Now the two relapsed into impassive silence.
“What do they want? Ask them what they want.”
Yancey spoke a few words in Osage. Big Elk replied with a monosyllable.
“What did he say? What is it?”
“I asked them to eat dinner with us. He says he cannot.”
“I should hope not. Tell her to speak English. She speaks English.”
Big Elk turned his great head, slowly, as though it moved on a mechanical pivot. He stared at his fat, round-faced wife. He uttered a brief command in his own tongue. The squaw smiled a little strange, embarrassed smile, like a schoolgirl—it was less a smile than a contortion of the face, so rare in her race as to be more frightening than a scowl.
“Big Elk and me come take you back to Wazhazhe.”
“What for?” cried Sabra, sharply.
“Four o’clock big dinner, big dance. Your son want um come tell you. Want um know he marry Ruby this morning.”
She was silent again, smiling her foolish fixed smile. Big Elk’s fan went back and forth, back and forth.
“God A’mighty!” said Yancey Cravat. He looked at Sabra, came over to her quickly, but she waved him away.
“Don’t. I’m not going to—it’s all right.” It was as though she shrank from his touch. She stood there, staring at the two barbaric figures staring so stonily back at her with their dead black Indian eyes. It was at times like this that the Marcy in her stood her in good stead. She came of iron stock, fit to stand the fire. Only beneath her fine dark eyes you now suddenly saw a smudge of purplish brown, as though a dirty thumb had rubbed there; and a sagging of all the muscles of her face, so that she looked wattled, lined, old.
“Don’t look like that, honey. Come. Sit down.”
Again the groping wave of her hand. “I’m all right, I tell you. Come. We must go there.”
Yancey came forward. He shook hands formally with Big Elk, with the Indian woman. Sabra, seeing him, suddenly realized that he was not displeased. She knew that no formal politeness would have prevented him from voicing his anger if this monstrous announcement had shattered him as it had her, so that her very vitals seemed to be withering within her.
“Sugar, shake hands with them, won’t you?”
“No. No.” She wet her dry lips a little with her tongue, like one in a fever. She turned, woodenly, and walked to the door, ignoring the Indians. Across the hall, slowly, like an old woman, down the porch steps, toward the shabby little car next to the big rich one. As she went she heard Yancey’s voice (was there an exultant note in it?) at the telephone.
“Jesse! Take this. Get it in. Ready! … Ex-Chief Big Elk, of the Osage Nation, and Mrs. Big Elk, living at Wazhazhe, announce the marriage of their daughter Ruby Big Elk to Cimarron Cravat, son of—don’t interrupt me—I’m in a hurry—son of Mr. and Mrs. Yancey Cravat, of this city. The wedding was solemnized at the home of the bride’s parents and was followed by an elaborate dinner made up of many Indian and American dishes, partaken of by the parents of the bride and the groom, many relatives and numerous friends of the young …”
Sabra climbed heavily into the car and sat staring at the broad back of the car ahead of her. Chief Big Elk and his wife came out presently, unreal, bizarre in the brilliant noonday Oklahoma sunshine, ushered by Yancey. He was being charming. They heaved their ponderous bulk into the big car. Yancey got in beside Sabra. She spoke to him once only.
“I think you are glad.”
“This is Oklahoma. In a way it’s what I wanted it to be when I came here twenty years ago. Cim’s like your father, Lewis Venable. Weak stuff, but good stock. Ruby’s pure Indian blood and a magnificent animal. It’s hard on you now, my darling. But their children and their grandchildren are going to be such stuff as Americans are made of. You’ll see.”
“I hope I shall die before that day.”
The shabby little middle-class car followed the one whirling ahead of them over the red clay Oklahoma roads. Eating the dust of the big car just ahead.
She went through it and stood it, miraculously, until one grotesquerie proved too much for her strained nerves and broke them. But she went into the Indian house, and saw Cim sitting beside the Indian woman, and as she looked at his beautiful weak face she thought, I wish that I had never found him that day when he was lost on the prairie long ago. He came toward her, his head lowered with that familiar look, his fine eyes hidden by the lids.
“Look at me!” Sabra commanded, in the voice of Felice Venable. The boy raised his eyes. She looked at him, her face stony. Ruby Big Elk came toward her with that leisurely, insolent, scuffling step. The two women gazed at each other; rather, their looks clashed, like swords held high. They did not shake hands.
There were races, there were prizes, there was dancing. In the old Indian days the bucks had raced on foot for a prize that was a pony tethered at a distance and won by the fleetest to reach him, mount, and ride him back to the starting point. Today the prize was a magnificent motor car that stood glittering in the open field half a mile distant. Sabra thought, I am dying, I am dying. And Donna. This squaw is her sister-in-law. Miss Dignum’s on the Hudson.
Ruby’s handsome head right had bought the young couple the house just across the road from Big Elk’s—a one-story red brick bungalow, substantial, ugly. They showed Sabra and Yancey through it. It was furnished complete. Mongrel Spanish furniture in the living room—red plush, fringe, brass nail heads as big as twenty-dollar gold pieces. An upright piano. An oak dining-room set.
