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refineries, and the distribution market, sat back and watched, letting the wildcatters take the risks in a new area. Once oil was found, it was a simple matter for them to step in and buy up leases on adjoining land, or buy a piece of some wildcatter's action, or simply purchase the crude oil he produced.
    It didn't take much money to drill a well back then, and little scientific knowledge was required. New drilling sites were selected on a basis that was pretty much "by guess and by golly." The only way to know for sure whether there was oil beneath a particular formation was to drill.
    More than once, R.D. had been tempted to raise some money and drill his own well. But he'd heard too many stories and seen too many wildcatters who were rich as Croesus one year lose it all in a string of dry holes the next. The only ones consistently making money, other than the majors, were the men supplying materials and equipment.
    Maybe because it was his first job, or maybe because he'd been raised a dirt farmer, R.D. was fascinated by the drilling mud used in the hole. All he had to do was scoop up some in his hand and he could tell by the feel and the texture of it—sometimes by the taste or smell of it—whether it was the right consistency for the job, or if it needed to be thinned or thickened.
    After six years of working in oil fields, R.D. recognized the many functions mud performed. It did more than soften the formation the drilling bit was cutting through, more than bring the bit's cuttings to the surface for disposal, and more than sheathe the wall of the hole to stabilize it so it wouldn't cave in. If the mud was the right weight, it exerted more pressure than any gas, oil, or water formation the bit encountered, thus preventing the blowout of a well. Over the years, he'd seen his share of blowouts—lengths of pipe, the drill, and other equipment thrown high in the air and turning into lethal missiles. Whenever a blowout was caused by natural gas, invariably there was fire. A gusher was nothing more than a blowout caused by oil. As spectacular as they were, they were still dangerous and a colossal waste of oil.
    As his fascination with mud grew, R.D. began experimenting with different mixtures and ingredients, picking the brains of geologists and chemists in the oil fields, and learning terms like viscosity. In 1922, he came up with a formula that seemed to be consistently successful. That same year his father died, killed when his horse bolted and overturned the wagon he was riding in.
    R.D. found himself back at River Bend, faced with a difficult decision. His mother, Abigail Louise Lawson, better known as Abbie Lou, couldn't work the farm by herself, and they couldn't afford a hired hand. But how could he stay and run it when his heart was in the mud pits of the oil fields? To make matters worse, that skinny little neighbor girl, Helen Rae Simpson, had grown into a doe-eyed young woman while he was gone, and R.D. found himself in love.
    Determined to do the right thing, he stayed to farm River Bend and follow in the tradition of his ancestors. He married Helen, and a year after their wedding, Robert Dean Lawson, Jr., was born. He should have been happy: he had a son, a lovely wife, a home, and a farm that was producing enough for them to get by. For three years R.D. tried to convince himself that a man couldn't ask for more, but he just couldn't stop talking about mud.
    Abbie Lou Lawson recognized her son's discontent. One December night at the supper table, she—who had given him her dark hair and blue, blue eyes—offered him a solution that would provide him with the means to achieve his dream. They would sell the roughly two hundred acres of River Bend's cropland and keep the rest. The old mansion was a white elephant nobody would buy, and the one hundred acres of pasture wouldn't bring much either. The money from the sale would start him in the mud business and she would keep the books, the same as