The Way of the Wind

Excerpt

PROLOGUE

And as the sturdy Pilgrim Fathers cut their perilous way through the dense and dangerous depths of the Forest Primeval for the setting up of their hearthstones, so the courageous pioneers 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 wanders 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, chanting, whispering, moaning and sighing from balmy springtime on through the heat of the long summer days, until in 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 Wind

Looking back upon it, the little Kentucky town seemed to blossom for Celia like the rose, one broad expanse of sloping lawns bordered with flower beds and shaded by quiet trees, elms and maples, brightly 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, surrounded 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 West to grow up with the country can go, but the South is plenty good enough fo' me."

"Fo' me, too," sighed Celia, homesickness 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," interrupted 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 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....