The midland journal. (Rising Sun, Md.) 1885-1947, 1931-05-22
By
EDNA FERBER
Copyright by Edna Ferber.H
wNU Service.

A cowed enough people they seemed
by now; dirty, degraded. Since the
Custer massacre Of '76 they had been
pretty thoroughly beaten into sub
mission. Sabra, if she considered them
at all, thought of them as dirty and
useless two-footed animals. The once
wild things seemed tame enough now,
herded together on their reservations,
spirit broken, pride destroyed.
-
The child CHM had got it into his
head that this was to be picnic. He
had smelled pies and cakes baking;
had seen hampers packed. Certainly.
except for the bizarre load that both
wagons contained, this might have
been one of those informal excursions
into a nearby wood which CHM so
loved, where they lunched in the open,
camped near a stream, and he was
allowed to run barefoot in the shadow
of his aristocratic grandmother's cool
disapproval.
There was lunatic week preceding
their departure from Wichita. Felice
fought their going to the last. and
finally took to her bed with threats of
impending dissolution which failed to
achieve the desired effect owing to the
preoccupation Of the persons supposed
to be stricken by her plight. From
time to time, intrigued by the thump-
ings, scurryings, shouts, laughter, quar-
rels, and general upheaval attendant
on the Cravats' departure, Felice rose
from her bed and trailed wanly about
the house, looking, in her white dimity
wrapper, like bilious and distracted
ghost She issue7 orders. stake this.
Don't I'd. SAINT be that you're
leaving IL lind! Your own Aunt
Sarah Mon lief du Tisne embroidered
every inch of them with her own"
'But, mamma, you don't understand.
Yancey says there's very little society,
and it's all quite rough and unsettled
wild, almost"
''That needn't prevent you from re-
membering you're lady, hope. IN
less you are planning to be one Of
those hays in a sunbonnet and no
teeth that Yancey seems to have taken
such fancy to-"
So Sabra Cravat took along to the
frontier wilderness such oddments and
elegancies as her training, lack Of ex-
perience. and southern family tradi-
ton dictated. There were two wagons,
canvas covered and numbering. Dishes,
trunks, bedding, boxes were snugly
slowed away in the capacious belly Of
one; the printing outfit, securely
roped and dashed, went in the other.
There was, to the Wichita eye, moth
ing unusual in the sight Of these huge
covered freighters that would soon go
numbering off toward the horizon.
Their like had worn many a track in
the Kansas prairie. Yet in this small
expedition faring forth there was
something that held the poignancy of
the tragic and the ridiculous. The
man, huge, bizarre, impractical; the
woman, tight Tipped, terribly deter
mined, her eyes staring with the fixed,
unseeing gaze Of one who knows that
to blink but once Is to be awash with
tears; the child, out Of hand with ex-
element and impotence to be gone.
From the day Of Yancey's recital of
the Run, black Isaiah, small descend
ant Of the Venables' black servants,
had begged to be taken along. De-
MED this, he had sulked for a week
and now was nowhere to be found.
The wagons, packed, stood waiting
before the Venable house. Perhaps
never in the history Of the settling of
the West did woman go a-pioneering
in such costume. Sabra had driven
horses all her life: so now she stepped
agilely from ground to hub, from hub
to wheel top, perched herself on the
high wagon seat and gathered up the
reins with deftness and outward COM
posture. Her eyes were enormous, her
pale face paler. Yancey had swung
Gin up to the calico-cushioned seat
beside Sabra. His short legs, in their
copper-toed boots, stuck straight out
in front of him. His dark eyes were
huge with excitement. 'Why don't we
go?" he demanded, over and over, in
something like scream. He shouted
to the horses as he had heard team
sters do. "Giddap in ere; Gee-op!
G'larng" His grandmother and grand
father, gazing up with sudden agony
in their faces at sight Of this little
expedition actually faring forth so alb
surdly into the unknown, had ceased
to exist for Gin. AS Sabra drove one
wagon and Yancey the other, the boy
pivoted between them through the long
drive. spending the morning in the
seat beside his mother, the afternoon
beside his father, with intervals of
mapping curled up on the bedding at
the back of the wagon.
Now, with a lurch and a rattle and
a great clatter of hoofs the two
rrorr ~x,oro ofF Thax, had v,,nda ov