The Way of the Wind Part 13

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.

[Ill.u.s.tration]

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 bl.u.s.teringly 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 encompa.s.ses the soul of a boy took possession of him. He was filled with the pa.s.sion of wander-l.u.s.t. 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.

Gra.s.ses 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 quant.i.ty 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 gra.s.ses 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.

[Ill.u.s.tration]

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.