Scottish Bargain

Even Texans are impressed at the size of the 800,000-acre Matador Ranch, second only to the King Ranch (950,000 acres) in the U.S. Matador is so big that a cowboy can ride 56 miles without leaving the main ranch; its roundup goes on all the year round. Matador had another distinction: it was not controlled by Texans, but by thrifty Scotsmen in Dundee.

Last week, with cattle prices pushing their ceiling, the Scotsmen decided to get out at the top. The five directors and more than 90% of the owners of the company's 800,000 shares of stock agreed to sell to Lazard Bros. & Co., Ltd. (British associate of Wall Street's Lazard Freres & Co.) for $23.70 a share. By holding out ever since Lazard made its first offer last December, stockholders made a fat profit. During eight months of negotiations, the stock shot up in London and the U.S. from $7 a share to nearly $28. Lazard Bros, said a "number of American corporations" were in with it on the $19 million deal. Although it has already signed up Matador's top ranch executives to run the cattle empire, the gossip is that Lazard eventually plans to break up Matador into separate companies and try to sell off the huge land holdings.

Buffalo Hunt. The site of Matador's main ranch in the Panhandle between Fort Worth and Amarillo was a buffalo hunters' camp when Henry ("Paint") Campbell, an old trail driver, bought the land in 1878. Within four years, he expanded the ranch to 1,500,000 acres and 40,000 head of cattle, sold out to a Scottish syndicate for $1,250,000. As Matador's manager, the new owners later chose Murdo Mackenzie, a strapping (6 ft. I in.) Scotsman who became a legendary figure in the West. Old Murdo never carried a gun ("I'm so big that any fool could hit me"), but fearlessly glared down armed rustlers whom he caught stealing cattle with the Matador's famed "V" brand. He even glared down President Theodore Roosevelt during a conference, told him: "You promised me 20 minutes and then did all the talking. Now you listen to me."

Mackenzie built Matador's stock to what proud Matador hands called "the world's finest" herd of Herefords. He once said: "If we can obtain a bull that will add 10-c- a head to the price of Matadors over a period of years, there is no price too great for us to pay." For Murdo, work was an obsession. "I can't see why men would play golf when they can work," he said.

Murdo Mackenzie built Matador's herds to 50,000, its annual sales to 15,000 head, and its profits to where annual dividends amounted to half of the original price (70-c-) of the stock. Since 1937, two years before old Murdo died at 89, his son John has run the ranch.

Search for Oil. At the height of its expansion, Matador owned or leased feeding ranges which included large tracts in Saskatchewan and hundreds of thousands of acres of reservation land leased from the Indians in Montana, Wyoming and South Dakota. Now, apart from the main 400,000-acre Matador ranch, the holdings consist of another 394,000-acre ranch (the Alamositas, or Little Cottonwoods) 140 miles to the northwest, and a small 4,000acre feeding strip near Malta, Mont. The lure to the buyers of Matador is not only cattle; it is also oil and gas. Although Humble Oil & Refining Co. has put down 14 dry wells on Matador land, hope stirred anew when the big oil strike was made in Scurry County (TIME, Dec. 5, 1949), only 90 miles from Matador. Dundee's thrifty owners drove such a Scottish bargain that they made Lazard Bros, agree that if oil or valuable minerals are subsequently found on Matador's ranges, the new owners will share their royalties 50-50 with the sellers.

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