Cimarron

fellow citizens, I have been called on to conduct this opening meeting of the Osage First Methodist, Episcopal, Lutheran, Presbyterian, Congregational, Baptist, Catholic, Unitarian Church. In the course of my career as a lawyer and an editor I have been required to speak on varied occasions and on many subjects. I have spoken in defense of my country and in criticism of it; I have been called on to defend and to convict horse thieves, harlots, murderers, samples of which professions could doubtless be found in any large gathering in the Indian Territory today. I name no names. I point no finger. Whether for good or for evil, the fact remains that any man or woman, for whatever purpose, found in this great Oklahoma country today is here because in his or her veins, actuated by motives lofty or base, there is the spirit of adventure. I ask with Shakespeare, ‘Why should a man, whose blood is warm within, sit like his grandsire cut in alabaster?’ Though I know the Bible from cover to cover, and while many of its passages and precepts are graven on my heart and in my memory, this, fellow citizens of Osage, is the first time that I have been required to speak the Word of God in His Temple.” He glanced around the gaudy, glaring tent. “For any shelter, however sordid, however humble⁠—no offense, Grat⁠—becomes, while His Word is spoken within it, His Temple. Suppose, then, that we unite in spirit by uniting in song. We have, you will notice, no hymn books. We will therefore open this auspicious occasion in the brief but inevitably glorious history of the city of Osage by singing⁠—uh⁠—what do you all know boys, anyway?”

There was a moment’s slightly embarrassing pause. The hard-bitten faces of the motley congregation stared blankly up at Yancey. Yancey, self-possessed, vibrant, looked warmly down on them. He raised an arm in encouragement. “Come on, boys! Name it! Any suggestions, ladies and gentlemen?”

“How about ‘Who Were You At Home?’ just for a starter,” called out a voice belonging to a man with a shining dome-shaped bald head and a flowing silky beard, reddish in color. He was standing near the rear of the tent. It was Shanghai Wiley, up from Texas; owner of more than one hundred thousand longhorn cattle and of the Rancho Palacios, on Tres Palacios Creek. He was the most famous cattle singer in the whole Southwest, besides being one of its richest cattle and land owners. Possessed of a remarkably high sweet tenor voice that just escaped being a clear soprano, he had been known to quiet a whole herd of restless cattle on the verge of a mad stampede. It was an art he had learned when a cowboy on the range. Many cowboys had it, but none possessed the magic soothing quality of Shanghai’s voice. It was reputed to have in it the sorcery of the superhuman. It was told of him that in a milling herd, their nostrils distended, their flanks heaving, he had been seen to leap from the back of one maddened steer to another, traveling the moving mass that was like a shifting sea, singing to them in his magic tenor, stopping them just as they were about to plunge into the Rio Grande.

Yancey acknowledged this suggestion with a grateful wave of the hand. “That’s right, Shanghai. Thanks for speaking up. A good song, though a little secular for the occasion, perhaps. But anyway, you all know it, and that’s the main thing. Kindly favor us with the pitch, will you, Shanghai? Will the ladies kindly join in with their sweet soprano voices? Now, then, all together!”

It was a well-known song in the Territory where, on coming to this new and wild country, so many settlers with a checkered⁠—not to say plaid⁠—past had found it convenient to change their names.

The congregation took it up feelingly, almost solemnly:

“Who were you at home?
Who were you at home?
God alone remembers
Ere you first began to roam.
Jack or Jo or Bill or Pete,
Anyone you chance to meet,
Sure to hit it just as neat,
Oh, who were you at home?”

“Now, all together! Again!”

Somebody in the rear suddenly produced an accordion, and from the crowd perched on the saloon bar came the sound of a jew’s-harp. The chorus now swelled with all the fervor of song’s ecstasy. They might have been singing “Onward, Christian Soldiers.” Through it all, high and clear, sounded Shanghai Wiley’s piercing tenor, like brasses in a band, and sustaining it from the roulette table platform the cello of Yancey Cravat’s powerful, rich baritone.

“Oh, who were you at home?
Who were you at home?”

They had not risen to sing for the reason that most of the congregation was already standing, and the few who were seated were afraid to rise for fear that their seats would be snatched from under them.

Sabra had joined in the singing, not at first, but later, timidly. It had seemed, somehow, to relieve her. This, she thought, was better. Perhaps, after all, this new community was about to make a proper beginning. Yancey, she thought, looked terribly handsome, towering there on the roulette table, his eyes alight, his slim foot, in its shining boot, keeping time to the music. She began to feel prim and good and settled at last.

“Now, then,” said Yancey, all aglow, “the next thing in order is to take up the collection before the sermon.”

“What for?” yelled Pete De Vargas.

Yancey fixed him with a pitying gray eye. “Because, you Spanish infidel, part of a church service is taking up a collection. Southwest Davis, I appoint you to work this side of the house. Ike Bixler, you take that side. The collection, fellow citizens, ladies and gentlemen⁠—and you, too, Pete⁠—is for the new church organ.”

“Why, hell, Yancey, we ain’t even got a church!” bawled Pete again, aggrieved.

“That’s all right, Pete. Once we buy an organ we’ll have to build a church to put it in. Stands to reason. Members of