Cimarron · Chapter 7 (2/2)

But he was ready with a honeyed reply culled from the same book so dear to his heart and his grandiloquent tongue. “ ‘Be not wroth with me hereat, goddess and queen.’ ”

The goddess and queen pushed her hair back from her forehead with a sooty hand, leaving still another smudge of printer’s ink upon that worried surface.

Jesse Rickey, the printer (known, naturally, to his familiars as “Gin” Rickey, owing to his periods of intemperance), and black Isaiah were, next to Sabra, most responsible for the astounding fact that the Cravat family finally was settled in house and office. The front door, which was the office entrance, faced the wide wallow of the main street. The back and the side doors of the dwelling looked out on a stretch of Oklahoma red clay, littered with the empty tin cans that mark any new American settlement, and especially one whose drought is relieved by the thirst-quenching coolness of tinned tomatoes and peaches. Perhaps the canned tomato, as much as anything, made possible the settling of the vast West and Southwest. In the midst of this clay and refuse, in a sort of shed-kennel, lived little Isaiah; rather, he slept there, like a faithful dog, for all day long he was about the house and the printing office, tireless, willing, invaluable. He belonged to Sabra, body and soul, as completely as though the Civil War had never been. A little servant of twelve, born to labor, he became as dear to Sabra, as accustomed, as one of her own children, despite her Southern training and his black skin. He dried the dishes, a towel tied around his neck; he laid the table; he was playmate and nursemaid for Cim; he ran errands, a swift and splayfooted Mercury; he was a born reporter, and in the course of his day’s scurrying about the town on this errand or that brought into Sabra’s kitchen more items of news and gossip (which were later transferred to the newspaper office) than a whole staff of trained newspaper men could have done. He was so little, so black, so lithe, so harmless looking, that his presence was, more often than not, completely overlooked. The saloon loungers, cowboys, rangers, and homesteaders in and about the town alternately spoiled and plagued him. One minute they were throwing him dimes in the dust for his rendition of his favorite song:

“King Jesus come a-ridin’ on a milk-white steed,

Wid a rainbow on his shoulder.”

The next moment they were making his splayfeet dance frenziedly as the bullets from their six-shooters plopped playfully all about him and his kinky hair seemed to grow straight and dank with terror.

Sabra, in time, taught him to read, write, and figure. He was quick to learn, industrious, lovable. He thought he actually belonged to her. Cim was beginning to learn the alphabet, and as Sabra bent over the child, Isaiah, too, would bring his little stool out of its corner. Perched on it like an intelligent monkey he mastered the curlicues in their proper sequence. He cleared the unsightly back yard of its litter of tin cans and refuse. Together he and Sabra even tried to plant a little garden in this barren sanguine clay. More than anything else, Sabra missed the trees and flowers. In the whole town of almost ten thousand inhabitants there were two trees: stunted jack oaks. Sometimes she dreamed of lilies of the valley⁠—the translucent, almost liquid green of their stems and leaves, the perfumed purity of their white bells.

All this, however, came later. These first few days were filled to overflowing with the labor of making the house habitable and the office and plant fit for Yancey’s professional pursuits. Already his talents as a silver-tongue were being sought in defense of murderers, horse thieves, land grabbers, and more civil offenders in all the surrounding towns and counties. It was known that the average jury was wax in his hands. Once started on his plea it was as though he were painting the emotions that succeeded each other across the faces of the twelve (or less, depending on the number available in the community) good men (or good enough) and true. A tremolo tone⁠—their eyes began to moisten, their mouth muscles to sag with sympathy; a wave of the hand, a lilt of the golden voice⁠—they guffawed with mirth. Even a horse thief, that blackest of criminals in this country, was said to have a bare chance for his life if Yancey Cravat could be induced to plead for him⁠—and provided always, of course, that the posse had not dealt with the offender first.

Yancey, from the time he rose in the morning until he went to bed late at night, was always a little overstimulated by the whisky he drank. This, together with a natural fearlessness, an enormous vitality, and a devouring interest in everybody and everything in this fantastic Oklahoma country, gained him friends and enemies in almost equal proportion.

In the ten days following their arrival in Osage, his one interest seemed to be the tracing of the Pegler murder⁠—for he scoffed at the idea that his predecessor’s death was due to any other cause.

He asked his question everywhere, even in the most foolhardy circumstances, and watched the effect of his question. Pegler had been a Denver newspaper man; known, respected, decent. Yancey had sworn to bring his murderers to justice.

Sabra argued with him, almost hysterically, but in vain. “You didn’t do anything about helping them catch the Kid, out there on the prairie, when they were looking for him, and you knew where he was⁠—or just about⁠—and he had killed a man, too, and robbed a bank, and I don’t know what all.”

“That was different. The Kid’s different,” Yancey answered, unreasonably and infuriatingly.

“Different! How different? What’s this Pegler to you! They’ll kill you, too⁠—they’ll shoot you down⁠—and then what shall I do?⁠—Cim⁠—Cim⁠—and I here, alone⁠—Yancey, darling⁠—I love you so⁠—if anything should happen to you⁠—” She waxed incoherent.

“Listen, honey. Hush your crying and listen. Try to understand. The Kid’s a terror. He’s a bad one. But it isn’t his fault. The government at Washington made him an outlaw.”

“Why, Yancey Cravat, what are you talking about? Don’t you ever say a thing like that before Cim.”

“The Kid’s father rode the range before there were fences or railroads in Kansas, and when this part of the country was running wild with longhorn cattle that had descended straight from the animals that the Spaniards had brought over four centuries ago. The railroads began coming in. The settlers came with it, from the Gulf Coast, up across Texas, through the Indian Territory to the end of steel at Abilene, Kansas. The Kid was brought up to all that. Freighters, bull whackers, mule skinners, hunters, and cowboys⁠—that’s all he knew. Into Dodge City, with perhaps nine months’ pay jingling in his pocket. I’ll bet neither the Kid nor his father before him ever saw a nickel or a dime. They wouldn’t have bothered with such chicken feed. Silver dollars were the smallest coin they knew. They worked for it, too. I’ve seen seventy-five thousand cattle at a time waiting shipment to the East, with lads like the Kid in charge. The Kid’s grandfather was a buffalo hunter. The range was the only life they wanted. Along comes the government. What happens?”

“What?” breathed Sabra, as always enthralled by one of Yancey’s arguments, forgetting quite that she must oppose this very plea.

“They take the range away from the cattle men and cowboys⁠—the free range that never belonged to them really, but that they had come to think of as theirs through right of use. Squatters come in, Sooners, too, and Nesters, and then the whole rush of the Opening. The range is cut up into town sites, and the town into lots, before their very eyes. Why, it must have sickened them⁠—killed them almost⁠—to see it.”

“But that’s progress, Yancey. The country’s got to be settled.”

“This was different. There’s never been anything like this. Settling a great section of a country always has been a matter of years⁠—decades⁠—centuries, even. But here they swept over it in a day. You know that as well as I do. Wilderness one day; town sites the next. And the cowboys and rangers having no more chance than chips in a flood. Can’t you see it? Shanties where the horizon used to be; grocery stores on the old buffalo trails. They went plumb locoed, I tell you. They couldn’t fight progress, but they could get revenge on the people who had taken their world away from them and cut it into little strips and dirtied it.”

“You’re taking the part of criminals, of murderers, of bad men! I’m ashamed of you! I’m afraid of you! You’re as bad as they are.”

“Now, now, Sabra. No dramatics. Leave that for me. I’m better at it. The Kid’s bad, yes. They don’t come worse than he. And they’ll get him, eventually. But he never kills unless he has to. When he robs a bank or holds up a train it’s in broad daylight, by God, with a hundred guns against him. He runs a risk. He doesn’t shoot in the dark. The other fellow always has a chance. It’s three or four, usually, against fifty. He was brought up a reckless, lawless, unschooled youngster. He’s a killer now, and he’ll die by the gun, with his boots on. But the man who fathered him needn’t be ashamed of him. There’s no yellow in the Kid.”

For one dreadful sickening second something closed with iron fingers around Sabra Cravat’s heart and squeezed it, and it ceased to beat. White faced, her dark eyes searched her husband’s face. Wichita whispers. Kansas slander. But that face was all exaltation, like the face of an evangelist, and as pure. His eyes were glowing. The iron fingers relaxed.

“But Pegler. The men who killed Pegler. Why are they so much worse⁠—”

“Skunks. Dirty jackals hired by white-livered politicians.”

“But why? Why?”

“Because Pegler had the same idea I have⁠—that here’s a chance to start clean, right from scratch. Live and let live. Clean politics instead of the skulduggery all around; a new way of living and of thinking, because we’ve had a chance to see how rotten and narrow and bigoted the other way has been. Here everything’s fresh. It’s all to do, and we can do it. There’s never been a chance like it in the world. We can make a model empire out of this Oklahoma country, with all the mistakes of the other pioneers to profit by. New England, and California, and the settlers of the Middle West⁠—it got away from them, and they fell into the rut. Ugly politics, ugly towns, ugly buildings, ugly minds.” He was off again. Sabra, all impatience, stopped him.

“But Pegler. What’s that got to do with Pegler?” She hated the name. She hated the dead man who was stalking their new life and threatening to destroy it.

“I saw that one copy of his paper. He called it the New Day⁠—poor devil. And in it he named names, and he outlined a policy and a belief something like⁠—well⁠—along the lines I’ve tried to explain to you. He accused the government of robbing the Indians. He accused the settlers of cheating them. He told just how they got their whisky, in spite of its being forbidden, and how their monthly allotment was pinched out of their foolish fingers⁠—”

“Oh, my heavens, Yancey! Indians! You and your miserable dirty Indians! You’re always going on about them as if they mattered! The sooner they’re all dead the better. What good are they? Filthy, thieving, lazy things. They won’t work. You’ve said so yourself. They just squat there, rotting.”

“I’ve tried to explain to you,” Yancey began, gently. “White men can’t do those things to a helpless⁠—”

“And so they killed him!” Sabra cried, irrelevantly. “And they’ll kill you, too. Oh, Yancey⁠—please⁠—please⁠—I don’t want to be a pioneer woman. I thought I did, but I don’t. I can’t make things different. I liked them as they were. Comfortable and safe. Let them alone. I don’t want to live in a model empire. Darling! Darling! Let’s just make it a town like Wichita⁠ ⁠… with trees⁠ ⁠… and people being sociable⁠ ⁠… not killing each other all the time⁠ ⁠… church on Sunday⁠ ⁠… a school for Cim.⁠ ⁠…”

The face she adored was a mask. The ocean-gray eyes were slate-gray now, with the look she had seen and dreaded⁠—cold, determined, relentless.

“All right. Go back there. Go back to your trees and your churches and your sidewalks and your Sunday roast beef and your whole goddamned, smug, dead-alive family. But not me! Me, I’m staying here. And when I find the man who killed Pegler I’ll face him with it, and I’ll publish his name, and if he’s alive by then I’ll bring him to justice and I’ll see him strung up on a tree. If I don’t it’ll be because I’m not alive myself.”

“Oh, God!” whimpered Sabra, and sank, a limp bundle of misery, into his arms. But those arms were, suddenly, no haven, no shelter. He put her from him, gently, but with iron firmness, and walked out of the house, through the newspaper office, down the broad and sinister red road.