The Way of the Wind | Page 6

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