xt7ns17snk7r https://exploreuk.uky.edu/dips/xt7ns17snk7r/data/mets.xml Norris, Zobe Anderson. 1911  books b92-271-32003857 English The author, : New York : Contact the Special Collections Research Center for information regarding rights and use of this collection. Oberhardt, William. Way of the wind  / by Zoe Anderson Norris ; drawings by Oberhardt. text Way of the wind  / by Zoe Anderson Norris ; drawings by Oberhardt. 1911 2002 true xt7ns17snk7r section xt7ns17snk7r 





























































ZOE ANDERSON NORRIS

 





TH E



THIE



WAY
of

WI N D



BY



ZOE ANDERSON



NORRIS



     DRAWINGS BY
     OBERHARDT









     NEW YORK
PUBLISHED BY THE AUTHOR
       1911



I



I

 




















COPYRIGHT, I9I, BY
ZOE ANDERSON NORRIS

Printed in the
United States of America

Published in October, ig I I.
By Zoe Anderson Norris.
Office of the East Side Magazine,
338 East isSth St., New York

 

PROLOGUE



               And as the sturdy Pu-
               grim Fathers cut their
               perilous way through
   1   t he dense and dangerous
                depths of the Forest
                Primeval for the setting
                up of their hearthstones,
                so the courageous pio-
                neers 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 wan-
ders 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, chant-
ing, whispering, moaning and sighing
from balmy springtime on through the
heat of the long summer days, until in

 

               Prologue

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 Wnd

            CHAPTER I.

               Looking back upon it,
               the little K e n t u c ky
               town seemed to blossom
         Gil for Celia like the rose,
              one broad expanse of
    :-t0:0sloping lawns bordered
              with flower beds and
  50    00  shaded by quiet trees,
              elms and maples, bright-
ly 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, sur-
rounded 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



I

 
The Way of the Wind



West to grow up with the country can
go, but the South is plenty good enough
fo' me."
  "Fo' me, too," sighed Celia, homesick-
ness 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," inter-
rupted 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
                  2

 
The Way of the Wind



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 com-
plained. "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 fash-
ioned 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'."



3

 
The Way of the Wind



  At that Celia's mother, hurrying fear-
fully 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 ten-
derness, "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 passen-
ger thereto, looking stolidly down on the
                   4

 
The Way of the Wind



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 com-
fort her. They thrust upon her gifts of
fruit and flowers and dainties for her
lunch.
  They bore her wraps out to the cum-
bersome 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
                  5

 
The Way of the Wind



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 man-
sions of more grandeur, past smaller
farms, until at length it drew up at the
tollgate.
  Here a girl with hair of sunshine, com-
ing out, untied the pole and raised it
slowly.
  "You goin' away, Miss Celia " she
asked in her soft Southern brogue, tune-
ful as the ripple of water. "I heah sum-
body 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,"
                   6

 
The Way of the Wind



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 dim-
ness 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.



7

 CHAPTER II.



               In all her life Celia had
   F(:-z2/;    not   travelled  further
               from  her native town
               than Lexington, which
               was thirty miles away.
               It was not necessary.
               She lived in the garden
              X 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 Ken-
tucky 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 surround-
ings, she silently accepted the infliction,
                   8  

 

The Way of the Wind



cowering into her seat without attempt-
ing 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 every-
thing, of the staring eyes of the porter,
of the strange faces about her, of the
jet black of the night that gloomed por-
tentously 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
                   9

 
The Way of the Wind



could see it beginning, bending the pliart
prairie grasses to earth, flinging thera
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 coun-
try, 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 flow-
ers, 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
                   I0

 
The Way of the Wind



his arms, and man though he was, shed
tears of pure rapture.
  His joy served to thrill her moment-
arily to the extent of forgetting the
wind, but with his departure for the ve-
hicle 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.



II

 
The Way of the Wind



  Then she sat silently by him through-
out their jolting journey over the prai-
rie country into what seemed to her to
be the Nowhere, listening to the wind
chant, now requiems, now dirges, listen-
ing 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 ca-
pricious woman, all the more sweet be-
cause 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 jeal
                   12

 
The Way of the Wind



ous 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 tumble-
weeds, 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 accom-
                   13

 
The Way of the Wind



plishing its will, which would have been
to snatch her from the cart and toss her
to the horizon in company with the tum-
bleweeds. 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 mel-
low 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.
                  14

 
The Way of the Wind



  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 A. ground!"



Is

 
CHAPTER III.



                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

                  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 pro-
found apology. She was right. It was
only a hole in the ground; but he, accus-
tomed 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 def-



i6

 
The Way of the Wind



erentially 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 ex-
alted, but the fact that he had so de-
scended 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 conscious-
ness.
  Nevertheless, he piled on twig after
twig until the refreshing flames bril-
liantly 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!
                   I7

 
The Way of the Wind



  Better far if, wet and soggy, they had
burned dimly or not at all; for their
blaze only served to exhibit every defi-
ciency 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 car-
pentry, the shapeless door which was like
a slap in the face with its raw and un-
painted color of new wood.
  After the first wild glance about her,
Celia buried her face in her hands, reso-
lutely 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 liv-
ing creature in whose estimation he
wished to stand high, he once more knelt
on the hearth, placed potatoes in the
                   i8

 
The Way of the Wind



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 seem-
ingly 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 pro-
vide 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 ac-
customed, almost every necessity, was
absent from that plain board.
  He had counted on her love to over-
look much.
  It had overlooked nothing.
  When all was in readiness he drew up
a chair and begged her to be seated.
                  '9

 
The Way of the Wind



  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 or-
dinary 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 en-
thusiastically 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 smil-
ing 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,
                  20

 
The Way of the Wind



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 cy-
clone that could snatch up a river and
toss it to the clouds, fight shy of the
forks of two
  Looking fearfully around at the shad-
ows, she interrupted him:
                  21

 
The Way of the Wind



  "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 walk-
ing out under the wind-blown stars he
looked up at them reverently and said
aloud:
  (For in the dreary deserts of loneli-
ness 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!"
                  22

 
CHAPTER IV.



               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 pro-
               cess 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 nerv-
ous laughs with which she greeted them
were a sign of terror rather than am.use-
ment.
  One night, he related, after a day
whose sultriness had been almost unen-
durable, 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.



23

 
The Way of the Wind



  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 ex-
tremely 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
                  24

 
The Way of the Wind



were white as if they had never con-
tained a suspicion of red. They had
turned white, no doubt, through fright.
  Evidently knives had flown promiscu-
ously 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 daz-
zling snowiness.
  The day was set for the wedding. Un-
fortunately-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 tri-
umphantly off.
                  25

 
The Way of the Wind



  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
longe 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 pre-
pared, 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 devn
                   J6

 
The Way of the Wind



ilments, 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 stee-
ples 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 tor-
nadoes."
  And this old man who had once been
a doctor of medicine in an Eastern vil-
lage 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 differ-
ence.
  "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 in-
sane. 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."
                  27

 
The Way of the Wind



  Seth had listened to these stories un-
dismayed; 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
                  28

 
The Way of the Wind



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 dug-
out before he began the work of the
fields, not only bending over the tubs
early in the morning for fear such bend-
ing 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 yel-
low 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



29

 
The Way of the Wind



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 pal-
ace 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 f