Cimarron · Chapter 16 (1/2)

XVI

“Remember the Maine! To hell with Spain!” You read this inflaming sentiment on posters and banners and on little white buttons pinned to coat lapels or dress fronts. There were other buttons and pennants bearing the likeness of an elderly gentleman with a mild face disguised behind a martial white mustache; and thousands of male children born within the United States in 1898 grew up under the slight handicap of the christened name of Dewey. The Oklahoma Wigwam bristled with new words: Manila Bay⁠—Hobson⁠—Philippines. Throughout the Southwest sombreros suddenly became dust-colored army hats with broad, flat brims and peaked crowns. People who, if they had thought of Spain at all, saw it in the romantic terms of the early Southwest explorers⁠—Coronado, De Soto, Moscoso⁠—and, with admiration for these intrepid and mistaken seekers after gold, now were told that they must hate Spain and the Spanish and kill as many little brown men living in the place called the Philippines as possible. This was done as dutifully as could be, but with less than complete enthusiasm.

Rough Riders! That was another matter. Here was something that the Oklahoma country knew and understood⁠—tall, lean, hard young men who had practically been born with a horse under them and a gun in hand; riders, hunters, dead shots; sunburned, keen eyed, daredevil. Their uniforms, worn with a swagger, had about them a dashing something that the other regiments lacked. Their hat crowns were dented, not peaked, and the brims were turned romantically up at one side and caught with the insignia of the Regiment⁠—the crossed sabers. And their lieutenant-colonel and leader was that energetic, toothy young fellow who was making something of a stir in New York State⁠—Roosevelt, his name was. Theodore Roosevelt.

Osage was shaken by chills and fever; the hot spasms of patriotism, the cold rigors of virtue. One day the good wives of the community would have a meeting at which they arranged for a home-cooked supper, with coffee, to be served to this or that regiment. Their features would soften with sentiment, their bosoms heave with patriotic pride. Next day, eyes narrowed, lips forming a straight line, they met to condemn Dixie Lee and her ilk, and to discuss ways and means for ridding the town of their contaminating presence.

The existence of this woman in the town had always been a festering sore to Sabra. Dixie Lee, the saloons that still lined Pawhuska Avenue, the gambling houses, all the paraphernalia of vice, were anathema lumped together in the minds of the redoubtable sunbonnets. A new political group had sprung up, ostensibly on the platform of civic virtue. In reality they were tired of seeing all the plums dropping into the laps of the early-day crew, made up of such strong-arm politicians as had been the first to shake the Territorial tree. In the righteous ladies of the Wyatt type they saw their chance for a strong ally. The saloons and the gamblers were too firmly intrenched to be moved by the reform element: they had tried it. Sabra had been urged to help. In the columns of the Oklahoma Wigwam she had unwisely essayed to conduct a campaign against Wick Mongold’s saloon, in whose particularly lawless back room it was known that the young boys of the community were in the habit of meeting. With Cim’s future in mind (and as an excuse) she wrote a stirring editorial in which she said bold things about shielding criminals and protecting the Flower of our Southwest’s Manhood. Two days later a passerby at seven in the morning saw brisk flames licking the foundations of the Oklahoma Wigwam office and the Cravat dwelling behind it. The whole had been nicely soaked in coal oil. But for the chance passerby, Sabra, Cim, Donna, newspaper plant, and house would have been charred beyond recognition. As the town fire protection was still of the scantiest, the alarmed neighbors beat out the fire with blankets wet in the nearby horse trough. It was learned that a Mexican had been hired to do the job for twenty dollars. Mongold skipped out.

After an interval reform turned its attention to that always vulnerable objective known then as the Scarlet Woman. Here it met with less opposition. Almost five years after Yancey’s departure it looked very much as though Dixie Lee and her fine brick house and her plumed and parasoled girls would soon be routed by the spiritual broom sticks and sunbonnets of the purity squad.

It was characteristic that at this moment in Osage’s history, when the town was torn, now by martial music, now by the call of civic virtue, Yancey Cravat should have chosen to come riding home; and not that alone, but to come riding home in full panoply of war, more dashing, more romantic, more mysterious than on the day he had ridden away.

It was eight o’clock in the morning. The case of Dixie Lee (on the charge of disorderly conduct) was due to come up at ten in the local court. Sabra had been at her desk in the Wigwam office since seven. One ear was cocked for the sounds that came from the house; the other was intent on Jesse Rickey’s erratic comings and goings in the printing shop just next the office.

“Cim! Cim Cravat! Will you stop teasing Donna and eat your breakfast. Miss Swisher’s report said you were late three times last month, and all because you dawdle while you dress, you dawdle over breakfast, you dawdle⁠—Jesse! Oh, Jesse! The Dixie Lee case will be our news lead. Hold two columns open.⁠ ⁠…”

Horse’s hoofs at a gallop, stopping spectacularly in front of the Wigwam office in a whirl of dust. A quick, light step. That step! But it couldn’t be. Sabra sprang to her feet, one hand at her breast, one hand on the desk, to steady herself. He strode into the office. For five years she had pictured him returning to her in dramatic fashion; in his white sombrero, his Prince Albert, his high-heeled boots. For five years she had known what she would say, how she would look at him, in what manner she would conduct herself toward him⁠—toward this man who had deserted her without a word, cruelly. In an instant, at sight of him, all this left her mind, her consciousness. She was in his arms with an inarticulate cry, she was weeping, her arms were about him, the buttons of his uniform crushed her breasts. His uniform. She realized then, without surprise, that he was in the uniform of the Oklahoma Rough Riders.

It is no use saying to a man who has been gone for five years, “Where have you been?” Besides, there was not time. Next morning he was on his way to the Philippines. It was not until he had gone that she realized her failure actually to put this question that had been haunting her for half a decade.

Cim and Donna took him for granted, as children do. So did Jesse Rickey, with his mind of a child. For that matter, Yancey took his own return for granted. His manner was nonchalant, his spirits high, his exuberance infectious. He set the pitch. There was about him nothing of the delinquent husband.

He now strode magnificently into the room where the children were at breakfast, snatched them up, kissed them. You would have thought he had been gone a week.

Donna was shy of him. “Your daughter’s a Venable, Mrs. Cravat,” he said, and turned to the boy. Cim, slender, graceful, taller than he seemed because of that trick of lowering his fine head and gazing at you from beneath his too-long lashes, reached almost to Yancey’s broad shoulders. But he had not Yancey’s heroic bulk, his vitality. The Cravat skull structure was contradicted by the narrow Venable face. The mouth was oversensitive, the hands and feet too exquisite, the smile almost girlish in its wistful sweetness. “ ‘Gods! How the son degenerates from the sire!’ ”

“Yancey!” cried Sabra in shocked protest. It was as though the five years had never been.

“Do you want to see my dog?” Cim asked.

“Have you got a pony?”

“Oh, no.”

“I’ll buy you one this afternoon. A pinto. Here. Look.”

He took from his pocket a little soft leathern pouch soiled and worn from much handling. It was laced through at the top with a bit of stout string. He loosed this, poured the bag’s contents onto the breakfast table; a little heap of shining yellow. The three stood looking at it. Cim touched it with one finger.

“What is it?”

Yancey scooped up a handful of it and let it trickle through his fingers. “That’s gold.” He turned to Sabra. “It’s all I’ve got to show, honey, for two years and more in Alaska.”

“Alaska!” she could only repeat, feebly. So that was it.

“I’m famished. What’s this? Bacon and eggs?” He reached for a slice of bread from the plate on the table, buttered it lavishly, clapped a strip of coldish bacon on top of that, and devoured it in eager bites. Sabra saw then, for the first time, that he was thinner; there were hollow shadows in the pockmarked cheeks; there was a scarcely perceptible sag to the massive shoulders. There was something about his hand. The forefinger of the right hand was gone. She felt suddenly faint, ill. She reeled a little and stumbled. As always, he sprang toward her. His lips were against her hair.

“Oh, God! How I’ve missed you, Sabra, sugar!”

“Yancey! The children!” It was the prim exclamation of a woman who had forgotten the pleasant ways of dalliance. Those five years had served to accentuate her spinsterish qualities; had made her more and more powerful; less human; had slowed the machinery of her emotional equipment. A man in the house. A possessive male, enfolding her in his arms; touching her hair, her throat with urgent fingers. She was embarrassed almost. Besides, this man had neglected her, deserted her, had left his children to get on as best they could. She shrugged herself free. Anger leaped within her. He was a stranger.

“Don’t touch me. You can’t come home like this⁠—after years⁠—after years⁠—”

“Ah, Penelope!”

She stared. “Who?”

“ ‘Strange lady, surely to thee above all woman kind the Olympians have given a heart that cannot be softened. No other woman in the world would harden her heart to stand thus aloof from her husband, who after travail and sore had come to her⁠ ⁠… to his own country.’ ”

“You and your miserable Milton!”

He looked only slightly surprised and did not correct her.

One by one, and then in groups and then in crowds, the neighbors and townspeople began to come in⁠—the Wyatts, Louis Hefner, Cass Peery, Mott Bixler, Ike Hawes, Grat Gotch, Doc Nisbett⁠—the local politicians, the storekeepers, their wives. They came out of curiosity, though they felt proper resentment toward this strange⁠—this baffling creature who had ridden carelessly away, leaving his wife and children to fend for themselves, and now had ridden as casually back again. They would have stayed away if they could, but his enchantment was too strong. Perhaps he represented, for them, the thing they fain would be or have. When Yancey, flouting responsibility and convention, rode away to be gone for mysterious years, a hundred men, bound by ties of work and wife and child, escaped in spirit with him; a hundred women, faithful wives and dutiful mothers, thought of Yancey as the elusive, the romantic, the desirable male.

Well, they would see how she had met it, and take their cue from her. A smart woman, Sabra Cravat. Throw him out, likely as not, and serve him right. But at sight of Yancey Cravat in his Rough Rider uniform of khaki, U.S.V. on the collar, the hat brim dashingly caught up on the left side with the insignia of crossed sabers, they were snared again in the mesh of his enchantment. The Rough Riders. Remember the Maine, to hell with Spain! There’ll Be a Hot Time in the Old Town Tonight. He became a figure symbolic of the war, of the Oklahoma country, of the Territory, of the Southwest⁠—impetuous, romantic, adventuring.

“Hi, Yancey! Well, say, where you been, you old son of a stampedin’ steer!”

“Howdy, Cimarron! Where at’s your white hat?”

“You and this Roosevelt get goin’ in this war, I guess the Spaniards’ll wish Columbus never been born.”

And Yancey, in return, “Hello, Clint! Howdy, Sam! Well, damn if it isn’t you, Grat! H’are you, Ike, you old hoss thief!”

The great figure towered even above these tall plainsmen; the fine eyes glowed; the mellifluous voice worked its magic. The renegade was a hero; the outcast had returned a conquerer.

Alaska. Oklahoma had not been so busy with its own growing pains that it had failed to hear of Alaska and the Gold Rush. “Alaska! Go on, you wasn’t never in Alaska! Heard you’d turned Injun. Heard you was buried up in Boot Hill along of the Doolins.”

He got out the little leather sack. While they gathered round him he poured out before their glistening eyes the shining yellow heap of that treasure with which the whole history of the Southwest was intertwined. Gold. The hills and the plains had been honeycombed for it; men had hungered and fought and parched for it; had died for it; had been killed for it; had sacrificed honor, home, happiness in the hope of finding it. And here was the precious yellow stuff from far-off Alaska trickling through Yancey Cravat’s slim white fingers.

“Damn it all, Yancey, some folks has all the luck.”

And so he stood, this Odysseus, and wove for them this new chapter in his saga. And they listened, and wondered, and believed and were stirred with envy and admiration and the longing for like adventure. He talked, he laughed, he gesticulated, he strode up and down, and they never missed the flirt of the Prince Albert coat tails, for there were brass buttons and patch pockets and gold embroidery and the glitter of crossed sabers to take their place.

“Luck! Call it luck, do you, Mott, to be frozen, starved, lost, snow-blinded! One whole winter shut up alone in a one-room cabin with the snow piled to the rooftop and no living soul to talk to for months. Luck to have your pardner that you trusted cheat you out of your claim and rob you of your gold in the bargain! All but this handful. I was going to see Sabra covered in gold like an Aztec princess.”

The eyes of listening Osage swung to the prim blue serge figure of the cheated Aztec princess, encountered the level gaze, the unsmiling lips; swung back again hastily to the dashing, the martial figure of the lately despised wanderer.

A tale of another world; a story of a land so remote from the brilliant scarlet and orange of the burning Southwest country that the very sound of the words he used in describing it fell with a strange cadence on the ears of the eager listeners. And as always when Yancey was telling the tale, he filled his hearers with a longing for the place he described; a longing that was like a nostalgia for something they had never known. Well, folks, winters at fifty below zero. Two hours of bitter winter sunshine, and then blackness. Long splendid summer days in May and June, with twenty hours of sunshine and four hours of twilight. Sabra, listening with the others, found this new vocabulary as strange, as terrifying, as the jargon of the Oklahoma country had been to her when first she had encountered it years ago.

Yukon. Chilkoot Pass. Skagway. Kuskokwim. Klondike. Moose. Caribou. Huskies. Sledges. Nome. Sitka. Blizzards. Snow blindness. Frozen fingers. Pemmican. Cold. Cold. Cold. Gold. Gold. Gold. To the fascinated figures crowded into the stuffy rooms of this little frame house squatting on the sunbaked Oklahoma prairie he brought, by the magic of his voice and his eloquence, the relentless movement of the glaciers, the black menace of icy rivers, the waste plains of blinding, treacherous snow. Two years of this, he said; and looked ruefully down at the stump that had been his famous trigger finger.