Still, oil was oil, and Indians were Indians. There was no way in which either of those native forces could quite be molded to fit the New York pattern.
The Osages still whirled up and down the Oklahoma roads, and those roads, for hundreds of miles, were still unpaved red prairie dust. They crashed into ditches and draws and culverts as of old, walked back to town and, entering the automobile salesroom in which they had bought the original car, pointed with one dusky finger at a new and glittering model.
“ ’Nother,” they said, succinctly. And drove out with it.
It was common news that Charley Vest had smashed eight Cadillac cars in a year, but then Charley had a mysterious source through which he procured fire water. They bought airplanes now, but they were forbidden the use of local and neighboring flying fields after a series of fatal smashes. They seemed, for the most part (the full bloods, at least), to be totally lacking in engine sense.
They had electric refrigerators—sometimes in the parlor, very proud. They ate enormously and waxed fatter and fatter. The young Osages now wore made-to-order shirts with monograms embroidered on them the size of a saucer. The Osages had taken to spending their summers in Colorado Springs or Manitou. At first the white residents of those cities had refused to rent their fine houses, furnished, to the Indians for the season. But the vast sums offered them soon overcame their reluctance. The Indian problem was still a problem, for he was considered legitimate prey, and thousands of prairie buzzards fed on his richness.
Sabra Cravat had introduced a bill for the further protection of the Osages, and rather took away the breath of the House assembled by advocating abolition of the Indian Reservation system. Her speech, radical though it was, and sensational, was greeted with favor by some of the more liberal of the Congressmen. They even conceded that this idea of hers, to the effect that the Indian would never develop or express himself until he was as free as the Negro, might some day become a reality. These were the reformers—the long-hairs—fanatics.
Oklahoma was very proud of Sabra Cravat, editor, Congresswoman, pioneer. Osage said she embodied the finest spirit of the state and of the Southwest. When ten of Osage’s most unctuous millionaires contributed fifty thousand dollars each for a five-hundred-thousand-dollar statue that should embody the Oklahoma Pioneer no one was surprised to hear that the sculptor, Masja Krbecek, wanted to interview Sabra Cravat.
Osage was not familiar with the sculpture of Krbecek, but it was impressed with the price of it. Half a million dollars for a statue!
“Certainly,” said the committee, calmly. “He’s the best there is. Half a million is nothing for his stuff. He wouldn’t kick a pebble for less than a quarter of a million.”
“Do you suppose he’ll do her as a pioneer woman in a sunbonnet? Holding little Cim by the hand, huh? Or maybe in a covered wagon.”
Sabra received Krbecek in a simple (draped) dress. He turned out to be a quiet, rather snuffy little Pole in eyeglasses, who looked more like a tailor—a “little” tailor—than a sculptor. His eye roamed about the living room of the house on Kihekah. The old wooden house had been covered with plaster in a deep warm shade much the color of the native clay; the gimcrack porch and the cupolas had been torn away and a great square veranda and a terrace built at the side, away from the street and screened by a thick hedge and an iron grille. It was now, in fact, much the house that Yancey had planned when Sabra first built it years ago. The old pieces of mahogany and glass and silver were back, triumphant again over the plush and brocade with which Sabra had furnished the house when new. The old, despised since pioneer days, was again the fashion in Osage. There was the DeGrasse silver, the cake dish with the carefree cupids, the mantelpiece figures of china, even the hand-woven coverlet that Mother Bridget had given her that day in Wichita so long ago. Its rich deep blue was unfaded.
“You are very comfortable here in Oklahoma,” said Masja Krbecek. He pronounced it syllable by syllable, painfully. O-kla-ho-ma.
“It is a very simple home,” Sabra replied, “compared to the other places you have seen hereabouts.”
“It is the home of a good woman,” said Krbecek, dryly.
Sabra was a trifle startled, but she said thank you, primly.
“You are a Congress member, you are editor of a great newspaper, you are well known through the country. You American women, you are really amazing.”
Again Sabra thanked him.
“Tell me, will you, my dear lady,” he went on, “some of the many interesting things about your life and that of your husband, this Yancey Cravat who so far preceded his time.”
So Sabra told him. Somehow, as she talked, the years rolled back, curtain after curtain, into the past. The Run. Then they were crossing the prairie, there was the first glimpse of the mud wallow that was Osage, the church meeting in the tent, the Pegler murder, the outlaws, the early years of the paper, the Indians, oil. She talked very well in her clear, decisive voice. At his request she showed him the time-yellowed photographs of Yancey, of herself. Krbecek listened. At the end, “It is touching,” he said. “It makes me weep.” Then he kissed her hand and went away, taking one or two of the old photographs with him.
The statue of the Spirit of the Oklahoma Pioneer was unveiled a year later, with terrific ceremonies. It was an heroic figure of Yancey Cravat stepping forward with that light graceful stride in the high-heeled Texas star boots, the skirts of the Prince Albert billowing behind with the vigor of his movements, the sombrero atop the great menacing buffalo head, one beautiful hand resting lightly on the weapon in his two-gun holster. Behind him, one hand just touching his shoulder for support, stumbled the weary, blanketed figure of an Indian.