Michener, James A. Read Free Page B

thousand students, with some of the most attractive female students in America, a fact which was confirmed every time I stepped outside my office.
    I walked south to Martin Luther King Boulevard and saw before me, six blocks down Congress Avenue, that majestic state capitol which had come into being in so strange a manner and with such curious results. In 1882 the state had been broke, but it lusted for the biggest possible capitol building to adorn the biggest state, so it offered three million acres of seemingly worthless western plains to anyone who would finance the project, and some Illinois investors took the bait. Behaving as if they were honorary Texans, they euchered the government out of an extra fifty thousand acres— and everybody was happy.
    How wild the turns of history! The land which the legislature gave the Illinois syndicate did seem worthless, but some comparable West Texas land they gave the university—at about the same time—turned out to be dripping with oil, which made it potentially the richest university in the world.
    As soon as I entered the familiar old capitol building with its high dome and nineteenth-century dignity, I was as captivated as I had been on that day long ago when I stood in the rotunda with the other children of my grade-school class to honor Sam Houston and the heroes of the Alamo. Today as I passed on my way to the governor's office, a new crop of children listened, eyes aglow.
    When I reached the office his secretary, beautiful and leggy, like many Texas women holding such positions of importance, said cheerily: 'So glad to have you with us, Professor. The others are waiting inside.' And with that, she pinned on my left lapel a badge which said 'Dr. Travis Barlow, Institute for Cultural Studies.'
    'Who are the others?' I asked, and she said: The governor will explain.'
    She led me to an anteroom decorated with a buffalo head on the wall and two fine Longhorn hides on the floor, but the real attraction was a group of four citizens, chosen with care, apparently, as f to represent the strength and diversity of Texas. Since we were obviously to form a unit of some kind, I tried to fix in memory each : ace and its accompanying tag.
    The first such pair belonged to a tall, thin, droop-shouldered, cowling man whose appearance alone would attract attention regardless of where he sat, but when I saw his tag I understood his real notoriety. He was Ransom Rusk, designated by both Fortune and Forbes as one of the richest men in Texas, 'net worth probably exceeding one billion.' He was in his late fifties, and from the way n which he withdrew from others, I judged that he was determined to protect both his wealth and his person from would-be intruders. Although he was dressed expensively he was not neat, and this and his permanent frown indicated that he didn't care what others thought of him.
    He was talking with a man of completely different cast, a big, easy, florid fellow, also in his fifties, wearing an expensive whipcord nit of the kind favored by ranchers, high-heeled boots, and about his neck a western bolo string tie fastened with a large turquoise jemstone. When I read his tag, Lorenzo Quimper, I had to smile, or he was a legend, the prototypical Texas wheeler-dealer, owner )f nine ranches, friend of presidents, dabbler in oil and everything ;lse, and a rabid supporter of his university athletic teams. He was i handsome man, but there was something too expansive about rim; if he were your small-town banker, you would not trust him vith your money. Seeing me enter, he turned momentarily in my direction, smiling broadly. 'Hiya, good buddy,' he said, offering his land. 'My name's Quimper. Welcome to the big time.' He re-urned instantly to his conversation with Rusk, for in his book I was worth three seconds.
    The third person I turned to was a tall patrician woman in her ate sixties, beautifully dressed, beautifully groomed. She had a 10-nonsense mien and looked as if she was