“Sabra! What is this! What are you doing running around at this hour of the night?”
Sol Levy, sitting there in the Oklahoma night, a lonely little figure, sleepless, brooding. He had never before called her Sabra.
“Sol! Sol! Cim’s out at the Reservation. Something’s happened. I know. I feel it.”
He did not scoff at this, as most men would. He seemed to understand her fear, her premonition, and to accept it with Oriental fatalism.
“What do you want to do?”
“Take me out there. Hitch up and drive me out there. Cim’s got the buggy. He went out with her.”
He did not ask where Yancey was. He asked nothing. “Go home,” he said. “Wait on your porch. I will get my rig and come for you. They shouldn’t see you. Do you want me to go home with you first?”
“No, no. I’m not afraid. I’m not afraid of anything.”
Sol Levy had two very fine horses; really good animals. They won the races regularly at the local fairs. The little light rig with its smart rubber tires whirled behind them over the red dusty Oklahoma prairie roads. His slim hands were not expert with horses. He was a nervous, jerky driver. They left the town behind them, were swallowed up by the prairie. The Reservation was a full two hours distant. Sabra took off her hat. The night air rushed against her face, cooling it. A half hour.
“Let me drive, will you, Sol?”
Without a word he entrusted the reins to her strong, accustomed hands; the hands of one who had come of generations of horse lovers. The animals sensed the change. They leaped ahead in the darkness. The light buggy rocked and bounced over the rutted roads. Sol asked her nothing. They drove in silence. Presently she began to talk, disjointedly. Yet, surprisingly enough, he seemed intuitively to understand—to fill in the gaps with his own instinct and imagination. What she said sounded absurd; he knew it for tragedy.
“… pineapple and marshmallow salad … hates that kind of thing … queer for a long time … moody … drinking … Ruby Big Elk … Cim … his face … peyote … Mescal Ceremony … Osage … white doeskin dress … Theresa Jump …”
“I see,” said Sol Levy, soothingly. “Sure. Well, sure. The boy will be all right. The boy will be all right. Well, Yancey—you know how he is—Yancey. Do you think he has gone away again? I mean—gone?”
“I don’t know.” Then, “Yes.”
Three o’clock and after. They came in sight of the Osage Reservation, a scattered settlement of sterile farms and wooden shanties sprawled on the bare unlovely prairie.
Darkness. The utter darkness that precedes the dawn. Stillness, except for the thud of their horses’ flying hoofs and the whir and bump of the buggy wheels. Then, as Sabra slowed them down, uncertainly, undecided as to what they might best do, they heard it—the weird wavering cadences of the Mescal song, the hail-like clatter of the gourd rattle shaken vigorously and monotonously; and beneath and above and around it all, reverberating, haunting, ominous, the beat of the buckskin drum. Through the still, cool night air of the prairie it came to them—to the overwrought woman, and to the little peaceful Jew. Barbaric sounds, wild, sinister. She pulled up the horses. They sat a moment, listening. Listening. The drum. The savage sound of the drum.
Fear was gnawing at her vitals, wringing her very heart with clammy fingers, yet Sabra spoke matter-of-factly, her voice holding a hard little note because she was trying to keep it from quavering.
“He’ll be in the Mescal teepee next to Big Elk’s House. They built it there when he was Chief, and they still use it regularly for the ceremony. Yancey showed it to me once, when he drove me out here.” She stopped and cleared her throat, for her voice was suddenly husky. She wondered, confusedly, if that sound was the drum or her own heart beating. She gave a little cracked laugh that bordered on hysteria. “A drum in the night. It sounds so terrible. So savage.”
Sol Levy took the reins from her shaking fingers. “Nothing to be frightened about. A lot of poor ignorant Indians trying to forget their misery. Come.” Perhaps no man ever made a more courageous gesture, for the little sensitive Jew was terribly frightened.
Uncertainly, in the blackness, they made their way toward the drum beat. Nearer and nearer, louder and louder. And yet all about, darkness, silence. Only that pulsing cry and rattle and beat pounding through the night like the tide. What if he is not there? thought Sabra.
Sol Levy pulled up in the roadway before the trampled yard that held the Mescal teepee, round, to typify the sun, built of wood, larger than any other building on the Reservation. The horses were frightened, restive. All about in the blackness you heard the stamp of other horses’ hoofs, heard them crunching the dried herbage of the autumn prairie. With difficulty he groped his way to a stump that served as hitching post, tied the horses. As he helped Sabra down her knees suddenly bent, and he caught her as she sank. “Oh! It’s all right. Stiff, I guess—from the ride.” She leaned against him a moment, then straightened determinedly. He took her arm firmly. Together they made their way toward the tent-shaped wooden teepee.
Two great, silent blanketed figures at the door through which the fitful flame of the sacred fire flared. The figures did not speak. They stood there, barring the way. The little Jew felt Sabra’s arm trembling in his hand. He peered up into the faces of the silent, immobile figures.
Suddenly, “Hello, Joe!” He turned to Sabra. “It’s Joe Yellow Eyes. He was in the store only yesterday. Say, Joe, the lady here—Mrs. Cravat—she wants her son should come out and go home.”
The blanketed figures stood silent.
Suddenly Sabra thought, “This is ridiculous.”
She loosed her arm. She took a step forward, her profile sharp and clear in the firelight. “I am
