They passed through the town of Osage in their brilliant striped blankets, sometimes walking, sometimes on sorry nags, sometimes in rickety wagons laden with pots, poles, rags, papooses, hounds. The townspeople hastily removed such articles as might please the pilfering fancy.
Sabra picked up the proof sheet, still damp from the press, and walked into Yancey’s office. Her face was white, set.
“You’re going to run this, Yancey?”
“Yes.”
“You’ll never be Governor of the Territory.”
“Never.”
She stood a moment, her face working. She crushed the galley proof in her hand so that her knuckles stood out, white.
“I’ve forgiven you many, many things, God knows, in the last ten years. I’ll never forgive you for this. Never.”
“Yes, you will, honey. Never is a long time. Not while I’m alive, maybe. But some day, a long time from now—though not so very long, maybe—you’ll be able to turn back to the old files of the Oklahoma Wigwam and lift this editorial of mine right out of it, word for word, and run it as your own.”
“Never. … Donna … Cim …”
“I can’t live my children’s lives for them, Sabra, honey. They’ve got to live their own. I believe what I believe. This town is rotten—the Territory—the whole country. Rotten.”
“You’re a fine one to say what is or isn’t rotten. You with your whisky and your Indians and your women. I despise you. So does everyone in the town—in the Territory.”
“ ‘A prophet is not without honor, save in his own country and in his own home.’ ” A trifle sonorously.
She never really knew whether he had done this thing with the very purpose of making his governorship impossible. It was like him.
Curiously enough, the editorial, while it maddened the white population of the Territory, gained the paper many readers. The Wigwam prospered. Osage blossomed. The town was still rough, crude, wide open, even dangerous. But it began to take on an aspect of permanence. It was no longer a camp; it was a town. It began to build schools, churches, halls. Arkansas Grat’s gambling tent had long ago been replaced by a solid wooden structure, just as gambling terms of the West and the Southwest had slowly been incorporated into the language of daily use. I’m keeping cases on him … standing pat … bluffing … bucking the tiger. Terms filched from the gaming table; poker and faro and keno.
Sol Levy’s store—the Levy Mercantile Company—had two waxen ladies in the window, their features only slightly affected by the burning Southwest sun. Yancey boomed Sol Levy for mayor of Osage, but he never had a chance. It was remarkable how the Oklahoma Wigwam persisted, though its position in most public questions was violently unpopular. Perhaps it, like Yancey, had a vitality and a charm that no one could withstand.
Although Sol Levy was still the town Jew, respected, prosperous, the town had never quite absorbed this Oriental. A citizen of years’ standing, he still was a stranger. He mingled little with his fellow townsmen outside business hours. He lived lonesomely at the Bixby House and ate the notoriously bad meals served by Mrs. Bixby. He was shy of the town women though the Women of the Town found him kindly, passionate, and generous. The business men liked him. They put him on committees. Occasionally Sabra or some other woman who knew him well enough would say, half playfully, half seriously, “Why don’t you get married, Sol? A nice fellow like you. You’d make some girl happy.”
Sometimes he thought vaguely of going to Wichita or Kansas City or even Chicago to meet some nice Jewish girl there, but he never did. It never entered his head to marry a Gentile. The social life of the town was almost unknown to him. Sometimes if a big local organization—the Elks, the Odd Fellows, the Sons of the Southwest—gave a benefit dance, you would glimpse him briefly, in the early part of the evening, standing shyly against the wall or leaning half hidden in the doorway, a darkling, remote, curiously Oriental figure in the midst of these robust red-faced plainsmen and ex-cowmen.
“Come on, Sol, mix in! Grab off one of the girls and get to dancin’, why don’t you? What you scairt of?” But Sol remained aloof. He regarded the hot, sweaty, shouting dancers with a kind of interested bewilderment and wonder, much as the dancers themselves sometimes watched the Indians during one of the Festival Dances on the outlying reservations. On occasion he made himself politely agreeable to a stout matron well past middle age. They looked up at his tragic dark eyes; they noticed his slim ivory hand as it passed them a plate of cake or a cup of coffee. “He’s real nice when you get to know him,” they said. “For a Jew, that is.”
Between him and Yancey there existed a deep sympathy and understanding. Yancey campaigned for Sol Levy in the mayoralty race—if a thing so one-sided could be called a race. The Wigwam extolled him.
“Sol Levy, the genial proprietor of the Levy Mercantile Company, is the Wigwam’s candidate for mayor. It behooves the people of Osage to do honor to one of its pioneer citizens whose career, since its early days, has been marked by industry, prosperity, generosity. He comes of a race of dreamers and doers. …”
“Why, the very idea!” snorted the redoubtable virago, Mrs. Tracy Wyatt, whose husband was the opposing candidate. “A Jew for mayor of Osage! They’ll be having an Indian mayor next. Mr. Wyatt’s folks are real Americans. They helped settle Arkansas. And as for me, why, I can trace my ancestry right back to William Whipple, who was one of the signers of the Declaration of Independence.”
Sol Levy never had a chance for public honor. He, in fact, did practically nothing to further his own possible election. He seemed to regard the whole matter with a remoteness slightly tinged with ironic humor. Yancey dropped into Sol’s store to bring him this latest pronouncement of the bristling Mrs. Wyatt. Sol
