There are two kinds of rich Texans, the lanky cowboy type that made it with cattle, and the chunky truck-driver type that made it with oil. Scientifically speaking, the varieties are not distinct. There’s been a certain amount of interbreeding, and you will occasionally find a lean Gary Cooper specimen with a pasture full of oil wells, or a massive gent with the build of a wrestler and a pasture full of cows—the pasture, in each case, being approximately the size of Rhode Island. The Haseltine stock, however, had apparently bred true ever since the first recorded beefy roughneck of that name brought in his first wildcat gusher and named it the Lulubelle #1 or whatever his wife’s name—or current girl friend’s—happened to be. If I sound a little snide it’s because, although born elsewhere, I was brought up in New Mexico, a proud but impoverished state that tends to look askance at the antics of its gigantic, wealthy neighbor and the drawling, well-heeled citizens it exports in overpowering numbers.
