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Show Ll CC H MI 1 ltr hbTod m is THE STORY Yancey Cravat, Just returned from th newly opened Indian territory, relates hla experiences to a larfce KatherlriK of tlie Van-able Van-able family. Yancey la married to Sabra Venable; la a criminal lawyer and editor of the Wichita WlKwam. Yanney announces he Is Koiriff, back to the Oklahoma country coun-try with Sabra and their four-year-old nnn, Cimarron. They arrive ar-rive at Ohjikb, where Yancey Intends In-tends to start a newspaper, Yancey Yan-cey la determined to find out who killed Editor Peeler of tho New Iay. Yancey consents to conduct divine worship on Sunday. During- the nervlcea Yancey announced an-nounced he haa learned who killed Peeler. lie stoops In time to escape es-cape a bullet fired by Yountla. Still BtooplnK, Yancey 8hoots and kills Yountla. Then he announces that Yountla killed regie r. Yancey Yan-cey fruMtratos a bank robbery and kills two desperadoes, Yancey Yan-cey urfe-es Sabra to Join him In the Hun at the opening of the Cherokee Chero-kee atrip. She refuses. He la grone five 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 nider. CHAPTER IX Continued 13 ". . . but hore In tills land, Subt-a, my girl, the women, they've been the real hewers of wood and drawers of water. You'll want to remember that." .Sabra remembered It now, well enough. Slowly the crowd began to disperse. The men had their business; the women wom-en their housework. Wives linked their arms through those of husbands, and the gesture was one of perhaps not entirely unconscious cruelty, accompanied ac-companied as It was by a darting glnnce at Sabra. "Hough Rider uniform, sack of gold, golden voice, and melting eye," that glance seemed to say. "You're welcome wel-come to all the happiness you can get from those. Security, permanence, home, husband I wouldn't change places with you." "Come on, Tuncey I" shouted Strap Buckner. "Over to the Sunny Southwest South-west and have a drink. We got a terrible lot of drinking to do, ain't we, boys? Come on, you old longhorn. We got to drink to you because you're back and because you're going away." "And to the war I" yelled I5ixler. "And the Rough Riders!" "And Alaska I" Their boots clattered across the board floor of the newspaper office. They swept the towering figure In Its khaki uniform with them. He turned, waved his hat at her. "Back In a minute, min-ute, honey." They were gone. Sabra turned to the children, CIm and Donna, flushed, both, with the unwonted un-wonted excitement; out of hand. Her face set Itself with that look of quiet resolve. "Half the morning's gone. But I want you to go along to school, anyway. Now, none of that ! It's no use your staying around here. The paper must be got out. Jesse'U be no good to me the rest of the day. It's easy to see that. I'll write a note to your teachers. . . . Run along now. I must go to court." She pinned on her hat, saw that her handbag contained pencil and paper, hurried Into the back room that was printing shop, composing room, press room combined. She had been right about Jesse Rickey. That consistently Irresponsible one was even now .'caning .'can-ing a familiar elbow on the polished surface of the Sunny Southwest bar as he helped toast the returned wanderer wan-derer or the departing hero or the war In the semi-tropics, or the snows of Alaska " or God knows what I" concluded con-cluded Sabra, In her mind. Cliff Means, the Ink-smeared printer's print-er's devil who, at fifteen, served as Jesse Rickey's sole assistant In the mechanical end of the Wigwam office, looked up iron) his case rack as Sabra entered. "It's all right, Mis' Cravat. I got the head all set up like you said. 'Vice Gets Death Blow. Reign of Scarlet Woman Ends. Judge Issues Ban.' Even if Jesse don't even if he ain't why, you and me can set up the story this afternoon so we can Mart the press goin' for Thursday. We ain't been late with the paper yet, have we?" "Out on time every Thursday for five years," Sabra said, almost defiantly. de-fiantly. Suddenly, sharp and clear, Yancey's voice calling her from the office porch, from the front office, from the print-shop print-shop doorway ; urgent, perturbed. "Sabra 1 Sabra I Sabra !" lie strode into the back shop. She faced him. Instinctively she knew. "What's this about Dixie Lee?" Ills news-trained eye leaped to the form. He read the set-up head, upside down, """"""""""t'y. "When's this case come up?" "Now." "Who's defending her?" "Nobody in town would touch the case. They say she got a lawyer from Denver. He didn't show up. He knew better than to take her money." "Prosecuting?" "Pat Loury." Without a word he turned. She caught him at the door, gripped his arm. "Where are you going?" "Court." "What for? What for?" Cut she knew. She actually interposed her body between him and the street door then, as though physically to prevent him from going. Her face was white. Her eyes stared, enormous. "You can't take the case of that woman "Why not?" "Because you can't. Because I've been fighting her. Because the Wigwam Wig-wam has come out against all that she stands for." "Why, Sabra, honey, where are you thinking of sending her?" "Away. Away from Osage," "But where?" "I don't know. I don't care. Things have changed since you went away. Went away and left me." "Nothing's changed. It's all the same. Dixie's been stoned in the market place for two thousand years and more. Driving her out Is not going to do It You've got to drive the devil out of " "Yancey Cravat, are you preaching to me? You who left your wife and children to starve, for all you cared! And now you come back and you take this creature's part against every respectable re-spectable woman In Osage against me I" "I know It. I can't help It, Sabra." "I'll tell you what I think," cried Sabra the Sabra Cravat who had been evolved In the past five years. "I think you're crazy! They've all said so. And now I know they are right." "Maybe so." "If you dare to think of disgracing me by defending her. And your children. chil-dren. I've fought her for months In the paper. A miserable creature like that 1 Your own wife a laughing stock for a a " "The territory's rotten. But, by G d, every citizen's still got the legal right to fight for existence!" He put her gently aside. She went mad. She became a wildcat. wild-cat. She tried to hold him. She beat herself against him. It was like an Infuriated sparrow hurling itself upon a mastodon. "If you dare! Why did you come back? I hate you. What's she to you? I say you won't. I'd rather see you dead. I'd kill you first. That scum! That filth! That harlot 1" Her dignity was gone. He lifted her, scratching, kicking, clawing, set her gently down in the chair In front of her desk. The screen slammed. His quick, light step across the porch, down the stairs. Crumpled, tear-stained, tear-stained, wild as she was, and with her hat on one side she reached automatically auto-matically for her pencil, a pad of copy paper, and wrote a new head. "Vice Again Triumphs Over Justice " Then, with what composure she could summon, she sped down the dusty road to where the combination Jail and courthouse a crude wooden building sat broiling In the sun. Because of the notoriety of the defendant de-fendant the inadequate little courtroom court-room would have been crowded enough in any case. But the news of Yancey's Yan-cey's abrupt departure from the Sunny Southwest saloon and the reason for It had spread from house to house through the little town with the rapidity rapid-ity of a forest fire leaping from tree to tree. Mad Yancey Cravat's latest freak. Men left their offices, their stores; women their cooking, their cleaning. The Jury so hastily assembled, assem-bled, Pat Leary In a solemn suit of black, Dixie Lee with her girls, even Judge Sipes himself seemed in momentary mo-mentary danger of being trampled by the milling mob. It was a travesty of a courtroom. The jury was a hard-faced lot for the most part. Plucked from the plains or the hills; halting of speech, slow of mind, quick on the trigger. A slow, rhythmic motion of the jaw was evidence that a generous preliminary bite of plug served as a precaution to soothe the nerves and steady the judgment This legal farce had already begun before Yancey made his spectacular entrance. "Case of the Territory of Oklahoma versus Dixie Lee!" (So they had made It a territorial case. . . .) "Counsel for the territory of Oklahoma Okla-homa I" Pat I.eary stood "up. ". . . for the defense." No one. The close-packed close-packed courtroom was a nightmare of staring eyes and fishlike mouths greedily devouring Dixie Lee's white, ravaged face. Oddly enough, compared com-pared to these, she seemed pure, aloof, exquisite. "The defendant having failed to provide herself with counsel, It Is my duty, according to the 'laws of the gover'ment of the United States and the territory of Oklahoma to appoint ap-point counsel for the defendant." He shifted his quid, the while his cunning, red-rimmed eyes roved solemnly through the crowd seeking the shyster, Gwin Larkin. A stir in the close-packed close-packed crowd: a murmur. "I hereby appoint " The murmur swelled. "Order In the court !" "i'our honor !" Towering above the crowd, forging his way through it like some relentless relent-less force of nature, came the great buffalo head, the romantic Rough Rider hat with Its turned-up brim caught by the crossed sabers ; tlie massive mas-sive khaki-clad figure. It was dramatic. It was melodramatic, it was ridiculous. It was superb. Here was the kind of situation that the Southwest loved and craved ; here was action, here was blood-and-thunder, here was adventure. Here, in a word, was Cimarron. He stood before the shoddy judge. He swept off his hat with a gesture that invested it with plumes. "If it please your honor, I represent the defendant, de-fendant, Dixie Lee." No territorial judge, denying Yancey Yan-cey Cravat, would have dared to face that crowd. He cast another glance round a helpless, baffled one, this time waved the approaching Gwin By Edna Ferter Copyright by Edna Ferbax. "W.NU Serrlce. Larkin back with a feeble gesture, and prepared to proceed with the case according to the laws of the territory. Certainly tlie look that he turned on Sabra Cravat as she entered a scant ten minutes later, white faced, resolute, reso-lute, and took her place as representative representa-tive of tlie press, was one of such mingled bewilderment and reproach as would have embarrassed anyone less utterly preoccupied than the editor and publisher of the Oklahoma Wigwam. Wig-wam. Objection on the part of the slick Pat Leary. Overruled, perforce, by the Judge. A shout from the crowd. Order! Bangl Another shout. Law In a lawless community not yet ten years old; a community made up, for the most part, of people whose very presence there meant impatience of the old order, defiance of the conventions. conven-tions. Ten minutes earlier they had "Your Honor, Gentlemen of the Jury. I Am the First to Bow to Achievement." been all for the cocky little Leary ; eager to cast the first stone at the woman in the temple. Now, with the Inexplicable fickleness of the mob, the electric current of sympathy flowed out from them to the woman to be tried, to the man who would defend her. Hot and swift and plenty of action that was the way the Southwest South-west liked its Justice. Pat Leary. Irish, ambitious, fiery. His temper, none too even at best, had been lost before he ever rose. The thought of Yancey ahead of him, the purity brigade behind him, spurred him to his frantic, his disorderly charge. His years as section hand on the railroad had equipped him with a vocabulary well suited to scourge this woman In black who sat so quietly, so white faced, before him, for all the crowd to see. Adjective on adjective; vituperation ; words which are considered consid-ered obscenity outside the Bible and the courtroom. A curious embarrassment seized the crowd. There were many in the packed room who had known the easy hospitality of Dixie's menage; who had eaten at her board, who had been broken In Grat Gotch's gambling place and had borrowed money from Dixie to save themselves from rough frontier revenge. She had plied her trade and taken the town's money and given It out again with the other merchants of the town. The banker could testify to that; the mayor; this committee; that committee. Put Dixie Lee's name down for a thousand. Part of the order of that disorderly, haphazard town. Names. Names. Names. The dull red of resentmeut deepened the natural nat-ural red of their sunburned faces. The jurors shifted in their places. A low S mutter, ominous, like a growl, sounded Its distant thunder. Blunt. Sharp. Ruthless. Younger than Yancey, less experienced, he still should have known better. These men of the Inadequate In-adequate Jury, these men In the courtroom court-room crowd, had come of a frontier background, had lived In the frontier atmosphere. In their rough youth, and now, women were scarce, with the scarcity that the hard life predicated. And because they were scarce they were precious. No woman so plain, so hard, so undesirable that she did not take on, by the very fact of her sex, a value fur beyond her deserts. The attitude of a whole nation had been touched by this sentimental fact which was, after all, largely geographic. geo-graphic. For a full century the countries coun-tries of Europe, bewildered by it, unable un-able to account for it, had laughed at this adolescent reverence of tlie American Amer-ican man for the American woman. Leary finished in a burst of oratory so ruthless, so brutal that he had the satisfaction of seeing the painful, unaccustomed un-accustomed red surge thickly over Dixie Lee's pale face from her brow down to where the ladylike white turnover turn-over of her high collar met the line of her throat. The pompous little Irishman seated himself, chest out, head high, eye roving the crowd and the bench, lips open with self-satisfaction. A few more cases like this and maybe they'd see there was material for a territory governor right here In Osage. The crowd shifted, murmured, gabbled. gab-bled. Yancey still sat sunk in his chair as though lost in thought. The gabble rose, soared. "He's given It up," thought Sabra, exnlting. "He sees how It Is." The eyes of the crowd so close packed In that suffocating little courtroom court-room were concentrated on the Inert figure lolling so limply In its chair. Perhaps they were going to be cheated of their show after all. Slowly the big head lifted, the powerful pow-erful shoulders straightened, he rose, he seemed to rise endlessly, he walked to Judge Sipes' crude desk with his light, graceful stride. The lids were still cast down over the lightning eyes. He stood a moment, that singularly sweet and winning smile wreathing his lips. He began to speak. The vibrant voice, after Leary's shouts, was so low pitched that the crowd held its breath in order to hear. "Your honor, gentlemen of the jury. I am the first to bow to achievement. Recognition where recognition is due this, gentlemen, has ever been my way. May I, then, before I begin my poor plea in defense of this lady, my client, most respectfully call your attention at-tention to that which, In my humble opinion, has never before been achieved, much less duplicated, in the whole of the Southwest. Turn your eye to the figure which has so recently and so deservedly held your attention. Gaze once more upon him. Regard him well. You will not look upon his like again. For, gentlemen, in my opinion this gifted person, Mr. Patrick Leary, is the only man in the Oklahoma Okla-homa territory in the Indian territory terri-tory in the whole of the brilliant and glorious Southwest nay, I may even go so far as to say the only man in this magnificent country, the United States of America ! of whom It actually actu-ally can be said that he is able to strut sittin2 down." The puffed little figure In the chair collapsed, then bounded to Its feet, redfaced, gesticulating. "Your honor! I object 1" But the rest was lost in the gigantic roar of the delighted crowd. "Go It, Yancey !" "That's the stuff, Cimarron !" Here was what they had come for. Doggone, there was nobody like him. Even today, though more than a quarter of a century has gone by, there still are people in Oklahoma who have kept a copy, typed neatly now from records made by hand, of the speech made that day by Yancey Cravat in defense of the town woman, Dixie Lee. "Yancey Cravat's Plea for a Fallen Woman." it is called; and never was speech more sentimental, windy, false, and utterly moving. The slang words hokum and bunk were not then in use, but even had they been they never would have been applied, by that appreciative crowd, at least, to the flowery and Impassioned oratory of the Southwest Silver Tongue, Yancey Yan-cey Cravat Cheap, melodramatic, gorgeous, Impassioned. Im-passioned. A quart of whisky in him ; an enthralled audience behind him; a white-faced woman with hopeless eyes to spur him on ; the cry of his wronged and righteous wife still sounding in his ears Booth himself, in his heydey, never gave a more brilliant, a more false performance. "Your honor! gentlemen of the jury! You have heard with what cruelty the prosecution has referred to the sins of this woman, as if her condition was of her own preference. A dreadful a vicious a revolting picture has been painted for you of her life and surroundings. sur-roundings. Tell me tell me do you really think that she willingly embraced em-braced a life so repellent, so horrible? No, gentlemen! A thousand times, np! This girl was bred in such luxury, such refinement, as few of us have known. And just as the young girl was budding Into womanhood, cruel fate snatched all this from her, bereft her of her dear ones, took from her, one by one, with a terrible and fierce rapidity, those upon whom she had come to look for love and support. And then, In that moment of darkest terror and loneliness, came one of our sex, gentlemen. A wolf in sheep's clothing. A fiend in the guise of a human. False promises. Lies. Deceit De-ceit so palpable that It would have deceived de-ceived no one but a young girl as Innocent, Inno-cent, as pure, as starry eyed as was this woman you now see white and trembling before you. One of our sex was the author of her ruin, more to blame than she. What could be more pathetic than the spectacle she presents? pre-sents? An immortal soul in ruin. A moment ago you heard her reviled, in the lowest terms a man can employ toward a woman, for the depths to which she has sunk, for the company she keeps, for the life she leads. Yet where can she go that her sin does not pursue her? You would drive her out. But where? Gentlemen, the very promises of God are denied her. Who was it said, 'Come unto me all ye that are heavy laden, and I will give you rest'? She is indeed heavy laden, this trampled flower of the South, but If at this instant she were to kneel down before us all and confess her Redeemer, Re-deemer, where is the church that would receive her, where the community com-munity that would take her in? Our sex wrecked her once pure life. Her own sex shrinks from her as from a pestilence. Society has reared its relentless re-lentless walls against her. Only In the friendly shelter of the grave can her betrayed and broken heart ever find the Redeemer's promised rest. The gentleman who so eloquently spoke before be-fore me told you of her assumed names, of her sins, of her habits. He never, for all his eloquence, told you of her sorrows, her agonies, her hopes, her despairs. But I could tell you. I could tell you of the desperate day the red-letter day in the banner of the great Oklahoma country when she tried to win a home for herself where she could live in decency and quiet . . . When the remembered voices of father and mother and sisters and brothers fall like music on her erring ears . . . who shall tell what this heavy heart, sinful though It may seem to you and to me . . . understanding, under-standing, pity, help, like music on her erring soul ... oh, gentlemen gentle-men . . . gentlemen , . ." But by this time the gentlemen, between be-tween emotion and tobacco juice, were having such difficulty with their Adam's apples as to make a wholesale strangling seem inevitable. The beautiful beau-tiful flexible voice went on, the hands wove their enchantment, the eyes held you In their spell. The pompous figure of little Pat Leary shrank, dwindled, disappeared before their mind's eye. The harlot Dixie Lee, in her black, became a woman romantic, piteous, appealing. Sabra Cravat, her pencil flying over her paper, thought grimly : "It isn't true. Don't believe him. He is wrong. He has always been wrong. For fifteen years he has always al-ways been wrong. Don't believe him. I shall have to print this. How lovely his voice is. It's like a knife in my heart. I mustn't look at his eyes. His hands what was that he said? I must keep my mind on . . . music on her erring soul . . . oh, my love ... I ought tOjhate him . . . I do hate him. . . ." It was finished. Yancey walked to his seat, sat as before, the great buffalo head lowered, the lids closed over the compelling eyes, the beautiful beauti-ful hands folded, relaxed. The good men and true of the Jury filed solemnly out through the crowd that made way for them. As solemnly they crossed the dusty road and repaired re-paired to a draw at the roadside, where they squatted on such bits of rock or board as came to hand. Solemnly, Sol-emnly, briefly, and with utter disregard disre-gard of its legal aspect, they discussed dis-cussed the case lr their inarticulate monosyllables could be termed discussion. dis-cussion. Tlie courtroom throng, scattering scat-tering for refreshment, had barely time to down its drink before the jury stamped heavily across the road and into the noisome courtroom. ". . . find the defendant, Dixie Lee, not guilty." (TO BE CONTINUED.! |