By November of 1919, Ray Colcord and Walt Helmerich had moved their rig to the booming north central Texas area near South Bend.
Although Helmerich was a part owner of the tools, he did not share in the production income of their first South Bend well, which originally delivered 300 barrels a day from 1,900 feet. Before starting the second, Helmerich sold his interest in a fig orchard so he could pay Colcord $9,920 for his share of the rig. By 1920, he had saved enough money to buy his own Star 29 cable rig.
Before Bill Payne joined Helmerich in 1920, he had worked as an "oil scout" for Charles Colcord's North American Oil and Refining Company in southwestern Oklahoma and then in South Bend.
Payne knew the best prospects in the area and Helmerich recognized his potential immediately. The science of petroleum geology was still in its infancy, and luck still played a dominant role in drilling. As Payne used to say, "In the oil business, give me the luck and you can keep the brains."
Bill Payne and Walt Helmerich were soon fast friends — and Payne quickly became superintendent of the company. Helmerich greatly admired Payne's honesty, quiet determination, and work ethic, while Payne viewed Helmerich as an outgoing, tough-minded individualist of great intelligence and integrity.
Payne was a native of Shawnee, Oklahoma, and had graduated from Oklahoma A & M in 1915 with a degree in bacteriology and chemistry. He continued his education at Massachusetts A&M and Amherst. His dean at Amherst suggested that the young man acquire some practical, on-the-job experience before completing his doctorate in microbiology.
Taking the dean's advice, Payne found work in a pharmaceutical company in Detroit, and later as a bacteriologist for the city. After the outbreak of the War, he received a commission in the Army Sanitation Corps. Released from the Army, he returned home to Oklahoma and was soon hired by North American Oil and Refining.
South Bend was a typical oil country boom town, located about 75 miles west of Fort Worth near what is now Possum Kingdom Lake. The newly married Helmerichs lived in a 12-foot-by-16-foot house made of railroad boxcars that they decorated themselves. For running water, Helmerich had to run pipe to a water source a mile away.
Oil rowdies were everywhere, and life was wild and boisterous. Once, as Helmerich was returning home from Graham, Texas, in his Model T and slowed to cross a bridge, an outlaw jumped onto the running board. Instead of stopping as the man ordered, Helmerich steered for the bridge upright and brushed him off. Another time, when a friend of Cadijah's came to visit, the Helmerichs treated her to dinner in the best restaurant in South Bend. Shortly after the trio were seated, two shots rang out — and a man lay dead not 10 feet away.It was no place for a lady.
So in 1923, out of mounting concern for her safety, Helmerich sent Cadijah to Tulsa to be with her mother as she awaited the birth of their first child