She had meant, at the last, to find occasion to inform her mother and the minor Venables that it was she who ironed Yancey’s fine white linen shirts. But she was not a spiteful woman. And she reflected that this might be construed as a criticism of her husband.
So, gladly, eagerly, Sabra went back to the wilds she once had despised.
XIII
Before the Katy pulled in at the Osage station (the railroad actually had been extended, true to Dixie Lee’s prediction, from Wahoo to Osage and beyond) Sabra’s eyes were searching the glaring wooden platform. Len Orson, the chatty and accommodating conductor, took Donna in his arms and stood with her at the foot of the car steps. His heavy gold plated watch chain, as broad as a cable, with its concomitant Masonic charm, elk’s tooth, gold pencil, and peach pit carved in the likeness of an ape, still held Donna enthralled, though she had snatched at it whenever he passed their seat or stood to relate the gossip of the Territory to Sabra. She was hungry for news, and Len was a notorious fishwife. Now, as she stepped off the train, Sabra’s face wore that look of radiant expectancy characteristic of the returned traveler, confident of a welcome.
“Well, I guess I know somebody’ll be pretty sorry to see you,” Len said, archly. He looked about for powerful waiting arms in which to deposit Donna. The engine bell clanged, the whistle tooted. His kindly and inquisitive blue eyes swept the station platform. He plumped Donna, perforce, into Sabra’s strangely slack arms, and planted one foot, in its square-toed easy black shoe, onto the car step in the nick of time, the other leg swinging out behind him as the train moved on.
Yancey was not there. The stark red-painted wooden station sat blistering in the sun. Yancey simply was not there. Not only that, the station platform, usually graced by a score of vacuous faces and limp figures gathered to witness the exciting event of the Katy’s daily arrival and departure, was bare. Even the familiar figure of Pat Leary, the station agent, who always ran out in his shirtsleeves to wrestle such freight or express as was left on the Osage platform, could not be seen. From within the ticket office came the sound of his telegraph instrument. Its click was busy; was frantic. It chattered unceasingly in the hot afternoon stillness.
Sabra felt sick and weak. Something was wrong. She left her boxes and bags and parcels on the platform where Len Orsen had obligingly dumped them. Half an hour before their arrival in Osage she had entrusted the children to the care of a fellow passenger while she had gone to the washroom to put on one of the new dresses made in Wichita and bearing the style cachet of Kansas City: green, with cream colored ruchings at the throat and wrists, and a leghorn hat with pink roses. She had anticipated the look in Yancey’s gray eyes at sight of it. She had made the children spotless and threatened them with dire things if they sullied their splendor before their father should see them.
And now he was not there.
With Donna in her arms and Cim at her heels she hurried toward the sound of the clicking. And as she went her eyes still scanned the dusty red road that led to the station, for sight of a great figure in a white sombrero, its coat tails swooping as it came.
She peered in at the station window. Pat Leary was bent over his telegraph key. A smart tight little Irishman who had come to the Territory with the railroad section crew when the Katy was being built. Station agent now, and studying law at night.
“Mr. Leary! Mr. Leary! Have you seen Yancey?” He looked up at her absently, his hand still on the key. Click … click … clickclickclickety—clicketyclickclick.
“Wha’ say?”
“I’m Mrs. Cravat. I just got off the Katy. Where’s my husband? Where’s Yancey?”
He clicked on a moment longer; then wiped his wet forehead with his forearm protected by the black sateen sleevelet. “Ain’t you heard?”
“No,” whispered Sabra, with stiff lips that seemed no part of her. Then, in a voice rising to a scream, “No! No! No! What? Is he dead?”
The Irishman came over to her then, as she crouched at the window. “Oh, no, ma’am. Yancey’s all right. He ain’t hurt to speak of. Just a nick in the arm—and left arm at that.”
“Oh, my God!”
“Don’t take on. You goin’ to faint or—?”
“No. Tell me.”
“I been so busy. … Yancey got the Kid, you know. Killed him. The whole town’s gone crazy. Pitched battle right there on Pawhuska Avenue in front of the bank, and bodies layin’ around like a battlefield. I’m sending it out. I ain’t got much time, but I’ll give you an idea. Biggest thing that’s happened in the history of the Territory—or the whole Southwest, for that matter. Shouldn’t wonder if they’d make Yancey President. Governor, anyway. Seems Yancey was out hunting up in the Hills last Thursday—”
“Thursday! But that’s the day the paper comes out.”
“Well, the Wigwam ain’t been so regular since you been away.” She allowed that to pass without comment. “Up in the Hills he stumbles on Doc Valliant, drunk, but not so drunk he don’t recognize Yancey. Funny thing about Doc Valliant. He can be drunker’n a fool, but one part of his brain stays clear
