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Show a I"" ............l.t.MMMM. 1.111. , j; a:nDflAiiiiERiCDM p. V: cccscctccttttccctctttttncss By Edna Ferl er w;;;;;;;;;::;;;;;;;c: : m CopyriKht by Edna Frber.'- wxu Servic. B ' riBlllllllllllllliailBIRltllllllllllllillUllllllllllllBllllllilllglJllllllltllllll!IIHtglHlLl THE STORY Yunrpy Cravat, Just returned from th newly opened Indian territory, relates his exprlenres to a larK gathering of the Ven-able Ven-able fa til II y. Yancey Is married to Hatjt-a Vena bio; in a criminal lawyer and editor of the Wichita Wigwam. When the Itun Blurted, Yancey had raced his pony against the thoroun h bred mount of a girl. The girl's home was Injured and whim Yancey stopped to ahoot It she grabbed his pony and got the land Yancey wanted. Yancey announces he Is going back to the Ok I a ho ma country with Ciabra and their four-year-old go n, Cimarron, They make the Journey In two covered waft on tt. They arrive at Osage, whore Yancey Intends to start a newspaper. Yancey I.h determined to find out who killed Editor Peg-ler Peg-ler of the New Day. Preparations for tho public-align of the Oklahoma Okla-homa Wigwam are completed. CHAPTER IV Continued It was all like n nightmarish game, she thought. The shooting, the carousing, the brawls and high altercations; alter-cations; the sounds or laughter and ribaldry and drinking and song that losued from the lllmsy cardboard false-front false-front shacks that lined t lie preposterous preposter-ous street. Steadfastly she refused to fcelleve that this was to he the accepted ac-cepted order of their existence. Yancey Yan-cey was always talking of a new code, a new day; live and let live. Kabra lefused to believe that this business of the I'egler shooting was as serious as Yancey made It out to be. It was Just one of Ids whims, lie would, she told herself, publish something or otiier about It In the first cdftlon of the Oklahoma Wigwam. Yancey stoutly maintained It was due off the press on Thursday. Privately, Sabra thought that this would have to be accomplished by a miracle. This . was Friday. A fortnight had gone by. Nothing had been done. Perhaps he was exaggerating the danger as well ns the Importance of all this Pegler business. Something else would come up to attract his Interest, arouse his lndignntlon, or outrage bis sense of Justice. She was overjoyed when, that same day, a solemn deputation of citizens, three In number, de rlgueur in sombreros som-breros and six-shooters, called on Yan-cey Yan-cey with the amazing request that he conduct divine service the following Sunday morning. Osage was over a month old. The women folks, they said. In effect, thought it high time that some contact be established be-twn be-twn the little town sprawled on the prulrie and the Power supposedly gazing gaz-ing down upon It from beyond the brilliant steel-blue dome suspended over It. Beneath the calico and sun-bonnets sun-bonnets despised of Sabra on that first day of her coming to Osage there apparently glowed the same urge for convention, discipline, and the old order or-der that so fired her to revolt. She warmed toward them. She made up her mind that, once the paper had gone to press, she would don the black silk and the hat with the plumes and go calling on such of the wooden shacks as she knew had fostered this meeting. Then she recollected her mother's training -and the stern commands com-mands of fashion. The sunbonnets bad been residents of Osage before she had arrived. They would have the call first. She got out a plaid silk tie for Clm. "Church meeting!" she exclaimed, ex-claimed, Joyously. Here, at last, was something familiar; .something on which she could get a firm foothold In this quagmire. Yancey temporarily abandoned his Journalistic mission lu order to make proper arrangements for Sunday's meeting. Horn entrepreneur, en-trepreneur, he took hold with the enthusiasm en-thusiasm that he always displayed in the first spurt of a new, enterprise. Already news of the prospective meeting meet-ing had spread by the mysterious means common to isolated settlements. settle-ments. Nesters, homesteaders, rangers, rang-ers, cowboys for miles around somehow some-how got wind of It. Saddles were polished, harnesses shined, calicoes washed and Ironed, faces scrubbed. Church meeting. i'ancey turned quite naturally to the one shelter in the town adequate to the size of the crowd expected. It was the gambling tent that stood at the far north end of Paw huska avenue, flags waving gayly from Its top In the brisk Oklahoma wind. For the men it was the social center of Osage. Faro, stud poker, chuckaluck diverted their minds from the stern business of citizenship cit-izenship and saved them the trouble of counting their ready cash on Saturday Satur-day night. Sunday was, of course, the great day lu the gambling tent. It was a question whether the owner and dealer would be willing to sacrifice sacri-fice any portion of Sunday's brisk trade for the furtherance of the Lord's business, even thoiH:h the good will of the townspeople were to be gained thereby. After all, he might argue, it was not til is element that kept a faro gam going. Yancey, because of his professional position and his well known power to char.n. was delegated to confer with that citizen du miuuie. Mr. Clr:;t Gotch. better known as Arkansas Grat, pro prietor and dealer of the gambling tent. A little plump man, Grat, with a round and smiling countenance, strangely unllned. He looked like an old baby. Yancey ordered his drink and Invited In-vited Gotch to have one with him. Over the whisky Yancey put his case. "Listen, Grat. The women folks have got it Into their heads that there ought to be a church service Sunday, now that Osage is over a month old. Willi ten thousand Inhabitants, and probably the metropolis of the great Southwest In another ten years. They want the thing done right. I'm chosen to conduct the meeting. There's no building In town big enough to hold the crowd. What I want to know Is, can we have the loan of your tent here for about an hour Sunday morning for the purpose of divine worship?" Arkansas Grat set down his glass, made a sweeping gesture with his right hand that included all that the tent contained. "Divine worship 1 Why, h l, yes, Yancey," he replied, graciously. They went to work early JSunrtny. So as not to mar the numbers they covered the faro and roulette tables with twenty-two foot boards. Such of the prospective congregation as came early would use these for seats. There were, too, a few rude benches on which the players usually sat. The remainder must stand. The meeting was to be from eleven to twelve. As early as nine o'clock they began to arrive. They came from lonely cabins, dugouts, tents. Ox carts, wagons, buggies, horsemen, mule teams. They . were starving for company. It wasn't religion they sought; It was the stimulation stimu-lation that comes of meeting their kind In the mass. They brought picnic baskets and boxes, prepared for a holiday. The town seemed alive with blan-. keted Indians. They squatted In the shade of the wooden shacks. They walked In from their near-by reserva- wl I "Divine Worship! Why, H I, Yes, Yancey." Hons, or rode their mangy horses, or brought In their entire families squaw, papoose, two or three children of assorted sizes, dogs. Sabra, seeing them, told herself sternly that she must remember to have a Christian spirit, and they were all God's children ; that these red men had been converted. She didn't believe be-lieve a word of it. ' Rangers, storekeepers, settlers. Lean squatters with their bony wives and their bare-legged, rickety children, as untamed as little wolves. Sabra superintended the toilettes of her men folk from Yancey to Isaiah. Yancey eluded her, laughing. "My good woman, do you realize that this is no way to titivate for the work of delivering the Word of God? Sackcloth Sack-cloth and ashes Is, I believe, the prescribed pre-scribed costume." He poured and drank down three fingers of whisky, the third since breakfast. Clm cavorted excitedly In his best suit, with the bright plaid silk tie and the buttoned shoes, tasseled at the top. The boy, Sabra thought as she dressed him, grew more and more like Yancey, except that he seemed to lack his father's driving force, his ebullience. ebulli-ence. Yancey's sure dramatic instinct bade him delay until he could make an effective entrance. A dozen times Sabra called to him, as he sat in the front oflice busy with paper and pencil. This was, she decided, his sole preparation prep-aration for the sermon he would be bound to deliver within the next hour. Later she found in the pocket of his sweeping Prince Albert the piece of paper on which lie had made notes. One word he hud written on it, and then disguised It with meaningless marks but not quite. Sabra, studying study-ing the paper after the events of the morning, made out the word "Yountis." At last he was ready. Sabra had put on, not her second-best black gros-graiu, gros-graiu, but her best, and the hat with the plumes. She and Yancey stepped sedately down the street, with Ci'ii's warm wriggling little fingers in her own clasp. Sabra was a slimly ele gant little figure In her modish black ; Yancey, as always, a dashing one. They went on their way. It occurred oc-curred neither to Sabra nor to Yancey Yan-cey that there was anything bizarre or even unusual In their thus proceeding, proceed-ing, three weii-dressed and reasonably conventional figures, toward a gambling gam-bling tent and saloon which, packed to suffocation with the worst and the best that a frontier town has to offer, was for one short hour to become a House of God. "Are you nervous, I'ancey dear?" "No, sugar. Though I will say I'd fifty times rather plead with a jury of Texas Panhandle cattlemen for the life of a professional horse tldef than stand up to preach before this gang of " He broke off abruptly. "What's everybody laughing at and pointing to?" Certainly passers-by were acting strangely. Instinctively Sabra and Yancey turned to look behind them. Down the street, perhaps fifty paces behind them, came Isaiah. He was strutting in an absurd and yet unmistakably unmis-takably recognizable imitation of Yancey's Yan-cey's stride and swing. Around his waist was wound a red calico sash, and over that hung a bolstered leather belt so large for his small waist that It hung to his knees and bumped against them at every step. Protruding from the holsters one saw the ugly heads of what seemed at first glance to be two six-shooters, but which turned out, on investigation by the Infuriated Mrs. Cravat, to be the household monkey wrench and a bar of Ink-soaked Ink-soaked Iron which went to make up one of the printing shop metal forms. On his head was a battered an unspeakable un-speakable sombrero which he must have salvaged from the back yard debris. He managed, by the very power of his dramatic gift, to give to the appreciative onlooker a complete com-plete picture of Yancey Cravat in ludicrous In grotesque miniature. He advanced toward them with an appalling ap-palling Imitation of Yancey's stride. Sabra's face went curiously sallow, so that she was, suddenly, Felice Ven-able, Ven-able, enraged. Yancey gave a great roar of laughter, and at that Sabra's blazing eyes turned from the ludicrous figure of the hlaek boy to her husband. hus-band. She was literally panting with fury. Her idol, her god, was being mocked. "You laugh! . . . Stop. . . ." She went in a kind of swoop of rage toward the now halting figure of Isaiah. The black face, all eyes now (and those all whites), looked up at her, startled, terrorized. She raised her hand In its neat black kid glove to cuff him smartly. But Yancey was too quick for her. Swiftly as she had swooped upon Isaiah, Yancey's leap had been quicker. He caught her hand half way in Its descent. His fingers closed round her wrist In an iron grip. "Let me go !" For that Instant she hated, him. "If you touch him I swear before God I'll not set foot Inside the tent. Look at him !" The black face gazed up at him. In It was worship, utter devotion. Yancey, Yan-cey, himself a born actor, knew that In Isaiah's grotesque costume, in his struttings and swaggerings, there had been only that sincerest of flattery, imitation of that which was adored. The eyes were those of a dog, faithful, hurt, bewildered. Yancey released Sabra's wrist. He turned his brilliant winning smile on Isaiah. He put out his hand, removed the mangy sombrero from the child's head, and let his fine white hand rest a moment on the woolly poll. Isaiah began to blubber, his fright giving way to injury. "Ah didn't go fo' to fret nobody. You-all was dress up fine fo' ch'ch meetin' so I crave to dress myself up Sunday style " "That's right, Isaiah. You look finer than any of us. Now listen to me. Do you want a real suit of Sunday clothes?" The white teeth now vied with the rolling eyes. "Sunday suit fo' me to wear! Fo' true!" "Listen close, Isaiah. I want you to do something for me. Something big. I don't want you to go to the church meeting." Then, as the black boy's expressive ex-pressive face, all smiles the instant before, became, suddenly doleful: -! "Isaiah, listen hard. This Is something important. Everybody In town's at the church meeting. Jesse Rickey's drunk. The house and the newspaper oflice are left alone. There are people peo-ple In town who'd sooner set fire to the newspaper plant and the house than see the paper come out on Thursday. Thurs-day. I want you to go back to the house and into the kitchen, where you can see the buck yard and the side entrance, too. Patrol duty, that's what I'm putting you on." "Y'es, suh, Mr. Yancey !" agreed Isaiah. "Patrol." His dejected frame now underwent a transformation as It stiffened to fit the new martial role. "Now listen close. If anybody comes up to the house they won't come the front way, but at the back, probably, or the side you take this and shoot." lie took from beneath the Prince Albert a gun which, well on the left, under the coat, was not visible as were the two six-shooters that lie always carried at his belt. It was a six-shooter of the kind known as the single action. The trigger was dead. It was the deadliest of Southwestern South-western weapons, a six-shooter whose hammer, when pulled back by the thumb, would fall again as soon as released. No need for Isaiah's small forefinger to wrestle with the trigger. "Oil, Yancey !'r breathed Sabra, in horror. "Yancey I He's a child !" Now It was she who was protecting the black boy from Yancey. Yancey ignored her. "You remember what I told you last week," he went on, equably. "When we were shooting at the tin can on .the fence post In the yard. Do It just as you did it then draw, aim, and shoot with the one motion." "Yes, suh, Mr. Yancey! I kill 'em daid." "You'll have a brand-new suit of Sunday clothes next week, remember, and boots to go with It. Now, scoot 1" Isaiah flashed a brilliant, a glorified glori-fied smile at Sabra over his shoulder and was off, a ludicrous black Don Quixote. Ail Sabra's pleasurable anticipation In the church meeting had fled. "How could you give a gun to a child like that! You'll be giving one to Cim, here, next. Alone in the house, with a gun." "It isn't loaded. Come on, honey. We're late." For the first time in their married life she doubted his word absolutely. He strode along towards the tent. She hurried at his side. Cim trotted to keep up with h,er, his hand in hers. "What did you mean when you said there were people who would setfire to the house? I never heard of such . . . Did you really mean that some one ... or was it an excuse to send Isaiah back because of the way he looked?" "That was it." For the second time she doubted him. "I don't believe you. There's something going on something you haven't told me. Yancey, tell me." "I haven't time now. Don't be foolish. fool-ish. I just don't like the complexion of I just thought that maybe this meeting was the Idea of somebody who Isn't altogether Inspired by a desire de-sire for a closer communion with God. Just occurred to me. I don't know why. Good joke on me, If It's true." "I'm not going to the meeting. I'm going back to the house." She was desperate. Her house was burning up, Isaiah was being murdered. . "You're coming with me." He rarely rare-ly used this tone toward her. "Yancey ! Yancey, I'm afraid to have you stand up there, before all those people. I'm afraid. Let's go hack: Tell them you're sick. Tell them " , They had reached the tent. The flap was open. A roar of talk came to them from within. The entrance was packed with lean figures smoking and spitting. "Hi, Yancey! How's the preacher? Where's your Bible, Yancey?" "Right here, boys." And Yancey reached into the capacious skirt of his Prince Albert to produce In triumph the Word of God. "Come in or stay out, boys. No loafing in the doorway." With Sabra on his arm he marched through the close-packed tent "They'T saved two seats for you and Clm down front or should have. Yes, there they are." Sabra felt faint. She had seen the foxlike face of Lon YountU In the doorway, "That man," she whispered to Yancey. "He was there. He looked at you as you passed by he looked a' you so " "That's fine, honey. Better than I hoped for. Nothing I like better than to have members of my flock risht under my eye." CHAPTER V Ranged along the rear of the tent were the Indians. Osages, Toncas, Cherokees, Creeks. They viewed the proceedings impassively, their faces bronze masks in which only the eyes moved. Later, on their reservations, with no white man to see and hear, they would gossip like fishwives; they would shake with laughter; they would retail this or that absurdity which, with their own eyes, they had seen the white man perform. They would slap their knees and rock with mirth. "Great jokers, the Indians," Yancey had once said, offhand, to Sabra. She had felt sure that he was mistaken. They were sullen, taciturn, grave. They did not speak; they grunted. They never laughed. Holding Cim's hand tightly In her own, Sabra, escorted by Yancey, found that two chairs had been placed for them. Sabra glanced shyly about her. Men hundreds of men. They were strangely alike, all those faces; young-old, young-old, weather-beaten, deeply seamed, and, for the most part, beardless. The Plains had taken them early, had scorched them with her sun, parched them with her drought, buffeted them with her wind, stung them with lier dust. Sabra had grown accustomed to these faces during the past two weeks. But the women sou was not prepared for the women. Calico and sunbonnets there were in plenty ; but the wives of Osage's citizenry had taken this first opportunity to show what they had in the way of finery. Near Sabra, and occupying one of the seats evidently reserved for persona of distinction, was a woman iho must be, Sabra thought, about her own age ; perhaps twenty or twenty-oae, fair, blue eyed, almost childlike in her girlish girl-ish slimness and purity of contour. She was very well dressed in a wine-color wine-color silk-wrap henrletta. bustled, very tightly basqued, and elaborate with fluting on sleeves and collar. Dress and bonnet were city made and very modish. From Denver, Sabra thought, or Kansas City, or even Chicago. Sabra further decided that the man beside her, who looked old enough to be her father, must be, after all, her husband. It was in the way he spoke to her, gazed at her, touched her. Yancey had pointed him out one day. She remembered his name because It had amused her at the tinje: Waltz, Evergreen Waltz. He was a notorious Southwest gambler, earned his living by the cards. The girl looked unhappy; un-happy; and beneath that, rebellious. Still, the sight of this lovely face, and of the other feminine faces looking look-ing out from at least fairly' modish and decent straw bonnets and toques, gave Sabra a glow of reassurance. Immediately Im-mediately this was quenched at the late, showy, and dramatic entrance, just before Yancey took his place, of a group of women of whom Sabra had actually been unaware. As a matter of fact, the leader of this spectacular group had arrived in Osage only the day before, accompanied by a bevy of six young ladies. Osage, since that first mad day of its beginning, had had its quota of shady ladles, but these had been raddled creatures, driftwood from this or that deserted mining camp or abandoned aban-doned town site, middle-aged, unsavory, un-savory, and doubtless slightly subnormal sub-normal mentally. These were different. The leader, a handsome black-haired woman of not more than twenty-two or -three, had taken for herself and her companions com-panions such rooms as they could get in the town. Within an hour It was known that the woman claimed the name of Dixie Lee. That she was a descendant of decayed southern aristocracy. aris-tocracy. That her blooming com-, panions boasted such fancy nomenclature nomencla-ture as Cherry de St. Maurice, Carmen Brown, Belle Mansero, and the like. That the woman, shrewd as a man and sharp as a knife, had driven a bargain bar-gain whereby she was to come into possession, at a stiff price, of the building known as the Elite Rooming House and Cafe, situated at the far end of Pawhuska avenue, near ths gambling tent; and that she contemplated contem-plated building a house of her own, planned for her own peculiar needs, ' if business warranted. Thus harlotry, heretofore sordid enough In a wrapper and curling pins, came to Osage in silks and plumes, with a brain behind it and a promise of prosperity In Its gaudy train. Dixie Lee, shrewd saleswoman, had been quick to learn of Sunday's meeting, meet-ing, and quicker still to see the advantage ad-vantage of this opportunity for a public pub-lic advertisement of her business. So now, at Osage's first church meeting, in marched the six, with Dixie Lee at their head making a seventh. They rustled In silks. The air of the close-packed close-packed tent became as suffocating with scent as a Persian garden at sunset. The hard-working worthy wives of Osage, in theU- cheviots and their faded bonnets and cotton gloves, suddenly seemed sallow, scrawny, and almost spectacularly unalluring. All this Sabra beheld in a single glance, as did the entire congregation Yancey, having lifted Cim into thi chair next his mother, looked up a! the entrance of this splendid procj slon. (TQ BK CONTINVISQ |