would come onto the ranch and stalk an eland or a zebra for two days and then refuse to kill the animal when it was in full sight: 'He was too handsome. I don't want a head that bad.' Always the man would pay the fee, as if he had killed the animal—$3,000 for an eland, $4,000 for the zebra—and would return home exalted.

'Trust Rusk,' Morrison whispered back. 'In everything, he's a killer.'

And then the explosive shot, shattering the noontime air, and the swift rush of the three watchers to where the great sable lay dead. There was much backslapping, many congratulations, and then the guide calling on his walkie-talkie: 'Clarence, Mr. Rusk just got his sable. Field Three, by the small rocky outcrop. Bring in the large truck with the rack in front. No, the Jeep won't be big enough.'

In due course, after the animal had been disembowled on the spot, the truck rolled up and four men muscled the splendid beast onto its rack, but as they left the enclosure, and the guide ran back to lock the high wire fence, they had the bad luck to run into Roy Bub Hooker as he returned unexpectedly from his trip to Austin, where he had arranged with Wildlife officers for the importation of two planeloads of animals from Kenya.

When he saw the dead sable coming at him, he recognized it as the specific male he had been cultivating to be master of the herd and whose semen he had been distributing to other American ranches and zoos that were endeavoring to keep the species from extinction. This was not some casual animal; this was a precious heritage worth enormous effort to keep it alive.

Roy Bub did not cry out; he screamed at the top of his voice as if he had been mortally lacerated, a beefy thirty-seven-year-old man, shrieking as if he were a wounded child: 'What in hell have you done?'

When he saw that the murderer was Ransom Rusk, he leaped at him and began pounding at him with his fist: 'You son-of-a-bitch! You murderin' son-of-a-bitch! Comin' onto this land . . .'

Rusk was more than able to defend himself, and with strong arms pushed the enraged Roy Bub back, but this did not stop the game specialist: 'Off of this land, you murderin' bastard! Off! Off!'

Morrison and the guides were appalled when they saw Roy Bub reach for his gun, which he carried regularly, for they could visualize a terrible tragedy. But it was Rusk, cool as a blue norther, who stopped him: 'Roy Bub! You horse's ass, put up that gun.'

The harshness of the words, their authority and the correct use of profanity stopped the big gamekeeper. Lowering his gun, he said quietly and with quivering force: Take your sable, God damn you, and get off this land. And don't never come back, because if you do, I'll kill you, for certain.'

Shaken, Rusk started toward the car that would take him to his airplane, but Roy Bub would not allow this: 'Take your sable with you.' WTien Rusk ignored him, the hefty man screamed: 'Take him. You killed him. Get him out of here.'

And when Rusk turned back to supervise the delivery of his sable to the taxidermist, he could hear Roy Bub shouting at Todd Morrison, his partner: 'You slimy son-of-a-bitch, I ought to shoot you,' and then Morrison's hesitant voice: 'Roy Bub, we're running a business, not some toy zoo.'

They did not meet at Allerkamp, because Rusk was afraid to return there, and besides, he did not want to discuss this impor-

tant affair in Todd Morrison's presence. They met in a private suite at the Driskill Hotel in Austin, where Rusk had spread maps and real estate plats on a table. He was there first, and when Roy Bub arrived Rusk hurried forward to shake his hands, both hands at the same time, as if they were old friends: 'Roy Bub, I apologize,' and before the younger man could say anything, Rusk added, in a rush of words: 'You have haunted me. All my life I've admired men who stood for something, who were willing to fight. Roy Bub, you're my kind of people, and I apologize.'

They opened cold beers taken from the refrigerator in the suite, after which Roy Bub asked: 'So what?' and Rusk said: 'I love animals as much as you do,' and Roy Bub replied: 'You have a strange way of showin' it.'

'I think I was hypnotized. At Gorongosa once, that's in Mozambique, I saw a group of sables, and right there I vowed .'He stopped, bowed his head, and said: 'Shit, I pressured Morrison. But he did call me down when he knew you wouldn't be there. I should have suspected.'

it was a very precious animal, Mr. Rusk. He was on all the zoo computers, father of the revived herd. He was. . .' His voice broke, and he lifted the empty beer bottle to drain the last few drops.

'I know. The man from San Diego called and tore me apart. So what I want to do, Roy Bub, and maybe this is what I've always wanted to do, I want to buy out Morrison, give him a hefty profit, and I want you and me . . .'

'I doubt he would sell his share.'

'Share? He owns it all.'

'Now wait, we bought this place ... I found it. I did the deed search.'

'But it was bought in his name, Roy Bub. He owns it. You do have certain rights.'

'He owns it?' The big man's voice began to rise, so Rusk placed the documents before him, and there was a lot of gobbledegook about this and that, but it was painfully clear that where the actual ownership of the land was concerned, Todd Morrison had it all.

When Roy Bub finished reading the incriminating documents and listened as Rusk explained each twisting labyrinth, he did not shout or even swear: 'Mr. Rusk, in everything I've ever done with that S.O.B. he's gigged me. Buy him out and let's wash our hands.'

in his real estate deals, I now find, he operates the same way. And I cannot understand it, because his wife is so completely honest. I've seen her turn back commissions when she's loused up some deal. She did it with me, voluntarily.'

'Todd Morrison!' Roy Bub repeated as he handed back the

mournful papers. 'With land as important as ours, with him dependin' on me to keep it goin', you'd think . . .'

'How many acres do you two have? I mean how many does he have?'

'About ten thousand. The Allerkamp ranch plus the Macnab, dating back to the 1840s, I believe.'

'If you and I were to do something, we'd do it Texas style,' and he asked Roy Bub to study the plats he had brought along: 'I've had my men looking into the land situation out there along the Pedernales, and they think they could get us an additional thirty thousand acres, not all of it contiguous but we might make some trades.'