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The prize is well worth struggling for. As told in the current issue of FORTUNE, the amazing growth of the ranch since the day Captain King rode out with his good friend, Colonel Robert E. Lee, and picked the original acreage is one of the epics of U. S. ranching. The Atwoods to the contrary, the ranch is flourishing mightily today under the dictatorship of good-looking Robert II, a 37-year-old ruler of vast energy. In his eight years' reign he has spent some $2,000,000 on such improvements as building 1,000 miles of new fences, grubbing 15,000 acres clear of mesquite and chaparral to plant them with Rhodes grass from Africa. He is proudest of his new breed of cattle, the Santa Gertrudis, achieved after many a year of experiments. It is a cross of Indian Brahma cattle, which are resistant to the tropical heat and diseases of southern Texas, and pure-bred shorthorns, one of the great English beef breeds. The result is a fat, sleek dark-red cow, both hardy and marketable.
As a commercial enterprise, the King Ranch is big and profitable. Every year it sells some $900,000 worth of cattle. De ducting operating expenses of $300,000, freight bills and grazing charges of $200,000, and taxes of $100,000, this leaves an operating profit of $300,000. But the tale is by no means told merely in terms of cattle. There is oil in Texas, and a lot of it. And it seems as certain as anything can be in prospecting business that somewhere beneath the ranch's 1,250,000 acres lies oil. For years one company and another has been reported dickering for oil rights. This autumn Humble Oil & Refining Co., subsidiary of Standard of New Jersey, closed the deal. In exchange for a low rental on drilling rights (13¢ an acre) Humble takes over the ranch's en tire funded debt (some $3,000,000) on a 20-year note, the interest at 5% payable at the end of the period. This means a yearly income somewhat over $130,000 (figuring the ranch's drilling acres at 1,000,000) in addition to the usual royalty of one barrel of oil in every eight taken out of the ground. By the time the King estate is finally settled, the ranch's acre age may be a minor item compared to its oil reserves.
* In one section Mrs. King's will specified a split-up ten years after her death, in another, 15 years after.