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Spindletop was a hill just 4 miles south of Beaumont, Texas. It had long been thought that oil lay under the salt dome that had created the hill. A few wildcatters had tried to drill wells there, but the salty sand would plug up their drills. It wasn’t until Captain Anthony F. Lucas was hired by the Higgins Company that the tide changed. Lucas was an expert in salt-dome formations. His first drilling reached 575 feet before he ran out of money, at which point he asked a number of people for money, one of whom was Joe Cullinan.
Having lined up the money from Ricardo’s bank, Cullinan headed to Spindletop to tell Lucas the good news. But it was too late. Lucas had signed a contract with a couple of men from Pennsylvania. Lucas ended up with only an eighth of the profits, and Higgins was cut out altogether.
Joe got a hotel room in Beaumont, from which he contacted and partnered with Arnold Schlaet to form the Texas Fuel Company. He sent a teletype to Governor James Hogg and Ricardo that they were looking for investors in what Cullinan believed would be the biggest oil strike in the history of Texas.
Ricardo had given up on his dream of forming a bank by a Mexican for Mexicans, and changed the name of his bank to “Lone Star Bank of Texas.” Oil was the bank’s business and there weren’t many Mexicans involved in the oil business.
Ricardo’s bank handled the investment money, and Cullinan began buying land as close to Lucas as he could and also on the southern fringe of Spindletop.
One of the investors asked him why he picked that area to invest their money in?
He replied, “Oil is a liquid. All liquids run downhill.” It was a fine theory, but it had yet to be tested.
On September 10, 1901, Lucas’ crew ran for their lives as a sea of mud, which had been pumped into the hole to seal the salt, rose from the well. Soon pipes shot from the earth like Chinese skyrockets and crashed down around the men. A great rumbling accompanied the ground’s shaking like an earthquake.
Then the oil came. It shot so high the men strained their necks trying to see the top. It was said that the geyser rose 150 feet before it came down and covered everything. Cullinan’s biggest Texas oil boom had begun.
Claude was a big investor with Texas Fuel, later to be known as Texaco Oil & Gas. He had one of the many drilling contracts the company had offered out for bid. He moved three derricks into position and, while Lucas was still trying to shut off his Geyser, Claude’s crew began to drill. The Lucas well was losing 100,000 barrels of oil a day. It took nine days to close the wellhead and start pumping again.
Investor groups formed by the dozen and soon the landscape was covered with oil derricks. Ricardo was investing in refineries and had put some money into a plan to dig a channel from the bay to Houston. After the 1900 hurricane, the big money invested in cotton, lumber, and now oil wanted a more secure port to ship their goods from. Houston would offer that kind of port.
Meanwhile, back on the ranch, things were getting a little dicey. With the oil boom came a demand for lumber to build derricks, and homes for the growing cities. Only a few companies at the time were using metal rigs like Claude. Most used wood, and once the well went dry they walked away and left the trash for somebody else to clean up. Then there was the building boom that followed each oil strike. Claude’s rigs were but a couple of days longer in start-up time, but they were reuseable. He left the pumps and moved the rigs to the next site.
The hill north of the range land where James’ spring was located also had a large stand of old-growth trees. A number of companies had been trying to lease the land to remove the trees, but he had turned them all down. He didn’t need the money and he was afraid the land would wash away and destroy the spring if the trees were taken out.
The people in San Antonio were pushing for the trees to be harvested for lumber also. It would offer work and boost the economy in a job-strapped area. There was no oil boom in San Antonio and they were losing a lot of their youth to the oil fields around Houston. The lumber and the mill that would come with it would be a big shot in the arm.
James’ only ally was Clara Davis, who also had a lot of trees on her land. Sophie had turned 15 that September. She had attended the Ranch School that Claude had built. Clara was having coffee with Dominique and James while Sophie and Trey played with old Patch. A quick knock came at the door and in walked Carlos Garcia, Miguel’s son, who was now James’ foreman.
“I’m sorry to disturb you, Mister Jaudon, but we’ve found where somebody has come up from the back side of the hill and cut about twenty trees. I thought you would want to know as soon as possible.”
James came out of his chair mad as a hornet. “Damn it! Last century I had to put up with cattle rustlers, and now, in this one, I have to put up with lumber thieves. What the hell is next?”
He went into the study and got his holster with his old .44. He also took his repeater down from the small deer horns above the fireplace. “Let’s go see if we can get a look at these bastards.”
James, Carlos, and two other armed hands rode out. James hollered, “We’ll ride around the hill. Let’s take the road. They may be coming down it on their way back to town.”
The thieves’ guns came flying out onto the ground.
“Now get down from those wagons and walk toward me,” James commanded.
The three men stood with their heads bowed, James looking down on them from his horse.“There had to be more than three of you to cut down so many of my trees and load these wagons. Where are the others?”
The tall skinny man in the middle spoke. “They set up a camp at the base of the hill. Four other men. We didn’t cut your trees, mister. We’re just mule skinners. We didn’t know they were stealing the trees, or we’d never have agreed to haul them.”
“I doubt that is true,” James replied, “but I’ll give you a benefit of a doubt and not kill you this time. Do you know who I am?”
“Yes, sir. Mister Jaudon. Everybody knows who you are.”
“Then you know if I tell you I will hunt you down and kill you, I mean it, and you believe me. Don’t you?”
“Yes, sir. There is no doubt that you would do that.”
James leaned over his saddle. “Here is what you are going to do in order to stay alive. You will drive your wagons to my house and unload the wood. Then you will go back into town and warn other like-minded folks that the next ones that come out here will not be leaving here alive.”
“Does that mean we can leave now?”
“Get out of here and go unload the wood before I change my mind. When you get to town, you tell that sheriff that we’ll try to take the other four men alive, but if they want a fight they’ll get one.”
One of the men bent to pick up his gun. James drew and fired. The bullet kicked the man’s gun five or six feet across the dirt. “We’ll be keeping the guns.”
Before they could drive away, James gave them another warning. “Tonight, when I get back home, if the logs aren’t stacked neatly in a pile, we’ll be heading to town with a rope.”
The man who had been doing the talking said, “Everything will be just like you want it, Mister Jaudon.”
James and his three men watched the wagons drive away for a while, and then he kicked his horse and hollered, “Let’s go get the other bastards.”
Fifteen minutes of hard riding and they turned onto the back side of the hill where they spotted the camp. A shot rang out and caught one of James’ ranch hands in the chest, killing him before he hit the ground. James screamed, “Kill every last one of these son-of-a-bitches.”
They spurred their horses into the tents kicking them over and starting pots and pans to flying into the air along with sparks from the campfires. They fired at anything that moved. A bullet grazed James’ thigh and hit his horse. He shot the man who had fired in the head just before his wounded horse collapsed.
Carlos shoute, “Get that one making a run for it.”
James looked out across the field as a rifle barked. The figure who was visible there stopped and stood up straight before he crumpled into a heap. Besides him, three other men lay dead in the camp. “Carlos, take one of their horses and bring that body back and put it with the rest.”
James caught the horse of his dead ranch hand and walked it back to where the man lay. He looked at the young face and reflected that, if Texas kills you, it will be when you’re young. “Help me put him over his saddle,” he directed the hand who come back with him.
They rode back home with James riding one of the dead thieves’ horses. It was the beginning of the Timber War.
| Copyright © 2020 by Ed Rogers |
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