She longed with unutterable longing, not for the sweet security of her bed back in Wichita—that seemed unreal now—but for those nights in the wagon on the prairie with no sound but the rustle of the scrub oaks, the occasional stamp of horses’ hoofs on dry clay, the rippling of a nearby stream. She looked at her little gold watch, all engraved with a bird and a branch and a waterfall and a church spire. It was only nine.
It was midnight when Yancey came in. She sat up in bed in her high-necked, long-sleeved nightgown. Her eyes, in her white face, were two black holes burned in a piece of paper.
“What was it? What was it?”
“What was what? Why aren’t you asleep, sugar?”
“Those shots. And the screaming. And the men hollering.”
“Shots?” He was unstrapping his broad leather belt with its twin six-shooters whose menacing heads peered just above their holsters. He wore it always now. It came, in time, to represent for her a sinister symbol of all the terrors, all the perils that lay waiting for them in this new existence. “Why, sugar, I don’t recollect hearing any—Oh—that!” He threw back his great head and laughed. “That was just a cowboy, feeling high, shooting out the lights over in Strap Turket’s saloon. On his way home and having a little fun with the boys. Scare you, did it?”
He came over to her, put a hand on her shoulder. She shrugged away from him, furious. She pressed her hand frantically to her forehead. It was cold and wet. She was panting a little. “I won’t bring my boy up in a town like this. I won’t. I’m going back. I’m going back home, I tell you.”
“Wait till morning, anyhow, won’t you, honey?” he said, and took her in his arms.
Next morning was, somehow, magically, next morning, with the terrors of the night vanished quite. The sun was shining. For a moment Sabra had the illusion that she was again at home in her own bed at Wichita. Then she realized that this was because she had been awakened by a familiar sound. It was the sound of Isaiah’s voice somewhere below in the dusty yard. He was polishing Yancey’s boots, spitting on them industriously and singing as he rubbed. His husky sweet voice came up to her as she lay there.
“Lis’en to de lambs, all a-cryin’
Lis’en to de lambs, all a-cryin’
Lis’en to de lambs, all a-cryin’
Ah wanta go to heab’n when ah die.
Come on, sister, wid yo’ ups an’ downs,
Wanta go to heab’n when ah die,
De angels waitin’ fo’ to gib yo’ a crown,
Wanta go to heab’n when ah die.”
Lugubrious though the words were, Sabra knew he was utterly happy.
There was much to be done—a dwelling to be got somehow—a place in which to house the newspaper plant. If necessary, Yancey said, they could live in the rear and set up the printing and law office in the front. Almost everyone who conducted a business in the town did this. “Houses are mighty scarce,” Yancey said, making a great masculine snorting and snuffling at the wash bowl as they dressed. “It’s take what you can get or live in a tent. I heard last night that Doc Nisbett’s got a good house. Five rooms, and he’ll furnish us with water. There’s a dozen families after it, and Doc’s as independent as a hog on ice.”
Sabra rather welcomed this idea of combining office and home. She would be near him all day. As soon as breakfast was over she and Yancey fared forth, leaving Cim in Isaiah’s care (under many and detailed instructions from Sabra). She had put on her black grosgrain silk with the three box pleats on each side, trimmed with the passementerie and jet buttons—somewhat wrinkled from its long stay in the trunk—and her modish hat with the five ostrich plumes and the pink roses that had cost twelve dollars and fifty cents in Wichita, and her best black buttoned kid shoes and her black kid gloves. In the tightly basqued black silk she was nineteen inches round the waist and very proud of it. Her dark eyes, slightly shadowed now, what with weariness, excitement, and loss of sleep, were enormous beneath the brim of the romantic black plumed hat.
Yancey, seeing her thus attired in splendor after almost a fortnight of the gray cheviot, struck an attitude of dazzlement. Blank verse leaped to his ready lips. “ ‘But who is this, what thing of sea or land—female of sex it seems—that so bedeck’d, ornate, and gay, comes this way sailing, like a stately ship of Tarsus, bound for th’ isles of Javan or Gadire, with all her bravery on. …’ ”
“Oh, now, Yancey, don’t talk nonsense. It’s only my second-best black grosgrain.”
“You’re right, my darling. Even Milton has no words for such beauty.”
“Do hurry, dear. We’ve so much to do.”
With his curling locks, his broad-brimmed white sombrero, his high-heeled boots, his fine white shirt, the ample skirts of his Prince Albert spreading and swooping with the vigor of his movements, Yancey was an equally striking figure, though perhaps not so unusual as she, in this day and place.
The little haphazard town lay broiling in the summer sun. The sky that Sabra was to know so well hung flat and glaring, a gray-blue metal disk, over the prairie.
“Well, Sabra honey, this isn’t so bad!” exclaimed Yancey, and looked about him largely. “ ‘Now Morning saffron-robed arose from the streams of Ocean to bring light to gods and men.’ ”
“Ocean!” echoed
