Cimarron by Edna Ferber

Author:Edna Ferber [Ferber, Edna]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-0-345-80576-8
Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Published: 2014-03-11T04:00:00+00:00

13

Before the Katy pulled in at the Osage station (the railroad actually had been extended, true to Dixie Lee’s prediction, from Wahoo to Osage and beyond) Sabra’s eyes were searching the glaring wooden platform. Len Orson, the chatty and accommodating conductor, took Donna in his arms and stood with her at the foot of the car steps. His heavy gold plated watch chain, as broad as a cable, with its concomitant Masonic charm, elk’s tooth, gold pencil, and peach pit carved in the likeness of an ape, still held Donna enthralled, though she had snatched at it whenever he passed their seat or stood to relate the gossip of the Territory to Sabra. She was hungry for news, and Len was a notorious fishwife. Now, as she stepped off the train, Sabra’s face wore that look of radiant expectancy characteristic of the returned traveler, confident of a welcome.

“Well, I guess I know somebody’ll be pretty sorry to see you,” Len said, archly. He looked about for powerful waiting arms in which to deposit Donna. The engine bell clanged, the whistle tooted. His kindly and inquisitive blue eyes swept the station platform. He plumped Donna, perforce, into Sabra’s strangely slack arms, and planted one foot, in its square-toed easy black shoe, onto the car step in the nick of time, the other leg swinging out behind him as the train moved on.

Yancey was not there. The stark red-painted wooden station sat blistering in the sun. Yancey simply was not there. Not only that, the station platform, usually graced by a score of vacuous faces and limp figures gathered to witness the exciting event of the Katy’s daily arrival and departure, was bare. Even the familiar figure of Pat Leary, the station agent, who always ran out in his shirt sleeves to wrestle such freight or express as was left on the Osage platform, could not be seen. From within the ticket office came the sound of his telegraph instrument. Its click was busy; was frantic. It chattered unceasingly in the hot afternoon stillness.

Sabra felt sick and weak. Something was wrong. She left her boxes and bags and parcels on the platform where Len Orsen had obligingly dumped them. Half an hour before their arrival in Osage she had entrusted the children to the care of a fellow passenger while she had gone to the washroom to put on one of the new dresses made in Wichita and bearing the style cachet of Kansas City: green, with cream colored ruchings at the throat and wrists, and a leghorn hat with pink roses. She had anticipated the look in Yancey’s gray eyes at sight of it. She had made the children spotless and threatened them with dire things if they sullied their splendor before their father should see them.

And now he was not there.

With Donna in her arms and Cim at her heels she hurried toward the sound of the clicking. And as she went her eyes still scanned the dusty red road

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