The midland journal. (Rising Sun, Md.) 1885-1947, 1931-07-24
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Vanishing point. She got into the
habit of talking to him about her
business problems, and he advised her
shrewdly. When she was utterly dis
couraged he would say, not tri-
umphantly, but as one who states an
irrefutable and not particularly happy
fact:
Some day, Mrs. Cravat, you and 1
will look back on this and we will
laugh-but not very loud"
How do you mean-laughr
Oil will be very rich, and you
will be very famous. And Yancey-"
"Yancey!" The word was wrenched
from her like a cry.
"They will tell stories about Yam
cey until he will grow into legend.
He will be part Of the history of the
Southwest. They will remember him
and write about him when all these
mealy-faced governors are dead and
gone and forgotten. They will tell the
little children about him, and they
will dispute about him-he did this,
he did that; he was like this, he was
like that. You will see."
Sabra thought Of her own children,
who knew so little of their father.
Donna, thin secretive child of al
most seven now, with dark, straight
black hair and sallow skip like Yam
cey's; CHM, almost thirteen, moody,
charming, imaginative. Donna was
more like her grandmother Felice ven-
able than her own mother; Gin re-
sembled Yancey so strongly in mood,
manner, and emotions as to have al
most no trace of Sabra. She won
dered, with pang, If she had failed
to impress herself on them because Of
her absorption in the town, in the
newspaper, In the resolve to succeed.
She got out photograph Of Yancey
that she had hidden away because to
see it was to feel stab Of pain, and
had it framed, and hung it on the
wall where the children could see it
daily.
"Your father" Sabra would begin,
courageously, resolved to make him
live again in the minds of the chill
dren. Donna was not especially inter-
ested. Gin said, II know it," and
capped her story with a tale of his
own in which Yancey's feat of der
ring-do outrivaled any swashbuckling
escapade of D'Artagnan.
''Oh, but CHM, that's not true! You
mustn't believe stories like that about
your father"
ut is true. Isaiah told me. l guess
he ought to know" And then the
question she dreaded when are
Isaiah and father coming back?"
She could answer, somehow, evasive-
ly, about Yancey, for her instinct con-
corning him was sure and strong. But
at the fate that had overtaken the
negro boy she covered, afraid even
to face the thought of it. For the
thing that had happened to the black
boy was so dreadful, so remorseless
that when the truth of 1t came to
Sabra she felt all this little world of
propriety, of middle-class Middle West
convention that she had built up about
her turning to ashes under the sudden
flaring fire of hidden savagery. She
tried never to think of it, but some
times. at night, the hideous thing took
possession Of her, and she was swept
by such horror that she crouched
there under the bedclothes. clammy
and shivering with the sweat of utter
fear. Her hatred of the Indians now
amounted to an obsession.
1t was in the fourth year of Yam
cey's absence that, coming suddenly
and silently into the kitchen from the
newspaper office, where she had been
busy as usual, she saw her Indian
maid twisted in contortion In front
Of the table where she had been at
work. Her face was grotesque, was
wet, with agony. 1t was the agony
which only one kind of pain can bring
to a woman's face. The Indian girl
was in the pangs of childbirth. Even
as she saw her Sabra realized that
something about her had vaguely dis
turbed her in the past few weeks.
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