Vivian Page Six BACKFIRE By - Bill Shipley Jeff Davis oozed out of the door of his grimy little shop and leered complacently, like a fat old buzzard, at the exas-peratingly attractive figure of a healthy young woman who was swinging along in the sunshine, her heets clacking invitingly on the rotting boardwalk across the street. But the top of Jeff's head was glistening pinkly in the dusty sunlight. He glanced enviously at three or four tall, stupid boys, squatting on their heels in front of the billiard parlor,who were digesting, with their eyes, the girl's every movement. Jeff sighed with self-pity, made a little gesture of impotence with his hands, and burrowed into his shop. Jeff's pa had been a Carpetbagger, a vulture rending at the once-beautiful country that was the pre-war South. When Jeff's pa first saw his only son, a scrawny, squalling, red brat, he said, without a second glance, "Call 'im Jeff Jeff Davis. It's a insult to both'n 'em." And if Jeff's pa was a Carpetbagger during Reconstruction, Jeff himself was certainly a Scalawag during all his checkered life. As a lean, ugly adolescent, he managed to keep alive in Atlanta by poking through alleys and back streets for forage, and by keeping up a steady campaign of petty thievery. As a young man, (young in years, I mean, for he was never young in heart) his raucous, nasal voice kept him at work as a barker for medicine shows and stinking little carnivals, which, together with his remunerative sideline of pocket-picking, supplied him with more, at times, than the barest necessities of life. But as the years went on, Jeff's voice began to lose its powers of persuasion. The automobile came, and the new war came, and the airplane came, and the suckers stopped being suckers, and the medicine shows and carnivals began to grow ill, one by one. One day, they were all dead, and Jeff, who knew no other trade, was starving. Then someone mentioned Oklahoma. Oklahoma, someone said, was, even now, fifty years after it had opened for settlement, a raw wound, dripping its life's blood copiously into the maw of every man who was clever enough to stand under the dribble. Someone said that the Indians were the world's most perfect dupes, and the the Government supplied them with enough money to keep a smart fellow like Jeff Davis on Easy Street. Someone did not say, of course, that many people in Oklahoma were hardly able to keep alive; someone did not say that the Indians had learned by experience how to hang on to their money. So, charmed by a rosy picture that someone had painted, Jeff Davis, with one last mighty effort, sucked in a hundred dollars and bummed his way west to the Promised Land. Oklahoma City, with its tall buildings and cosmopolitan population, held no promise, and Jeff, remembering the Indians, bumbled on west to the Cheyenne country. At Half Breed Crossing, he glanced about him, and knew that he'd found his stamping-grounds. There was one short, unpaved street, where the dust was ankle deep, and the board sidewalks, long since fallen into decay, were shaded by roof extensions of rusty corrugated tin. The end of the street was plugged with a fat hill, unattractively, though naturally, bedizined with scrub-oak and prickly pear. There was one dingy drugstore that stank of musty cough-syrup and pulp magazines; there were two or three greasy- spoons that sold beer in front and Four Roses and rot-gut in the back (for Oklahoma has not voted repeal); there was a "Dress Shoppe" whose principal trade was in gingham prints and sleazy rayon; there was a billiard and domino parlor where the male population lived; and there was a jewelry store that sold Indian "curios" "curios" from the backs of which the words "Made in Japan" had been furtively erased. This was the store that caught the trained eye of Jeff Davis. In two weeks, he had given up seventy-five dollars of his money, and had added the stock of the "curio" shop to his collection of worldly goods. Harmony Wiggin had been the Cheyenne agent ever since the establishment of the reservation. His agency, behind the hill at the end of the street, functioned as a city hall; for, though Half Breed Crossing was unincorporated, Harmony was, by every practical indication, its permanent and active mayor. He was a college man, and, like every fellow who lives long among the polyglot humanity that is the State of Oklahoma, he was quick to size up every new acquaintance that he made One morning, when Harmony was driving in from the county seat with the mail (for he was the postmaster, and kept a postoffice in the agency), he saw, in the greasy, fly-specked window of the "curio" shop, a sign, scrawled laboriously with black ink on the back of a suit-box, which read: "UNDER NEW MANAGEMENT" He chuckled at the grandiose ridiculousness of the wording, and drove in to the curb. The shop door stood open, and three or four self-important green horse flies zoomed in and out of the transom. He stalked through the entrance, and broke into a broad grin when he saw the foxy, freckled little man behind the counter swooping down upon him. "Good mawnin', suh, good mawnin'. What can Ah do fo' you?" drawled Jeff Davis, who well knew that a hearty Southern accent, spread on thick, intensified the guilelessness of his voice. "Nothin', I don't reckon, at present. Thought I'd drop in and get acquainted. My name's Wiggins. I'm at the agency been running it for years. Reckon you're from further South, by your speech." "Tha's right, suh, tha's right," replied Jeff, with disgusting exaggeration, "Ah'm Mr. Jefferson Davis, of Atlanta, Geor gia. Havin' seen the opportunity open in this thrivin' l'ii city, Ah've decided to establish mah business contacts heah." Harmony could not help smiling, for Half Breed Crossing had been dying for thirty years. But he managed to look. gullible and interested as the harsh, high voice chattered on. "An' so, hearin' of the mahvellous han'work of the Indians of Oklahoma, Ah have established in owdah to carry on a respectable trade with them fo' our mutual profit." Harmony's eyes twinkled as he listened to this romantic and drippily affected announcement, but he answered innocently, while his brain was madly scheming, "To tell the truth, Mister Davis, these Cheyennes aren't very apt with their hands, but they have a great many trinkets from other tribes particularly the Zunis, down in New Mexico. I remember, 'bout a week ago, old Stinkin' Horse dumbest old (Continued on page 18) Page Seven