Chapter 14

That evening the three of us showed up at the rental in Burnside North that Ms Cortez shared with David. They listened to our story and Elieta was interested; I peeked into her mind. David’s mind was mixed. Part of his thoughts were: OK. She’s the boss. If she wants me to go to Irving, Texas, I’ll go. But part of his thoughts were: Me and Eli? I mean I was going to ask her to pair up permanently, but...

I chuckled to myself. Sometimes fate takes a hand, David ol’ boy.

[Lexi, I’ve found a five-acre horse farm that’s on the market. We can add a security fence easily and an inner fence for the dogs. The house is enormous: six bedrooms, and the four-car garage has a large two bedroom apartment over it. It is located in Denton, a moderately large suburb of the Dallas-Fort Worth metroplex. I think it will do.]

[I have planted a notice on a newly-created (created by yours truly) Al-Qaeda web site that says that “Exxon is the son of the Devil and is forever to be damned for dealing with the Saudi oil princes. They and their oil tankers will suffer the same fate as the Exxon Valdez, which we took down in 1989.” That ought to get the stew bubbling.]

I’m going to lose some money if I have to buy some Exxon stock, aren’t I?

[Don’t be greedy, Lexi. How else are you going to get to be a big enough shark to get in with the big fish at Exxon? We’ll buy after the alerts about the oil tankers. You’re going to have to have about 250 million shares to own 5% of the 5 billion shares that are outstanding. That comes to just about $1.8 billion. With a ‘B’. You better notify your SEC legal scum, so they can notify the feds and, by the by, Exxon. You’re not going to buy it all at once. “Hello, Charles Schwab? I want to buy $2 billion of Exxon.” No ... We’ll buy it 100,000 shares at a time. Just tell your lawyers to alert the SEC and Exxon that you’re going to take a significant position ... I don’t think we’re going to have to buy a fraction of the $1.8 billion at today’s prices. But we will if we have to. Heck, the CEO only has about 10,000 shares. Ten times that number will get – or SHOULD get – his attention.]

Red, those are big numbers. Remember, I’m just a no-account Injin girl from the wrong side of the tracks.

[Correction: you WERE a no-account Injin girl ... just call your pal Chuck, and tell ‘em to start buying when and if Exxon dips by a buck. But wait ‘til the first Al-Qaeda warning appears and the first Exxon tanker runs aground.]

Shortly, we bought – or SotH bought – the property in Denton and immediately started stringing two courses of barbed wire around Will Haver’s ranch. On one of my flying visits to the place, I learned the proper pronunciation of the fence material was ‘Bob Wahr.’ By the time everything was up to my standards – you may interpret that to mean David’s and Linc’s standards – the school year was just about finished, and the twins had just had their eighth birthdays.

We dug a pool and had a proper house warming for all the staff, including all the stable hands who tended the horses. They all passed muster with David, mostly he ran a check on their legal background. I ran a more personal check. Mentally, I couldn’t find a thing wrong with any of ‘em. They were almost all Mexicans, about half of them were illegals, but I didn’t care about that. I decided to run a mental check weekly, to make sure nobody was drifting off the reservation, coming onto Exxon’s or a Saudi prince’s payroll.

We said our temporary good-byes to the folks on the Navajo reservation, and Wild Mustang called me into his room. I, of course, knew what he had in mind, but I let him say it his own way.

“Owl,” said the old Medicine Man, “It may be that I won’t see you when you’re coming back. I know you’ll be away for a while.”

“Nonsense. You’ll be here, always. No matter what.”

“Aghhrrmm.” He cleared his throat into a handkerchief. Never saw him do that before. “Chief Soaring Eagle is very old. And I’m even older than he is.” He placed a hand on my arm. “We trust you to look after the Navajo people. After we’re gone, I mean ... Always listen to the Snow Owl. She’ll guide you right.” He wiped his eyes ... must have been that desert dust that the wind blew into his bedroom.

“But before that happens, take me out to the bar-bra-que. (sic)” His hand on my arm, he led me out to the party. “I can smell they’re gonna burn them steaks.”

I put my hand on his. “I will. You can count on it.”

“I always knewd you could tell a steak that was over done. You’re good with food.”

“Always have been.” I had to wipe away a little desert dust from my own eyes.

...

We officially moved into the Texas Whirlwind Hacienda on June 1. On June 7, I got a call from Dolores Melrose, personal assistant to Abel Fortin, CEO of Exxon. He wanted to arrange a meeting, at my convenience, of course.

“Well,” I flipped a few pages, noisily so that she could hear. “I have some time tomorrow or the next day. Does he want to come out for lunch? Does he have any allergies I should be aware of?”

“Oh. Well, he had been hoping to have you come to the office. Say at two o’clock tomorrow?”

“I see. Not exactly at my convenience, then, is it?” I said it just to have the pleasure of hearing her say:

“Well, I...”

“Tell Mr. Fortin that I can make it at three.” I couldn’t very well attend to his exact hour, could I?

I made arrangements for a helicopter to drop me off at 2:45 at the Exxon building. And pick me up at 3:30. How did I know it was going to be such a short meeting? I was going to wear my Sitting-Bull-waiting-for-Custer outfit. Metaphorically.

I had followed Red’s instructions to the T. When the ‘Exxon Pride of the Gulf’ ran aground coming out of the Strait of Hormuz, following the Al-Qaeda warning on the internet, I placed a small order to buy Exxon when it was down from the lofty $7.45 per share to $6.75. No oil was spilled in the boating accident, just a clumsy navigational error.

Two days later, there was a collision south of Singapore, involving ‘Greenwater Rose,’ another Exxon tanker. There was no loss of life, but there was an oil spill and Singapore and Indonesia were very annoyed. At this point, we were surprised to see Al-Qaeda posting a ‘we did it and we’re going to keep doing it until you break off with Saudi Arabia’ message on their web sites. Red disavowed all knowledge of the message, and we congratulated ourselves. The power of the internet to take up the cause!