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Show BEAR RIVER VALLEY LEADER, THURSDAY, MARCH 26, 1931 c smarron By EDNA FERBER , Copyright by Edna Ferber.l WNU Service His past, before bis coming to Wiclilta, was clouded with myths and surmises. Gossip said this; slander whispered that. Rumor, romantic, unsavory, fantastic, shifting and changing like clouds on a mountain peak, floated about the head of Yancey Cravat. They say he has Indian blood In him. They say he has an Indian wife soniewhere, and a lot of papooses. Cherokee. They say he used to be known as "Cimarron" Cravat, hence his son's name, corrupted to Cim. They say his real name is Cimarron Seven, of the Choctaw Indian family of Sevens; he was raised In a tepee; a wickiup had been his bedrooora, robe. his a blanket was It known he had been one of the early boomers who followed the banner of the picturesque and splendidly mad David Payne in the first wild dash of that adventurer Into Indian territory. He had dwelt, others whispered, In that sinister strip, thirty-fou- r miles wide and almost two hundred as miles long, called early as 1854, and, later, known as the Cimarron, a Spanish word meaning wild or unruly. Here, in this strange unowned empire without laws and .tthout a government, a paradise for hingmere tricks." Pausing only a moment at the sideboard to toss oft! three fingers of Spanish brandy, like burning liquid amber, Yancey patted his lips with his fine linen handkerchief. "I've tasted nothing like that in a month, I can tell yon. Raw corn whisky fit to tear your throat out. And as for the water! Red mud. There wasn't a drink of water to be had In the town after the first twenty-fou- r hours. There we were, thousands and thousands of us, milling around the border like cattle, with the burning sun baking us all day, nowhere to go for shade, and the thick red dust clogging eyes and nose and mouth. No place to wash, no place to sleep, nothing to eat. Queer enough, they didn't seem to mind. Didn't seem to notice. They were feeding on a kind of crazy excitement, and there was a wild light in their eyes. If you had a bit of food you divided It with some one. I finally got a cup of water for a dollar, after standing in line for three hours, and then a woman Just behind me " "A woman !" Cousin Arminta Greenwood (of the Georgia Greenwoods). And Sabra Cravat echoed the words In a shocked whisper. "You wouldn't believe, would you, that women would go it alone in a fracas like that. But they did. They were there with their husbands some of them, but there were women who made the Run alone.' "What kind of women?" Felice Ven-abltone was not one of inquiry but of condemnation. "Women with iron in 'em. Women who wanted land and a home. Pioneer women." From Aunt Cassandra Venable's end of the table there came a word that sounded like, "Hussies!" It was rumored he had spent at least a year (and for good reason). They said the evidences of his Indian blood were plain ; look at his skin, his hair, his manner of walking. And why did he protest in his newspaper against the government's treatment of those dirty, thieving, lazy, wards of a beneficent counfor his newspaper its very As try! name was a scandal: The Wichita Wigwam. And just below this: All the News. Any Scandal Not Libelous. Published Once a Week If Convenient Wichita, professing scorn of the Wigwam, read it Wichita peruse his ) good-for-nothi- Yancey Cravat caught the word be neath his teeth and spat It back. The one behind me In "Hussies, heb the line was a woman of forty or looked It in a calico dress and a She had driven across the prairies all the way from the north of Arkansas in a spring! ess wagon. She was like the women who crossed the continent to California in '49. A gaunt face. woman, with a weather-beateRough hair, and unlovely hands, and boots with the mud cakes on them. It's women like her who've made this country what it Is. You can't read the history of the United States, my friends, without learning the great story of those thousands of unnamed women women like" this one I've de maiden editorial entitled, "Shall the Blue Itlmid of the Decayed South Poison the Red Blood of the Great Middle West?" and saw him, tv.-- months later, carry off in triumph as his bride Sabra Venable, daughter of that same Decay. Sab;a Venable, at sixteen, might have had her pick of the lads of Kansas, ail the way from JSalina to Winfield. Not to mention more legitimate suitors of Itock up from the Smith, such as Dabney Venable himself. Sabra's cousin, who resembled at once Lafayette and old Lewis, even to the premature silver of his I;:ur, the length the fine, dolichocephalic, slightly head, and the black stock at sight of which Wichita gasped. When, from among ail these eligihles, Sabra had chosen the romantic but mysterious Cravat, Wichita mothers of marriageable daughters felt themselves revenged of the Venable airs. Strangely 1 o sun-bonne- r y """ldent ' enough, the marriageable daughters seemed more resentful than ever, and there was a noticeable falling off in the number of young ladies who had been wont to drop round at the Wigwarn office with notices of this or that meeting or social event to be inserted In the columns of the paper. During the course of the bountiful meal with which the Venable table was spread Yancey Cravat had eaten almost nothing. Here was an audience to his liking. Here was a tale to his taste. His story, wild, unbelievable, yet true, was of the opening of the Oklahoma country; of a wilderness made populous in an hour; of cities numbering thousands literally sprung up overnight, where the day before had been only prairie, coyotes, rattlesnakes, red clay, scrub oak, and an occasional nester hidden In the security of a weedy draw. Coat tails swishing, eyes flashing, arms waving, voice soaring. "Folks, there's never been anything it since Creation. Creation I , like H 11 That took six days.- This was done in one. It was history made In an hour and I helped make it Thousands and thousands of people from all over this vast ' commonwealth of ours" (he talked like that) "traveled hundreds of miles to get a bare piece of land for nothing. But what land! Virgin, except when the Indians had roamed It. 'Lands of lost gods, and godlike men!' They came like n procession a crazy procession all the way to the border, covering the ground as fast bs they could, by any means at hand scrambling over . the ground, pushing and shoving each other Into the ditches to get there first "They came from Texas, and Arkansas and Colorado and Missouri. They came on foot by G d, all the way from Iowa snd Nebraska! They came In buggies and wagons and on horseback and muleback. In prairie schooners and ox carts and carriages. 1 met up with one old homesteader by the roadside a face dried and wrinkled as a nutmeg who told me he had started weeks and weeks before, and had made the long trip at best he could, on foot or by rail and boat and wagon, just as kind hearted t. n blue-blood- , people along the way would pick him np. I wonder If he ever got bis piece of land in that savage rush poor old deviL" lie paused a moment perhaps In retrospect, perhaps cunningly to whet the appetites of his listeners. He wrung a breathless, "Oh, Yancey, go on ! Go on !" from Sabra. "Well, the border at last and It Vras like a Fourth of July celebration on Judgment day. The militia was lined up at the boundary. No one was allowed to set foot on the new land until noon next day. at the firing of the guns. Two millions acres of land were to be given away for the grabbing. Noon was the time. They all knew It by heart April 22, at noon. It takes generations of people hundreds of years to settle a new land. This was going to be made livable territory over night was made like a miracle out of the Old Testament Compared to this, the Loaves and the Fishes and the parting of the Red sea were not- d scribed women in boots and calico dresses and sunbonnets. crossing the prairie and the desert and the mountains enduring hardship and privation. Good women, with a ter rible and rigid goodness that comes of l. work and Nothing picturesque or romantic about them, I suppose though occasionally one of them flashes Belle Starr the outlaw Rose of the Cimarron Jeannette Daisy who Jumped from a moving Santa Fe train to stake her claim but the others no, their story's never really been told. But it's there, Just the same. And If It's ever told straight you'll know it's the suhbonnet and not the sombrero that has settled this mud-cake- self-denia- -' country." "Talking nonsense," drawled Felice j ' Venable. Yancey whirled on his high heels to face her, has fine eyes blazing. "You're one of them. You came up from the South with your husband to make a new home In this Kansas " "I am not!" retorted Felice Venable, with enormous dignity. "And I'll thank you not to say any such thing. Sunbonnet Indeed ! I've never worn a . i a tn i suuoonnei id my ime. "Oh, irijnjma. Yancey didn't mean-- he meantourage to leave your home In the South and come up he wasn't thinking of Yancey, do get on with your story of the Run. You got a drink of water for a dollar dear me! and shared It with the woman In the calico and the sunbonnet " He looked a little sheepish. "Well, matter of fact It turned out she didn't have a dollar to spare, or anywhere near It, but even 11 she had It wouldn't have done her any good. The fellow d hombre with selling It was a one eye and Mexican pants. The trigger finger of his right hand had been shot away In some fracas or other, so be ladled out water with that hand and toted his gun In his left Bunged up he was, plenty. By the time I got to him there was one cup of water left In the bucket He tipped It while I held the dipper, and It trickled out, Just an even dlpperful. The last cup of water on the border. The crowd waiting in line behind me gave a kind of sound between a groan and a moan. The sound you bear a herd of cow animals give, out on the prairie, when their tongues are hanging out for water In the dry spell. . I tipped up the dipper and bad downed a big mouth . rat-face- I h It was, too. ful filthy tasting Gyp water. You eruld feel the alkali cake on your tongue. Well, my head went back as I drank, and I got one look at that woman's face. Her eyes were on me on my throat, where the Adam's apple had j.it given that one -big gulp after the ft swallow. All bloodshot the whites of her eyes, and a look In them li!;e n fixing man looks at a light. Her mv h was open, and her Hps were all s;!!:t with the hat and the dust and the sun. and dry and flaky as ashes. And then she shut her lips a little and tried to swallow nothing, and couldn't. There I wasn't any spit in her mouth. couldn't down another mouthful, parching as I was. I'd have seen her terrible face to the last day of my life. So I righted it. and held It out to her and said, 'Here, sister, take the rest of It I'm through. Cousin Jouett Goforth essayed his little-Jo- ke. "Are you right sure she was forty, Yancey, and weather-beaten-? And that about her hair and boots and hands?" Cravat, standing behind his wife's chair, looked down at her; at the fine white line that marked the parting of her thick black hair. With one forefinger he touched her ehek, gently. "Dead sure, Jouett. I left out one thing, though." Cousin Jouett made a sound signifying, ah, I thought so. "Her teeth," Yancey Cravat went on thoughtfully. "Broken and discolored like those of a woman of seventy. And most of them gone at the side." Here Yancey could not resist charging up and down, flirting his roat tails and generally ruining the fine flavor of his victory over the Venable mind. The Venable mind (or the prospect of escaping it) had been one of the reasons for his dash into the wild melee of the Run in the first place. Now he stood surveying these handsome futile faces, and a great Impatience shook him, and a flame of rage shot through him, and a tongue of malice flicked him. With these to goad hrm, and the knowledge of how he had failed, he plunged again into his story to the end. "I had planned to try and get a place on the Santa Fe train that was standing, steam up, ready to run into the Nation. But you couldn't get on. There wasn't room for a flea. They were hanging on the and swarming all over the engine, and sitting on top of the cars. It was keyed down to make no more speed than a horse. It turned out they didn't even do that They went twenty miles in ninety minutes. I decided I'd use my Indian pony. 1 knew I'd get endurance, anyway, if not speed. And that's what counted in the end. "There we stood, by the thousands, all night Morning, and we began to line up at the border, as near as they'd let us go. Militia all along to keep us back. They had burned the prairie ahead for miles Into the Nation, so as to keep the grass down and make the way clearer. To smoke out the sooners, too, who had sneaked In and were hiding In the scrub oaks, in the draws, wherever they could. Most of the killing was due to them. They had crawled in and staked the land and stood ready to shoot those of us who came In, fair and square. In the Run. I knew the piece I wanted. A little creek ran through the land, and the prairie rolled a little there, too. Nothing but blackjacks for miles around It, but on that section, because of the water, I suppose, there were elms and persimmons and cotton-wood- s and even a grove of pecans. I had noticed it many a time, riding the range." (H'm! Riding the range! All the Venables made a quick mental note of that. It was thus, by stray bits and snatches, that they managed to piece together something of Yancey Cravat's past.) "Ten o'clock, and the crowd was nervous and restless. Thousands from all parts of the country had waited ten years for this day when the would be fed. They were like people starving. I've seen the same look exactly on the faces of men who were ravenous for food. "Well, eleven o'clock, and they were crowding and cursing and fighting for places near the line. They shouted and sang and yelled and argued, and the sound they made wasn't human at all, but like thousands of wild animals penned up. The sun blazed down. It was cruel. The dust hung over everything In a thick cloud, blinding you and choking you. The black dust of the burned prairie was over everything. We were like a horde of fiends with our red eyes and our cracked lips and our blackened faces. Eleven-thirt- y. It was a picture straight out of hell. The roar grew louder. People fought for an Inch of gain on the border. Just next to me was a girl who looked about eighteen she and a turned out to be twenty-fiv- e beauty she was, too on a cow-catch- land-hungr- coal-blac- "Aha." p In that crary mob. The better to cut East Tremonton - and in social chat, after which a de. lightful lunch was served. Mr. and Mrs. Lowell Barkle who have spent the winter in Californta called upon their grandparents, Mr. and Mrs, George Brough, while to Providence, Saturday. Mrs. Amos Hansen and children of Elwood spent Sunday afternoon with her mother, Mrs. George Brough. Max Beal attended the funeral of - en-ro- ute afternoon. Vernal Johns visited in Ogden urday and Sunday. Sat- Saluting the West, Conoco's Broadcast Saluting the West, the next broadcast of the Conoco Listeners' Hour will continue the series of programs dedicated to sections of the country of interest to motor travelers. Music typical of the West will be heard during the program. Peggy and Pat, of course, will be in the studio to direct the program in accordance with the wishes of the listen Seager. ers themselves and promise an excepMr. and Mrs. N. W. Olsen and chilfine broadcast The orchesdren and Mr. and Mrs. Linden Barkle tionally tra and the quartette are preparing motored to Blackfoot, Idaho, for the special features they report. week end. Tune in Tuesday evening, March 31, Mrs. P. E. Ault, Miss Rae Abbott, on station KSL, Salt Lake City, at 6 Day Garfield and 0. L. Brough and p. m. club recson, Owen, attended the reational meet at Bear River City, After being engaged 26 years a Mis Friday evening. souri man married at the age of 91. Mrs. John Selman entertained the But you'll have to admit that he put ladies of the community, Monday up a good fight evening in honor of her daughter, Mrs. Gene Thompson, who left TuesThere are said to be 200 dialects in day for her new home near Corinne. the U. S. but to the average citizen The evening was spent playing 'rook' the dollar speaks louder than them all. 4-- H It Was Like Water Over a Going ATTENTION LADIES Broken Dam. soldiers, their guns In one hand, their watches In the other. Those last five minutes seemed years long; and funny, they'd quieted till there wasn't a The last minute sound. Listening. Twelve o'clock. was an eternity. There went up a roar that drowned the crack of the soldiers' musketry as they fired in the air as the signal of noon and the start of the Run. You could see the puffs of smoke from their guns, but you couldn't hear a sound. The thousands surged over the line. It was like water going over a broken dam. We swept across the prairie In a cloud of black and red dust that covered our faces and hauds In a minute, so that we looked like black demons from helL The old man ou his pony kept in one rut, the girl on her thoroughbred In the other, and I on my Whitefoot on the raised place in the middle. That first half mile k race. The was almost a old fellow was yelling and waving one arm and hanging on somehow. He was beating his pony with the flask on his flanks. Then he began to drop behind. Next thing I heard a terrible scream and a great shouting behind me. I threw a quick glance over my shoulder. The old plainsman's pony had stumbled and fallen. His bottle flew smashed into bits, his in another direction, and he lay sprawling full length In the rut of the trail. The next instant he was hidden In a welter of pounding hoofs and flying dirt and cinders and wagon A The dramatic pause. wheels." faces around the table were balloons pulled by a single siring. They swung this way and that with Yancey Cravat's pace as he strode the room, his Prince Albert coat tails billowing. This way the faces turned toward the sideboard. That way they turned toward the windows. Yancey held the little moment of silence like a Jewel In the circlet of faces. Sabra Cra vat's voice, high and sharp with neck-and-nec- tense, cat the stiUnjM (To Be Continued) Unlimited Money to LOAN on Irrigated Land. 6 12 per cent. No commissions. JOHN J.SHUMWA Phones: B. K. V. 69.a-2- Bell. 129 ; FOR SALE Six Weeks Old Pullets for Spring on Ladies Spring Special COATS and DRESSES U. S. Cleaners Tremonton, Utah CALL 15 For a free demonstration on the MAYTAG Also to see the new IRONER A demonstration will give you a chance on the Free Maytag or Ironer which is to be given away MAYTAG SHOP Tremonton - - - - Utah POULTRYMEN!! BUY HOME HATCHED CHICKS at NEW LOW PRICES Diamond State Accredited See : . Herman Landvatter AT ONCE Agent for Ogden Poultry Farm and Hatchery TREMONTON. was an old felbeard a plains- In his belt, man, he was a one wooden leg, and a flask of whisky. He took a pull out of that every minute or two. He was mounted on an Indian pony like mine. As we waited we fell to talking, the three of us, though you couldn't hear much In that uproar. The girl said she had trained her thoroughbred for the race. He was from Kentucky, and so was she. She was bound to get her hundred and sixty acres, she said. She had to have It She didn't say why, and I didn't ask her. We were all too keyed np, anyway, to, make sense. Oh. t forgot She had on a get-uthat took I he attention of anyone that saw her, even I : skullcap." .j Here there was quite a bombardMr. and Mrs. K. H. Fridal Jr. had as ment of sound as silver spoons and Sunday dinner guests, Mr. and Mrs. knives and forks were dropped from Warren Wright of Salt Lake City, ehn-kfand nerveless feminine VenMiss Mae Fridal and K. H. Fridal Sr.. able fingers. Miss Mae Fridal and K. H. Fridal Sr. "It turr.ed out that the three of at, returned Friday from a three week's there In the front line, were headed visit in California with Vein Fridal the old freighters" trail towards and wife and other friends. Miss Mae ti e crevk land. I said. Til be the returned with Mr. and Mrs. Wright to first in the Run to reach Little Bear. Salt Lake City, Sunday evening- where That was the name of the creek will vist for several weeks. the section. The girl pulled her cap she O. A. Seager and Mrs. 0. L. Mrs. down tight over her ears. 'Follow me,' she laughed. Til show you the way. Brough were among those who attendat Then the old fellow with the woodea ed the Relief Society Pageant leg and the 'whiskers yelled out Thatcher Sunday evening. Miss Maudell Seager attended teachWhoop-ee-! I'll tell 'em along the ers institute in Brigham City, Satur- -' Little Bear you're both "There we were, the girl on my left, day. the old plainsman on my right Eleven Mr. Marion Woodruff returned home forty-five- . Along the border were the Sunday evening from Salt Lake City, after spending four weeks at the home of his daughter, Mrs. J. C. Shaw. Mr. and Mrs. Harry Furse and children of Salt Lake City visited Saturday evening and Sunday 'with Mrs. Furse's parents, Mr. and Mrs. 0. A. k thoroughbred." "Aha!" said Cousin Jouett Goforth. He was the kind of man who says, "On the other side low with a long gray y the wind, she bad shortened sail and wore a short skirt black tights, and a PAGE THREL . Phone 7-0- -1 Automobile Service AT LOW COST We specialize in complete automobile service. Repairing, washing, greasing, simonizing, body and fender work on all makes of cars. We can match any color paint job. Also wrecker service. Delivery-Wh-y brood your own chicks when you can purchase pullets at six weeks of age as cheaply as you can produce them your- self. Then you are assured of a superior quality bird because of the methods employed in brooding. Call and inspect my plant and be convinced. 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