Sabra had always taken water for granted, like air and sunshine. It was one of the elements. It was simply there. But since leaving Wichita there was always talk of water. Yancey, on the prairie journey, made it the basis of their camping site.
“Oh, barrels,” she now repeated, trying to appear intensely practical. “Well, let—me—see. There’s cooking, of course, and all the cleaning around the house, and drinking, and bathing. I always give Cim his bath in the evening if I can. You wouldn’t believe how dirty that child gets by the end of the day. His knees—oh, yes—well, I should think ten barrels a day would be enough.”
“Ten barrels,” said Doc Nesbitt, in a flat voice utterly devoid of expression, “a day.”
“I should think that would be ample,” Sabra repeated, judiciously.
Doc Nisbett now regarded Sabra with a look of active dislike. Then he did a strange thing. He walked across the little porch, shut the front door, locked it, put the key in his pocket, seated himself in the chair and tilted it up against the wall at exactly the angle at which they had come upon him.
Sabra stood there. Seeing her, it would have been almost impossible to believe that anyone so bravely decked out in silk and plumes and pink roses could present a figure so bewildered, so disconsolate, so defeated. Literally, she did not know what to do. She had met and surmounted many strange experiences in these last ten days. But she had been born of generations of women to whom men had paid homage. Perhaps in all her life she had never encountered the slightest discourtesy in a man, much less this abysmal boorishness.
She looked at him, her face white, shocked. She looked up, in embarrassment, at the glaring steel sky; she looked down at the blinding red dust, she looked helplessly in the direction that Yancey had so blithely taken. She glanced again at Doc Nisbett, propped so woodenly against the wall of his hateful house. His eye was as cold, as glassy, as unseeing as the eye of a dead fish.
She should, of course, have gone straight up to him and said, “Do you mean that ten barrels are too much? I didn’t know. I am new to all this. Whatever you say.”
But she was young, and inexperienced, and full of pride, and terribly offended. So without another word she turned and marched down the dusty street. Her head in its plumed hat was high. On either cheek burned a scarlet patch. Her eyes, in her effort to keep back the hot tears, were blazing, liquid, enormous. She saw nothing. From the saloons that lined the street there came, even at this hour of the morning, yelps and the sound of music.
And then a fearful thing happened to Sabra Cravat.
Down the street toward her came a galloping cowboy in sombrero and chaps and six-shooters. Sabra was used to such as he. Full of her troubles, she was scarcely aware that she had glanced at him. How could she know that he was just up from the plains of Texas, that this raw town represented for him the height of effete civilization, that he was, in celebration of his arrival, already howling drunk as befits a cowboy just off the range, and that never before in his life (he was barely twenty-three) had he seen a creature so gorgeous as this which now came toward him, all silk, plumes, roses, jet, scarlet cheeks, and great liquid eyes. Up he galloped; stared, wheeled, flung himself off his horse, ran toward her in his high-heeled cowboy boots (strangely enough all that Sabra could recall about him afterward were those boots as he came toward her. The gay tops were of shiny leather, and alternating around them was the figure of a dancing girl with flaring skirts, and a poker hand of cards which later she learned was a royal flush, all handsomely embossed on the patent leather cuffs of the boots). She realized, in a flash of pure terror, that he was making straight for her. She stood, petrified. He came nearer, he stood before her, he threw his arms like steel bands about her, he kissed her full on the lips, released her, leaped on his horse, and was off with a bloodcurdling yelp and a clatter and a whirl of dust.
She thought that she was going to be sick, there, in the road. Then she began to run, fleetly but awkwardly, in her flounced and bustled silken skirts. Hefner’s Furniture Store. Hefner’s Furniture Store. Hefner’s Furniture Store. She saw it at last. Hefner’s Furniture and Undertaking Parlors. A crude wooden shack, like the rest. She ran in. Yancey. Yancey! Everything looked dim to her bewildered and sun-blinded eyes. Someone came toward her. A large moist man, in shirtsleeves. Hefner, probably. My husband. My husband, Yancey Cravat. No. Sorry, ma’am. Ain’t been in, I know of. Anything I can do for you, ma’am?
She blurted it, hysterically. “A man—a cowboy—I was walking along—he jumped off his horse—he—I never saw him b—he kissed me—there on the street in broad daylight—a cowboy—he kissed—”
“Why, ma’am, don’t take on so. Young fella off the range, prob’ly. Up from Texas, more’n likely, and never did see a gorgeous critter like yourself, if you’ll pardon my mentioning it.”
Her voice rose in her hysteria. “You don’t understand! He kissed me. He k-k-k-k—” racking sobs.
“Now, now, lady. He was drunk, and you kind of went to his head. He’ll ride back to Texas, and you’ll be none the worse for it.”
At this calloused viewpoint of a tragedy she broke down completely and buried her head on her folded arms atop the object nearest at hand. Her slim body shook with her sobs. Her tears flowed. She cried aloud like a child.
But at that a plaintive but firm note of protest entered Mr. Hefner’s voice.
“Excuse me, ma’am, but that’s velvet you’re
