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Show Y Pll Q By EJna Fesrkeir m0 Copyright by Edna Ferbcr.l TTICU Service. I . s THE STCRY Yancey Cravat, juat returned from lh newly opened Indian territory, relates his experiences to a laree gathering of the Ven-able Ven-able family. Yancey la married to fclabra Vonnble; la a criminal lawyer and editor of the Wichita Wigwam. When tho Hun started, Yancey had racod his pony RKH-lnnt the thoroughbred mount of a girl. The girl's horae was Injured and when Yancey stopped to shoot It she grabbed his pony and got the land Yancey wanted. Yancey announces he la going ban to the Oklahoma country wltli Sabra and thoir four-year-old man, Cimarron. They make the Journoy In two covered wagons. Thoy arrive at Osage, wher Yancey Intends to start a newspaper. Yancey Is determined to find out who killed Editor Peg-ler Peg-ler o; the Now Day, Preparations for the publication of the Oklahoma Okla-homa Wigwam are completed. Yancey consents to conduct divine di-vine worship on Sunday. During the eer vices Yancey announces he has learned who killed Peg-ler. Peg-ler. Ha stoops In time to escape a bullet fired by Yountis. Still stooping, Yancey shoots and kills Yountis. Then he announces that Yountis kijlod Pegler. CHAPTER V Continued 9 Here, then, was the monstrous society so-ciety In which Sabra Cravat now found herself. For her, and the other respectable women of the town, there was nothing but their housework, their children, their memories of the homes they hid left. And so the woman who was, after , all, tli most Intelligent among them, Bet abut creating some sort of social order for the good wives of the community. com-munity. Grimly Sabra (and, In time, the other virtuous women of the community) com-munity) set about making this new frontier town like the old as speedily as possible. Yancey, almost single handed, tried to make the new as unlike the old as possible. He fought a losing fight from the first. He, with Ms unformed dreams much less the roistering play boys of saloon and plain and gambling house never had a chance against the indomitable materialism ma-terialism of the women. Sabra's house became a sort of social center following the discovery that she received copies of Harper's Bazar with fair regularity. Her social triumph was complete when she displayed dis-played her new draped jars, done by her after minute Instructions found in the latest copy of Harper's. She then graciously printed these Instructions In the Oklahoma Wigwam, causing a flurry of excitement In a hundred homes and mystifying the local storekeepers store-keepers by the sudden demand for Jars. Slowly, In Sabra's eyes, the other women of the town began to emerge from a mist of drabness Into distinct personalities. There was one who had been a school teacher In Cairo, 111. Her husband, Tracy Wyatt, ran the spasmodic bus and dray line between Wahoo and Osage. They had no children. chil-dren. She was a sparse and simpering woman of thirty-nine, who talked a good deal of former trips to Chicago during which she had reveled In the culture of that elTete city. Yancey was heard learnedly discoursing to her on the subject of Etruscan pottery, tf which he knew nothing. The ex-chool ex-chool teacher rolled her eyes and tossed her head a good deal. "You don't know what a privilege It Is, Mr. Cravat, to find myself talking talk-ing to some one whose mind can soar above the sordid life of this horrible town." It was Sabra who started the Phllo-mathean Phllo-mathean club. The other women clutched at the Idea. It was part of their defense against these wilds. After all, a town that boasted a culture cul-ture club could not be altogether lost. Sabra timidly approached Mrs. Wyatt with her plan to form a woman's club, and Mrs. Wyatt snatched at It with such ferocity as almost to make It appear her own Idea. Each was to Invite four women of the town's elite. Ten, they decided, would be enough as charter members. "I," began Mrs. Wyatt promptly, "am going to ask Mrs. Louie Hefner, Mrs. Doc Nisbett " "Her husband's horrid ! I hate him. I don't want her in my club." The ten barrels of water still rankled. "We're not asking husbands, my dear Mrs. Cravat This Is a ladies' club. Mrs. Nisbett," retorted Mrs. Wyatt, Introducing snobbery Into that welter of mud, Indians, pine shacks, drought, and semi-barbarism known as Osage, Indian territory, "was a Krumpf, of Ouachita, Ark." Sabra, descendant of the Marcys and the Venables, lifted her handsome black eyebrows. Privately, she decided de-cided to select her four from among the less vertebrate and more ebullient of Osages' matrons. She made up her mind that next day, after the liouse-work liouse-work was done, she would call on her candidates, beginning with that pretty and stylish Mrs. Evergreen Waltz. At supper that evening she told Yancey of her four prospective members. "Waltz' wife!" Surprise and musement, too, were In his voice, but jha wan too full of her plans to no tice. Besides, Yancey often was mys-tifylngly mys-tifylngly amused at things that seemed to Sabra quite serious. "Why that's fine, Sabra. That's fine! That's the spirit 1" "She looks kind of babyish and lonely, lone-ly, sitting there by the window sewing all day. And her husband's so much older, and a cripple, too, or almost. I noticed he limps quite badly. What's his trouble?" "Shot In the leg." , "Oh." She had already learned to accept this form of injury as a matter of course. "I thought I'd ask her to prepare a paper for the third meeting on Mrs. Browning's 'Aurora Leigh." I could lend her yours to read up on, If you don't mind, Just In case she hasn't got It." Yancey thought it unlikely. The paper on Mrs. Browning's "Aurora "Au-rora Leigh" never was written by the pretty Mrs. Evergreen Waltz. Three days later Sabra, chancing to glance out of her sitting .room window, saw the crippled nnd middle-aged gambler passing her house, and In spite of his Infirmity he was walking with great speed running, almost. In his hand was a piece of white paper a letter, Sabra thought. She hoped it was not bad news. He had looked, she thought, sort of odd and wild. Evergreen Waltz, after weeks of tireless tire-less waiting and watching, had at last Intercepted a letter from his young wife's lover. As he now came panting up the street the girl sat at the window, win-dow, sewing. The single shot went just through the center of the wide white space between her great babyish baby-ish blue eyes. "Why didn't you tell me that when she married him she was a girl out of a out of a house !" Sabra demanded, between horror and wrath. "I thought you knew. Women are supposed to have Intuition, or whatever what-ever they call It, aren't they?" j CHAPTER VI Sabra's second child, a girl, was born In June, a little more than a year after their coming to Osage. It was not , as dreadful an ordeal there In those crude surroundings as one might have thought. She was tended, during her accouchement, by the best doctor in the county and certainly the most picturesque man of medicine medi-cine in the whole Southwest, Dr. Don Valliant. Like thousands of others living In this new country, his past was his own secret. It was known that he often vanished for days, leaving leav-ing the sick to get on as best they could. He would reappear as Inexplicably Inex-plicably as he had vanished and his horse was jaded. It was no secret that he was often called to attend the bandits when one of their number, wounded In some outlaw raid, had taken to their hiding place In the hills. He was tender and deft with Sabra, though between them he and Yancey consumed an Incredible quantity of whisky during the racking hours of her confinement. At the end he held up a caterwauling morsel of flesh torn from Sabra's flesh a thing perfect of Its kind, with an astonishing mop of black hair. "This Is a Spanish beauty you have for a daughter, Yancey. I present to you Senorita Donna Cravat." And Donna Cravat she remained. The town, somewhat scandalized, thought she had been named after Doctor Don himself. Besides, they did not consider Donna a name at all. When Sabra Cravat arose from that bed something in her had crystalized. Perhaps It was that, for the first time In a year, she had had hours in which to rest her tired limbs; perhaps the ordeal itself worked a psychic as well as a physical change in her; it might have been that she realized she must cut a new pattern In this Oklahoma life of theirs. The boy Cim might surmount sur-mount It ; the girl Donna never. During Dur-ing the hours through which she had lain in her bed in the stifling wooden shack, mists seemed to have rolled away from before her eyes. She saw clearly. She felt light and terribly capable so much so that she made the mistake of getting up, dizzily donning don-ning slippers and wrapper, and tottering tot-tering Into the newspaper office where Yancey was writing an editorial and shouting choice passages of It Into the Inattentive ear of Jesse Rickey, who was setting type In the printing shop. ". . . the most stupendous farce ever conceived by the mind of man in a civilized country. . . ." He looked up to see In the doorway a wraith, all eyes and long black braids. "Why, sugar I What's this? You can't get up !" She smiled rather feebly. 'Tm tip. I felt so light, so" "I should think you would. All that physic." "I feel so strong. Tm going to do so many things. Y'ou'll see. I'm going go-ing to paper the whole house. Rosebuds Rose-buds In the bedroom. I'm going to plant two trees In the front I'm going to start another club not like the Philomatliean I think that's silly now but one to make this town ... no saloons . . .women like that Dixie Lee . . . going to have a real hired girl as soon as the newspaper begins to . . . feel so queer . . . Yancey. Yan-cey. . . ." As she began to topple, Yancey caught the Osage Joan of Arc in his arms. Incredibly enough, she actually did paper the entire house, aided by Isaiah and Jesse Rickey. Isaiah's ebony countenance splashed with the white paste mixture made a bizarre effect, a trifle startling to anyone coming com-ing upon the scene unawares. Also Jesse Rickey's inebriate eye, which bo often resulted in many grotesque pied print lines appearing In unexpected and Inconvenient places in the Oklahoma Okla-homa Wigwam columns, was none too dependable In the matching of rosebud rose-bud patterns. The result, In spots, was Burkanklan, with roses grafted on leaves and tendrils emerging from petals. Still, the effect was gay, even luxurious. The Philomatliean club, as one woman, fell upon wall paper and paste pot, as they had upon the covered cov-ered jars in Sabra's earlier effort at decoration. Within a month Louie Hefner was compelled to Install a full line of wall paper to satisfy the local demand. -Slowly, slowly, the life of the community, com-munity, In the beginning so wild, so unrelated In its parts, began to weave In and out, warp and woof, to make a pattern. It was at first faint, almost undiscernible. But presently the eye could trace here a motif, there a figure, here a motif, there a figure. The shuttle shut-tle swept back, forward, back, forward. "It's almost time for the Jew," Sabra would say, looking up from her sewing. "I need some number forty sewing-machine needles." And then perhaps next day, or the day after, Cim, playing in the yard, would see a familiar figure, bent almost double, gnomelike and grotesque, against the western sky. It was Sol Levy, the peddler, the Alsatian Jew. Sabra would fold up her work, brush the threads from her apron ; or If her hands were In the dough she would hastily mold and crimp her pie crust so as to be ready for his visit. Sol Levy had come over an Immigrant Immi-grant in the noisome bowels of some dreadful ship. His hair was blue-black blue-black and very thick, and his face was white in spite of the burning southwest south-west sun. A black stubble of beard intensified this pallor. He had delicate deli-cate blue-veined hands and narrow arched feet. He belonged in crowded places, In populous places, In the color and glow and swift drama of the bazaars. God knows how he had found his way to this vast wilderness. Perhaps in Chicago, or In Kansas City, or Omaha he had heard of this new country and the rush of thousands for its land. And he had bummed his way on foot. He had started to peddle with an oilcloth-covered pack on his back. Through the little hot western towns In summer. 'Through the bitter cold western towns ! winter. They turned dogs on him. The children cried, "Jew I Jew !" He was only a boy, disguised with that stubble of beard. He would enter the yard of a farmhouse or a dwelling, In a town such as Osage. A wary eye on the dog. Nice Fido. Nice doggie. Down, down! Pins, sewing machine needles, rolls of gingham and calico, and last, craftily, his Hamburg lace. He brought news, too. "The bridge Is out below Gray Horse. , . . The Osages are having a powpow at Hominy. All night they kept me awake with their drums, those savages. . . . The Kid and his gang held up the Santa Fe near Wetoka and got thirty-five thousand dollars ; but one of them will never hold up a train again. Shot In the head. Verdigris Verdi-gris Bob by name. Would be a feather feath-er In that sheriff's cap, to catch the Kid! ... A country! My forefathers fore-fathers should have lived to see me here 1" His beautiful, civilized face, mobile as an actor's, was at once expressive of despair and bitter amusement. His long slender hands were spread In a gesture of wondering resignation. He sometimes talked to Dixie Lee. There existed between these two a strange relation of understanding and something resembling respect. Outcasts, Out-casts, both of them, he because of his race, she because of her calling. "A smart girl like yon, what do you want In such a business?" "I've got to live, Solly. God knows why !" "You come from a good family. You are young yet you are smart There are other ways." Y-e-e-e-s? I tried a couple of things. Nix, nix!" In a year or two he opened a little store In Osage. It was, at first, only a wooden shack containing two or three rough pine tables on which his wares were spread. He was the town Jew. He was a person apart. Sometimes Some-times the cowboys deviled him; or the saloon loungers and professional bad men. They looked upon him as fair gome. He thought of them as savages. In the three and a half years of her residence in Osage Sabra had yielded hardly an Inch. It was amazing. It was heroic. She had set herself certain cer-tain standards, and those she had maintained in spite of almost overwhelming over-whelming opposition. She had been bred on tradition. If she had yielded at all It was in minor matters and because be-cause to do so was expedient. Once only In those three years had she gone back to Wichita. At the prospect of the journey she had been in a fever of anticipation for days. She had taken with her Cim and Donna. She was so proud of them, so Intent on outfitting them with a wardrobe sufficiently splendid to set off their charms, that she neglected the matter of her own costuming and found herself arriving In Wichita with a trunk containing the very clothes with which she had departed from it almost four years earlier. Prominent among these was a green nun's veiling with pink ruchings. She had had little enough use for It In these past years. The visit was not a success. The very things she had expected to enjoy fell, somehow, flat. She missed the pace, the exhilarating uncertainty of the Oklahoma life. The teacup conversation con-versation of her girlhood friends seemed to lack tang and meaning. Their existence was orderlj', calm, accepted. ac-cepted. For herself and the other SB "A Smart Girl Like You, What Do You Want In Such a Business?" women of Osage there was everything still to do. There lay a city, a country, coun-try, a whole vast territory to be swept and garnished by an army of sunbon-nets. sunbon-nets. Paradoxically enough, she was trying to implant In the red clay of Osage the very forms and institutions that now bored her in Wichita. Yet It was, perhaps ,a very human trait. It was illustrated literally by the fact that she was, on her return, more thrilled to find that the scrawny elm, no larger than a baby's arm, which she had planted outside the doorway in Osage, actually had found some moisture for its thirsty roots, and was now feebly vernal, than she had been at sight of the cool glossy canopy of cedar, arbor vitae, sweet locust, and crepe myrtle that shaded the Kansas garden. Then the children. The visiting Venables Insisted on calling Cim by his full name Cimarron. Sabra had heard It so rarely since the day of his birth that she now realized, for the first time, how foolish she had been to yield to Yancey's whim In the naming nam-ing of the boy. Cimarron. Spanish ; wild, or unruly. The boy had made such an obstreperous entrance Into the world, and Yancey had shouted, In delight "Look at him! See him kick with his feet and strike out with his fists! He's a wild one. Heh, Cimarron Cimar-ron ! Peceno Gitano." Cimarron was almost eight now. If It Is possible for a boy of eight to be I romantic in aspect, Cimarron Cravat was that. His head was not large, like Yancey's, but long and fine, like Sabra's a Venable head. His eyes were Sabra's, too, dark and large, but they had the ardent look of Yancey's gray ones, and he had Yancey's absurdly ab-surdly long and curling lashes, like a beautiful girl's. His speech was strangely adult. This, perhaps, because of his close association as-sociation with his elders in those first formative years In Osage. His skin was bronzed the color of his father's. He looked like a little patrician Spaniard or perhaps (the Venables thought privately) part Indian. Then, too, there had been few children of his age In the town's beginning. Sabra Sa-bra had been, at first, too suspicious of such as there were. He would, probably, have seemed a rather unpleasant un-pleasant and priggish little boy if his voice and manner had not been endowed en-dowed miraculously with all the charm and magnetism that his father possessed pos-sessed in such disarming degree. Even little Donna was not much of a success. The baby was an eerie little elf, as plain as the boy was handsome. She resembled her grandmother, grand-mother, Felice Venable, without a trace of that redoubtable matron's former for-mer beauty. All in all, Sabra found herself joyously returning to the barren bar-ren burning country to which, four years earlier, she had gone In such dread and terror. She resented her mother's do-thls, do-that. She say Felice Venable now, no longer as L power, an authority In all matters ol importance, but as a sallow old lady who tottered on heels that were too high and who, as she sat talking, pleated and unpleated with tremulous fingers the many ruffles of her whit! dimity wrapper. The matriarch ha.1 lost her crown. Sabra was matrlarci now of her own little kingdom; anl already she was planning to extenj that realm beyond and beyond 1U present confines Into who knows wha.' vastness of demesne. She had meant, at the last, to flnq, occasion to Inform her mother anci the minor Venables that It was sho who Ironed Yancey's fine white lines shirts. But she was not a spitefu: woman. And she reflected that this might be construed as a criticism of her husband. So, gladly, eagerly, Sabra went bad to the wilds she once had despised. CHAPTER VII Before the Katy pulled In at the Osage station (the railroad actually had been extended, true to Dixie Lee's prediction, from Wahoo to Osage and beyond) Sabra's eyes were searching the glaring wooden platform. Yancey was not there. The stark red-painted wooden station sat blistering In the sun. Yancey simply was not there. Not only that, the station platform usually graced by a score of vacuous faces and limp figures gathered to witness the exciting event of the Katy's daily arrival and departure, was bare. Sabra felt sick and weak. Something Some-thing was wrong. She left her boxes and bags and parcels on the platform. Half an hour before their arrival In Osage she had entrusted the children to the care of a fellow passenger while she had gone to the washroom to put on one of the new dresses made In Wichita and bearing the style cachet of Kansas City. She had anticipated the look in Yancey's gray eyes at sight of It She had made the children spotless spot-less and threatened them with dire things if they sullied their splendor before their father should see them. And now he was not there. With Donna In her arms and Cim at her heels she peered In at the station sta-tion window. Pat Leary was bent over his telegraph key. A smart tight little Irishman who had come to the territory terri-tory with the railroad section crew when the Katy was being built Station Sta-tion agent now, and studying law at night "Mr. Leary ! Mr. Leary I Have yon seen Yancey?" He looked up at her absently, his hand still on the key, then wiped his wet forehead with his forearm protected by the black sateen sleevelet. "Ain't yofl heard?" "No," whispered Sabra, with stiff lips that seemed no part of her. Then, In a voice rising to a scream, "No ! No! No! What? Is he dead?" The Irishman came over to her then, as she crouched at the window. "Oh, no, ma'am. Yancey's all right He ain't hurt to speak of. Just a nick In the nrm and left arm at that." "Oh, my God!" "Don't take on; You goln' to faint or?" "No. Tell me." ;'I been so busy. . . . Yancey got the Kid, you know. Killed him. The whole town's gone crazy. Pitched battle bat-tle right there on Pawhuska avenue In front of the bank, and bodies layin' around like a battlefield. I'm sending It out I ain't got much time, but I'll give you an Idea. Seems Yancey was out hunting up In the hills last Thursday " "Thursday! But that's the day U paper comes out." (TO B CONTINCEIXf |