BLOOD SPORT: A DEAL GONE BAD

SUSAN MCDOUGAL STRETCHED HER legs in the ample passenger space of her husband Jim's light green Mercedes 280-S as it cruised north along the winding Route 65 to the resort town of Eureka Springs, Arkansas. It was a mild, brilliantly sunny winter day in early 1978. Susan was wearing bell-bottom pants and a tight white tank top; she knew her husband liked the impression she made as they traveled along the rural highways. Susan gazed out on the rugged hills of north-central Arkansas and thought how pretty it was. They passed occasional signs advertising campgrounds and raft trips down the White River. With the mild winters and scenery, McDougal was convinced that real estate in the area would be attractive to growing numbers of retirees. Jim and Susan McDougal were always on the lookout for real estate deals.

The big Mercedes was one of her husband's few indulgences. Given the money they were making, the McDougals didn't live lavishly. Jim seemed indifferent to most of the trappings of wealth, but he loved clothes and cars, especially Mercedes. Before the 280-S he had owned a yellow 450-SL convertible. While driving with one of his close friends, future Arkansas Governor Jim Guy Tucker, he managed to beach the car on the dividing strip of North University Street in Little Rock, stopping traffic during rush hour. McDougal was unfazed, chatting with Tucker as though nothing had happened. "Don't get out and look around, giving everyone the satisfaction of seeing what an idiot you've been," he told his passenger. "Don't worry. Somebody will come and take care of this." (Someone did.)

It was one of the many ways in which McDougal seemed to live on a higher plane than ordinary mortals, and it was one of the qualities that had dazzled Susan when, as a 19-year-old student at Ouachita Baptist University in Arkadelphia, she first met McDougal, 15 years her senior. McDougal, who cut quite a figure around campus with his Savile Row suits, straw hats and aristocratic accent, was teaching political science there, an interlude in a career that had included stints as an aide to Arkansas Senators John McClellan and J. William Fulbright. After a yearlong courtship, Jim and Susan were married in Little Rock in May 1976. Among the guests: a promising pol then running for Arkansas attorney general named Bill Clinton and his wife Hillary Rodham. McDougal had met Clinton on the Fulbright Senate campaign in 1968, and they quickly became friends.

This weekend was supposed to be a quiet getaway. But after the McDougals arrived and checked into their hotel for the night, they awoke the next morning to discover that a freak snowstorm had blown in overnight. Jim wanted to stay in, and in no time, Susan noticed, was scanning the real estate ads in the local paper. Suddenly he looked up with a gleam in his eye. "Look at this," he told Susan. "Twelve hundred acres in Marion County for less than $100 an acre." It struck him as an amazingly good deal. "Is there any land in America that could be worth less than $100 an acre?" They bought the land within a week, sight unseen.