It was a question whether the owner and dealer would be willing to sacrifice any portion of Sunday’s brisk trade for the furtherance of the Lord’s business, even though the goodwill of the townspeople were to be gained thereby. After all, he might argue, it was not this element that kept a faro game going.
Yancey, because of his professional position and his well-known power to charm, was delegated to confer with that citizen du monde, Mr. Grat Gotch, better known as Arkansas Grat, proprietor and dealer of the gambling tent. Mr. Gotch was in. Not only that, it being midafternoon and a slack hour for business, he was superintending the placing of a work of art recently purchased by him and just arrived via the Missouri, Kansas & Texas Railroad, familiarly known throughout the Territory, by a natural process of elision, as the Katy. The newly acquired treasure was a picture, done in oils, of a robust and very pink lady of full habit who, apparently having expended all her energy upon the arrangement of her elaborate and highly modern coiffure, was temporarily unable to proceed further with her toilette until fortified by refreshment and repose. To this end she had flung herself in a complete state of nature (barring the hairpins) down on a convenient couch where she lolled at ease, her lips parted to receive a pair of ripe red cherries which she held dangling between thumb and forefinger of a hand whose little finger was elegantly crooked. Her eyes were not on the cherries but on the beholder, of whom she was, plainly, all unaware.
As a tent naturally boasts no walls, it was impossible properly to hang this objet d’art, and it was being suspended by guy ropes from the tent top so that it dangled just in front of the bar, as it properly should, flanked by mirrors. Arkansas Grat had pursued his profession in the bonanza days of Denver, San Francisco, White Oaks, and Dodge City. In these precocious cities his artistic tastes had been developed. He knew that the eye, as well as the gullet, must have refreshment in hours of ease. A little plump man, Grat, with a round and smiling countenance, strangely unlined. He looked like an old baby.
He now, at Yancey’s entrance, called his attention to the newly acquired treasure, expressing at the same time his admiration for it.
“Ain’t she,” he demanded, “a lalapaloosa!”
Yancey surveyed the bright pink lady. He had come to ask a favor of Grat, but he would not sell his artistic soul for this mess of pottage.
“It’s a calumny,” he announced, with some vehemence, “on nature’s fairest achievement.”
The word was not contained in Mr. Gotch’s vocabulary. He mistook Yancey’s warmth of tone for enthusiasm. “That’s right,” he agreed, in triumphant satisfaction. “I was sayin’ to the boys only this morning when she come.”
Yancey ordered his drink and invited Gotch to have one with him. Arkansas Grat was not one of those abstemious characters frequently found in fiction who, being dispensers of alcoholic refreshment, never sample their own wares. Over the whisky Yancey put his case.
“Listen, Grat. The women folks have got it into their heads that there ought to be a church service Sunday, now that Osage is over a month old, with ten thousand inhabitants, and probably the metropolis of the great Southwest in another ten years. They want the thing done right. I’m chosen to conduct the meeting. There’s no building in town big enough to hold the crowd. What I want to know is, can we have the loan of your tent here for about an hour Sunday morning for the purpose of divine worship?”
Arkansas Grat set down his glass, made a sweeping gesture with his right hand that included faro tables, lolling cherry eater, bar, piano, and all else that the tent contained.
“Divine worship! Why, hell, yes, Yancey,” he replied, graciously.
They went to work early Sunday. So as not to mar the numbers they covered the faro and roulette tables with twenty-two-foot boards. Such of the prospective congregation as came early would use these for seats. There were, too, a few rude benches on which the players usually sat. The remainder must stand. The meeting was to be from eleven to twelve. As early as nine o’clock they began to arrive. They seemed to spring out of the earth. The horizon spewed up little hurrying figures, black against the brilliant Oklahoma sky. They came from lonely cabins, dugouts, tents. Ox carts, wagons, buggies, horsemen, mule teams. They were starving for company. It wasn’t religion they sought; it was the stimulation that comes of meeting their kind in the mass. They brought picnic baskets and boxes prepared for a holiday. The cowboys were gorgeous. They wore their pink and purple shirts, their five-gallon hats, their gayest neckerchiefs, their most ornate high-heeled boots. They rode up and down before the big tent, their horses curveting and stepping high. “Whoa there! Don’t crowd the cattle! … You figgerin’ on gettin’ saved, Quince? … Yessir, I’m here for the circus and I’m stayin’ for the concert and grand olio besides. … Say, you’re too late, son. Good whisky and bad women has ruined you.”
The town seemed alive with blanketed Indians.
They squatted in the shade of the wooden shacks. They walked in from their nearby reservations, or rode their mangy horses, or
