The Way of the Wind | Page 7

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