Heading straight for the Frio this time, Cullen hit the second gusher of his career, a pool almost as big as the first. It came in strong on a rainy night, blowing off the Christmas tree, the spewing oil coating the glasses of his driller so thoroughly he couldn’t see to cap the well for hours. The investors got their money back and more, and if Cullen’s financial future wasn’t yet certain, his reputation as an oilman was. “That man had guts,” one investor, J. E. Duff, said years later. “If he thought there was oil under a tract, he’d spend his last dollar drilling it, regardless of what
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