Alice Walton finds refuge in Texas.

The second-richest woman in America is now apparently the second-richest Texan.

Alice Walton, the only daughter (she has three brothers) of the late Sam Walton, has acquired a Texas driver's license and 3,200 acres in the hill country near Mineral Wells, west of Dallas. The compound includes a 4,400-SF main house, four other houses, a pool and outbuildings.

It is a fit spread for Walton, a lifelong equestrian who also trains and breeds work horses for ranchers. It is also a refuge, after a decade of fitful efforts in her native Arkansas to become a regional leader in money management, economic development and investment banking. In October, she resigned as chief executive officer of the Llama Holding Co., her investment firm, while remaining chairman and majority shareholder. She opened Llama in Fayetteville in 1988 with $25 million of her own capital.

Hard feelings linger, according to Arkansas business leaders who request anonymity for fear of offending the Walton family. "There's the sense around here that she feels mistreated, so she's packing up and moving to Texas," one senior executive sighs.

In a telephone interview, Walton did not explain her decision, but said of her new address: "I feel so totally at home. I love it."

A watercolorist who collects early American art, she rhapsodized over the paint that was being applied to her new home that day. "Yellow-gold, Southwestern, soft, soft, soft," she says.

For all her artistic ardor, though, she has no fashion pretensions. Asked if she has a favorite designer, she laughs. "I'm a cowgirl," she says. "I like jeans and boots."

But she left no doubt she would stay in charge at Llama. As she describes her vision for the firm, she peppers her comments with digs at Wall Street.

"What I want are a group of people who have financial expertise but don't think like an investment banker, who have operating knowledge, who understand our clients," says Walton, who is 49. "Most investment banks aren't built that way. They're built around 28-year-old guys who don't have the sense God gave a goose."

It's not as if Walton has to work for a living. Her stake in Wal-Mart is worth more than $11 billion, placing her second in wealth to her mother, Helen, among women and probably second, in Texas, to Michael Dell, the founder of Dell Computer, who is worth about $13 billion.

Walton may miss her thousand acres of Ozark lakefront near the headquarters of the Wal-Mart Stores Inc. chain, which was founded by her father, but she will also leave behind the state's income tax, Texas has none.

Lynn DeVault, her chosen successor as Llama's chief, says annual earnings are "in the millions" and that Llama Holding Co. has $500 million in assets. Llama has had successes, financing a bond issue for a Northwest Arkansas Regional Airport near Wal-Mart's home - with P r es i d e n t Clinton, dedicating the airport last November, singled out Walt on for praise - and helping to finance an employee buyout that kept the Hathaway Shirt Company of Maine alive. Also in October, Llama acquired Boston Capital Mortgage, since renamed Llama Capital Mortgage Co Llama's real estate and corporate finance branches, DeVault says, had record returns in 1997.

But in Arkansas, Llama is also noted for its setbacks. In February 1998, it sold a sports management division, and three months later withdrew as underwriter for two state bond issues.

"No one has ever understood what Llama was trying to do," one investment banker says. "It's always been whatever the idea of the week was."

Walton's company has also suffered from executive turnover. Don Clanton, a former Llama executive, calls her a poor manager of people. "She becomes impatient," he says. But she is knowledgeable and "gets to the bottom line about as fast as anyone I've seen," he says.

DeVault says any turnover resulted from growth As for Walton's management skills, the ranch-horse enterprise, DeVault adds, is "very much a business."

"She's not a kid with a pony in the backyard," DeVault says.

Walton traveled to her new backyard along a sometimes rough course. Her father, in his autobiography, described her as "volatile." She initially worked as a WalMart buyer and later became a broker at E.F. Hutton's New Orleans office There, she ran afoul of the Securities and Exchange Commission over options trading and in 1979 accepted a six-month suspension without acknowledging any improprieties. She soon returned to Arkansas.

She has also endured two divorces and more that 30 surgeries to repair a leg crushed when the car she was driving overturned in Mexico in 1983. Six years later, she was held blameless when an Arkansas woman stepped into the path of her Porsche and died as a result of the collision.

Then, in January 1998, her sport utility vehicle crashed near her Arkansas home. She was charged with drunken driving and three other violations.

"You know who I am, don't you? You know my last name?" an officer quoted Walton as saying. She says she has no memories of the incident because of a concussion.

Despite hiring two prominent lawyers and a public relations firm, she was convicted, fined $925, sentenced to 28 hours of community service and ordered to undergo counseling.

DeVault says Walton's move to Texas was not an effort to escape her past.

In any case, Walton will not be leaving the Walton empire too far behind. There in Mineral Wells is Wal-Mart Store No. 804.

Steve Barnes is a Little Rock-based freelance writer. The feature first appeared in The New York Times on Nov. 22.