When the count from the run-off election was in. Parr had delivered for Lyndon. But though he had dallied in sending his returns while Lyndon kept in close touch by telephone, it finally turned out that they had closed their own count prematurely. Stevenson was ahead by 113 votes.

Johnson made another frantic telephone call to Parr, who indicated that he might pick up what they needed in Precinct 13 at Alice. Thereupon his henchmen "recanvassed the returns," reporting on September 3 the "corrected" total of 202 additional votes for Johnson and one for Stevenson. Thus Lyndon went into the lead by 87 votes out of nearly a million actually cast.

At mid-afternoon on October 22, 1951, thirty-year old "Mac" Wallace drove up to the Pitch and Putt course, walked in on "Doug" Kinser at the keeper's house and shot him dead. Wallace fled, but was caught, indicted for murder with "malice aforethought," and released on $30,000 bond. Strangely, no counsel appeared for him at first; only William E. Carroll, "a university friend," who somehow arranged the bond - later reduced to $10,000; while Carroll refused to say who the counsel would be.

Strangely too, District Attorney Bob Long called in a psychiatrist. Wallace, arrogant throughout the hearing, refused to see him. Still with no attorney, but with his "University friend" contending he was being held "without cause," and with bond posted, District Judge Charles A. Betts issued a writ of habeas corpus and released him.

He was brought to trial in the 98th District Court of Travis County before Judge Betts, with John Cofer, Johnson's every ready and able lawyer in times of trouble, and Polk Shelton, as attorneys for the defense. Cofer was not unduly searching hi his examination of jurors, but qualified each on his attitude toward the "suspended sentence law".

The case went to trial. District Attorney Bob Long - notwithstanding the identity of the car, a bloody shirt and a cartridge of the same caliber as used in the shooting, found in Wallace's possession, and witnesses who heard the shots and saw the departure of a man who fit Wallace's description - described it as "a near perfect murder."

Wallace did not take the stand. No evidence was presented to suggest cause or extenuating circumstances. Cofer simply filed a brief, one-page motion for an instructed verdict, pleading that there was no evidence upon which the State could "legally base a judgment of guilt." Long said nothing whatever in rebuttal. After less than two hours of testimony which was shut off so "abruptly" that it "left the packed courtroom with jaws ajar." Long urged the jury to "punish punish Wallace in whatever degree you can agree upon."

Thus after one of the briefest and most perfunctory trials of a prominent murder case on record, even in Texas, the jury nonetheless found, March 27, 1952, that Wallace was, as charged, guilty "of murder with malice aforethought." Its penalty, a five-year suspended sentence - for murder in the first degree.

Long was on his way out of the courtroom while the verdict was being read. His staff seemed "dumbfounded," but his own comment to the press was no less strange than his action: "You win cases and you lose them... usually everything happens for the best." Somewhat understandable, therefore, was the comment of The Austin Statesman that this case, "marked from the start to finish by the unusual," had left the people of Austin shocked and "quizzical.''

On the night of April 4, 1962, at the western end of Texas, a ranchman came upon the body of George Krutilek in the sandhills near the town of Clint, slumped in his car with a hose from his exhaust stuck in the window. He had been dead for several days, and the El Paso County pathologist, Dr. Frederick Bornstein , held that he certainly did not die from carbon monoxide poisoning.

Krutilek was a forty-nine-year old certified public accountant who had undergone secret grilling by FBI agents on April 2, the day after Billie Sol Estes' arrest. . . . Krutilek had worked for Estes and had been the recipient of his favors, but he was never seen or heard of again after the FBI grilling until his badly decomposed body was found.

Johnson wanted power and with all his knowledge of political strategy and his proven control of Congress, he could see wider horizons of power as Vice-president than as Senate Majority Leader. In effect, by presiding over the Senate, he could now conceive himself as virtually filling both high and important positions - and he was not far from wrong. Finally, as Victor Lasky pointed out, Johnson had nursed a lifetime dream to be President. As Majority leader he never could have made it. But as Vice-president fate could always intervene.

Haley's book may not be a masterpiece in the strictly scholarly sense, and it is certainly not a bible of my political creed, but as source material it is invaluable. For the author is not only a fellow-countryman of Lyndon B. Johnson, but an insider of Texas politics and an old political pro in his own right. A self-styled 'Jeffersonian Democrat' and conservative, Haley has been for years active in regional politics and in 1956 he unsuccessfully sought the Democratic nomination for Governor.

That this biography of Lyndon B. Johnson is coloured to a considerable extent by bitterness at his own failure in the political game, as well as by an ingrained dislike of the Rooseveltian tradition (which, alas, also produced LBJ) and a generally ultra-conservative stance, I do not doubt. Still, even after making generous allowance for possible exaggeration due to these factors, there remains in his book so much well-documented fact that it cannot possibly be bypassed by anyone seeking enlightenment about the dark recesses of the Johnson story.

The principal merit of Haley's A Texan looks at Lyndon lies in exploring those parts of Johnson's past that have been most zealously kept from view by the official biographers. In particular, the author relates in great and obviously authentic detail how Lyndon B. Johnson got started on his long and crooked road to the White House through a fraudulent vote.