OCR Text |
Show (TZiwifi TTO ft 0k JtfB-' EdaaRrbw jj h Ultisti-atioiv lt THE STORY Yanrpy Cravnt, Ju.st returned from the newly opened Indian territory, rrlates his experiences to a large gathering of tli e Ven-nble Ven-nble family. Yancey is married to Sabra Venable; Is a criminal lawyer and editor of the Wichita Wigwam. Yancey announces he Is golnif bnck to the Oklahoma country coun-try with Sabra and their four-year-old son, Cimarron. They arrive ar-rive at Osage, where Yancey in-tonds in-tonds to start a newspaper. Yancey Yan-cey la determined to find out who killed Kdltor Pegler of the New Day. Yancey consents to conduct diine worship on Sunday. During Dur-ing the services Yancey announces an-nounces he has learned who killed I'egler. lie stoops in time to escape es-cape a bullet (Ired by Yountis. Still stooping, Yancey shoots and kills Yountis. Then he announces that Yountis killed Peeler. Yancey Yan-cey frustrates a bank robbery and kills two desperadoes. Yancey Yan-cey urges Sabra to Join him in the Run at the opening of the Cherokee Chero-kee strip. She. refuses. He is gone (lve years. Dixie Lee and her girls arouse the indignation of the wives and mothers of Osage. The war with Spain begins. be-gins. Yancey returns In the uniform uni-form of a Rough Rider. Dixie Lee Is on trial as a public nuisance. nui-sance. Yancey defends her and she is acquitted. chapter x 14 It was as though Osage and the whole Oklahoma country now stopped and took a deep breath. Well It might. Just ahead of It, all unknown, waited years of such clangor and strife as would make the past years seem uneventful In comparison. Ever since the day of the Iiun, more than fifteen years ago, it had been racing helter-skelter, helter-skelter, devil take the hindmost ; shooting shoot-ing into the air, prancing and yelping out of sheer vitality and cussedness. A man's country it seemed to be, ruled by men for men. The women allowed them to think so. The word feminism was unknown to the Sabra Cravats, the Mrs. YVyatts, the Mrs. Hefners, the Mesdnmes Turket and Folsom and Sipes. Prim, good women and courageous, cour-ageous, banded together by their goodness good-ness and by their common resolve to tame the wilderness. Their power was the more tremendous because they did not know they had it. They never once said, during those fifteen years, "We women will do this. We women will change that." Quietly, Indomitably, Indomit-ably, relentlessly, without even a furtive fur-tive glance of understanding exchanged ex-changed between them, but secure in their common knowledge of the sentimental senti-mental . American male, they went ahead with their plans. Yancey had come home from the Spaiv.sh-Amorieun war a hero. Other men from Osage had been in the Philippines. One had even died there (dysentery and ptomaine from bad tinned beef). Rut Yancey was the town's Hough Rider. He had charged tip San Juan hill with Roosevelt, Osige, knowing Yancey and never having hav-ing seen Roosevelt, assumed that Yancey Yan-cey Cravat the Southwest Cimarron had led the way, an ivory-and-silver-mnnnted six-shooter in either hand, the great buffalo head lowered with such menace that the enemy had fled in terror. His return had been the occasion for such a celebration as the town had never known and never would know again, they assured each other, between be-tween drinks, until the day when statehood should come to the territory. He returned a captain, unwounded, but thin and yellow, with the livery look that confirmed the stories one had heard of putrid food, typhoid, dysentery, dys-entery, anil mosquitoes more deadly, In this semi-tropical country, than bullets bul-lets or cannon. Poisoned and enfeebled though he was. his return seemed to energize the crude little town. Wherever lie might be lie lived in a swirl of events that drew into its eddy all that came within with-in its radius. Hi, Yancey! Hi, Clint! He shed the khaki and the cocked hat and actually appeared again in the familiar white sombrero. Prince Albert, Al-bert, and high-heeled boots. Osage breathed a sigh of satisfaction. His dereliction was forgiven, the rumors about Mm forgotten or allowed to subside, at least. Again the editorial columns of the Oklahoma Wigwam blazed with hyperbole. It was hard for Sabra to take second sec-ond place (or to appear to take secoud place) in the oflice of the Wigwam. She had so long ruled there alone. Her word had been law to the wavering waver-ing Jesse Rickey and to the worshiping Cliff Means. And now to say, "You'd better ask Mr. Cravat." "He says leave It to you. He's went out." Y liicey did a good deal of going out. Sabra, niter all, still did most of the work ct the paper without having the musfactioi. of dictating its policy. A linotype machine, that talented iron monster, now chattered and cluttered and clanked in the composing room of tiie Wigwam. It was the first of its kind In the Oklahoma country. Sabra was proud of the linotype machine, ma-chine, for It had been her five years at the head of the Wigwam that had made it possible. It was she who had gone out after job printing contracts; con-tracts; who had educated the local merchants to the value of advertising. advertis-ing. Certainly Yancey, prancing and prating, had never given a thought to these substantial foundations on which the entire business success of the paper rested. They now got out with ease the daily Wigwam for the Osage townspeople and the weekly for county coun-ty subscribers. five years had gone by six years since Yancey's return. Yet, strangely enough, Sabra never had a feeling of security. She never forgot what he had said about Wichita. "Almost five years In one place. That's the longest stretch I've ever done, honey." Five years. And tills was well Into the sixth. He had plunged head first into the statehood tight, into the Indian territory situation. The anti-Indian faction was bitterly opposed to the plan for combining the Oklahoma ter-r'tory ter-r'tory and the Indian territory under the single state of Oklahoma. Their slogan was "The White Man's State for the White Man." "Who brought the Indian here to the Oklahoma country in the first place?" shouted Yancey in the editorial edi-torial columns of the Wigwam. "White men. They hounded them from Mis-sour! Mis-sour! to Arkansas, from Arkansas to southern Kansas, then to northern Kansas, to northern Oklahoma, to southern Oklahoma. You white men sold them the piece of arid and barren land on which they now live In squalor and misery. It isn't fit for a white man to live on, or the Indians wouldn't be living on it now. Deprived of their tribal laws, deprived of their tribal rites, herded together in stockades like wild animals, robbed, cheated, .kicked, hounded from place to place, give them the protection of the country coun-try that has taken their country away from them. Give them at least the right to become citizens of the state of Oklahoma." He was obsessed by it. He traveled to Washington in the hope of lobbying lobby-ing for it. Roosevelt was characteristically character-istically cordial to his old campaign comrade. Washington ladies were captivated cap-tivated by the flowery speeches of this romantic, tins story-book swaggerer swag-gerer out of the Southwest. It was rumored on good authority that he was to be appointed the next governor of the Oklahoma territory. "Oh, Yancey," Sabra said, "do be careful. Governor of the territory ! It would mean so much. It would help Cim in the future. Donna, too. Their father a governor." She thought. "Perhaps "Per-haps all that I've gone through in the last ten years will be worth it, now. Perhaps it was this. He'll settle down. . . . Mamma can't say now . . . and all the Venables and the Vians and the Goforths and the Greenwoods. . . ." She had had to endure their pity, even from a distance, dis-tance, all these years. The rumor took on substance. My husband, Yancey Cravat, governor of the territory of Oklahoma. And then, when statehood came, as it must in the next few years, perhaps governor of the state of Oklahoma. Why not! At which point Yancey blasted any possibility of his appointment to the governorship by hurling a red-hot editorial edi-torial into the columns of the Wigwam. Wig-wam. The gist of it was that the hundreds of thousands of Indians now living on reservations throughout the United States should be allowed to live where they pleased, at liberty. The whites of the Oklahoma territory and the Indian territory, with an Indian In-dian population of about one hundred and twenty thousand of various tribes Poncas, Cherokees, Chickasaws, Creeks, Osages, Kiowas, Comanches, Kaws, Choctaws, Seminoles, and a score of others read, emitted a roar of rage, and brandishing the paper ran screaming into the streets, cursing curs-ing the name of Yancey Cravat. Much that he wrote was true, perhaps. per-haps. Yet the plight of the Indian was not as pitiable as Yancey painted it. He cast over them the glamor of his own romantic nature. The trutli was that they themselves cared little except a few of their tribal leaders, more intelligent than the rest. They hunted a little, fished, slept, visited from tribe to tribe, the Poncas visiting visit-ing the Osages, the Osages the Poncas, Pon-cas, gossiping, eating, holding powwows. pow-wows. Sabra picked up the proof sheet of the editorial, still damp from the press, and walked into Yancey's office. Her face was white, set. "You're going to run this, Yancej?" "Yes." Yon'll never be governor of the territory." "Never.- She stood a moment, her fare working. work-ing. She crushed the galley proof in her hand so that her kuuckles stood out, white. "I've forgiven you many, many tilings, God knows, in the last ten years. I'll never forgive you for this. Never." "Yes, you will, honey. Never is a long time. Not while I'm alive, maybe. may-be. Put some day, a long time from now though not so very long, maybe you'll be able to turn back to the old files of the Oklahoma Wigwam and lift this editorial of mine right out of it, word for word, and run it as your own." "Never. . . . Donna . . . Cim. . ." "I can't live my children's lives for them, Sabra honey. They've got to live their own. I believe what 1 Ixv lieve. This town Is rotten Ihe territory terri-tory the whole country. Rotten." "You're a fine one to say what is or isn't rotten. You with your whisky and your Indians and your women. I despise you. So does every one in the town in the territory." " 'A prophet Is not without honor, save In his own country and in his own home.' " A trifle sonorously. She never really knew whether he had done this tiling with the very purpose pur-pose of making his governorship impossible. im-possible. It was like him. Curiously enough, the editorial, while It maddened the white population popula-tion of the territory, gained the paper 'c UJSj They Chewed Tobacco and Spat. many readers. The Wigwam prospered. pros-pered. Osage blossomed. It was no longer a camp; it was a town. It began be-gan to build schools, churches, halls. Sol Levy's store the Levy Mercantile Mercan-tile company had two waxen ladies in the window, their features only slightly slight-ly affected by the burning southwest sun. Yancey boomed Sol Levy for mayor of Osage, but lie never had a chance. It was remarkable how the Oklahoma Wigwam persisted, though its position in most public questions was violently unpopular. Perhaps it, like Yancey, had a vitality and a charm that no one could withstand. Although Sol Levy was still the town Jew, respected, prosperous, the town had never quite absorbed this oriental. A citizen of years' standing, he still was a stranger. He mingled little with his fellow townsmen outside out-side business hours. He was shy of the town women though the women of the town found him kindly, passionate, and generous. The business men liked him. They put him on committees. commit-tees. Occasionally Sabra or some other woman who knew him well enough would say, half playfully, half seriously, "Why don't you get married. mar-ried. Sol? A nice fellow like you. You'd make some girl happy." Sometimes he thought vaguely of going go-ing to Wichita or Kansas Cily or even Chicago to met some nice Jewish girl there, but he never did. It never entered en-tered his head to marry a Gentile. Between him and Yancey there existed ex-isted a deep sympathy and understanding. understand-ing. Yancey campaigned for Sol Levy in the mayoralty race if a tiling so one-sided could be called a race. The Wigwam extolled him. "Why, the very idea !" snorted the redoubtable virago, Mrs. Tracy Wyatt, whose husband was the opposing candidate. can-didate. "A Jew for mayor of Osage! They'll be having an Indian mayor next. Mr. Wyatt's folks are real Americans. They helped settle Arkansas. Ar-kansas. And as for me. why, I can trace my ancestry right back to William Wil-liam Whipple, who was one of the signers of the Declaration of Independence." Inde-pendence." Sol Levy never had a chance for public honor. He, In fact, did practically prac-tically nothing to further his own possible pos-sible election. He seemed to regard the whole matter with a remoteness slightly tinged with ironic humor. Yancey dropped into Sol's store to bring him this latest pronouncement of the bristling Mrs. Wyatt. "Declaration of Independence!" Sol exclaimed, thoughtfully. "Tell her one of my ancestors wrote the Ten Commandments. Com-mandments. Fella name of Moses." Yancey, roaring with laughter, used this in the Wigwam, and it naturally helped as much as anything to defeat the already defeated candidate. The town went by Indians, cow boys up from Texas, plainsmen, ranchers. ranch-ers. They still squatted at the curb, aa In the early days. They chewed tobacco and spat. The big sombreio persisted, and even the boots and spurs. There was talk of paving Pawhuska avenue, but this did not come for years. The town actually boasted a waterworks. The Wigwam otlice still stood on Pawhuska, but it now occupied occu-pied the entire house. Two years after Yancey's return they had decided de-cided to build a home on Kihekah street, where there actually were trees now almost ten years old. Sabra built a white frame house In the style of the day, with turrets, towers, tow-ers, minarets, cupolas, and scroll work. There was a stained glass window In the hall, in purple and red and green and yellow, which, confronting the entering caller, gave him the look of being suddenly stricken witli bubonic plague. There were parlor, sitting room, dining room, kitchen on the first floor; four bedrooms on the second floor, and a bathroom, actually, witli a full-size bathtub, a toilet, and a marble washstand with varicose veins. In the cellar there was a hot air furnace. fur-nace. "As long as we're building and furnishing," fur-nishing," Sabra said, "it might as well be the best." She had gone about planning the house, ami furnishing it, with her customary energy and capability. capa-bility. With it all she found time to do her work on the Wigwam for without with-out her the paper would have been run to the ground in six months. Oeage had long since ceased to consider con-sider it queer that she, a woman, and the wife of one of its most prominent prom-inent citizens, should go to work every morning like a man. Sabra, in common with the other well-to-do housewives of the community, com-munity, employed an Indian girl as a house servant. There was no other kind of help available. After her hideous hid-eous experience with Arita she had been careful to get Indian girls older, more settled, though this was difficult. She preferred Osage girls. These married young, often before they had finished their studies at the Indian school. Ruby Eig Elk had been with Sabra now for three years. A curious, big, silent girl of about twenty-two almost al-most handsome one of six children a large family for an Osage. Sabra was somewhat taken aback, after the girl had been with her for some months, to learn that she already had been twice married. "What became of your husbands, Ruby?" "Died." She had a manner that bordered on the Insolent. Sabra put It down to Indian dignity. When she walked she scuffed her feet ever so little, and this, for some inexplicable reason, seemed to add insolence to her bearing. "Oh, do lift your feet, Ruby ! Don't scuffle when you walk." The girl made no reply. Went on scuffling. Sabra discovered dis-covered that she was lame; the left leg was slightly shorter than the right. She did not limp or, rather, hid the tendency to limp by the irritating sliding slid-ing sound. Her walk was straight, leisurely, measured. Sabra was terribly ter-ribly embarrassed; apologized to the Indian girl. The girl only looked at her and said nothing. Sabra repressed a little shivver. She had never got accustomed to the Indians. Ruby's father, Eig Elk, had been chief of the Osage tribe by election for ten years, and though he no longer held this highest office, was a man much looked up to in the Osage nation. na-tion. He had sent his six children and actually his fat wife to the Indian In-dian school, but he himself steadfastly stead-fastly refused to speak a word of English, though he knew enough of the language. He conversed in Osage, and when necessary used an interpreter. inter-preter. It was a kind of stubborn Indian In-dian pride in him. It was his enduring endur-ing challenge to the white man. "You have not defeated me." It slowly dawned on Sabra that young Cim was always to be found lolling in the kitchen, talking to Ruby. Ruby, she discovered to her horror, was teaching Cim to speak Osage. A difficult language to the wdiite, he seemed to have a natural aptitude for it. She came upon them, their heads close together over the kitchen table, laughing and talking and singing. sing-ing. Rather, Ruby Big Elk was singing sing-ing a song with a curious rhythm, and (to Sabra's ear, at least) no melody. Cim was trying to follow the strange gutturals, slurs, and accents, his eyes fixed on Ruby's face, his own expression utterly absorbed, rapt. "What are you doing? What Is this?" The Indian girl's face took on Its customary expression of proud disdain. dis-dain. She rose. "Teach um song," she said ; which was queer, for she spoke Knglish perfectly. "Well, I must say, Cimarron Cravat! When you know your father is expecting expect-ing you down at the office " She stopped. Her quick eye had leaped to the table where lay the little round peyote disk or mescal button which is the hashish of the Indian'. She had heard about it; knew how prevalent among the Indian tribes from Nebraska down to Mexico had become the habit of eating this little buttoulike top of a Mexican cactus plant. In shape a disk about an Inch and a half in diameter and a quarter of an inch thick, the mescal or peyote gave the eater a strange feeling of lightness, dispelled pain and fatigue, caused visions of marvelous beauty and grandeur. The use of It had become be-come an Indian religious rite. Like a fury Sabra advanced to tha table, snatch.:! up the little round button but-ton of soft green. "Peyote!" She whirled on Cim. "What are you doing with this thing?" Cim's eyes cast down sullenly. His hands in his pockets, he leaned against the wall, very limp, very bored, very infuriating and insolent. "Ruby was just teaching me one of the Mescal ceremony songs. Darned Interesting. It's the last song. They sing It at sunrise when they're just about all in.' Goes like tills." To Sabra's horror he began an eerie song as he stood there leaning against the kitchen wall, his eyes half closed. "Stop it !" screamed Sabra. With the gesture of a tragedy queen she motioned hini out of the kitchen, lie obeyed with very bad grace, his goinn more annoying, in its manner, than Ills staying. Sabra followed him, silently. Suddenly she realized she haled his walk, and knew why. He walked with a queer little springing gait, on the very soles of his feet. It came over her that It always had annoyed her. She remembered that some one had laughingly told her what Pete Pltchlyn, the old Indian scout, lounging on his street corner, had said about young Cim : "Every time I see that young Cimarron Cimar-ron Cravat a-comin' down the street I expect to hear a twig snap. Walks like a story-book Injun." In the privacy of the sitting room Sabra confronted her son, the bit of peyote still crushed in her hand. "So you've come to this ! I'm ashamed of you !" "Come to what?" She opened her hand to show the button of pulpy green crushed In her palm. "Peyote. A son of mine. I'd rather see you dead " "Oh, for heaven's sake, mom, don't get Biblical, like dad. To hear you person would think you'd found mi drugged in a Chinese opium den." "I think I'd almost rather." "It's nothing but a miserable little piece of cactus. And what was I doing do-ing but sitting In the kitchen listening to Ruby tell how her father " "I should think a man of almost eighteen could find something better to do than sit in a kitchen in the middle of the day talking to an Indian In-dian girl. Where's your pride!" Cim's eyes were still cast down. He still lounged insolently, his hands in his pockets. "How about these stories you've told me all your life about the love you southerners had for your servants-and how old Angle was like a second mother to you?" "They were different. They knew their place." He raised the heavy eyelids then and lifted his fine head with the menacing look that she knew so well in his father. "You're right. They are different. In the first place, Ruby isn't an Indian hired girl. She is the daughter of an Osage chief." "Osage fiddlesticks! What of It?" "Rutfy Big Elk is just as Important a person in the Osage nation as Alice Roosevelt is in Washington." "Now, listen here, Cimarron Cravat! I've heard about enough. A lot of dirty Indians! Just you march yourself down to the Wigwam office, young man, and don't you ever again let me catcli you talking in that disrespectful manner about the daughter of the President of the United States. And if I ever hear that you've eaten a bite of this miserable stuff" she held out her hand, shaking a little, the mescal button crushed In her palm "I'll have your father thrash you within an inch of your life, big as you are. As it is, he shall hear of this." Cut Yancey, on being told, only looked thoughtful and a little sad. "It's your own fault, Sabra. You're bound that the boy shall live 'the life you've planned for him instead of the one he wants. So he's trying to escape es-cape into a dream life. Like the Indians. In-dians. It's all the same thing." "I don't know what you're talking about. I don't think you know, either." "The Indians started to eat peyote after the whites had taken their religious re-ligious and spiritual and decent physical physi-cal life away from them. 'Man cannot can-not live by bread alone.' He has got to have dreams, or life is unendurable. So the Indian turned to the peyote. He finds peace and comfort and beauty in his dreams." A horrible suspicion darted through Sabra. "Yancey Cravat, have you ever " He nodded his magnificent head slowly, sadly. "Many times. Many times." (TO BE CONTINUED.) |