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margin-right: 20%; text-align: left;} + .poem br {display: none;} + .poem .stanza {margin: 1em 0em 1em 0em;} + .poem span {display: block; margin: 0; padding-left: 3em; text-indent: -3em;} + .poem span.i2 {display: block; margin-left: 2em;} + .poem span.i4 {display: block; margin-left: 4em;} + .poem span.i18 {display: block; margin-left: 10em; padding-left: 3em; text-indent: -3em;} + .poem span.i20 {display: block; margin-left: 12em; padding-left: 3em; text-indent: -3em;} + .poem span.i22 {display: block; margin-left: 14em; padding-left: 3em; text-indent: -3em;} + hr.full { width: 100%; + margin-top: 0em; + margin-bottom: 0em; + border: solid black; + height: 5px; } + pre {font-size: 65%;} + // --> + /* XML end ]]>*/ + </style> +</head> +<body> +<h1 class="pg">The Project Gutenberg eBook, The Way of the Wind, by Zoe Anderson Norris, +Illustrated by Oberhardt</h1> +<pre> +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at <a href = "http://www.gutenberg.org">www.gutenberg.org</a></pre> +<p>Title: The Way of the Wind</p> +<p>Author: Zoe Anderson Norris</p> +<p>Release Date: August 17, 2006 [eBook #19071]</p> +<p>Language: English</p> +<p>Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1</p> +<p>***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE WAY OF THE WIND***</p> +<p> </p> +<h3 class="pg">E-text prepared by David Garcia, Jeannie Howse,<br /> + and the Project Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team<br /> + (<a href="http://www.pgdp.net/">http://www.pgdp.net/</a>)<br /> + from page images generously made available by<br /> + Kentuckiana Digital Library<br /> + (<a href="http://kdl.kyvl.org/">http://kdl.kyvl.org/</a>)</h3> +<p> </p> +<table border="0" cellpadding="10" style="background-color: #ccccff;"> + <tr> + <td valign="top"> + Note: + </td> + <td> + Images of the original pages are available through + Kentuckiana Digital Library. See + <a href="http://kdl.kyvl.org/cgi/t/text/text-idx?c=kyetexts;cc=kyetexts;xc=1&idno=B92-271-32003857&view=toc"> + http://kdl.kyvl.org/cgi/t/text/text-idx?c=kyetexts;cc=kyetexts;xc=1&idno=B92-271-32003857&view=toc</a> + </td> + </tr> +</table> +<p> </p> +<div class="tr"> +<p class="cen" style="font-weight: bold;">Transcriber's Note:</p> +<br /> +<p class="noin">While this book is full of dialect and very odd spelling, + there are a number of obvious typographical errors which have + been corrected in this text. For a complete list, please + see the <a href="#TN">bottom of this document</a>.</p> +<p class="noin">The original document had no table of contents; one has been provided for the convenience of the reader.</p> +</div> +<p> </p> +<hr class="full" /> + +<br /> +<br /> +<br /> + +<div class="img"> +<a href="images/frontis.jpg"> +<img border="0" src="images/frontis.jpg" width="75%" alt="ZOE ANDERSON NORRIS" /></a><br /> +<p class="cen" style="margin-top: .2em;">ZOE ANDERSON NORRIS</p> +</div> + +<br /> +<hr /> +<br /> + +<h1>THE WAY<br /> +OF<br /> +THE WIND</h1> +<br /> +<br /> + +<h3>BY</h3> +<h2>ZOE ANDERSON NORRIS</h2> + +<br /> +<br /> +<br /> +<br /> + + +<h4>DRAWINGS BY<br /> +OBERHARDT</h4> + +<br /> +<br /> +<br /> +<br /> + + + +<h5>NEW YORK<br /> +PUBLISHED BY THE AUTHOR<br /> +1911</h5> + +<br /> +<hr /> +<br /> +<br /> +<br /> +<br /> + + +<h4><span class="sc">Copyright, 1911, by</span><br /> +ZOE ANDERSON NORRIS</h4> + +<br /> +<br /> + +<h4><i>Printed in the<br /> +United States of America</i></h4> + +<h5>Published in October, 1911.<br /> +By Zoe Anderson Norris.<br /> +Office of the East Side Magazine,<br /> +338 East 15th St., New York</h5> + +<br /> +<br /> +<br /> +<br /> +<a name="toc" id="toc"></a><hr /> +<br /> + + +<h2>Contents</h2> +<br /> + +<p class="noin" style="margin-left: 35%; font-size: 90%;"> +<a href="#PROLOGUE">PROLOGUE</a><br /> +<a href="#CHAPTER_I">CHAPTER I.</a><br /> +<a href="#CHAPTER_II">CHAPTER II.</a><br /> +<a href="#CHAPTER_III">CHAPTER III.</a><br /> +<a href="#CHAPTER_IV">CHAPTER IV.</a><br /> +<a href="#CHAPTER_V">CHAPTER V.</a><br /> +<a href="#CHAPTER_VI">CHAPTER VI.</a><br /> +<a href="#CHAPTER_VII">CHAPTER VII.</a><br /> +<a href="#CHAPTER_VIII">CHAPTER VIII.</a><br /> +<a href="#CHAPTER_IX">CHAPTER IX.</a><br /> +<a href="#CHAPTER_X">CHAPTER X.</a><br /> +<a href="#CHAPTER_XI">CHAPTER XI.</a><br /> +<a href="#CHAPTER_XII">CHAPTER XII.</a><br /> +<a href="#CHAPTER_XIII">CHAPTER XIII.</a><br /> +<a href="#CHAPTER_XIV">CHAPTER XIV.</a><br /> +<a href="#CHAPTER_XV">CHAPTER XV.</a><br /> +<a href="#CHAPTER_XVI">CHAPTER XVI.</a><br /> +<a href="#CHAPTER_XVII">CHAPTER XVII.</a><br /> +<a href="#CHAPTER_XVIII">CHAPTER XVIII.</a><br /> +<a href="#CHAPTER_XIX">CHAPTER XIX.</a><br /> +<a href="#CHAPTER_XX">CHAPTER XX.</a><br /> +<a href="#CHAPTER_XXI">CHAPTER XXI.</a><br /> +<a href="#CHAPTER_XXII">CHAPTER XXII.</a><br /> +<a href="#CHAPTER_XXIII">CHAPTER XXIII.</a><br /> +<a href="#CHAPTER_XXIV">CHAPTER XXIV.</a><br /> +<a href="#CHAPTER_XXV">CHAPTER XXV.</a><br /> +<a href="#CHAPTER_XXVI">CHAPTER XXVI.</a><br /> +<a href="#CHAPTER_XXVII">CHAPTER XXVII</a><br /> +<a href="#CHAPTER_XXVIII">CHAPTER XXVIII.</a><br /> +<a href="#CHAPTER_XXIX">CHAPTER XXIX.</a><br /> +<a href="#CHAPTER_XXX">CHAPTER XXX.</a></p> + + +<br /> +<br /> +<br /> +<br /> +<a name="PROLOGUE" id="PROLOGUE"></a><hr /> +<br /> + +<h3>PROLOGUE<span class="totoc"><a href="#toc">ToC</a></span></h3> +<br /> + +<div class="imgl"> +<img border="0" src="images/image01.png" width="100%" alt="Chapter 1" /> +</div> + +<p>And as the sturdy Pilgrim Fathers cut their perilous way through the +dense and dangerous depths of the Forest Primeval for the setting up +of their hearthstones, so the courageous pioneers of the desolate and +treeless West were forced to fight the fury of the winds.</p> + +<p>The graves of them lie mounded here and there in the uncultivated +corners of the fields, though more often one wanders across the level +country, looking for them in the places where they should be and are +not, because of the tall and waving corn that covers the length and +breadth of the land.</p> + +<p>And yet the dead are not without memorial. Each steady stalk is a +plumed standard of pioneer conquest, and through its palmy leaves the +chastened wind remorsefully sighs requiems, chanting, whispering, +moaning and sighing from balmy springtime on through the heat of the +long summer days, until in the frost the farmers cutting the stalks +and stacking them evenly about in the semblance of long departed +tepees, leave no dangling blades to sigh through, nor tassels to +flout.</p> + +<p class="right">THE AUTHOR.</p> + +<br /> +<br /> +<br /> +<br /> +<a name="CHAPTER_I" id="CHAPTER_I"></a><hr /> +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1" id="Page_1">[1]</a></span><br /> + +<h2>The Way of the Wind</h2> + + +<h3>CHAPTER I.<span class="totoc"><a href="#toc">ToC</a></span></h3> +<br /> + +<div class="imgl"> +<img border="0" src="images/image02.png" width="100%" alt="CHAPTER I." /> +</div> + +<p>Looking back upon it, the little Kentucky town seemed to blossom for +Celia like the rose, one broad expanse of sloping lawns bordered with +flower beds and shaded by quiet trees, elms and maples, brightly green +with young leaflets and dark with cedars and pines, as it was on the +day when she stood on the vine-covered veranda of her mother's home, +surrounded by friends come to say good-by.</p> + +<p>Jane Whitcomb kissed her cheek as she tied the strings of her big poke +bonnet under her chin.</p> + +<p>"I hope you will be happy out theah, Celia," she said; "but if it was +me and I had to go, I wouldn't. You couldn't get me to take such +risks. Wild horses couldn't. All them whut wants to go <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_2" id="Page_2">[2]</a></span>West to grow +up with the country can go, but the South is plenty good enough fo' +me."</p> + +<p>"Fo' me, too," sighed Celia, homesickness full upon her with the +parting hour. "It's Seth makes me go. Accordin' to him, the West is +the futuah country. He has found a place wheah they ah goin' to build +a Magic City, he says. He's goin' to maik a fortune fo' me out theah, +he says, in the West."</p> + +<p>"Growin' up with the country," interrupted Sarah Simpson, tying a +bouquet of flowers she had brought for Celia with a narrow ribbon of +delicate blue.</p> + +<p>"Yes," admitted Celia, "growing up with the country."</p> + +<p>Sarah handed her the flowers.</p> + +<p>"It's my opinion," concluded she, "that it's the fools, beggin' youah +pahdon, whut's goin' out theah to grow up with the country, and the +wise peepul whut's stayin' at home and advisin' of 'em to go."</p> + +<p>Celia shuddered.</p> + +<p>"I'm ha'f afraid to go," she said. "They say the wind blows all the +time out theah. They say it nevah quits blowin'."</p> + +<p>"'Taint laik as if you wus goin' to be alone out theah," comforted +Mansy <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_3" id="Page_3">[3]</a></span>Storm, who was busy putting away a little cake she had made +with her own hands for Celia's lunch basket. "Youah husband will be +out theah."</p> + +<p>She closed the lid down and raised her head brightly.</p> + +<p>"Whut diffunce does it maik?" she asked, "how ha'd the wind blows if +you've got youah husband?"</p> + +<p>Lucy Brown flipped a speck of dust from the hem of Celia's travelling +dress.</p> + +<p>"Yes," said she, "and such a husband!"</p> + +<p>Celia looked wistfully out over the calm and quiet street, basking in +the sunlight, peacefully minus a ripple of breeze to break the beauty +of it, her large eyes sad.</p> + +<p>"I'm afraid of the wind," she complained. "Sto'ms scah me."</p> + +<p>And she reiterated:</p> + +<p>"I'm afraid of the wind!"</p> + +<p>Sarah suddenly ran down the walk on either side of which blossomed old +fashioned flowers, Marsh Marigolds, Johnny-Jump-Ups and Brown-Eyed +Susans. She stood at the front gate, which swung on its hinges, +leaning over it, looking down the road.</p> + +<p>"I thoat I heahd the stage," she called back. "Yes. Suah enuf. Heah it +is, comin'."</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_4" id="Page_4">[4]</a></span>At that Celia's mother, hurrying fearfully out the door, threw her +arms around her.</p> + +<p>Celia fell to sobbing.</p> + +<p>"It's so fah away," she stammered brokenly, between her sobs. "I'm +afraid ... to ... go.... It's so fah ... away!"</p> + +<p>"Theah! theah!" comforted her mother, lifting up her face and kissing +it. "It's not so fah but you can come back again. The same road comes +that goes, deah one. Theah! Theah!"</p> + +<p>"Miss Celia," cried a reproachful voice from the door. "Is you gwine +away, chile, widout tellin' youah black Mammy good-by?"</p> + +<p>Celia unclasped her mother's arms, fell upon the bosom of her black +Mammy and wept anew.</p> + +<p>"De Lawd be wid you, chile," cooed the voice of the negress, musical +with tenderness, "an' bring you back home safe an' soun' in His own +time."</p> + +<p>The stage rolled up with clash and clatter and flap of curtain.</p> + +<p>It stopped at the gate. There ensued the rush of departure, the +driver, after hoisting the baggage of his one passenger thereto, +looking stolidly down on the <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_5" id="Page_5">[5]</a></span>heartbreak from the height of his perch, +his long whip poised in midair.</p> + +<p>Celia's friends swarmed about her. They kissed her. They essayed to +comfort her. They thrust upon her gifts of fruit and flowers and +dainties for her lunch.</p> + +<p>They bore her wraps out to the cumbersome vehicle which was to convey +her to Lexington, the nearest town which at that time boasted of a +railroad. They placed her comfortably, turning again and again to give +her another kiss and to bid her good-by and God-speed.</p> + +<p>It was as if her heartstrings wrenched asunder at the jerk of the +wheels that started the huge stage onward.</p> + +<p>"Good-by, good-by!" she cried out, her pale face at the window.</p> + +<p>"Good-by," they answered, and Mansy Storm, running alongside, said to +her:</p> + +<p>"You give my love to Seth, Celia. Don't you fo'get."</p> + +<p>Then breathlessly as the stage moved faster:</p> + +<p>"If evah the Good Lawd made a man a mighty little lowah than the +angels," she added, "that man's Seth."</p> + +<p>The old stage rumbled along the broad white Lexington pike, past +houses of <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_6" id="Page_6">[6]</a></span>other friends, who stood at gates to wave her farewell.</p> + +<p>It rumbled past little front yards abloom with flowers, back of which +white cottages blinked sleepily, one eye of a shuttered window open, +one shut, past big stone gates which gave upon mansions of more +grandeur, past smaller farms, until at length it drew up at the +tollgate.</p> + +<p>Here a girl with hair of sunshine, coming out, untied the pole and +raised it slowly.</p> + +<p>"You goin' away, Miss Celia?" she asked in her soft Southern brogue, +tuneful as the ripple of water. "I heah sumbody say you was goin' +away."</p> + +<p>Celia smothered a sob.</p> + +<p>"Yes," she answered, "I am goin' away."</p> + +<p>"It's a long, long way out theah to the West," commented the girl +wistfully as she counted out the change for the driver, "a long, long +way!"</p> + +<p>As if the way had not seemed long enough!</p> + +<p>Celia sobbed outright.</p> + +<p>"Yes," she assented, "it is a long, long way!"</p> + +<p>"I am sawy you ah goin', Miss Celia," <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_7" id="Page_7">[7]</a></span>said the girl. "Good-by. Good +luck to you!" And the stage moved on, Celia staring back at her with +wide sad eyes. The girl leaned forward, let the pole carefully down +and fastened it. As she did so a ray of sunshine made a halo of her +hair.</p> + +<p>Celia flung herself back into the dimness of the corner and wept out +her heart. It seemed to her that, with the letting down of that pole, +she had been shut out of heaven.</p> + +<br /> +<br /> +<br /> +<br /> +<a name="CHAPTER_II" id="CHAPTER_II"></a><hr /> +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_8" id="Page_8">[8]</a></span><br /> + +<h3>CHAPTER II.<span class="totoc"><a href="#toc">ToC</a></span></h3> +<br /> + +<div class="imgl"> +<img border="0" src="images/image03.png" width="100%" alt="CHAPTER II." /> +</div> + + +<p>In all her life Celia had not travelled further from her native town +than Lexington, which was thirty miles away. It was not necessary. She +lived in the garden spot of the world, an Eden with all things +sufficient for a simple life.</p> + +<p>As she stood at the station, waiting for her train, an old negro +shuffled by. He hummed the refrain of "Old Kentucky Home," "Fare you +well, my lady!" It seemed meant for her. The longing was strong within +her to fly back to the old town she loved so well; but the train, +roaring in just then, intimidated her by its unaccustomed turmoil and +she allowed herself to be hauled on board by the brakeman and placed +in the car.</p> + +<p>Passing into the open country, the speed of the train increased. The +smoke and cinders poured into the open window. Timid because of her +strange surroundings, she silently accepted the infliction, <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_9" id="Page_9">[9]</a></span>cowering +into her seat without attempting to put the window down. When a man in +the opposite seat leaned forward and pulled it down for her, she was +too abashed to thank him, but retained her crouching position and +began silently to weep.</p> + +<p>A terrible night of travel began. It was a day car. Celia crouched +into her seat, trying to sleep, afraid of everything, of the staring +eyes of the porter, of the strange faces about her, of the jet black +of the night that gloomed portentously through the window.</p> + +<p>Then came the dawn and with it the long gray bridge spanning the drab +and sullen Mississippi, then St. Louis, with its bustle and rush and +more and more strange faces, a sea of strange faces through which she +must pass.</p> + +<p>After another weary day of travel through which she dozed, too tired +to think, too tired to move, at twilight she reached Kansas City, a +little town on the edge of the desert. Here, worn out mentally and +physically, she was forced to stop and rest a night and sleep in a +bed.</p> + +<p>And the next day the wind!</p> + +<p>A little way out from the town she <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_10" id="Page_10">[10]</a></span>could see it beginning, bending +the pliant prairie grasses to earth, flinging them fiercely upward, +crushing them flat again and pressing them there, whistling, +whistling, whistling!</p> + +<p>The car moved fairly fast for a car of that day, but the wind moved +faster. It shook the windows with terrific force. It blew small grains +of sand under the sill to sting Celia, moaning, moaning, moaning in +its mad and unimpeded march across the country straight to the skies.</p> + +<p>She looked out in dismay.</p> + +<p>Back of her, on either side of her and beyond, stretched this vast +prairie country, desolate of shrub, undergrowth, or tree, a barren +waste, different from the beautiful, still, green garden spot that she +called home, a spot redolent of flowers, sweet with the odor of +new-mown grass, and pungent with whiff of pine and cedar, different as +night is from day.</p> + +<p>Her heart sank within her as she looked.</p> + +<p>It was late in the afternoon when she came to her station, a +collection of frame shanties dignified by that name, and Seth, tall, +tanned and radiant, clasped her in <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_11" id="Page_11">[11]</a></span>his arms, and man though he was, +shed tears of pure rapture.</p> + +<p>His joy served to thrill her momentarily to the extent of forgetting +the wind, but with his departure for the vehicle which was to convey +her to their home, the discomfort of it returned to her.</p> + +<p>The madness of it! The fury of it! Its fiendish joy! It tore at her +skirts. It wrapped them about her. It snatched them away again, +flapping them flaglike.</p> + +<p>It was with difficulty that she kept her hat on her head. She held it +with both hands.</p> + +<p>The wind seemed to make sport of her, to laugh at her. It treated her +as it would a tenderfoot. It tried to frighten her. It blew the +shutters of the shanties open and slammed them to with a noise like +guns. It shrieked maniacally as if rejoicing in her discomfort. At +times it seemed to hoot at her.</p> + +<p>Added to this, when Seth returned for her with the vehicle, it proved +to be a common two-wheeled cart drawn by a mule, a tall, ungainly cart +of dull and faded blue.</p> + +<p>She kept back the tears as Seth helped her in.</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_12" id="Page_12">[12]</a></span>Then she sat silently by him throughout their jolting journey over the +prairie country into what seemed to her to be the Nowhere, listening +to the wind chant, now requiems, now dirges, listening to its shriek +and whistle, listening to it cry aloud and moan, die down to a +whisper, then rise once more and wail like a living thing in +unendurable pain.</p> + +<p>Seth, too, by and by fell into silence, but from a different cause. +The wind failed to distress him. He had become accustomed to it in the +months spent in preparing her home. It was like an old friend that +sometimes whispered in his tired ears words of infinite sweetness. He +forgave the wanton shrieks of it because of this sweetness, the +sweetness of a capricious woman, all the more sweet because of her +capriciousness.</p> + +<p>He was silent from pure happiness at having Celia there beside him, +going over the same road with him in the old blue cart.</p> + +<p>From time to time he glanced at her timidly as if half afraid if he +looked too hard the wind might blow her away.</p> + +<p>And, indeed, there did appear to be some danger; for the wind that had +loved Seth from the first was apparently <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_13" id="Page_13">[13]</a></span>jealous of Celia. It tore at +her as though to toss her to unreachable distances in the way it +ripped the tumbleweeds from their small brittle stems and tossed them +away.</p> + +<p>Seth looked at her profile, white from the fatigue of the journey, but +beautiful as alabaster; at the blue of her eyes; at the delicate taper +of her small white hands that from her birth had done only the +daintiest of service; at the small feet that had never once walked the +rough and sordid pathway of toil.</p> + +<p>Beautiful! Beautiful!</p> + +<p>His eyes caressed her. Except that he must hold the reins both arms +would have encircled her. As it was, she rested in the strong and +tender half-circle of one.</p> + +<p>All at once the wind became frantic. It blew and blew!</p> + +<p>Finding it impossible to tear Celia from the tender circling of that +arm, it wreaked its vengeance upon the tumbleweeds, broke them +fiercely from their stems, and sent them pell-mell over the prairie +before the tall blue cart, about it, at the sides of it, a fantastic +cortege, airily tumbling, tumbling, tumbling!</p> + +<p>Yes. The wind was jealous of Celia.</p> + +<p>Strong as it was, it failed of <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_14" id="Page_14">[14]</a></span>accomplishing its will, which would +have been to snatch her from the cart and toss her to the horizon in +company with the tumbleweeds. It shrieked its despair, the despair of +a jealous woman balked of her vengeance, tumultuously wild.</p> + +<p>At last at about twilight, at the time of day when the prairie skies +are mellow with tints fit for a Turner and the prairie winds sough +with the tenderness of lullabies, resting for a period, in order to +prepare for the fury of the night, they came upon the forks of the two +rivers, sparsely sheltered by a few straggling and wind-blown trees.</p> + +<p>Seth reined in the animal, sprang down over the high wheel of the cart +and helped Celia out.</p> + +<p>"Darling," he said, "let me welcome you home!"</p> + +<p>"Home," she repeated. "Where is it?"</p> + +<p>For she saw before her only a slight elevation in the earth's surface, +a mound enlarged.</p> + +<p>Going down a few steps, Seth opened wide the door of their dugout, +looking gladly up at her, standing stilly there, a picture daintily +silhouetted by the pearl pink of the twilit sky.</p> + +<p>"Heah!" he smiled.</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_15" id="Page_15">[15]</a></span>Celia stared down into the darkness of it as into a grave.</p> + +<p>"A hole in the ground," she cried.</p> + +<p>Then, as the beflowered home she had left rose mirage-like in the +window of her memory, she sobbingly re-stammered the words:</p> + +<p>"A ... hole ... in ... the ... ground!"</p> + +<br /> +<br /> +<br /> +<br /> +<a name="CHAPTER_III" id="CHAPTER_III"></a><hr /> +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_16" id="Page_16">[16]</a></span><br /> + +<h3>CHAPTER III.<span class="totoc"><a href="#toc">ToC</a></span></h3> +<br /> + +<div class="imgl"> +<img border="0" src="images/image04.png" width="100%" alt="CHAPTER III." /> +</div> + + +<p>It was not yet June, but the winds blow cold on the prairie later than +June at nightfall. The moment the sun goes down, up come the chill +winds.</p> + +<p>Sick at heart, Seth coaxed the shuddering Celia down the steps into +the cellar-like habitation dimly lighted by a single half window dug +out mansard fashion at the side.</p> + +<p>He was silent, hurt in every fibre of his being. His manner was one of +profound apology. She was right. It was only a hole in the ground; but +he, accustomed to dugouts during the months he had spent on the +prairie preparing for the joy of her coming, had overlooked its +deficiencies and learned to think of it as home.</p> + +<p>There were two chairs. He was glad of that. For a long time there had +been only one.</p> + +<p>He placed her in the new one, bought in honor of her coming, seating +her <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_17" id="Page_17">[17]</a></span>deferentially as if she had been a Queen, and went hurriedly +about, building a fire of little dry twigs he had torn from shrubs +along the river that the gay crackle of them might cheer her.</p> + +<p>As she sat looking on, she saw in this humble service not his +devotion, but his humiliation, not his great love for her which +glorified all service humble or exalted, but the fact that he had so +descended in the scale of life as to put his hand to work that she had +been used to see done only by negroes.</p> + +<p>Her pride, her only inheritance from haughty slave-holding ancestors, +was wounded. Not all Seth's devotion, not all his labor in her behalf +could salve that wound.</p> + +<p>As he knelt before the blazing twigs, apparently doing their best to +aid him in his effort to cheer her, something of this feeling +penetrated to his inner consciousness.</p> + +<p>Nevertheless, he piled on twig after twig until the refreshing flames +brilliantly illumined the dugout.</p> + +<p>From dirt floor to dirt roof they filled it with light.</p> + +<p>The poor little twigs, eagerly flashing into flame to help him!</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_18" id="Page_18">[18]</a></span>Better far if, wet and soggy, they had burned dimly or not at all; for +their blaze only served to exhibit every deficiency Seth should have +endeavored to hide. The thatch of the roof, the sod, the carpetless +floor, the lack of furniture, the plain wooden bedstead in the corner +with its mattress of straw, the crazy window fashioned by his own rude +carpentry, the shapeless door which was like a slap in the face with +its raw and unpainted color of new wood.</p> + +<p>After the first wild glance about her, Celia buried her face in her +hands, resolutely shutting out the view for fear of bursting into +uncontrollable tears.</p> + +<p>Seth, seeing this, rose from his knees slowly, lamely, as if suddenly +very tired, and went about his preparations for their evening meal.</p> + +<p>Men with less courage than it required to perform this simple duty +have stood up to be shot at.</p> + +<p>Knowing full well that with each act of humble servitude he sank lower +and lower in the estimation of the one living creature in whose +estimation he wished to stand high, he once more knelt on the hearth, +placed potatoes in the <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_19" id="Page_19">[19]</a></span>ashes, raked a little pile of coals together +and set the coffee pot on them.</p> + +<p>He drew the small deal table out and put upon it two cups and saucers, +plates and forks for two. There was but one knife. That was for Celia. +A pocket knife was to serve for himself.</p> + +<p>It had been his pleasure throughout his lonely days of waiting to +picture this first meal which Celia and he should eat together.</p> + +<p>Never once had he dreamed that the realization could come so near +breaking a strong man's heart,—that things seemingly of small import +could stab with a thrust so knife-like.</p> + +<p>He felt the color leave his cheek at the thought that he had failed to +provide a cloth for the table, not even a napkin. He fumbled at his +bandana, then hopelessly replaced it in his pocket. He grew cold at +the realization that every luxury to which she had been accustomed, +almost every necessity, was absent from that plain board.</p> + +<p>He had counted on her love to overlook much.</p> + +<p>It had overlooked nothing.</p> + +<p>When all was in readiness he drew up a chair and begged her to be +seated.</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_20" id="Page_20">[20]</a></span>He took the opposite chair and the meal proceeded in silence, broken +only by the wail of the wind and the crackle of the little dry twigs +that burned on the hearth.</p> + +<p>"I am afraid of it," sighed Celia.</p> + +<p>"Of what, sweet?" he asked, and she answered:</p> + +<p>"I am afraid of the wind."</p> + +<p>"There is nothing to be afraid of," he explained quickly. "It is only +the ordinary wind of the prairies. It ain't a cyclone. Cyclones nevah +come this way, neah to the forks of two rivers wheah we ah," and +waxing eloquent on this, his hobby, he began telling her of the great +and beautiful and prosperous city which was sometime to be built on +this spot; perhaps the very dugout in which they sat would form its +center. He talked enthusiastically of the tall steepled temples that +would be erected, of the schools and colleges, of the gay people +beautifully dressed who would drive about in their carriages under the +shade of tall trees that would line the avenues, of the smiling men +and women and children whose home the Magic City would be, and how he +was confident they would build it here because, in the land of +terrible winds, <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_21" id="Page_21">[21]</a></span>when people commenced to erect their metropolis, they +must put it where no deadly breath of cyclone or tornado could tear at +it or overturn it.</p> + +<p>With that he went on to describe the destructive power of the +cyclones, telling how one in a neighboring country had licked up a +stream that lay in its course, showering the water and mud down fifty +miles away.</p> + +<p>"But no cyclone will ever come here," he added and explained why.</p> + +<p>Because it was the place of the forks of two rivers, the Big Arkansas +and the Little Arkansas. A cyclone will go out of its way, he told +her, rather than tackle the forks of two rivers. The Indians knew +that. They had pitched their tents here before they had been driven +into the Territory and that was what they had said. And they were very +wise about some things, those red men, though not about many.</p> + +<p>But Celia could not help putting silent questions to herself. Why +should a cyclone that could snatch up a river and toss it to the +clouds, fight shy of the forks of two?</p> + +<p>Looking fearfully around at the shadows, she interrupted him:</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_22" id="Page_22">[22]</a></span>"I am afraid," she whispered. "I am afraid!"</p> + +<p>Seth left his place at the table and took her in his arms.</p> + +<p>"Po' little gurl," he said. "Afraid, and tiahd, too. Travelin' so fah. +Of cose, she's tiahd!"</p> + +<p>And with loving hands, tender as a mother's, he helped her undress and +laid her on the rough bed of straw, covered with sheets of the +coarsest, wishing it might be a bed of down covered with silks, +wishing they were back in the days of enchantment that he might change +it into a couch fit for a Princess by the wave of a wand.</p> + +<p>Then he left her a moment, and walking out under the wind-blown stars +he looked up at them reverently and said aloud:</p> + +<p>(For in the dreary deserts of loneliness one often learns to talk +aloud very openly and confidentially to God, since people are so +scarce and far away:)</p> + +<p>"Tempah the wind to this po' shiverin' lam, deah Fathah!"</p> + +<p>Then with a fanatic devotion, he added:</p> + +<p>"And build the Magic City!"</p> + +<br /> +<br /> +<br /> +<br /> +<a name="CHAPTER_IV" id="CHAPTER_IV"></a><hr /> +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_23" id="Page_23">[23]</a></span><br /> + +<h3>CHAPTER IV.<span class="totoc"><a href="#toc">ToC</a></span></h3> +<br /> + +<div class="imgl"> +<img border="0" src="images/image02.png" width="100%" alt="CHAPTER IV." /> +</div> + + +<p>Upon each trip to the station for provision or grain Seth met with +tail ends of cyclones, or heard of rumors of those that had just +passed through, or were in process of passing, strange enough stories +of capers cut by the fantastic winds.</p> + +<p>He told these tales to Celia with a vein of humor meant to cheer her, +but which had an opposite effect. Love blinded, he failed to see that +the nervous laughs with which she greeted them were a sign of terror +rather than amusement.</p> + +<p>One night, he related, after a day whose sultriness had been almost +unendurable, a girl had stood at the door to her dugout, bidding her +sweetheart good night. She opened the door, he stepped outside, and a +cyclone happening to pass that way, facetiously caught him into the +atmosphere and carried him away somewhere, she never knew where.</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_24" id="Page_24">[24]</a></span>Strewn in the path of that cyclone were window-sashes, doors, +shingles, hair mattresses, remnants of chimneys, old iron, bones, +rags, rice, old shoes and dead bodies; but not the body of her +blue-eyed sweetheart.</p> + +<p>For many months she grieved for him, dismally garbed in crape, which +was extremely foolish of her, some said, for all she knew he might +still be in the land of the living. Possibly the cyclone had only +dropped him into another county where, likely as not, he was by this +time making love to another girl.</p> + +<p>But though she mourned and mourned and waited and waited for the wild +winds to bring him back, or another in his place, none came.</p> + +<p>"They've got to tie strings to their sweethearts in this part of the +country," the old gray-haired man at the corner grocery had said, "if +they want to keep them."</p> + +<p>Another playful cyclone had snatched up a farmer who wore red and +white striped socks. The cyclone had blown all the red out of the +socks, the story teller had said, so that when they found the farmer +flattened against a barn door as if he had been pasted there, his +socks <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_25" id="Page_25">[25]</a></span>were white as if they had never contained a suspicion of red. +They had turned white, no doubt, through fright.</p> + +<p>Evidently knives had flown promiscuously about in another cyclone, he +said. Hogs had been cut in two and chickens carved, ready for the +table.</p> + +<p>There were demons at work as well as knives.</p> + +<p>A girl was engaged to be married. All her wedding finery had been +made. Dainty, it was, too; so dainty that she laid it carefully away +in a big closet in a distant wing of the house, far from the profane +stare of strange eyes. She made discreet pilgrimages to look at those +dainty things so dear to her, lingerie white and soft and fine, satin +slippers, fans, gloves and a wedding gown of dazzling snowiness.</p> + +<p>The day was set for the wedding. Unfortunately—how could she know +that?—the same day was set for a cyclone.</p> + +<p>The girl could almost hear the peal of the wedding bells; when along +came the tornado, rushing, roaring, shrieking like mad, and grasping +that wing of the house, that special and precious wing containing her +trousseau, bore it triumphantly off.</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_26" id="Page_26">[26]</a></span>A silk waist was found in one county, but the skirt to match it lay in +another, many miles away. Her beplumed hat floated in a pool of +disfiguring water, her long suede gloves lay in a ditch and her white +satin wedding slippers, alas, hung by their tiny heels at the top of a +tree in a neighboring township, the only tree in the entire +surrounding county, put there, in all probability, to catch and hold +them for her.</p> + +<p>Naturally, the wedding was postponed until new wedding finery could be +prepared, but alas! A man's will is the wind's will!</p> + +<p>By the time the second trousseau was well on the way, the affections +of the girl's sweetheart had wafted away and wound themselves about +another girl.</p> + +<p>Here and there the prairie farmers had planted out trees in rows and +clumps, taking tree claims from the Government for that purpose.</p> + +<p>In many instances cyclones had bent these prospective forests double +in their extreme youth, leaving them to grow that way, leaning heavily +forward in the attitude of old men running.</p> + +<p>Of course, there were demons. God could have nothing to do with their +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_27" id="Page_27">[27]</a></span>devilments, Seth said. Seth had great belief in God.</p> + +<p>One had maliciously torn up all the churches in a town by the roots, +turned them upside down and stuck their steeples in the ground as if +in mockery of religion.</p> + +<p>"Why do you call them cyclones?" the old man at the corner grocery had +asked. "They are not cyclones. They are tornadoes."</p> + +<p>And this old man who had once been a doctor of medicine in an Eastern +village and who was therefore learned, though he had been persuaded by +some Wise men to go West and grow up with the Fools, went on to +explain the difference.</p> + +<p>"A cyclone," he said, "is miles and miles in width. It sweeps across +the prairie screeching and screaming, but doing not so very much +damage as it might do, just getting on the nerves of the people and +helping to drive them insane. That is all.</p> + +<p>"Then along comes a hailstone. It drops into the southeast corner of +this cyclone and there you are! It generates a tornado and That is the +Thing that rends the Universe."</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_28" id="Page_28">[28]</a></span>Seth had listened to these stories undismayed; for what had they to do +with his ranch and the Magic City upon which it was to be built?</p> + +<p>A cyclone would never come to the forks of two rivers. The Indians had +said so.</p> + +<p>Tradition had it that an old squaw whose name was Wichita had +bewitched the spot with her incantations, defying the wind to touch +the ground on which she had lived and died.</p> + +<p>It must have been that this old squaw still occupied the spot, that +her phantom still stooped over seething kettles, or stalked abroad in +the darkness, or chanted dirges to the slap and pat of the grim war +dance of the Indians; for the winds, growing frightened, had let the +forks of the river alone.</p> + +<p>Seth was very careful to relate this to Celia, to reiterate it to this +fearful Celia who started up so wildly out of her sleep at the +maniacal shriek of the wind. Very tenderly he whispered the +reassurance and promise of protection against every blast that blew, +thus soothing her softly back to slumber, after which he lay awake, +watching her lest she wake again <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_29" id="Page_29">[29]</a></span>and wishing he might still the +Universe while she slept.</p> + +<p>He redoubled his care of her by night and by day, doing the work of +the dugout before he began the work of the fields, not only bending +over the tubs early in the morning for fear such bending might hurt +her, but hanging out the clothes on the line for fear the fierce and +vengeful wind might tan her beautiful complexion and tangle the fine +soft yellow of her hair.</p> + +<p>For the same reason, he brought in the clothes after the day's labor +was over, and ironed them. He also did the simple cooking in order to +protect her beauty from blaze of log and twinkle of twig.</p> + +<p>If he could he would have hushed the noise of the world for love of +her.</p> + +<p>And yet, day after day, coming home from his work in the fields, he +found her at the door of their dugout, peering after the east-bound +train, trailing so far away as to seem a toy train, with a look of +longing that struck cold to his heart.</p> + +<p>His affection counted as nothing. His care was wasted. In spite of +which he was full of apologies for her.</p> + +<p>Other women, making these crude caves into homes for themselves and +their <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_30" id="Page_30">[30]</a></span>children, had found contentment, but they were women of a +different fibre.</p> + +<p>He would not have her of a different and coarser fibre, this exquisite +Southern creature, charming, delicate, set like a rare exotic in the +humble window of his hut.</p> + +<p>It was not her fault. It was his. It was his place to turn the hut +into a palace for his Queen; and so he would, when the Wise Men came +out of the East and built the Magic City.</p> + +<p>When the Fools had made the plains a fit place for human beings to +inhabit, planting trees to draw down the reluctant rain from the +clouds, sowing seed and raising crops sometimes, to their surprise and +the amazement of those who heard of it, the Wise Men would appear and +buy the land, and the building of great cities would begin.</p> + +<p>Already they had reared a town that dared approach in size to a city +on the edge of the desert, but what had happened?</p> + +<p>An angry cyclone, hearing of it, had come along and snatched it into +the clouds.</p> + +<p>Furious at sight of its spick and span newness, its yellow frame +shanties and <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_31" id="Page_31">[31]</a></span>shining shingles, it had carried it off as if it had +been a hen coop and set it down somewhere in Texas, a state that had +been longer settled and was therefore a better place for houses and +fences, and left it there.</p> + +<p>Then the Wise Men, growing discouraged, had gone away.</p> + +<p>But they would come again, he promised himself. They would come again. +They must. Not to pass through in long vestibule trains whose sparks +out of pure fiendishness lighted the furious prairie fires that were +so hard to put out, smothering the innocent occupants of the dugouts +in their sleep and burning their grain. Not to gaze wild-eyed through +the shining windows of these splendid cars as they passed on and on to +some more promising unwind-blown country, to build there their +beautiful cities of marble and of stone.</p> + +<p>They would come to stay.</p> + +<p>When?</p> + +<p>Why, when they should find a spot unvisited by cyclones, and that spot +would be in the place of their dugout at the forks of these two +rivers, the Big Arkansas and the Little Arkansas, the little river +that had real water trickling <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_32" id="Page_32">[32]</a></span>along its shallow bed year in and year +out, and the Big river whose bed was dry as a bone all the year round +until June, when the melting snows of the Rockies sent the water down +in floods.</p> + +<p>In fierce, uncontrollable and pitiless floods to drown the crops that +had been spared by the chinch bugs, the grasshoppers and the Hot +Winds.</p> + +<p>All this Seth told Celia, finishing with his old rapturous picture of +the glory of the Magic City, which he called after the old witch who +had driven the winds from the forks of the rivers, Wichita.</p> + +<p>He talked on, trying hard not to let her listless air of incredulity +freeze the marrow of his bones and the blood in his veins, or cut him +so deeply as to destroy his enrooted hope in their splendid future.</p> + +<p>Taking her in his arms, partly to hide her cold face from his view and +partly to comfort her, he offered every possible apology for her +unbelief, wrapping her about with his love and tenderness as with a +mantle.</p> + +<p>He thought by day of the coming of the child, and dreamed of it by +night, trusting that, whether or not she shared his belief in the +Magic City, when she <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_33" id="Page_33">[33]</a></span>held it warmly in her arms, that little baby, +his and hers, the homesick look would give place to a look of content, +and the hole in the ground would become to her a home.</p> + +<br /> +<br /> +<br /> +<br /> +<a name="CHAPTER_V" id="CHAPTER_V"></a><hr /> +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_34" id="Page_34">[34]</a></span><br /> + +<h3>CHAPTER V.<span class="totoc"><a href="#toc">ToC</a></span></h3> +<br /> + +<div class="imgl"> +<img border="0" src="images/image01.png" width="100%" alt="CHAPTER V." /> +</div> + + +<p>Seth was toiling slowly along a furrow back of his plow, bending +sidewise with the force of the wind, not resentfully that it persisted +in making it so difficult for him to earn his bread, for resentment +was not in his nature, besides which, Seth loved the wind,—but +humming a little tune, something soft and reminiscent about his old +Kentucky home, with its chorus of "Fare you well, my lady," when a +broncho, first a mere speck on the horizon ahead of him, then larger +and larger, rushed out of the wind from across the prairie with +flashing eyes and distended nostrils, and lunged toward him.</p> + +<p>At first he thought it was a wild broncho, untamed and riderless; but +as his eyes became accustomed to dust and sunlight, he discovered that +the saddle held a girl.</p> + +<p>For the moment she had bent herself <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_35" id="Page_35">[35]</a></span>to the broncho's mane, which had +the effect, together with the haze produced by the wind-blown dust, of +rendering the animal apparently riderless.</p> + +<p>Seth drew up his mule and halted.</p> + +<p>At the same time the broncho was jerked with a sudden rein that sent +him back on his haunches, his front feet pawing the air.</p> + +<p>His rider, apparently accustomed to this pose, clung to him with the +persistency of a fly to fly paper, righted him, swung herself from the +saddle and stood before Seth, a tall, slim girl of twelve, a girl of +complexion brown as berries, of dark eyes heavily fringed with thick +lashes and dusky hair tinged redly with sunburn. Her hair, one of her +beauties, blew about her ears in tangled curls that were unconfined by +hat or bonnet.</p> + +<p>She smiled at him, showing rows of rice-like teeth, of an exaggerated +white in contrast with the sunburn of her face.</p> + +<p>"Hello," she said.</p> + +<p>"Hello," said Seth in return.</p> + +<p>Then, in the outspoken manner of the prairie folk he asked:</p> + +<p>"Who ah you?"</p> + +<p>"I am Cyclona," she answered.</p> + +<p>"Cyclona what?"</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_36" id="Page_36">[36]</a></span>"Just Cyclona. I ain't got no other name."</p> + +<p>Seth smiled back at her, she seemed so timidly wild, like those little +prairie dogs that stand on their haunches and bark, and yet are ever +mindful of the safety of their near-by lairs, waiting for them in case +of molestation.</p> + +<p>"Wheah did you come frum?" he queried.</p> + +<p>"Two or three hundred miles from here," she answered, "where we had a +claim."</p> + +<p>"Who is we?" asked Seth.</p> + +<p>"My father and me. He ain't my real father. He's the man what adopted +me."</p> + +<p>Always courteous, Seth stood, hand on plough, waiting for her to state +her errand or move on.</p> + +<p>She did neither.</p> + +<p>"There be'n't many neighbors hereabout, be there?" she ventured +presently, toying with her broncho's mane.</p> + +<p>"No," said Seth. "They ah mighty scarce. One about every eighteen +miles or so."</p> + +<p>Cyclona looked straight at him out of her big dark eyes framed by +their heavy lashes.</p> + +<p>"I am a neighbor of yourn," she said.</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_37" id="Page_37">[37]</a></span>"I'm glad of that," responded Seth with ready Southern cordiality. +"Wheah do you live?"</p> + +<p>Cyclona turned and pointed to the horizon.</p> + +<p>"About ten or twelve miles away," she explained. "There!"</p> + +<p>"Been theah long?" asked Seth.</p> + +<p>"Come down last week," said Cyclona, adding lightly by way of +explanation, "we blew down. Father and his wife and me. Never had no +mother. A cyclone blew her away. That's why they call me Cyclona."</p> + +<p>She drew her sleeve across her eyes.</p> + +<p>"It's mighty lonesome in these parts," she sighed, "without no +neighbors. Neighbors was nearer where we came from."</p> + +<p>"What made you move, then?" Seth queried.</p> + +<p>"We didn't move," said Cyclona. "We was moved. Father likes it here, +but I get awful lonesome without no neighbors."</p> + +<p>The plaint struck an answering chord.</p> + +<p>"Look heah," said Seth. "You see that little dugout 'way ovah theah? +That's wheah I live. My wife's theah all by herself. She's lonesome, +too. Maybe <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_38" id="Page_38">[38]</a></span>she'd laik to have you come and visit her and keep her +company. Will you?"</p> + +<p>Cyclona nodded a delighted assent, caught the mane of her broncho, and +swung herself into her saddle with the ease and grace of a cowboy.</p> + +<p>Seth was suddenly engrossed with the fear that Celia, seeing the girl +come out of the Nowhere, as she had come upon him, might be frightened +into the ungraciousness of unsociability.</p> + +<p>"Wait," he cried. "I will go with you."</p> + +<p>So he took Cyclona's rein and led her broncho over the prairie to +Celia's door, the girl, laughing at the idea of being led, chattering +from her saddle like any magpie.</p> + +<p>He knocked at Celia's door and soon her face, white, Southern, +aristocratic, in sharp contrast with the sunburned cheek and wild eye +of Cyclona, appeared.</p> + +<p>He waved a rough hand toward Cyclona, sitting astride her broncho, a +child of the desert, untamed as a coyote, an animated bronze of the +untrammelled West emphasized by the highlights of sunshine glimmering +on curl and dimple, on broncho mane and hoof, and backed by the +brilliancy of sky, the far away <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_39" id="Page_39">[39]</a></span>line of the horizon and the howl of +the wind.</p> + +<p>"Look!" he called to her exultantly, in the voice of the prairies, +necessarily elevated in defiance of the wind, "I have brought a little +girl to keep you company."</p> + +<br /> +<br /> +<br /> +<br /> +<a name="CHAPTER_VI" id="CHAPTER_VI"></a><hr /> +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_40" id="Page_40">[40]</a></span><br /> + +<h3>CHAPTER VI.<span class="totoc"><a href="#toc">ToC</a></span></h3> +<br /> + +<div class="imgl"> +<img border="0" src="images/image05.png" width="100%" alt="CHAPTER VI." /> +</div> + + +<p>It was in this way that Cyclona blew into their lives and came to be +something of a companion to Celia, though, realizing that the girl was +a distinct outgrowth of the country she so detested, she never came to +care for her with that affection which she had felt for her Southern +girl friends. The kindly interest which most women, settled in life, +feel for the uncertain destiny of every girl child bashfully budding +into womanhood was absent.</p> + +<p>It is to be doubted if Celia possessed a kindly heart to begin with, +added to which there was nothing of the self-conscious bud about +Cyclona. She was ignorant of her beauty as a prairie rose. Strange as +her life had been, encompassed about by cyclones, the episode of her +moving as told by the gray-haired doctor at the corner grocery was +stranger.</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_41" id="Page_41">[41]</a></span>"The house was little," the doctor commenced, "or it might not have +happened. There was only one room. It was built of boards and weighed +next to nothing, which may have helped to account for it.</p> + +<p>"On that particular day the house was situated in the northern part of +the State."</p> + +<p>He swapped legs.</p> + +<p>"But the next day," he resumed. "Well, you can't tell exactly where +any house will be the next day in Kansas.</p> + +<p>"It was about noon and Cyclona's foster father was out in the +cornfield, plowing. The wind, as usual, was blowing a gale. It was a +mild gale, sixty miles an hour, so Jonathan did not permit it to +interfere with his plowing. The rows were a little uneven because the +wind blew the horse sidewise and that naturally dragged the plow out +of the furrows, but as one rarely sees a straight row of corn in +Kansas, Jonathan was not worried. If he took pains to sow the corn +straight, in trim and systematic rows, like as not the wind would blow +the seed out of the ground into his neighbor's cornfield, so what was +the use?</p> + +<p>"Like the horse and plough, Jonathan was walking crooked, bent in the +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_42" id="Page_42">[42]</a></span>direction of the wind. He seldom walks straight or talks straight for +that matter, the wind has had such an effect on him.</p> + +<p>"At any rate, leaving out the question of his reasoning which pursues +a devious and zigzag course, varying according to the way the wind +blows—and he is not alone in this peculiarity in Kansas, as I +say—Jonathan steadily toiled against the wind, he stopped altogether, +and taking out his lunch basket, he removed a pie and sat down on a +log to eat it, while his horse, moving a little further along, propped +himself against a cottonwood tree to keep from being entirely blown +away, and also rested."</p> + +<p>He swapped tobacco wads from one cheek to the other and continued:</p> + +<p>"The pie was made of custard, Jonathan said, with meringue on the top. +The meringue blew away, but Jonathan contentedly ate the custard, +thankful that the hungry wind had not taken that.</p> + +<p>"Mrs. Jonathan had been going about all morning with a dust rag in her +hand, wiping the dust from the sills and the furniture.</p> + +<p>"So, tired out at last, she had flung <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_43" id="Page_43">[43]</a></span>herself on the bed and was +quietly napping when the cyclone came along.</p> + +<p>"Of course, the house and the bed she was lying on were shaken, but +Mrs. Jonathan had lived so long in Kansas she couldn't sleep unless +the wind rocked the bed.</p> + +<p>"She slept all the sounder, therefore, lulled by its whistling and +moaning and sobbing, not waking even when Cyclona, this girl they had +adopted, opened the door and shut it suddenly with herself on the +inside, and a fortunate thing, too, that was for Cyclona, or the +cyclone might have left her behind.</p> + +<p>"Cyclona, standing by the window, saw it all, the swiftly passing +landscape, the trees, the cows, as one would look from an observation +car on a train.</p> + +<p>"The house was at last deposited rather roughly on terra firma and the +jar awoke Mrs. Jonathan. She sat up and rubbed her eyes open. Then she +looked about her in some alarm.</p> + +<p>"The furniture was tumbled together in one corner all in a heap, +Jonathan says, and the pictures were topsy turvy. Pictures are never +on a level on Kansas walls on account of the winds, so Mrs. Jonathan +thought little of this, but the <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_44" id="Page_44">[44]</a></span>ceiling puzzled her. Instead of +arching in the old way, it pointed at her. It was full of shingles, +moreover, like a roof, and the point reached nearly to her head when +she sat up in the bed, staring about her.</p> + +<p>"'What on earth is the matter?' she asked of Cyclona.</p> + +<p>"Cyclona turned away from the window.</p> + +<p>"'We have moved,' said she.</p> + +<p>"Mrs. Jonathan arose then, and going to the door, opened it and found +that what Cyclona had said was true. The scenery was quite different. +It is much further south here, you know, than in the northern part of +the State. The grass was green and the trees, hardly budded at all +where she came from, here had full grown leaves.</p> + +<p>"There was little or no debris in the path of the cyclone, nearly +everything, with the exception of the house, having been dropped +before it arrived at that point.</p> + +<p>"A few stray cows hung from the branches of the large cottonwood +trees, Jonathan says...."</p> + +<p>Here the Doctor was interrupted by a <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_45" id="Page_45">[45]</a></span>man who took his pipe out of his +mouth and coughed.</p> + +<p>"But they presently dropped on all fours," he continued, "and began to +munch on the nice green grass growing all about them.</p> + +<p>"The landscape thus losing all indications of the tornado's effect, +assumed a sylvan aspect which was tranquil in the extreme.</p> + +<p>"Not far off stood the horse still hitched to the plough, Jonathan +said. The horse had a dazed look, but the plough seemed to be in fit +enough condition. One handle, slightly bent, had evidently struck +against something on the journey, which gave it a rakish aspect, but +that was all."</p> + +<p>"Did the horse have its hide on?" asked the man who had coughed.</p> + +<p>"So far's I know," the Doctor replied. "Why?"</p> + +<p>"Because there's a story goin' the rounds," answered the cougher, "to +the effec' that a horse was blown a hundred miles in a cyclone and +when they found him he was hitched to a tree and skinned."</p> + +<p>There was a period of thoughtful <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_46" id="Page_46">[46]</a></span>silence before the Doctor went on +with his story.</p> + +<p>"As Mrs. Jonathan looked out the door," he said, "she saw Jonathan +walking down the road in her direction. His slice of pie, which he had +not had time to finish, was still in his hand.</p> + +<p>"'Where are we at?' he asked her, curiously.</p> + +<p>"'I am sure I don't know,' answered Mrs. Jonathan, beginning, +woman-like, to cry, now that the danger was over.</p> + +<p>"Jonathan began to finish his pie, which the cyclone had interrupted. +Between mouthfuls he gave quick glances of surprise at the house.</p> + +<p>"'What on earth!' he exclaimed, 'is the matter with the roof?'</p> + +<p>"Mrs. Jonathan ran out to look.</p> + +<p>"The tornado had been busy with the roof. It had blown it skyward and +then, upon second thoughts, had brought it back again and deposited it +not right side up, but upside down.</p> + +<p>"The extreme suction caused by this sudden reversal of things had +caught every rag of clothing in the house into the atmosphere where, +adhering to the roof, they had been brought down with it, so that they +hung in festoons all <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_47" id="Page_47">[47]</a></span>around the outside, the roof, fastening onto the +walls with a tremendous jerk, securing all the different articles with +the clinch of a massive and giant clothespin.</p> + +<p>"'It was a strange sight,' Jonathan said.</p> + +<p>"Mrs. Jonathan's and Cyclona's skirts, stockings, shirt waists, night +dresses and handkerchiefs were strung along indiscriminately with +Jonathan's trousers, coats, waistcoats and socks. Here and there, in +between, prismatic quilts, red bordered tablecloths and fringed +napkins varied the monotony.</p> + +<p>"'How are we ever going to get them down?' asked Mrs. Jonathan, the +floodgate of her tears loosed once more at sight of her household and +wearing apparel hung, as it were, from the housetop.</p> + +<p>"Jonathan said his wife didn't seem to think of the kindness of the +cyclone in bringing her husband along with the house when it might so +easily have divorced them by dropping him into the house of some plump +widow. All she seemed to think of was those clothes.</p> + +<p>"'Don't you worry,' he told her. 'We will just wait till another +cyclone comes <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_48" id="Page_48">[48]</a></span>along and turns the roof right side up again.'</p> + +<p>"For one becomes philosophical, you know, living in Kansas. One must, +or live somewhere else....</p> + +<p>"Jonathan looked delightedly about him.</p> + +<p>"The green prairies sloped away to the skies; there was a clump of +cottonwood trees near by and a little creek, the same that gurgles by +Seth's claim, gurgled by his between twin rows of low green bushes.</p> + +<p>"He admired this scenery, Jonathan did. He smiled a smile which +stretched from one ear to the other when he discovered that his +faithful and trusted horse had followed him down and was standing +conveniently near by, ready for work.</p> + +<p>"'I like this part of the country,' he declared, 'better than the part +we came from. We'll just stake off this claim and take possession.'</p> + +<p>"After a moment of thought, however, he added provisionally:</p> + +<p>"'That is, until another cyclone takes a notion to move us.'"</p> + +<br /> +<br /> +<br /> +<br /> +<a name="CHAPTER_VII" id="CHAPTER_VII"></a><hr /> +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_49" id="Page_49">[49]</a></span><br /> + +<h3>CHAPTER VII.<span class="totoc"><a href="#toc">ToC</a></span></h3> +<br /> + +<div class="imgl"> +<img border="0" src="images/image06.png" width="100%" alt="CHAPTER VII." /> +</div> + + +<p>Across the purple prairie, the wondering stars blinking down upon him, +the wind tearing at him to know what the matter was, the tumbleweeds +tumbling at the heels of his broncho, his heart in his mouth, Seth +madly rode in the wild midnight to fetch the weazened old woman who +tended the women of the desert, rode as madly back again, leaving the +midwife to follow.</p> + +<p>After an age, it seemed to him, she came, and the child was born.</p> + +<p>Seth knelt and listened to the breathing of the little creature in the +rapture felt by most mothers of newborn babes and by more fathers than +is supposed.</p> + +<p>Now and again this feeling, which more than any other goes to make us +akin to the angels, is lacking in a mother.</p> + +<p>Seth saw with a sadness he could not uproot that Celia was one of +these. His belief, therefore, in the efficacy of the child to comfort +her went the way of <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_50" id="Page_50">[50]</a></span>other beliefs he had been forced one by one to +relinquish. When, after some weeks of tending her, the old woman was +gone, and Celia was able to be about, it was he who took charge of the +child, while she, in her weakness, gave herself up to an increased +disgust for her surroundings and an even deeper longing to go back +home.</p> + +<p>It was in vain that he showed her the broad green of the wheat fields, +smiling in the sunlight, waving in the wind.</p> + +<p>Some blight would come to them.</p> + +<p>Fruitlessly he pictured to her the little house he would build for her +when the crop was sold.</p> + +<p>She listened incredulously.</p> + +<hr style='width: 15%; margin-top: 1.5em; margin-bottom: 1.5em;' /> + +<p>And then came the grasshoppers.</p> + +<p>For miles over the vastness of the desert they rushed in swarms, +blackening the earth, eclipsing the sun.</p> + +<p>Having accomplished their mission of destruction, they disappeared as +quickly as they had come, leaving desolation in their wake. The +prairie farms had been reduced to wastes, no leaves, no trees, no +prairie flowers, no grasses, no weeds.</p> + +<p>One old woman had planted a garden near her dugout, trim, neat, +flourishing, <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_51" id="Page_51">[51]</a></span>with its rows of onions, potatoes and peas in the pod. +It was utterly demolished. She covered her head with her apron and +wept old disconsolate tears at the sight of it.</p> + +<p>Another was hanging her clothes on the line. When the grasshoppers +were gone there were no clothes and no line.</p> + +<p>As for the beautiful wheat fields that had shone in the sun, that had +waved in the wind, they lay before Seth's tearless eyes, a blackened +ruin.</p> + +<p>Was it against God's wish that they make their feeble effort to +cultivate the plains, those poor pioneer people, that He must send a +scourge of such horror upon them?</p> + +<p>Or had He forsaken the people and the country, as Celia had said?</p> + +<p>Seth walked late along the ruin of the fields, not talking aloud to +God as was his wont when troubled, silent rather as a child upon whom +some sore punishment has been inflicted for he knows not what, silent, +brooding, heartsick with wondering, and above all, afraid to go back +and face the chill of Celia's look and the scorn of her eye.</p> + +<p>But what one must do one must do, and back he went finally, opened +the <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_52" id="Page_52">[52]</a></span>badly hung door and stood within, his back to it, with the air of +a culprit, responsible alike for the terror of the winds, the scourge +of the grasshoppers and the harshness of God.</p> + +<p>"As a man," she said slowly, her blue eyes shining with their clear +cold look of cut steel through slits of half-shut white lids, the +words dropping distinctly, clearly, relentlessly, that he might not +forget them, that he might remember them well throughout the endless +years of desert life that were to follow, "you ah a failuah."</p> + +<p>He hung his head.</p> + +<p>"You ah right," he said.</p> + +<p>For though he had not actually gone after the grasshoppers and brought +them in a deadly swarm to destroy his harvest, he had enticed her to +the plains it seemed for the purpose of witnessing the destruction.</p> + +<p>"You ah right," he reiterated.</p> + +<p>In the night Celia dreamed of home and the blue-grass hills and the +whip-poor-wills and the mocking birds that sang through the moonlight +from twilight till dawn.</p> + +<p>Sobbing in her sleep, she waked to hear the demoniacal shriek of the +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_53" id="Page_53">[53]</a></span>tireless wind and the howl of a coyote, and wept, refusing to be +comforted.</p> + +<p>The next day she said to Seth firmly and conclusively:</p> + +<p>"I am goin' home."</p> + +<br /> +<br /> +<br /> +<br /> +<a name="CHAPTER_VIII" id="CHAPTER_VIII"></a><hr /> +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_54" id="Page_54">[54]</a></span><br /> + +<h3>CHAPTER VIII.<span class="totoc"><a href="#toc">ToC</a></span></h3> +<br /> + +<div class="imgl"> +<img border="0" src="images/image01.png" width="100%" alt="CHAPTER VIII." /> +</div> + + +<p>To do her justice, Celia would have taken the child with her; but +young as he was, Seth refused to give him up. He would buy a little +goat, he said, feed the baby on its milk and look after him.</p> + +<p>At heart he said to himself that he would hold the child as ransom. +Surely, if love for him failed, love for the little one would draw the +mother back to the hole in the ground.</p> + +<p>He found Cyclona and implored her to keep the child while he hitched +up the cart and drove the mother away over the same road she had come +to the station.</p> + +<p>It was a silent drive; each occupied with individual thoughts running +in separate channels; she glad that her eyes were looking their last +on the wind-lashed prairies blackened by the scourge; he casting about +in his mind for some bait with which to entice her to return.</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_55" id="Page_55">[55]</a></span>"You will come back to the child?" he faltered.</p> + +<p>But she made no answer.</p> + +<p>"If the crops succeed," he ventured, "and I build you a beautiful +house, then will you come back?"</p> + +<p>For answer, she gave a scornful glance at the blackened plains, +flowerless, grainless, grassless.</p> + +<p>"If the Wise Men come out of the East," it was his last plea, "and +build the Magic City, then you will come back?"</p> + +<p>At that she laughed aloud and the wind, to spare him the sound of it, +tossed the laugh quickly out and away with the jeer of its cruel +mockery.</p> + +<p>"The Magic City!" she repeated.</p> + +<p>She laughed in derision of such violence that she fell to coughing.</p> + +<p>"The Magic City!" she reiterated. "The Magic City!"</p> + +<br /> +<br /> +<br /> +<br /> +<a name="CHAPTER_IX" id="CHAPTER_IX"></a><hr /> +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_56" id="Page_56">[56]</a></span><br /> + +<h3>CHAPTER IX.<span class="totoc"><a href="#toc">ToC</a></span></h3> +<br /> + +<div class="imgl"> +<img border="0" src="images/image02.png" width="100%" alt="CHAPTER IX." /> +</div> + + +<p>For one mad moment, such as comes to the bravest, Seth's impulse was +to throw himself beneath the wheels of the car that was taking Celia +away from him.</p> + +<p>In another he would have lain a crushed and shapeless mass in their +wake; but as he shut his eyes for the leap there came to him +distinctly, pitifully, wailingly, the cry of the child.</p> + +<p>Perhaps it came to him in reality across the intervening miles of +wind-blown prairie. Perhaps the wind blew it to him. Who knows? Our +Mother Earth often sends us help in our sorest need in her own way, a +way which oftentimes partakes of mystery.</p> + +<p>Perhaps it came only in memory.</p> + +<p>However, it served.</p> + +<p>He opened his eyes, and the madness had passed.</p> + +<p>He pulled himself together dazedly, <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_57" id="Page_57">[57]</a></span>unfastened the hitch rein of the +mule, mounted awkwardly into the high and ungainly blue cart and +started off in the direction of the cry.</p> + +<p>The wind which on the coming trip had appeared to take fiendish +delight in trying to tear Celia's garments to ribbons, now suddenly +died down, for the wind loved Seth.</p> + +<p>It had done with Celia. She was gone. But not by one breath would it +add to the grief of Seth. On the contrary, it spent its most dulcet +music in the effort to soothe him. Tenderly as the cooing of a dove it +whispered in his ear, reminding him of the child.</p> + +<p>He answered aloud.</p> + +<p>"I know," he said. "I had forgotten him. The po' little mothahless +chile!"</p> + +<p>And the wind kissed his cheek, its breath sweet as a girl's, caressing +him, urging him over the vastness of the prairie to the child.</p> + +<p>On the road to the station, Seth's mind had been filled with Celia to +the exclusion of all else. He had not observed the devastation of the +prairie.</p> + +<p>Unlike her, his heart held no hatred for the wayward winds. They were +of heaven. He loved them. Fierce they <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_58" id="Page_58">[58]</a></span>were at times, it was true, +claws that clutched at his heart; but at other times they were gentle +fingers running through his hair.</p> + +<p>Their natures were opposite as the poles, his and hers.</p> + +<p>The prairies were her detestation. He loved them.</p> + +<p>He inherited the traits of his ancestors, the sturdy Kentucky pioneers +who had lived in log huts and felled the forests in settling the +country. Something not yet tamed within him loved the little wild +things that had their homes in the prairie grasses:</p> + +<p>The riotous birds, the bright-colored insects, the prairie dogs in +their curious towns, sitting on their haunches at the doors of their +little dugouts, so similar to his own, and barking, then running at +whistle or crack of whip into the holes to their odd companions, the +owls and the rattlesnakes; the herds of antelope emerging from the +skyline and brought down to equally diminutive size by the infinite +distance, disappearing into the skyline mysteriously as they had come.</p> + +<p>But now he looked out on the prairie with a sigh.</p> + +<p>It was like a familiar face disfigured <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_59" id="Page_59">[59]</a></span>by a burn, scarred and almost +unrecognizable.</p> + +<p>The prairie in loneliness is similar to the sea.</p> + +<p>In one wide circle it stretches from horizon to horizon.</p> + +<p>It stretched about him far as the eye could reach, scorched and +hideous as the ruin of his life.</p> + +<p>He shut his eyes. He dared not look out on the ruin of his life. What +if the ghastly spectacle should turn his brain?</p> + +<p>That had been known to happen among the prairie folk time out of +number. Many a brain stupefied by the lonely life of the dugout, the +solemn, often portentous grandeur of the great blue dome, under which +the pioneers crawled so helplessly, had been blown zigzag by the wild +buffetings of the wayward, wanton winds, punctuating the dread +loneliness so insistently, so incessantly, so diabolically by its +staccato preludes, by its innuendoes of interludes prestissimo, by its +finales frantically furious and fiendishly calculated to frighten the +soul and tear the bewildered and weakened brain from its pedestal.</p> + +<p>The reproach of the thought held <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_60" id="Page_60">[60]</a></span>something of injustice, the wind +blew with such gentleness, kissing his cheek.</p> + +<p>His mind ran dangerously on in the current of insanity. He endeavored +to quiet it.</p> + +<p>The thought of his mother came to him.</p> + +<p>Once he had heard her crying in the night, waiting for his father to +come home, not knowing where he was, wondering as women will, and +fearfully crying.</p> + +<p>Then he heard her begin to count aloud in the dark:</p> + +<p>"One, two. One, two, three," she had counted, to quiet her brain.</p> + +<p>He fell mechanically to counting as she had done:</p> + +<p>"One, two. One, two, three."</p> + +<p>He must preserve his sanity, he said to himself, for the sake of the +child. Otherwise it would be good to lose all remembrance, to forget, +to dream, to lapse into the nothingness of the vacant eye, the +down-drooping lid and the drivel.</p> + +<p>"One, two. One, two, three," he counted, the wind listening.</p> + +<p>In spite of the counting, with his eyes fixed on the desolation of the +prairie, his thoughts on Celia, suddenly he felt <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_61" id="Page_61">[61]</a></span>himself seized by +gusts of violent rage. The desire to dash out his brains against the +unyielding wall of his relentless destiny tore him like the fingers of +a giant hand.</p> + +<p>"One, two. One, two, three," he counted, and between the words came +the cry of the child.</p> + +<p>If he could only render his mind a blank until it recovered its +equilibrium, a ray of sunshine must leak in somewhere.</p> + +<p>It must for the sake of the child.</p> + +<p>But how was it possible for him to go back to the ghastliness of the +dugout, the bereft house, where it was as if the most precious inmate +had suddenly died—to the place that had held Celia but would hold her +no more!</p> + +<p>It was necessary to count very steadily here, to strangle an outcry of +despair.</p> + +<p>"One, two, three. One, two, three. One, two, three, four, five."</p> + +<p>He could count no further.</p> + +<p>The wind, seeing his distress, soughed with a weird sweet sound like +aeolian harps in the effort to comfort him, but he dropped the reins +and laid his face in the hollow of his arm.</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_62" id="Page_62">[62]</a></span>It was the attitude of a woman, grief-stricken.</p> + +<p>He had evidently fallen into a lethargy of grief from which he must be +aroused.</p> + +<p>So thought the wind. It blew a great blast. It whistled loudly as if +calling, calling, calling!</p> + +<p>Was it the wind or his heart? Was it his Mother Nature, his Guardian +Angel, or God?</p> + +<p>Again pitifully, distinctly, wailingly, came the cry of the child.</p> + +<p>He raised his head, grasped the reins and hurried.</p> + +<p>On he went, on and on, faster and faster, until at last he came to the +door of the tomb.</p> + +<p>He descended into it. He took the child from the arms of Cyclona, who +sat by the fire cuddling it, and held it close to his heart.</p> + +<p>"He has been crying," she told him, "every single minute since you +have been gone. Crying! Crying! No matter what I did, no matter how +hard I tried, I couldn't quiet him."</p> + +<br /> +<br /> +<br /> +<br /> +<a name="CHAPTER_X" id="CHAPTER_X"></a><hr /> +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_63" id="Page_63">[63]</a></span><br /> + +<h3>CHAPTER X.<span class="totoc"><a href="#toc">ToC</a></span></h3> +<br /> + +<div class="imgl"> +<img border="0" src="images/image04.png" width="100%" alt="CHAPTER X." /> +</div> + + +<p>On the following day Cyclona sat in the low rocking chair, rocking the +baby, singing to it, crooning a lullaby, a memory of her own baby days +when some self-imposed mother, taking the place of her own, had +crooned to her.</p> + +<div class="block"> +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Sleep, baby, sleep,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">The big stars are the sheep.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">The little stars are the lambs, I guess,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">The moon is the shepherdess,<br /></span> +<span class="i18">Sleep,<br /></span> +<span class="i20">Baby,<br /></span> +<span class="i22">Sleep."<br /></span> +</div></div></div> + +<p>But the baby sobbed, looking in bewilderment up at the dark gypsy face +above it in search of the pale and beautiful face of his mother.</p> + +<p>Finding it not, he hid his eyes upon her shoulder, and sobbed.</p> + +<p>The wind sobbed with him. Outside the window it wailed in eerie +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_64" id="Page_64">[64]</a></span>lamentation. It dashed a near-by shrub, a ragged rosetree that Seth +had planted, against the window. The twigs tapped at the pane like +human fingers.</p> + +<p>"There, there!" soothed Cyclona, and she changed the baby's position, +so that his little body curled warmly about her and his face was +upturned to hers to coax him into the belief that she was Celia.</p> + +<p>Once more she drifted into the lullaby, crooning it very softly in her +lilting young voice:</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Sleep, baby, sleep.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">The big stars are the sheep,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">The little stars are the lambs, I guess,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">The moon is the shepherdess,<br /></span> +<span class="i18">Sleep,<br /></span> +<span class="i20">Baby,<br /></span> +<span class="i22">Sleep."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>But the wind seemed to oppose her efforts at soothing the child whose +startled eyes stared at the window against which tapped the attenuated +fingers of the twigs. The wind shrieked at him. His sobs turned into +cries.</p> + +<p>Cyclona got up and going to the bed laid him on it, talking cooing +baby talk <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_65" id="Page_65">[65]</a></span>to him. She prepared his food. She warmed the milk and +crumbled bread into it.</p> + +<p>Taking him up again, she fed it to him spoonful by spoonful, +awkwardly, yet in a motherly way.</p> + +<p>Then she patted him on her shoulder, and tried to rock him to sleep, +singing, patting him on the back cooingly when the howl of the wind +startled him out of momentary slumber.</p> + +<p>The wind appeared to be extraordinarily perverse. It was almost as if, +knowing this was Celia's child, that Celia whose hatred it had felt +from the first, it took pleasure in punctuating his attempt to sleep +with shrieks and wailings, with piercing and unearthly cries.</p> + +<p>Once it tossed a tumbleweed at the window. The great round human-like +head looked in and the child, opening his eyes upon it, broke into +piteous moaning.</p> + +<p>The wind laughed, snatched the tumbleweed and tossed it on.</p> + +<p>"The wind seems to be tryin' itself," complained Cyclona, getting up +once more and walking about with the child in her arms, singing as she +walked:</p> + +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_66" id="Page_66">[66]</a></span> +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Sleep, baby, sleep,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">The big stars are the sheep,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">The little stars are the lambs, I guess,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">The wind is the shepherdess,<br /></span> +<span class="i18">Sleep,<br /></span> +<span class="i20">Baby,<br /></span> +<span class="i22">Sleep."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>The wind grew furious.</p> + +<p>With a wild yell it burst the door of the dugout open.</p> + +<p>Cyclona put the baby back on the bed, faced the fury of the wind a +moment, then cried out to it:</p> + +<p>"Why can't you behave?"</p> + +<p>Then she shut the door and placed a chair against it, taking the baby +up and again walking it back and forth, up and down and back and +forth.</p> + +<p>"It's just tryin' itself," she repeated.</p> + +<p>Again she endeavored with the coo of the lullaby to entice the child +into forgetting the wind.</p> + +<p>But the wind was not to be forgotten. It turned into a tornado. +Failing of its effort to tear off the roof of the dugout, it stormed +tempestuously, fretfully; it raved, it grumbled, it groaned.</p> + +<p>It screamed aloud with a fury not to be appeased or assuaged.</p> + +<p>Cyclona had taken her seat in the <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_67" id="Page_67">[67]</a></span>rocking chair near the hearth. She +had laid the crying child in every possible position, across her knee +face down, sitting on one of her knees, her hand to his back with +gentle pats, and over her shoulder.</p> + +<p>All to no avail. It seemed as if the child would never quit sobbing. +The sense of her helplessness joined with pity for his distress +saddened her to tears.</p> + +<p>She was very tired. She had had charge of the child since early +morning, when Seth, compelled to attend to his work in the fields, had +left him to her.</p> + +<p>She bent forward and looked out the window where the long fingers of +the ragged rosebush, torn by the wind, tapped ceaselessly at the pane.</p> + +<p>"Wind," she implored. "Stop blowing. Don't you know the little baby's +mother has gone away? Don't you know the little baby hasn't any mother +now; that she's left him and gone away?"</p> + +<p>It seemed that the wind had not thought of it in this way. Occupied +only with Celia's departure, it had not considered the desolation it +had caused.</p> + +<p>The long lithe fingers of the twigs ceased their tapping.</p> + +<p>The wind sobbed fitfully a moment, <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_68" id="Page_68">[68]</a></span>little sad remorseful penitential +sobs, and died away softly across the prairie as a breath of May.</p> + +<p>The stillness which ensued was so deep and restful that the eyes of +the child involuntarily closed. Cyclona pressed his little body close +to her, his head in the hollow of her arm. She rocked him back and +forth gently, singing:</p> + +<p>"Sleep, baby, sleep," the words coming slowly, she was so tired.</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"The big stars are the sheep,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">The little ... stars ... are ... the lambs, I guess.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">The moon ... is ... the ... shepher ... dess,<br /></span> +<span class="i18">Sleep,<br /></span> +<span class="i20">Baby ...<br /></span> +<span class="i22">Sleep ..."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>Her eyes closed. She nodded, still rocking gently back and forth.</p> + +<p>After a long time Seth pushed open the door and looked in.</p> + +<p>He set back the chair and came tip-toeing forward.</p> + +<p>Cyclona raised her head and looked at him dreamily.</p> + +<p>"Hush!" she whispered. "Be very quiet ... He has gone to sleep."</p> + +<br /> +<br /> +<br /> +<br /> +<a name="CHAPTER_XI" id="CHAPTER_XI"></a><hr /> +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_69" id="Page_69">[69]</a></span><br /> + +<h3>CHAPTER XI.<span class="totoc"><a href="#toc">ToC</a></span></h3> +<br /> + +<div class="imgl"> +<img border="0" src="images/image07.png" width="100%" alt="CHAPTER XI." /> +</div> + + +<p>"Brumniagen" is a name given to those wares which, having no use for +them at home, England ships to other countries. The term, however, is +not applied to one leading export of this sort: the scores of younger +sons of impoverished Noblemen who are packed off to the wilds of +Australia or to the Great Desert of America, to finish sowing their +wild oats in remote places, where such agriculture is not so overdone +as it is in England.</p> + +<p>This economic movement resulted in a neighbor for Jonathan and Seth, a +young, blue-eyed, well-built Englishman, whose name was Hugh +Walsingham.</p> + +<p>Jonathan walked out of his topsy turvy house one day to find the claim +just north of his pre-empted by the young man who was evidently a +tenderfoot, since his fair complexion had not yet become tanned by the +ceaseless winds.</p> + +<p>Walsingham had staked out the claim, <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_70" id="Page_70">[70]</a></span>and was busily engaged in +excavating a cave in which he purposed to dwell.</p> + +<p>Jonathan, never busy himself, lent a helping-hand, and he and +Walsingham at once became friends.</p> + +<p>The outdoor life of the prairie pleased Walsingham, the abundance of +game rejoiced him. An excellent shot, his dugout was soon filled with +heads of antelope, while the hide of a buffalo constituted the +covering for his floor.</p> + +<p>Surrounded by an atmosphere of sobriety, for even at that early date +the fad of temperance had fastened itself upon Kansas, he became by +and by of necessity a hard working farmer, tilling the soil from +morning till night in the struggle to earn his salt.</p> + +<p>There are not many women on the prairies now. Then they were even more +scarce. It was not long before his admiring eyes centered themselves +upon Cyclona. He fell to wondering why it was that she appeared to +consider her own home so excellent a place to stay away from.</p> + +<p>Personally he would consider the topsy turvy house a good and +sufficient reason for continued absence, but according to his English +ideas a girl should love her <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_71" id="Page_71">[71]</a></span>own roof whether it was right side up or +inverted.</p> + +<p>The thought of this brown-skinned girl of the rapt and steadfast gaze +remained with him. It was, he explained to himself, the look one finds +in the eyes of sailors accustomed to the limitless reach of the +monotonous seas; it came from the constant contemplation of desert +wastes ending only in skylines, of sunlit domes dust-besprinkled, of +night skies scattered thick with dusty stars.</p> + +<p>His interest grew to the extent that he issued from his dugout early +of mornings in order to see her depart for her mysterious destination.</p> + +<p>He waited at unseemly hours in the vicinity of Jonathan's curious +dwelling to behold her as she came back home.</p> + +<p>On one of these occasions, when he was turning to go, after watching +her throw the saddle on her broncho, fasten the straps, leap into the +saddle and speed away, to be swallowed up by the distances, Jonathan +came out of the topsy turvy house and found him.</p> + +<p>"Walk with me awhile," implored Walsingham, a sudden sense of the +loneliness of the prairie having come upon him with the vanishing of +the girl.</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_72" id="Page_72">[72]</a></span>Jonathan, always ready to idle, filled his pipe and walked with him.</p> + +<p>"Who is the girl?" asked Hugh.</p> + +<p>"She is a little girl we adopted," explained Jonathan. "I don't know +who she is or where she came from. Her mother blew away in a cyclone. +That is all I know about her."</p> + +<p>"A pretty girl," commented Hugh.</p> + +<p>"And a mighty good girl," added Jonathan. "I don't know what we'd do +without her."</p> + +<p>"You seem to do without her a good deal," said Hugh, relighting his +pipe which the wind had blown out. "She is away from home most of the +time."</p> + +<p>"Cyclona's playing nurse," said Jonathan. "She's taking care of a +child whose mother has deserted him. He is a good big boy now, but +Cyclona's taken care of that child ever since he come into the world +putty near," and he recited the story of Celia's heartlessness.</p> + +<p>"What sort of man is the father?" queried Hugh with a manner of +exaggerated indifference.</p> + +<p>"Seth? Why, Seth's one of the finest men you ever saw. And he's +good-looking, too. Sunburnt and tall and kind of lank, but +good-lookin'. He's got some <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_73" id="Page_73">[73]</a></span>crazy notion, Seth has, of buildin' a +Magic City on his claim some time or other, but aside from that there +ain't no fault to find with Seth. He's a mighty fine man."</p> + +<hr style='width: 15%; margin-top: 1.5em; margin-bottom: 1.5em;' /> + +<p>On the plains all waited for letters. Walsingham was no exception to +the rule. Few came. He was too far away. Younger sons of impoverished +noblemen are sent to far-off places purposely to be forgotten. He +employed the intervals between such stray notes as he received in +studying Cyclona.</p> + +<p>He wondered what his aristocratic sisters would do if they were +obliged to saddle their own ponies. He wondered what they would do if +they were obliged to wear such gowns as Cyclona wore. And yet Cyclona +was charming in those old gowns, blue and pink cotton in the summer +and a heavy blue one for winter wear.</p> + +<p>Constantly in the open she possessed the beauty of perfect health. Her +brown cheeks glowed like old gold from the pulsing of rich blood. An +athletic poise of her shoulders and carriage of head added grace to +her beauty.</p> + +<p>But her chief charm for the young <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_74" id="Page_74">[74]</a></span>Englishman, surfeited with the +affectation of English girls, lay in her natural simplicity.</p> + +<p>Except for her association with Seth, whose innate culture could not +but communicate itself, Cyclona was totally untutored. She knew +nothing of coyness, caprice or mannerisms. Singleness of purpose and +unselfishness shone in her tranquil and steadfast gaze which Hugh was +fortunate enough now and then to encounter.</p> + +<p>Walsingham found himself passing restless hours in the endeavor to +devise means by which he might turn her frank gaze upon himself. In +fancy he imaged her clothed in fitting garments, walking with that +free, beautiful, lithe and swinging gait into the splendor of his +mother's English home.</p> + +<br /> +<br /> +<br /> +<br /> +<a name="CHAPTER_XII" id="CHAPTER_XII"></a><hr /> +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_75" id="Page_75">[75]</a></span><br /> + +<h3>CHAPTER XII.<span class="totoc"><a href="#toc">ToC</a></span></h3> +<br /> + +<div class="imgl"> +<img border="0" src="images/image08.png" width="100%" alt="CHAPTER XII." /> +</div> + + +<p>As the boy, whom Seth called Charlie, grew older, Seth cast about in +his mind for some story to tell him which should serve to protect both +Celia and himself.</p> + +<p>Celia was not to blame for leaving him. He had long ago come to that +conclusion. He was a failure, as she had said. Women as a rule do not +care for failures, though there are some few who do.</p> + +<p>They love men who succeed.</p> + +<p>In personal appearance, aside from some angularities, considerable +gauntness, and much sunburn, Seth told himself that he was not +different from other men. It was not palpable to the casual observer +that as men went he was a failure, but Seth realized the truth of +Celia's judgment.</p> + +<p>He had failed doubly. In the effort to provide her a home, and to +imbue her with his belief in the Magic City. Since she had gone home +he had sent her next <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_76" id="Page_76">[76]</a></span>to no money. He had none to send. Perhaps that +was why she did not write. He never knew. Putting himself in her +place, he concluded she was right. A delicate little woman, far away +from a great failure of a husband who could not provide for her, ought +to let him go without letters.</p> + +<p>And so thinking, he seldom hung about the post-office waiting for the +mail. He trained himself to expect nothing.</p> + +<p>Yes. It had been impossible for him to send her money.</p> + +<p>Disaster had followed disaster and he had been barely able to keep +himself and the boy alive.</p> + +<p>He was a failure of the most deplorable sort, but the boy did not know +it. He did not even guess it. The standing monument of his failure in +life to Celia was the dugout. In the eyes of the boy it was no failure +at all. Born in it he had no idea of the luxury of a house and the +luxuries we wot not of we miss not.</p> + +<p>He was used to lizards on the roof, to say nothing of other creeping +things within the house which are generally regarded as obnoxious, +roaches, ants, mice. <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_77" id="Page_77">[77]</a></span>He rather liked them than otherwise, regarding +them as his private possessions.</p> + +<p>Besides, hadn't he Cyclona?</p> + +<p>And as for the winds of which Celia complained so bitterly, he loved +them. His ears had never been out of the sound of them and they were +very gentle winds sometimes, tender and loving with their own child +born on the desert. They lulled him. They cradled him. They were sweet +as Cyclona's voice singing him to sleep.</p> + +<p>In another State, where they failed to blow, it would in all +probability have been necessary to entice a cyclone into his +neighborhood to induce him to slumber.</p> + +<p>Accustomed to the infinite tenderness of his father's care from the +first, the boy loved him. Seth determined that if it were possible, +this state of affairs should continue. If it were necessary to invent +a story to fit the case, he would be as other men, or even better in +the eyes of the child, until there came a time when he must learn the +truth.</p> + +<p>Perhaps the time would never come. If he could by any manner of means +keep up the delusion until the Wise Men came out of the East and built +the Magic City, <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_78" id="Page_78">[78]</a></span>he would be a failure no longer. He would be an +instantaneous success.</p> + +<p>Also, though he fully pardoned Celia for her desertion of himself, he +had never quite come to understand or fully forgive her desertion of +the boy, her staying away as she had done month after month, year +after year, missing all the beauty of his babyhood.</p> + +<p>He therefore found it impossible to tell the boy that his mother had +heartlessly deserted him, as impossible as to tell him that his father +was a failure.</p> + +<p>Yet the child, like every other, insisted upon knowing something of +his origin. To satisfy him, Seth evolved a story, adding to it from +time to time. He told it sitting in the firelight, the boy in his +arms.</p> + +<p>It was the story of the Flying Peccary.</p> + +<p>"Tell me how I came in the cyclone," Charlie would insist, nestling +into the comfortable curve of his arm.</p> + +<p>"The cyclone brought you paht of the way," corrected Seth, jealous of +his theory that cyclones never touched the place of his dugout, the +forks of the two rivers, "and the flyin' peccary brought you the rest. +You've heard me tell about these little Mexican hawgs, the wildest, +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_79" id="Page_79">[79]</a></span>woolliest, measliest little hawgs that evah breathed the breath of +life and how they ate up the cyclone?"</p> + +<p>"Yes," nodded Charlie.</p> + +<p>"Well, this was the first time, I reckon, that a cyclone evah met its +match, becawse a cyclone was nevah known befo' to stop at anything +until it had cleaned up the earth and just stopped then on account of +its bein' out of breath and tiahd. But it met its match that time.</p> + +<p>"You see, Texas is full of those measly little peccaries. You can +hahdly live, they say, down theah for them. They eat up the rail +fences, the wagon beds, the bahns and the sheep and the cows. They +don't stop at women and children, I heah, if they get a good chance at +them. And grit! They've got plenty of that, I tell you, and to spah, +those little bad measly Mexican hawgs.</p> + +<p>"Well, one day a herd of peccaries wah a gruntin' and squealin' around +the prairie, huntin' for something to eat as usual, when a cyclone +come lumberin' along.</p> + +<p>"It come bringin' everything with it it could bring; houses, bahns, +chicken coops and a plentiful sprinklin' of human bein's, to liven up +things a little. A <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_80" id="Page_80">[80]</a></span>cyclone ain't very particular, any more than a +peccary. It snatches up anything that comes handy. Sometimes it picks +up a few knives and whacks things with them as it goes along. You know +that, don't you, Cyclona?"</p> + +<p>Cyclona nodded. She always lingered at the fireside to hear this story +of the flying peccary which was her favorite as well as the child's.</p> + +<p>"It brought me," she said.</p> + +<p>The boy raised himself in Seth's arms.</p> + +<p>"Maybe you are my sister!" he cried.</p> + +<p>"Maybe I am," smiled Cyclona.</p> + +<p>"At that theah Towanda cyclone," recommenced Seth, "that little Kansas +town the cyclone got mad at and made way with, theah must have been a +hundred knives or mo' flyin' around loose. They cut hogs half in two. +You would have thought a butchah had done it. And the chickens were +carved ready to be put on the table. It was wonderful the things that +cyclone did."</p> + +<p>"And the peccaries," Charlie reminded him.</p> + +<p>"That cyclone," began Seth all over again, "came flyin' along black as +night and thunderin' laik mad and caught up the whole herd of +peccaries.</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_81" id="Page_81">[81]</a></span>"Those peccaries ain't even-tempahd animals.</p> + +<p>"They've got tempahs laik greased lightnin'. It made them firin' mad +fo' a cyclone to take such liberties with them, and they got up and +slammed back at it right and left. Well, they didn't do a thing to +that cyclone. In the first place the whole herd of peccaries began to +snap and grunt laik fury till the noise of the cyclone simmahd down +into a sort of pitiful whine, laik the whine of a whipped dog. Imagine +a cyclone comin' to that! Then, they tell me, you couldn't heah +anything but the squealin' and gruntin' of those pesky little +peccaries.</p> + +<p>"Between squeals they bit into that theah cyclone fo' all it was wuth, +takin' great chunks out of it, swallowin' lightnin' and eatin' big +mouthfuls of thundah just as if they laiked it. All the stuff the +cyclone was bringin' along with it wa'n't anything to them. They +swallowed it whole and pretty soon, you'd hahdly believe it, but theah +wa'n't anything lef' of that cyclone at all.</p> + +<p>"They had eaten up ever' single bit of it except a tiny breeze they +had fohgotten that died away mournful laik across the prairies, +sighin' becawse it had <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_82" id="Page_82">[82]</a></span>stahted out so brash and come to such a sudden +untimely and unexpected end.</p> + +<p>"Then, theah was the herd of peccaries about five miles from wheah +they had stahted, sittin' down, resting, a-smilin' at each othah and +congratulatin' each othah, I reckon, on the way they had knocked the +stuffin' out of that theah ole cyclone fo' good and all.</p> + +<p>"They must have scahd the res' of the cyclones off, too, becawse with +them and the forks of the rivahs, they haven't been seen or heahd of +aroun' these pahts since."</p> + +<p>"Exceptin' the tail end of that one that moved me," Cyclona reminded +him.</p> + +<p>"And what about me?" questioned Charlie.</p> + +<p>"Oh, yes. One of these heah peccaries, a good-natured peccary, too, +with a laikin' fo' little children, found you in the cyclone. You were +a pretty little baby with big blue eyes the same's you've got now. I +don't know exactly wheah the cyclone found you. Anyway, the peccary +picked you up in his mouth. When he had rested as long as he wanted to +with the other peccaries, he flew along and flew along—they had all +got to be flying peccaries, you know, on account <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_83" id="Page_83">[83]</a></span>of swallowin' so +much wind, until he came to the door of my dugout, this same dugout we +are in now, and he laid you very carefully down by the door. Then I +went out in the mawnin' and brought you in."</p> + +<p>Charlie invariably at this point reached up his arms and put them +around Seth's neck.</p> + +<p>It was very kind of him, he thought, to go out and bring him in. What +if the wolves had come along and eaten him! Or the little hungry +coyotes they heard barking in the nights. Ugh!</p> + +<p>"And then the peccary flew away again?" he asked. "Didn't he?"</p> + +<p>"Yes," answered Seth. "He flew away with the rest of the flyin' +peccaries."</p> + +<p>"And haven't you ever seen them since?" asked Charlie, "or him?"</p> + +<p>"Sometimes you can see them 'way up in the air," replied Seth, running +his fingers through his hair, "but they ah so fah away and little, you +can't tell them from birds."</p> + +<p>Cyclona nodded again.</p> + +<p>"Yes," she corroborated, "they are so far away and little you can't +tell them from birds."</p> + +<br /> +<br /> +<br /> +<br /> +<a name="CHAPTER_XIII" id="CHAPTER_XIII"></a><hr /> +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_84" id="Page_84">[84]</a></span><br /> + +<h3>CHAPTER XIII.<span class="totoc"><a href="#toc">ToC</a></span></h3> +<br /> + +<div class="imgl"> +<img border="0" src="images/image01.png" width="100%" alt="CHAPTER XIII." /> +</div> + + +<p>The Post Mistress at the station tapped her thimble on the window-pane +at the chickens floundering in the flower-bed outside.</p> + +<p>They turned, looked at her, then, rising, staggered off with a ruffled +and uppish air, due partly to their indignation and partly to the fact +that the wind blew their feathers straight up, and a trifle forward +over their heads.</p> + +<p>"It's bad enough," she said, "to try and raise flowers in Kansas, +fighting the wind, without having to fight the chickens. It's a fight +for existence all the way round, this living in Kansas."</p> + +<p>Her companion was a man with iron-gray hair, a professor of an Eastern +college who had come West, planted what money he had in real estate +and lost it. He, however, still retained part of the real estate.</p> + +<p>He frequently lounged about the office for an hour or two during the +day, <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_85" id="Page_85">[85]</a></span>waiting for the mail, good enough company except that he +occasionally interfered with the reading of the postal cards.</p> + +<p>He looked up from a New York newspaper, three days old.</p> + +<p>"Pioneer people," he observed laconically, "must expect to fight +everything from real estate agents to buffaloes."</p> + +<p>The Post Mistress laid down her sewing. Her official duties were not +arduous. They left her between trains ample time to attend to those of +her household, sewing and all, also to embroider upon bits of gossip +caught here and there in regard to her scattered neighbors whose +lights of nights were like so many stars dotting the horizon.</p> + +<p>She looked out the window to where a tall lank farmer was tying a mule +to the hitching post. Over the high wheel of the old blue cart he +turned big hollow eyes her way.</p> + +<p>"I hope he won't come before the train gets in," she sighed. "There +ain't no letter for him, I hope he won't come. Sometimes I feel like I +just can't tell him there ain't no letter for him."</p> + +<p>"Who is it?" asked the Professor.</p> + +<p>"Seth Lawson," she answered.</p> + +<p>The Professor elevated his eyebrows.</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_86" id="Page_86">[86]</a></span>"The man who owns the ground on which they are to build the Magic +City?" he asked laughingly.</p> + +<p>"It may happen," declared the Post Mistress tartly. "Anything is +liable to happen in Kansas, the things you least expect."</p> + +<p>"Everything in the way of cyclones, you mean," put in the Professor.</p> + +<p>"Cyclones and everything else," affirmed the Post Mistress. "No matter +what it is, Kansas goes other States one better. She raises the +tallest corn—they have to climb stepladders to reach the ears—and +the biggest watermelons in the world."</p> + +<p>"When she raises any at all," the Professor inserted.</p> + +<p>"They say," began the Post Mistress, "that in the Eastern part of the +State, where they are beginning to be civilized, when a farmer plants +his watermelon seed, he hitches up his fastest team and drives into +the next county for the watermelon, it grows so fast. Even then, +unless he has a pretty fast team somebody else gets it. If you find +one on your claim, you know, it's yours."</p> + +<p>"I've heard that story," the Professor politely reminded her.</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_87" id="Page_87">[87]</a></span>"They do say," remembered the Post Mistress, "that the Indians tell +that yarn, that a cyclone never came to Seth's ranch. It may be a fool +notion and it may not.... Look at him," leaning forward and gazing out +the window. "See how gaunt and haggard and wistful he looks. I don't +believe he gets enough to eat. There ain't a sadder sight on these +prairies than Seth Lawson. How many months has she been away from him +now? May, June, July, August, September, November," counting on her +fingers. "Seven months and one little letter from her to say she got +home safe. A dozen from him to her. More. You could almost see the +love and sadness through the envelope. And none from her in answer.</p> + +<p>"Look at him now. Walkin' up and down, up and down, to pass away the +time till the train comes. Waitin' for a letter. It won't come. It +never will come. And him waitin' and waitin'. He'd as well wait for +the dead to come to life or for that wife of his to leave her Kentucky +home she's so much fonder of than she is of him or the baby or +anything else in the world, to come back to him. What sort of woman +can she be <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_88" id="Page_88">[88]</a></span>anyway to leave a little nursing baby?"</p> + +<p>"Some cats leave their kittens before their eyes are open," the +Professor said.</p> + +<p>"But a woman isn't a cat," objected the Post Mistress. "At least she +oughtn't to be. Do you know I've always said the worst woman was too +good for the best man, but that woman has made me change my mind. +She's gone for good. She don't have to stand the wind any longer or +the sleet or the rain. She's gone for good. Then why couldn't she +write him a little letter to keep the heart warm in him. What harm +would that do her. How much time would it take?</p> + +<p>"It don't seem so bad somehow for a woman to have the heartache. She's +used to it, mostly. Some women ain't happy unless they do have it. +Heartaches and tears make up their lives, they furnish excitement. But +a man is different. You see a man holding a baby in long clothes. It's +awkward, ain't it? Somehow it don't seem natural. If you have got any +sort of mother's heart in your bosom, you want to go and take it out +of his arms and cuddle it.</p> + +<p>"It's the same with a man with the heartache. You want to go and take +it <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_89" id="Page_89">[89]</a></span>away from him, even if you have to keep it yourself. It don't seem +right for him to have it no more than it seems right for him to have +to take care of a child.</p> + +<p>"That man's got both. The little baby and the heartache. But what can +you do for him? There's nothing goin' to cure him but a letter from +her, and you can't get that. If ever a man deserved a good wife it's +that man, Seth, and what did he get? A Southern woman!"</p> + +<p>"Those Southern women make good wives," asserted the Professor, "if +you give them plenty of servants and money. None better."</p> + +<p>"Good fair-weather wives," nodded the Post Mistress, "but look out for +storms. That's when they desert."</p> + +<p>"It's a sweeping assertion," mused the Professor, "and not quite fair. +It is impossible to judge them all by this weak creature, Celia +Lawson. Many a woman in Kentucky braved dangers, cold, hunger and wild +animals, living in log huts as these women live in their dugouts, +before that State was settled and civilized."</p> + +<p>"Some won't give in that it is <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_90" id="Page_90">[90]</a></span>civilized," objected the Post +Mistress, "they're so given down there to killin' people."</p> + +<p>"The only difference," went on the Professor, "was in the animals. +They had bears. We have buffaloes. But sometimes you come across a +woman who isn't cut out for a pioneer woman, and all the training in +the world won't make her one. It's the way with Seth's wife."</p> + +<p>"She's not only weak and incapable," vowed the Post Mistress, "but +soulless and heartless."</p> + +<p>"How these women love each other," the Professor commented.</p> + +<p>"'Tain't that," flared the Post Mistress. "I'm as good a friend to a +woman as another woman can be...."</p> + +<p>"Just so," the Professor smiled.</p> + +<p>"It's my theory," frowned the Post Mistress, "that women should stand +by women and men by men...."</p> + +<p>"Your Theory," mused the Professor.</p> + +<p>"And I practice it," declared the Post Mistress. "Only in this case I +can't. Nobody could. What sort of woman is she, anyway? I can't +understand her. She's rid of him and the child and the wind and the +weather. She's back there where they say it's cool in the <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_91" id="Page_91">[91]</a></span>summer-time +and warm in the winter, where the cold blasts don't blow, and the hot +winds don't blister, and still she can't take time to sit down and +write a little note to the father of her child."</p> + +<p>She looked away from the window and Seth to the Professor, who +wondered why it was he had never before observed the beauty of her +humid eyes.</p> + +<p>"I can't bear to see him walking up and down," she complained, +"waitin' and waitin'. It disgusts you with woman-kind."</p> + +<p>The wind blew the shutter to with a bang. It flung it open again. Some +twigs of a tree outside tapped at the pane. A whistle sounded.</p> + +<p>Seth turned glad eyes in the direction of the sound. The train!</p> + +<p>There was the usual bustle. A man brought in a bag of letters, flung +it down, sped out and made a flying leap for the train, which was +beginning to move on. The Post Mistress busied herself with +distributing the mail and Seth walked back and forth, waiting.</p> + +<p>Presently he came in at the door, stood at the grated window back of +which she sorted out the letters and then went out again.</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_92" id="Page_92">[92]</a></span>After a time he drove slowly by the house in the high blue cart.</p> + +<p>"Was there anything for him?" asked the Professor.</p> + +<p>The Post Mistress looked after the cart receding into a cloud of dust +blown up by the wind and brushed her fingers across her eyes.</p> + +<p>"There was nothing for him," she said.</p> + +<br /> +<br /> +<br /> +<br /> +<a name="CHAPTER_XIV" id="CHAPTER_XIV"></a><hr /> +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_93" id="Page_93">[93]</a></span><br /> + +<h3>CHAPTER XIV.<span class="totoc"><a href="#toc">ToC</a></span></h3> +<br /> + +<div class="imgl"> +<img border="0" src="images/image05.png" width="100%" alt="CHAPTER XIV." /> +</div> + + +<p>On the winter following Celia's departure, Seth fared ill.</p> + +<p>It was all he could do to keep warmth in the boy's body and his own, +to get food for their nourishment.</p> + +<p>And as for homesickness!</p> + +<p>There were nights when he looked at the silver moon, half effaced by +wind-blown clouds, and fought back the tears, thinking how that same +moon was shining down on home and her.</p> + +<p>Nights when he fell into very pleasant dreams of that tranquil +beauteous and pleasant country where the wind did not blow. Dreams in +which he beheld flowers, not ragged wind-torn flowers of a parched and +ragged prairie, odorless, colorless flowers and tumbleweeds tossing +weirdly over dusty plains, but flowers of his youth, Four o'Clocks, +Marguerites and Daffy-Down-Dillies, nodding bloomily on either side of +an old brick walk <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_94" id="Page_94">[94]</a></span>leading from door to gate, Jasmine hanging +redolently from lattice, Virginia Creeper and Pumpkin-vine.</p> + +<p>And oh!</p> + +<p>A radiant dream! Celia, walking out through vine and flower in all her +fresh young beauty to meet him as in the old days, to open wide the +door and welcome him.</p> + +<p>Then as she had done, he waked sobbing, man though he was, but he +hushed his sobs for fear of waking the child.</p> + +<p>Homesickness!</p> + +<p>He dared not dwell on the word lest his few ideas, scattered already +by the sough of the wind, the incessant moan and sob and wail of the +wind, might blow away altogether; lest he throw to those winds his +pride of independence, his resolute determination to make a home for +her and himself and their child in the West, and go back to her.</p> + +<p>This, whatever dreams assailed him, he resolved not to do.</p> + +<p>And yet there was one dream which he thrust from him fiercely, afraid +of it, turning pale at the remembrance of it. A dream of a night on +that winter when he had gone to bed hungry.</p> + +<p>It was a strange dream and terrible.</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_95" id="Page_95">[95]</a></span>He thought it was night, he was out on the prairie, and the wolves +were following him.</p> + +<p>They had caught him.</p> + +<p>Ravenously they were tearing the flesh from his body in shreds.</p> + +<p>He waked in terror to hear the bark of a pack at his door, for in that +winter of bitter cold the wolves also suffered.</p> + +<p>"Was that to be his fate?" he asked himself.</p> + +<p>Was he to strive and strive, to spend his life in striving, and then +in the working out of destiny, in the survival of the fittest, of the +stronger over the weaker, of those who are able to devour over those +destined to be devoured, fall prey to the fangs of animals hungrier +than he and stronger?</p> + +<p>There were times when he was very tired. When almost he was ready to +fold his arms, to give up the fight and say—</p> + +<p>"So be it."</p> + +<p>But what of the boy then?</p> + +<p>Raising himself out of the slough of despond, he resolutely re-fed his +soul with hope.</p> + +<p>Those Wise Men! If only they could come! If only they could be made to +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_96" id="Page_96">[96]</a></span>see and understand that this was the place for their Magic City and +be persuaded to build it here!</p> + +<p>Then all would be well. He would take the boy to Celia, show her how +beautiful he was beginning to be and win her back again.</p> + +<p>Then they would all three come and live in a palace in the Magic City, +a beautiful house. Live happy ever after.</p> + +<br /> +<br /> +<br /> +<br /> +<a name="CHAPTER_XV" id="CHAPTER_XV"></a><hr /> +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_97" id="Page_97">[97]</a></span><br /> + +<h3>CHAPTER XV.<span class="totoc"><a href="#toc">ToC</a></span></h3> +<br /> + +<div class="imgl"> +<img border="0" src="images/image07.png" width="100%" alt="CHAPTER XV." /> +</div> + + +<p>The wind lulled the child to sleep, the wind wakened him, the wind +sang to him all day long, dashed playful raindrops in his upturned +face and whispered to him.</p> + +<p>Perhaps it was the wind, then, that was his mother. This variable, +coquettish wind of tones so infinitely tender, of shrieks so +blusteringly loud.</p> + +<p>He listened to it in the dawn. He listened to it in the sombre +darkness of the night. Early and late it seemed to call to him to come +out and away to his mother.</p> + +<p>The restlessness that sometimes encompasses the soul of a boy took +possession of him. He was filled with the passion of wander-lust. The +darkened walls of the dugout restricted him, those grim, gray earth +walls that duskily, grave-like, enclosed the body of him.</p> + +<p>He must be up and away.</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_98" id="Page_98">[98]</a></span>He would go to the heart of the wind and find his mother.</p> + +<p>Seth had gone to the town for feed for his cattle. Cyclona was at +home. He took advantage of their absence to start on his journey.</p> + +<p>Outside the dugout the wind enveloped him softly, enticingly, kissing +his curls, kissing the rosy sunburn, the tender down of his cheek +which still retained the kissable outline of babyhood.</p> + +<p>It was day when he started, broad day, bright with the light of the +red sun high in the heavens, surrounded by the brilliant hue of +cloudless skies.</p> + +<p>The boy ran.</p> + +<p>The wind tossed him like a plaything as it tossed the big round +tumbleweeds, making the pace for him a little beyond.</p> + +<p>Now and again, broad day though it was, the wind blew blasts that +frightened him, dying down immediately again into piping Pan-like +whispers that lured him on and on until he became a mere speck on the +trackless prairie, blown by alternate blasts and zephyrs, hurrying, +hurrying, hurrying to the heart of the wind to find his mother.</p> + +<p>But by and by the sun sank, dropping suddenly into the Nowhere behind +the <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_99" id="Page_99">[99]</a></span>darkling line of the mysterious horizon.</p> + +<p>Then the twilight seeped softly over the prairie, like a drop of ink +spilt over a blotter.</p> + +<p>A little while later and the prairie became obscurely shadowy, peopled +all at once by frightful things, familiar everyday things changed to +hideous hobgoblins by the chrism of the dark.</p> + +<p>Grasses with long human fingers beckoned him to the Unknown, which is +always terrible, while great ever-moving tumbleweeds sprang up at him +as if from underground, like enormous heads of resurrected giants.</p> + +<p>And the voice of the wind!</p> + +<p>As he neared the heart of it, it, too, took on an unknown quantity +more terrible than the bugaboo of the shadows and the dark.</p> + +<p>It howled with the howl of wolves.</p> + +<p>The child began to be afraid. Pantingly, wildly afraid!</p> + +<p>He stood still, looking breathlessly ahead of him to where the prairie +stretched indefinitely to the rim of the starlit dome, billowy with +long gray grasses blown into the semblance of fingers by the bellowing +blasts of the fearsome wind.</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_100" id="Page_100">[100]</a></span>He sobbed, he was now so far from home, and the voice of the wind had +taken on a menacing note of such deep subtleness.</p> + +<p>Which way was home? He had forgotten. The way the wind blew?</p> + +<p>But the wind had turned to a whirlwind, blowing gales in every +direction to mislead him, now that he wanted to go home.</p> + +<p>True, there were the stars, blinking high above the stress and turmoil +of the tireless wind, but he was too young yet to understand the way +they pointed.</p> + +<p>As he stood irresolutely sobbing, one ache of loneliness and +homesickness and fear, he heard the call of a human voice and his +name, the voice coming to him high above the wind, with its own note +of terrorized anguish.</p> + +<p>His father's voice!</p> + +<p>The voice sounded nearer and nearer, calling, calling!</p> + +<p>The child ran toward the sound of it, the loneliness of the prairie +swallowed up in a sob of gladness, and he was in Seth's arms.</p> + +<p>As for Seth, he could only articulate one word:</p> + +<p>"Why? Why?"</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_101" id="Page_101">[101]</a></span>Celia had deserted him, but the Boy!</p> + +<p>"I was looking for my mother," sobbed the child in answer, safe in the +tender hollow of his arm.</p> + +<p>After a moment's hesitation:</p> + +<p>"Mother will come to you some day," Seth breathed over him. "Won't +Cyclona and father do till then?"</p> + +<p>And in the close clasp of the longing man the child felt the +unmistakable throb of paternity penetrate his heart and was +satisfied.</p> + +<br /> +<br /> +<br /> +<br /> +<a name="CHAPTER_XVI" id="CHAPTER_XVI"></a><hr /> +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_102" id="Page_102">[102]</a></span><br /> + +<h3>CHAPTER XVI.<span class="totoc"><a href="#toc">ToC</a></span></h3> +<br /> + +<div class="imgl"> +<img border="0" src="images/image10.png" width="100%" alt="CHAPTER XVI." /> +</div> + + +<p>The winter had been too long and cold, or the child, however tender +Seth's care of him, had been insufficiently clothed and fed.</p> + +<p>He lay ill, alternately shaking with chills and burning with fever.</p> + +<p>It was March now and the winds blew with the fierceness of tornadoes.</p> + +<p>But the laughter of Charlie's delirium outvoiced the winds.</p> + +<p>Now he moaned with them and sighed.</p> + +<p>Cyclona took up her abode at the dugout now, nursing him tirelessly, +while Seth walked the floor, back and forth, back and forth like some +caged and helpless animal writhing in pain; for from the first he had +read death in the face of the child.</p> + +<p>The wind lulled and Seth knelt by his bedside, his ear against +Charlie's heart, listening for his breathing, Cyclona standing +fearfully by, her face white as the coverings.</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_103" id="Page_103">[103]</a></span>After a long time Seth raised beseeching eyes to her in an unspoken +question:</p> + +<p>"Does he breathe?"</p> + +<p>As if he had heard, Charlie suddenly opened his eyes and looked +smilingly first at one and then at the other of these two who had +encompassed his short life about with such loving care.</p> + +<p>"Listen," he whispered, "to the wind."</p> + +<p>The wind had risen. It howled like some mad thing. It blew great +blasts, ferocious blasts and deafening.</p> + +<p>It was as if it, too, were hurt. It was as if it, too, suffered the +agony of mortal pain in sympathy with the child.</p> + +<p>Soon the child began to lisp and they bent their heads to listen.</p> + +<p>"I am ... going ... out ... in ... the wind ... again," he said, "to +find ... my ... mother."</p> + +<p>"Charlie!" cried Seth, in a voice whose anguish sounded high above the +winds. "Stay! It is we who love you, Cyclona and I. Stay with us!"</p> + +<p>Cyclona knelt and laid her brown hand across the beautiful eyelids of +the child for a little while.</p> + +<p>Then she took Seth's head and pillowing it upon her bosom, rocked +gently <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_104" id="Page_104">[104]</a></span>back and forth as they knelt alone on the hard cold earth of +the dugout floor.</p> + +<p>"It doesn't matter now," she whispered to him; "he knows."</p> + +<br /> +<br /> +<br /> +<br /> +<a name="CHAPTER_XVII" id="CHAPTER_XVII"></a><hr /> +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_105" id="Page_105">[105]</a></span><br /> + +<h3>CHAPTER XVII.<span class="totoc"><a href="#toc">ToC</a></span></h3> +<br /> + +<div class="imgl"> +<img border="0" src="images/image08.png" width="100%" alt="CHAPTER XVII." /> +</div> + + +<p>The days are long in the desert. Sometimes they seem to be endless. +When the wind would permit, Seth endeavored to find comfort in digging +in the soil into which we must all descend, in getting near to it, in +ploughing it, often with apparent aimlessness, never being able to +count upon the harvest, but buoying up his soul with hope of the +yield.</p> + +<p>But there were days of wind and rain and sleet and cold stormy weather +when all animals of the desert, whether human or four-footed, were +glad to seek their holes in the ground and stay there.</p> + +<p>These days Seth spent in building the beautiful house.</p> + +<p>He sat before the dim half window, drawing the plan, Cyclona beside +him, watching him.</p> + +<p>Sometimes he called her Cyclona, and then again he called her Charlie; +for <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_106" id="Page_106">[106]</a></span>what with his grief and the wail of the wind, his mind had become +momentarily dazed.</p> + +<p>Full well Cyclona knew the story of the Magic City, having heard it +again and again, but it was only of late when Seth had given up all +hope of Celia's returning to the dugout that he commenced to plan the +beautiful house.</p> + +<p>"When the Wise Men come out of the East," Seth told her, "and buy up +ouah land fo' the Magic City, we shall be rich. It is then that I +shall build this beautiful house, so beautiful that she must come and +live in it with us."</p> + +<p>Cyclona leaned over the table on her elbows, looking at the plan. Her +dark eyes were sad, for she knew that by "us," Seth meant Charlie and +himself.</p> + +<p>He ran his pencil over the plan, showing how the beautiful house was +to be built. Somewhat after the fashion of a Southern house +modernized. A Southern woman, he explained, must live in a house which +would remind her of her home and still be so beautiful that not for +one instant would she regret that home or the land of her birth which +she had left for it.</p> + +<p>"A species of insanity it is," he <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_107" id="Page_107">[107]</a></span>muttered, "to bring such a woman to +a hole in the ground." He bit his lip and frowned, "fo' theah ah women +in whom the love of home, of country, is pa'amount. Above all human +things, above husband, above children, she loves her home. Child! +Celia has no child. Cyclona, has no one written to Celia that she has +no child?"</p> + +<p>This wildly, his eyes insanely bright.</p> + +<p>"It is just as well," soothed Cyclona. "It doesn't matter. She never +knew him."</p> + +<p>It seemed to Cyclona that she could see the lonely resting place of +the child reflected in Seth's eyes, so firmly was his mind fixed upon +it.</p> + +<p>"You ah right, Cyclona," he said by and by. "You ah right. It is just +as well. It might grieve her, altho' it is as you say, she nevah knew +him."</p> + +<p>Cyclona traced a line of the plan of the beautiful house.</p> + +<p>"Tell me about it," she said.</p> + +<p>"It is her natuah," insisted Seth almost fiercely, "and we can no mo' +change ouah natuah, the instinct that is bawn in us, that is +inherited, than we can change the place of ouah birth. Can we teach +the fish to fly or the bird to <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_108" id="Page_108">[108]</a></span>swim, or the blind mole to live above +the cool sof' earth in which centuries of ancestral moles have +delighted to burrow? Then no mo' can you teach a woman in whom the +love of country is pa'amount to love anothah country. Only by the +gentlest measuahs may you wean her from it. Only by givin' her in this +strange new country something mo' beautiful than any othah thing she +has evah known. And that," he finished, "is why I am goin' to build +the beautiful house."</p> + +<p>He fell to dreaming audibly.</p> + +<p>"All these were of costly stones, accordin' to the measuah of hewed +stones, sawed with saws within and without," he muttered, "even from +the foundation unto the copin', and so on the outside toward the great +court."</p> + +<p>Cyclona reaching up took down from a shelf a well-thumbed Book, which, +since books are scarce on the desert, both knew by heart, and opened +it at the Book of Kings.</p> + +<p>"Seth," she said, presently, touching him on the shoulder, "aren't you +getting this house mixed up with the House of the Lord?"</p> + +<p>"No," smiled Seth, "with the house <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_109" id="Page_109">[109]</a></span>that Solomon built fo' Pharaoh's +daughter whom he had taken to wife."</p> + +<p>He went on softly:</p> + +<p>"And the foundation was of cos'ly stones, even great stones, stones of +ten cubits, and stones of eight cubits. And above were cos'ly stone, +aftah the measuah of hewed stones, and cedars."</p> + +<p>"Seth," said Cyclona, to whom no dream was too fanciful, "are you +goin' to build this house just like that one?"</p> + +<p>"If I could, I would," Seth made reply, and then went on dreaming his +dream aloud. "And he made the pillahs and the two rows around about +upon the network, to covah the chapiters that were upon the top, with +pomegranates; and so did he fo' the othah chapiter. And the chapiters +that were upon the tip of the pillahs were of lily work in the porch, +fo' cubits. Lily work," he lingered over the words, smiling at their +musical poetry.</p> + +<p>After awhile he began again to talk of the beautiful house which +should have every improvement, a marble bath....</p> + +<p>"And it was an hand-breadth thick," interrupted Cyclona, "and the brim +thereof was wrought like the brim of a cup, with flowers, of lilies; +it contained <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_110" id="Page_110">[110]</a></span>two thousand baths. If you could, would you build her a +bath like that, Seth?" she questioned.</p> + +<p>"I would," replied Seth, "and as fo' the lights!"</p> + +<p>"There were windows in three rows," read Cyclona, "and light was +against light in three ranks."</p> + +<p>"Lights!" exclaimed Seth, "little electric lights tricked out with +fancy globes of rose colah matching the roses in her cheeks."</p> + +<p>He dropped his pencil and gazed ahead of him.</p> + +<p>"Do you know?" he asked dreamily, "how I shall match that rose color +of her cheek, not havin' her by? I shall taik the innah petal of a +rose and maik the little lights the color of that."</p> + +<p>Cyclona arose and walked over to a bit of glass that hung on the wall. +She frowned at the reflection of her brown cheek there. A tender and +delicate rose underlay the brown, but her eyes saw no beauty in it. +She sighed as she came back and once more sat down.</p> + +<p>"I shall have the beautiful house agleam with lights," went on Seth, +who had failed to notice the interruption. "Lights at the sight of +which Solomon <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_111" id="Page_111">[111]</a></span>would have stood aghast, that splendid ole aristocrat +whose mos' magnificent temples were dimly lit by candles.... Windows +in three rows! Windows in a dozen rows out of which her blue eyes +shall look on smooth green swahds and flowahs.</p> + +<p>"The house shall gleam alight with windows. Theah shall be no da'k +spot in it. Windowless houses ah fo' creatuahs of a clay less fine +than hers," repeating tenderly, "of less fine clay. She is a bein' +created to bask in the sunshine. She shall bask in it. These windows +shall be thrown wide open to the sun, upstaiahs and down. Not a speck +nor spot shall mah their cleanliness, lest a ray of light escape. +Those who live in da'kness wilt within and without. She shall not live +in da'kness. Nevah again. Nevah again shall she live in a hole in the +ground."</p> + +<p>After a time:</p> + +<p>"Is it possible?" he mused, half to himself, half to Cyclona, "to +build a house without a cellah?"</p> + +<p>"I don't know," said Cyclona, whose knowledge of houses was limited to +her own whose roof was still upside down, and dugouts.</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_112" id="Page_112">[112]</a></span>"If I could build this house without a cellah," said Seth, "I would."</p> + +<p>Cyclona again read from the Book.</p> + +<p>"It stood upon twelve oxen," she read, "three looking toward the +north, and three looking toward the west and three looking toward the +south and three looking toward the east. Why not stand it on oxen like +that, Seth?" she questioned.</p> + +<p>Seth laughed.</p> + +<p>"That wasn't the house," said he. "That was the molten sea."</p> + +<p>"Oh!" exclaimed Cyclona. "I know now. The foundation was of stone made +ready before they were brought hither, costly stones, great stones. It +must have a foundation of some sort," she argued, keeping her finger +on the place as she looked up, "or it will blow away."</p> + +<p>"Of co'se," assented Seth, "or it will blow away. Well, if it must it +must; but we will put half-windows into that cellah so it won't be +da'k, so it won't be like this, a hole in the ground. We will light it +with electrics. But we won't talk of the cellah. That saddens me. I am +tiahd of livin' in the hole in the ground myself sometimes. We will +talk of the beautiful rooms above ground that we will build fo' her.</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_113" id="Page_113">[113]</a></span>"Look. You entah a wide door whose threshold her little feet will +press. She will trail up this staiahway," and he let his pencil linger +lovingly over the place, "in her silks and velvets, followed by her +maids, and theah on the second landing she will find palms and the +flowahs she loves best, and her own white room with its bed of gold +covahd with lace so delicate, delicate as she is. Soft, filmy lace fit +fo' a Princess, fo' that is what she is. Theah will be bits of +spindle-legged golden furniture about in this white bed-room of hers +and pier-glasses that will maik a dozen of her, that will maik twenty +of her, we will arrange it so; for theah cannot be too many +reflections, can theah, of so gracious and lovely a Princess?"</p> + +<p>Once more Cyclona tapped him on the shoulder.</p> + +<p>"Seth," said she, "where is the room for the Prince?"</p> + +<p>Seth looked up at her vacantly. It was some time before he answered. +Then his answer showed vagueness; for what with the howl of the wind +and the eternal presence in the closet of his soul of the skeleton of +despair, his mind had become a little erratic at times.</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_114" id="Page_114">[114]</a></span>"When the Prince has proven himself worthy to be the Prince Consort of +so wonderful a Princess," he replied, "then he, too, may come and live +in the beautiful house, but not until then."</p> + +<p>His thoughts harked back to the cellar. Staring ahead of him he saw +the slight figure of a woman silhouetted against the tender pearl of +the evening sky, eyes staring affrightedly into the darkened door of a +dugout, a fluff of yellow hair like a halo about the beautiful face.</p> + +<p>"A cellah is a hole in the ground," he sighed. "A cellah is a hole in +the ground. Theah shall be nothing about this house I shall build fo' +the Princess in any way resemblin' a hole in the ground. Holes in the +ground are fo' wolves and prairie dogs and...."</p> + +<p>"And us," Cyclona finished grimly, then smiled.</p> + +<p>Seth, drawing himself up, gazed at her.</p> + +<p>In her own wild way Cyclona had grown to be beautiful, still brown as +a Gypsy, but large of eye and red of lip. She might have passed for a +type of Creole or a study in bronze as she faced him with that little +smile of defiance on her <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_115" id="Page_115">[115]</a></span>red lips. Too beautiful she was for a +dugout, true, and yet the dusky brownish gray of the earth-colored +walls served in a way to set off her rich dark coloring.</p> + +<p>Seth returned to the plan.</p> + +<p>"And for us," he assented, humbly.</p> + +<p>"We must build it of stone," he continued. "White stone. Stone never +blows away. It will be finished, too, with the finest of wood, +covahd...."</p> + +<p>"Wait," cried Cyclona, turning over the leaves of the Book, "and he +built the walls of the house with boards of cedar, both the floor of +the house and the walls of the ceiling. And he covered them on the +inside with wood and covered the floor of the house with planks of +fir."</p> + +<p>"Cedah," nodded Seth. "It would be well to build it of cedah. The +cedah is a Southern tree. It would remind her of home.</p> + +<p>"We will finish it, then, with cedah and polish it so well that laik +the mirrors it will reflect her face as she walks about. Heah will be +the music room. It shall have a piano made of the same rich wood. It +will look as if it were built in the house. Theah shall be guitahs and +mandolins. She plays the guitah a <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_116" id="Page_116">[116]</a></span>little, Cyclona, the Princess. You +should see her small white hands as she fingahs the strings. I will +have a low divan of many cushions heah by the window of the music +room. She shall sit heah in her beautiful gown of silk. White silk, +fo' white becomes her best, her beauty is so dainty. She shall sit +heah in her white silk gown and play and play and sing those Southern +songs of hers that ah so full of music...."</p> + +<p>He dropped his pencil and sat very still for a space, looking ahead of +him out of the window.</p> + +<p>The panorama, framed by its limited sash of wilful winds playing havoc +with the clouds, became obliterated by the picture of her, sitting by +a wide and sunny window, backed by those gay pillows, thrumming with +slim white fingers on the guitar and singing.</p> + +<p>Again Cyclona waked him from his day dream with a touch. He ran his +fingers through his hair, staring at her.</p> + +<p>"Is that you, Charlie," he asked her.</p> + +<p>"Not Charlie," she answered. "Cyclona."</p> + +<p>"I beg yoah pahdon," he said. "Ve'y often now you seem to me to be +Charlie. I don't know why."</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_117" id="Page_117">[117]</a></span>"Tell me more about the Princess," soothed Cyclona, "is she so +beautiful?"</p> + +<p>"Beautiful," echoed Seth. "She is fit fo' any palace, she is so +beautiful. And when the Wise Men come out of the East we will build it +fo' her. It shall have gold do'knobs and jewelled ornaments and rare +birds of gay plumage to sing and keep her company, and painted +ceilings and little cupids carved in mahble, and theah shall be graven +images set on onyx pedestals and some curious Hindoo gods squatting, +and a Turkish room of red lights dimmed by little carved lanterns and +rich, rare rugs and pictuahs by great mastahs in gilded frames, and +walls lined with the books she loves best in royal bindings.... And +she shall have servants to wait upon her and do her bidding and we +will send to Paris fo' her gowns and her bonnets and her wraps. And +she shall have carriages and coachmen and footmen. A Victoria, I think +I shall odah fo' her, ve'y elegant, lined with blue to match her +eyes.... No—that would be too light. Her eyes are beautiful, Cyclona. +Don't think fo' a moment that they are not, but can you undahstan', I +wondah, how eyes can be ve'y beautiful and yet <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_118" id="Page_118">[118]</a></span>of a cold and steely +blue that sometimes freezes the blood in youah veins? A little too +light, perhaps, and that gives them the look of cleah cold cut steel.</p> + +<p>"I shall have the linings of her Victoria light, but not quite so +light, a little dahkah and wahmah, perhaps, the footmen with a livery +to match. That goes without sayin'. And she shall have outridahs, too, +if she likes, as in the olden time back theah at home in the South. No +grand dame of the ole and splendid South she loves so well shall be so +grand as she, shall be so splendid as she when we shall have finished +the beautiful house fo' her.</p> + +<p>"Cyclona," wildly, "how could we expect a little delicate frail +Southern woman to come and live in a hole in the ground. How could we? +Why shouldn't she hate the wind? Ah! We must still the winds! We must +still the winds! But how?"</p> + +<p>At this Seth was wont to rise, to walk the circumscribed length of his +miserable dwelling and to worry his soul.</p> + +<p>"How shall we still the winds?" he would moan. "How shall we still the +winds that the soun' of them shall not disturb her?"</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_119" id="Page_119">[119]</a></span>After a long time of thinking:</p> + +<p>"Cyclona," he concluded, "in some countries they move forests. Don't +they? Have I read that or dreamed it? If only we could move a forest +or two onto these vast prairies, that would still the winds. Tall +trees penetratin' the skies would be impassable barriers to the +terrible winds that have full sweep as it is. They would still the +winds, those forests, if we could move them!"</p> + +<p>Cyclona's heart was full at this; for Seth was far from sane, alas! +when he talked of moving forests of trees to the barren prairies. The +idea at last struck him as preposterous.</p> + +<p>"We will build tall trees," he continued quickly, as if to cover the +tracks of his mistakes. "We will build trees that will taik root in +the night and spring up before morning. Trees that will grow and grow +and grow. Magic trees growing so quickly in the lush black soil of the +prairie once we get them started, the soil so neah the undahground +streams by the rivahs heah, that the angels would look down in +wondahment.</p> + +<p>"They would, to see how quickly they would grow. Such trees would +tempah <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_120" id="Page_120">[120]</a></span>the winds that blow so now because they have full sweep, +because there is nothin' to stop them. Winds, laik everything else, +are amenable to control, if you only know how to control them. These +tall trees will not only break the force of the winds, but they will +shade her beautiful face as she drives about. They will shut off the +too ardent sun that would wish to kiss her."</p> + +<p>Now and again Cyclona grew a trifle impatient of this beautiful +creature whose character she knew, whose child she had cared for and +helped to bury, grew a trifle tired of hearing hymns sung in her +praise.</p> + +<p>"Where is she now?" she asked listlessly, knowing full well, merely to +continue if the talk pleased him, tired as she was.</p> + +<p>"Charlie," smiled Seth, and never once did Cyclona correct him when he +called her Charlie, reasoning that perhaps the spirit of the child was +near him, since there were those who believed that and it was +comforting. "She is laik the flowahs, that beautiful one. She knows +bettah than to bloom in this God-fo'saken country—that was what she +called it—wheah you cain't get the flowahs to <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_121" id="Page_121">[121]</a></span>bloom because of the +wind that is fo'evah blowin'. She lives now wheah the flowahs bloom +and the wind nevah blows."</p> + +<p>Cyclona lifted her head to listen to the moan and the sough of the +wind.</p> + +<p>"I love it," she said.</p> + +<p>"So do I," said Seth, "though sometimes I am half afraid of it, +thinkin' it is getting into my brain, but she hated it. But nevah +mind. When we grow tall trees that will break the force of the wind +and shade her from the sun and build the beautiful house fo' her, she +will come back home and live in it with us and we shall be happy! +Happy! We shall fo'get all ouah sorrow, we shall be so happy!"</p> + +<p>At that moment, the moment of the going down of the sun, the wind +dropped and the passing clouds let in the gleam of the sunset at the +window. It rested goldenly on Seth's face. It illumined it. It +glorified it.</p> + +<p>Cyclona looked at him long and earnestly, at the strong, fine lines of +sadness brought beautifully out by this unexpected high-light of the +skies, accentuated Rembrandt-like, against the darkness of the +earth-colored hole in the ground.</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_122" id="Page_122">[122]</a></span>Then she bent her sunburnt head and a tear fell on her hand +outstretched upon the table.</p> + +<p>At sight of the tear Seth was like a man who is all at once drunk with +new wine. There is truth in the wine. There are times when it clears +the brain for the moment and reveals things as they are.</p> + +<p>He looked at Cyclona with new eyes. It was as if he had never before +seen her. She differed from Celia as the wild rose differs from the +rose that blooms in hothouses, and yet how beautiful she was! He +realized for the first time her wonderful beauty. So olive of +complexion with the delicate tinge of rose showing through, so bronze +of hair in close-cut sun-kissed curls!</p> + +<p>The little curls that gave her a boyish look in spite of the fact that +she had blossomed into radiant womanhood. The big brown eyes. The +curve of the neck, the little tip-tilted chin!</p> + +<p>Seth had been hardly human if the thought of forgetting Celia and her +indifference in Cyclona's arms had not more than once presented +itself.</p> + +<p>It presented itself now with the strength of strong winds.</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_123" id="Page_123">[123]</a></span>Without home or kindred, without tie or connection, she was a flower +in his pathway. He had only to reach out and pluck her and wear her on +his heart. There were none to gainsay him. No mortal lived who dared +defend her or say nay.</p> + +<p>Why waste his life, then, in dreams and fantasies, in regrets, and +hopings, when here lay a glowing, breathing, living reality?</p> + +<p>He reached out his hand and caught hers in a firm, compelling grasp. A +splendid creature sent to comfort him. A creature blown by the winds +of heaven to his threshold. A dear defenceless thing without home or +kindred, unprotected, uncared of, weak and in need of affection, in +dire need of love.</p> + +<p>Helpless, unshielded, unguarded ... unprotected ... unguarded ... +uncared for....</p> + +<p>Seth frowned. The wind had wafted itself into his brain again. He was +growing dazed.</p> + +<p>He caught his hand away from Cyclona's. He thrust his fingers through +his hair. He pressed them over his eyes.</p> + +<p>These strange words persisted in piling themselves solidly between him +and his <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_124" id="Page_124">[124]</a></span>desire. They formed a barrier stronger than walls of brick or +mortar.</p> + +<p>Unprotected, defenceless, unguarded, uncared for, this girl who had +rocked his child and Celia's in her arms, who had held him close to +the warmth of her young bosom. This beautiful unprotected girl who had +tenderly closed the eyes of his child!</p> + +<p>The fragile barrier built by unseen hands was cloud-high now.</p> + +<p>If the wraith of Cyclona had occupied the chair there by his side she +could scarcely have been further removed from his embrace.</p> + +<p>Humbly Seth bent over the small brown hand.</p> + +<p>Reverently he kissed away the tear.</p> + +<br /> +<br /> +<br /> +<br /> +<a name="CHAPTER_XVIII" id="CHAPTER_XVIII"></a><hr /> +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_125" id="Page_125">[125]</a></span><br /> + +<h3>CHAPTER XVIII.<span class="totoc"><a href="#toc">ToC</a></span></h3> +<br /> + +<div class="imgl"> +<img border="0" src="images/image05.png" width="100%" alt="CHAPTER XVIII." /> +</div> + + +<p>But the moons waxed and waned and the months lapsed into years and +Seth grew hopeless, more and more hopeless, so hopeless that at last +he began to lose faith in the Magic City, and to fear for the +realization of his fantastic will-o'-the-wisp of a beautiful house.</p> + +<p>Would the Wise Men never come out of the East to buy up his land and +build that magnificent city of his dreams at the forks of the river +where the cyclones never came, so that he could build his beautiful +house for Celia? Or would they always stop just short of it?</p> + +<p>Already that little town on the edge of the State called Kansas City +because it was in Missouri, had boomed itself into a city and, being +just outside the cyclone belt, had not been blown away. In spite of +the fact that it had been set high on a hill it had not been blown +away.</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_126" id="Page_126">[126]</a></span>The Wise Men had built that town.</p> + +<p>Also, there was another town they had built within the belt which +promised to thrive, a town where the people had so arranged it that +the coming of a cyclone could be telegraphed to them, where signs like +this were posted, "A cyclone due at three o'clock," and they had ample +time to shut up shop and school and prepare for it, going down into +their cyclone cellars, shutting fast the doors and staying there until +it was over.</p> + +<p>True, a cyclone or two had grazed this town.</p> + +<p>One had even taken off a wing. But, though a trifle disabled by each, +it had continued to thrive, showing such evident and robust signs of +life and strength that the cyclones, presently giving up in despair of +making a wreck of it, had gone on by as Seth has said they would do +once they found their master.</p> + +<p>Then this town had been by way of premium for stanchness and courage +made the capital of this State of tornadoes and whirlwinds.</p> + +<p>But this was as far as it went or seemed to intend to go. Further +south and west an attempt or two had been made to plant towns, but +their cellars <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_127" id="Page_127">[127]</a></span>had not been dug deep enough or their foundations had +not been sufficiently firm, or the cyclones had not yet become +reconciled to the sight of them. At any rate, the cyclones had come +along and swept them away without a word of warning, and they had not +been heard of since, neither cyclone nor town.</p> + +<p>And so, altogether, Seth lost heart and came to the conclusion that +his Magic City, if it was ever to be built would be built after his +time and he would never have the happiness of gazing upon it. The hope +of seeing it was all that had kept him in the West. Now that he had +lost it, an uncontrollable longing came over him to go back home, to +see the wife who had deserted him, throw himself at her feet and beg +her forgiveness for his madness which had resulted in their +separation.</p> + +<p>From dreaming dreams of the Magic City he took to dreaming dreams of +her.</p> + +<p>It was years since he had seen her, but the absent, like the dead, +remain unchanged to us. To him she was the same as when last he saw +her.</p> + +<p>How beautiful she had been with her great blue eyes and her hair the +color of Charlie's, tawny, like sunshine! And <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_128" id="Page_128">[128]</a></span>right, too, in her +scorn of his visions. And how foolish he had been to dream of training +the wind-blown West into a fit place for human beings to inhabit, or +for great cities to be built! It would take a stronger hand than his +to do that, he had come to believe. It would take the hand of God.</p> + +<p>He had tried to find a tree that would grow so swiftly that the wind +could have no effect upon it. He had planted slim switches of one kind +after another and the wind had blown each to leaflessness, until now +there stood a slim row of cottonwoods that he had tried as a last +resort, but the same thing would happen to them, perhaps. He had lost +faith in trees. But he would not say yet that he had lost faith in +God.</p> + +<p>He watched the same train trailing so far away as to seem a toy train +and longed as she had done to take it and go back home.</p> + +<p>At last he understood the look in her eyes as she watched it and the +thoughts that enthralled her.</p> + +<p>Sometimes when we strive for a thing and set our hearts on it, it +holds itself aloof from us. When we cease to strive, it comes.</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_129" id="Page_129">[129]</a></span>But that is among the many strange ways of Providence which seems to +rule us blindly, but which is not so blind, perhaps, after all, as it +seems.</p> + +<p>Another of its ways most incomprehensible is to bring us what we have +longed for a little too late sometimes.</p> + +<p>But this is the story of Seth, and this is the way of its happening:</p> + +<p>It was early in a mild and beautiful spring when the corn was young. +It stood shoulder high, lusty and strong and green. What with the +unwonted mildness of the weather and the absence of the usual storms +and the proneness of the clouds to deposit themselves about in gentle +showers, the crop promised fair to rival any crop that Seth had ever +raised on the Kansas prairies.</p> + +<p>He hoed and toiled and smiled and listened to the rustling of the +corn, for he had made up his mind.</p> + +<p>When the harvest was at an end he would sell the crop and the place +for what it would bring, and go back home. He would go back to his +wife and home!</p> + +<p>The rustling of the corn was music in his ears. It was more. It was +like the glad hand of young Love; for with the crops so fine and the +harvest so rich, <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_130" id="Page_130">[130]</a></span>when he went back home to her, he would not go +empty-handed and unwelcome.</p> + +<p>He was going back once more to his Kentucky home.</p> + +<p>No hills seemed so green as those Kentucky hills and no skies so blue +as those skies that vaulted above the green, green hills of his native +land.</p> + +<p>It had been longer than he cared to count since he had seen the blue +grass waving about in the wind there, not such wind as swept the +Kansas prairies, but gentle zephyrs almost breathless that rustled +softly and musically through the little blades of grass just as the +wind was rustling through the stalks now as he walked slowly with the +heavy stride of the clumsy farmer, hoeing the corn.</p> + +<p>And he had not heard the whip-poor-will, nor sat under the shade of +the wide spreading oaks, nor listened to the soft Southern talk of his +and her people, not since he had come to Kansas with those other +foolish folk to brave the dangers of the strange new country in the +search of homes.</p> + +<p>Homes!</p> + +<p>He could point out the graves of some of them here and there about the +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_131" id="Page_131">[131]</a></span>vastness of the level prairies, though more often he wandered across +the vast level wastes, looking for the places where they should be and +found them not, because of the buffaloes that had long ago trampled +out the shape of them, or because of the corn that had been planted in +furrows above their mounds, the serried ranks through which the wind +sang requiems, chanting, whispering, moaning and sighing in the balmy +springtime and through the heat of the long summer days until in the +chill of the autumn the farmers cut the stalks and stacked them +evenly, leaving no dangling leaves to sigh through nor tassels to +flout.</p> + +<p>Now that he had made up his mind, the roughness of his life bore in +upon him.</p> + +<p>He thought with Celia that it would be good to live again in a land +where people led soft, easy lives. She was not to be blamed. She was +right with that strange animal instinct which leads some women blindly +to the truth, and he had wasted the best years of his life and all of +the boy's in this terrible land of whirlwinds and coyotes and wide, +thirsty plains stretching to meet the blazing <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_132" id="Page_132">[132]</a></span>skies of noonday or the +star-gemmed dome of the purple night.</p> + +<p>For the plains in some strange and mysterious way took vengeance upon +many of those who dared upturn with hoe and plough the fresh new +malarial soil, inserting germs of disease and death which soon +stretched them beneath.</p> + +<p>Some lives must invariably be sacrificed to the upbuilding of any new +country, but why so many? And, sadder still, minds had been +sacrificed. The asylums, such as they were, were filled with those +whose minds in the ghastly loneliness of the desert had been torn and +turned and twisted by the incessant whirl and shirr and swish and +force of the pitiless winds.</p> + +<p>He himself loved the wind, but there were times when he was afraid of +it, when it got in his brain and whirled and caused him to see things +in strange lights and weird, things fantastically colored, +kaleidoscopic and upside down.</p> + +<p>When the day's work was done he sat outside the dugout talking +sometimes to himself, sometimes to Cyclona, telling of how when the +harvest was over and gathered he would go back home.</p> + +<p>His plan must succeed, he sighed, to <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_133" id="Page_133">[133]</a></span>himself sometimes, sometimes to +Cyclona, who would sit listening, her great eyes on the limit of the +horizon, deep, dark, troubled as she brooded upon what her life would +be when he was gone; and as he talked he panted in the deep +earnestness of his insistence that the crops must succeed.</p> + +<p>Other plans had failed, but not this. Not this! It must not! +Resolutely he put away from him all thought of failure. It must +succeed. He must go home!</p> + +<p>He must ease this longing for the sight of Celia and her people which +had come to him of late to stay with him through seed-time and +harvest, through the early spring when the corn was young, and later +when it rose to heights unheard of, and later still through those +bitter days of grasshoppers and chinch bugs and hot winds and other +blightful things that haunt the Kansas cornfield to their ruin.</p> + +<p>He must go home.</p> + +<br /> +<br /> +<br /> +<br /> +<a name="CHAPTER_XIX" id="CHAPTER_XIX"></a><hr /> +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_134" id="Page_134">[134]</a></span><br /> + +<h3>CHAPTER XIX.<span class="totoc"><a href="#toc">ToC</a></span></h3> +<br /> + +<div class="imgl"> +<img border="0" src="images/image10.png" width="100%" alt="CHAPTER XIX." /> +</div> + + +<p>Since Seth had braved everything and dared everything, going so far +even as to hire harvest hands to help him, taking every possible +chance upon the yield of this harvest, as a gambler stakes his all +upon the last throw of the dice, fortune seemed at last to come his +way, and it promised a yield which eclipsed his wildest dreaming.</p> + +<p>His heart grew light as he listened to the rustling of the corn and +into his tired eyes, beginning to be old, there crept so warm a glow +that the farm hands stood and stared at him as they came trooping in +hot and dusty from the fields.</p> + +<p>They wondered what could have come over him to give to his worn and +faded face so nearly the look of youth.</p> + +<p>"The corn is fine, John, isn't it?" he asked of a gray-haired man who +sat at one corner of the rough table, mopping <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_135" id="Page_135">[135]</a></span>his forehead with a +large bandana handkerchief, not too clean.</p> + +<p>John put the handkerchief back into his pocket and fell upon the meal +Seth set before him.</p> + +<p>"It's fine enough," said he, "it'll be the finest crop ever raised in +these here parts if the hot winds don't come."</p> + +<p>After a little while he said again:</p> + +<p>"If the hot winds don't come."</p> + +<p>Seth set a plate of bread down by him with a crash.</p> + +<p>"The hot winds!" he cried. "The hot winds!"</p> + +<p>Man as he was he clasped his hands together and caught them apart, +wringing them.</p> + +<p>"I had forgotten all about the hot winds!" he moaned. "I had forgotten +all about the hot winds!"</p> + +<hr style='width: 15%; margin-top: 1.5em; margin-bottom: 1.5em;' /> + +<p>The softness of the spring air gave place to heat, to extreme heat, +sudden and blighting. A copper sun blazed in a copper sky.</p> + +<p>The cooling breezes under the influence of the heat changed to +scorching winds. These winds blew menacingly through the rustling +stalks of the strong green corn.</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_136" id="Page_136">[136]</a></span>For one long day they laughed defiance, holding firmly erect their +brave heads upon which the yellow tassels were beginning to thrust +themselves aloft in silken beauty; and Seth, watching, braced himself +with the hope that they would somehow stand the ordeal, that the heat +might abate, that in some way, by the special finger of Providence, +perhaps, the threatened ruin might be warded off, that a cooling +breeze might come blowing up from the Gulf or a shower might fall and +he could still go back home.</p> + +<p>On the second day the heat had not abated. It had rather increased. +The burning winds blew stronger. They raged with a sudden fury, died +down to a whisper, and raged again.</p> + +<p>John, when he led the field hands in, shook his head and took his +place at the table in silence.</p> + +<p>Seth, setting their meal before them, crept to the door and looked +out.</p> + +<p>He turned faint and sick at heart at the sight of the fields, for the +tassels had drooped and the broad green leaves were slowly changing to +a parched and withered brown, parched and withered as his face, which +had been bared to the <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_137" id="Page_137">[137]</a></span>heat of the Kansas prairies for so many years, +parched and withered as his heart which had borne the brunt of sadness +and sorrow and separation until the climax was reached and it could +bear no more.</p> + +<p>On the third day the hot winds grew vengeful. They swept across the +prairies with a hissing sound as of flames sizzling through the heat +of a furnace. The tassels, burnt now to a dingy brown, hung in wisps. +The leaves drooped like tired arms. They no longer sang in the wind. +They rattled, a hoarse, harsh rattle premonitory of death.</p> + +<p>Far and near the fields lay scorched, withered, burnt to a crisp as if +by the fast and furious blast of a raging prairie fire.</p> + +<p>There was no longer need of harvest hands.</p> + +<p>The harvest, gathered by the hot winds, was ended. The ruin was +complete.</p> + +<p>Their mission accomplished, the winds died down suddenly as they had +risen and passed away across the barren prairies in a sigh.</p> + +<p>Then up came the cooling breezes from the Gulf, light, zephyry clouds +gathered, <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_138" id="Page_138">[138]</a></span>shut off the brazen sunlight and burst into a grateful +shower, which descended upon the parched and deadened fields of corn.</p> + +<p>But Seth!</p> + +<p>Flung on his knees by the side of the bed in the corner of the hole in +the ground, his face buried in his arms, he listened to the patter of +those raindrops on the corn.</p> + +<p>His eyes were dry; but a spring had broken somewhere near the region +of his heart.</p> + +<p>He owned himself defeated.</p> + +<p>He gave up the fight.</p> + +<br /> +<br /> +<br /> +<br /> +<a name="CHAPTER_XX" id="CHAPTER_XX"></a><hr /> +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_139" id="Page_139">[139]</a></span><br /> + +<h3>CHAPTER XX.<span class="totoc"><a href="#toc">ToC</a></span></h3> +<br /> + +<div class="imgl"> +<img border="0" src="images/image06.png" width="100%" alt="CHAPTER XX." /> +</div> + + +<p>Cyclona had gone to Seth's dugout and found a note from him on the +table. It contained few words, but they held a world of meaning. +Simple words and few, tolling her knell of doom.</p> + +<p>"I have gone to Celia," it read.</p> + +<p>Cyclona crushed the paper, flung it to the floor and ran from the hole +in the ground, afraid of she knew not what, engulfed in the awful fear +which encompasses the hopeless,—the fear of herself.</p> + +<p>She sprang to her saddle and urged her broncho on with heel and whip, +upright as an Indian in her saddle, her face set, expressionless in +its marble-like immobility.</p> + +<p>She scarcely heeded the direction she took. She left that to her +broncho, who sped into the heat of the dusty daylight, following hard +in the footsteps of the wind.</p> + +<p>What she wished to do was to go <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_140" id="Page_140">[140]</a></span>straight to God, to stand before Him +and ask him questions.</p> + +<p>If within us earthworms there is the Divine Spark of the Deity, if we +are in truth His sons and daughters, she reasoned, then we have some +rights that this Deity is bound to respect.</p> + +<p>What earthly father would knowingly permit his children to stumble +blindly along dangerous pathways into dangerous places?</p> + +<p>What earthly father would demand that his children rush headlong into +danger unquestioningly?</p> + +<p>What earthly father would create hearts only to crush them?</p> + +<p>Why had He thrust human beings onto this earth against their will, +without their volition, to suffer the tortures of the damned?</p> + +<p>Why had He created this huge joke of an animal, part body, part soul, +all nerves keen to catch at suffering, only to laugh at it?</p> + +<p>Why had He taken the pains to fashion this Opera Bouffe of a world at +all? Why had He made of it a slate upon which to draw lines of human +beings, then wipe them aimlessly off as would any child?</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_141" id="Page_141">[141]</a></span>For mere amusement after the manner of children?</p> + +<p>If not, then why? Why? Why?</p> + +<p>She could have screamed out this "Why" into the way of the wind.</p> + +<p>She wanted to ask Him why he whirled body-clad souls out of the +Nowhere, dragged them by the hair of their heads through ways thronged +with thorns, then thrust them back again into the Nowhere, to lie +stone still in their chill damp graves, in their straight grave +clothes, awaiting His pleasure?</p> + +<p>Why had He seen fit to fashion some all body and no soul?</p> + +<p>Why had He made others all soul?</p> + +<p>Why had He created the Seths to weary for love of the Celias and the +Cyclonas to eat out their hearts for love of the Seths?</p> + +<p>Some of these questions she had been wont to put to Seth, who had +answered them as best he could in his patient way.</p> + +<p>There was a hidden meaning in it all, he had said, meaningless as it +often seemed. Some meaning that would show itself in God's good time.</p> + +<p>We are uncut diamonds, was one of his explanations. We had much need +of polishing before we could attain <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_142" id="Page_142">[142]</a></span>sufficient brilliancy to adorn a +crown. We must have faith and hope, he had said. Much faith and hope +and patience. And above all we must have the belief that it would all +come out in the Great White Wash of Eternity, in God's good time.</p> + +<p>But there were those who succumbed before God's good time, who would +never know the explanation until they had passed into the Beyond, +where they would cease to care.</p> + +<p>She rode on and on, asking herself these questions and finding no +answer in the whirl and eddy of dust blown at her by the wind, in the +limitless stretch of prairie, in the suffocating thickness of heat +which enveloped the way of the wind.</p> + +<p>Intense heat. Sultry, parching, enervating, sure precursor, if she had +thought to remember, if she had been less engrossed in the bitterness +of her questionings, of a storm.</p> + +<p>Soon, aroused by the intensity of this heat, which burned like the +blast from an oven, she whirled about and turned her broncho's head +the other way.</p> + +<p>It was time, for that way lay her home and danger threatened it.</p> + +<p>At the moment of her turning a blast <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_143" id="Page_143">[143]</a></span>blew with trumpet-like warning +into the day, blazing redly like a fire of logs quickened by panting +breaths.</p> + +<p>A lurid light, like the light of Judgment Day or the wrath of God +spread while she looked.</p> + +<p>It enveloped her.</p> + +<p>It was as if she gazed upon earth and sky through a bit of bright red +stained glass.</p> + +<p>In the southern skies, in the direction of her home, clouds piled +high, black, threatening.</p> + +<p>Then she heard a rushing sound of wind, wailing, moaning, threshing, +roaring sullenly in the distance.</p> + +<p>She spurred her broncho into the darkness lit by flashes of this lurid +light.</p> + +<p>A flash of light.</p> + +<p>Then darkness, thick as purple velvet.</p> + +<p>Furiously she urged the animal forward into this horrible unknown +which had the look of the wrath of God come upon her for her doubting, +pressed on by an innate feeling of affection for those two who had +befriended her, hurrying to their aid, spurred by an instinctive +foreboding of impending evil in this awful roaring, whirling, +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_144" id="Page_144">[144]</a></span>murderous sound of the wild winds gone suddenly stark mad.</p> + +<p>As she sped on, something swept past her with a great hoarse roar, +distinguishable above the deafening roar of the wind.</p> + +<p>It was Seth's herd, stampeding, running with the wind and bellowing +with fear.</p> + +<p>She winged her way into the terror of the darkness.</p> + +<p>Ready an hour before for death in any form, she now all at once found +herself panting with fear of it, gasping with a deadly fear of a +ghastly fate, of being crushed and mangled, of dying by inches beneath +some horrible weight, but this did not deter her.</p> + +<p>Afraid to breathe a prayer to the God whom she had dared to question, +she winged her way breathlessly on and on.</p> + +<p>Then sheets of water, as if the skies had opened and emptied +themselves,—and a vivid flash of lightning revealing the wind's wet +wings, its wild whirling fingers dripping.</p> + +<p>Cyclona saw it coming in that flash, a fiendish thing apparently +alive, copper-colored, funnel-shaped, ghastly. She threw herself +forward on the neck of her <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_145" id="Page_145">[145]</a></span>broncho, grasping his mane. Then a blow +from a great unseen hand out of the darkness struck them both, felling +them.</p> + +<p>During the next few minutes of inky blackness, of indescribable +terror, of flying missiles armed with death, Cyclona lay unconscious. +When she opened her eyes a calm light of the evenness of twilight had +spread over the track of the cyclone, and her head lay pillowed on +Hugh Walsingham's shoulder. Close beside her was a ragged bough and +her broncho lay dead near by. The bough was the hand that had struck +them out of the darkness, had thrown her to the sod and killed her +animal.</p> + +<p>"I came very near," she sighed, "to standing before God."</p> + +<p>By and by with Walsingham's help she stood.</p> + +<p>"Where is the house?" she asked, bewildered by the barrenness of the +spot on which the topsy turvy house had stood for so many years.</p> + +<p>"It is gone," said he.</p> + +<p>Cyclona pressed both hands to her face and rocked back and forth, +sobbing.</p> + +<p>God had spared her, true, but He had <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_146" id="Page_146">[146]</a></span>offered her this delicate irony +of leaving her homeless.</p> + +<p>Hugh looked moodily out over the place of the topsy turvy house, his +own mind awhirl with the maddening force of the furious winds through +which he had passed.</p> + +<p>"In Kansas," said he, grimly, "it is the wind that giveth and the wind +that taketh away."</p> + +<p>Then, looking tenderly at the girl in his arms, he added softly: +"Blessed be the name of the wind!"</p> + +<br /> +<br /> +<br /> +<br /> +<a name="CHAPTER_XXI" id="CHAPTER_XXI"></a><hr /> +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_147" id="Page_147">[147]</a></span><br /> + +<h3>CHAPTER XXI.<span class="totoc"><a href="#toc">ToC</a></span></h3> +<br /> + +<div class="imgl"> +<img border="0" src="images/image03.png" width="100%" alt="CHAPTER XXI." /> +</div> + + +<p>Thereafter at station after station, a tall, gaunt man may have been +seen handling baggage, running errands, caring for the cattle, doing +any sort of work, no matter how humble, that lay to his hand, making +his way slowly, wearily but steadily on toward the South.</p> + +<p>Seth, working his way home to Celia.</p> + +<p>He slept in baggage cars, on cattle trains. He swung to steps of +trains moved off and clung there between brief stations. He stopped +over at small towns and earned his bread at odd jobs, bread and +sufficient money sometimes to move on steadily for a day or two.</p> + +<p>Strange weathers burned and bit him. He walked heavily in the path of +the wind overhung by pale clouds. He slept under the stars out in the +open.</p> + +<p>It was days before he passed the plains, the place of the sleepless +winds where <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_148" id="Page_148">[148]</a></span>wan white skies bent above the grass of the hot dry +pulse, the lifeless grass that wailed into the ceaseless wind its +dirge of death and decay.</p> + +<p>It was weeks before he reached Kansas City, the city of hills, with +lights hung high and lights hung low. Here he found a place as +brakeman and worked his way into Missouri.</p> + +<p>Here it was as if an ocean steamer had suddenly stopped the whir of +its wheels at the approach of the pilot come out from shore to tug it +in.</p> + +<p>The wind had stopped blowing.</p> + +<p>The position was only temporary. Another brakeman taking his place, +Seth walked.</p> + +<p>He was not sorry to walk in this quiet land. How tenderly green the +shrubbery was, how beautiful! Mingled with the darker green of the +cedar and pine, the brown green of the cone.</p> + +<p>How sweet the slow green trees! Not windswept! Not torn by the wild, +wet fingers of the wind, not lashed with hot and scathing fingers gone +dry with drought, but still and peaceful.</p> + +<p>A sleepy world of streams it was, a sleepy world of streams and sweet +green trees among whose leaflets gentle zephyrs <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_149" id="Page_149">[149]</a></span>breathed scarcely +perceptible sighs of pure contentment.</p> + +<p>Patiently, contentedly, he walked mile after mile through this +beautiful Missouri which was so like home, among these tall, sighing +trees, under the protection of their great still umbrella-like heads, +thinking of his dream Celia, whom he was so soon to see.</p> + +<p>The absence of the wind had left his brain clear. Since it was so +short a time until his dream was to become a reality, no longing or +heartache served to set his brain afire with the agony of despair. +Calmly he walked in the white straight rain among the tender trees, +his tired brain clear, thinking of her.</p> + +<p>How would she receive him?</p> + +<p>Surely, in spite of his empty-handedness, she would greet him lovingly +because of their long separation and the death of the child. Surely +she would receive him lovingly because of the endless days that had +divided them. Those days! Those days! But he refused to let his mind +dwell on the deadly length of them. It might sadden again.</p> + +<p>In the world, he reasoned, there were those two only, Celia and +himself. Should they not cling together?</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_150" id="Page_150">[150]</a></span>True, he would arrive empty-handed, but he could make a living for her +and himself in the old town. He was not without friends there. There +were those who had loved him in the olden time. They would give him +work. They would help him build up his lost fortunes. He would spend +his life in retrieving, in compensating to Celia for the foolish years +that he had spent dreaming dreams.</p> + +<p>In St. Louis he remained for weeks, working about the station in the +effort to earn enough for his ride to Cincinnati. At length he +succeeded, but on an emigrant train.</p> + +<p>He rode for a day, looking out the window at the landscape swimming by +rather than at his wild-eyed companions, crowded together like sheep. +At the end of the day he arrived at Cincinnati.</p> + +<p>And then Seth came into—into God's country.</p> + +<br /> +<br /> +<br /> +<br /> +<a name="CHAPTER_XXII" id="CHAPTER_XXII"></a><hr /> +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_151" id="Page_151">[151]</a></span><br /> + +<h3>CHAPTER XXII.<span class="totoc"><a href="#toc">ToC</a></span></h3> +<br /> + +<div class="imgl"> +<img border="0" src="images/image08.png" width="100%" alt="CHAPTER XXII." /> +</div> + + +<p>For some months after Celia's return to her native town, her friends +gathered gladly about her. A little visit! That was natural enough. +They welcomed her with open arms.</p> + +<p>As the visit lengthened, questions ensued.</p> + +<p>The child. What of him. Was he not very young to leave for such a +length of time? Was not that a strange mother who could thus separate +herself from a babe in arms; who could deprive him of the warmth and +comfort of her embrace?</p> + +<p>And Seth? What of him? For Seth had many friends among them who knew +his great heart and his worth.</p> + +<p>How was it possible for her to remain apart from her husband and child +so long?</p> + +<p>Contented in the soft and balmy clime, in the land of her birth, she +told them <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_152" id="Page_152">[152]</a></span>of the terror of the winds, of the sunbaked prairie, of the +plague of the grasshoppers, of the hot winds that blistered, of the +scorch of the simoons, of the withering blasts of summer and the +freezing storms of winter, and thought that sufficient explanation +until she beheld herself reflected in the coldness of their glances as +in a mirror, set aloof outside their lives as a thing abnormal, as a +worthless instrument whose leading string is somehow out of tune, +which has snapped with a discordant twang.</p> + +<p>However, this did not greatly distress her. She turned to her mother +for companionship. The mother filled what small need she had of love +until she died. She was soon followed, this mother of hers, into the +land of shadows by the loving shadow of herself, Celia's black Mammy. +Then Celia was left alone in the old house, which, for lack of funds, +was fast falling into ruin, the wrinkled shingles of the roof letting +in the rain in dismal drops to flood the cellar and the kitchen, the +grass growing desolately up between the bricks of the pavement that +led from door to gate for lack of the tread of neighborly feet.</p> + +<p>Life, which is never the same, which <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_153" id="Page_153">[153]</a></span>is ever changing, changes by +degrees. Not all at once did Celia's soul shrivel but gradually. Now +and again in the early days following upon her return to her home, at +the cry of a child in the street, she would start to her feet, then +remember and shrug her shoulders and forget. And there were some +nights that were filled for her with the remembered moan of the +prairie winds. She heard them shriek and howl and whistle with all +their old time force and terror. She sprang wildly out of bed and ran +to the window to look out on the slumbrous quiet of the Southern +night, to clasp her hand and thank her good fortune that she looked +not out on the wide weird waste of the trackless prairie.</p> + +<p>Gradually, too, she descended to poverty and that without complaint.</p> + +<p>To poverty dire as that from which she had fled, except that it was +unaccompanied by the horror of simoon and blizzard, of hot winds and +cold.</p> + +<p>For her this sufficed.</p> + +<p>Too proud to ask for help of those who passed her by in coldness as a +soulless creature of a nature impossible to understand and therefore +to be shunned, she toiled and delved alone, a recluse and <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_154" id="Page_154">[154]</a></span>outcast in +the home of her birth. She delved in the patch of a garden for the +wherewithal to keep the poor roof over her head. She hoed and dug and +drove hard bargains with the grocers to whom she sold her meagre +products. She washed and ironed and mended and darned and cooked, +coming at length perforce to the drudgery which throughout her brief +life in the hole in the ground she had scornfully disdained.</p> + +<p>Not once did the thought of asking help of Seth or of returning to him +present itself.</p> + +<p>And yet there were tardy times when the memory of the winds remained +with her day in and day out, when at twilight she sat on the steps of +her vine-covered, crumbling portico and communed with herself.</p> + +<p>When, placing herself apart, she reviewed her life and observed +herself with the critical eye of an uninterested outsider.</p> + +<p>Invariably then she would say to herself, remembering the wail and +shriek and moan of the hideous winds:</p> + +<p>"I would leave them again, the winds and the child and him. If it +happened a second time, and I again had the <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_155" id="Page_155">[155]</a></span>choice, I would leave +them exactly the same."</p> + +<p>Then aloud, in apology for what had the look to her own biased eyes of +utter heartlessness:</p> + +<p>"It was the fault of the winds," she would mutter, "it was the fault +of the winds!"</p> + +<br /> +<br /> +<br /> +<br /> +<a name="CHAPTER_XXIII" id="CHAPTER_XXIII"></a><hr /> +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_156" id="Page_156">[156]</a></span><br /> + +<h3>CHAPTER XXIII.<span class="totoc"><a href="#toc">ToC</a></span></h3> +<br /> + +<div class="imgl"> +<img border="0" src="images/image05.png" width="100%" alt="CHAPTER XXIII." /> +</div> + + +<p>Kentucky! God's country!</p> + +<p>It was as if Seth had dropped out of a wind-blown cloud into a quiet +garden, sweetly fenced about and away from the jar and fret of the +world.</p> + +<p>Placid, content, tranquil, standing stock-still in the delicacy of its +old-fashioned beauty, as if the world outside and beyond had never +progressed.</p> + +<p>He wandered by old and rich plantations, carved by necessity into +smaller farms, past big white stone gates opening to wide avenues +which led up to them, looking wistfully in, still content to wander a +space before he should experience the rapture of seeing Celia's face, +loitering, the white happiness of that within his reach, half fearing +to hold out his hand for it, fearing it might vanish, escape +phantasmagorically, turn out to be a will-o'-the-wisp.</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_157" id="Page_157">[157]</a></span>Whip-poor-wills accompanied him in his wanderings, Bob Whites, +Nightingales; and lazy ebon negroes, musical as birds, sang lilting +Southern songs on the way to the tinkle of banjo and guitar.</p> + +<p>The negroes were not so kind as the birds. From them he suffered +humiliation.</p> + +<p>More than once he was dubbed "Po' white!" by some haughty ebon +creature from whose mouth he was supposedly taking the bread.</p> + +<p>But here, as in Missouri, he looked for consolation to the wet woods, +to the still, soft, straight rain, to the sighing trees that softly +soughed him welcome.</p> + +<p>After weary days and nights, working by day on rock-pile or in field, +sleeping by night in the corner of a friendly fence of worm-eaten +rails, fanned by the delicate hair of the pale blue grasses, he came +to Burgin.</p> + +<p>The driver of the bus that conveyed passengers to Harrodsburg looked +down upon him from the height of his perch. He was strange to Seth, +but he recognized a something of the kinship of country in his face +and manner.</p> + +<p>"Have a lif'?" he asked.</p> + +<p>Seth refused. It was bright daylight. <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_158" id="Page_158">[158]</a></span>He wished to steal into his old +home under the covering of the twilight, he was so footsore and +bedraggled.</p> + +<p>"I'll walk," he smiled, "but thank you just the same."</p> + +<p>Four miles, then, over hill, down dale, past dusty undergrowth, the +brilliant blue of the skies above him, passing negroes who looked +strangely at him out of rolling eyes, who jerked black thumbs in his +direction over shoulders, saying:</p> + +<p>"See de po' white trash man, walkin' home!"</p> + +<p>But there were some Bob Whites singing in the bushes over the rail +fences, singing, singing!</p> + +<p>A bird at the side of the road rested momentarily on a long, keen +switch of a blackberry bush, the switch bent earthward, the bird flew +off and the twig bent back again.</p> + +<p>At sight of him ground squirrels sped into the underbrush.</p> + +<p>Somewhere on the other side of the rail fences little negroes sang. +They were too young yet to jerk their thumbs at him and say:</p> + +<p>"Po' white!"</p> + +<p>Now that he was so near to Celia his heart misgave him. How would she +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_159" id="Page_159">[159]</a></span>receive him, coming home to her a tramp, a dusty, tired, footsore +tramp, wet, chilled to the bone, footsore and tired! So tired!</p> + +<p>He forged ahead, trying hard to throw off these thoughts. It was the +scornful negroes who had engendered them.</p> + +<p>A mile from Harrodsburg he came to the toll gate. A woman whose yellow +hair showed streaks of gray, raised the pole for him, smiling at him.</p> + +<p>"That man had eyes like Seth Lawsons," she said to her husband, who +smoked his pipe on the porch while she raised and lowered the poles +and so supported the family.</p> + +<p>She was the girl who had called good-by after Celia years before, when +she left for her journey to the West and the Magic City.</p> + +<hr style='width: 15%; margin-top: 1.5em; margin-bottom: 1.5em;' /> + +<p>It was twilight when Seth came to Celia's gate.</p> + +<p>A woman sat alone on the step of the portico, looking out down the +pike.</p> + +<p>Seth paused, his hand on the latch, seeing which the woman shook her +head negatively.</p> + +<p>Seth raised the latch, whereupon she suddenly stood, frowning.</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_160" id="Page_160">[160]</a></span>"I have nothing for you," she called out raspingly. "There is not a +thing in the house to eat. Go away! Go away!"</p> + +<p>"Celia!" Seth cried out, stabbed to the heart. "I am not a beggar for +bread, but give me a crust of kindness for the love of God! I am +Seth."</p> + +<br /> +<br /> +<br /> +<br /> +<a name="CHAPTER_XXIV" id="CHAPTER_XXIV"></a><hr /> +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_161" id="Page_161">[161]</a></span><br /> + +<h3>CHAPTER XXIV.<span class="totoc"><a href="#toc">ToC</a></span></h3> +<br /> + +<div class="imgl"> +<img border="0" src="images/image10.png" width="100%" alt="CHAPTER XXIV." /> +</div> + + +<p>Seen from afar off by the loving eyes of memory, the cows' horns are +longer than they are close by.</p> + +<p>The kitchen was old and smoky. Once on a time it had been regularly +calcimined, twice a year, or three times, but it had been many years +now since it had undergone this cleanly process.</p> + +<p>Celia's welcome of Seth had been according to her nature, all the more +hardened now by seclusion and poverty. She heard without emotion of +the death of the child. It mattered little to her. She had never known +him. Seth, come back to her a failure, a tramp, was deserving of scant +courtesy. She meted it out to him as it seemed to her he deserved.</p> + +<p>The miles he had travelled counted little. Since he had proven himself +too great a failure to travel as men do, it was only just that he +should work his <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_162" id="Page_162">[162]</a></span>way, sleep in fence corners, live on crusts and walk.</p> + +<p>It was one of her theories that, given sufficient time, all men and +animals sink to their level.</p> + +<p>Who was Seth that he should be exempt from this law?</p> + +<p>The thought occurred to her that he had come to her as a last +recourse. That, unable to make his own living, he had come to share +hers.</p> + +<p>That thought scarcely served to add warmth to her welcome.</p> + +<p>Seth sat on a chair against the blackened wall in the position of the +tramp who has covered weary distances, whose every bone aches with the +extreme intensity of fatigue.</p> + +<p>He was like a rag that had been thrown there.</p> + +<p>As Celia had watched him get their first supper in the dugout, so he +now watched her. As she had sat bitterly disillusioned in the darkness +of the hole in the ground, so he sat within the four close walls of +the smoke-begrimed kitchen of her old Kentucky home, disillusioned +beyond compare.</p> + +<p>In the once sunny hair there were streaks of gray, but it was not +that. <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_163" id="Page_163">[163]</a></span>There were wrinkles beneath the blue eyes that had not lost +their sternness, the cold blue of their intensity, the chill and +penetrating frost of their gaze. Somehow, too, those large and +beautiful eyes had appeared to grow smaller with the passing of the +years, not with tears, for there are tears that wash out all else but +beauty in some women's eyes, but with the barren drought of feeling +which goes to sap the very fount of loveliness.</p> + +<p>And it was this barren drought of feeling which at last served to +disillusion him, whose existence he at last realized in this creature +who had been his cherished idol. He realized it in her apathy upon +hearing of the death of the child. He realized it in the look she +turned upon him in which he saw her stern suspicion that he had come +homeless to her in the hope of a home.</p> + +<p>Formerly, in the days of her mother and her old black Mammy, they had +taken tea in the dining-room, which had looked out on a green sward +brightened by flowers.</p> + +<p>Gay and cheerful teas these were, enlivened by guests.</p> + +<p>In the absence of guests, Celia had fallen into the slack habit of +eating in <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_164" id="Page_164">[164]</a></span>the kitchen of the smoke-begrimed ceiling and the dark bare +walls. There was a small deal table against the window. It was covered +with an abbreviated cloth.</p> + +<p>Celia walked about setting this table for Seth and herself, laying +with palpable reluctance the extra plate, cup, saucer, knife and fork. +Her movements were no longer girlish. They were heavy and slow.</p> + +<p>When tea was ready she bade Seth draw up his chair. They then ate +their supper, Seth too tired to talk and Celia busy with the problem +of this added mouth destined to consume the contents of her scant +larder.</p> + +<p>When supper was over Seth left her to clear the table, went out in the +dark on the front porch away from the cold steel blue of her eye and +sat down on the step.</p> + +<p>Men seldom shed tears, or he would have found it in his heart to +weep.</p> + +<br /> +<br /> +<br /> +<br /> +<a name="CHAPTER_XXV" id="CHAPTER_XXV"></a><hr /> +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_165" id="Page_165">[165]</a></span><br /> + +<h3>CHAPTER XXV.<span class="totoc"><a href="#toc">ToC</a></span></h3> +<br /> + +<div class="imgl"> +<img border="0" src="images/image09.png" width="100%" alt="CHAPTER XXV." /> +</div> + + +<p>Not many moons after the wreck wrought by the withering winds, which, +while they had not touched the place of the forks of the two rivers, +lacked little of it, the Wise Men came out of the East and found +Cyclona alone in the Kansas dugout there by the Big Arkansas and the +Little Arkansas.</p> + +<p>"Is this the place where the Indians pitched their tents?" they asked, +"because no cyclones come here?"</p> + +<p>"Yes," she answered.</p> + +<p>"Then this," said they, "is where we will build our city."</p> + +<p>"The Magic City," repeated Cyclona, without surprise.</p> + +<p>"When we have finished it," they smiled, "it will be a Magic City."</p> + +<p>Cyclona looked wistfully out along the weary track of the wind.</p> + +<p>"But Seth," said she, "will never see it maybe. He has given up and +gone back home."</p> + +<br /> +<br /> +<br /> +<br /> +<a name="CHAPTER_XXVI" id="CHAPTER_XXVI"></a><hr /> +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_166" id="Page_166">[166]</a></span><br /> + +<h3>CHAPTER XXVI.<span class="totoc"><a href="#toc">ToC</a></span></h3> +<br /> + +<div class="imgl"> +<img border="0" src="images/image04.png" width="100%" alt="CHAPTER XXVI." /> +</div> + + +<p>Few there are who have not heard of the Magic City, the Windy Wonder +of the West, the Peerless Princess of the Plains, and how it sprung up +mushroom-like in a night there at the forks of the Big Arkansas and +the Little Arkansas, where the Indians had pitched their tents and +Seth had lived and hoped and despaired, and how men went wild erecting +Colleges and Palaces and Temples and Watch Factories and buying up +town lots so far from the town that if the city had been built on all +of them it would have surpassed the marvellous tales of it written in +the newspapers, reached half way to Denver and become, instead of the +Magic City of the West, the Magic City of the World.</p> + +<p>Seth had been a dreamer of dreams, but his vision of the Magic City +was not half so marvellous as the city itself.</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_167" id="Page_167">[167]</a></span>Fortunes were made in a day and lost before midnight.</p> + +<p>Men came from far and near, many from the other side of the water, and +bought town lots and sold them, bought still others and built tall +houses and planted great avenues of trees, cottonwood trees, the trees +of Seth's imaginings, trees that seemed also to spring up in a night, +they grew so magically, thrusting deep roots into the moist black soil +and greedily sucking up its moisture in a very madness of growing, and +laid off parks and sent flashing electric cars out into the large +farms and dangled big soft balls of electricity in the middle of the +streets that twinkled at eventide like big pale blinking fireflies.</p> + +<p>Those who had formerly eked out a precarious enough existence in +dugouts, now lived in palaces, had their raiment fashioned by hands +Parisian, and gave receptions on a scale of such grandeur that the +flowers offered as souvenirs thereat would have kept many a wolf from +a dugout door for years, and a few Wise Men it was said lost their +heads in the mad whirl of speculation, but as that often happens in +the building up of any great city, not necessarily in the West, <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_168" id="Page_168">[168]</a></span>it +was not so surprising as it might have been.</p> + +<p>Indeed, the World stood still a moment, agape at the wonder of the +Magic City, and there were those who, now that Seth had passed out of +the way of the wind into a country strange to them, spoke of him +reverently as Prophet and Seer, going so far as to express regret that +while within the sound of their voices they had carelessly dubbed him +a foolish dreamer of mad, fantastic and impossible dreams, yet +comforting themselves withal with the thought that they were not alone +in denying a Prophet honor in his own country, since so wagged the +world.</p> + +<br /> +<br /> +<br /> +<br /> +<a name="CHAPTER_XXVII" id="CHAPTER_XXVII"></a><hr /> +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_169" id="Page_169">[169]</a></span><br /> + +<h3>CHAPTER XXVII.<span class="totoc"><a href="#toc">ToC</a></span></h3> +<br /> + +<div class="imgl"> +<img border="0" src="images/image08.png" width="100%" alt="CHAPTER XXVII." /> +</div> + + +<p>The Magic City, stretching itself far and near, had not failed to +include the little station.</p> + +<p>Common walls of plank no longer enshrined the person of the Post +Mistress. She no longer looked out from the limited space of a narrow +window onto ragged flower beds in whose soft, loose earth floundered +wind-blown chickens.</p> + +<p>She dwelt in the wide, white marble halls of a lofty new Post Office. +Bell boys, porters and stenographers surrounded her.</p> + +<p>It was five o'clock. The Professor stood near while she sorted out +some letters and placed them in pigeon-holes. He was clad in the +latest fashion as laid down by the London Tailors who, at the first +sound of the Boom, had hastened on the wings of the wind to the Magic +City. His frock coat radiated newness, his patent leathers shone, and +a portion of the brim of a tall silk hat rested daintily <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_170" id="Page_170">[170]</a></span>between +thumb and fingers of a well-gloved hand.</p> + +<p>As a matter of fact, since he had proved himself her friend through +thick and thin, through storms and adversity, through high winds and +blizzards, the Post Mistress had at last, after much persuasion, +awarded him the privilege of standing by her throughout the rest of +her natural existence.</p> + +<p>A dapper youth in livery approached the window, asked for letters and +withdrew.</p> + +<p>There was about him a certain air of elegance which yet had somehow +the subtle effect of having been reflected.</p> + +<p>"Will Low's valet," explained the Post Mistress. "Sometimes it seems +to be a dream, all this. These men who sat around my big blazing stove +spinning cyclone yarns while they waited for the brakeman to fling in +the mailbag, sending their valets for their mail! It seems like magic, +doesn't it?"</p> + +<p>"It does," assented the Professor.</p> + +<p>"There's Zed Jones," continued the Post Mistress, "with his new drag, +his Queen Anne cottage built of gray stone, his Irish setters. And +Mrs. Zed sending to Paris for all her clothes, and the little <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_171" id="Page_171">[171]</a></span>Zeds +fine as fiddles with their ponies and their pony carts."</p> + +<p>"And Hezekiah Smith," reminded the Professor.</p> + +<p>"Who used to sleep on a pile of newspapers in his old newsstand on the +corner, driving his tandem now. And Howard Evans and Roger Cranes and +a dozen others, all poor as church mice then, and rich as cream now. +It is like fairy land. You, too," with an admiring glance at the frock +coat, "worth fifty thousand. And my bit of land bringing me a small +fortune. I think after," with another smile in his direction, "we'll +let some other lone single woman have this job who needs the money. We +won't keep the Post Office any longer."</p> + +<p>The Professor smiled a silent assent.</p> + +<p>"But the most wonderful thing of all," went on the Post Mistress, "is +that girl Cyclona. All of twenty-seven or eight, but she looks like a +girl. It was pretty cute of her, wasn't it, to jump Seth's claim?"</p> + +<p>"She didn't exactly jump it," said the Professor. "She was taking care +of it after Seth went away, when her own topsy turvy house blew off +somewhere. <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_172" id="Page_172">[172]</a></span>She had no other home. I wouldn't exactly call it jumping +Seth's claim."</p> + +<p>"Call it what you please," said the Post Mistress, "but it amounts to +the same thing. She got all the money the Wise Men paid for the claim, +and it went into the millions. Why, Seth's claim takes up the very +heart of the city. That girl's worth her weight in gold, that Cyclona, +and she deserves it, taking care of the baby first, then watching +after Seth. I believe she's in love with Seth. I believe she lives in +hopes that he'll come back again. I know. She is seen everywhere with +Hugh Walsingham, drivin' with him in her stylish little trap, a good +driver she is, too, after ridin' fiery bronchos, herdin' Seth's cattle +and livin' wild-like on the prairies. She's a splendid whip, afraid of +nothin'."</p> + +<p>"But you can see in her big, stretchy faraway eyes that she ain't +thinkin' about Hugh Walsingham, that she's always thinkin' about Seth +and wishin' it was him a drivin' with her in that stylish little trap +of hers."</p> + +<p>She stopped to read a postal card.</p> + +<p>"Cyclona's a fine young woman," she resumed, "and a beautiful young +woman, if she is brown as a gypsy, but the wind <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_173" id="Page_173">[173]</a></span>has left a wheel in +her head. She has never been right since that storm that blew away the +topsy turvy house. Another shock and her mind will go entirely. I've +heard a doctor say so, a man who knows. She deserves all she's got and +a happy life with that handsome Englishman, but here she is with some +fool idea that the money, all these riches she's fallen heiress to, +that make her the belle of the Magic City, ain't hers. That they are +held in trust for Seth and Celia, that heartless Celia, who deserted +her husband and baby to go back to her home in the South.</p> + +<p>"What right has that Celia got to any money that comes out of the West +she hated so, out of this wind-blown place she wouldn't live in? None +at all. No more right than I have. Leaving Seth out here on the plains +all by himself, grievin' for her, breakin' his heart for her, nearly +losin' his mind with grief about her.</p> + +<p>"The money's Cyclona's. She worked for it, never thinkin' of the +reward. She took care of the child and looked after Seth. She deserves +all the good that can come to her, that girl does."</p> + +<p>"She does," assented the Professor.</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_174" id="Page_174">[174]</a></span>"Hugh Walsingham's in a good fix, too," continued the Post Mistress, +"sold his claim for a whole lot of money. Able now, he is, to help his +poor relations back there in England, who sent him to the plains to +get rid of him. Funny how things turn out sometimes."</p> + +<p>"Cyclona coming out of Nowhere, and he packed off out of England, both +outcasts, both rich now and ready to live happy ever after, if Cyclona +would only get rid of this fool notion of hers that she's only holdin' +the riches in trust for Celia and Seth.</p> + +<p>"Have you heard the news? It's this: You know Nancy Lewis, the +dish-washer in the restaurant before the Boom, the girl who happened +to save her earnings and buy a bit of land that turned into a gold +nugget? Well, a millionaire who made his money here, fell in love with +her. She accepted him, but he made a slight mistake. He failed to keep +an engagement with her one night and sent a waiter with a note. She +got huffy and went off and married the waiter.</p> + +<p>"We can't rise all at once from our station in life, can we? Like as +not, when we get into our new house and put on style ourselves with +our drags <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_175" id="Page_175">[175]</a></span>and our dogs, I'll be sortin' out letters in my dreams and +handin' them through a dream window to the people. This girl is a born +dish-washer. She clung to her station. Her children may rise from the +position of dish-washers, if they have enough money and education, but +not she."</p> + +<p>"Wait a minute. Here's a postcard I haven't read yet. It looks like +it's been through a cyclone. Land sakes alive! Guess who it's from!"</p> + +<p>"Can't," said the Professor, beginning to be hungry.</p> + +<p>The Post Mistress turned the card over and over.</p> + +<p>"It's from Jonathan, Cyclona's father," she chuckled. "Of all the +people in the world! It is post-marked Texas."</p> + +<p>"So that's where they blew to! It's to Cyclona, but everybody will be +dying to know what it says. Listen:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>"'Dear Cyclona:—</p> + +<p>"'I think you will be glad to hear that this cyclone was good +to us, blowin' us 'way down here in Texas, where the weather +is so fine. It saved me the trouble, too, of bothering with +the roof. <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_176" id="Page_176">[176]</a></span>It blew it right side up and the clothes are all +down in the room now.'"</p> + +<p> +"'Your affectionate father,'"<br /> +"'Jonathan.'"<br /> +</p> + +<p>"'P.S.—I like this part of the country better than I did +Kansas. I think we will stay here, Cyclona.'"</p></div> + +<p>"Until another cyclone comes along," the Professor commented, "and +blows him into the Gulf."</p> + +<p>"I wonder," mused the Post Mistress, "if the cyclone put the clothes +away in the presses when it took them down from the walls."</p> + +<br /> +<br /> +<br /> +<br /> +<a name="CHAPTER_XXVIII" id="CHAPTER_XXVIII"></a><hr /> +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_177" id="Page_177">[177]</a></span><br /> + +<h3>CHAPTER XXVIII.<span class="totoc"><a href="#toc">ToC</a></span></h3> +<br /> + +<div class="imgl"> +<img border="0" src="images/image03.png" width="100%" alt="CHAPTER XXVIII." /> +</div> + + +<p>It was as the Post Mistress had said. Cyclona was the heiress of the +Magic City. As Seth had predicted, she sold his land in its heart for +more money than she knew what to do with. Cyclona was not only the +most beautiful young woman in the Magic City, but she was the most +beautifully gowned and exquisite, what with her well-filled purse with +its attendant luxuries of maids, mantua-makers and milliners. She was +new to look at, but old thoughts clung to her, old dreams, old +fancies.</p> + +<p>Cyclona dreamed a dream one night. She thought that she was in the old +dugout at the little deal table before the dim half-window, outside +which the wind sang fitfully, blowing the tumbleweeds hither and +thither, near and far, with moans and sighs, and Seth sat by her side. +And as of old he talked to her of the beautiful house.</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_178" id="Page_178">[178]</a></span>"All these were of costly stones, according to the measures of hewed +stones," she heard him say in the dream, "sawed with saws within and +without. Even from the foundation unto the coping, and so on the +outside toward the great court."</p> + +<p>Cyclona sat up in her bed with a start and slept no more.</p> + +<p>So it was the beautiful house that she was to build, of course. +Wondering how it was she had not thought before of carrying out Seth's +dearest wish without waiting to be reminded of it in a dream, +reproaching herself, condemning her selfishness, marvelling how she +could for a moment have considered this money her own which she simply +held in trust for Celia and Seth.</p> + +<p>Thereafter, Hugh, in spite of his deep affection for her, became +occasionally somewhat exasperated with Cyclona, who all at once +developed such peculiar ideas in regard to the building of the house, +ideas gathered from an old and yellow plan resurrected from the leaves +of a well-thumbed Bible brought from the dugout.</p> + +<p>"Cedar!" he cried, "Must we bring cedar all the way from the South? +It <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_179" id="Page_179">[179]</a></span>will cost a fortune. Why not use some other wood? There are others +as beautiful."</p> + +<p>"We will use cedar," determined Cyclona without further explanation, +and cedar they used, carved curiously in pomegranate and lily work, +very beautiful, Hugh had to acknowledge, though the expense was more +than it should have been, no matter how much money a young woman had +to throw to the birds.</p> + +<p>"Shall we have so many windows?" he asked as Cyclona ordered window +after window, according to the old yellow plan.</p> + +<p>"There must be no dark spot in all this house," decided Cyclona, and +when it was finished there was not. Built of stone brought from great +distances, stone of delicate pink from Tennessee, carved, wide of +door, alight with windows, it was a marvel to those who came and stood +by, watching the building of it.</p> + +<p>"A beautiful house," they called it. "A beautiful house!"</p> + +<p>There was no word of Seth in regard to the beautiful house that +Cyclona failed to remember.</p> + +<p>"This is the stairway," she heard him say, "up which Celia shall trail +in her <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_180" id="Page_180">[180]</a></span>silks and her velvets. This is the threshold her little feet +shall press, and here is the low divan before a wide and sunny window +where she shall sit and thrum on her guitar."</p> + +<p>Cyclona fashioned the threshold of marble, she built the stairway +spacious, she had the low divan carved in cedar and placed it before a +wide and sunny window in the music room. She placed there mandolins +and guitars. She ordered a piano made of cedar for the music room. She +had antique and gorgeous pillows embroidered by deft fingers for the +low divan, then went on to the bed-room of white and gold, of which +Seth had delighted to dream. She ordered pier-glasses, so many that +Hugh began to fear indeed for her sanity. She bought spindle-legged +furniture of gold and scattered it about. She covered the gold +bedstead with lace of the rarest. She hung curtains at the sunny +window, but curtains of so lacey a web that no possible ray of light +could they exclude.</p> + +<p>"Exquisite!" exclaimed Hugh, "but must you have gold door knobs?"</p> + +<p>"We must," answered Cyclona; and people came in wonder to look at the +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_181" id="Page_181">[181]</a></span>beautiful house whose gold door knobs passed into one of the many +traditions of the excess of insanity displayed by the very rich of +that marvellous boom in their expenditure of money.</p> + +<p>Cyclona caused the cellar to be lighted, according to Seth's +directions, until there was no dark spot in it. Light gleamed +throughout, if not the light of day, the light of electrics.</p> + +<p>"I never in my life," declared Hugh, "saw so light a cellar. It is +like a conservatory."</p> + +<p>By the time the house was finished, it was the wonder of the Magic +City, which itself was the wonder of the West for its beautiful +houses.</p> + +<p>Then, when carpenter, painter, wood-carver and decorator had departed, +and the house stood in the sunshine, a gem of a house, surpassing, if +possible, in beauty, the house of Seth's imaginings, he came to +Cyclona for the last time in a dream. He stood in the dimness of a +low-roofed room, looking out of a window. His face was inexpressibly +sad. He stood there stilly for a long time, looking out of the window.</p> + +<p>Then there rushed through Cyclona's <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_182" id="Page_182">[182]</a></span>dream the heavy whirring roar of +the wind, the moan of the wind, the wail of the wind.</p> + +<p>Cyclona started out of the dream with a cry.</p> + +<p>What had happened? What was it? What was it?</p> + +<p>It was as if her life had gone out all at once like the flame of a +candle. It was as if her heart-strings had snapped asunder.</p> + +<p>What was it? What was it?</p> + +<p>She lay back among her pillows, trembling in the dark, afraid of she +knew not what, her wide eyes agaze at the ceiling's shadows.</p> + +<p>And then after a long while she fell asleep again and once more +dreamed.</p> + +<p>The wind soughed through her dream again, pitifully, wailingly, as it +had often soughed outside the dugout. Presently it dropped to a +whisper and the passing gleam of clouds let in a slab of sunlight +through the window.</p> + +<p>Was Seth in the dugout then, or in that other room?</p> + +<p>Whichever it was, the sunlight rested goldenly on the calmness of his +face. It glorified it.</p> + +<p>In her dream, Cyclona looked long and <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_183" id="Page_183">[183]</a></span>lovingly at the strong, fine +lines of it brought out by this unexpected high light of the skies, +accentuated Rembrandt-like against the darkness of the hole in the +ground.</p> + +<p>Yes. It was in the hole in the ground and not that other room of the +Beautiful House.</p> + +<p>As she looked the calm dream face of Seth turned to her with a smile +of ineffable content.</p> + +<p>On the following day Hugh said to her:</p> + +<p>"Now that the beautiful house is finished, be mine. Be mine!"</p> + +<p>She shook her head and looked at him with eyes that turned the heart +of him cold. The pupils that had once been large and full and black +had shrunk to the size of pin heads.</p> + +<p>"No," she said. "I will wait and keep the house beautiful for Seth. +Last night I saw him in a dream. He'll be coming home soon now to the +beautiful house."</p> + +<p>She walked to the window and looked out. She sank into a chair there, +folded her hands and smiled contentedly, looking out through the +leaves of the trees down the sunlit road.</p> + +<p>"I will wait here for Seth," she <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_184" id="Page_184">[184]</a></span>repeated. "He won't be long now. +He'll be coming home soon. I saw his face last night in a dream, and +he smiled at me."</p> + +<br /> +<br /> +<br /> +<br /> +<a name="CHAPTER_XXIX" id="CHAPTER_XXIX"></a><hr /> +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_185" id="Page_185">[185]</a></span><br /> + +<h3>CHAPTER XXIX.<span class="totoc"><a href="#toc">ToC</a></span></h3> +<br /> + +<div class="imgl"> +<img border="0" src="images/image10.png" width="100%" alt="CHAPTER XXIX." /> +</div> + + +<p>The whittlers of the little sticks sitting on dry goods boxes which +surrounded the corner grocery looked up as a wagon came lumberingly +down the Lexington Pike, rounded the corner and made its way up Main +Street to Tom Coleman's livery stable.</p> + +<p>They watched a man get out, lift an enormous trunk and carry it into +the stable on his shoulders. They saw the man bend earthward beneath +the weight of the trunk.</p> + +<p>"Seth Lawson," they explained to some newcomers. "He's got a place at +last. Drivin' the baggage wagon from Burgin to Harrodsburg and back +again."</p> + +<p>Tom Grums, the grocer, puffed a few whiffs of his pipe.</p> + +<p>"That's the man," he explained succinctly, "whut was goin' to conquer +the West. That's the man whut said he was <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_186" id="Page_186">[186]</a></span>goin' to build the Magic +City at the forks of two rivahs wheah the wind didn't blow."</p> + +<p>By and by, when he had unhitched and fed his horse Seth came down the +street, passed the whittlers of the little sticks and went on up the +Lexington Pike to his home and Celia's.</p> + +<p>He walked laggingly. There was something that he must tell Celia and +he was afraid. It was impossible for him to keep the place.</p> + +<p>He was not young enough. He was not sufficiently nimble. They wanted a +younger man, they told him, to lift the trunks. He had been months +getting the place and now he had lost it. He had lost it within a +week.</p> + +<p>He walked slowly through the hall to the kitchen where Celia stood at +the old stove, cooking their supper. He sat by the window presently, +watching her.</p> + +<p>No. He wouldn't tell her. He could not. He hadn't the courage to face +the scorn of her eye, to face the cold steely blue of it.</p> + +<p>He ate the supper she set silently before him slowly. It had the taste +to sawdust.</p> + +<p>After supper he went out on the porch <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_187" id="Page_187">[187]</a></span>awhile and sat looking into the +dusk, looking over the fine soft green of the dim grass on the +opposite lawns, his mind going back to the scorched and parched +grasses of the prairie.</p> + +<p>How quiet it was! How windless. There came to him the memory of the +wind as it soothed him that day of Celia's home coming. He had not +hated the wind. He had loved it. There came also the memory of the +wind as it soughed around the dugout on those lonely nights, when he +and Cyclona had planned the beautiful house for Celia. In a flash of +light he seemed to see Cyclona.</p> + +<p>With this rose by his side, he had gone sighing after the roses of +memory.</p> + +<p>He arose and began to walk up and down, up and down to the gate and +back, to the gate and back, thinking of Cyclona and the wind. A +restlessness began to possess him, a longing for the sound of the +wind, for the sound of the voice of Cyclona which had mingled from the +first, from first to last, with the sound of the wind. The windless +stillness oppressed him. He stopped at the gate and looked again +across at the quiet grass of the still, dim lawns, then he <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_188" id="Page_188">[188]</a></span>walked +back into the house, along the hall and up into the low-roofed garret, +which had been set apart for him by Celia.</p> + +<p>He closed the door of the garret very carefully behind him. He walked +to the window and looked out. The stillness weighed upon him. If only +he could run into the wind! If only he could hear again its wail, its +sob, its grief, its moaning.</p> + +<p>Oh, no. It was impossible to tell Celia that he no longer had work. He +had no courage to face the steel blue of her eye.</p> + +<p>Impossible, too, to face the sarcastic whittlers of the little sticks +who sat around the corner grocery in the morning, he who was to have +conquered the West and build the Magic City. They were total strangers +to him. All his old friends in the town seemed to be dead.</p> + +<p>He took a pistol down from the shelf and looked at it. He turned it +around and around, the dim light coming in at the window playing on +it. Since the first night of his arrival he had had it ready.</p> + +<p>"A man who cannot earn his salt," he said softly, "encumbers the +earth."</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_189" id="Page_189">[189]</a></span>He held the thing, playing with it. He smiled as he played with it. He +went to the window and stood for a long while, looking out, thinking +of Cyclona, thinking very lovingly of Cyclona, that beautiful girl who +had cared for him and the child. He would like to see Cyclona once +more before,—but that was impossible. In the other world, perhaps.</p> + +<p>God was not to blame. How could He look after so many? If he put them +here with all their faculties, was it His fault if they failed?</p> + +<p>He was very tired. His fingers rested lovingly upon the weapon that +was to send him to the other world. He was very tired. He was very +tired.</p> + +<p>By and by he placed the weapon to his temple, taking careful aim.</p> + +<p>In a blinding flash of light he saw Cyclona.</p> + +<p>There was the heavy roar of the wind, the wild and woeful wind of the +prairies,—and stillness.</p> + +<br /> +<br /> +<br /> +<br /> +<a name="CHAPTER_XXX" id="CHAPTER_XXX"></a><hr /> +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_190" id="Page_190">[190]</a></span><br /> + +<h3>CHAPTER XXX.<span class="totoc"><a href="#toc">ToC</a></span></h3> +<br /> + +<div class="imgl"> +<img border="0" src="images/image06.png" width="100%" alt="CHAPTER XXX." /> +</div> + + +<p>Some visitors from the East to the Magic City, whose fame was now +widespread, were driving gaily by the beautiful house, which was one +of the choice show places of the town.</p> + +<p>Cyclona, sitting by the window, turned her wide, soft eyes their way.</p> + +<p>"How beautiful she is," sighed one of the girls, "but how strange her +eyes are! How vacant they are! There is no expression in her eyes," +she said and sighed again.</p> + +<p>"She has built the house," explained the guide, "for someone she says +who ought to own it. She sits there waiting for him, taking care of +the house, keeping it beautiful for him."</p> + +<p>"She is very gentle and mild," he added, as they passed out of sight +of the beautiful house, "and so they let her live <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_191" id="Page_191">[191]</a></span>there instead of +locking her up in an asylum with all those other pioneer prairie +people whose minds went the way of the wind."</p> + +<br /> +<hr /> +<br /> +<br /> +<br /> + + +<div class="tr"> +<p class="cen"><a name="TN" id="TN"></a>Typographical errors corrected in text:</p> +<br /> +Page 26: longe replaced with long<br /> +Page 108: mesauahs replaced with measuahs<br /> +Page 165: Buth replaced with But<br /> +Page 186: has replaced with was<br /> +</div> + +<br /> +<br /> +<br /> +<hr class="full" /> + + + +<p>***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE WAY OF THE WIND***</p> +<p>******* This file should be named 19071-h.txt or 19071-h.zip *******</p> +<p>This and all associated files of various formats will be found in:<br /> +<a href="http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/1/9/0/7/19071">http://www.gutenberg.org/1/9/0/7/19071</a></p> +<p>Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed.</p> + +<p>Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + + + + +Title: The Way of the Wind + + +Author: Zoe Anderson Norris + + + +Release Date: August 17, 2006 [eBook #19071] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII) + + +***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE WAY OF THE WIND*** + + +E-text prepared by David Garcia, Jeannie Howse, and the Project Gutenberg +Online Distributed Proofreading Team (https://www.pgdp.net/) from page +images generously made available by Kentuckiana Digital Library +(http://kdl.kyvl.org/) + + + +Note: Project Gutenberg also has an HTML version of this + file which includes the original illustrations. + See 19071-h.htm or 19071-h.zip: + (https://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/1/9/0/7/19071/19071-h/19071-h.htm) + or + (https://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/1/9/0/7/19071/19071-h.zip) + + + Images of the original pages are available through + Kentuckiana Digital Library. See + http://kdl.kyvl.org/cgi/t/text/text-idx?c=kyetexts;cc=kyetexts;xc=1&idno=B92-271-32003857&view=toc + + + +--------------------------------------------------------------+ + | Transcriber's Note: | + | | + | While this book is full of dialect and very odd spelling, | + | there are a number of obvious typographical errors which | + | have been corrected in this text. For a complete list, | + | please see the end of this document. | + | | + +--------------------------------------------------------------+ + + + + + +THE WAY OF THE WIND + +by + +ZOE ANDERSON NORRIS + +Drawings by Oberhardt + + + + + + + +[Illustration: ZOE ANDERSON NORRIS] + + + + +New York +Published by the Author +1911 +Copyright, 1911, by +Zoe Anderson Norris +Printed in the +United States of America +Published in October, 1911. +By Zoe Anderson Norris. +Office of the East Side Magazine, +338 East 15th St., New York + + + + +PROLOGUE + + +And as the sturdy Pilgrim Fathers cut their perilous way through the +dense and dangerous depths of the Forest Primeval for the setting up +of their hearthstones, so the courageous pioneers of the desolate and +treeless West were forced to fight the fury of the winds. + +The graves of them lie mounded here and there in the uncultivated +corners of the fields, though more often one wanders across the level +country, looking for them in the places where they should be and are +not, because of the tall and waving corn that covers the length and +breadth of the land. + +And yet the dead are not without memorial. Each steady stalk is a +plumed standard of pioneer conquest, and through its palmy leaves the +chastened wind remorsefully sighs requiems, chanting, whispering, +moaning and sighing from balmy springtime on through the heat of the +long summer days, until in the frost the farmers cutting the stalks +and stacking them evenly about in the semblance of long departed +tepees, leave no dangling blades to sigh through, nor tassels to +flout. + + THE AUTHOR. + + + + +The Way of the Wind + + +CHAPTER I. + +[Illustration] + + +Looking back upon it, the little Kentucky town seemed to blossom for +Celia like the rose, one broad expanse of sloping lawns bordered with +flower beds and shaded by quiet trees, elms and maples, brightly green +with young leaflets and dark with cedars and pines, as it was on the +day when she stood on the vine-covered veranda of her mother's home, +surrounded by friends come to say good-by. + +Jane Whitcomb kissed her cheek as she tied the strings of her big poke +bonnet under her chin. + +"I hope you will be happy out theah, Celia," she said; "but if it was +me and I had to go, I wouldn't. You couldn't get me to take such +risks. Wild horses couldn't. All them whut wants to go West to grow +up with the country can go, but the South is plenty good enough fo' +me." + +"Fo' me, too," sighed Celia, homesickness full upon her with the +parting hour. "It's Seth makes me go. Accordin' to him, the West is +the futuah country. He has found a place wheah they ah goin' to build +a Magic City, he says. He's goin' to maik a fortune fo' me out theah, +he says, in the West." + +"Growin' up with the country," interrupted Sarah Simpson, tying a +bouquet of flowers she had brought for Celia with a narrow ribbon of +delicate blue. + +"Yes," admitted Celia, "growing up with the country." + +Sarah handed her the flowers. + +"It's my opinion," concluded she, "that it's the fools, beggin' youah +pahdon, whut's goin' out theah to grow up with the country, and the +wise peepul whut's stayin' at home and advisin' of 'em to go." + +Celia shuddered. + +"I'm ha'f afraid to go," she said. "They say the wind blows all the +time out theah. They say it nevah quits blowin'." + +"'Taint laik as if you wus goin' to be alone out theah," comforted +Mansy Storm, who was busy putting away a little cake she had made +with her own hands for Celia's lunch basket. "Youah husband will be +out theah." + +She closed the lid down and raised her head brightly. + +"Whut diffunce does it maik?" she asked, "how ha'd the wind blows if +you've got youah husband?" + +Lucy Brown flipped a speck of dust from the hem of Celia's travelling +dress. + +"Yes," said she, "and such a husband!" + +Celia looked wistfully out over the calm and quiet street, basking in +the sunlight, peacefully minus a ripple of breeze to break the beauty +of it, her large eyes sad. + +"I'm afraid of the wind," she complained. "Sto'ms scah me." + +And she reiterated: + +"I'm afraid of the wind!" + +Sarah suddenly ran down the walk on either side of which blossomed old +fashioned flowers, Marsh Marigolds, Johnny-Jump-Ups and Brown-Eyed +Susans. She stood at the front gate, which swung on its hinges, +leaning over it, looking down the road. + +"I thoat I heahd the stage," she called back. "Yes. Suah enuf. Heah it +is, comin'." + +At that Celia's mother, hurrying fearfully out the door, threw her +arms around her. + +Celia fell to sobbing. + +"It's so fah away," she stammered brokenly, between her sobs. "I'm +afraid ... to ... go.... It's so fah ... away!" + +"Theah! theah!" comforted her mother, lifting up her face and kissing +it. "It's not so fah but you can come back again. The same road comes +that goes, deah one. Theah! Theah!" + +"Miss Celia," cried a reproachful voice from the door. "Is you gwine +away, chile, widout tellin' youah black Mammy good-by?" + +Celia unclasped her mother's arms, fell upon the bosom of her black +Mammy and wept anew. + +"De Lawd be wid you, chile," cooed the voice of the negress, musical +with tenderness, "an' bring you back home safe an' soun' in His own +time." + +The stage rolled up with clash and clatter and flap of curtain. + +It stopped at the gate. There ensued the rush of departure, the +driver, after hoisting the baggage of his one passenger thereto, +looking stolidly down on the heartbreak from the height of his perch, +his long whip poised in midair. + +Celia's friends swarmed about her. They kissed her. They essayed to +comfort her. They thrust upon her gifts of fruit and flowers and +dainties for her lunch. + +They bore her wraps out to the cumbersome vehicle which was to convey +her to Lexington, the nearest town which at that time boasted of a +railroad. They placed her comfortably, turning again and again to give +her another kiss and to bid her good-by and God-speed. + +It was as if her heartstrings wrenched asunder at the jerk of the +wheels that started the huge stage onward. + +"Good-by, good-by!" she cried out, her pale face at the window. + +"Good-by," they answered, and Mansy Storm, running alongside, said to +her: + +"You give my love to Seth, Celia. Don't you fo'get." + +Then breathlessly as the stage moved faster: + +"If evah the Good Lawd made a man a mighty little lowah than the +angels," she added, "that man's Seth." + +The old stage rumbled along the broad white Lexington pike, past +houses of other friends, who stood at gates to wave her farewell. + +It rumbled past little front yards abloom with flowers, back of which +white cottages blinked sleepily, one eye of a shuttered window open, +one shut, past big stone gates which gave upon mansions of more +grandeur, past smaller farms, until at length it drew up at the +tollgate. + +Here a girl with hair of sunshine, coming out, untied the pole and +raised it slowly. + +"You goin' away, Miss Celia?" she asked in her soft Southern brogue, +tuneful as the ripple of water. "I heah sumbody say you was goin' +away." + +Celia smothered a sob. + +"Yes," she answered, "I am goin' away." + +"It's a long, long way out theah to the West," commented the girl +wistfully as she counted out the change for the driver, "a long, long +way!" + +As if the way had not seemed long enough! + +Celia sobbed outright. + +"Yes," she assented, "it is a long, long way!" + +"I am sawy you ah goin', Miss Celia," said the girl. "Good-by. Good +luck to you!" And the stage moved on, Celia staring back at her with +wide sad eyes. The girl leaned forward, let the pole carefully down +and fastened it. As she did so a ray of sunshine made a halo of her +hair. + +Celia flung herself back into the dimness of the corner and wept out +her heart. It seemed to her that, with the letting down of that pole, +she had been shut out of heaven. + + + + +CHAPTER II. + +[Illustration] + + +In all her life Celia had not travelled further from her native town +than Lexington, which was thirty miles away. It was not necessary. She +lived in the garden spot of the world, an Eden with all things +sufficient for a simple life. + +As she stood at the station, waiting for her train, an old negro +shuffled by. He hummed the refrain of "Old Kentucky Home," "Fare you +well, my lady!" It seemed meant for her. The longing was strong within +her to fly back to the old town she loved so well; but the train, +roaring in just then, intimidated her by its unaccustomed turmoil and +she allowed herself to be hauled on board by the brakeman and placed +in the car. + +Passing into the open country, the speed of the train increased. The +smoke and cinders poured into the open window. Timid because of her +strange surroundings, she silently accepted the infliction, cowering +into her seat without attempting to put the window down. When a man in +the opposite seat leaned forward and pulled it down for her, she was +too abashed to thank him, but retained her crouching position and +began silently to weep. + +A terrible night of travel began. It was a day car. Celia crouched +into her seat, trying to sleep, afraid of everything, of the staring +eyes of the porter, of the strange faces about her, of the jet black +of the night that gloomed portentously through the window. + +Then came the dawn and with it the long gray bridge spanning the drab +and sullen Mississippi, then St. Louis, with its bustle and rush and +more and more strange faces, a sea of strange faces through which she +must pass. + +After another weary day of travel through which she dozed, too tired +to think, too tired to move, at twilight she reached Kansas City, a +little town on the edge of the desert. Here, worn out mentally and +physically, she was forced to stop and rest a night and sleep in a +bed. + +And the next day the wind! + +A little way out from the town she could see it beginning, bending +the pliant prairie grasses to earth, flinging them fiercely upward, +crushing them flat again and pressing them there, whistling, +whistling, whistling! + +The car moved fairly fast for a car of that day, but the wind moved +faster. It shook the windows with terrific force. It blew small grains +of sand under the sill to sting Celia, moaning, moaning, moaning in +its mad and unimpeded march across the country straight to the skies. + +She looked out in dismay. + +Back of her, on either side of her and beyond, stretched this vast +prairie country, desolate of shrub, undergrowth, or tree, a barren +waste, different from the beautiful, still, green garden spot that she +called home, a spot redolent of flowers, sweet with the odor of +new-mown grass, and pungent with whiff of pine and cedar, different as +night is from day. + +Her heart sank within her as she looked. + +It was late in the afternoon when she came to her station, a +collection of frame shanties dignified by that name, and Seth, tall, +tanned and radiant, clasped her in his arms, and man though he was, +shed tears of pure rapture. + +His joy served to thrill her momentarily to the extent of forgetting +the wind, but with his departure for the vehicle which was to convey +her to their home, the discomfort of it returned to her. + +The madness of it! The fury of it! Its fiendish joy! It tore at her +skirts. It wrapped them about her. It snatched them away again, +flapping them flaglike. + +It was with difficulty that she kept her hat on her head. She held it +with both hands. + +The wind seemed to make sport of her, to laugh at her. It treated her +as it would a tenderfoot. It tried to frighten her. It blew the +shutters of the shanties open and slammed them to with a noise like +guns. It shrieked maniacally as if rejoicing in her discomfort. At +times it seemed to hoot at her. + +Added to this, when Seth returned for her with the vehicle, it proved +to be a common two-wheeled cart drawn by a mule, a tall, ungainly cart +of dull and faded blue. + +She kept back the tears as Seth helped her in. + +Then she sat silently by him throughout their jolting journey over the +prairie country into what seemed to her to be the Nowhere, listening +to the wind chant, now requiems, now dirges, listening to its shriek +and whistle, listening to it cry aloud and moan, die down to a +whisper, then rise once more and wail like a living thing in +unendurable pain. + +Seth, too, by and by fell into silence, but from a different cause. +The wind failed to distress him. He had become accustomed to it in the +months spent in preparing her home. It was like an old friend that +sometimes whispered in his tired ears words of infinite sweetness. He +forgave the wanton shrieks of it because of this sweetness, the +sweetness of a capricious woman, all the more sweet because of her +capriciousness. + +He was silent from pure happiness at having Celia there beside him, +going over the same road with him in the old blue cart. + +From time to time he glanced at her timidly as if half afraid if he +looked too hard the wind might blow her away. + +And, indeed, there did appear to be some danger; for the wind that had +loved Seth from the first was apparently jealous of Celia. It tore at +her as though to toss her to unreachable distances in the way it +ripped the tumbleweeds from their small brittle stems and tossed them +away. + +Seth looked at her profile, white from the fatigue of the journey, but +beautiful as alabaster; at the blue of her eyes; at the delicate taper +of her small white hands that from her birth had done only the +daintiest of service; at the small feet that had never once walked the +rough and sordid pathway of toil. + +Beautiful! Beautiful! + +His eyes caressed her. Except that he must hold the reins both arms +would have encircled her. As it was, she rested in the strong and +tender half-circle of one. + +All at once the wind became frantic. It blew and blew! + +Finding it impossible to tear Celia from the tender circling of that +arm, it wreaked its vengeance upon the tumbleweeds, broke them +fiercely from their stems, and sent them pell-mell over the prairie +before the tall blue cart, about it, at the sides of it, a fantastic +cortege, airily tumbling, tumbling, tumbling! + +Yes. The wind was jealous of Celia. + +Strong as it was, it failed of accomplishing its will, which would +have been to snatch her from the cart and toss her to the horizon in +company with the tumbleweeds. It shrieked its despair, the despair of +a jealous woman balked of her vengeance, tumultuously wild. + +At last at about twilight, at the time of day when the prairie skies +are mellow with tints fit for a Turner and the prairie winds sough +with the tenderness of lullabies, resting for a period, in order to +prepare for the fury of the night, they came upon the forks of the two +rivers, sparsely sheltered by a few straggling and wind-blown trees. + +Seth reined in the animal, sprang down over the high wheel of the cart +and helped Celia out. + +"Darling," he said, "let me welcome you home!" + +"Home," she repeated. "Where is it?" + +For she saw before her only a slight elevation in the earth's surface, +a mound enlarged. + +Going down a few steps, Seth opened wide the door of their dugout, +looking gladly up at her, standing stilly there, a picture daintily +silhouetted by the pearl pink of the twilit sky. + +"Heah!" he smiled. + +Celia stared down into the darkness of it as into a grave. + +"A hole in the ground," she cried. + +Then, as the beflowered home she had left rose mirage-like in the +window of her memory, she sobbingly re-stammered the words: + +"A ... hole ... in ... the ... ground!" + + + + +CHAPTER III. + +[Illustration] + + +It was not yet June, but the winds blow cold on the prairie later than +June at nightfall. The moment the sun goes down, up come the chill +winds. + +Sick at heart, Seth coaxed the shuddering Celia down the steps into +the cellar-like habitation dimly lighted by a single half window dug +out mansard fashion at the side. + +He was silent, hurt in every fibre of his being. His manner was one of +profound apology. She was right. It was only a hole in the ground; but +he, accustomed to dugouts during the months he had spent on the +prairie preparing for the joy of her coming, had overlooked its +deficiencies and learned to think of it as home. + +There were two chairs. He was glad of that. For a long time there had +been only one. + +He placed her in the new one, bought in honor of her coming, seating +her deferentially as if she had been a Queen, and went hurriedly +about, building a fire of little dry twigs he had torn from shrubs +along the river that the gay crackle of them might cheer her. + +As she sat looking on, she saw in this humble service not his +devotion, but his humiliation, not his great love for her which +glorified all service humble or exalted, but the fact that he had so +descended in the scale of life as to put his hand to work that she had +been used to see done only by negroes. + +Her pride, her only inheritance from haughty slave-holding ancestors, +was wounded. Not all Seth's devotion, not all his labor in her behalf +could salve that wound. + +As he knelt before the blazing twigs, apparently doing their best to +aid him in his effort to cheer her, something of this feeling +penetrated to his inner consciousness. + +Nevertheless, he piled on twig after twig until the refreshing flames +brilliantly illumined the dugout. + +From dirt floor to dirt roof they filled it with light. + +The poor little twigs, eagerly flashing into flame to help him! + +Better far if, wet and soggy, they had burned dimly or not at all; for +their blaze only served to exhibit every deficiency Seth should have +endeavored to hide. The thatch of the roof, the sod, the carpetless +floor, the lack of furniture, the plain wooden bedstead in the corner +with its mattress of straw, the crazy window fashioned by his own rude +carpentry, the shapeless door which was like a slap in the face with +its raw and unpainted color of new wood. + +After the first wild glance about her, Celia buried her face in her +hands, resolutely shutting out the view for fear of bursting into +uncontrollable tears. + +Seth, seeing this, rose from his knees slowly, lamely, as if suddenly +very tired, and went about his preparations for their evening meal. + +Men with less courage than it required to perform this simple duty +have stood up to be shot at. + +Knowing full well that with each act of humble servitude he sank lower +and lower in the estimation of the one living creature in whose +estimation he wished to stand high, he once more knelt on the hearth, +placed potatoes in the ashes, raked a little pile of coals together +and set the coffee pot on them. + +He drew the small deal table out and put upon it two cups and saucers, +plates and forks for two. There was but one knife. That was for Celia. +A pocket knife was to serve for himself. + +It had been his pleasure throughout his lonely days of waiting to +picture this first meal which Celia and he should eat together. + +Never once had he dreamed that the realization could come so near +breaking a strong man's heart,--that things seemingly of small import +could stab with a thrust so knife-like. + +He felt the color leave his cheek at the thought that he had failed to +provide a cloth for the table, not even a napkin. He fumbled at his +bandana, then hopelessly replaced it in his pocket. He grew cold at +the realization that every luxury to which she had been accustomed, +almost every necessity, was absent from that plain board. + +He had counted on her love to overlook much. + +It had overlooked nothing. + +When all was in readiness he drew up a chair and begged her to be +seated. + +He took the opposite chair and the meal proceeded in silence, broken +only by the wail of the wind and the crackle of the little dry twigs +that burned on the hearth. + +"I am afraid of it," sighed Celia. + +"Of what, sweet?" he asked, and she answered: + +"I am afraid of the wind." + +"There is nothing to be afraid of," he explained quickly. "It is only +the ordinary wind of the prairies. It ain't a cyclone. Cyclones nevah +come this way, neah to the forks of two rivers wheah we ah," and +waxing eloquent on this, his hobby, he began telling her of the great +and beautiful and prosperous city which was sometime to be built on +this spot; perhaps the very dugout in which they sat would form its +center. He talked enthusiastically of the tall steepled temples that +would be erected, of the schools and colleges, of the gay people +beautifully dressed who would drive about in their carriages under the +shade of tall trees that would line the avenues, of the smiling men +and women and children whose home the Magic City would be, and how he +was confident they would build it here because, in the land of +terrible winds, when people commenced to erect their metropolis, they +must put it where no deadly breath of cyclone or tornado could tear at +it or overturn it. + +With that he went on to describe the destructive power of the +cyclones, telling how one in a neighboring country had licked up a +stream that lay in its course, showering the water and mud down fifty +miles away. + +"But no cyclone will ever come here," he added and explained why. + +Because it was the place of the forks of two rivers, the Big Arkansas +and the Little Arkansas. A cyclone will go out of its way, he told +her, rather than tackle the forks of two rivers. The Indians knew +that. They had pitched their tents here before they had been driven +into the Territory and that was what they had said. And they were very +wise about some things, those red men, though not about many. + +But Celia could not help putting silent questions to herself. Why +should a cyclone that could snatch up a river and toss it to the +clouds, fight shy of the forks of two? + +Looking fearfully around at the shadows, she interrupted him: + +"I am afraid," she whispered. "I am afraid!" + +Seth left his place at the table and took her in his arms. + +"Po' little gurl," he said. "Afraid, and tiahd, too. Travelin' so fah. +Of cose, she's tiahd!" + +And with loving hands, tender as a mother's, he helped her undress and +laid her on the rough bed of straw, covered with sheets of the +coarsest, wishing it might be a bed of down covered with silks, +wishing they were back in the days of enchantment that he might change +it into a couch fit for a Princess by the wave of a wand. + +Then he left her a moment, and walking out under the wind-blown stars +he looked up at them reverently and said aloud: + +(For in the dreary deserts of loneliness one often learns to talk +aloud very openly and confidentially to God, since people are so +scarce and far away:) + +"Tempah the wind to this po' shiverin' lam, deah Fathah!" + +Then with a fanatic devotion, he added: + +"And build the Magic City!" + + + + +CHAPTER IV. + +[Illustration] + + +Upon each trip to the station for provision or grain Seth met with +tail ends of cyclones, or heard of rumors of those that had just +passed through, or were in process of passing, strange enough stories +of capers cut by the fantastic winds. + +He told these tales to Celia with a vein of humor meant to cheer her, +but which had an opposite effect. Love blinded, he failed to see that +the nervous laughs with which she greeted them were a sign of terror +rather than amusement. + +One night, he related, after a day whose sultriness had been almost +unendurable, a girl had stood at the door to her dugout, bidding her +sweetheart good night. She opened the door, he stepped outside, and a +cyclone happening to pass that way, facetiously caught him into the +atmosphere and carried him away somewhere, she never knew where. + +Strewn in the path of that cyclone were window-sashes, doors, +shingles, hair mattresses, remnants of chimneys, old iron, bones, +rags, rice, old shoes and dead bodies; but not the body of her +blue-eyed sweetheart. + +For many months she grieved for him, dismally garbed in crape, which +was extremely foolish of her, some said, for all she knew he might +still be in the land of the living. Possibly the cyclone had only +dropped him into another county where, likely as not, he was by this +time making love to another girl. + +But though she mourned and mourned and waited and waited for the wild +winds to bring him back, or another in his place, none came. + +"They've got to tie strings to their sweethearts in this part of the +country," the old gray-haired man at the corner grocery had said, "if +they want to keep them." + +Another playful cyclone had snatched up a farmer who wore red and +white striped socks. The cyclone had blown all the red out of the +socks, the story teller had said, so that when they found the farmer +flattened against a barn door as if he had been pasted there, his +socks were white as if they had never contained a suspicion of red. +They had turned white, no doubt, through fright. + +Evidently knives had flown promiscuously about in another cyclone, he +said. Hogs had been cut in two and chickens carved, ready for the +table. + +There were demons at work as well as knives. + +A girl was engaged to be married. All her wedding finery had been +made. Dainty, it was, too; so dainty that she laid it carefully away +in a big closet in a distant wing of the house, far from the profane +stare of strange eyes. She made discreet pilgrimages to look at those +dainty things so dear to her, lingerie white and soft and fine, satin +slippers, fans, gloves and a wedding gown of dazzling snowiness. + +The day was set for the wedding. Unfortunately--how could she know +that?--the same day was set for a cyclone. + +The girl could almost hear the peal of the wedding bells; when along +came the tornado, rushing, roaring, shrieking like mad, and grasping +that wing of the house, that special and precious wing containing her +trousseau, bore it triumphantly off. + +A silk waist was found in one county, but the skirt to match it lay in +another, many miles away. Her beplumed hat floated in a pool of +disfiguring water, her long suede gloves lay in a ditch and her white +satin wedding slippers, alas, hung by their tiny heels at the top of a +tree in a neighboring township, the only tree in the entire +surrounding county, put there, in all probability, to catch and hold +them for her. + +Naturally, the wedding was postponed until new wedding finery could be +prepared, but alas! A man's will is the wind's will! + +By the time the second trousseau was well on the way, the affections +of the girl's sweetheart had wafted away and wound themselves about +another girl. + +Here and there the prairie farmers had planted out trees in rows and +clumps, taking tree claims from the Government for that purpose. + +In many instances cyclones had bent these prospective forests double +in their extreme youth, leaving them to grow that way, leaning heavily +forward in the attitude of old men running. + +Of course, there were demons. God could have nothing to do with their +devilments, Seth said. Seth had great belief in God. + +One had maliciously torn up all the churches in a town by the roots, +turned them upside down and stuck their steeples in the ground as if +in mockery of religion. + +"Why do you call them cyclones?" the old man at the corner grocery had +asked. "They are not cyclones. They are tornadoes." + +And this old man who had once been a doctor of medicine in an Eastern +village and who was therefore learned, though he had been persuaded by +some Wise men to go West and grow up with the Fools, went on to +explain the difference. + +"A cyclone," he said, "is miles and miles in width. It sweeps across +the prairie screeching and screaming, but doing not so very much +damage as it might do, just getting on the nerves of the people and +helping to drive them insane. That is all. + +"Then along comes a hailstone. It drops into the southeast corner of +this cyclone and there you are! It generates a tornado and That is the +Thing that rends the Universe." + +Seth had listened to these stories undismayed; for what had they to do +with his ranch and the Magic City upon which it was to be built? + +A cyclone would never come to the forks of two rivers. The Indians had +said so. + +Tradition had it that an old squaw whose name was Wichita had +bewitched the spot with her incantations, defying the wind to touch +the ground on which she had lived and died. + +It must have been that this old squaw still occupied the spot, that +her phantom still stooped over seething kettles, or stalked abroad in +the darkness, or chanted dirges to the slap and pat of the grim war +dance of the Indians; for the winds, growing frightened, had let the +forks of the river alone. + +Seth was very careful to relate this to Celia, to reiterate it to this +fearful Celia who started up so wildly out of her sleep at the +maniacal shriek of the wind. Very tenderly he whispered the +reassurance and promise of protection against every blast that blew, +thus soothing her softly back to slumber, after which he lay awake, +watching her lest she wake again and wishing he might still the +Universe while she slept. + +He redoubled his care of her by night and by day, doing the work of +the dugout before he began the work of the fields, not only bending +over the tubs early in the morning for fear such bending might hurt +her, but hanging out the clothes on the line for fear the fierce and +vengeful wind might tan her beautiful complexion and tangle the fine +soft yellow of her hair. + +For the same reason, he brought in the clothes after the day's labor +was over, and ironed them. He also did the simple cooking in order to +protect her beauty from blaze of log and twinkle of twig. + +If he could he would have hushed the noise of the world for love of +her. + +And yet, day after day, coming home from his work in the fields, he +found her at the door of their dugout, peering after the east-bound +train, trailing so far away as to seem a toy train, with a look of +longing that struck cold to his heart. + +His affection counted as nothing. His care was wasted. In spite of +which he was full of apologies for her. + +Other women, making these crude caves into homes for themselves and +their children, had found contentment, but they were women of a +different fibre. + +He would not have her of a different and coarser fibre, this exquisite +Southern creature, charming, delicate, set like a rare exotic in the +humble window of his hut. + +It was not her fault. It was his. It was his place to turn the hut +into a palace for his Queen; and so he would, when the Wise Men came +out of the East and built the Magic City. + +When the Fools had made the plains a fit place for human beings to +inhabit, planting trees to draw down the reluctant rain from the +clouds, sowing seed and raising crops sometimes, to their surprise and +the amazement of those who heard of it, the Wise Men would appear and +buy the land, and the building of great cities would begin. + +Already they had reared a town that dared approach in size to a city +on the edge of the desert, but what had happened? + +An angry cyclone, hearing of it, had come along and snatched it into +the clouds. + +Furious at sight of its spick and span newness, its yellow frame +shanties and shining shingles, it had carried it off as if it had +been a hen coop and set it down somewhere in Texas, a state that had +been longer settled and was therefore a better place for houses and +fences, and left it there. + +Then the Wise Men, growing discouraged, had gone away. + +But they would come again, he promised himself. They would come again. +They must. Not to pass through in long vestibule trains whose sparks +out of pure fiendishness lighted the furious prairie fires that were +so hard to put out, smothering the innocent occupants of the dugouts +in their sleep and burning their grain. Not to gaze wild-eyed through +the shining windows of these splendid cars as they passed on and on to +some more promising unwind-blown country, to build there their +beautiful cities of marble and of stone. + +They would come to stay. + +When? + +Why, when they should find a spot unvisited by cyclones, and that spot +would be in the place of their dugout at the forks of these two +rivers, the Big Arkansas and the Little Arkansas, the little river +that had real water trickling along its shallow bed year in and year +out, and the Big river whose bed was dry as a bone all the year round +until June, when the melting snows of the Rockies sent the water down +in floods. + +In fierce, uncontrollable and pitiless floods to drown the crops that +had been spared by the chinch bugs, the grasshoppers and the Hot +Winds. + +All this Seth told Celia, finishing with his old rapturous picture of +the glory of the Magic City, which he called after the old witch who +had driven the winds from the forks of the rivers, Wichita. + +He talked on, trying hard not to let her listless air of incredulity +freeze the marrow of his bones and the blood in his veins, or cut him +so deeply as to destroy his enrooted hope in their splendid future. + +Taking her in his arms, partly to hide her cold face from his view and +partly to comfort her, he offered every possible apology for her +unbelief, wrapping her about with his love and tenderness as with a +mantle. + +He thought by day of the coming of the child, and dreamed of it by +night, trusting that, whether or not she shared his belief in the +Magic City, when she held it warmly in her arms, that little baby, +his and hers, the homesick look would give place to a look of content, +and the hole in the ground would become to her a home. + + + + +CHAPTER V. + +[Illustration] + + +Seth was toiling slowly along a furrow back of his plow, bending +sidewise with the force of the wind, not resentfully that it persisted +in making it so difficult for him to earn his bread, for resentment +was not in his nature, besides which, Seth loved the wind,--but +humming a little tune, something soft and reminiscent about his old +Kentucky home, with its chorus of "Fare you well, my lady," when a +broncho, first a mere speck on the horizon ahead of him, then larger +and larger, rushed out of the wind from across the prairie with +flashing eyes and distended nostrils, and lunged toward him. + +At first he thought it was a wild broncho, untamed and riderless; but +as his eyes became accustomed to dust and sunlight, he discovered that +the saddle held a girl. + +For the moment she had bent herself to the broncho's mane, which had +the effect, together with the haze produced by the wind-blown dust, of +rendering the animal apparently riderless. + +Seth drew up his mule and halted. + +At the same time the broncho was jerked with a sudden rein that sent +him back on his haunches, his front feet pawing the air. + +His rider, apparently accustomed to this pose, clung to him with the +persistency of a fly to fly paper, righted him, swung herself from the +saddle and stood before Seth, a tall, slim girl of twelve, a girl of +complexion brown as berries, of dark eyes heavily fringed with thick +lashes and dusky hair tinged redly with sunburn. Her hair, one of her +beauties, blew about her ears in tangled curls that were unconfined by +hat or bonnet. + +She smiled at him, showing rows of rice-like teeth, of an exaggerated +white in contrast with the sunburn of her face. + +"Hello," she said. + +"Hello," said Seth in return. + +Then, in the outspoken manner of the prairie folk he asked: + +"Who ah you?" + +"I am Cyclona," she answered. + +"Cyclona what?" + +"Just Cyclona. I ain't got no other name." + +Seth smiled back at her, she seemed so timidly wild, like those little +prairie dogs that stand on their haunches and bark, and yet are ever +mindful of the safety of their near-by lairs, waiting for them in case +of molestation. + +"Wheah did you come frum?" he queried. + +"Two or three hundred miles from here," she answered, "where we had a +claim." + +"Who is we?" asked Seth. + +"My father and me. He ain't my real father. He's the man what adopted +me." + +Always courteous, Seth stood, hand on plough, waiting for her to state +her errand or move on. + +She did neither. + +"There be'n't many neighbors hereabout, be there?" she ventured +presently, toying with her broncho's mane. + +"No," said Seth. "They ah mighty scarce. One about every eighteen +miles or so." + +Cyclona looked straight at him out of her big dark eyes framed by +their heavy lashes. + +"I am a neighbor of yourn," she said. + +"I'm glad of that," responded Seth with ready Southern cordiality. +"Wheah do you live?" + +Cyclona turned and pointed to the horizon. + +"About ten or twelve miles away," she explained. "There!" + +"Been theah long?" asked Seth. + +"Come down last week," said Cyclona, adding lightly by way of +explanation, "we blew down. Father and his wife and me. Never had no +mother. A cyclone blew her away. That's why they call me Cyclona." + +She drew her sleeve across her eyes. + +"It's mighty lonesome in these parts," she sighed, "without no +neighbors. Neighbors was nearer where we came from." + +"What made you move, then?" Seth queried. + +"We didn't move," said Cyclona. "We was moved. Father likes it here, +but I get awful lonesome without no neighbors." + +The plaint struck an answering chord. + +"Look heah," said Seth. "You see that little dugout 'way ovah theah? +That's wheah I live. My wife's theah all by herself. She's lonesome, +too. Maybe she'd laik to have you come and visit her and keep her +company. Will you?" + +Cyclona nodded a delighted assent, caught the mane of her broncho, and +swung herself into her saddle with the ease and grace of a cowboy. + +Seth was suddenly engrossed with the fear that Celia, seeing the girl +come out of the Nowhere, as she had come upon him, might be frightened +into the ungraciousness of unsociability. + +"Wait," he cried. "I will go with you." + +So he took Cyclona's rein and led her broncho over the prairie to +Celia's door, the girl, laughing at the idea of being led, chattering +from her saddle like any magpie. + +He knocked at Celia's door and soon her face, white, Southern, +aristocratic, in sharp contrast with the sunburned cheek and wild eye +of Cyclona, appeared. + +He waved a rough hand toward Cyclona, sitting astride her broncho, a +child of the desert, untamed as a coyote, an animated bronze of the +untrammelled West emphasized by the highlights of sunshine glimmering +on curl and dimple, on broncho mane and hoof, and backed by the +brilliancy of sky, the far away line of the horizon and the howl of +the wind. + +"Look!" he called to her exultantly, in the voice of the prairies, +necessarily elevated in defiance of the wind, "I have brought a little +girl to keep you company." + + + + +CHAPTER VI. + +[Illustration] + + +It was in this way that Cyclona blew into their lives and came to be +something of a companion to Celia, though, realizing that the girl was +a distinct outgrowth of the country she so detested, she never came to +care for her with that affection which she had felt for her Southern +girl friends. The kindly interest which most women, settled in life, +feel for the uncertain destiny of every girl child bashfully budding +into womanhood was absent. + +It is to be doubted if Celia possessed a kindly heart to begin with, +added to which there was nothing of the self-conscious bud about +Cyclona. She was ignorant of her beauty as a prairie rose. Strange as +her life had been, encompassed about by cyclones, the episode of her +moving as told by the gray-haired doctor at the corner grocery was +stranger. + +"The house was little," the doctor commenced, "or it might not have +happened. There was only one room. It was built of boards and weighed +next to nothing, which may have helped to account for it. + +"On that particular day the house was situated in the northern part of +the State." + +He swapped legs. + +"But the next day," he resumed. "Well, you can't tell exactly where +any house will be the next day in Kansas. + +"It was about noon and Cyclona's foster father was out in the +cornfield, plowing. The wind, as usual, was blowing a gale. It was a +mild gale, sixty miles an hour, so Jonathan did not permit it to +interfere with his plowing. The rows were a little uneven because the +wind blew the horse sidewise and that naturally dragged the plow out +of the furrows, but as one rarely sees a straight row of corn in +Kansas, Jonathan was not worried. If he took pains to sow the corn +straight, in trim and systematic rows, like as not the wind would blow +the seed out of the ground into his neighbor's cornfield, so what was +the use? + +"Like the horse and plough, Jonathan was walking crooked, bent in the +direction of the wind. He seldom walks straight or talks straight for +that matter, the wind has had such an effect on him. + +"At any rate, leaving out the question of his reasoning which pursues +a devious and zigzag course, varying according to the way the wind +blows--and he is not alone in this peculiarity in Kansas, as I +say--Jonathan steadily toiled against the wind, he stopped altogether, +and taking out his lunch basket, he removed a pie and sat down on a +log to eat it, while his horse, moving a little further along, propped +himself against a cottonwood tree to keep from being entirely blown +away, and also rested." + +He swapped tobacco wads from one cheek to the other and continued: + +"The pie was made of custard, Jonathan said, with meringue on the top. +The meringue blew away, but Jonathan contentedly ate the custard, +thankful that the hungry wind had not taken that. + +"Mrs. Jonathan had been going about all morning with a dust rag in her +hand, wiping the dust from the sills and the furniture. + +"So, tired out at last, she had flung herself on the bed and was +quietly napping when the cyclone came along. + +"Of course, the house and the bed she was lying on were shaken, but +Mrs. Jonathan had lived so long in Kansas she couldn't sleep unless +the wind rocked the bed. + +"She slept all the sounder, therefore, lulled by its whistling and +moaning and sobbing, not waking even when Cyclona, this girl they had +adopted, opened the door and shut it suddenly with herself on the +inside, and a fortunate thing, too, that was for Cyclona, or the +cyclone might have left her behind. + +"Cyclona, standing by the window, saw it all, the swiftly passing +landscape, the trees, the cows, as one would look from an observation +car on a train. + +"The house was at last deposited rather roughly on terra firma and the +jar awoke Mrs. Jonathan. She sat up and rubbed her eyes open. Then she +looked about her in some alarm. + +"The furniture was tumbled together in one corner all in a heap, +Jonathan says, and the pictures were topsy turvy. Pictures are never +on a level on Kansas walls on account of the winds, so Mrs. Jonathan +thought little of this, but the ceiling puzzled her. Instead of +arching in the old way, it pointed at her. It was full of shingles, +moreover, like a roof, and the point reached nearly to her head when +she sat up in the bed, staring about her. + +"'What on earth is the matter?' she asked of Cyclona. + +"Cyclona turned away from the window. + +"'We have moved,' said she. + +"Mrs. Jonathan arose then, and going to the door, opened it and found +that what Cyclona had said was true. The scenery was quite different. +It is much further south here, you know, than in the northern part of +the State. The grass was green and the trees, hardly budded at all +where she came from, here had full grown leaves. + +"There was little or no debris in the path of the cyclone, nearly +everything, with the exception of the house, having been dropped +before it arrived at that point. + +"A few stray cows hung from the branches of the large cottonwood +trees, Jonathan says...." + +Here the Doctor was interrupted by a man who took his pipe out of his +mouth and coughed. + +"But they presently dropped on all fours," he continued, "and began to +munch on the nice green grass growing all about them. + +"The landscape thus losing all indications of the tornado's effect, +assumed a sylvan aspect which was tranquil in the extreme. + +"Not far off stood the horse still hitched to the plough, Jonathan +said. The horse had a dazed look, but the plough seemed to be in fit +enough condition. One handle, slightly bent, had evidently struck +against something on the journey, which gave it a rakish aspect, but +that was all." + +"Did the horse have its hide on?" asked the man who had coughed. + +"So far's I know," the Doctor replied. "Why?" + +"Because there's a story goin' the rounds," answered the cougher, "to +the effec' that a horse was blown a hundred miles in a cyclone and +when they found him he was hitched to a tree and skinned." + +There was a period of thoughtful silence before the Doctor went on +with his story. + +"As Mrs. Jonathan looked out the door," he said, "she saw Jonathan +walking down the road in her direction. His slice of pie, which he had +not had time to finish, was still in his hand. + +"'Where are we at?' he asked her, curiously. + +"'I am sure I don't know,' answered Mrs. Jonathan, beginning, +woman-like, to cry, now that the danger was over. + +"Jonathan began to finish his pie, which the cyclone had interrupted. +Between mouthfuls he gave quick glances of surprise at the house. + +"'What on earth!' he exclaimed, 'is the matter with the roof?' + +"Mrs. Jonathan ran out to look. + +"The tornado had been busy with the roof. It had blown it skyward and +then, upon second thoughts, had brought it back again and deposited it +not right side up, but upside down. + +"The extreme suction caused by this sudden reversal of things had +caught every rag of clothing in the house into the atmosphere where, +adhering to the roof, they had been brought down with it, so that they +hung in festoons all around the outside, the roof, fastening onto the +walls with a tremendous jerk, securing all the different articles with +the clinch of a massive and giant clothespin. + +"'It was a strange sight,' Jonathan said. + +"Mrs. Jonathan's and Cyclona's skirts, stockings, shirt waists, night +dresses and handkerchiefs were strung along indiscriminately with +Jonathan's trousers, coats, waistcoats and socks. Here and there, in +between, prismatic quilts, red bordered tablecloths and fringed +napkins varied the monotony. + +"'How are we ever going to get them down?' asked Mrs. Jonathan, the +floodgate of her tears loosed once more at sight of her household and +wearing apparel hung, as it were, from the housetop. + +"Jonathan said his wife didn't seem to think of the kindness of the +cyclone in bringing her husband along with the house when it might so +easily have divorced them by dropping him into the house of some plump +widow. All she seemed to think of was those clothes. + +"'Don't you worry,' he told her. 'We will just wait till another +cyclone comes along and turns the roof right side up again.' + +"For one becomes philosophical, you know, living in Kansas. One must, +or live somewhere else.... + +"Jonathan looked delightedly about him. + +"The green prairies sloped away to the skies; there was a clump of +cottonwood trees near by and a little creek, the same that gurgles by +Seth's claim, gurgled by his between twin rows of low green bushes. + +"He admired this scenery, Jonathan did. He smiled a smile which +stretched from one ear to the other when he discovered that his +faithful and trusted horse had followed him down and was standing +conveniently near by, ready for work. + +"'I like this part of the country,' he declared, 'better than the part +we came from. We'll just stake off this claim and take possession.' + +"After a moment of thought, however, he added provisionally: + +"'That is, until another cyclone takes a notion to move us.'" + + + + +CHAPTER VII. + +[Illustration] + + +Across the purple prairie, the wondering stars blinking down upon him, +the wind tearing at him to know what the matter was, the tumbleweeds +tumbling at the heels of his broncho, his heart in his mouth, Seth +madly rode in the wild midnight to fetch the weazened old woman who +tended the women of the desert, rode as madly back again, leaving the +midwife to follow. + +After an age, it seemed to him, she came, and the child was born. + +Seth knelt and listened to the breathing of the little creature in the +rapture felt by most mothers of newborn babes and by more fathers than +is supposed. + +Now and again this feeling, which more than any other goes to make us +akin to the angels, is lacking in a mother. + +Seth saw with a sadness he could not uproot that Celia was one of +these. His belief, therefore, in the efficacy of the child to comfort +her went the way of other beliefs he had been forced one by one to +relinquish. When, after some weeks of tending her, the old woman was +gone, and Celia was able to be about, it was he who took charge of the +child, while she, in her weakness, gave herself up to an increased +disgust for her surroundings and an even deeper longing to go back +home. + +It was in vain that he showed her the broad green of the wheat fields, +smiling in the sunlight, waving in the wind. + +Some blight would come to them. + +Fruitlessly he pictured to her the little house he would build for her +when the crop was sold. + +She listened incredulously. + + * * * * * + +And then came the grasshoppers. + +For miles over the vastness of the desert they rushed in swarms, +blackening the earth, eclipsing the sun. + +Having accomplished their mission of destruction, they disappeared as +quickly as they had come, leaving desolation in their wake. The +prairie farms had been reduced to wastes, no leaves, no trees, no +prairie flowers, no grasses, no weeds. + +One old woman had planted a garden near her dugout, trim, neat, +flourishing, with its rows of onions, potatoes and peas in the pod. +It was utterly demolished. She covered her head with her apron and +wept old disconsolate tears at the sight of it. + +Another was hanging her clothes on the line. When the grasshoppers +were gone there were no clothes and no line. + +As for the beautiful wheat fields that had shone in the sun, that had +waved in the wind, they lay before Seth's tearless eyes, a blackened +ruin. + +Was it against God's wish that they make their feeble effort to +cultivate the plains, those poor pioneer people, that He must send a +scourge of such horror upon them? + +Or had He forsaken the people and the country, as Celia had said? + +Seth walked late along the ruin of the fields, not talking aloud to +God as was his wont when troubled, silent rather as a child upon whom +some sore punishment has been inflicted for he knows not what, silent, +brooding, heartsick with wondering, and above all, afraid to go back +and face the chill of Celia's look and the scorn of her eye. + +But what one must do one must do, and back he went finally, opened +the badly hung door and stood within, his back to it, with the air of +a culprit, responsible alike for the terror of the winds, the scourge +of the grasshoppers and the harshness of God. + +"As a man," she said slowly, her blue eyes shining with their clear +cold look of cut steel through slits of half-shut white lids, the +words dropping distinctly, clearly, relentlessly, that he might not +forget them, that he might remember them well throughout the endless +years of desert life that were to follow, "you ah a failuah." + +He hung his head. + +"You ah right," he said. + +For though he had not actually gone after the grasshoppers and brought +them in a deadly swarm to destroy his harvest, he had enticed her to +the plains it seemed for the purpose of witnessing the destruction. + +"You ah right," he reiterated. + +In the night Celia dreamed of home and the blue-grass hills and the +whip-poor-wills and the mocking birds that sang through the moonlight +from twilight till dawn. + +Sobbing in her sleep, she waked to hear the demoniacal shriek of the +tireless wind and the howl of a coyote, and wept, refusing to be +comforted. + +The next day she said to Seth firmly and conclusively: + +"I am goin' home." + + + + +CHAPTER VIII. + +[Illustration] + + +To do her justice, Celia would have taken the child with her; but +young as he was, Seth refused to give him up. He would buy a little +goat, he said, feed the baby on its milk and look after him. + +At heart he said to himself that he would hold the child as ransom. +Surely, if love for him failed, love for the little one would draw the +mother back to the hole in the ground. + +He found Cyclona and implored her to keep the child while he hitched +up the cart and drove the mother away over the same road she had come +to the station. + +It was a silent drive; each occupied with individual thoughts running +in separate channels; she glad that her eyes were looking their last +on the wind-lashed prairies blackened by the scourge; he casting about +in his mind for some bait with which to entice her to return. + +"You will come back to the child?" he faltered. + +But she made no answer. + +"If the crops succeed," he ventured, "and I build you a beautiful +house, then will you come back?" + +For answer, she gave a scornful glance at the blackened plains, +flowerless, grainless, grassless. + +"If the Wise Men come out of the East," it was his last plea, "and +build the Magic City, then you will come back?" + +At that she laughed aloud and the wind, to spare him the sound of it, +tossed the laugh quickly out and away with the jeer of its cruel +mockery. + +"The Magic City!" she repeated. + +She laughed in derision of such violence that she fell to coughing. + +"The Magic City!" she reiterated. "The Magic City!" + + + + +CHAPTER IX. + +[Illustration] + + +For one mad moment, such as comes to the bravest, Seth's impulse was +to throw himself beneath the wheels of the car that was taking Celia +away from him. + +In another he would have lain a crushed and shapeless mass in their +wake; but as he shut his eyes for the leap there came to him +distinctly, pitifully, wailingly, the cry of the child. + +Perhaps it came to him in reality across the intervening miles of +wind-blown prairie. Perhaps the wind blew it to him. Who knows? Our +Mother Earth often sends us help in our sorest need in her own way, a +way which oftentimes partakes of mystery. + +Perhaps it came only in memory. + +However, it served. + +He opened his eyes, and the madness had passed. + +He pulled himself together dazedly, unfastened the hitch rein of the +mule, mounted awkwardly into the high and ungainly blue cart and +started off in the direction of the cry. + +The wind which on the coming trip had appeared to take fiendish +delight in trying to tear Celia's garments to ribbons, now suddenly +died down, for the wind loved Seth. + +It had done with Celia. She was gone. But not by one breath would it +add to the grief of Seth. On the contrary, it spent its most dulcet +music in the effort to soothe him. Tenderly as the cooing of a dove it +whispered in his ear, reminding him of the child. + +He answered aloud. + +"I know," he said. "I had forgotten him. The po' little mothahless +chile!" + +And the wind kissed his cheek, its breath sweet as a girl's, caressing +him, urging him over the vastness of the prairie to the child. + +On the road to the station, Seth's mind had been filled with Celia to +the exclusion of all else. He had not observed the devastation of the +prairie. + +Unlike her, his heart held no hatred for the wayward winds. They were +of heaven. He loved them. Fierce they were at times, it was true, +claws that clutched at his heart; but at other times they were gentle +fingers running through his hair. + +Their natures were opposite as the poles, his and hers. + +The prairies were her detestation. He loved them. + +He inherited the traits of his ancestors, the sturdy Kentucky pioneers +who had lived in log huts and felled the forests in settling the +country. Something not yet tamed within him loved the little wild +things that had their homes in the prairie grasses: + +The riotous birds, the bright-colored insects, the prairie dogs in +their curious towns, sitting on their haunches at the doors of their +little dugouts, so similar to his own, and barking, then running at +whistle or crack of whip into the holes to their odd companions, the +owls and the rattlesnakes; the herds of antelope emerging from the +skyline and brought down to equally diminutive size by the infinite +distance, disappearing into the skyline mysteriously as they had come. + +But now he looked out on the prairie with a sigh. + +It was like a familiar face disfigured by a burn, scarred and almost +unrecognizable. + +The prairie in loneliness is similar to the sea. + +In one wide circle it stretches from horizon to horizon. + +It stretched about him far as the eye could reach, scorched and +hideous as the ruin of his life. + +He shut his eyes. He dared not look out on the ruin of his life. What +if the ghastly spectacle should turn his brain? + +That had been known to happen among the prairie folk time out of +number. Many a brain stupefied by the lonely life of the dugout, the +solemn, often portentous grandeur of the great blue dome, under which +the pioneers crawled so helplessly, had been blown zigzag by the wild +buffetings of the wayward, wanton winds, punctuating the dread +loneliness so insistently, so incessantly, so diabolically by its +staccato preludes, by its innuendoes of interludes prestissimo, by its +finales frantically furious and fiendishly calculated to frighten the +soul and tear the bewildered and weakened brain from its pedestal. + +The reproach of the thought held something of injustice, the wind +blew with such gentleness, kissing his cheek. + +His mind ran dangerously on in the current of insanity. He endeavored +to quiet it. + +The thought of his mother came to him. + +Once he had heard her crying in the night, waiting for his father to +come home, not knowing where he was, wondering as women will, and +fearfully crying. + +Then he heard her begin to count aloud in the dark: + +"One, two. One, two, three," she had counted, to quiet her brain. + +He fell mechanically to counting as she had done: + +"One, two. One, two, three." + +He must preserve his sanity, he said to himself, for the sake of the +child. Otherwise it would be good to lose all remembrance, to forget, +to dream, to lapse into the nothingness of the vacant eye, the +down-drooping lid and the drivel. + +"One, two. One, two, three," he counted, the wind listening. + +In spite of the counting, with his eyes fixed on the desolation of the +prairie, his thoughts on Celia, suddenly he felt himself seized by +gusts of violent rage. The desire to dash out his brains against the +unyielding wall of his relentless destiny tore him like the fingers of +a giant hand. + +"One, two. One, two, three," he counted, and between the words came +the cry of the child. + +If he could only render his mind a blank until it recovered its +equilibrium, a ray of sunshine must leak in somewhere. + +It must for the sake of the child. + +But how was it possible for him to go back to the ghastliness of the +dugout, the bereft house, where it was as if the most precious inmate +had suddenly died--to the place that had held Celia but would hold her +no more! + +It was necessary to count very steadily here, to strangle an outcry of +despair. + +"One, two, three. One, two, three. One, two, three, four, five." + +He could count no further. + +The wind, seeing his distress, soughed with a weird sweet sound like +aeolian harps in the effort to comfort him, but he dropped the reins +and laid his face in the hollow of his arm. + +It was the attitude of a woman, grief-stricken. + +He had evidently fallen into a lethargy of grief from which he must be +aroused. + +So thought the wind. It blew a great blast. It whistled loudly as if +calling, calling, calling! + +Was it the wind or his heart? Was it his Mother Nature, his Guardian +Angel, or God? + +Again pitifully, distinctly, wailingly, came the cry of the child. + +He raised his head, grasped the reins and hurried. + +On he went, on and on, faster and faster, until at last he came to the +door of the tomb. + +He descended into it. He took the child from the arms of Cyclona, who +sat by the fire cuddling it, and held it close to his heart. + +"He has been crying," she told him, "every single minute since you +have been gone. Crying! Crying! No matter what I did, no matter how +hard I tried, I couldn't quiet him." + + + + +CHAPTER X. + +[Illustration] + + +On the following day Cyclona sat in the low rocking chair, rocking the +baby, singing to it, crooning a lullaby, a memory of her own baby days +when some self-imposed mother, taking the place of her own, had +crooned to her. + + "Sleep, baby, sleep, + The big stars are the sheep. + The little stars are the lambs, I guess, + The moon is the shepherdess, + Sleep, + Baby, + Sleep." + +But the baby sobbed, looking in bewilderment up at the dark gypsy face +above it in search of the pale and beautiful face of his mother. + +Finding it not, he hid his eyes upon her shoulder, and sobbed. + +The wind sobbed with him. Outside the window it wailed in eerie +lamentation. It dashed a near-by shrub, a ragged rosetree that Seth +had planted, against the window. The twigs tapped at the pane like +human fingers. + +"There, there!" soothed Cyclona, and she changed the baby's position, +so that his little body curled warmly about her and his face was +upturned to hers to coax him into the belief that she was Celia. + +Once more she drifted into the lullaby, crooning it very softly in her +lilting young voice: + + "Sleep, baby, sleep. + The big stars are the sheep, + The little stars are the lambs, I guess, + The moon is the shepherdess, + Sleep, + Baby, + Sleep." + +But the wind seemed to oppose her efforts at soothing the child whose +startled eyes stared at the window against which tapped the attenuated +fingers of the twigs. The wind shrieked at him. His sobs turned into +cries. + +Cyclona got up and going to the bed laid him on it, talking cooing +baby talk to him. She prepared his food. She warmed the milk and +crumbled bread into it. + +Taking him up again, she fed it to him spoonful by spoonful, +awkwardly, yet in a motherly way. + +Then she patted him on her shoulder, and tried to rock him to sleep, +singing, patting him on the back cooingly when the howl of the wind +startled him out of momentary slumber. + +The wind appeared to be extraordinarily perverse. It was almost as if, +knowing this was Celia's child, that Celia whose hatred it had felt +from the first, it took pleasure in punctuating his attempt to sleep +with shrieks and wailings, with piercing and unearthly cries. + +Once it tossed a tumbleweed at the window. The great round human-like +head looked in and the child, opening his eyes upon it, broke into +piteous moaning. + +The wind laughed, snatched the tumbleweed and tossed it on. + +"The wind seems to be tryin' itself," complained Cyclona, getting up +once more and walking about with the child in her arms, singing as she +walked: + + "Sleep, baby, sleep, + The big stars are the sheep, + The little stars are the lambs, I guess, + The wind is the shepherdess, + Sleep, + Baby, + Sleep." + +The wind grew furious. + +With a wild yell it burst the door of the dugout open. + +Cyclona put the baby back on the bed, faced the fury of the wind a +moment, then cried out to it: + +"Why can't you behave?" + +Then she shut the door and placed a chair against it, taking the baby +up and again walking it back and forth, up and down and back and +forth. + +"It's just tryin' itself," she repeated. + +Again she endeavored with the coo of the lullaby to entice the child +into forgetting the wind. + +But the wind was not to be forgotten. It turned into a tornado. +Failing of its effort to tear off the roof of the dugout, it stormed +tempestuously, fretfully; it raved, it grumbled, it groaned. + +It screamed aloud with a fury not to be appeased or assuaged. + +Cyclona had taken her seat in the rocking chair near the hearth. She +had laid the crying child in every possible position, across her knee +face down, sitting on one of her knees, her hand to his back with +gentle pats, and over her shoulder. + +All to no avail. It seemed as if the child would never quit sobbing. +The sense of her helplessness joined with pity for his distress +saddened her to tears. + +She was very tired. She had had charge of the child since early +morning, when Seth, compelled to attend to his work in the fields, had +left him to her. + +She bent forward and looked out the window where the long fingers of +the ragged rosebush, torn by the wind, tapped ceaselessly at the pane. + +"Wind," she implored. "Stop blowing. Don't you know the little baby's +mother has gone away? Don't you know the little baby hasn't any mother +now; that she's left him and gone away?" + +It seemed that the wind had not thought of it in this way. Occupied +only with Celia's departure, it had not considered the desolation it +had caused. + +The long lithe fingers of the twigs ceased their tapping. + +The wind sobbed fitfully a moment, little sad remorseful penitential +sobs, and died away softly across the prairie as a breath of May. + +The stillness which ensued was so deep and restful that the eyes of +the child involuntarily closed. Cyclona pressed his little body close +to her, his head in the hollow of her arm. She rocked him back and +forth gently, singing: + +"Sleep, baby, sleep," the words coming slowly, she was so tired. + + "The big stars are the sheep, + The little ... stars ... are ... the lambs, I guess. + The moon ... is ... the ... shepher ... dess, + Sleep, + Baby ... + Sleep ..." + +Her eyes closed. She nodded, still rocking gently back and forth. + +After a long time Seth pushed open the door and looked in. + +He set back the chair and came tip-toeing forward. + +Cyclona raised her head and looked at him dreamily. + +"Hush!" she whispered. "Be very quiet ... He has gone to sleep." + + + + +CHAPTER XI. + +[Illustration] + + +"Brumniagen" is a name given to those wares which, having no use for +them at home, England ships to other countries. The term, however, is +not applied to one leading export of this sort: the scores of younger +sons of impoverished Noblemen who are packed off to the wilds of +Australia or to the Great Desert of America, to finish sowing their +wild oats in remote places, where such agriculture is not so overdone +as it is in England. + +This economic movement resulted in a neighbor for Jonathan and Seth, a +young, blue-eyed, well-built Englishman, whose name was Hugh +Walsingham. + +Jonathan walked out of his topsy turvy house one day to find the claim +just north of his pre-empted by the young man who was evidently a +tenderfoot, since his fair complexion had not yet become tanned by the +ceaseless winds. + +Walsingham had staked out the claim, and was busily engaged in +excavating a cave in which he purposed to dwell. + +Jonathan, never busy himself, lent a helping-hand, and he and +Walsingham at once became friends. + +The outdoor life of the prairie pleased Walsingham, the abundance of +game rejoiced him. An excellent shot, his dugout was soon filled with +heads of antelope, while the hide of a buffalo constituted the +covering for his floor. + +Surrounded by an atmosphere of sobriety, for even at that early date +the fad of temperance had fastened itself upon Kansas, he became by +and by of necessity a hard working farmer, tilling the soil from +morning till night in the struggle to earn his salt. + +There are not many women on the prairies now. Then they were even more +scarce. It was not long before his admiring eyes centered themselves +upon Cyclona. He fell to wondering why it was that she appeared to +consider her own home so excellent a place to stay away from. + +Personally he would consider the topsy turvy house a good and +sufficient reason for continued absence, but according to his English +ideas a girl should love her own roof whether it was right side up or +inverted. + +The thought of this brown-skinned girl of the rapt and steadfast gaze +remained with him. It was, he explained to himself, the look one finds +in the eyes of sailors accustomed to the limitless reach of the +monotonous seas; it came from the constant contemplation of desert +wastes ending only in skylines, of sunlit domes dust-besprinkled, of +night skies scattered thick with dusty stars. + +His interest grew to the extent that he issued from his dugout early +of mornings in order to see her depart for her mysterious destination. + +He waited at unseemly hours in the vicinity of Jonathan's curious +dwelling to behold her as she came back home. + +On one of these occasions, when he was turning to go, after watching +her throw the saddle on her broncho, fasten the straps, leap into the +saddle and speed away, to be swallowed up by the distances, Jonathan +came out of the topsy turvy house and found him. + +"Walk with me awhile," implored Walsingham, a sudden sense of the +loneliness of the prairie having come upon him with the vanishing of +the girl. + +Jonathan, always ready to idle, filled his pipe and walked with him. + +"Who is the girl?" asked Hugh. + +"She is a little girl we adopted," explained Jonathan. "I don't know +who she is or where she came from. Her mother blew away in a cyclone. +That is all I know about her." + +"A pretty girl," commented Hugh. + +"And a mighty good girl," added Jonathan. "I don't know what we'd do +without her." + +"You seem to do without her a good deal," said Hugh, relighting his +pipe which the wind had blown out. "She is away from home most of the +time." + +"Cyclona's playing nurse," said Jonathan. "She's taking care of a +child whose mother has deserted him. He is a good big boy now, but +Cyclona's taken care of that child ever since he come into the world +putty near," and he recited the story of Celia's heartlessness. + +"What sort of man is the father?" queried Hugh with a manner of +exaggerated indifference. + +"Seth? Why, Seth's one of the finest men you ever saw. And he's +good-looking, too. Sunburnt and tall and kind of lank, but +good-lookin'. He's got some crazy notion, Seth has, of buildin' a +Magic City on his claim some time or other, but aside from that there +ain't no fault to find with Seth. He's a mighty fine man." + + * * * * * + +On the plains all waited for letters. Walsingham was no exception to +the rule. Few came. He was too far away. Younger sons of impoverished +noblemen are sent to far-off places purposely to be forgotten. He +employed the intervals between such stray notes as he received in +studying Cyclona. + +He wondered what his aristocratic sisters would do if they were +obliged to saddle their own ponies. He wondered what they would do if +they were obliged to wear such gowns as Cyclona wore. And yet Cyclona +was charming in those old gowns, blue and pink cotton in the summer +and a heavy blue one for winter wear. + +Constantly in the open she possessed the beauty of perfect health. Her +brown cheeks glowed like old gold from the pulsing of rich blood. An +athletic poise of her shoulders and carriage of head added grace to +her beauty. + +But her chief charm for the young Englishman, surfeited with the +affectation of English girls, lay in her natural simplicity. + +Except for her association with Seth, whose innate culture could not +but communicate itself, Cyclona was totally untutored. She knew +nothing of coyness, caprice or mannerisms. Singleness of purpose and +unselfishness shone in her tranquil and steadfast gaze which Hugh was +fortunate enough now and then to encounter. + +Walsingham found himself passing restless hours in the endeavor to +devise means by which he might turn her frank gaze upon himself. In +fancy he imaged her clothed in fitting garments, walking with that +free, beautiful, lithe and swinging gait into the splendor of his +mother's English home. + + + + +CHAPTER XII. + +[Illustration] + + +As the boy, whom Seth called Charlie, grew older, Seth cast about in +his mind for some story to tell him which should serve to protect both +Celia and himself. + +Celia was not to blame for leaving him. He had long ago come to that +conclusion. He was a failure, as she had said. Women as a rule do not +care for failures, though there are some few who do. + +They love men who succeed. + +In personal appearance, aside from some angularities, considerable +gauntness, and much sunburn, Seth told himself that he was not +different from other men. It was not palpable to the casual observer +that as men went he was a failure, but Seth realized the truth of +Celia's judgment. + +He had failed doubly. In the effort to provide her a home, and to +imbue her with his belief in the Magic City. Since she had gone home +he had sent her next to no money. He had none to send. Perhaps that +was why she did not write. He never knew. Putting himself in her +place, he concluded she was right. A delicate little woman, far away +from a great failure of a husband who could not provide for her, ought +to let him go without letters. + +And so thinking, he seldom hung about the post-office waiting for the +mail. He trained himself to expect nothing. + +Yes. It had been impossible for him to send her money. + +Disaster had followed disaster and he had been barely able to keep +himself and the boy alive. + +He was a failure of the most deplorable sort, but the boy did not know +it. He did not even guess it. The standing monument of his failure in +life to Celia was the dugout. In the eyes of the boy it was no failure +at all. Born in it he had no idea of the luxury of a house and the +luxuries we wot not of we miss not. + +He was used to lizards on the roof, to say nothing of other creeping +things within the house which are generally regarded as obnoxious, +roaches, ants, mice. He rather liked them than otherwise, regarding +them as his private possessions. + +Besides, hadn't he Cyclona? + +And as for the winds of which Celia complained so bitterly, he loved +them. His ears had never been out of the sound of them and they were +very gentle winds sometimes, tender and loving with their own child +born on the desert. They lulled him. They cradled him. They were sweet +as Cyclona's voice singing him to sleep. + +In another State, where they failed to blow, it would in all +probability have been necessary to entice a cyclone into his +neighborhood to induce him to slumber. + +Accustomed to the infinite tenderness of his father's care from the +first, the boy loved him. Seth determined that if it were possible, +this state of affairs should continue. If it were necessary to invent +a story to fit the case, he would be as other men, or even better in +the eyes of the child, until there came a time when he must learn the +truth. + +Perhaps the time would never come. If he could by any manner of means +keep up the delusion until the Wise Men came out of the East and built +the Magic City, he would be a failure no longer. He would be an +instantaneous success. + +Also, though he fully pardoned Celia for her desertion of himself, he +had never quite come to understand or fully forgive her desertion of +the boy, her staying away as she had done month after month, year +after year, missing all the beauty of his babyhood. + +He therefore found it impossible to tell the boy that his mother had +heartlessly deserted him, as impossible as to tell him that his father +was a failure. + +Yet the child, like every other, insisted upon knowing something of +his origin. To satisfy him, Seth evolved a story, adding to it from +time to time. He told it sitting in the firelight, the boy in his +arms. + +It was the story of the Flying Peccary. + +"Tell me how I came in the cyclone," Charlie would insist, nestling +into the comfortable curve of his arm. + +"The cyclone brought you paht of the way," corrected Seth, jealous of +his theory that cyclones never touched the place of his dugout, the +forks of the two rivers, "and the flyin' peccary brought you the rest. +You've heard me tell about these little Mexican hawgs, the wildest, +woolliest, measliest little hawgs that evah breathed the breath of +life and how they ate up the cyclone?" + +"Yes," nodded Charlie. + +"Well, this was the first time, I reckon, that a cyclone evah met its +match, becawse a cyclone was nevah known befo' to stop at anything +until it had cleaned up the earth and just stopped then on account of +its bein' out of breath and tiahd. But it met its match that time. + +"You see, Texas is full of those measly little peccaries. You can +hahdly live, they say, down theah for them. They eat up the rail +fences, the wagon beds, the bahns and the sheep and the cows. They +don't stop at women and children, I heah, if they get a good chance at +them. And grit! They've got plenty of that, I tell you, and to spah, +those little bad measly Mexican hawgs. + +"Well, one day a herd of peccaries wah a gruntin' and squealin' around +the prairie, huntin' for something to eat as usual, when a cyclone +come lumberin' along. + +"It come bringin' everything with it it could bring; houses, bahns, +chicken coops and a plentiful sprinklin' of human bein's, to liven up +things a little. A cyclone ain't very particular, any more than a +peccary. It snatches up anything that comes handy. Sometimes it picks +up a few knives and whacks things with them as it goes along. You know +that, don't you, Cyclona?" + +Cyclona nodded. She always lingered at the fireside to hear this story +of the flying peccary which was her favorite as well as the child's. + +"It brought me," she said. + +The boy raised himself in Seth's arms. + +"Maybe you are my sister!" he cried. + +"Maybe I am," smiled Cyclona. + +"At that theah Towanda cyclone," recommenced Seth, "that little Kansas +town the cyclone got mad at and made way with, theah must have been a +hundred knives or mo' flyin' around loose. They cut hogs half in two. +You would have thought a butchah had done it. And the chickens were +carved ready to be put on the table. It was wonderful the things that +cyclone did." + +"And the peccaries," Charlie reminded him. + +"That cyclone," began Seth all over again, "came flyin' along black as +night and thunderin' laik mad and caught up the whole herd of +peccaries. + +"Those peccaries ain't even-tempahd animals. + +"They've got tempahs laik greased lightnin'. It made them firin' mad +fo' a cyclone to take such liberties with them, and they got up and +slammed back at it right and left. Well, they didn't do a thing to +that cyclone. In the first place the whole herd of peccaries began to +snap and grunt laik fury till the noise of the cyclone simmahd down +into a sort of pitiful whine, laik the whine of a whipped dog. Imagine +a cyclone comin' to that! Then, they tell me, you couldn't heah +anything but the squealin' and gruntin' of those pesky little +peccaries. + +"Between squeals they bit into that theah cyclone fo' all it was wuth, +takin' great chunks out of it, swallowin' lightnin' and eatin' big +mouthfuls of thundah just as if they laiked it. All the stuff the +cyclone was bringin' along with it wa'n't anything to them. They +swallowed it whole and pretty soon, you'd hahdly believe it, but theah +wa'n't anything lef' of that cyclone at all. + +"They had eaten up ever' single bit of it except a tiny breeze they +had fohgotten that died away mournful laik across the prairies, +sighin' becawse it had stahted out so brash and come to such a sudden +untimely and unexpected end. + +"Then, theah was the herd of peccaries about five miles from wheah +they had stahted, sittin' down, resting, a-smilin' at each othah and +congratulatin' each othah, I reckon, on the way they had knocked the +stuffin' out of that theah ole cyclone fo' good and all. + +"They must have scahd the res' of the cyclones off, too, becawse with +them and the forks of the rivahs, they haven't been seen or heahd of +aroun' these pahts since." + +"Exceptin' the tail end of that one that moved me," Cyclona reminded +him. + +"And what about me?" questioned Charlie. + +"Oh, yes. One of these heah peccaries, a good-natured peccary, too, +with a laikin' fo' little children, found you in the cyclone. You were +a pretty little baby with big blue eyes the same's you've got now. I +don't know exactly wheah the cyclone found you. Anyway, the peccary +picked you up in his mouth. When he had rested as long as he wanted to +with the other peccaries, he flew along and flew along--they had all +got to be flying peccaries, you know, on account of swallowin' so +much wind, until he came to the door of my dugout, this same dugout we +are in now, and he laid you very carefully down by the door. Then I +went out in the mawnin' and brought you in." + +Charlie invariably at this point reached up his arms and put them +around Seth's neck. + +It was very kind of him, he thought, to go out and bring him in. What +if the wolves had come along and eaten him! Or the little hungry +coyotes they heard barking in the nights. Ugh! + +"And then the peccary flew away again?" he asked. "Didn't he?" + +"Yes," answered Seth. "He flew away with the rest of the flyin' +peccaries." + +"And haven't you ever seen them since?" asked Charlie, "or him?" + +"Sometimes you can see them 'way up in the air," replied Seth, running +his fingers through his hair, "but they ah so fah away and little, you +can't tell them from birds." + +Cyclona nodded again. + +"Yes," she corroborated, "they are so far away and little you can't +tell them from birds." + + + + +CHAPTER XIII. + +[Illustration] + + +The Post Mistress at the station tapped her thimble on the window-pane +at the chickens floundering in the flower-bed outside. + +They turned, looked at her, then, rising, staggered off with a ruffled +and uppish air, due partly to their indignation and partly to the fact +that the wind blew their feathers straight up, and a trifle forward +over their heads. + +"It's bad enough," she said, "to try and raise flowers in Kansas, +fighting the wind, without having to fight the chickens. It's a fight +for existence all the way round, this living in Kansas." + +Her companion was a man with iron-gray hair, a professor of an Eastern +college who had come West, planted what money he had in real estate +and lost it. He, however, still retained part of the real estate. + +He frequently lounged about the office for an hour or two during the +day, waiting for the mail, good enough company except that he +occasionally interfered with the reading of the postal cards. + +He looked up from a New York newspaper, three days old. + +"Pioneer people," he observed laconically, "must expect to fight +everything from real estate agents to buffaloes." + +The Post Mistress laid down her sewing. Her official duties were not +arduous. They left her between trains ample time to attend to those of +her household, sewing and all, also to embroider upon bits of gossip +caught here and there in regard to her scattered neighbors whose +lights of nights were like so many stars dotting the horizon. + +She looked out the window to where a tall lank farmer was tying a mule +to the hitching post. Over the high wheel of the old blue cart he +turned big hollow eyes her way. + +"I hope he won't come before the train gets in," she sighed. "There +ain't no letter for him, I hope he won't come. Sometimes I feel like I +just can't tell him there ain't no letter for him." + +"Who is it?" asked the Professor. + +"Seth Lawson," she answered. + +The Professor elevated his eyebrows. + +"The man who owns the ground on which they are to build the Magic +City?" he asked laughingly. + +"It may happen," declared the Post Mistress tartly. "Anything is +liable to happen in Kansas, the things you least expect." + +"Everything in the way of cyclones, you mean," put in the Professor. + +"Cyclones and everything else," affirmed the Post Mistress. "No matter +what it is, Kansas goes other States one better. She raises the +tallest corn--they have to climb stepladders to reach the ears--and +the biggest watermelons in the world." + +"When she raises any at all," the Professor inserted. + +"They say," began the Post Mistress, "that in the Eastern part of the +State, where they are beginning to be civilized, when a farmer plants +his watermelon seed, he hitches up his fastest team and drives into +the next county for the watermelon, it grows so fast. Even then, +unless he has a pretty fast team somebody else gets it. If you find +one on your claim, you know, it's yours." + +"I've heard that story," the Professor politely reminded her. + +"They do say," remembered the Post Mistress, "that the Indians tell +that yarn, that a cyclone never came to Seth's ranch. It may be a fool +notion and it may not.... Look at him," leaning forward and gazing out +the window. "See how gaunt and haggard and wistful he looks. I don't +believe he gets enough to eat. There ain't a sadder sight on these +prairies than Seth Lawson. How many months has she been away from him +now? May, June, July, August, September, November," counting on her +fingers. "Seven months and one little letter from her to say she got +home safe. A dozen from him to her. More. You could almost see the +love and sadness through the envelope. And none from her in answer. + +"Look at him now. Walkin' up and down, up and down, to pass away the +time till the train comes. Waitin' for a letter. It won't come. It +never will come. And him waitin' and waitin'. He'd as well wait for +the dead to come to life or for that wife of his to leave her Kentucky +home she's so much fonder of than she is of him or the baby or +anything else in the world, to come back to him. What sort of woman +can she be anyway to leave a little nursing baby?" + +"Some cats leave their kittens before their eyes are open," the +Professor said. + +"But a woman isn't a cat," objected the Post Mistress. "At least she +oughtn't to be. Do you know I've always said the worst woman was too +good for the best man, but that woman has made me change my mind. +She's gone for good. She don't have to stand the wind any longer or +the sleet or the rain. She's gone for good. Then why couldn't she +write him a little letter to keep the heart warm in him. What harm +would that do her. How much time would it take? + +"It don't seem so bad somehow for a woman to have the heartache. She's +used to it, mostly. Some women ain't happy unless they do have it. +Heartaches and tears make up their lives, they furnish excitement. But +a man is different. You see a man holding a baby in long clothes. It's +awkward, ain't it? Somehow it don't seem natural. If you have got any +sort of mother's heart in your bosom, you want to go and take it out +of his arms and cuddle it. + +"It's the same with a man with the heartache. You want to go and take +it away from him, even if you have to keep it yourself. It don't seem +right for him to have it no more than it seems right for him to have +to take care of a child. + +"That man's got both. The little baby and the heartache. But what can +you do for him? There's nothing goin' to cure him but a letter from +her, and you can't get that. If ever a man deserved a good wife it's +that man, Seth, and what did he get? A Southern woman!" + +"Those Southern women make good wives," asserted the Professor, "if +you give them plenty of servants and money. None better." + +"Good fair-weather wives," nodded the Post Mistress, "but look out for +storms. That's when they desert." + +"It's a sweeping assertion," mused the Professor, "and not quite fair. +It is impossible to judge them all by this weak creature, Celia +Lawson. Many a woman in Kentucky braved dangers, cold, hunger and wild +animals, living in log huts as these women live in their dugouts, +before that State was settled and civilized." + +"Some won't give in that it is civilized," objected the Post +Mistress, "they're so given down there to killin' people." + +"The only difference," went on the Professor, "was in the animals. +They had bears. We have buffaloes. But sometimes you come across a +woman who isn't cut out for a pioneer woman, and all the training in +the world won't make her one. It's the way with Seth's wife." + +"She's not only weak and incapable," vowed the Post Mistress, "but +soulless and heartless." + +"How these women love each other," the Professor commented. + +"'Tain't that," flared the Post Mistress. "I'm as good a friend to a +woman as another woman can be...." + +"Just so," the Professor smiled. + +"It's my theory," frowned the Post Mistress, "that women should stand +by women and men by men...." + +"Your Theory," mused the Professor. + +"And I practice it," declared the Post Mistress. "Only in this case I +can't. Nobody could. What sort of woman is she, anyway? I can't +understand her. She's rid of him and the child and the wind and the +weather. She's back there where they say it's cool in the summer-time +and warm in the winter, where the cold blasts don't blow, and the hot +winds don't blister, and still she can't take time to sit down and +write a little note to the father of her child." + +She looked away from the window and Seth to the Professor, who +wondered why it was he had never before observed the beauty of her +humid eyes. + +"I can't bear to see him walking up and down," she complained, +"waitin' and waitin'. It disgusts you with woman-kind." + +The wind blew the shutter to with a bang. It flung it open again. Some +twigs of a tree outside tapped at the pane. A whistle sounded. + +Seth turned glad eyes in the direction of the sound. The train! + +There was the usual bustle. A man brought in a bag of letters, flung +it down, sped out and made a flying leap for the train, which was +beginning to move on. The Post Mistress busied herself with +distributing the mail and Seth walked back and forth, waiting. + +Presently he came in at the door, stood at the grated window back of +which she sorted out the letters and then went out again. + +After a time he drove slowly by the house in the high blue cart. + +"Was there anything for him?" asked the Professor. + +The Post Mistress looked after the cart receding into a cloud of dust +blown up by the wind and brushed her fingers across her eyes. + +"There was nothing for him," she said. + + + + +CHAPTER XIV. + +[Illustration] + + +On the winter following Celia's departure, Seth fared ill. + +It was all he could do to keep warmth in the boy's body and his own, +to get food for their nourishment. + +And as for homesickness! + +There were nights when he looked at the silver moon, half effaced by +wind-blown clouds, and fought back the tears, thinking how that same +moon was shining down on home and her. + +Nights when he fell into very pleasant dreams of that tranquil +beauteous and pleasant country where the wind did not blow. Dreams in +which he beheld flowers, not ragged wind-torn flowers of a parched and +ragged prairie, odorless, colorless flowers and tumbleweeds tossing +weirdly over dusty plains, but flowers of his youth, Four o'Clocks, +Marguerites and Daffy-Down-Dillies, nodding bloomily on either side of +an old brick walk leading from door to gate, Jasmine hanging +redolently from lattice, Virginia Creeper and Pumpkin-vine. + +And oh! + +A radiant dream! Celia, walking out through vine and flower in all her +fresh young beauty to meet him as in the old days, to open wide the +door and welcome him. + +Then as she had done, he waked sobbing, man though he was, but he +hushed his sobs for fear of waking the child. + +Homesickness! + +He dared not dwell on the word lest his few ideas, scattered already +by the sough of the wind, the incessant moan and sob and wail of the +wind, might blow away altogether; lest he throw to those winds his +pride of independence, his resolute determination to make a home for +her and himself and their child in the West, and go back to her. + +This, whatever dreams assailed him, he resolved not to do. + +And yet there was one dream which he thrust from him fiercely, afraid +of it, turning pale at the remembrance of it. A dream of a night on +that winter when he had gone to bed hungry. + +It was a strange dream and terrible. + +He thought it was night, he was out on the prairie, and the wolves +were following him. + +They had caught him. + +Ravenously they were tearing the flesh from his body in shreds. + +He waked in terror to hear the bark of a pack at his door, for in that +winter of bitter cold the wolves also suffered. + +"Was that to be his fate?" he asked himself. + +Was he to strive and strive, to spend his life in striving, and then +in the working out of destiny, in the survival of the fittest, of the +stronger over the weaker, of those who are able to devour over those +destined to be devoured, fall prey to the fangs of animals hungrier +than he and stronger? + +There were times when he was very tired. When almost he was ready to +fold his arms, to give up the fight and say-- + +"So be it." + +But what of the boy then? + +Raising himself out of the slough of despond, he resolutely re-fed his +soul with hope. + +Those Wise Men! If only they could come! If only they could be made to +see and understand that this was the place for their Magic City and +be persuaded to build it here! + +Then all would be well. He would take the boy to Celia, show her how +beautiful he was beginning to be and win her back again. + +Then they would all three come and live in a palace in the Magic City, +a beautiful house. Live happy ever after. + + + + +CHAPTER XV. + +[Illustration] + + +The wind lulled the child to sleep, the wind wakened him, the wind +sang to him all day long, dashed playful raindrops in his upturned +face and whispered to him. + +Perhaps it was the wind, then, that was his mother. This variable, +coquettish wind of tones so infinitely tender, of shrieks so +blusteringly loud. + +He listened to it in the dawn. He listened to it in the sombre +darkness of the night. Early and late it seemed to call to him to come +out and away to his mother. + +The restlessness that sometimes encompasses the soul of a boy took +possession of him. He was filled with the passion of wander-lust. The +darkened walls of the dugout restricted him, those grim, gray earth +walls that duskily, grave-like, enclosed the body of him. + +He must be up and away. + +He would go to the heart of the wind and find his mother. + +Seth had gone to the town for feed for his cattle. Cyclona was at +home. He took advantage of their absence to start on his journey. + +Outside the dugout the wind enveloped him softly, enticingly, kissing +his curls, kissing the rosy sunburn, the tender down of his cheek +which still retained the kissable outline of babyhood. + +It was day when he started, broad day, bright with the light of the +red sun high in the heavens, surrounded by the brilliant hue of +cloudless skies. + +The boy ran. + +The wind tossed him like a plaything as it tossed the big round +tumbleweeds, making the pace for him a little beyond. + +Now and again, broad day though it was, the wind blew blasts that +frightened him, dying down immediately again into piping Pan-like +whispers that lured him on and on until he became a mere speck on the +trackless prairie, blown by alternate blasts and zephyrs, hurrying, +hurrying, hurrying to the heart of the wind to find his mother. + +But by and by the sun sank, dropping suddenly into the Nowhere behind +the darkling line of the mysterious horizon. + +Then the twilight seeped softly over the prairie, like a drop of ink +spilt over a blotter. + +A little while later and the prairie became obscurely shadowy, peopled +all at once by frightful things, familiar everyday things changed to +hideous hobgoblins by the chrism of the dark. + +Grasses with long human fingers beckoned him to the Unknown, which is +always terrible, while great ever-moving tumbleweeds sprang up at him +as if from underground, like enormous heads of resurrected giants. + +And the voice of the wind! + +As he neared the heart of it, it, too, took on an unknown quantity +more terrible than the bugaboo of the shadows and the dark. + +It howled with the howl of wolves. + +The child began to be afraid. Pantingly, wildly afraid! + +He stood still, looking breathlessly ahead of him to where the prairie +stretched indefinitely to the rim of the starlit dome, billowy with +long gray grasses blown into the semblance of fingers by the bellowing +blasts of the fearsome wind. + +He sobbed, he was now so far from home, and the voice of the wind had +taken on a menacing note of such deep subtleness. + +Which way was home? He had forgotten. The way the wind blew? + +But the wind had turned to a whirlwind, blowing gales in every +direction to mislead him, now that he wanted to go home. + +True, there were the stars, blinking high above the stress and turmoil +of the tireless wind, but he was too young yet to understand the way +they pointed. + +As he stood irresolutely sobbing, one ache of loneliness and +homesickness and fear, he heard the call of a human voice and his +name, the voice coming to him high above the wind, with its own note +of terrorized anguish. + +His father's voice! + +The voice sounded nearer and nearer, calling, calling! + +The child ran toward the sound of it, the loneliness of the prairie +swallowed up in a sob of gladness, and he was in Seth's arms. + +As for Seth, he could only articulate one word: + +"Why? Why?" + +Celia had deserted him, but the Boy! + +"I was looking for my mother," sobbed the child in answer, safe in the +tender hollow of his arm. + +After a moment's hesitation: + +"Mother will come to you some day," Seth breathed over him. "Won't +Cyclona and father do till then?" + +And in the close clasp of the longing man the child felt the +unmistakable throb of paternity penetrate his heart and was +satisfied. + + + + +CHAPTER XVI. + +[Illustration] + + +The winter had been too long and cold, or the child, however tender +Seth's care of him, had been insufficiently clothed and fed. + +He lay ill, alternately shaking with chills and burning with fever. + +It was March now and the winds blew with the fierceness of tornadoes. + +But the laughter of Charlie's delirium outvoiced the winds. + +Now he moaned with them and sighed. + +Cyclona took up her abode at the dugout now, nursing him tirelessly, +while Seth walked the floor, back and forth, back and forth like some +caged and helpless animal writhing in pain; for from the first he had +read death in the face of the child. + +The wind lulled and Seth knelt by his bedside, his ear against +Charlie's heart, listening for his breathing, Cyclona standing +fearfully by, her face white as the coverings. + +After a long time Seth raised beseeching eyes to her in an unspoken +question: + +"Does he breathe?" + +As if he had heard, Charlie suddenly opened his eyes and looked +smilingly first at one and then at the other of these two who had +encompassed his short life about with such loving care. + +"Listen," he whispered, "to the wind." + +The wind had risen. It howled like some mad thing. It blew great +blasts, ferocious blasts and deafening. + +It was as if it, too, were hurt. It was as if it, too, suffered the +agony of mortal pain in sympathy with the child. + +Soon the child began to lisp and they bent their heads to listen. + +"I am ... going ... out ... in ... the wind ... again," he said, "to +find ... my ... mother." + +"Charlie!" cried Seth, in a voice whose anguish sounded high above the +winds. "Stay! It is we who love you, Cyclona and I. Stay with us!" + +Cyclona knelt and laid her brown hand across the beautiful eyelids of +the child for a little while. + +Then she took Seth's head and pillowing it upon her bosom, rocked +gently back and forth as they knelt alone on the hard cold earth of +the dugout floor. + +"It doesn't matter now," she whispered to him; "he knows." + + + + +CHAPTER XVII. + +[Illustration] + + +The days are long in the desert. Sometimes they seem to be endless. +When the wind would permit, Seth endeavored to find comfort in digging +in the soil into which we must all descend, in getting near to it, in +ploughing it, often with apparent aimlessness, never being able to +count upon the harvest, but buoying up his soul with hope of the +yield. + +But there were days of wind and rain and sleet and cold stormy weather +when all animals of the desert, whether human or four-footed, were +glad to seek their holes in the ground and stay there. + +These days Seth spent in building the beautiful house. + +He sat before the dim half window, drawing the plan, Cyclona beside +him, watching him. + +Sometimes he called her Cyclona, and then again he called her Charlie; +for what with his grief and the wail of the wind, his mind had become +momentarily dazed. + +Full well Cyclona knew the story of the Magic City, having heard it +again and again, but it was only of late when Seth had given up all +hope of Celia's returning to the dugout that he commenced to plan the +beautiful house. + +"When the Wise Men come out of the East," Seth told her, "and buy up +ouah land fo' the Magic City, we shall be rich. It is then that I +shall build this beautiful house, so beautiful that she must come and +live in it with us." + +Cyclona leaned over the table on her elbows, looking at the plan. Her +dark eyes were sad, for she knew that by "us," Seth meant Charlie and +himself. + +He ran his pencil over the plan, showing how the beautiful house was +to be built. Somewhat after the fashion of a Southern house +modernized. A Southern woman, he explained, must live in a house which +would remind her of her home and still be so beautiful that not for +one instant would she regret that home or the land of her birth which +she had left for it. + +"A species of insanity it is," he muttered, "to bring such a woman to +a hole in the ground." He bit his lip and frowned, "fo' theah ah women +in whom the love of home, of country, is pa'amount. Above all human +things, above husband, above children, she loves her home. Child! +Celia has no child. Cyclona, has no one written to Celia that she has +no child?" + +This wildly, his eyes insanely bright. + +"It is just as well," soothed Cyclona. "It doesn't matter. She never +knew him." + +It seemed to Cyclona that she could see the lonely resting place of +the child reflected in Seth's eyes, so firmly was his mind fixed upon +it. + +"You ah right, Cyclona," he said by and by. "You ah right. It is just +as well. It might grieve her, altho' it is as you say, she nevah knew +him." + +Cyclona traced a line of the plan of the beautiful house. + +"Tell me about it," she said. + +"It is her natuah," insisted Seth almost fiercely, "and we can no mo' +change ouah natuah, the instinct that is bawn in us, that is +inherited, than we can change the place of ouah birth. Can we teach +the fish to fly or the bird to swim, or the blind mole to live above +the cool sof' earth in which centuries of ancestral moles have +delighted to burrow? Then no mo' can you teach a woman in whom the +love of country is pa'amount to love anothah country. Only by the +gentlest measuahs may you wean her from it. Only by givin' her in this +strange new country something mo' beautiful than any othah thing she +has evah known. And that," he finished, "is why I am goin' to build +the beautiful house." + +He fell to dreaming audibly. + +"All these were of costly stones, accordin' to the measuah of hewed +stones, sawed with saws within and without," he muttered, "even from +the foundation unto the copin', and so on the outside toward the great +court." + +Cyclona reaching up took down from a shelf a well-thumbed Book, which, +since books are scarce on the desert, both knew by heart, and opened +it at the Book of Kings. + +"Seth," she said, presently, touching him on the shoulder, "aren't you +getting this house mixed up with the House of the Lord?" + +"No," smiled Seth, "with the house that Solomon built fo' Pharaoh's +daughter whom he had taken to wife." + +He went on softly: + +"And the foundation was of cos'ly stones, even great stones, stones of +ten cubits, and stones of eight cubits. And above were cos'ly stone, +aftah the measuah of hewed stones, and cedars." + +"Seth," said Cyclona, to whom no dream was too fanciful, "are you +goin' to build this house just like that one?" + +"If I could, I would," Seth made reply, and then went on dreaming his +dream aloud. "And he made the pillahs and the two rows around about +upon the network, to covah the chapiters that were upon the top, with +pomegranates; and so did he fo' the othah chapiter. And the chapiters +that were upon the tip of the pillahs were of lily work in the porch, +fo' cubits. Lily work," he lingered over the words, smiling at their +musical poetry. + +After awhile he began again to talk of the beautiful house which +should have every improvement, a marble bath.... + +"And it was an hand-breadth thick," interrupted Cyclona, "and the brim +thereof was wrought like the brim of a cup, with flowers, of lilies; +it contained two thousand baths. If you could, would you build her a +bath like that, Seth?" she questioned. + +"I would," replied Seth, "and as fo' the lights!" + +"There were windows in three rows," read Cyclona, "and light was +against light in three ranks." + +"Lights!" exclaimed Seth, "little electric lights tricked out with +fancy globes of rose colah matching the roses in her cheeks." + +He dropped his pencil and gazed ahead of him. + +"Do you know?" he asked dreamily, "how I shall match that rose color +of her cheek, not havin' her by? I shall taik the innah petal of a +rose and maik the little lights the color of that." + +Cyclona arose and walked over to a bit of glass that hung on the wall. +She frowned at the reflection of her brown cheek there. A tender and +delicate rose underlay the brown, but her eyes saw no beauty in it. +She sighed as she came back and once more sat down. + +"I shall have the beautiful house agleam with lights," went on Seth, +who had failed to notice the interruption. "Lights at the sight of +which Solomon would have stood aghast, that splendid ole aristocrat +whose mos' magnificent temples were dimly lit by candles.... Windows +in three rows! Windows in a dozen rows out of which her blue eyes +shall look on smooth green swahds and flowahs. + +"The house shall gleam alight with windows. Theah shall be no da'k +spot in it. Windowless houses ah fo' creatuahs of a clay less fine +than hers," repeating tenderly, "of less fine clay. She is a bein' +created to bask in the sunshine. She shall bask in it. These windows +shall be thrown wide open to the sun, upstaiahs and down. Not a speck +nor spot shall mah their cleanliness, lest a ray of light escape. +Those who live in da'kness wilt within and without. She shall not live +in da'kness. Nevah again. Nevah again shall she live in a hole in the +ground." + +After a time: + +"Is it possible?" he mused, half to himself, half to Cyclona, "to +build a house without a cellah?" + +"I don't know," said Cyclona, whose knowledge of houses was limited to +her own whose roof was still upside down, and dugouts. + +"If I could build this house without a cellah," said Seth, "I would." + +Cyclona again read from the Book. + +"It stood upon twelve oxen," she read, "three looking toward the +north, and three looking toward the west and three looking toward the +south and three looking toward the east. Why not stand it on oxen like +that, Seth?" she questioned. + +Seth laughed. + +"That wasn't the house," said he. "That was the molten sea." + +"Oh!" exclaimed Cyclona. "I know now. The foundation was of stone made +ready before they were brought hither, costly stones, great stones. It +must have a foundation of some sort," she argued, keeping her finger +on the place as she looked up, "or it will blow away." + +"Of co'se," assented Seth, "or it will blow away. Well, if it must it +must; but we will put half-windows into that cellah so it won't be +da'k, so it won't be like this, a hole in the ground. We will light it +with electrics. But we won't talk of the cellah. That saddens me. I am +tiahd of livin' in the hole in the ground myself sometimes. We will +talk of the beautiful rooms above ground that we will build fo' her. + +"Look. You entah a wide door whose threshold her little feet will +press. She will trail up this staiahway," and he let his pencil linger +lovingly over the place, "in her silks and velvets, followed by her +maids, and theah on the second landing she will find palms and the +flowahs she loves best, and her own white room with its bed of gold +covahd with lace so delicate, delicate as she is. Soft, filmy lace fit +fo' a Princess, fo' that is what she is. Theah will be bits of +spindle-legged golden furniture about in this white bed-room of hers +and pier-glasses that will maik a dozen of her, that will maik twenty +of her, we will arrange it so; for theah cannot be too many +reflections, can theah, of so gracious and lovely a Princess?" + +Once more Cyclona tapped him on the shoulder. + +"Seth," said she, "where is the room for the Prince?" + +Seth looked up at her vacantly. It was some time before he answered. +Then his answer showed vagueness; for what with the howl of the wind +and the eternal presence in the closet of his soul of the skeleton of +despair, his mind had become a little erratic at times. + +"When the Prince has proven himself worthy to be the Prince Consort of +so wonderful a Princess," he replied, "then he, too, may come and live +in the beautiful house, but not until then." + +His thoughts harked back to the cellar. Staring ahead of him he saw +the slight figure of a woman silhouetted against the tender pearl of +the evening sky, eyes staring affrightedly into the darkened door of a +dugout, a fluff of yellow hair like a halo about the beautiful face. + +"A cellah is a hole in the ground," he sighed. "A cellah is a hole in +the ground. Theah shall be nothing about this house I shall build fo' +the Princess in any way resemblin' a hole in the ground. Holes in the +ground are fo' wolves and prairie dogs and...." + +"And us," Cyclona finished grimly, then smiled. + +Seth, drawing himself up, gazed at her. + +In her own wild way Cyclona had grown to be beautiful, still brown as +a Gypsy, but large of eye and red of lip. She might have passed for a +type of Creole or a study in bronze as she faced him with that little +smile of defiance on her red lips. Too beautiful she was for a +dugout, true, and yet the dusky brownish gray of the earth-colored +walls served in a way to set off her rich dark coloring. + +Seth returned to the plan. + +"And for us," he assented, humbly. + +"We must build it of stone," he continued. "White stone. Stone never +blows away. It will be finished, too, with the finest of wood, +covahd...." + +"Wait," cried Cyclona, turning over the leaves of the Book, "and he +built the walls of the house with boards of cedar, both the floor of +the house and the walls of the ceiling. And he covered them on the +inside with wood and covered the floor of the house with planks of +fir." + +"Cedah," nodded Seth. "It would be well to build it of cedah. The +cedah is a Southern tree. It would remind her of home. + +"We will finish it, then, with cedah and polish it so well that laik +the mirrors it will reflect her face as she walks about. Heah will be +the music room. It shall have a piano made of the same rich wood. It +will look as if it were built in the house. Theah shall be guitahs and +mandolins. She plays the guitah a little, Cyclona, the Princess. You +should see her small white hands as she fingahs the strings. I will +have a low divan of many cushions heah by the window of the music +room. She shall sit heah in her beautiful gown of silk. White silk, +fo' white becomes her best, her beauty is so dainty. She shall sit +heah in her white silk gown and play and play and sing those Southern +songs of hers that ah so full of music...." + +He dropped his pencil and sat very still for a space, looking ahead of +him out of the window. + +The panorama, framed by its limited sash of wilful winds playing havoc +with the clouds, became obliterated by the picture of her, sitting by +a wide and sunny window, backed by those gay pillows, thrumming with +slim white fingers on the guitar and singing. + +Again Cyclona waked him from his day dream with a touch. He ran his +fingers through his hair, staring at her. + +"Is that you, Charlie," he asked her. + +"Not Charlie," she answered. "Cyclona." + +"I beg yoah pahdon," he said. "Ve'y often now you seem to me to be +Charlie. I don't know why." + +"Tell me more about the Princess," soothed Cyclona, "is she so +beautiful?" + +"Beautiful," echoed Seth. "She is fit fo' any palace, she is so +beautiful. And when the Wise Men come out of the East we will build it +fo' her. It shall have gold do'knobs and jewelled ornaments and rare +birds of gay plumage to sing and keep her company, and painted +ceilings and little cupids carved in mahble, and theah shall be graven +images set on onyx pedestals and some curious Hindoo gods squatting, +and a Turkish room of red lights dimmed by little carved lanterns and +rich, rare rugs and pictuahs by great mastahs in gilded frames, and +walls lined with the books she loves best in royal bindings.... And +she shall have servants to wait upon her and do her bidding and we +will send to Paris fo' her gowns and her bonnets and her wraps. And +she shall have carriages and coachmen and footmen. A Victoria, I think +I shall odah fo' her, ve'y elegant, lined with blue to match her +eyes.... No--that would be too light. Her eyes are beautiful, Cyclona. +Don't think fo' a moment that they are not, but can you undahstan', I +wondah, how eyes can be ve'y beautiful and yet of a cold and steely +blue that sometimes freezes the blood in youah veins? A little too +light, perhaps, and that gives them the look of cleah cold cut steel. + +"I shall have the linings of her Victoria light, but not quite so +light, a little dahkah and wahmah, perhaps, the footmen with a livery +to match. That goes without sayin'. And she shall have outridahs, too, +if she likes, as in the olden time back theah at home in the South. No +grand dame of the ole and splendid South she loves so well shall be so +grand as she, shall be so splendid as she when we shall have finished +the beautiful house fo' her. + +"Cyclona," wildly, "how could we expect a little delicate frail +Southern woman to come and live in a hole in the ground. How could we? +Why shouldn't she hate the wind? Ah! We must still the winds! We must +still the winds! But how?" + +At this Seth was wont to rise, to walk the circumscribed length of his +miserable dwelling and to worry his soul. + +"How shall we still the winds?" he would moan. "How shall we still the +winds that the soun' of them shall not disturb her?" + +After a long time of thinking: + +"Cyclona," he concluded, "in some countries they move forests. Don't +they? Have I read that or dreamed it? If only we could move a forest +or two onto these vast prairies, that would still the winds. Tall +trees penetratin' the skies would be impassable barriers to the +terrible winds that have full sweep as it is. They would still the +winds, those forests, if we could move them!" + +Cyclona's heart was full at this; for Seth was far from sane, alas! +when he talked of moving forests of trees to the barren prairies. The +idea at last struck him as preposterous. + +"We will build tall trees," he continued quickly, as if to cover the +tracks of his mistakes. "We will build trees that will taik root in +the night and spring up before morning. Trees that will grow and grow +and grow. Magic trees growing so quickly in the lush black soil of the +prairie once we get them started, the soil so neah the undahground +streams by the rivahs heah, that the angels would look down in +wondahment. + +"They would, to see how quickly they would grow. Such trees would +tempah the winds that blow so now because they have full sweep, +because there is nothin' to stop them. Winds, laik everything else, +are amenable to control, if you only know how to control them. These +tall trees will not only break the force of the winds, but they will +shade her beautiful face as she drives about. They will shut off the +too ardent sun that would wish to kiss her." + +Now and again Cyclona grew a trifle impatient of this beautiful +creature whose character she knew, whose child she had cared for and +helped to bury, grew a trifle tired of hearing hymns sung in her +praise. + +"Where is she now?" she asked listlessly, knowing full well, merely to +continue if the talk pleased him, tired as she was. + +"Charlie," smiled Seth, and never once did Cyclona correct him when he +called her Charlie, reasoning that perhaps the spirit of the child was +near him, since there were those who believed that and it was +comforting. "She is laik the flowahs, that beautiful one. She knows +bettah than to bloom in this God-fo'saken country--that was what she +called it--wheah you cain't get the flowahs to bloom because of the +wind that is fo'evah blowin'. She lives now wheah the flowahs bloom +and the wind nevah blows." + +Cyclona lifted her head to listen to the moan and the sough of the +wind. + +"I love it," she said. + +"So do I," said Seth, "though sometimes I am half afraid of it, +thinkin' it is getting into my brain, but she hated it. But nevah +mind. When we grow tall trees that will break the force of the wind +and shade her from the sun and build the beautiful house fo' her, she +will come back home and live in it with us and we shall be happy! +Happy! We shall fo'get all ouah sorrow, we shall be so happy!" + +At that moment, the moment of the going down of the sun, the wind +dropped and the passing clouds let in the gleam of the sunset at the +window. It rested goldenly on Seth's face. It illumined it. It +glorified it. + +Cyclona looked at him long and earnestly, at the strong, fine lines of +sadness brought beautifully out by this unexpected high-light of the +skies, accentuated Rembrandt-like, against the darkness of the +earth-colored hole in the ground. + +Then she bent her sunburnt head and a tear fell on her hand +outstretched upon the table. + +At sight of the tear Seth was like a man who is all at once drunk with +new wine. There is truth in the wine. There are times when it clears +the brain for the moment and reveals things as they are. + +He looked at Cyclona with new eyes. It was as if he had never before +seen her. She differed from Celia as the wild rose differs from the +rose that blooms in hothouses, and yet how beautiful she was! He +realized for the first time her wonderful beauty. So olive of +complexion with the delicate tinge of rose showing through, so bronze +of hair in close-cut sun-kissed curls! + +The little curls that gave her a boyish look in spite of the fact that +she had blossomed into radiant womanhood. The big brown eyes. The +curve of the neck, the little tip-tilted chin! + +Seth had been hardly human if the thought of forgetting Celia and her +indifference in Cyclona's arms had not more than once presented +itself. + +It presented itself now with the strength of strong winds. + +Without home or kindred, without tie or connection, she was a flower +in his pathway. He had only to reach out and pluck her and wear her on +his heart. There were none to gainsay him. No mortal lived who dared +defend her or say nay. + +Why waste his life, then, in dreams and fantasies, in regrets, and +hopings, when here lay a glowing, breathing, living reality? + +He reached out his hand and caught hers in a firm, compelling grasp. A +splendid creature sent to comfort him. A creature blown by the winds +of heaven to his threshold. A dear defenceless thing without home or +kindred, unprotected, uncared of, weak and in need of affection, in +dire need of love. + +Helpless, unshielded, unguarded ... unprotected ... unguarded ... +uncared for.... + +Seth frowned. The wind had wafted itself into his brain again. He was +growing dazed. + +He caught his hand away from Cyclona's. He thrust his fingers through +his hair. He pressed them over his eyes. + +These strange words persisted in piling themselves solidly between him +and his desire. They formed a barrier stronger than walls of brick or +mortar. + +Unprotected, defenceless, unguarded, uncared for, this girl who had +rocked his child and Celia's in her arms, who had held him close to +the warmth of her young bosom. This beautiful unprotected girl who had +tenderly closed the eyes of his child! + +The fragile barrier built by unseen hands was cloud-high now. + +If the wraith of Cyclona had occupied the chair there by his side she +could scarcely have been further removed from his embrace. + +Humbly Seth bent over the small brown hand. + +Reverently he kissed away the tear. + + + + +CHAPTER XVIII. + +[Illustration] + + +But the moons waxed and waned and the months lapsed into years and +Seth grew hopeless, more and more hopeless, so hopeless that at last +he began to lose faith in the Magic City, and to fear for the +realization of his fantastic will-o'-the-wisp of a beautiful house. + +Would the Wise Men never come out of the East to buy up his land and +build that magnificent city of his dreams at the forks of the river +where the cyclones never came, so that he could build his beautiful +house for Celia? Or would they always stop just short of it? + +Already that little town on the edge of the State called Kansas City +because it was in Missouri, had boomed itself into a city and, being +just outside the cyclone belt, had not been blown away. In spite of +the fact that it had been set high on a hill it had not been blown +away. + +The Wise Men had built that town. + +Also, there was another town they had built within the belt which +promised to thrive, a town where the people had so arranged it that +the coming of a cyclone could be telegraphed to them, where signs like +this were posted, "A cyclone due at three o'clock," and they had ample +time to shut up shop and school and prepare for it, going down into +their cyclone cellars, shutting fast the doors and staying there until +it was over. + +True, a cyclone or two had grazed this town. + +One had even taken off a wing. But, though a trifle disabled by each, +it had continued to thrive, showing such evident and robust signs of +life and strength that the cyclones, presently giving up in despair of +making a wreck of it, had gone on by as Seth has said they would do +once they found their master. + +Then this town had been by way of premium for stanchness and courage +made the capital of this State of tornadoes and whirlwinds. + +But this was as far as it went or seemed to intend to go. Further +south and west an attempt or two had been made to plant towns, but +their cellars had not been dug deep enough or their foundations had +not been sufficiently firm, or the cyclones had not yet become +reconciled to the sight of them. At any rate, the cyclones had come +along and swept them away without a word of warning, and they had not +been heard of since, neither cyclone nor town. + +And so, altogether, Seth lost heart and came to the conclusion that +his Magic City, if it was ever to be built would be built after his +time and he would never have the happiness of gazing upon it. The hope +of seeing it was all that had kept him in the West. Now that he had +lost it, an uncontrollable longing came over him to go back home, to +see the wife who had deserted him, throw himself at her feet and beg +her forgiveness for his madness which had resulted in their +separation. + +From dreaming dreams of the Magic City he took to dreaming dreams of +her. + +It was years since he had seen her, but the absent, like the dead, +remain unchanged to us. To him she was the same as when last he saw +her. + +How beautiful she had been with her great blue eyes and her hair the +color of Charlie's, tawny, like sunshine! And right, too, in her +scorn of his visions. And how foolish he had been to dream of training +the wind-blown West into a fit place for human beings to inhabit, or +for great cities to be built! It would take a stronger hand than his +to do that, he had come to believe. It would take the hand of God. + +He had tried to find a tree that would grow so swiftly that the wind +could have no effect upon it. He had planted slim switches of one kind +after another and the wind had blown each to leaflessness, until now +there stood a slim row of cottonwoods that he had tried as a last +resort, but the same thing would happen to them, perhaps. He had lost +faith in trees. But he would not say yet that he had lost faith in +God. + +He watched the same train trailing so far away as to seem a toy train +and longed as she had done to take it and go back home. + +At last he understood the look in her eyes as she watched it and the +thoughts that enthralled her. + +Sometimes when we strive for a thing and set our hearts on it, it +holds itself aloof from us. When we cease to strive, it comes. + +But that is among the many strange ways of Providence which seems to +rule us blindly, but which is not so blind, perhaps, after all, as it +seems. + +Another of its ways most incomprehensible is to bring us what we have +longed for a little too late sometimes. + +But this is the story of Seth, and this is the way of its happening: + +It was early in a mild and beautiful spring when the corn was young. +It stood shoulder high, lusty and strong and green. What with the +unwonted mildness of the weather and the absence of the usual storms +and the proneness of the clouds to deposit themselves about in gentle +showers, the crop promised fair to rival any crop that Seth had ever +raised on the Kansas prairies. + +He hoed and toiled and smiled and listened to the rustling of the +corn, for he had made up his mind. + +When the harvest was at an end he would sell the crop and the place +for what it would bring, and go back home. He would go back to his +wife and home! + +The rustling of the corn was music in his ears. It was more. It was +like the glad hand of young Love; for with the crops so fine and the +harvest so rich, when he went back home to her, he would not go +empty-handed and unwelcome. + +He was going back once more to his Kentucky home. + +No hills seemed so green as those Kentucky hills and no skies so blue +as those skies that vaulted above the green, green hills of his native +land. + +It had been longer than he cared to count since he had seen the blue +grass waving about in the wind there, not such wind as swept the +Kansas prairies, but gentle zephyrs almost breathless that rustled +softly and musically through the little blades of grass just as the +wind was rustling through the stalks now as he walked slowly with the +heavy stride of the clumsy farmer, hoeing the corn. + +And he had not heard the whip-poor-will, nor sat under the shade of +the wide spreading oaks, nor listened to the soft Southern talk of his +and her people, not since he had come to Kansas with those other +foolish folk to brave the dangers of the strange new country in the +search of homes. + +Homes! + +He could point out the graves of some of them here and there about the +vastness of the level prairies, though more often he wandered across +the vast level wastes, looking for the places where they should be and +found them not, because of the buffaloes that had long ago trampled +out the shape of them, or because of the corn that had been planted in +furrows above their mounds, the serried ranks through which the wind +sang requiems, chanting, whispering, moaning and sighing in the balmy +springtime and through the heat of the long summer days until in the +chill of the autumn the farmers cut the stalks and stacked them +evenly, leaving no dangling leaves to sigh through nor tassels to +flout. + +Now that he had made up his mind, the roughness of his life bore in +upon him. + +He thought with Celia that it would be good to live again in a land +where people led soft, easy lives. She was not to be blamed. She was +right with that strange animal instinct which leads some women blindly +to the truth, and he had wasted the best years of his life and all of +the boy's in this terrible land of whirlwinds and coyotes and wide, +thirsty plains stretching to meet the blazing skies of noonday or the +star-gemmed dome of the purple night. + +For the plains in some strange and mysterious way took vengeance upon +many of those who dared upturn with hoe and plough the fresh new +malarial soil, inserting germs of disease and death which soon +stretched them beneath. + +Some lives must invariably be sacrificed to the upbuilding of any new +country, but why so many? And, sadder still, minds had been +sacrificed. The asylums, such as they were, were filled with those +whose minds in the ghastly loneliness of the desert had been torn and +turned and twisted by the incessant whirl and shirr and swish and +force of the pitiless winds. + +He himself loved the wind, but there were times when he was afraid of +it, when it got in his brain and whirled and caused him to see things +in strange lights and weird, things fantastically colored, +kaleidoscopic and upside down. + +When the day's work was done he sat outside the dugout talking +sometimes to himself, sometimes to Cyclona, telling of how when the +harvest was over and gathered he would go back home. + +His plan must succeed, he sighed, to himself sometimes, sometimes to +Cyclona, who would sit listening, her great eyes on the limit of the +horizon, deep, dark, troubled as she brooded upon what her life would +be when he was gone; and as he talked he panted in the deep +earnestness of his insistence that the crops must succeed. + +Other plans had failed, but not this. Not this! It must not! +Resolutely he put away from him all thought of failure. It must +succeed. He must go home! + +He must ease this longing for the sight of Celia and her people which +had come to him of late to stay with him through seed-time and +harvest, through the early spring when the corn was young, and later +when it rose to heights unheard of, and later still through those +bitter days of grasshoppers and chinch bugs and hot winds and other +blightful things that haunt the Kansas cornfield to their ruin. + +He must go home. + + + + +CHAPTER XIX. + +[Illustration] + + +Since Seth had braved everything and dared everything, going so far +even as to hire harvest hands to help him, taking every possible +chance upon the yield of this harvest, as a gambler stakes his all +upon the last throw of the dice, fortune seemed at last to come his +way, and it promised a yield which eclipsed his wildest dreaming. + +His heart grew light as he listened to the rustling of the corn and +into his tired eyes, beginning to be old, there crept so warm a glow +that the farm hands stood and stared at him as they came trooping in +hot and dusty from the fields. + +They wondered what could have come over him to give to his worn and +faded face so nearly the look of youth. + +"The corn is fine, John, isn't it?" he asked of a gray-haired man who +sat at one corner of the rough table, mopping his forehead with a +large bandana handkerchief, not too clean. + +John put the handkerchief back into his pocket and fell upon the meal +Seth set before him. + +"It's fine enough," said he, "it'll be the finest crop ever raised in +these here parts if the hot winds don't come." + +After a little while he said again: + +"If the hot winds don't come." + +Seth set a plate of bread down by him with a crash. + +"The hot winds!" he cried. "The hot winds!" + +Man as he was he clasped his hands together and caught them apart, +wringing them. + +"I had forgotten all about the hot winds!" he moaned. "I had forgotten +all about the hot winds!" + + * * * * * + +The softness of the spring air gave place to heat, to extreme heat, +sudden and blighting. A copper sun blazed in a copper sky. + +The cooling breezes under the influence of the heat changed to +scorching winds. These winds blew menacingly through the rustling +stalks of the strong green corn. + +For one long day they laughed defiance, holding firmly erect their +brave heads upon which the yellow tassels were beginning to thrust +themselves aloft in silken beauty; and Seth, watching, braced himself +with the hope that they would somehow stand the ordeal, that the heat +might abate, that in some way, by the special finger of Providence, +perhaps, the threatened ruin might be warded off, that a cooling +breeze might come blowing up from the Gulf or a shower might fall and +he could still go back home. + +On the second day the heat had not abated. It had rather increased. +The burning winds blew stronger. They raged with a sudden fury, died +down to a whisper, and raged again. + +John, when he led the field hands in, shook his head and took his +place at the table in silence. + +Seth, setting their meal before them, crept to the door and looked +out. + +He turned faint and sick at heart at the sight of the fields, for the +tassels had drooped and the broad green leaves were slowly changing to +a parched and withered brown, parched and withered as his face, which +had been bared to the heat of the Kansas prairies for so many years, +parched and withered as his heart which had borne the brunt of sadness +and sorrow and separation until the climax was reached and it could +bear no more. + +On the third day the hot winds grew vengeful. They swept across the +prairies with a hissing sound as of flames sizzling through the heat +of a furnace. The tassels, burnt now to a dingy brown, hung in wisps. +The leaves drooped like tired arms. They no longer sang in the wind. +They rattled, a hoarse, harsh rattle premonitory of death. + +Far and near the fields lay scorched, withered, burnt to a crisp as if +by the fast and furious blast of a raging prairie fire. + +There was no longer need of harvest hands. + +The harvest, gathered by the hot winds, was ended. The ruin was +complete. + +Their mission accomplished, the winds died down suddenly as they had +risen and passed away across the barren prairies in a sigh. + +Then up came the cooling breezes from the Gulf, light, zephyry clouds +gathered, shut off the brazen sunlight and burst into a grateful +shower, which descended upon the parched and deadened fields of corn. + +But Seth! + +Flung on his knees by the side of the bed in the corner of the hole in +the ground, his face buried in his arms, he listened to the patter of +those raindrops on the corn. + +His eyes were dry; but a spring had broken somewhere near the region +of his heart. + +He owned himself defeated. + +He gave up the fight. + + + + +CHAPTER XX. + +[Illustration] + + +Cyclona had gone to Seth's dugout and found a note from him on the +table. It contained few words, but they held a world of meaning. +Simple words and few, tolling her knell of doom. + +"I have gone to Celia," it read. + +Cyclona crushed the paper, flung it to the floor and ran from the hole +in the ground, afraid of she knew not what, engulfed in the awful fear +which encompasses the hopeless,--the fear of herself. + +She sprang to her saddle and urged her broncho on with heel and whip, +upright as an Indian in her saddle, her face set, expressionless in +its marble-like immobility. + +She scarcely heeded the direction she took. She left that to her +broncho, who sped into the heat of the dusty daylight, following hard +in the footsteps of the wind. + +What she wished to do was to go straight to God, to stand before Him +and ask him questions. + +If within us earthworms there is the Divine Spark of the Deity, if we +are in truth His sons and daughters, she reasoned, then we have some +rights that this Deity is bound to respect. + +What earthly father would knowingly permit his children to stumble +blindly along dangerous pathways into dangerous places? + +What earthly father would demand that his children rush headlong into +danger unquestioningly? + +What earthly father would create hearts only to crush them? + +Why had He thrust human beings onto this earth against their will, +without their volition, to suffer the tortures of the damned? + +Why had He created this huge joke of an animal, part body, part soul, +all nerves keen to catch at suffering, only to laugh at it? + +Why had He taken the pains to fashion this Opera Bouffe of a world at +all? Why had He made of it a slate upon which to draw lines of human +beings, then wipe them aimlessly off as would any child? + +For mere amusement after the manner of children? + +If not, then why? Why? Why? + +She could have screamed out this "Why" into the way of the wind. + +She wanted to ask Him why he whirled body-clad souls out of the +Nowhere, dragged them by the hair of their heads through ways thronged +with thorns, then thrust them back again into the Nowhere, to lie +stone still in their chill damp graves, in their straight grave +clothes, awaiting His pleasure? + +Why had He seen fit to fashion some all body and no soul? + +Why had He made others all soul? + +Why had He created the Seths to weary for love of the Celias and the +Cyclonas to eat out their hearts for love of the Seths? + +Some of these questions she had been wont to put to Seth, who had +answered them as best he could in his patient way. + +There was a hidden meaning in it all, he had said, meaningless as it +often seemed. Some meaning that would show itself in God's good time. + +We are uncut diamonds, was one of his explanations. We had much need +of polishing before we could attain sufficient brilliancy to adorn a +crown. We must have faith and hope, he had said. Much faith and hope +and patience. And above all we must have the belief that it would all +come out in the Great White Wash of Eternity, in God's good time. + +But there were those who succumbed before God's good time, who would +never know the explanation until they had passed into the Beyond, +where they would cease to care. + +She rode on and on, asking herself these questions and finding no +answer in the whirl and eddy of dust blown at her by the wind, in the +limitless stretch of prairie, in the suffocating thickness of heat +which enveloped the way of the wind. + +Intense heat. Sultry, parching, enervating, sure precursor, if she had +thought to remember, if she had been less engrossed in the bitterness +of her questionings, of a storm. + +Soon, aroused by the intensity of this heat, which burned like the +blast from an oven, she whirled about and turned her broncho's head +the other way. + +It was time, for that way lay her home and danger threatened it. + +At the moment of her turning a blast blew with trumpet-like warning +into the day, blazing redly like a fire of logs quickened by panting +breaths. + +A lurid light, like the light of Judgment Day or the wrath of God +spread while she looked. + +It enveloped her. + +It was as if she gazed upon earth and sky through a bit of bright red +stained glass. + +In the southern skies, in the direction of her home, clouds piled +high, black, threatening. + +Then she heard a rushing sound of wind, wailing, moaning, threshing, +roaring sullenly in the distance. + +She spurred her broncho into the darkness lit by flashes of this lurid +light. + +A flash of light. + +Then darkness, thick as purple velvet. + +Furiously she urged the animal forward into this horrible unknown +which had the look of the wrath of God come upon her for her doubting, +pressed on by an innate feeling of affection for those two who had +befriended her, hurrying to their aid, spurred by an instinctive +foreboding of impending evil in this awful roaring, whirling, +murderous sound of the wild winds gone suddenly stark mad. + +As she sped on, something swept past her with a great hoarse roar, +distinguishable above the deafening roar of the wind. + +It was Seth's herd, stampeding, running with the wind and bellowing +with fear. + +She winged her way into the terror of the darkness. + +Ready an hour before for death in any form, she now all at once found +herself panting with fear of it, gasping with a deadly fear of a +ghastly fate, of being crushed and mangled, of dying by inches beneath +some horrible weight, but this did not deter her. + +Afraid to breathe a prayer to the God whom she had dared to question, +she winged her way breathlessly on and on. + +Then sheets of water, as if the skies had opened and emptied +themselves,--and a vivid flash of lightning revealing the wind's wet +wings, its wild whirling fingers dripping. + +Cyclona saw it coming in that flash, a fiendish thing apparently +alive, copper-colored, funnel-shaped, ghastly. She threw herself +forward on the neck of her broncho, grasping his mane. Then a blow +from a great unseen hand out of the darkness struck them both, felling +them. + +During the next few minutes of inky blackness, of indescribable +terror, of flying missiles armed with death, Cyclona lay unconscious. +When she opened her eyes a calm light of the evenness of twilight had +spread over the track of the cyclone, and her head lay pillowed on +Hugh Walsingham's shoulder. Close beside her was a ragged bough and +her broncho lay dead near by. The bough was the hand that had struck +them out of the darkness, had thrown her to the sod and killed her +animal. + +"I came very near," she sighed, "to standing before God." + +By and by with Walsingham's help she stood. + +"Where is the house?" she asked, bewildered by the barrenness of the +spot on which the topsy turvy house had stood for so many years. + +"It is gone," said he. + +Cyclona pressed both hands to her face and rocked back and forth, +sobbing. + +God had spared her, true, but He had offered her this delicate irony +of leaving her homeless. + +Hugh looked moodily out over the place of the topsy turvy house, his +own mind awhirl with the maddening force of the furious winds through +which he had passed. + +"In Kansas," said he, grimly, "it is the wind that giveth and the wind +that taketh away." + +Then, looking tenderly at the girl in his arms, he added softly: +"Blessed be the name of the wind!" + + + + +CHAPTER XXI. + +[Illustration] + + +Thereafter at station after station, a tall, gaunt man may have been +seen handling baggage, running errands, caring for the cattle, doing +any sort of work, no matter how humble, that lay to his hand, making +his way slowly, wearily but steadily on toward the South. + +Seth, working his way home to Celia. + +He slept in baggage cars, on cattle trains. He swung to steps of +trains moved off and clung there between brief stations. He stopped +over at small towns and earned his bread at odd jobs, bread and +sufficient money sometimes to move on steadily for a day or two. + +Strange weathers burned and bit him. He walked heavily in the path of +the wind overhung by pale clouds. He slept under the stars out in the +open. + +It was days before he passed the plains, the place of the sleepless +winds where wan white skies bent above the grass of the hot dry +pulse, the lifeless grass that wailed into the ceaseless wind its +dirge of death and decay. + +It was weeks before he reached Kansas City, the city of hills, with +lights hung high and lights hung low. Here he found a place as +brakeman and worked his way into Missouri. + +Here it was as if an ocean steamer had suddenly stopped the whir of +its wheels at the approach of the pilot come out from shore to tug it +in. + +The wind had stopped blowing. + +The position was only temporary. Another brakeman taking his place, +Seth walked. + +He was not sorry to walk in this quiet land. How tenderly green the +shrubbery was, how beautiful! Mingled with the darker green of the +cedar and pine, the brown green of the cone. + +How sweet the slow green trees! Not windswept! Not torn by the wild, +wet fingers of the wind, not lashed with hot and scathing fingers gone +dry with drought, but still and peaceful. + +A sleepy world of streams it was, a sleepy world of streams and sweet +green trees among whose leaflets gentle zephyrs breathed scarcely +perceptible sighs of pure contentment. + +Patiently, contentedly, he walked mile after mile through this +beautiful Missouri which was so like home, among these tall, sighing +trees, under the protection of their great still umbrella-like heads, +thinking of his dream Celia, whom he was so soon to see. + +The absence of the wind had left his brain clear. Since it was so +short a time until his dream was to become a reality, no longing or +heartache served to set his brain afire with the agony of despair. +Calmly he walked in the white straight rain among the tender trees, +his tired brain clear, thinking of her. + +How would she receive him? + +Surely, in spite of his empty-handedness, she would greet him lovingly +because of their long separation and the death of the child. Surely +she would receive him lovingly because of the endless days that had +divided them. Those days! Those days! But he refused to let his mind +dwell on the deadly length of them. It might sadden again. + +In the world, he reasoned, there were those two only, Celia and +himself. Should they not cling together? + +True, he would arrive empty-handed, but he could make a living for her +and himself in the old town. He was not without friends there. There +were those who had loved him in the olden time. They would give him +work. They would help him build up his lost fortunes. He would spend +his life in retrieving, in compensating to Celia for the foolish years +that he had spent dreaming dreams. + +In St. Louis he remained for weeks, working about the station in the +effort to earn enough for his ride to Cincinnati. At length he +succeeded, but on an emigrant train. + +He rode for a day, looking out the window at the landscape swimming by +rather than at his wild-eyed companions, crowded together like sheep. +At the end of the day he arrived at Cincinnati. + +And then Seth came into--into God's country. + + + + +CHAPTER XXII. + +[Illustration] + + +For some months after Celia's return to her native town, her friends +gathered gladly about her. A little visit! That was natural enough. +They welcomed her with open arms. + +As the visit lengthened, questions ensued. + +The child. What of him. Was he not very young to leave for such a +length of time? Was not that a strange mother who could thus separate +herself from a babe in arms; who could deprive him of the warmth and +comfort of her embrace? + +And Seth? What of him? For Seth had many friends among them who knew +his great heart and his worth. + +How was it possible for her to remain apart from her husband and child +so long? + +Contented in the soft and balmy clime, in the land of her birth, she +told them of the terror of the winds, of the sunbaked prairie, of the +plague of the grasshoppers, of the hot winds that blistered, of the +scorch of the simoons, of the withering blasts of summer and the +freezing storms of winter, and thought that sufficient explanation +until she beheld herself reflected in the coldness of their glances as +in a mirror, set aloof outside their lives as a thing abnormal, as a +worthless instrument whose leading string is somehow out of tune, +which has snapped with a discordant twang. + +However, this did not greatly distress her. She turned to her mother +for companionship. The mother filled what small need she had of love +until she died. She was soon followed, this mother of hers, into the +land of shadows by the loving shadow of herself, Celia's black Mammy. +Then Celia was left alone in the old house, which, for lack of funds, +was fast falling into ruin, the wrinkled shingles of the roof letting +in the rain in dismal drops to flood the cellar and the kitchen, the +grass growing desolately up between the bricks of the pavement that +led from door to gate for lack of the tread of neighborly feet. + +Life, which is never the same, which is ever changing, changes by +degrees. Not all at once did Celia's soul shrivel but gradually. Now +and again in the early days following upon her return to her home, at +the cry of a child in the street, she would start to her feet, then +remember and shrug her shoulders and forget. And there were some +nights that were filled for her with the remembered moan of the +prairie winds. She heard them shriek and howl and whistle with all +their old time force and terror. She sprang wildly out of bed and ran +to the window to look out on the slumbrous quiet of the Southern +night, to clasp her hand and thank her good fortune that she looked +not out on the wide weird waste of the trackless prairie. + +Gradually, too, she descended to poverty and that without complaint. + +To poverty dire as that from which she had fled, except that it was +unaccompanied by the horror of simoon and blizzard, of hot winds and +cold. + +For her this sufficed. + +Too proud to ask for help of those who passed her by in coldness as a +soulless creature of a nature impossible to understand and therefore +to be shunned, she toiled and delved alone, a recluse and outcast in +the home of her birth. She delved in the patch of a garden for the +wherewithal to keep the poor roof over her head. She hoed and dug and +drove hard bargains with the grocers to whom she sold her meagre +products. She washed and ironed and mended and darned and cooked, +coming at length perforce to the drudgery which throughout her brief +life in the hole in the ground she had scornfully disdained. + +Not once did the thought of asking help of Seth or of returning to him +present itself. + +And yet there were tardy times when the memory of the winds remained +with her day in and day out, when at twilight she sat on the steps of +her vine-covered, crumbling portico and communed with herself. + +When, placing herself apart, she reviewed her life and observed +herself with the critical eye of an uninterested outsider. + +Invariably then she would say to herself, remembering the wail and +shriek and moan of the hideous winds: + +"I would leave them again, the winds and the child and him. If it +happened a second time, and I again had the choice, I would leave +them exactly the same." + +Then aloud, in apology for what had the look to her own biased eyes of +utter heartlessness: + +"It was the fault of the winds," she would mutter, "it was the fault +of the winds!" + + + + +CHAPTER XXIII. + +[Illustration] + + +Kentucky! God's country! + +It was as if Seth had dropped out of a wind-blown cloud into a quiet +garden, sweetly fenced about and away from the jar and fret of the +world. + +Placid, content, tranquil, standing stock-still in the delicacy of its +old-fashioned beauty, as if the world outside and beyond had never +progressed. + +He wandered by old and rich plantations, carved by necessity into +smaller farms, past big white stone gates opening to wide avenues +which led up to them, looking wistfully in, still content to wander a +space before he should experience the rapture of seeing Celia's face, +loitering, the white happiness of that within his reach, half fearing +to hold out his hand for it, fearing it might vanish, escape +phantasmagorically, turn out to be a will-o'-the-wisp. + +Whip-poor-wills accompanied him in his wanderings, Bob Whites, +Nightingales; and lazy ebon negroes, musical as birds, sang lilting +Southern songs on the way to the tinkle of banjo and guitar. + +The negroes were not so kind as the birds. From them he suffered +humiliation. + +More than once he was dubbed "Po' white!" by some haughty ebon +creature from whose mouth he was supposedly taking the bread. + +But here, as in Missouri, he looked for consolation to the wet woods, +to the still, soft, straight rain, to the sighing trees that softly +soughed him welcome. + +After weary days and nights, working by day on rock-pile or in field, +sleeping by night in the corner of a friendly fence of worm-eaten +rails, fanned by the delicate hair of the pale blue grasses, he came +to Burgin. + +The driver of the bus that conveyed passengers to Harrodsburg looked +down upon him from the height of his perch. He was strange to Seth, +but he recognized a something of the kinship of country in his face +and manner. + +"Have a lif'?" he asked. + +Seth refused. It was bright daylight. He wished to steal into his old +home under the covering of the twilight, he was so footsore and +bedraggled. + +"I'll walk," he smiled, "but thank you just the same." + +Four miles, then, over hill, down dale, past dusty undergrowth, the +brilliant blue of the skies above him, passing negroes who looked +strangely at him out of rolling eyes, who jerked black thumbs in his +direction over shoulders, saying: + +"See de po' white trash man, walkin' home!" + +But there were some Bob Whites singing in the bushes over the rail +fences, singing, singing! + +A bird at the side of the road rested momentarily on a long, keen +switch of a blackberry bush, the switch bent earthward, the bird flew +off and the twig bent back again. + +At sight of him ground squirrels sped into the underbrush. + +Somewhere on the other side of the rail fences little negroes sang. +They were too young yet to jerk their thumbs at him and say: + +"Po' white!" + +Now that he was so near to Celia his heart misgave him. How would she +receive him, coming home to her a tramp, a dusty, tired, footsore +tramp, wet, chilled to the bone, footsore and tired! So tired! + +He forged ahead, trying hard to throw off these thoughts. It was the +scornful negroes who had engendered them. + +A mile from Harrodsburg he came to the toll gate. A woman whose yellow +hair showed streaks of gray, raised the pole for him, smiling at him. + +"That man had eyes like Seth Lawsons," she said to her husband, who +smoked his pipe on the porch while she raised and lowered the poles +and so supported the family. + +She was the girl who had called good-by after Celia years before, when +she left for her journey to the West and the Magic City. + + * * * * * + +It was twilight when Seth came to Celia's gate. + +A woman sat alone on the step of the portico, looking out down the +pike. + +Seth paused, his hand on the latch, seeing which the woman shook her +head negatively. + +Seth raised the latch, whereupon she suddenly stood, frowning. + +"I have nothing for you," she called out raspingly. "There is not a +thing in the house to eat. Go away! Go away!" + +"Celia!" Seth cried out, stabbed to the heart. "I am not a beggar for +bread, but give me a crust of kindness for the love of God! I am +Seth." + + + + +CHAPTER XXIV. + +[Illustration] + + +Seen from afar off by the loving eyes of memory, the cows' horns are +longer than they are close by. + +The kitchen was old and smoky. Once on a time it had been regularly +calcimined, twice a year, or three times, but it had been many years +now since it had undergone this cleanly process. + +Celia's welcome of Seth had been according to her nature, all the more +hardened now by seclusion and poverty. She heard without emotion of +the death of the child. It mattered little to her. She had never known +him. Seth, come back to her a failure, a tramp, was deserving of scant +courtesy. She meted it out to him as it seemed to her he deserved. + +The miles he had travelled counted little. Since he had proven himself +too great a failure to travel as men do, it was only just that he +should work his way, sleep in fence corners, live on crusts and walk. + +It was one of her theories that, given sufficient time, all men and +animals sink to their level. + +Who was Seth that he should be exempt from this law? + +The thought occurred to her that he had come to her as a last +recourse. That, unable to make his own living, he had come to share +hers. + +That thought scarcely served to add warmth to her welcome. + +Seth sat on a chair against the blackened wall in the position of the +tramp who has covered weary distances, whose every bone aches with the +extreme intensity of fatigue. + +He was like a rag that had been thrown there. + +As Celia had watched him get their first supper in the dugout, so he +now watched her. As she had sat bitterly disillusioned in the darkness +of the hole in the ground, so he sat within the four close walls of +the smoke-begrimed kitchen of her old Kentucky home, disillusioned +beyond compare. + +In the once sunny hair there were streaks of gray, but it was not +that. There were wrinkles beneath the blue eyes that had not lost +their sternness, the cold blue of their intensity, the chill and +penetrating frost of their gaze. Somehow, too, those large and +beautiful eyes had appeared to grow smaller with the passing of the +years, not with tears, for there are tears that wash out all else but +beauty in some women's eyes, but with the barren drought of feeling +which goes to sap the very fount of loveliness. + +And it was this barren drought of feeling which at last served to +disillusion him, whose existence he at last realized in this creature +who had been his cherished idol. He realized it in her apathy upon +hearing of the death of the child. He realized it in the look she +turned upon him in which he saw her stern suspicion that he had come +homeless to her in the hope of a home. + +Formerly, in the days of her mother and her old black Mammy, they had +taken tea in the dining-room, which had looked out on a green sward +brightened by flowers. + +Gay and cheerful teas these were, enlivened by guests. + +In the absence of guests, Celia had fallen into the slack habit of +eating in the kitchen of the smoke-begrimed ceiling and the dark bare +walls. There was a small deal table against the window. It was covered +with an abbreviated cloth. + +Celia walked about setting this table for Seth and herself, laying +with palpable reluctance the extra plate, cup, saucer, knife and fork. +Her movements were no longer girlish. They were heavy and slow. + +When tea was ready she bade Seth draw up his chair. They then ate +their supper, Seth too tired to talk and Celia busy with the problem +of this added mouth destined to consume the contents of her scant +larder. + +When supper was over Seth left her to clear the table, went out in the +dark on the front porch away from the cold steel blue of her eye and +sat down on the step. + +Men seldom shed tears, or he would have found it in his heart to +weep. + + + + +CHAPTER XXV. + +[Illustration] + + +Not many moons after the wreck wrought by the withering winds, which, +while they had not touched the place of the forks of the two rivers, +lacked little of it, the Wise Men came out of the East and found +Cyclona alone in the Kansas dugout there by the Big Arkansas and the +Little Arkansas. + +"Is this the place where the Indians pitched their tents?" they asked, +"because no cyclones come here?" + +"Yes," she answered. + +"Then this," said they, "is where we will build our city." + +"The Magic City," repeated Cyclona, without surprise. + +"When we have finished it," they smiled, "it will be a Magic City." + +Cyclona looked wistfully out along the weary track of the wind. + +"But Seth," said she, "will never see it maybe. He has given up and +gone back home." + + + + +CHAPTER XXVI. + +[Illustration] + + +Few there are who have not heard of the Magic City, the Windy Wonder +of the West, the Peerless Princess of the Plains, and how it sprung up +mushroom-like in a night there at the forks of the Big Arkansas and +the Little Arkansas, where the Indians had pitched their tents and +Seth had lived and hoped and despaired, and how men went wild erecting +Colleges and Palaces and Temples and Watch Factories and buying up +town lots so far from the town that if the city had been built on all +of them it would have surpassed the marvellous tales of it written in +the newspapers, reached half way to Denver and become, instead of the +Magic City of the West, the Magic City of the World. + +Seth had been a dreamer of dreams, but his vision of the Magic City +was not half so marvellous as the city itself. + +Fortunes were made in a day and lost before midnight. + +Men came from far and near, many from the other side of the water, and +bought town lots and sold them, bought still others and built tall +houses and planted great avenues of trees, cottonwood trees, the trees +of Seth's imaginings, trees that seemed also to spring up in a night, +they grew so magically, thrusting deep roots into the moist black soil +and greedily sucking up its moisture in a very madness of growing, and +laid off parks and sent flashing electric cars out into the large +farms and dangled big soft balls of electricity in the middle of the +streets that twinkled at eventide like big pale blinking fireflies. + +Those who had formerly eked out a precarious enough existence in +dugouts, now lived in palaces, had their raiment fashioned by hands +Parisian, and gave receptions on a scale of such grandeur that the +flowers offered as souvenirs thereat would have kept many a wolf from +a dugout door for years, and a few Wise Men it was said lost their +heads in the mad whirl of speculation, but as that often happens in +the building up of any great city, not necessarily in the West, it +was not so surprising as it might have been. + +Indeed, the World stood still a moment, agape at the wonder of the +Magic City, and there were those who, now that Seth had passed out of +the way of the wind into a country strange to them, spoke of him +reverently as Prophet and Seer, going so far as to express regret that +while within the sound of their voices they had carelessly dubbed him +a foolish dreamer of mad, fantastic and impossible dreams, yet +comforting themselves withal with the thought that they were not alone +in denying a Prophet honor in his own country, since so wagged the +world. + + + + +CHAPTER XXVII. + +[Illustration] + + +The Magic City, stretching itself far and near, had not failed to +include the little station. + +Common walls of plank no longer enshrined the person of the Post +Mistress. She no longer looked out from the limited space of a narrow +window onto ragged flower beds in whose soft, loose earth floundered +wind-blown chickens. + +She dwelt in the wide, white marble halls of a lofty new Post Office. +Bell boys, porters and stenographers surrounded her. + +It was five o'clock. The Professor stood near while she sorted out +some letters and placed them in pigeon-holes. He was clad in the +latest fashion as laid down by the London Tailors who, at the first +sound of the Boom, had hastened on the wings of the wind to the Magic +City. His frock coat radiated newness, his patent leathers shone, and +a portion of the brim of a tall silk hat rested daintily between +thumb and fingers of a well-gloved hand. + +As a matter of fact, since he had proved himself her friend through +thick and thin, through storms and adversity, through high winds and +blizzards, the Post Mistress had at last, after much persuasion, +awarded him the privilege of standing by her throughout the rest of +her natural existence. + +A dapper youth in livery approached the window, asked for letters and +withdrew. + +There was about him a certain air of elegance which yet had somehow +the subtle effect of having been reflected. + +"Will Low's valet," explained the Post Mistress. "Sometimes it seems +to be a dream, all this. These men who sat around my big blazing stove +spinning cyclone yarns while they waited for the brakeman to fling in +the mailbag, sending their valets for their mail! It seems like magic, +doesn't it?" + +"It does," assented the Professor. + +"There's Zed Jones," continued the Post Mistress, "with his new drag, +his Queen Anne cottage built of gray stone, his Irish setters. And +Mrs. Zed sending to Paris for all her clothes, and the little Zeds +fine as fiddles with their ponies and their pony carts." + +"And Hezekiah Smith," reminded the Professor. + +"Who used to sleep on a pile of newspapers in his old newsstand on the +corner, driving his tandem now. And Howard Evans and Roger Cranes and +a dozen others, all poor as church mice then, and rich as cream now. +It is like fairy land. You, too," with an admiring glance at the frock +coat, "worth fifty thousand. And my bit of land bringing me a small +fortune. I think after," with another smile in his direction, "we'll +let some other lone single woman have this job who needs the money. We +won't keep the Post Office any longer." + +The Professor smiled a silent assent. + +"But the most wonderful thing of all," went on the Post Mistress, "is +that girl Cyclona. All of twenty-seven or eight, but she looks like a +girl. It was pretty cute of her, wasn't it, to jump Seth's claim?" + +"She didn't exactly jump it," said the Professor. "She was taking care +of it after Seth went away, when her own topsy turvy house blew off +somewhere. She had no other home. I wouldn't exactly call it jumping +Seth's claim." + +"Call it what you please," said the Post Mistress, "but it amounts to +the same thing. She got all the money the Wise Men paid for the claim, +and it went into the millions. Why, Seth's claim takes up the very +heart of the city. That girl's worth her weight in gold, that Cyclona, +and she deserves it, taking care of the baby first, then watching +after Seth. I believe she's in love with Seth. I believe she lives in +hopes that he'll come back again. I know. She is seen everywhere with +Hugh Walsingham, drivin' with him in her stylish little trap, a good +driver she is, too, after ridin' fiery bronchos, herdin' Seth's cattle +and livin' wild-like on the prairies. She's a splendid whip, afraid of +nothin'." + +"But you can see in her big, stretchy faraway eyes that she ain't +thinkin' about Hugh Walsingham, that she's always thinkin' about Seth +and wishin' it was him a drivin' with her in that stylish little trap +of hers." + +She stopped to read a postal card. + +"Cyclona's a fine young woman," she resumed, "and a beautiful young +woman, if she is brown as a gypsy, but the wind has left a wheel in +her head. She has never been right since that storm that blew away the +topsy turvy house. Another shock and her mind will go entirely. I've +heard a doctor say so, a man who knows. She deserves all she's got and +a happy life with that handsome Englishman, but here she is with some +fool idea that the money, all these riches she's fallen heiress to, +that make her the belle of the Magic City, ain't hers. That they are +held in trust for Seth and Celia, that heartless Celia, who deserted +her husband and baby to go back to her home in the South. + +"What right has that Celia got to any money that comes out of the West +she hated so, out of this wind-blown place she wouldn't live in? None +at all. No more right than I have. Leaving Seth out here on the plains +all by himself, grievin' for her, breakin' his heart for her, nearly +losin' his mind with grief about her. + +"The money's Cyclona's. She worked for it, never thinkin' of the +reward. She took care of the child and looked after Seth. She deserves +all the good that can come to her, that girl does." + +"She does," assented the Professor. + +"Hugh Walsingham's in a good fix, too," continued the Post Mistress, +"sold his claim for a whole lot of money. Able now, he is, to help his +poor relations back there in England, who sent him to the plains to +get rid of him. Funny how things turn out sometimes." + +"Cyclona coming out of Nowhere, and he packed off out of England, both +outcasts, both rich now and ready to live happy ever after, if Cyclona +would only get rid of this fool notion of hers that she's only holdin' +the riches in trust for Celia and Seth. + +"Have you heard the news? It's this: You know Nancy Lewis, the +dish-washer in the restaurant before the Boom, the girl who happened +to save her earnings and buy a bit of land that turned into a gold +nugget? Well, a millionaire who made his money here, fell in love with +her. She accepted him, but he made a slight mistake. He failed to keep +an engagement with her one night and sent a waiter with a note. She +got huffy and went off and married the waiter. + +"We can't rise all at once from our station in life, can we? Like as +not, when we get into our new house and put on style ourselves with +our drags and our dogs, I'll be sortin' out letters in my dreams and +handin' them through a dream window to the people. This girl is a born +dish-washer. She clung to her station. Her children may rise from the +position of dish-washers, if they have enough money and education, but +not she." + +"Wait a minute. Here's a postcard I haven't read yet. It looks like +it's been through a cyclone. Land sakes alive! Guess who it's from!" + +"Can't," said the Professor, beginning to be hungry. + +The Post Mistress turned the card over and over. + +"It's from Jonathan, Cyclona's father," she chuckled. "Of all the +people in the world! It is post-marked Texas." + +"So that's where they blew to! It's to Cyclona, but everybody will be +dying to know what it says. Listen: + + "'Dear Cyclona:-- + + "'I think you will be glad to hear that this cyclone was good + to us, blowin' us 'way down here in Texas, where the weather + is so fine. It saved me the trouble, too, of bothering with + the roof. It blew it right side up and the clothes are all + down in the room now.'" + + "'Your affectionate father,'" + "'Jonathan.'" + + "'P.S.--I like this part of the country better than I did + Kansas. I think we will stay here, Cyclona.'" + +"Until another cyclone comes along," the Professor commented, "and +blows him into the Gulf." + +"I wonder," mused the Post Mistress, "if the cyclone put the clothes +away in the presses when it took them down from the walls." + + + + +CHAPTER XXVIII. + +[Illustration] + + +It was as the Post Mistress had said. Cyclona was the heiress of the +Magic City. As Seth had predicted, she sold his land in its heart for +more money than she knew what to do with. Cyclona was not only the +most beautiful young woman in the Magic City, but she was the most +beautifully gowned and exquisite, what with her well-filled purse with +its attendant luxuries of maids, mantua-makers and milliners. She was +new to look at, but old thoughts clung to her, old dreams, old +fancies. + +Cyclona dreamed a dream one night. She thought that she was in the old +dugout at the little deal table before the dim half-window, outside +which the wind sang fitfully, blowing the tumbleweeds hither and +thither, near and far, with moans and sighs, and Seth sat by her side. +And as of old he talked to her of the beautiful house. + +"All these were of costly stones, according to the measures of hewed +stones," she heard him say in the dream, "sawed with saws within and +without. Even from the foundation unto the coping, and so on the +outside toward the great court." + +Cyclona sat up in her bed with a start and slept no more. + +So it was the beautiful house that she was to build, of course. +Wondering how it was she had not thought before of carrying out Seth's +dearest wish without waiting to be reminded of it in a dream, +reproaching herself, condemning her selfishness, marvelling how she +could for a moment have considered this money her own which she simply +held in trust for Celia and Seth. + +Thereafter, Hugh, in spite of his deep affection for her, became +occasionally somewhat exasperated with Cyclona, who all at once +developed such peculiar ideas in regard to the building of the house, +ideas gathered from an old and yellow plan resurrected from the leaves +of a well-thumbed Bible brought from the dugout. + +"Cedar!" he cried, "Must we bring cedar all the way from the South? +It will cost a fortune. Why not use some other wood? There are others +as beautiful." + +"We will use cedar," determined Cyclona without further explanation, +and cedar they used, carved curiously in pomegranate and lily work, +very beautiful, Hugh had to acknowledge, though the expense was more +than it should have been, no matter how much money a young woman had +to throw to the birds. + +"Shall we have so many windows?" he asked as Cyclona ordered window +after window, according to the old yellow plan. + +"There must be no dark spot in all this house," decided Cyclona, and +when it was finished there was not. Built of stone brought from great +distances, stone of delicate pink from Tennessee, carved, wide of +door, alight with windows, it was a marvel to those who came and stood +by, watching the building of it. + +"A beautiful house," they called it. "A beautiful house!" + +There was no word of Seth in regard to the beautiful house that +Cyclona failed to remember. + +"This is the stairway," she heard him say, "up which Celia shall trail +in her silks and her velvets. This is the threshold her little feet +shall press, and here is the low divan before a wide and sunny window +where she shall sit and thrum on her guitar." + +Cyclona fashioned the threshold of marble, she built the stairway +spacious, she had the low divan carved in cedar and placed it before a +wide and sunny window in the music room. She placed there mandolins +and guitars. She ordered a piano made of cedar for the music room. She +had antique and gorgeous pillows embroidered by deft fingers for the +low divan, then went on to the bed-room of white and gold, of which +Seth had delighted to dream. She ordered pier-glasses, so many that +Hugh began to fear indeed for her sanity. She bought spindle-legged +furniture of gold and scattered it about. She covered the gold +bedstead with lace of the rarest. She hung curtains at the sunny +window, but curtains of so lacey a web that no possible ray of light +could they exclude. + +"Exquisite!" exclaimed Hugh, "but must you have gold door knobs?" + +"We must," answered Cyclona; and people came in wonder to look at the +beautiful house whose gold door knobs passed into one of the many +traditions of the excess of insanity displayed by the very rich of +that marvellous boom in their expenditure of money. + +Cyclona caused the cellar to be lighted, according to Seth's +directions, until there was no dark spot in it. Light gleamed +throughout, if not the light of day, the light of electrics. + +"I never in my life," declared Hugh, "saw so light a cellar. It is +like a conservatory." + +By the time the house was finished, it was the wonder of the Magic +City, which itself was the wonder of the West for its beautiful +houses. + +Then, when carpenter, painter, wood-carver and decorator had departed, +and the house stood in the sunshine, a gem of a house, surpassing, if +possible, in beauty, the house of Seth's imaginings, he came to +Cyclona for the last time in a dream. He stood in the dimness of a +low-roofed room, looking out of a window. His face was inexpressibly +sad. He stood there stilly for a long time, looking out of the window. + +Then there rushed through Cyclona's dream the heavy whirring roar of +the wind, the moan of the wind, the wail of the wind. + +Cyclona started out of the dream with a cry. + +What had happened? What was it? What was it? + +It was as if her life had gone out all at once like the flame of a +candle. It was as if her heart-strings had snapped asunder. + +What was it? What was it? + +She lay back among her pillows, trembling in the dark, afraid of she +knew not what, her wide eyes agaze at the ceiling's shadows. + +And then after a long while she fell asleep again and once more +dreamed. + +The wind soughed through her dream again, pitifully, wailingly, as it +had often soughed outside the dugout. Presently it dropped to a +whisper and the passing gleam of clouds let in a slab of sunlight +through the window. + +Was Seth in the dugout then, or in that other room? + +Whichever it was, the sunlight rested goldenly on the calmness of his +face. It glorified it. + +In her dream, Cyclona looked long and lovingly at the strong, fine +lines of it brought out by this unexpected high light of the skies, +accentuated Rembrandt-like against the darkness of the hole in the +ground. + +Yes. It was in the hole in the ground and not that other room of the +Beautiful House. + +As she looked the calm dream face of Seth turned to her with a smile +of ineffable content. + +On the following day Hugh said to her: + +"Now that the beautiful house is finished, be mine. Be mine!" + +She shook her head and looked at him with eyes that turned the heart +of him cold. The pupils that had once been large and full and black +had shrunk to the size of pin heads. + +"No," she said. "I will wait and keep the house beautiful for Seth. +Last night I saw him in a dream. He'll be coming home soon now to the +beautiful house." + +She walked to the window and looked out. She sank into a chair there, +folded her hands and smiled contentedly, looking out through the +leaves of the trees down the sunlit road. + +"I will wait here for Seth," she repeated. "He won't be long now. +He'll be coming home soon. I saw his face last night in a dream, and +he smiled at me." + + + + +CHAPTER XXIX. + +[Illustration] + + +The whittlers of the little sticks sitting on dry goods boxes which +surrounded the corner grocery looked up as a wagon came lumberingly +down the Lexington Pike, rounded the corner and made its way up Main +Street to Tom Coleman's livery stable. + +They watched a man get out, lift an enormous trunk and carry it into +the stable on his shoulders. They saw the man bend earthward beneath +the weight of the trunk. + +"Seth Lawson," they explained to some newcomers. "He's got a place at +last. Drivin' the baggage wagon from Burgin to Harrodsburg and back +again." + +Tom Grums, the grocer, puffed a few whiffs of his pipe. + +"That's the man," he explained succinctly, "whut was goin' to conquer +the West. That's the man whut said he was goin' to build the Magic +City at the forks of two rivahs wheah the wind didn't blow." + +By and by, when he had unhitched and fed his horse Seth came down the +street, passed the whittlers of the little sticks and went on up the +Lexington Pike to his home and Celia's. + +He walked laggingly. There was something that he must tell Celia and +he was afraid. It was impossible for him to keep the place. + +He was not young enough. He was not sufficiently nimble. They wanted a +younger man, they told him, to lift the trunks. He had been months +getting the place and now he had lost it. He had lost it within a +week. + +He walked slowly through the hall to the kitchen where Celia stood at +the old stove, cooking their supper. He sat by the window presently, +watching her. + +No. He wouldn't tell her. He could not. He hadn't the courage to face +the scorn of her eye, to face the cold steely blue of it. + +He ate the supper she set silently before him slowly. It had the taste +to sawdust. + +After supper he went out on the porch awhile and sat looking into the +dusk, looking over the fine soft green of the dim grass on the +opposite lawns, his mind going back to the scorched and parched +grasses of the prairie. + +How quiet it was! How windless. There came to him the memory of the +wind as it soothed him that day of Celia's home coming. He had not +hated the wind. He had loved it. There came also the memory of the +wind as it soughed around the dugout on those lonely nights, when he +and Cyclona had planned the beautiful house for Celia. In a flash of +light he seemed to see Cyclona. + +With this rose by his side, he had gone sighing after the roses of +memory. + +He arose and began to walk up and down, up and down to the gate and +back, to the gate and back, thinking of Cyclona and the wind. A +restlessness began to possess him, a longing for the sound of the +wind, for the sound of the voice of Cyclona which had mingled from the +first, from first to last, with the sound of the wind. The windless +stillness oppressed him. He stopped at the gate and looked again +across at the quiet grass of the still, dim lawns, then he walked +back into the house, along the hall and up into the low-roofed garret, +which had been set apart for him by Celia. + +He closed the door of the garret very carefully behind him. He walked +to the window and looked out. The stillness weighed upon him. If only +he could run into the wind! If only he could hear again its wail, its +sob, its grief, its moaning. + +Oh, no. It was impossible to tell Celia that he no longer had work. He +had no courage to face the steel blue of her eye. + +Impossible, too, to face the sarcastic whittlers of the little sticks +who sat around the corner grocery in the morning, he who was to have +conquered the West and build the Magic City. They were total strangers +to him. All his old friends in the town seemed to be dead. + +He took a pistol down from the shelf and looked at it. He turned it +around and around, the dim light coming in at the window playing on +it. Since the first night of his arrival he had had it ready. + +"A man who cannot earn his salt," he said softly, "encumbers the +earth." + +He held the thing, playing with it. He smiled as he played with it. He +went to the window and stood for a long while, looking out, thinking +of Cyclona, thinking very lovingly of Cyclona, that beautiful girl who +had cared for him and the child. He would like to see Cyclona once +more before,--but that was impossible. In the other world, perhaps. + +God was not to blame. How could He look after so many? If he put them +here with all their faculties, was it His fault if they failed? + +He was very tired. His fingers rested lovingly upon the weapon that +was to send him to the other world. He was very tired. He was very +tired. + +By and by he placed the weapon to his temple, taking careful aim. + +In a blinding flash of light he saw Cyclona. + +There was the heavy roar of the wind, the wild and woeful wind of the +prairies,--and stillness. + + + + +CHAPTER XXX. + +[Illustration] + + +Some visitors from the East to the Magic City, whose fame was now +widespread, were driving gaily by the beautiful house, which was one +of the choice show places of the town. + +Cyclona, sitting by the window, turned her wide, soft eyes their way. + +"How beautiful she is," sighed one of the girls, "but how strange her +eyes are! How vacant they are! There is no expression in her eyes," +she said and sighed again. + +"She has built the house," explained the guide, "for someone she says +who ought to own it. She sits there waiting for him, taking care of +the house, keeping it beautiful for him." + +"She is very gentle and mild," he added, as they passed out of sight +of the beautiful house, "and so they let her live there instead of +locking her up in an asylum with all those other pioneer prairie +people whose minds went the way of the wind." + + + + * * * * * + + + + +---------------------------------------------------------+ + | Typographical errors corrected in the text: | + | | + | Page 26: longe replaced with long | + | Page 108: mesauahs replaced with measuahs | + | Page 165: Buth replaced with But | + | Page 186: has replaced with was | + | | + +---------------------------------------------------------+ + + + +***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE WAY OF THE WIND*** + + +******* This file should be named 19071.txt or 19071.zip ******* + + +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: +https://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/1/9/0/7/19071 + + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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