Cimarron · Chapter 9 (2/2)

“Mr. Grat Gotch, being used to lightning calculations in the matter of coins, will kindly count the proceeds of the collection.”

Arkansas Grat, red-faced and perspiring, elbowed his way to the pulpit and made his swift and accurate count. He muttered the result to Yancey. Yancey announced it publicly. “Fellow citizens, the sum of the first collection for the new church organ for the Osage church, whose denomination shall be nameless, is the gratifying total of one hundred and thirty-three dollars and fifty-five cents.⁠—Heh, wait a minute, Grat! Fifty-five⁠—did you say fifty-five cents?”

“That’s right, Yancey.”

Yancey’s eye swept his flock. “Some miserable tightfisted skinflint 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 today 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 26:27: ‘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.⁠ ⁠…”