Cimarron

by Edna Ferber

  “That’s right, Yancey.”

  Yancey’s eye swept his flock. “Some miserable tight-fisted skin-flint of a——But maybe it was a Ponca or an Osage, by mistake.”

  “How about a Cherokee, Yancey!” came a taunting voice from somewhere in the rear.

  “No, not a Cherokee, Sid. Recognized your voice by the squeak. A Cherokee—as you’d know if you knew anything at all—you and Yountis and the rest of your outfit—is too smart to put anything in the contribution box of a race that has robbed him of his birthright.” He did not pause for the titter that went round. He now took from the rear pocket of the flowing Prince Albert the small and worn little Bible. “Friends! We’ve come to the sermon. What I have to say is going to take fifteen minutes. The first five minutes are going to be devoted to a confession by me to you, and I didn’t expect to make it when I accepted the job of conducting this church meeting. Walt Whitman—say, boys, there’s a poet with red blood in him, and the feel of the land, and a love of his fellow beings!—Walt Whitman has a line that has stuck in my memory. It is: ‘I say the real and permanent grandeur of these states must be their religion.’ That’s what Walt says. And that’s the text I intended to use for the subject of my sermon, though I know that the Bible should furnish it. And now, at the eleventh hour, I’ve changed my mind. It’s from the Good Book, after all. I’ll announce my text, and then I’ll make my confession, and following that, any time left will be devoted to the sermon. Any lady or gent wishing to leave the tent will kindly do so now, before the confession, and with my full consent, or remain in his or her seat until the conclusion of the service, on pain of being publicly held up to scorn by me in the first issue of my newspaper, the Oklahoma Wigwam, due off the press next Thursday. Anyone wishing to leave the tent kindly rise now and pass as quietly as may be to the rear. Please make way for all departing—uh—worshipers.”

  An earthquake might have moved a worshiper from his place in that hushed and expectant gathering: certainly no lesser cataclysm of nature. Yancey waited, Bible in hand, a sweet and brilliant smile on his face. He waited quietly, holding the eyes of the throng in that stifling tent. A kind of power seemed to flow from him to them, drawing them, fixing them, enthralling them. Yet in his eyes, and in the great head raised now as it so rarely was, there was that which sent a warning pang of fear through Sabra. She, too, felt his magnetic draw, but mingled with it was a dreadful terror—a stab of premonition. The little pitted places in the skin of forehead and cheeks were somehow more noticeable. Twice she had seen his eyes look like that.

  Yancey waited yet another moment. Then he drew a long breath. “My text is from Proverbs. ‘There is a lion in the way; a lion is in the streets.’ Friends, there is a lion in the streets of Osage, our fair city, soon to be Queen of the Great Southwest. A lion is in the streets. And I have been a liar and a coward and an avaricious knave. For I pretended not to have knowledge which I have; and I went about asking for information of this lion—though I would change the word lion to jackal or dirty skunk if I did not feel it to be sacrilege to take liberties with Holy Writ—when already I had proof positive of his guilt—proof in writing, for which I paid, and about which I said nothing. And the reason for this deceit of mine I am ashamed to confess to you, but I shall confess it. I intended to announce to you all to-day that I had this knowledge, and I meant to announce to you from this pulpit—” he glanced down at the roulette table—“from this platform—that I would publish this knowledge in the columns of the Oklahoma Wigwam on Thursday, hoping thereby to gain profit and fame because of the circulation which this would gain for my paper, starting it off with a bang!” At the word “bang,” uttered with much vehemence, the congregation of Osage’s First Methodist, Episcopal, Lutheran, etc., church jumped noticeably and nervously. “Friends and fellow citizens, I repent of my greed and of my desire for self-advancement at the expense of this community. I no longer intend to withhold, for my own profit, the name of the jackal in a lion’s skin who, by threats of sudden death, has held this town abjectly terrorized. I stand here to announce to you that the name of that skunk, that skulking fiend and soulless murderer who shot down Jack Pegler when his back was turned—that coward and poltroon—” he was gesturing with his Bible in his hand, brandishing it aloft—“was none other than—”

  He dropped the Bible to the floor as if by accident, in his rage. As he stooped for it, on that instant, there was the crack of a revolver, a bullet from a six-shooter in the rear of the tent sang past the spot where his head had been, and there appeared in the white surface of the tent a tiny circlet of blue that was the Oklahoma sky. But before that dot of blue appeared Yancey Cravat had raised himself halfway from the hips, had fired from the waist without, seemingly, pausing to take aim. His thumb flicked the hammer. That was all. The crack of his six-shooter was, in fact, so close on the heels of that first report that the two seemed almost simultaneous. The congregation was now on its feet, en masse, its back to the roulette table pulpit. Its eyes were on one figure; its breath was suspended. That figure—a man—was seen to perform some curious antics. He looked, first of all, surprised. With his left hand he had gripped one of the taut tent ropes, and now, with his hand still grasping the hempen line, his fingers slipping gently along it, as though loath to let go, he sank to the floor, sat there a moment, as if in meditation, loosed his hand’s hold of the rope, turned slightly, rolled over on one side and lay there, quite still.

  “—Lon Yountis,” finished Yancey, neatly concluding his sentence and now holding an ivory-mounted six-shooter in right and left hand.

  Screams. Shouts. A stampede for the door. Then the voice of Yancey Cravat, powerful, compelling, above the roar. He sent one shot through the dome of the tent to command attention. “Stop! Stand where you are! The first person who stampedes this crowd gets a bullet. Shut that tent flap, Jesse, like I told you to this morning. Louie Hefner, remove the body and do your duty.”

  “Okeh, Yancey. It’s self-defense and justifiable homicide.”

  “I know it. Louis, … Fellow citizens! We will forego the sermon this morning, but next Sabbath, if requested, I shall be glad to take the pulpit again, unless a suitable and ordained minister of God can be procured. The subject of my sermon for next Sabbath will be from Proverbs XXVI, 27: ‘Whoso diggeth a pit shall fall therein’ … This church meeting, brethren and sisters, will now be concluded with prayer.” There was a little thudding, scuffling sound as a heavy, inert burden was carried out through the tent flap into the noonday sunshine. His six-shooters still in his hands, Yancey Cravat bowed his magnificent buffalo head—but not too far—and sent the thrilling tones of his beautiful voice out into the agitated crowd before him.

  “… bless this community, O Lord.…”

  10

  Mournfully, and in accordance with the custom of the community, Yancey carved a notch in the handsome ivory and silver-mounted butt of his six-shooter. It was then for the first time that Sabra, her eyes widening with horror, noticed that there were five earlier notches cut in the butts of Yancey’s two guns—two on one, three on the other. This latest addition brought the number up to six.

  Aghast, she gingerly investigated further. She saw that the two terrifying weapons were not worn completely encased in the holster but each was held within it by an ingenious steel clip, elastic and sensitive as a watch spring. This spring gripped the barrel securely and yet so lightly that the least effort would set it free. Yancey could pull his gun and thumb the hammer with but one motion, instead of two. The infinitesimal saving of time had saved his life that day.

  “Oh, Yancey, you haven’t killed six men!”

  “I’ve never killed a man unless I knew he’d kill me if I didn’t.”

  “But that’s murder!”

  “Would you have liked to see Yountis get me?”

  “Oh, darling, no! I died a thousand deaths while you were standing there. That terrible prayer, when I thought surely someone else would shoot you. But wasn’t there som
e other way? Did you have to kill him? Like that?”

  “Why, no, honey. I could have let him kill me.”

  “Cim has seen his own father shoot a man and kill him.”

  “Better than seeing a man shoot and kill his own father.”

  There was nothing more that she could say on this subject. But still another question was consuming her.

  “That woman. That woman. I saw you talking to her, right on the street, in broad daylight to-day, after the meeting. All that horrible shooting—all those people around you—Cim screaming—and then to find that woman smirking and talking. Bad enough if you’d never seen her before. But she stole your land from you in the Run. You stood there, actually talking to her. Chatting.”

  “I know. She said she had made up her mind that day of the Run to get a piece of land, and farm it, and raise cattle. She wanted to give up her way of living. She’s been at it since she was eighteen. Now she’s twenty-six. Older than she looks. She comes of good stock. She was desperate.”

  “What she doing here, then!”

  “Before the month was up she saw she couldn’t make it go. One hundred and sixty acres. Then the other women homesteaders found out about her. It was no use. She sold out for five hundred dollars, added to it whatever money she had saved, and went to Denver.”

  “Why didn’t she stay there?”

  “Her business was overcrowded there. She got a tip that the railroad was coming through here. She’s a smart girl. She got together her outfit, and down she came.”

  “You talk as though you admired her! That—shat—” Felice Venable’s word came to her lips—“that hussy!”

  “She’s a smart girl. She’s a—” he hesitated, as though embarrassed—“in a way she’s a—well, in a way, she’s a good girl.”

  Sabra’s voice rose to the pitch of hysteria.

  “Don’t you quote your Bible at me, Yancey Cravat! You with your Lukes and your Johns and your Magdalenes! I’m sick of them.”

  The first issue of the Oklahoma Wigwam actually appeared on Thursday, as scheduled. It was a masterly mixture of reticence and indiscretion. A half column, first page, was devoted to the church meeting. The incident of the shooting was not referred to in this account. An outsider, reading it, would have gathered that all had been sweetness and light. On an inside column of the four-page sheet was a brief notice:

  It is to be regretted that an unimportant but annoying shooting affray somewhat marred the otherwise splendid and truly impressive religious services held in the recreation tent last Sunday, kindness of the genial and popular proprietor, Mr. Grat Gotch. A ruffian, who too long had been infesting the streets of our fair city of Osage, terrorizing innocent citizens, and who was of the contemptible ilk that has done so much toward besmirching the dazzling fame of the magnificent Southwest, took this occasion to create a disturbance, during which he shot, with intent to kill, at the person presiding. It was necessary to reply in kind. The body, unclaimed, was interred in Boot Hill, with only the prowling jackals to mourn him, their own kin. It is hoped that his nameless grave will serve as a warning to others of his class.

  Having thus modestly contained himself in the matter of the actual shooting, Yancey let himself go a little on the editorial page. His editorials, in fact, for a time threatened the paper’s news items. Sabra and Jesse Rickey had to convince him that the coming of the Katy was of more interest to prospective subscribers than was the editorial entitled, Lower than the Rattlesnake. He was prevailed upon to cut it slightly, though under protest.

  The rattlesnake has a bad reputation. People accuse him of a great many mean things, and it cannot be denied that the world would be better off if his species were exterminated. Nine times out of ten his bite is fatal, and many homes have been saddened because of his venomous attacks. But the rattlesnake is a gentleman and a scholar beside some snakes. He always gives warning. It is the snake that takes you unawares that hurts the worst.…

  Thus for a good half column.

  Sabra, reading the damp galley proof, was murmurous with admiration. “It’s just wonderful! But, Yancey, don’t you think we ought to have more news items? Gossip, sort of. I don’t mean gossip, really, but about people, and what they’re doing, and so on. Those are the things I like to read in a newspaper. Of course men like editorials and important things like that. But women——”

  “That’s right, too,” agreed Jesse Rickey, looking up, ink smeared, from his case. “Get the women folks to reading the paper.”

  Sabra was emerging slowly from her rôle of charming little fool. By degrees she was to take more and more of a hand in the assembling of the paper’s intimate weekly items, while Yancey was concerned with cosmic affairs. Indeed, had it not been for Sabra and Jesse Rickey that first issue of the Oklahoma Wigwam might never have appeared, for the front office of the little wooden shack that served as newspaper plant was crowded, following that eventful Sunday, with congratulatory committees, so that it seemed stuffed to suffocation with sombreros, six-shooters, boots, tobacco, and repetitious talk.

  “Yessir, Yancey, that was one of the quickest draws I ever see.… And you was on to him all the time, huh? Sa-a-ay, you’re a slick one, all right. They don’t come no slicker.… The rest of the gang has took to the Hills, I understand. That shows they’re scairt, because they got a feud with the Kid and his outfit, and the Kid sees ’em he’ll drop ’em like a row of gobblers at a turkey shootin’. Yancey, you’re the kind of stuff this country needs out here. First thing you know you’ll be Governor of the Territory. How’s that, boys! Come on out and have a drink to the future new Governor, the Honorable Yancey Cravat!”

  The group moved in a body across the dusty street into the Sunny Southwest Saloon, from whence came further and more emphatic sounds of approbation.

  Sabra, in her checked gingham kitchen apron, was selecting fascinating facts from the stock of ready-print brought with them from Wichita, fresh supplies of which they would receive spasmodically by mail or express via the Katy or the Santa Fé.

  SWIMMING BRIDES

  Girls inhabiting the Island of Himla, near Rhodes, are not allowed to marry until they have brought up a specified number of sponges, each taken from a certain depth. The people of the Island earn their living by the sponge fishery.

  STRENGTH OF THE THUMB

  The thumb is stronger than all the other fingers together.

  COMPRESSED AIR FOR MINE HAULAGE

  During the last ten years a great many mines have replaced animal haulage with compressed air motors.

  As the printing plant boasted only a little hand press, the two six-column forms had to be inked with a hand roller. Over this was placed the damp piece of white print paper. Each sheet was done by hand. The first issue of the Oklahoma Wigwam numbered four hundred and fifty copies, and before it was run off, Yancey, Jesse Rickey, Sabra, Isaiah—every member of the household except little Cim—had taken a turn at the roller. Sabra’s back and arm muscles ached for a week.

  Yancey made vigorous protest. “What! Ink on the white wonder of dear Juliet’s hand! Out, damned spot! See here, honey. This will never do. My sweet Southern jasmine working over a miserable roller! I’d rather never get out a paper, I tell you.”

  “It looks as if you never would, anyway.” The sweet Southern jasmine did not mean to be acid; but the events of the past two or three weeks were beginning to tell on her nerves. The ready-print contained the opening chapters of a novel by Bertha M. Clay in which beauty and virtue triumphed over evil. An instalment of this would appear weekly. The second half of it was missing. But Sabra sagely decided that this fragment, for a time at least, would compensate the feminine readers of the Oklahoma Wigwam for the preponderance of civic and political matter and the scarcity of social and personal items. She made up her mind that she would conquer her shyness and become better acquainted with some of those cheviots and straw bonnets seen at the Sunday church meeting.

  Yancey and Jesse Rickey seemed to have some joke betw
een them. Sabra, in her kitchen, could hear them snickering like a couple of schoolgirls. They were up to some mischief. Yancey was possessed of the rough and childlike notion of humor that was of the day and place.

  “What are you boys up to?” she asked him at dinner.

  He was all innocence. “Nothing. Not a thing! What a suspicious little puss you’re getting to be.”

  The paper came out on Thursday afternoon, as scheduled. Sabra was astonished and a little terrified to see the occasion treated as an event, with a crowd of cowboys and local citizens in front of the house, pistols fired, whoops and yells; and Yancey himself, aided by Jesse Rickey, handing out copies as if they had cost nothing to print. Perhaps twenty-five of these were distributed, opened eagerly, perused by citizens leaning against the porch posts, and by cowboys on horseback, before Sabra, peeking out of the office window, saw an unmistakable look of surprise—even of shock—on their faces and heard Cass Bixby drawl, “Say, Yancey, that’s a hell of a name for a newspaper.”

  She sent Isaiah out to get hold of a copy. He came back with it, grinning. It was a single sheet. The Oklahoma Galoot. Motto: Take It or Leave It. Beneath this a hastily assembled and somewhat pied collection of very personal items, calculated to reveal the weakness and foibles of certain prominent citizens now engaged in perusing the false sheet.

  The practical joke being revealed and the bona fide paper issued, this was considered a superb triumph for Yancey, and he was again borne away to receive the congratulatory toasts of his somewhat sheepish associates.

  It was a man’s town. The men enjoyed it. They rode, gambled, swore, fought, fished, hunted, drank. The antics of many of them seemed like those of little boys playing robber’s cave under the porch. The saloon was their club, the brothel their social rendezvous, the town women their sweethearts. Literally there were no other young girls of marriageable age; for the men and women who had come out here were, like Sabra and Yancey, married couples whose ages ranged between twenty and forty. It was no place for the very young, the very old, or even the middle-aged. Through it all wove the Indians, making a sad yet colorful pattern. The Osage reservation was that nearest the town of Osage. There now was some talk of changing the name of the town because of this, but it never was done. It had been named in the rush of the Run. The Osages, unlike many of the other Territory Plains tribes, were a handsome people—tall, broad-shouldered, proud. The women carried themselves well, head up, shoulders firm, their step leisurely and light. Their garments were mean enough, but over them they wore the striped blanket of the tribe, orange and purple and scarlet and blue, dyed with the same brilliant lasting dyes that Mother Bridget had used in Sabra’s coverlet. They came in from the Reservation on foot; sometimes a family rattled along the red clay road that led into town, huddled in a wagon, rickety, mud spattered. Sometimes a buck rode a scrofulous horse, his lean legs hugging its sorry flanks. The town treated them with less consideration than the mongrel curs that sunned themselves in the road. They bought their meager supplies with the stipend that the government allowed them; the men bought, stole, or begged whisky when they could, though fire water was strictly forbidden them, and to sell or give it to an Indian was a criminal offense. They lolled or squatted in the sun. They would not work. They raised a little corn which, mixed with lye, they called soffica. This mess, hot or cold, was eaten with a spoon made from the horn of a cow. Sabra hated them, even feared them, though Yancey laughed at her for this. Cim was forbidden by her to talk to them. This after she discovered that Yancey had taken him out to visit the Reservation one afternoon. Here, then, was the monstrous society 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 had left.