The Way of the Wind | Page 6

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