Classic Audiobook Collection - The Way of the Wind by Zoe Anderson Norris ~ Full Audiobook [drama]

Starting point is 00:00:00 The Way of the Wind by Zoe Anderson Norris Prologue and Chapter 1 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 hearth stones, so the courageous pioneers of the desolate and treeless west were forced to fight the fury of the winds.

Starting point is 00:00:28 The graves of them lie mounds. 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 stock is a plumed standard of pioneer conquest and through its palmy leaves the chastened wind remorsefully sighed requiemes, 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

Starting point is 00:01:23 Chapter 1 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 in the vine-covered veranda of her mother's home, surrounded by friends come to say goodbye. Jane Whitcomb kissed her cheek as she tied the strings of her big poke bonnet under her chin. "'I hope you'll be happy out there, Celia,' she said.

Starting point is 00:02:06 "'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 what wants to go west to grow up with a country can go, but the south is plenty good enough for me.' "'For me, too,' sighed Celia, homesickness full upon her with the parting hour. It's Seth makes me go.

Starting point is 00:02:33 According to him, the West is the future country. He has found a place where they are going to build a magic city, he says. He's going to make a fortune for me out there, he says, in the West. Growing up with the country, interrupted Sarah Simpson, tying a bouquet of flower she had brought for Celia with a narrow ribbon of delicate blue. Yes, admitted Celia. Celia, growing up with the country. Sarah handed her the flowers. It's my opinion, concluded she,

Starting point is 00:03:09 that it's the fools, begging your pardon, what's going out there to grow up with the country, and the wise people what's staying at home and advising of them to go. Celia shuddered. I'm half afraid to go, she said. They say the wind blows all the time out there. They say it never quits blowing.

Starting point is 00:03:32 "'Tain't like as if you's going to be alone out there,' comforted Mansey's Storm, who was busy putting away a little cake she had made with her own hands, for Celia's lunch basket. "'Your husband will be out there?' She closed the lid down and raised her head brightly. "'What difference does it make?' she asked. "'How hard the wind blows if you got your husband?' lucy brown flipped a speck of dust from the hem of celia's traveling dress yes said she and such a husband

Starting point is 00:04:09 celia looked wistfully out over the calm and quiet street basking in the sunlight peacefully minus a ripple of breeze to break the beauty of it her large eyes sad i'm afraid of the wind she complained storms scare me and she reiterated i'm afraid of the wind sarah suddenly ran down the walk on either side of which blossomed old-fashioned flowers marsh marigolds johnny jump-ups and brown-eyed susans she stood at the front gate which swung on its hinges leaning over it looking down the road i thought i heard the stage she called back yes sure enough here it is is coming." At that, Celia's mother, hurrying fearfully out the door, threw her arms around her. Celia fell to sobbing. "'It's so far away,' she stammered brokenly between her sobs. "'I'm afraid to go. It's so far away.' "'There, there,' comforted her mother, lifting up her face and kissing it.

Starting point is 00:05:25 "'It's not so far, but you can come back again.' "'The same road comes that goes, dear one. "'There, there.' "'Miss Celia,' cried a reproachful voice from the door. "'Is you going away, child, without telling you a black mammy good-bye?' Celia unclasped her mother's arms, fell upon the bosom of her black mammy, and wept anew. "'The Lord would be wit you, child,' cooed the voice of the negress, musical with tenderness, and bring you back home safe and sound in his own time.

Starting point is 00:06:03 The stage rolled up with clash and clatter and flap of curtain. It stopped at the gate. There ensued the rush of departure, the driver, after hoisting the baggage of his one passenger thereto, looking stolidly down on the heartbreak from the height of his perch, his long whip poised in mid-air. Celia's friend swarmed about her. They kissed her. They essayed to comfort her. They thrust upon her gifts of fruit and flowers and dainties for her lunch. They bore her wraps out to the cumbersome vehicle, which was to convey her to Lexington, the nearest town which at that time boasted of a railroad.

Starting point is 00:06:45 They placed her comfortably, turning again and again to give her another kiss, and to bid her goodbye and godspeed. It was as if her heartstrings wrenched asunder at the jerk of the wheels that started the huge stage onward. Goodbye, good-bye, she cried out, her pale face at the window. Goodbye, they answered, and Mancy Storm, running alongside, said to her, You give my love to Seth, Celia, don't you forget? Then, breathlessly, as the stage moved fast, faster. "'If ever the good Lord made a man a mighty little lower than the angels,' she added, "'that man, Seth!' The old stage rumbled along the broad white Lexington Pike,

Starting point is 00:07:37 past houses of other friends who stood at gates to wave her farewell. It rumbled past little front yards abloom with flowers, back of which white cottages blinked sleepily. One eye of a shuttered window open, one shut, past big stone gates, which gave upon mansions of more grander, past smaller farms, until at length it drew up at the toll gate. Here a girl with hair of sunshine coming out untied the poles and raised it slowly. "'You going away, Miss Celia?' she asked in her soft southern brogue, tuneful as the ripple of water. I hear somebody say you was going away. Celia smothered a sob.

Starting point is 00:08:27 Yes, she answered. I am going away. It's a long, long way out there to the west, commented the girl wistfully as she counted out the change for the driver. A long, long way. As if the way had not seemed long enough. Celia sobbed outright. right. Yes, she assented. It is a long, long way. I am sorry you're going, Miss Celia, said the girl.

Starting point is 00:09:01 Goodbye, good luck to you. And the stage moved on, Celia staring back at her with wide, sad eyes. The girl leaned forward, let the pole carefully down, and fastened it. As she did so, a ray of sunshine made a hailing. of her hair. Celia flung herself back into the dimness of the corner and wept out her heart. It seemed to her that with the letting down of that pole she had been shut out of heaven. End of Chapter 1. Recording by Roger Maline. Chapter 2 of The Way of the Wind by Zoe Anderson Norris. This Libervox recording is in the public domain. Recording by Roger Malene.

Starting point is 00:09:56 Chapter 2 In all her life, Celia had not traveled further from her native town than Lexington, which was thirty miles away. It was not necessary. She lived in the garden spot of the world, an Eden with all things sufficient for a simple life. As she stood at the station, waiting for her train, an old negro shuffled by. He hummed the refrain of Old Kentucky home, fare you well, my lady. It seemed meant for her. The longing was strong within her to fly back to the

Starting point is 00:10:34 old town she loved so well, but the train, roaring in just then, intimidated her by its unaccustomed turmoil, and she allowed herself to be hauled on board by the brakeman and placed in the car. Passing into the open country, the speed of the train increased. The smoke and cinders poured into the window. Timid because of her strange surroundings, she silently accepted the infliction, cowering into her seat without attempting to put the window down. When a man in the opposite seat leaned forward and pulled it down for her, she was too abashed to thank him, but retained her crouching position and began silently to weep. A terrible night of travel began. It was a day car.

Starting point is 00:11:23 Celia crouched into her seat, trying to sleep, afraid of everything, of the staring eyes of the porter, of the strange faces about her, of the jet black of the night that gloomed portentously through the window. Then came the dawn, and with it the long gray bridge spanning the drab in sullen Mississippi, then St. Louis, with its bustle and rush and more and more strange faces, a sea of strange faces, through which she must pass. After another weary day of travel through which she dozed, too tired to think,

Starting point is 00:12:01 too tired to move, at twilight she reached Kansas City, a little town on the edge of the desert. Here, worn out mentally and physically, she was forced to stop and rest a night and sleep in a bed. And the next day, the wind. A little way out from the town

Starting point is 00:12:21 she could see it beginning, bending the pliant prairie grasses to earth, flinging them fiercely upward, crushing them flat again and pressing them there, whistling, whistling, whistling. The car moved fairly fast for a car of that day, but the wind moved faster. It shook the windows with terrific force. It blew small grains of sand under the sill to sting, Celia, moaning, moaning, moaning in its mad and unimpeded march across the country straight to the skies. She looked out in dismay. Back of her, on either side of her and beyond, stretched this vast prairie country,

Starting point is 00:13:06 desolate of shrub, undergrowth, or tree, a barren waste. Different from the beautiful, still-green garden spot that she called home, a spot redolent of flowers, sweet with the order of new-mone grass, and pungent with whiff of pine and cedar, different as night is from day. Her heart sank within her as she looked. It was late in the afternoon when she came to her station, a collection of frame shanties dignified by that name, and Seth, tall, tanned and radiant, clasped her in his arms, and man though he was, shed tears of pure rapture. his joy served to thrill her momentarily to the extent of forgetting the wind but with his departure for the vehicle which was to convey her to their home the discomfort of it returned to her

Starting point is 00:14:01 the madness of it the fury of it its fiendish joy it tore at her skirts it wrapped them about her it snatched them away again flapping them flag-like it was with difficulty that she kept her hat on her head she held it with both hands the wind seemed to make sport of her to laugh at her it treated her as it would a tenderfoot it tried to frighten her it blew the shutters of the shanties open and slammed them too with a noise-like guns it shrieked maniacally as if rejoicing in her discomfort at times it seemed to hoot at her added to this when seth returned for her with the vehicle it proved to be a common two-wheeled cart drawn by a mule a tall ungainly cart of dull and faded blue she kept back the tears as seth helped her in then she sat silently by him throughout their jolting journey over the prairie country into what seemed to her to be the nowhere listening to the wind chant now requiems now dirges listening to it shriek and whistle listening to it cry aloud and moan die down to a whisper then rise once more and wail like a living thing in unendurable pain Seth, too, by and by fell into silence, but from a different cause. The wind failed to distress him.

Starting point is 00:15:40 He had become accustomed to it in the month spent in preparing her home. It was like an old friend that sometimes whispered in his tired ears, words of infinite sweetness. He forgave the wanton shrieks of it because of this sweetness, the sweetness of a capricious woman. all the more sweet because of her capriciousness. He was silent from pure happiness at having Celia there beside him, going over the same road with him in the old blue cart. From time to time he glanced at her timidly,

Starting point is 00:16:16 as if half afraid if he looked too hard, the wind might blow her away. And, indeed, there did appear to be some danger, for the wind that had loved Seth from the first was apparently jealous of Celia. It tore at her as though to toss her to unreachable distances in the way it ripped the tumbleweeds from their small brittle stems and tossed them away.

Starting point is 00:16:42 Seth looked at her profile, white from the fatigue of the journey, but beautiful as alabaster, at the blue of her eyes, at the delicate taper of her small white hands, that from her birth had done only the daintiest of service, at the small feet that had never once walked the rough and sordid pathway of toil. Beautiful, beautiful! His eyes caressed her.

Starting point is 00:17:10 Except that he must hold the reins, both arms would have encircled her. As it was, she rested in the strong and tender half-circle of one. All at once, the wind became frantic. It blew and blue! finding it impossible to tear celia from the tender circling of that arm it wreaked its vengeance upon the tumbleweeds broke them fiercely from their stems and sent them pell-mell over the prairie before the tall blue cart about it at the sides of it a fantastic cortege airily tumbling tumbling tumbling tumbling yes the wind was jealous of celia strong as it was it failed of accomplishing its will which would have been to snatch her from the cart and toss her to the horizon, in company with the tumbleweeds.

Starting point is 00:18:05 It shrieked its despair, the despair of a jealous woman balked of her vengeance, tumultuously wild. At last, at about twilight, at the time of day when the prairie skies are mellow with tints fit for a turner, and the prairie winds sow with the tenderness of lullabies, resting for a period, in order to prepare for the fury of the night, they came upon the forks of two rivers, sparsely sheltered by a few straggling and wind-blown trees. Seth reigned in the animal, sprang down over the high wheel of the cart, and helped Celia out.

Starting point is 00:18:45 "'Darling!' he said. "'Let me welcome you home!' "'Home,' she repeated. "'Where is it?' for she saw before her only a slight elevation in the earth's surface a mound enlarged going down a few steps seth opened wide the door of their dug-out looking gladly up at her standing stilly there a picture daintily silhouetted by the pearl pink of the twilit sky here he smiled celia stared down into the darkness of it as into a grave a hole in the ground she cried then as the beflowered home she had left rose mirage like in the window of her memory she sobbingly restammered the words a hole in the ground end of chapter two recording by roger maline chapter three of the way of the wind by zoie anderson norris this librovoc's recording is in the public domain

Starting point is 00:20:01 recording by roger maline chapter three it was not yet june but the winds blow cold on the prairie later than june at nightfall the moment the sun goes down up come the chill winds sick at heart seth coaxed the shuddering celia down the steps into the cellar-like habitation dimly lighted by a single half-window dug out mansard fashion at the side he was silent hurt in every fibre of his being his manner was one of profound apology she was right it was only a hole in the ground but he accustomed to dugouts during the months he had spent on the prairie preparing for the joy of her coming had overlooked its deficiencies and learned to think of it as home there were two chairs he was glad of that for a long time there had only been one he placed her in the new one bought in honor of her coming seating her deferentially as if she had been a queen and went hurriedly about building a fire of little dry twigs he had torn from shrubs along the river that the gay crackle of them might cheer her as she sat looking on she saw in this humble service not his devotion but his humiliation not not his great love for her which glorified all service humble or exalted but the fact that he had so descended in the scale of life as to put his hands to work that she had been used to see done only by negroes her pride her only inheritance from haughty slave-holding ancestors was wounded not all seth's devotion not all his labor in her behalf could salve that wound

Starting point is 00:21:56 as he knelt before the blazing twigs apparently doing their best to aid him in his effort to cheer her something of his feeling penetrated to his inner consciousness nevertheless he piled on twig after twig until the refreshing flames brilliantly illumined the dug-out from dirt floor to dirt roof they filled it with light the poor little twigs eagerly flashing into flame to help him better far if wet and soggy they had burned dimly or not at all for their blaze only served to exhibit every deficiency seth should have endeavored to hide the thatch of the roof the sod the carpetless floor the lack of furniture the plain wooden bedstead in the corner with its mattress of straw the crazy window fashioned by his own rude carpentry the shapeless door which was like a slap in the face with its raw and unpainted color of new wood. After the first wild glance about her, Celia buried her face in her hands, resolutely shutting out the view

Starting point is 00:23:07 for fear of bursting into uncontrollable tears. Seth, seeing this, rose from his knees slowly, lamely, as if suddenly very tired, and went about his preparations for their evening meal. Men with less courage than it required to perform this simple duty have stood up to be shot at. Knowing full well that with each act of humble servitude, he sank lower and lower in the estimation of the one living creature,

Starting point is 00:23:38 in whose estimation he wished to stand high, he once more knelt on the hearth, placed potatoes in the ashes, raked a little pile of coals together and set the coffee-pot on them. He drew the small deal table out and put upon it two, cups and saucers, plates and for two. There was but one knife. That was for Celia. A pocket knife was to serve for himself. It had been his pleasure throughout his lonely days of waiting to picture this first meal which Celia and he should eat together. Never once it he dreamed that the realization could come so near breaking a strong man's heart, that things

Starting point is 00:24:22 seemingly of small import could stab with the thrust so knife-like. He felt the color leave his cheek at the thought that he had failed to provide a cloth for the table, not even a napkin. He fumbled at his bandana, then hopelessly replaced it in his pocket. He grew cold at the realization that every luxury to which she had been accustomed, almost every necessity, was absent from that plain board. He had counted on her love to overlook much. It had overlooked nothing. When all was in readiness, he drew up a chair and begged her to be seated. He took the opposite chair, and the meal proceeded in silence, broken only by the wail of the wind and the crackle of the little dry twigs that burned on the hearth.

Starting point is 00:25:16 "'I am afraid of it,' sighed Celia. Of what, sweet? he asked, and she answered, I am afraid of the wind. There is nothing to be afraid of, he explained quickly. It is only the ordinary wind of the prairies. It ain't a cyclone. Cyclones never come this way, near to the forks of two rivers where we are. And waxing eloquent on this, his hobby,

Starting point is 00:25:47 he began telling her of the great and beautiful and prosperous city, which was some time to be built on this spot. Perhaps the very dugout in which they sat would form at center. He talked enthusiastically of the tall, steeple temples that would be erected, of the schools and colleges, of the gay people beautifully dressed, who would drive about on their carriages under the shade of tall trees that would lie in the avenues, of the smiling men and women and children whose home the magic city would be. be. And how he was confident they would build it here, because, in the land of terrible winds,

Starting point is 00:26:27 when people commence to erect their metropolis, they must put it where no deadly breath of cyclone or tornado could tear at it or overturn it. With that, he went on to describe the destructive power of the cyclones, telling how one in a neighboring county had looked up a stream that lay in its course, showering the water and mud down 50 miles away. But no cyclone will ever come here, he added and explained why. Because it was the place of the forks of two rivers, the big Arkansas and the little Arkansas. A cyclone will go out of its way, he told her, rather than tackle the forks of two rivers. The Indians knew that.

Starting point is 00:27:14 They had pitched their tents here before, they had been driven into the territory, and that 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.

Starting point is 00:27:49 I am afraid. Seth left his place at the table and took her in his arms. Poor little girl, he said. Afraid and tired, too. Traveling so far? Of course she's tired. And with loving hands, tender as a mother's, he helped her undress and laid her on the rough bed of straw.

Starting point is 00:28:14 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 open and confidentially to God, since people are so scarce and far away, temper the wind to this poor shivering lamb, dear father. And with a fanatic devotion, he added, And build the magic city! End of Chapter 3. Recording by Roger Maline.

Starting point is 00:29:15 Chapter 4 of the Way of the Wind by Zoe Anderson Norris. This Librevox recording is in the public. domain. Recording by Roger Maline. Chapter 4. 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,

Starting point is 00:29:40 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 of fain. 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

Starting point is 00:30:14 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. Strewing in the path of that cyclone were window sashes, doors, shingles, air 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.

Starting point is 00:31:10 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 storyteller 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.

Starting point is 00:31:57 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

Starting point is 00:32:38 and fine, satin slippers, fans, gloves, and a wedding gown of dazzling snowiness. The day we 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-sweighed gloves lay in a ditch,

Starting point is 00:33:29 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.

Starting point is 00:34:05 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 different A cyclone, he said, is miles and miles in width. It sweeps across the prairie, screeching and screaming,

Starting point is 00:35:25 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 torrent. 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

Starting point is 00:35:58 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 tell us the wind to take it that an old squaw whose name was wichita had bewitched the spot with her incantations defying the wind to touched 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 stocked 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.

Starting point is 00:36:39 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,

Starting point is 00:37:04 watching her lest she wake again, and wishing he might still the universe while she slept. He redoubled his care of her, her by night and by day doing the work of the dug-out 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 eastbound 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

Starting point is 00:38:20 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 fiber. He would not have her of a different and coarser fiber, 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 his. It was his place to turn the hut into a palace for his queen, and so he would, when the wise men came out of the east and built the magic city. When the fools had made the plains a fit place for human beings to inhabit, planting trees to draw down the reluctant rain from the clouds, sowing seed and raising crops sometimes, to their surprise and the amazement of those who heard of it,

Starting point is 00:39:15 the wise men would appear, and by the land, and the building of great cities would begin. Already they had reared a town that dared approach in size to a city on the edge of the desert, but what had happened? An angry cyclone here. of it had come along and snatched it into the clouds furious at sight of its spick and span newness its yellow-frame shanties and shining shingles it had carried it off as if it had been a hen-coop and set it down somewhere in texas a state that had been longer settled and was therefore a better place for houses and fences and left it there then the wise men growing discouraged had gone away But they would come again, he promised himself. They would come again. They must.

Starting point is 00:40:09 Not to pass through in long vestibule trains, whose sparks out of pure fiendishness lighted the furious prairie fires that were so hard to put out, smothering the innocent occupants of the dugouts in their sleep and burning their grain. Not to gaze wild-eyed through the shining windows of these splendid cars, as they passed on and on to some more. more promising, unwind-blown country, to build there their beautiful cities of marble and of

Starting point is 00:40:39 stone, they would come to stay? When? Why, when they should find a spot unvisited by cyclones, and that spot would be in the place of their dugout at the forks of these two big rivers, the big Arkansas and the little Arkansas, the little river that had real water trickling along its shallow bed year in and year out, and the big river, whose bed was dry as a bone all the year round until June, when the melting snows of the Rockies sent the water down in floods, in fierce, uncontrollable, and pitiless floods to drown the crops that had been spared by the chinch-bugs, the grasshoppers,

Starting point is 00:41:23 and the hot winds. All this, Seth told Celia, finishing with his old rapturous picture of the glory of the magic city, which he called after the old witch who had driven the winds from the forks of the rivers, Wichita. He talked on, trying hard not to let her listless air of incredulity freeze the marrow of his bones and the blood in his veins, or cut him so deeply as to destroy his enrooted hope in their splendid future. Taking her in his arms, partly to hide her cold face from his view, and partly to comfort her, he offered every possible apology for her unbelief, wrapping her about with his love and tenderness as with a mantle. He thought by day of the coming of the child, and dreamed of it by night,

Starting point is 00:42:17 trusting that, whether or not she shared his belief in the magic city, when she held it warmly in her arms, that little baby, his and hers, the homesick look would give place to a look of content. and the hole in the ground would become to her a home. End of Chapter 4. Recording by Roger Maline. Chapter 5 of the Way of the Wind by Zoe Anderson Norris. This Libervox recording is in the public domain. Recording by Roger Maline.

Starting point is 00:42:58 Chapter 5. Seth was toiling slowly along a furrow back of his plow, bending sidewise with the force of the wind, not resentfully that it persisted in making it so difficult for him to earn his bread, for resentment was not in his nature, besides which, Seth loved the wind, but humming a little tune, something soft and reminiscent about his old Kentucky home, with its chorus of fare you well, my lady, when a bronco, first a mere speck on the horizon ahead of him, then, larger and larger, rushed out of the wind from across the prairie with flashing eyes and distended nostrils and lunged toward him. At first he thought it was a wild bronco, untamed and riderless, but as his eyes became accustomed to dust and sunlight, he discovered that the saddle held a

Starting point is 00:43:54 girl. For the moment she had bent herself to the bronco's mane, which had the effect, together with the haze produced by the wind-blown dust, of rendering the animal apparently riderless. Seth drew up his mule and halted. At the same time, the bronco was jerked with a sudden rain that sent him back on his haunches, his front feet pawing the air. His rider, apparently accustomed to this pose,

Starting point is 00:44:24 clung to him with the persistency of a fly-to-fly paper, righted him, swung herself from the saddle, and stood before Seth, a tall, slim girl of twelve, a girl of complexion brown as berries, of dark eyes heavily fringed with thick lashes and dusky hair tinned redly with sunburn. Her hair, one of her beauties, blew about her ears and tangled curls that were unconfined by hat or bonnet. She smiled at him, showing rows of rice-like teeth, of an exactest, exaggerated white in contrast with the sunburn of her face. Hello, she said.

Starting point is 00:45:08 Hello, said Seth in return. Then, in the outspoken manner of the prairie folk, he asked, Who are you? I am Cyclona, she answered. Cyclona what? Just cyclona. I ain't got no other name. Seth smiled back at her.

Starting point is 00:45:30 she seemed so timidly wild, like those little prairie dogs that stand in their haunches and bark, and yet are ever mindful of the safety of their nearby layers, waiting for them in case of molestation. Where did you come from? he queried. Two or three hundred miles from here, she answered, where we had a claim. Who is we? asked Seth. My father and me. He ain't my rome. He ain't my real father, he's the man what adopted me.

Starting point is 00:46:05 Always courteous, Seth stood, hand-on plow, waiting for her to state her errand or move on. She did neither. There be'n't many neighbors here about, be there, she ventured presently, toying with her bronco's mane. No, said Seth. They are mighty scarce. One about every eighteen miles or so.

Starting point is 00:46:30 cyclona looked straight at him out of her big dark eyes framed by their heavy lashes i am a neighbor a yearn she said i'm glad of that responded seth with ready southern cordiality where do you live cyclona turned and pointed to the horizon about ten or twelve miles away she explained there been there long asked said Seth. Come down last week, said Cyclona, adding lightly by way of explanation, we blew down, father and his wife and me. Never had no mother. A cyclone blew her away.

Starting point is 00:47:17 That's why they call me Cyclona. She drew her sleeve across her eyes. It's mighty lonesome in these parts, she sighed, without no neighbors. neighbors was nearer where we came from what made you move then seth queried we didn't move said cyclona we was moved father liked it here but i get awful lonesome without no neighbors the plaint struck an answering cord look here said seth you see that little dug out way over there that's where i live live. My wife's there all by herself. She's lonesome, too. Maybe she'd like to have you come and visit her and keep her company. Will you? Cyclona nodded, a delighted assent, caught the mane of her

Starting point is 00:48:15 bronco, and swung herself into her saddle with the ease and grace of a cowboy. Seth was suddenly engrossed with the fear that Celia, seeing the girl come out of the nowhere, as she had come upon him, might be frightened into the ungraciousness of unsociability. Wait, he cried, I will go with you. So he took Cyclona's reign and led her bronco over the prairie to Celia's door, the girl, laughing at the idea of being led, chattering from her saddle like any magpie. He knocked at Celia's door, and soon her face, white, southern, aristocratic in sharp contrast with the sunburned cheek and wild eye of cyclona appeared he waved a rough hand toward cyclona sitting astride her bronco a child of the desert untamed as a coyote

Starting point is 00:49:13 an animated bronze of the untrammeled west emphasized by the highlights of sunshine glimmering on curl and dimple on bronco mane and hoof and backed by the brilliancy of sky the far-away line of the horizon and the howl of the wind look he called to her exultantly in the voice of the prairies necessarily elevated in defiance of the wind i have brought a little girl to keep you company end of chapter v recording by roger maline chapter six of the way of the wind by zoie anderson norris this librovoc's recording is in the public domain recording by roger maline chapter six it was in this way that cyclona blew into their lives and came to be something of a companion to celia though realizing that the girl was a distinct outgrowth of the country, she so detested, she never came to care for her with that affection which she had felt for her southern girl friends. The kindly interest which most women, settled in life, feel for the uncertain destiny of every girl child, bashfully budding into womanhood, was absent. It is to be doubted if Celia possessed a kindly heart to begin with, added to which

Starting point is 00:50:46 there was nothing of the self-conscious bud about cyclona. she was ignorant of her beauty as a prairie rose strange as her life had been encompassed about by cyclones the episode of her moving as told by the gray-haired doctor at the corner grocery was stranger the house was little the doctor commenced or it might not have happened there was only one room it was built of boards and weighed next to nothing which may have helped to account for it on that particular day the house was situated in the northern part of the state he swapped legs but the next day he resumed well you can't tell exactly where any house will be the next day in kansas it was about noon and cyclone's foster-father was out in the cornfield plowing the wind as usual was blowing a gale it was a mild gale sixty-mile an hour, so Jonathan did not permit it to interfere with his plowing. The rows were a little uneven, because the wind blew the horse sideways, and that naturally dragged the plow out of the furrows. But as one rarely sees a straight row of corn in Kansas,

Starting point is 00:52:08 Jonathan was not worried. If he took pains to sew the corn straight, in trim and systematic rows, like as not, the wind would blow the seed out of the ground in, to his neighbor's cornfield. So what was the use? Like the horse and plow, Jonathan was walking crooked, bent in the direction of the wind. He seldom walked straight or talk straight, for that matter. The wind has had such an effect on him. At any rate, leaving out the question of his reasoning, which pursues a devious and zigzag course, varying according to the way the wind blows, and he is not alone in this peculiarity in Kansas, as I say, Jonathan steadily toiled against the wind.

Starting point is 00:52:55 He stopped altogether, and taking out his lunch basket, he removed a pie and sat down on a log to eat it, while his horse, moving a little further along, propped himself against a cottonwood tree to keep from being entirely blown away and also rested. He swapped tobacco wads from one cheek to be. the other and continued, "'The pie was made of custard,' Jonathan said,

Starting point is 00:53:22 with meringue on the top. The meringue blew away, but Jonathan contentedly ate the custard, thankful that the hungry wind had not taken that. Mrs. Jonathan had been going about all morning with a dust rag in her hand, wiping the dust from the sills and the furniture. So, tired out at last,

Starting point is 00:53:43 she had flung herself on the bed and was quietly napping when the cyclone came along. Of course, the house and the bed she was lying on were shaken, but Mrs. Jonathan had lived so long in Kansas she couldn't sleep unless the wind rocked the bed. She slept all the sounder, therefore, lulled by its whistling and moaning and sobbing, not waking, even when Cyclona, this girl they had adopted, opened the door and shut it suddenly with herself in the evening,

Starting point is 00:54:15 inside, and a fortunate thing, too, that was for Cyclona, or the Cyclone might have left her behind. Cyclona, standing by the window, saw it all, the swiftly passing landscape, the trees, the cows, as one would look from an observation car on a train. The house was at last deposited rather roughly on Terraferma, and the jar awoke, Mrs. Jonathan. She sat up and rubbed her eyes open. Then she looked about her in some alarm. The furniture was tumbled together in one corner, all in a heap, Jonathan says,

Starting point is 00:54:56 and the pictures were topsy-turvy. Pictures are never on a level on Kansas walls, on account of the winds, so Mrs. Jonathan thought little of this, but the ceiling puzzled her. Instead of arching in the old way, it pointed at her. It was full of shingles, moreover, like a roof, and the point reached nearly to her head when she sat up in the bed, staring about her.

Starting point is 00:55:23 What on earth is the matter? she asked of Cyclona. Cyclona turned away from the window. We have moved, said she. Mrs. Jonathan arose, then, and going to the door, opened it and found what Cyclona had said was true. The scenery was quite, different. It is much further south here, you know, than in the northern part of the state. The grass was green, and the trees hardly butted at all where she came from, here had full-grown leaves.

Starting point is 00:55:59 There was little or no debris in the path of the cyclone, nearly everything, with the exception of the house, having been dropped before it arrived at that point. A few stray cows hung from the branches of the large cottonwood trees, Jonathan says. Here the doctor was interrupted by a man who took his pipe out of his mouth and coughed. But they presently dropped on all fours, he continued, and began to munch on the nice green grass growing all about them. The landscape, thus losing all indications of the tornado's effect, assumed a sylvan aspect, which was tranquil in the extreme. Not far off stood the horse still hitched to the plow, Jonathan said.

Starting point is 00:56:46 The horse had a dazed look, but the plow seemed to be in fit enough condition. One handle, slightly bent, had evidently struck against something on the journey, which gave it a rakeish aspect, but that was all. Did the horse have its hide on? asked the man who had coughed.

Starting point is 00:57:07 So far as I know, the doctor replied. Why? Because there's a story going the rounds, answered the coffer, to the effect that a horse was blown a hundred miles in a cyclone, and when they found him,

Starting point is 00:57:23 he was hitched to a tree and skinned. There was a period of thoughtful silence before the doctor went on with his story. As Mrs. Jonathan looked out the door, he said, she saw Jonathan walking down the road in her direction. His slice of pie, which he had not had time to finish, was still in his hand. Where are we at? he asked her, curiously.

Starting point is 00:57:50 I am sure I don't know, answered Mrs. Jonathan, beginning, woman-like to cry, now that the danger was over. Jonathan began to finish his pie, which the cyclone had interrupted. Between mouthfuls, he gave quick glances of surprise at the house. What on earth, he exclaimed, is the matter with the roof? Mrs. Jonathan ran out to look. The tornado had been busy with the roof. It had blown it skyward, and then, upon second thoughts, had brought it back again and deposited it, not right side up, but upside down.

Starting point is 00:58:30 The extreme suction caused by this sudden reversal of, of things, had caught every rag of clothing in the house into the atmosphere, where, adhering to the roof, they had been brought down with it, so that they hung in festoons all around the outside, the roof, fastening onto the walls with a tremendous jerk, securing all the different articles with the clinch of a massive and giant clothespin. "'It was a strange sight,' Jonathan said. Mrs. Jonathan's and Cyclone's skirts, stockings, shirt-waists, night-dresses, and handkerchiefs, were strung along indiscriminately with Jonathan's trousers, coats, waistcoats, and socks.

Starting point is 00:59:16 Here and there, in between, prismatic quilts, red-bordered tablecloths, and fringe napkins, varied the monotony. How are we ever going to get them down? asked Mrs. Jonathan, the floodgate of her tears loosed once more at sight of her household and wearing apparel hung as it were from the housetop jonathan said his wife didn't seem to think of the kindness of the cyclone and bringing her husband along with the house when it might so easily have divorced them by dropping him into the house of some plump widow all she seemed to think of was those clothes don't you worry he told her we'll just wait till another cyclone comes along and turns the roof right side up again for one becomes philosophical you know living in kansas one must or live somewhere else jonathan looked delightedly about him the green prairies sloped away to the skies there was a clump of cottonwood trees near by and a little creek the same that gurgles by Seth's claim, gurgled by his between twin rows of low green bushes.

Starting point is 01:00:33 He admired this scenery, Jonathan did. He smiled a smile which stretched from one ear to the other when he discovered that his faithful and trusted horse had followed him down and was standing conveniently nearby, ready for work. I like this part of the country, he declared, better than the part we came from. We'll just stake off this claim and take possession. After a moment of thought, however, he added provisionally, That is, until another cyclone takes a notion to move us. End of Chapter 6.

Starting point is 01:01:12 Recording by Roger Maline. Chapter 7 of the Way of the Wind by Zoe Anderson Norris. This Librevox recording is in the public domain. Recording by Roger Maline Chapter 7 Across the Purple Prairie, the wandering stars blinking down upon him, the wind tearing at him to know what the matter was,

Starting point is 01:01:44 the tumbleweeds tumbling at the heels of his bronco, his heart and his mouth, Seth madly rode in the wild midnight to fetch the weazened old woman who tended the women of the desert, rode as madly back again, leaving the midwife to follow. After an age, it seemed to him, she came, and the child was born.

Starting point is 01:02:06 Seth knelt and listened to the breathing of the little creature, in the rapture felt by most mothers of newborn babes, and by more fathers than is supposed. Now and again this feeling, which more than any other goes to make us akin to the angels, is lacking in a mother. Seth saw with a sadness he could not uproot that Celia was one of these, His belief, therefore, in the efficacy of the child to comfort her, went the way of other beliefs he had been forced one by one to relinquish.

Starting point is 01:02:42 When, after some weeks of tending her, the old woman was gone, and Celia was able to be about, it was he who took charge of the child, while she, in her weakness, gave herself up to an increased disgust for her surroundings, and an even deeper longing to go by. back home. It was in vain that he showed her the broad green of the wheat fields, smiling in the sunlight, waving in the wind. Some blight would come to them. Fruitlessly, he pictured to her the little house he would build for her when the crop was sold. She listened incredulously. And then came the grasshoppers. For miles over the vastness of the desert, they rushed in swarms, blackening the earth,

Starting point is 01:03:32 eclipsing the sun. Having accomplished their mission of destruction, they disappeared as quickly as they had come, leaving desolation in their wake. The prairie farms had been reduced to wastes, no leaves, no trees, no prairie flowers, no grasses, no weeds.

Starting point is 01:03:55 One old woman had planted a garden near her dugout, trim, neat, flourishing, with its rows of onions, potatoes, and peas in the pod. It was utterly demolished. She covered her head with her apron and wept old, disconsolate tears at the side of it. Another was hanging her clothes on the line. When the grasshoppers were gone, there were no clothes and no line. As for the beautiful wheat fields that had shown in the sun that had waved in the wind,

Starting point is 01:04:27 that had waved in the wind, they lay before Seth's tearless eyes, a blackened ruin. Was it against God's wish that they make their feeble effort to cultivate the plains, those poor pioneer people, that he must send a scourge of such horror upon them? Or had he forsaken the people and the country, as Celia had said? Seth walked late along the ruin of the fields, not talking aloud to God, as was his want when troubled silent rather as a child upon whom some punishment has been inflicted for he knows not what silent brooding heart-sick with wondering and above all afraid to go back and face the chill of celia's look and the scorn of her eye but what one must do one must do and back he went finally opened the badly hung door and stood within his back to it, with the air of a culprit, responsible alike for the terror of the winds, the scourge of

Starting point is 01:05:34 the grasshoppers, and the harshness of God. As a man, he said slowly, her blue eyes shining with their clear, cold look of cut steel through slits of half-shut white lids, the words dropping distinctly, clearly, relentlessly, that he might not forget them, that he might remember them well throughout the endless years of desert life that were to follow. You are a failure, he hung his head. You are right, he said. For though he had not actually gone after the grasshoppers and brought them in a deadly swarm to destroy his harvest,

Starting point is 01:06:15 he had enticed her to the plains, it seemed for the purpose of witnessing the destruction. You are right, he reiterated. In the night Celia dreamed of home and the bluegrass hills and the whippoorwills and the mockingbirds that sang through the moonlight from twilight till dawn. Sobbing in her sleep, she waked to hear the demoniacal shriek of the tireless wind and the howl of a coyote and wept, refusing to be comforted. The next day she said to Seth firmly and conclusively,

Starting point is 01:06:55 i am going home end of chapter seven recording by roger maline chapter eight of the way of the wind by zoie anderson norris this librivox recording is in the public domain recording by roger maline chapter eight to do her justice celia would have taken the child with her but young as he was seth refused to give her him up. He would buy a little goat, he said, feed the baby on its milk and look after him. At heart, he said to himself that he would hold the child as ransom. Surely, if love for him failed, love for the little one would draw the mother back to the hole in the ground. He found cyclona and implored her to keep the child while he hitched up the cart and drove the mother away over the same road she had come to the station. It was a silent drive, each occupied with individual thoughts running in separate channels.

Starting point is 01:08:11 She, glad that her eyes were looking their last on this wind-lashed prairies, blackened by the scourge. He, casting about in his mind for some bait with which to entice her, to return. You will come back to the child, he faltered. but she made no answer. If the crop succeed, he ventured, and I build you a beautiful house, then will you come back? For answer, she gave a scornful glance at the blackened plains, flowerless, grainless, grassless.

Starting point is 01:08:49 If the wise men come out of the east, it was his last plea, and build the magic city, then you will come back? at that she laughed aloud and the wind to spare him the sound of it tossed the laugh quickly out and away with the jeer of its cruel mockery the magic city she repeated she laughed in derision of such violence that she fell to coughing the magic city she reiterated the magic city end of chapter eight recording by roger maline chapter nine of the way of the wind by zoie anderson norris this librivox recording is in the public domain recording by roger maline chapter nine for one mad moment such as comes to the bravest seth's impulse was to throw himself beneath the wheels of the car that was taking celia away from him in another he would have lain a crushed and shapeless mass in their wake but as he shut his eyes for the leap there came to him distinctly pitifully wailingly the cry of the child

Starting point is 01:10:18 perhaps it came to him in reality across the intervening miles of wind-blown prairie perhaps the wind blew it to him who knows our mother earth often sends us help in our sorous need in her own way a way which oftentimes partakes of mystery perhaps it came only in memory however it served he opened his eyes and the madness had passed he pulled himself together dazedly unfastened the hitch-rain of the mule mounted awkwardly into the high and ungainly blue cart and started off in the direction of the cry the wind which on the coming trip had appeared to take fiendish delight in trying to tear celia's garments to ribbons now suddenly died down for the wind loved seth it had done with celia she was gone but not by one breath would it add to the grief of seth on the contrary it spent its most dulcet music in the effort to soothe him tenderly as the cooing of a dove it whispered in his ear reminding him of the child he answered aloud i know he said i had forgotten him the poor little motherless child and the wind kissed his cheek its breath sweet as a girl's caressing him urging him over the vastness of the prairie to the child on the road to the station Seth's mind had been filled with Celia to the exclusion of all else.

Starting point is 01:12:03 He had not observed the devastation of the prairie. Unlike her, his heart held no hatred for the wayward winds. They were of heaven. He loved them. Fierce they were at times, it was true, claws that clutched at his heart. But at other times they were gentle fingers running through his hair. Their natures were opposite as the point. poles, his and hers. The prairies were her detestation. He loved them. He inherited the traits of his

Starting point is 01:12:36 ancestors, the sturdy Kentucky pioneers who had lived in log huts and fell the forests in settling the country. Something not yet tamed within him loved the little wild things that had their homes in the prairie grasses. The riotous birds, the bright-colored insects. The prairie-dress. The prairie-dews. The prairie-dus birds. The prairie dogs in their curious towns, sitting on their haunches at the doors of their little dugouts, so similar to his own, and barking, then running at whistle or crack of whip, into the holes to their odd companions. The owls and the rattlesnakes, the herds of antelope emerging from the skyline, and brought down to equally diminutive size by their infinite distance, disappearing into the skyline mysteriously as they had come.

Starting point is 01:13:27 but now he looked out on the prairie with a sigh it was like a familiar face disfigured by a burn scarred and almost unrecognizable the prairie in loneliness is similar to the sea in one wide circle it stretches from horizon to horizon it stretched about him as far as the eye could reach scorched and hideous as the ruin of his life he shut his eyes he dared not look out on the ruin of his life what if the ghastly spectacle should turn his brain that had been known to happen among the prairie folk time out of number many a brain stupefied by the lonely life of the dug-out the solemn often portentous grandeur of the great blue dome under which the pioneers crawled so helplessly had been blown zigzag by the wild buffetings of the wayward wanton winds punctuating the dread loneliness so insistently so incessantly so diabolically by its staccato preludes by its innuendos of interludes prestissimo by its fanlies frantically furious and fiendishly calculated to frighten the soul and tear the bewildered and weakened brain from its pedestal the reproach of the thought held something of injustice the wind blew with such gentleness kissing his cheek his mind ran dangerously on in the current of insanity he endeavored to quiet it the thought of his mother came to him once he had heard her crying in the night waiting for his father to come home not knowing where he was wondering as women will and fearfully crying

Starting point is 01:15:21 then he heard her begin to count aloud in the dark one two one two three she had counted to quiet her brain he fell mechanically to counting as she had done one two one two three he must preserve his sanity he said to himself for the sake of the child otherwise it would be good to lose all remembrance to forget to dream to lapse into the nothingness of the vacant eye the down-drooping lid and the drivel one two one two three he counted the wind listening in spite of the counting with his eyes fixed on the desolation of the prairie his thoughts on celia suddenly he felt himself seized by gusts of violent rage the desire to dash out his brains against the unyielding wall of his relentless destiny tore him like the fingers of a giant hand one two one two three he counted and between the words came the cry of the child if he could only render his mind a blank until it recovered its equilibrium a ray of sunshine must leak in somewhere it must be for the sake of the child but how is it possible for him to go back to the ghastliness of the dugout the bereft house where it was as if for him to go back to the ghastliness of the dugout the bereft house where it was as if for the the most precious inmate had suddenly died, to the place that had held Celia but would hold her no more.

Starting point is 01:17:11 It was necessary to count very steadily here, to strangle an outcry of despair. One, two, three, one, two, three, one, two, three, four, five. He could count no further. the wind seeing his distress soued with a weird sweet sound like elonium harps in the effort to comfort him but he dropped the reins and laid his face in the hollow of his arm it was the attitude of a woman grief-stricken he had evidently fallen into a lethargy of grief from which he must be aroused so thought the wind it blew a great blast it whistled loudly as if calling, calling, calling. Was it the wind or his heart? Was it his mother nature, his guardian angel, or God?

Starting point is 01:18:16 Again pitifully, distinctly, wailingly, came the cry of the child. He raised his head, grasped the reins, and hurried. On he went, on and on, faster and faster, until at last he came to the door of the tomb. He descended into it. He took the child from the arms of Cyclona, who sat by the fire, cuddling it, and held it close to his heart.

Starting point is 01:18:46 He has been crying, she told him, every single minute since you have been gone. Crying! Crying! No matter what I did, no matter how hard I tried, I couldn't quiet him. End of Chapter 9.

Starting point is 01:19:05 Recording by Roger Maline. Chapter 10 of the Way of the Wind by Zoe Anderson Norris. This Libravox recording is in the public domain. Recording by Roger Maline. Chapter 10 On the following day, Cyclona sat in the low rocking chair, rocking the baby, singing to it, crooning a lullaby, a memory of her. own baby days, when some self-imposed mother, taking the place of her own, had crooned to her.

Starting point is 01:19:45 Sleep, baby, sleep! The big stars are the sheep. The little stars are the lambs, I guess. The moon is the shepherdess. Sleep, baby, sleep. But the baby sobbed, looking in bewilderment up at the dark gypsy face above it, in search of the pale and beautiful face of his mother. Finding it not, he hid his eyes upon her shoulder and sobbed.

Starting point is 01:20:13 The wind sobbed with him. Outside the window it wailed in eerie lamentation. It dashed a nearby shrub, a ragged rose-tree that Seth had planted against the window. The twigs tapped at the pane like human fingers. There, there, soothed Cyclona, and she changed the baby's position, so that his little body curled warmly about her, and his face was upturned to hers to coax him into the belief that she was Celia.

Starting point is 01:20:46 Once more she drifted into the lullaby, crooning it very softly in her lilting young voice. Sleep, baby, sleep! The big stars are the sheep. The little stars are the lambs, I guess. The moon is the shepherdess. Sleep, baby, sleep. but the wind seemed to oppose her efforts at soothing the child whose startled eyes stared at the window against which tapped the attenuated fingers of the twigs the wind shrieked at him his sobs turned into cries

Starting point is 01:21:23 cyclona got up and going to the bed laid him on it talking cooing baby talk to him she prepared his food she warmed the milk and crumbled bread into it taking him up again she fed it to him spoonful by spoonful awkwardly yet in a motherly way then she patted him on her shoulder and tried to rock him to sleep singing patting him on the back cooingly when the howl of the wind startled him out of momentary slumber the wind appeared to be extraordinarily perverse it was almost as if knowing this was celia's child that celia whose hatred it had felt from the first it took pleasure in punctuating his attempt to sleep with shrieks and wailings with piercing and unearthly cries once it tossed a tumbleweed at the window the great round human-like head looked in and the child opening his eyes upon it broke into piteous moaning the wind laughed snatched the tumbleweed and tossed it on the wind seems to be trying itself complained cyclona getting up once more and walking about with a child in her arms singing as she walked sleep baby sleep the big stars are the sheep the little stars are the lambs i guess the wind is the shepherdess sleep baby sleep the wind grew furious with a wild yell it burst the door of the dugout open cyclona put the baby back on the bed faced the fury of the wind a moment then cried out to it why can't you behave then she shut the door and placed a chair against it taking the baby up and again walking it back and forth up and down and back and forth it's just trying itself she repeated

Starting point is 01:23:30 again she endeavored with the coup of the lullaby to entice the child into forgetting the wind but the wind was not to be forgotten it turned into a tornado failing of its effort to tear off the roof of the dugout it stormed depentuously fretfully it raved it grumbled it groaned it screamed aloud with a fury not to be appeased or assuaged cyclona had taken her seat in the rocking-chair near the hearth she had laid the crying child in every possible position across her knee faced down sitting on one of her knees her hand to his back with gentle pats and over her shoulder. All to no avail. It seemed as if the child would never quit sobbing. The sense of her helplessness, joined with pity for his distress, saddened her to tears. She was very tired. She had had charge of the child since early morning when Seth, compelled to attend to his work in the fields, had left him to her. She bent forward and looked out the window where the long fingers of the ragged rose-bush, torn by the wind,

Starting point is 01:24:49 tapped ceaselessly at the pain. "'Wind!' she implored. "'Stop blowing!' "'Don't you know the little baby's mother has gone away? Don't you know the little baby hasn't any mother now? That she's left him and gone away?' It seemed that the wind had not thought of it in this way. occupied only with Celia's departure,

Starting point is 01:25:15 it had not considered the desolation it had caused. The long, lithe fingers of the twigs ceased their tapping. The wind sobbed fitfully a moment, little sad, remorseful, penitential sobs, and died away softly across the prairie as a breath of May. The stillness which ensued was so deep and restful that the eyes of the child involuntarily closed. Cyclona pressed his little body close to her,

Starting point is 01:25:47 his head in the hollow of her arm. She rocked him back and forth, gently singing, Sleep, baby, sleep. The words coming slowly, she was so tired. The big stars are the sheep. The little stars are the lambs, I guess. The moon is the shepherdess.

Starting point is 01:26:12 Sleep, baby, sleep. Her eyes closed. She nodded, still rocking gently back and forth. After a long time, Seth pushed open the door and looked in. He set back the chair and came tiptoeing forward. Cyclona raised her head and looked at him dreamily. Hush! she whispered.

Starting point is 01:26:39 Be very quiet. He has gone to sleep. End of Chapter 10. Recording by Roger Maline. Chapter 11 of the Way of the Wind by Zoe Anderson Norris. This Libravox recording is in the public domain. Recording by Roger Malene. Chapter 11

Starting point is 01:27:08 Brahmijin is a name given to those wares which, having no use for them at home, England ships to other countries. The term, however, is not applied to one leading export of this sort. The scores of younger sons of impoverished noblemen who are packed off to the wilds of Australia or to the great desert of America to finish sowing their wild oats in remote places

Starting point is 01:27:37 where such agriculture is not so overdone as it is in England. This economic movement resulted in a neighbor for Jonathan and Suss. a young, blue-eyed, well-built Englishman, whose name was Hugh Walsingham. Jonathan walked out of his topsy-turvy house one day to find the claim just north of his preempted by the young man who was evidently a tenderfoot, since his fair complexion had not yet become tanned by the ceaseless winds. Walsingham had staked out the claim, and was busily engaged in excavating a cave in which he proposed. to dwell. Jonathan, never busy himself, lent a helping hand, and he and Walsingham at once became

Starting point is 01:28:25 friends. The outdoor life of the prairie pleased Walsingham, the abundance of game rejoiced him. An excellent shot, his dugout was soon filled with heads of antelope, while the hide of a buffalo constituted the covering for his floor. Surrounded by an accident. atmosphere of sobriety for even at that early date the fad of temperance had fastened itself upon kansas he became by and by of necessity a hard-working farmer tilling the soil from morning till night in the struggle to earn his salt there are not many women on the prairies now then they were even more scarce it was not long before his admiring eyes centered themselves upon cyclona he fell to wondering why it was that she appeared to consider her own home so excellent a place to stay away from personally he would consider the topsy-turvy house a good and sufficient reason for continued absence but according to his english ideas a girl should love her own roof whether it was right side up or inverted the thought of this brown-skinned girl of the rapt and steadfast gaze remained with him it was he explained to himself the look one finds in the eyes of sailors accustomed to the limitless reach of the monotonous seas it came from the constant contemplation of desert wastes and

Starting point is 01:30:01 ending only in skylines, of sunlit domes, dust be sprinkled, of night skies scattered thick with dusty stars. His interest grew to the extent that he issued from his dugout early of mornings in order to see her depart for her mysterious destination. He waited at unseemly hours in the vicinity of Jonathan's curious dwelling to behold her as she came back home. On one of these occasions, when he was turning to go, after watching her throw the saddle on her bronco, fasten the straps, leap into the saddle and speed away, to be swallowed up by the distances, Jonathan came out of the topsy-turvy house and found him.

Starting point is 01:30:48 "'Walk with me a while,' implored Walsingham, a sudden sense of the loneliness of the prairie having come upon him with the vanishing of the girl. Jonathan, always ready to idle, filled his pipe and walked with him. "'Who is the girl?' asked Hugh. "'She is a little girl we adopted,' explained Jonathan. "'I don't know who she is or where she came from. Her mother blew away in a cyclone.

Starting point is 01:31:20 That is all I know about her.' "'A pretty girl,' commented Hugh. "'And a mighty good girl,' added Jonathan. "'I don't know what we'd do without her.' "'You seem to do without her a good deal,' said Hugh, relighting his pipe, which the wind had blown out. "'She is away from home most of the time.' "'Cyclonus playing nurse,' said Jonathan.

Starting point is 01:31:50 "'She's taking care of a child whose mother has deserted him. "'He's a good big boy now, but Cyclone has taken care of that child ever since he came into the world pretty near. And he recited the story of Celia's heartlessness. "'What sort of man is the father?' queried Hugh, with a manner of exaggerated indifference. "'Seth? Why, Seth's one of the finest men you ever saw. And he's good-looking, too. Sun-burnt and all, and kind of lank, but good-looking.' He's got some crazy notion, Seth has,

Starting point is 01:32:29 of building a magic city on his claim sometime or other, but aside from that, there ain't no fault to find with Seth. He's a mighty fine man. On the plains all waited for letters. Walsingham was no exception to the rule. Few came. He was too far away. Younger sons of impoverished noblemen are sent to far off,

Starting point is 01:32:56 places, purposely, to be forgotten. He employed the intervals between such stray notes as he received in studying Cyclona. He wondered what his aristocratic sisters would do if they were obliged to saddle their own ponies. He wondered what they would do if they were obliged to wear such gowns as Cyclona wore. And yet Cyclona was charming in those old gowns, blue and pink cotton in the summer, and a heavy blue one for winter wear. Constantly in the open, she possessed the beauty of perfect health. Her brown cheeks glowed like old gold from the pulsing of rich blood.

Starting point is 01:33:41 An athletic poise of her shoulders and carriage of head added grace to her beauty. But her chief charm, for the young Englishman, surfeited with the affectation of English girls, lay in her natural simplicity. Except for her association with Seth, whose innate culture could not but communicate itself, Cyclona was totally untutored. She knew nothing of coyness, caprice, or mannerisms.

Starting point is 01:34:11 Singleness of purpose and unselfishness shone in her tranquil and steadfast gaze, which Hugh was fortunate enough now and then to encounter. Walsingham found himself passing restless hours in the endeavor to devise means by which he might turn her frank gaze upon himself. In fancy, he imaged her clothed in fitting garments, walking with that free, beautiful, lithe, and swinging gate into the splendor of his mother's English home. End of Chapter 11. Recording by Roger Malene Chapter 12 of the Way of the Wind by Zoe Anderson Norris

Starting point is 01:35:01 This Libravox recording is in the public domain. Recording by Roger Maline Chapter 12 As the boy, whom Seth called Charlie, grew older, Seth cast about in his mind for some story to tell him, which should serve to protect both Celia and himself. Celia was not to blame for leaving. him. He had long ago come to that conclusion. He was a failure, as she had said.

Starting point is 01:35:35 Women, as a rule, do not care for failures, though there are some few who do. They love men who succeed. In personal appearance, aside from some angularities, considerable gauntness, and much sunburn, Seth told himself that he was not different from other men. It was not palpable to the casual observer that as men went he was a failure, but Seth realized the truth of Celia's judgment. He had failed doubly, in the effort to provide her a home and to imbue her with his belief in the magic city. Since she had gone home, he had sent her next to no money. He had none to send. Perhaps that was why she did not write. he never knew putting himself in her place he concluded she was right a delicate little woman far away from a great failure of a husband who could not provide for her ought to let him go without letters

Starting point is 01:36:40 and so thinking he seldom hung about the post-office waiting for the mail he trained himself to expect nothing yes it had been impossible for him to send her money disaster had followed disaster and he had been barely able to keep himself and the boy alive he was a failure of the most deplorable sort but the boy did not know it he did not even guess it the standing monument of his failure in life to celia was the dug-out in the eyes of the boy it was no failure at all born in it he had no idea of the luxury of a house and the luxuries we wot not of we miss not he was used to lizards on the roof to say nothing of other creeping things within the house which are generally regarded as obnoxious roaches ants mice he rather liked them than otherwise regarding them as his private possessions besides hadn't he cyclona and as for the winds of which celia complained so bitterly he loved them his ears had never been out of the sound of them and they were very gentle winds sometimes tender and loving with their own child born in the desert they lulled him they cradled him they were sweet as cyclona's voice singing him to sleep in another state where they failed to blow it would in all probability have been necessary to entice a cyclone into his neighborhood to induce him to slumber accustomed to the infinite tenderness of his father's care from the first the boy loved him seth determined that if it were possible this state of affairs should continue if it were necessary to invent a story to fit the case he would be as other men

Starting point is 01:38:43 or even better in the eyes of the child, until there came a time when he must learn the truth. Perhaps the time would never come. If he could by any manner of means keep up the delusion until the wise men came out of the east and built the magic city, he would be a failure no longer. He would be an instantaneous success.

Starting point is 01:39:07 Also, though he fully pardoned Celia for her desertion of himself, he had never quite come to understand or fully forgive her desertion of the boy, her staying away as she had done month after month, year after year, missing all the beauty of his babyhood. He therefore found it impossible to tell the boy that his mother had heartlessly deserted him, as impossible as to tell him that his father was a failure. Yet the child, like every other, insisted upon knowing something of his origin,

Starting point is 01:39:42 To satisfy him, Seth evolved a story, adding to it from time to time. He told it sitting in the firelight, the boy in his arms. It was the story of the flying peckery. Tell me how I came in the cyclone, Charlie would insist, nestling into the comfortable curve of his arm. The cyclone brought you part of the way, corrected Seth, jealous of his theory that cyclone. never touched the place of his dugout, the forks of the two rivers, and the fly and peckery brought you the rest.

Starting point is 01:40:22 You've heard me tell about these little Mexican hogs, the wildest, woollyest, measliest little hogs that ever breathed the breath of life, and how they ate up the cyclone? Yes, nodded Charlie. Well, this was the first time, I reckon, that a cyclone ever met its match, because a cyclone was never known before to stop at anything until it had cleaned up the earth and just stopped then on account of its being out of breath and tired but it met its match that time

Starting point is 01:40:57 you see texas is full of those measly little peckeries you can hardly live they say down there for them they eat up the rail fences the wagon beds the barns and the sheep and the cows they don't stop at women and children i hear if they get a good chance at them and grit they've got plenty of that i tell you and to spare those little bad measly mexican hogs well one day a herd of peckery's was a grunting and squealing round the prairie hunting for somethin to eat as usual when a cyclone came lumbering along it come bringing everything with it it could bring houses bonds, chicken coops, and a plentiful sprinkling of human beings to liven up things a little. A cyclone ain't very particular, any more than a peckery. It snatches up anything that comes handy. Sometimes it picks up a few knives and wax things with them as it goes along. You know that, don't you, Cyclona?

Starting point is 01:42:08 Cyclona nodded. She always lingered at the fireside to hear this. story of the flying peckery, which was her favorite as well as the child's. "'It brought me,' she said. The boy raised himself in Seth's arms. "'Maybe you're my sister,' he cried. "'Maybe I am,' smiled Cyclona. "'At that there towanda cyclone,' recommenced Seth.

Starting point is 01:42:39 That little Kansas town the Cyclone got mad at and made way with, there must have been a hundred knives or more flying around loose. They cut hogs half in two. You would have thought a butcher had done it, and the chickens were carved ready to be put on the table. It was wonderful the things that cyclone did. And the peckeries, Charlie reminded him. That cyclone, began Seth all over again, came flying along, as night, and thundering like mad, and caught up the whole herd of peckeries. Those peckeries ain't even-tempered animals. They've got tempas like grease lightning. It made them firing mad for a cyclone to take such liberties with them, and they got up and

Starting point is 01:43:33 slammed back at it right and left. Well, they didn't do a thing to that cyclone. In the first place, the whole herd of peckeries began to snap and grunt like fury till the noise of the cyclone simmed down into a sort of pitiful wine, like the wine of a whipped dog. Imagine a cyclone coming to that. Then, they tell me, you couldn't hear anything but the squealing and grunting of those pesky little peckeries. Between squeals, they bid into that there cyclone for all it was worth,

Starting point is 01:44:11 taking great chunks out of it, swallowing lightning and eating big mouthfuls of funda, just as if they liked it. All the stuff the cyclone was bringing along with it wasn't anything to them. They swallowed it whole, and pretty soon you'd hardly believe it, but there wasn't anything left to that cyclone at all. They had eaten up every single bit of it except a tiny breeze they had forgotten, that died away mournful like, across the prairies, sighing, because it had started out so brash, and come to such a sudden

Starting point is 01:44:48 untimely and unexpected end. Then there was the herd of peckeries, about five miles from where they had started, sitting down, resting, a-smiling at each other, and congratulating each other, I reckon, on the way they had knocked the stuffing out of that their old cyclone for good and all. They must have scared the rest of the cyclones off, too, because with them and the forks of the rivers they haven't been seen or heard of around these parts since. Except in the tail end of that one that moved me, cyclona reminded him. And what about me? questioned Charlie.

Starting point is 01:45:29 Oh, yes. One of these here peckeries, a good-natured peckery, too, with a lichen for little children found you in the cyclone. You were a pretty little baby with big blue eyes, the same as you got now. I don't know exactly where the cyclone found you. Anyway, the peckery picked you up in his mouth. When he had rested as long as he wanted to with the other peckeries, he flew along and flew along. They had all got to be flying peckeries, you know,

Starting point is 01:46:03 on account of swallowing so much wind, until he came to the door of my dugout, this same dugout we are in now, and he laid you very carefully down by the door. Then I went out in the morning and brought you in. Charlie, invariably at this point, reached up his arms and put them around Seth's neck. It was very kind of him, he thought, to go out and bring him in. What if the wolves had come along and eaten him? Or the little hungry coyotes they heard barking in the nights. Oh!

Starting point is 01:46:41 And then the peckery flew away again? he asked. Didn't he? Yes, answered Seth. He flew away with the rest of the flying peckeries. And haven't you ever seen them since? asked Charlie. Or him? Sometimes you can. can see them way up in the air, replied Seth, running his fingers through his hair.

Starting point is 01:47:07 But they are so far away and little, you can't tell them from birds. Cyclona nodded again. Yes, she corroborated. They are so far away and little you can't tell them from birds. End of Chapter 12. Recording by Roger Malene. of the way of the wind by Zoe Anderson Norris. This Libravox recording is in the public domain.

Starting point is 01:47:46 Recording by Roger Maline. Chapter 13 The postmistress at the station tapped her thimble on the window pane at the chickens floundering in the flower bed outside. They turned, looked at her, then, rising, staggered off with a ruffled and upish air, due partly to their indignation, and partly to the fact that the wind blew their feathers straight up and a trifle forward over their heads. "'It's bad enough,' she said, to try and raise flowers in Kansas, fighting the wind without having to fight the chickens. It's a fight for existence all the way around, this living in Kansas.'

Starting point is 01:48:31 Her companion was a man with iron-gray hair, a professor of an eastern college, who had come west, planted what money he had in real estate, and lost it. He, however, still retained part of the real estate. He frequently lounged about the office for an hour or two during the day, waiting for the mail, good enough company, except that he occasionally interfered with the reading of the postal cards. He looked up from a New York newspaper, three days old. "'Bionaire, people,' he observed laconically,

Starting point is 01:49:07 must expect to fight everything from real estate agents to buffaloes the postmistress laid down her sewing her official duties were not arduous they left her between trains ample time to attend to those of her household sewing and all also to embroider upon bits of gossip caught here and there in regard to her scattered neighbors whose lights of nights were like so many stars dotting the horizon she looked out the window to where a tall lank farmer was tying a mule to the hitching post over the high wheel of the old blue cart he turned big hollow eyes her way i hope he won't come before the train gets in she sighed there ain't no letter for him i hope he won't come sometimes i feel like i just can't tell him there ain't no letter for him who is it asked the professor set lawson she answered the professor elevated his eyebrows the man who owns the ground on which they are to build the magic city he asked laughingly it may happen declared the postmistress tartly anything is liable to happen in kansas the things you least expect everything in the way of cyclicals "'Cylones, you mean,' put in the professor. "'Cyclones and everything else,' affirmed the postmistress.

Starting point is 01:50:41 "'No matter what it is, Kansas goes other states one better. "'She raises the tallest corn, "'they have to climb step-ladders to reach the ears, "'and the biggest watermelons in the world.' "'When she raises any at all,' the professor inserted, They say, began the postmistress, that in the eastern part of the state, where they are beginning to be civilized,

Starting point is 01:51:09 when a farmer plants his watermelon seed, he hitches up his fastest team and drives into the next county for the watermelon. It grows so fast. Even then, unless he has a pretty fast team, somebody else gets it. If you find one on your own claim, you know, it's yours. I've heard that story, the professor politely reminded her.

Starting point is 01:51:35 They do say, reminded the postmistress, that the Indians tell that yarn that a cyclone never came to Seth's ranch. It may be a fool notion, and it may not. Look at him, leaning forward and gazing out the window. See how gaunt and haggard and wistful he looks? I don't believe he gets. enough to eat. There ain't a sadder sight on these prairies than Seth Lawson. How many months has she been away from him now? May, June, July, August, September, November, counting on her fingers, seven months and one little letter from her to say she got home safe. A dozen from him to her, more. You can almost see the love and sadness through the envelope.

Starting point is 01:52:28 and none from her in answer look at him now walking up and down up and down to pass away the time till the train comes waiting for a letter it won't come it never will come and him waiting and waiting he does well wait for the dead to come to life or for that wife of his to leave her kentucky home she's so much fonder of than she is of him or the baby or anything else in the world to come back to him what sort of woman can she be anyway to leave a little nursing baby some cats leave their kittens before their eyes are open the professor said but a woman isn't a cat objected the post mistress. At least she oughtn't to be. Do you know, I've always said the worst woman was too good for the best man, but that woman has made me change my mind. She's gone for good. She don't have to stand the wind any longer, or the sleet, or the rain. She's gone for good. Then why couldn't she write him a little letter to keep the heart warm in him? What harm would that do her? How much time would it take?

Starting point is 01:53:50 It don't seem so bad somehow for a woman to have the heartache. She's used to it, mostly. Some women ain't happy unless they do have it. Heartaches and tears make up their lives. They furnish excitement. But a man is different. You see a man holding a baby in long clothes. It's awkward, ain't it?

Starting point is 01:54:15 Somehow it don't seem natural. If you have got any sort of mother's heart in your bosom, you want to go and take it out of his arms and cuddle it. It's the same with a man with the heartache. You want to go and take it away from him, even if you have to keep it yourself. It don't seem right for him to have it no more than it seems right for him to have to take care of a child. That man's got both, the little baby and the heartache. But what can you do for him? There's nothing going to cure him but a letter from her, and you can't get that.

Starting point is 01:54:54 If ever a man deserved a good wife, it's that man, Seth. And what did he get? A southern woman. Those southern women make good wives, asserted the professor. If you give them plenty of servants and money, none better. Good fair-weather wives, nodded the postmistress, but look out for storms that's when they desert it's a sweeping assertion mused the professor and not quite fair it is impossible to judge them all by this weak creature celia lawson many a woman in kentucky braved dangers cold hunger and wild animals living in log huts as these women live in their dugouts before that state was settled and civilized

Starting point is 01:55:47 some won't give in that it is civilized objected the postmistress they're so given down there to killin people the only difference went on the professor was in the animals they had bears we have buffaloes but sometimes you come across a woman who isn't cut out for a pioneer woman and all the training in the world won't make her one it's the way with Seth's wife. She's not only weak and incapable, vowed the postmistress, but soulless and heartless. How these women love each other, the professor commented.

Starting point is 01:56:33 Taint that, flared the postmistress. I'm as good a friend to a woman as another woman can be. Just so, the professor smiled. It's my theory. frowned the postmistress that women should stand by women and men by men your theory mused the professor and i practice it declared the postmistress only in this case i can't nobody could what sort of woman is she anyway i can't i can't understand her she's rid of him in the child and the wind and the weather she's back there where they say it's cool in the summertime and warm in the winter, where the cold blasts don't blow, and the hot winds don't blister, and still she can't take time to sit down and write a little

Starting point is 01:57:29 note to the father of her child? She looked away from the window and Seth to the professor, who wondered why it was he had never before observed the beauty of her humid eyes. I can't bear to see him walking up and down, she complained, waiting and waiting. It disgust you with womankind. The wind blew the shutter, too, with a bang. It flung it open again. Some twigs of a tree outside tapped at the pane.

Starting point is 01:58:02 A whistle sounded. Seth turned glad eyes in the direction of the sound. The train! There was the usual bustle. A man brought in a bag of letters, flung it down, sped out, and made a flying leap for the train, which was beginning to move on. The postmistress busied herself with distributing the mail, and Seth walked back and forth, waiting. Presently he came in at the door, stood at the grated window back of which she sorted out the letters, and then went out again.

Starting point is 01:58:40 After a time he drove slowly by the house in the high blue cart. was there anything for him asked the professor the postmistress looked after the cart receding into a cloud of dust blown up by the wind and brushed her fingers across her eyes there was nothing for him she said end of chapter thirteen recording by roger maline chapter fourteen of the way of the wind by zoie anderson norris this libervox recording is in the public domain recording by roger maline chapter fourteen on the winter following celia's departure seth fared ill it was all he could do to keep warmth in the boy's body and his own to get food for their nourishment and as for homesickness there were nights when he looked at the silver moon half effaced by windblown clouds and fought back the tears thinking how that same moon was shining down on home and her nights when he fell into very pleasant dreams of that tranquil beauteous and pleasant country where the wind did not blow dreams in which he beheld flowers not ragged wind-torn flowers of a parched and ragged prairie odorless colorless flowers and tumbleweeds tossing weirdly over dusty plains but flowers of his youth.

Starting point is 02:00:24 Four o'clock, marguerites and daffy-down dillies, nodding bloomily on either side of an old brick walk, leading from door to gate, Jasmine hanging redolently from lattice, Virginia Creeper, and pumpkin vine. And, oh, a radiant dream! Celia, walking out through vine and flower, in all her fresh young beauty,

Starting point is 02:00:50 to meet him as in the old day, days, to open wide the door and welcome him. Then, as she had done, he waked sobbing, man though he was, but he hushed his sobs for fear of waking the child. Hom sickness. He dared not dwell on the word lest his few ideas, scattered already by the sow of the wind, the incessant moan and sob and wail of the wind might blow away altogether, lest he throw to those winds his pride of independence, his resolute determination to make a home for her and himself and their child in the West, and go back to her. This, whatever dreams assailed him, he resolved not to do. And yet there was one dream which he thrust from him fiercely,

Starting point is 02:01:43 afraid of it, turning pale at the remembrance of it. A dream of a night on that winter when he had gone to bed hungry. It was a strange dream and terrible. He thought it was night. He was out on the prairie, and the wolves were following him. They had caught him. Ravenously, they were tearing the flesh from his body and shreds.

Starting point is 02:02:08 He waked in terror to hear the bark of a pack at his door, for in that winter of bitter cold the wolves also suffered. Was that to be his fate? he asked himself. Was he to strive and strive, to spend his life in striving, and then in the working out of destiny, in the survival of the fittest, of the stronger over the weaker,

Starting point is 02:02:33 of those who are able to devour over those destined to be devoured, fall prey to the fangs of animals hungrier than he and stronger? There were times when he was very tired, when almost he was ready to fold, his arms, to give up the fight and say, so be it. But what of the boy then? Raising himself out of the

Starting point is 02:03:00 slew of despond, he resolutely refed his soul with hope. Those wise men, if only they would come, if only they could be made to see and understand that this was the place for the magic city and be persuaded to build it here. 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 happily ever after.

Starting point is 02:03:38 End of Chapter 14. Recording by Roger Maline. Chapter 15 of The Way of the Wind by Zoe Anderson Norris. This Libravox recording is in the public domain. Recording by Roger Maline. Chapter 15 The wind lulled the child to sleep. The wind wakened him.

Starting point is 02:04:10 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 tone. so infinitely tender, of shrieks so blusteringly loud. He listened to it in the dawn. He listened to it in the somber darkness of the night. Early and late it seemed to call to him to come out and away to his mother.

Starting point is 02:04:42 The restlessness that sometimes encompasses the soul of a boy took possession of him. He was filled with the passion of wanderlust. 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 his curls kissing his 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

Starting point is 02:05:47 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

Starting point is 02:06:49 grasses with long human fingers beckoned him to the unknown which is always terrible while great ever-moving tumbleweed 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 quantity more terrible than the bugaboo of the shadows in 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 prairies stretched indefinitely to the rim of the starlit dome billowy with long gray grass is 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?

Starting point is 02:07:58 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,

Starting point is 02:08:25 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?

Starting point is 02:09:00 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.

Starting point is 02:09:34 End of Chapter 15, recording by Roger Maline. Chapter 16 of the Way of the Wind by Zoe Anderson Norris. This Librovoc's recording is in the public domain. Recording by Roger Maline. Chapter 16 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.

Starting point is 02:10:16 It was March now, and the winds blew with the fierceness of tornadoes. but the laughter of charlie's delirium outvoiced the winds now he moaned with them and sighed cyclona took up her abode at the dug-out now nursing him tirelessly while seth walked the floor back and forth back and forth like some caged and helpless animal writhing in pain for from the first he had read death in the face of the child the wind lulled and seth knelt by his bed side, his ear against Charlie's heart, listening for his breathing, cyclona standing fearfully by, her face white as the coverings. After a long time, Seth raised beseeching eyes to her in an unspoken question, does he breathe? As if he had heard, Charlie suddenly opened his eyes and looked smilingly first at one and then at the other of these two who had encompassed his short life, about with such loving care.

Starting point is 02:11:24 Listen, he whispered, to the wind. The wind had risen. It howled like some mad thing. It blew great blasts, ferocious blasts, and deafening. It was as if it too were hurt. It was as if it too suffered the agony of mortal pain and sympathy with the child. Soon the child began to lisp, and they bowed. bent their heads to listen.

Starting point is 02:11:54 I am going out in the wind again, he said, to find my mother. Charlie, cried Seth, in a voice whose anguish sounded high above the winds, stay! It is we who love you, Cyclona and I. Stay with us! Cyclona knelt and laid her brown hand across the beautiful eyelids of the child for a little while. then she took seth's head and pillowing it upon her bosom rocked gently back and forth as they knelt alone on the hard cold earth of the dug-out floor it doesn't matter now she whispered to him he knows end of chapter sixteen recording by roger maline chapter seventeen of the way of the wind by zoie anderson norris this librivox recording is in the public

Starting point is 02:12:58 domain. Recording by Roger Maline. Chapter 17. The days are long in the desert. Sometimes they seem to be endless. When the wind would permit, Seth endeavored to find comfort in digging in the soil into which we must all descend, in getting near to it, in plowing it, often with apparent aimlessness, never being able to count upon the harvest, but buoying up his soul with hope of the yield. But there were days of wind and rain and sleet and cold stormy weather when all animals of the desert, whether human or four-footed, were glad to seek their holes on the ground and stay there. These days Seth spent in building the beautiful house. He sat before the dim half-window,

Starting point is 02:13:51 drawing the plan, cyclona beside him, watching him. Sometimes he called her cyclona, and then again he called her Charlie, for what with his grief and the wail of the wind, his mind had become momentarily dazed. Full well, Cyclona knew the story of the magic city, having heard it again and again, but it was only of late when Seth had given up all hope of Celia's returning to the dugout that he commenced to plan the beautiful house. When the wise men come out of the east, Seth told her, and buy up our land for the magic city, we shall be rich.

Starting point is 02:14:31 It is then that I shall build this beautiful house, so beautiful that she must come and live in it with us. Cyclona leaned over the table on her elbows, looking at the plan. Her dark eyes were sad, for she knew that by us, Seth meant Charlie and himself. He ran his pencil over the plan, showing how the beautiful house was to be built.

Starting point is 02:14:58 Somewhat after the fashion of a southern house modernized. A southern woman, he explained, must live in a house which would remind her of her home and still be so beautiful that not for one instant would she regret that home or the land of her birth which she had left for it. A species of insanity it is, he muttered, to bring such a woman to a hole in the ground. he bit his lip and frowned for there are women in whom the love of home of country is paramount above all human things above husband above children she loves her home child celia has no child cyclona has no one written to celia that she has no child this wildly his eyes insanely bright it is just a child as well, soothed Cyclona. It doesn't matter. She never knew him. It seemed to Cyclona that she

Starting point is 02:16:02 could see the lonely resting place of the child reflected in Seth's eyes, so firmly was his mind fixed upon it. "'You are right, Cyclona,' he said by and by. "'You are right. It is just as well. It might grieve her, although it is, as you say, she never knew him.' a line of the plan of the beautiful house. Tell me about it, she said. It is her nature, insisted Seth, almost fiercely, and we can no more change our nature, the instinct that is born in us, that is inherited,

Starting point is 02:16:41 than we can change the place of our birth. Can we teach the fish to fly, or the bird to swim, or the blind mold to live above the cool, soft earth, in which centuries of ancestral moles have delighted to borrow, then no more can you teach a woman in whom the love of country is paramount to love another country? Only by the gentlest measures may you wean her from it, only by giving her in this strange new country something more beautiful

Starting point is 02:17:12 than any other thing she has ever known. And that, he finished, is why I am going to build a beautiful house. He fell to dreaming audibly. All of these were of costly stones, according to the measure of huge stones, sawed with saws within and without, he muttered, even from the foundation upon the copen,

Starting point is 02:17:38 and so on the outside toward the great court. Cyclona reached up, took down from a shelf a well-thumbed book, which, since books are scarce on the desert, both knew by heart, and opened it at the Book of Kings. Seth, she said, presently, touching him on the shoulder, "'Aren't you getting this house mixed up with the house of the Lord?' "'No,' smiled Seth,

Starting point is 02:18:07 "'with the house that Solomon built for Pharaoh's daughter whom he had taken to wife.' He went on softly, "'and the foundation was of costly stones, even great stones, even great stones, stones of ten cubits, and stones of eight cubits, and above were costly stone, after the measure of hewed stones and cedars. "'Seth,' said Cyclona, to whom no dream was too fanciful, "'are you going to build this house just like that one?' "'If I could, I would,' Seth made reply,

Starting point is 02:18:43 and then went on dreaming his dream aloud. and he made the pillars and the two rows around about upon the network to cover the chapiters that were upon the top with pomegranates and so did he for the other chapter and the chapiters that were upon the tip of the pillars were of lily work in the porch for cubits lily work he lingered over the words smiling at the musical poetry after a while he began again to talk of the beautiful house which should have every improvement, a marble bath. And it was a hand-bred thick, interrupted Cyclona, and the brim thereof was wrought like the brim of a cup, with flowers of lilies. It contained two thousand baths.

Starting point is 02:19:36 If you could, would you build her a bath like that, Seth? she questioned. I would, replied Seth. And as for the lights, there were windows in three rows red cyclona and light was against light in three ranks lights exclaimed seth little electric lights tricked out with fancy globes of rose color matching the roses in her cheeks he dropped his pencil and gazed ahead of him do you know he asked dreamily how i shall match that rose color of her cheek not having her by i shall take the inner petal of her rose and make the little lights the color of that cyclona arose and walked over to a bit of glass that hung on the wall she frowned at the reflection of her brown cheek there a tender and delicate and deletka like it rose underlay the brown, but her eyes saw no beauty in it. She sighed as she came back, and once more sat down. "'I shall have the beautiful house agleam with lights,' went on,

Starting point is 02:20:51 Seth, who had failed to notice the interruption. Lights at the sight of which Solomon would have stood aghast, that splendid old aristocrat, whose most magnificent temples were dimly lit by candles. Windows in three rows. Windows in a dozen rows, out of which her blue eyes shall look on smooth green swads and flowers. The house shall gleam a light with windows. There shall be no dark spot in it.

Starting point is 02:21:25 Windowless houses offer creatures of a clay less fine than hers, repeated tenderly, of less fine clay. she is a being created to bask in the sunshine she shall bask in it these windows shall be thrown wide open to the sun upstairs and down not a speck nor spot shall maw their cleanliness lest a ray of light escape those who live in darkness wilt within and without she shall not live in darkness never again never again shall she live in a whole in the ground. After a time, "'Is it possible?' he mused, half to himself, half to Cyclona, "'to build a house without a cella?' "'I don't know,' said Cyclona, whose knowledge of houses was limited to her own,

Starting point is 02:22:23 whose roof was still upside down, and dugouts. "'If I could build this house without a cella,' said Seth, I would. Cyclona again read from the book. It stood upon twelve oxen, she read, three looking toward the north, and three looking toward the west, and three looking toward the south,

Starting point is 02:22:49 and three looking toward the east. Why not stand it on oxen like that, Seth? she questioned. Seth laughed. That wasn't the house, said he. that was the molten sea. Oh! exclaimed Cyclona. I know now. The foundation was of stone made ready

Starting point is 02:23:12 before they were brought hither, costly stones, great stones. It must have a foundation of some sort, she argued, keeping her finger on the place as she looked up, or it will blow away. Of course, assented Seth, or it will blow away. Well, if it must, it must.

Starting point is 02:23:36 But we will put half windows into that cella so it won't be dark, so it won't be like this, a hole in the ground. We will light it with electrics. But we won't talk of the cella. That saddens me. I am tired of living in the hole in the ground myself sometimes. We will talk of the beautiful rooms above ground

Starting point is 02:23:59 that we will build for her. Look! You enter a wide door whose threshold her little feet will press. She will trail up this stairway. And he let his pencil linger lovingly over the place,

Starting point is 02:24:15 in her silks and velvets, followed by her maids. And there on the second landing she will find palms and the flowers she loves best, and her own white room with its bed of gold covered with lace,

Starting point is 02:24:29 so delicate delicate as she is soft filmy lace fit for a princess for that is what she is there will be bits of spindle-legged golden furniture about in this white bedroom of hers and peer-glasses that will make a dozen of her that will make twenty of her we will arrange it so for there cannot be too many reflections can there of so gracious and lovely a princess Once more, Cyclona tapped him on the shoulder. "'Seth,' said she, "'where is the room for the prince?' Seth looked up at her vacantly. It was some time before he answered. Then his answer showed vagueness,

Starting point is 02:25:18 for what with the howl of the wind and the eternal presence in the closet of his soul of the skeleton of despair, his mind had become a little erratic at times. when the prince has proven himself worthy to be the prince consort of so wonderful a princess he replied then he too may come and live in the beautiful house but not until then his thoughts harked back to the cellar staring ahead of him he saw the slight figure of a woman silhouetted against the tender pearl of the evening sky eyes staring affrightedly into the darkened door of a dug-out a fluffer of yellow hair like a halo about the beautiful face. A cella is a hole in the ground, he sighed.

Starting point is 02:26:08 A cella is a hole in the ground. There shall be nothing about this house I shall build for the princess in any way resembling a hole in the ground. Holes in the ground are for wolves and prairie dogs and... And us, Cyclona finished grimly, then smiled. Seth, drawing himself up, gazed at her. In her own wild way, Cyclona had grown to be beautiful,

Starting point is 02:26:37 still brown as a gypsy, but large of eye and red of lip. She might have passed for a type of creole, or a study in bronze, as she faced him with that little smile of defiance on her red lips. Too beautiful she was for a dugout, true, and yet the dusky brownish gray of the earth-colored walls served in a way to set off her rich dark coloring. Seth returned to the plan.

Starting point is 02:27:08 "'And for us,' he assented, humbly. "'We must build it of stone,' he continued. "'White stone. "'Stone never blows away. "'It will be finished, too, with the finest of wood, covered. "'Wait!' cried Scy. cyclona, turning over the leaves of the book. And he built the walls of the house with boards of cedar,

Starting point is 02:27:33 both the floor of the house and the walls of the ceiling. And he covered them on the inside with wood and covered the floor of the house with planks of fur. Cedar, nodded Seth. It would be well to build it of cedar. The ceda is a southern tree. It would remind her of home. We will finish it then with seed

Starting point is 02:27:57 and polish it so well that like the mirrors it will reflect her face as she walks about. Here will be the music room. It shall have a piano made of the same rich wood. It will look as if it were built in the house. There shall be guitars and mandolins. She plays the guitar,

Starting point is 02:28:19 Little Cyclona, the princess. You should see her small, white hands as she fingers the strings. I will have a low die van of many cushions here by the window of the music room. She shall sit here in her beautiful gown of silk. White silk, for white becomes her best. Her beauty is so dainty. She shall sit here in her white silk gown and play and play, and sing those southern songs of hers that are so full of music. He dropped his pencil and sat very still for a space, looking ahead of him out of the window. The panorama, framed by its limited sash of willful winds playing havoc with the clouds,

Starting point is 02:29:08 became obliterated by the picture of her, sitting by a wide and sunny window, backed by those gay pillows, thrumming with slim white, fingers on the guitar and singing. Again Cyclona waked him from his daydream with a touch. He ran his fingers through his hair, staring at her. "'Is that you, Charlie?' he asked her. "'Not Charlie,' she answered. "'Cyclona.' "'I beg your pardon,' he said.

Starting point is 02:29:42 "'Very often now, you seem to me to be Charlie. I don't know why. Why? Tell me more about the princess, soothed Cyclona. Is she so beautiful? Beautiful, echoed Seth. She is fit for any palace, she is so beautiful. And when the wise men come out of the east, we will build it for her. It shall have gold doorknobs and jeweled ornaments, and rare birds of gay plumage to sing and keep her company, and painted ceilings and little cupids carved in marble, and there shall be graven images set on onyx pedestals, and some curious Hindu gods squatting, and a Turkish room of red lights dimmed by little carved lanterns,

Starting point is 02:30:34 and rich rare rugs, and pictures by great masters in gilded frames, and walls lined with the book she loves best in royal bindings. And she shall have servants to wait upon her and do her bidding, and we will send to Paris for her gowns, and her bonnets and her wraps. And she shall have carriages and coachmen and footmen. A Victoria, I think I shall order for her, very elegant, lined with blue to match her eyes. No, that would be too light.

Starting point is 02:31:11 Her eyes are beautiful, Cyclona. Don't think for a moment that they are not. But can you understand, I wonder, how eyes can be very beautiful, and yet of a cold and steely blue that sometimes freezes the blood in your veins? A little too light, perhaps, and that gives them the look of clear, cold-cut steel. I shall have the linings of her victoria light, but not quite so light, a little darker and warmer, perhaps, the footman with the livery to mat. that goes without saying and she shall have outriders too if she likes as in the olden time back there at home in the south

Starting point is 02:31:58 no grand dame of the old and splendid south she loves so well shall be so grand as she shall be so splendid as she when we shall have finished the beautiful house for her cyclona wildly how could we expect a little delicate frail southern woman to come and live in a hole in the ground how could we why shouldn't she hate the wind ah we must still the winds we must still the winds but how at this seth was wont to rise to walk the circumscribed length of his miserable dwelling and to worry his soul. How shall we still the winds, he would moan? How shall we still the winds that the sound of them shall not disturb her? After a long time of thinking, Scyclona, he concluded,

Starting point is 02:32:59 in some countries they move forests, don't they? Have I read that or dreamed it? If only we could move a forest or two onto these vast prairies, that would still the winds. Tall trees penetrate in the skies would be impassable barriers to the terrible winds that have full sweep as it is. They would still the winds, those forests, if we could move them. Cyclone's heart was full at this, for Seth was far from sane, alas, when he talked of moving forests of trees to the barren prairies. The idea at last struck him as preposterous.

Starting point is 02:33:45 We will build tall trees, he continued quickly, as if to cover the tracks of his mistakes. We will build trees that will take root in the night and spring up before morning. Trees that will grow and grow and grow. Magic trees growing so quickly in the lush black soil of the prairie, once we get them started, the soil so needs. of the underground streams by the rivers here that the angels would look down in wonderment. They would, to see how quickly they would grow. Such trees would temper the winds that blow so now, because they have full sweep, because there is nothing to stop them. Winds, like everything else,

Starting point is 02:34:33 are amenable to control, if you only know how to control them. These tall trees will not only break the force of the winds, but they will shade her beautiful face as she drives about. They will shut off the too ardent sun that would wish to kiss her. Now and again Cyclona grew a trifle impatient of this beautiful creature, whose character she knew, whose child she had cared for and helped to bury, grew a trifle tired of hearing hymns sung in her praise. "'Where is she now?' she asked listlessly, knowing full well, merely to continue if the talk pleased him, tired as she was. "'Charlie!' smiled Seth, and never once did Cyclona correct him when he called her Charlie,

Starting point is 02:35:27 reasoning that perhaps the spirit of the child was near him, since there were those who believed that, and it was comforting. She is like the flowers, that beautiful one. She knows better than to bloom in this godforsaken country, that was what she called it, where you can't get the flowers to bloom because of the wind that is forever blowing. She lives now where the flowers bloom

Starting point is 02:35:54 and the wind never blows. Cyclona lifted her head to listen to the moan and the sow of the wind. I love it, she said. said. "'So do I,' said Seth, "'though sometimes I am half afraid of it, "'thinking it is getting into my brain, "'but she hated it. "'But never mind.

Starting point is 02:36:17 "'When we grow tall trees, "'that will break the force of the wind, "'and shade her from the sun, "'and build the beautiful house for her. "'She will come back home and live in it with us, "'and we shall be happy, happy. "'We shall forget all our sons, sorrow, we shall be so happy. At that moment, the moment of the going down of the sun,

Starting point is 02:36:41 the wind dropped, and the passing clouds let in the gleam of the sunset at the window. It rested goldenly on Seth's face. It illumined it. It glorified it. Cyclona looked at him long and earnestly, at the strong, fine lines of sadness brought beautifully out by this unexpected highlight of the sky. accentuated, Rembrandt-like, against the darkness of the earth-colored, hole in the ground. Then she bent her sun-burnt head, and a tear fell on her hand outstretched upon the table. At sight of the tear, Seth was like a man who is all at once drunk with new wine. There is truth in the wine.

Starting point is 02:37:28 There are times when it clears the brain for the moment and reveals things as they are. he looked at cyclona with new eyes it was as if he had never before seen her she differed from celia as the wild rose differs from the rose that blooms in hothouses and yet how beautiful she was he realized for the first time her wonderful beauty so olive of complexion with a delicate tinge of rose showing through so bronze of hair and close-cut sun-kissed curls the little curls that gave her a boyish look in spite of the fact that she had blossomed into radiant womanhood the big brown eyes the curve of the neck the little tip-tilted chin seth had been hardly human if the thought of forgetting celia and her indifference in cyclona's arms had not more than once presented itself it presented itself now with the strength of strong winds without home or kindred without tie or connection she was a flower in his pathway he had only to reach out and pluck her and wear her on his heart there were none to gainsay him no mortal lived who dared defend her or say nay why waste his life then in dreams and fantasies in regrets and hopings when here lay a glowing breathing, living reality. He reached out his hand and caught hers in a firm, compelling

Starting point is 02:39:10 grasp. A splendid creature sent to comfort him. A creature blown by the winds of heaven to his threshold. A dear, defenseless thing without home or kindred, unprotected, uncared of, weak and in need of affection, in dire need of love. Helpless. unshielded unguarded unprotected unguarded uncared for seth frowned the wind had wafted itself into his brain again he was growing dazed he caught his hand away from cyclone's he thrust his fingers through his hair he pressed them over his eyes these strange words persisted in piling themselves solidly between him and his desire they formed a barrier stronger than walls of brick or mortar unprotected defenseless unguarded uncared for this girl who had rocked his child and celia's in her arms who had held him close to the warmth of her young bosom this beautiful unprotected girl who had tenderly closed the eyes of his child the fragile barrier built by unseen hands was cloud high now in the wraith of cyclona had occupied the chair there by his side she could scarcely have been further removed from his embrace

Starting point is 02:40:49 humbly seth bent over the small brown hand reverently he kissed away the tear end of chapter seventeen recording by roger maline chapter eighteen of the way of the wind by zoie anderson norris this libervox recording is in the public domain recording by roger maline chapter eighteen but the moons waxed and waned and the moon's wanes and waned and the moon's waxed and the moon's waxed and the moon's months lapsed into years, and Seth grew hopeless, more and more hopeless, so hopeless that at last he began to lose faith in the magic city, and to fear for the realization of his fantastic will-of-the-wisp of a beautiful house. Would the wise men never come out of the east to buy up his land and build that magnificent city of his dreams at the forks of the river, where the cyclones never came, so that he could build his beautiful house for Celia? Or would they always stop just short of it?

Starting point is 02:42:04 Already that little town on the edge of the state called Kansas City, because it was in Missouri, had boomed itself into a city and, being just outside the cyclone belt, had not been blown away. In spite of the fact that it had been set high on a hill, it had not been blown away. The wise men had built that town, also there was another town they had built within the belt which promised to thrive a town where the people had so arranged it that the coming of a cyclone could be telegraphed to them where signs like this were posted a cyclone do at three o'clock and they had ample time to shut up shop and school and prepare for it going down into their cyclone cellars shutting fast the doors and staying there until it was over true a cyclone or two had grazed this town one had even taken off a wing but though a trifle disabled by each it had continued to thrive

Starting point is 02:43:10 showing such evident and robust signs of life and strength that the cyclones presently giving up in despair of making a wreck of it had gone on by as seth had said they would do once they found their master then this town had been by way of premium for stanchness and courage made the capital of this state of tornadoes and whirlwinds but this was as far as it went or seemed to intend to go further south and west an attempt or two had been made to plant towns but their cellars had not been dug deep enough or their foundations had not been sufficiently firm or the cyclones had not yet become reconciled to the side of them at any rate the cyclones had come along and swept them away without a word of warning and they had not been heard of since neither cyclone nor town and so altogether seth lost heart and came to the conclusion that his magic city if it was ever to be built would be built after his time and he would never have the happiness of gazing upon it the hope of seeing it was all that had kept him in the west now that he had lost it an uncontrollable longing came over him to go back home to see the wife who had deserted him throw himself at her feet and beg her forgiveness for his madness which had resulted in their separation from dreaming dreams of the magic city he took to dreaming dreams of her it was years since he had seen her but the absence of her like the dead, remain unchanged to us.

Starting point is 02:44:53 To him she was the same as when last he saw her. How beautiful she had been with her great blue eyes and her hair the color of Charlie's, tawny like sunshine, and right too in her scorn of his visions. And how foolish he had been to dream of training the wind-blown west into a fit place for human beings to inhabit,

Starting point is 02:45:17 or for great cities to be built, it would take a stronger hand than his to do that he had come to believe it would take the hand of god he had tried to find a tree that would grow so swiftly that the wind could have no effect upon it he had planted slim switches of one kind after another and the wind had blown each to leaflessness until now there stood a slim row of cottonwoods that he had tried as a last resort but the same thing would happen to them perhaps he had lost faith in trees but he would not say yet that he had lost faith in god he watched the same train trailing so far away as to seem a toy train and longed as she had done to take it and go back home at last he understood the look in her eyes as she watched it and the thoughts that enthralled her sometimes when we strive for a thing and set our hearts on it it holds itself aloof from us when we cease to strive it comes but that is among the many strange ways of providence which seems to rule us blindly but which is not so blind perhaps after all as it seems another of its ways most incomprehensible is to bring us what we have longed for a little too late sometimes but this is the story of seth and this is the way of its happening it was early in a mild and beautiful spring when the corn was young it stood shoulder high lusty and strong and green

Starting point is 02:47:00 what with the unwonted mildness of the weather and the absence of the usual storms and the proneness of the clouds to deposit themselves about in gentle showers the crop promised fair to rival any crop that seth had ever raised on the kansas prairies he hoed and toiled and smiled and listened to the rustling of the corn for he had made up his mind when the harvest was at an end he would sell the crop and the place for what it would bring and go back home he would go back to his wife and home the rustling of the corn was music in his ears it was more it was like the glad hand of young love for with the crop so fine and the harvest so rich when he went back home to her he would not go empty-handed and unwelcome he was going back once more to his kentucky home no hills seemed so green as those kentucky hills and no skies so blue as those skies that vaulted o'clock above the green, green hills of his native land. It had been longer than he cared to count since he had seen the blue grass waving about in the wind there, not such wind as swept the Kansas prairies,

Starting point is 02:48:20 but gentle zephyrs, almost breathless, that rustled softly and musically through the little blades of grass, just as the wind was rustling through the stalks now, as he walked slowly with a heavy stride of the clumsy farmer, hoeing the corn. And he had not heard the whipper will, nor sat under the shade of the widespreading oaks, nor listened to the soft southern talk of his and her people,

Starting point is 02:48:47 not since he had come to Kansas with those other foolish folk to brave the dangers of the strange new country in the search of homes. Holmes! He could point out the graves of some of them, here and there about the vastness of the level prairies, though more often he wandered across the vast level wastes, looking for the places where they should be and found them not, because of the buffaloes that had long ago trampled out the shape of them,

Starting point is 02:49:16 or because of the corn that had been planted in furrows above their mounds, the serried ranks through which the winds sang requiems, chanting, whispering, moaning and sighing in the balmy springtime, and through the heat of the long summer days, until in the chill of autumn the farmers cut the stocks and stacked them evenly, leaving no dangling leaves to sigh through

Starting point is 02:49:42 nor tassels to flout. Now that he had made up his mind, the roughness of his life bore in upon him. He thought with Celia that it would be good to live again in a land where people led soft, easy lives. She was not to be blamed. She was right with that strange animal instinct

Starting point is 02:50:02 which lead some women blindly to the truth, and he had wasted the best years of his life, and all of the boys, in this terrible land of whirlwinds and coyotes, and wide, thirsty plains, stretching to meet the blazing skies of noon day, or the star-gemmed dome of the purple night? For the plains, in some strange and mysterious way,

Starting point is 02:50:27 took vengeance upon many of those who dared upturn with hoe and plow, the fresh new malarial soil, inserting germs of disease and death which soon stretched them beneath. Some lives must invariably be sacrificed to the upbuilding of any new country, but why so many? And sadder still, mines had been sacrificed. The asylums, such as they were, were filled with those whose minds in the ghastly loneliness of the desert had been torn and turned and twisted by the incessant whirl and sure and swish and force of the pitiless winds. He himself loved the wind, but there were times when he was afraid of it, when it got in his brain and whirled and caused him to see things in strange lights,

Starting point is 02:51:18 and weird things fantastically colored, kaleidoscopic and upside down. When the day's work was done, he sat outside the day's work. the dugout talking, sometimes to himself, sometimes to Cyclona, telling of how, when the harvest was over and gathered, he would go back home. His plan must succeed, he sighed, to himself, sometimes, sometimes to Cyclona, who would sit listening, her great eyes on the limit of the horizon, deep, dark, troubled as she brooded upon what her life would be when he was gone, and as he talked he panted in the deep earnestness of his insistence that the crops must succeed. Other plans had failed, but not this, not this, it must not.

Starting point is 02:52:12 Resolutely, he put away from him all thought of failure. It must succeed. He must go home. He must ease this longing for the sight of Celia and her people, which had come to him of late to stay with him through seed time and harvest, through the early spring when the corn was young, and later when it rose to heights unheard of, and later still, through those bitter days of grasshoppers and chinch-bugs and hot winds and other blightful things that haunt the Kansas cornfield to their ruin.

Starting point is 02:52:49 He must go home. End of Chapter 18 recording by Roger Maline Chapter 19 of the Way of the Wind by Zoe Anderson Norris This Libervox recording is in the public domain Recording by Roger Maline Chapter 19 Since Seth had braved everything and dared everything

Starting point is 02:53:24 Going so far even as to hire harvest hands to help him Taking every possible chance upon the yield of this harvest as a gambler stakes his all upon the last throw of the dice, fortune seemed at last to come his way, and it promised a yield which eclipsed his wildest dreaming. His heart grew light as he listened to the rustling of the corn, and into his tired eyes, beginning to be old, there crept so warm aglow that the farmhand stood and stared at him

Starting point is 02:53:57 as they came trooping in hot and dusty from the fields. They wondered what could have come over him to give to this worn and faded face so nearly the look of youth. The corn is fine, John, isn't it? He asked of a gray-haired man, who sat at one corner of the rough table, mopping his forehead with a large bandana handkerchief, not too clean. John put the handkerchief back into his pocket and fell upon the meal Seth set before him. It's fine enough. said he.

Starting point is 02:54:34 It'll be the finest crop ever raised in these here parts if the hot winds don't come. After a little while, he said again, If the hot winds don't come. Seth set a plate of bread down by him with a crash. The hot wins, he cried. The hot wins! Man as he was, he clasped his hands together and caught them apart, wringing them. i had forgotten all about the hot winds he moaned i had forgotten all about the hot winds the softness of the spring air gave place to heat to extreme heat sudden and blighting

Starting point is 02:55:19 a copper sun blazed in a copper sky the cooling breezes under the influence of the heat changed to scorching winds these winds blew menacingly through the rustling stars of the strong green corn. For one long day they laughed defiance, holding firmly erect their brave heads upon which the yellow tassels were beginning to thrust themselves aloft in sulk and beauty, and Seth, watching, braced himself with the hope that they would somehow stand the ordeal, that the heat might abate, that in some way, by the special finger of Providence, perhaps, the threatened ruin might be warded off, that a cooling breeze might come blowing up from the Gulf,

Starting point is 02:56:08 or a shower might fall, and he could still go back home. On the second day the heat had not abated. It had rather increased. The burning winds blew stronger. They raged with a sudden fury, died down to a whisper, and raged again. John, when he led the field hands in, shook his head and took his place at the table in silence. Seth, setting their meal before them, crept to the door and looked out. He turned faint and sick at heart at the side of the fields, for the tassels had drooped, and the broad green leaves were slowly changing to a parched and withered brown,

Starting point is 02:56:54 parched and withered as his face, which had been bared to the heat of the Kansas prairies for so many years. Parched and withered as his heart, which had borne the brunt of sadness and sorrow and separation until the climax was reached and it could bear no more. On the third day the hot winds grew vengeful. They swept across the prairies with a hissing sound, as of flames sizzling through the sea. the heat of a furnace. The tassels, burnt now to a dingy brown, hung in wisps. The leaves drooped like tired arms. They no longer sang in the wind. They rattled, a hoarse, harsh, rattle promontory of death. Far and near the fields lay scorched, withered, burnt to a crisp, as if by the fast and furious blast

Starting point is 02:57:52 of a raging prairie fire. There was no longer need of harvest hands. The harvest, gathered by the hot winds, was ended. The ruin was complete. Their mission accomplished, the winds died down suddenly as they had risen and passed away across the barren prairies in a sigh. Then up came the cooling breezes from the Gulf,

Starting point is 02:58:20 light, Zephyry cloud, gathered, shut off the brazen sunlight, and burst into a grateful shower, which descended upon the parched and deadened fields of corn. But Seth! Flung on his knees by the side of the bed in the corner of the hole in the ground, his face buried in his arms, he listened to the patter of those raindrops on the corn. His eyes were dry, but a spring had broken somewhere near the region of his heart. He owned himself, defeated. He gave up the fight.

Starting point is 02:59:00 End of Chapter 19. Recording by Roger Maline. Chapter 20 of the Way of the Wind by Zoe Anderson Norris. This Libervox recording is in the public domain. Recording by Roger Maline. Chapter 20 Cyclona had gone to Seth's dugout, and found a note from him on the table.

Starting point is 02:59:30 It contained few words, but they held a world of meaning, simple words and few, tolling her knell of doom. I have gone to Celia, it read. Cyclona crushed the paper, flung it to the floor, and ran from the hole in the ground,

Starting point is 02:59:50 afraid of she knew not what, engulfed in the awful fear which encompasses the hopeless. The fear, of herself. She sprang to her saddle and urged her Bronco on with heel and whip, upright as an Indian in her saddle, her face set expressionless, in its marble-like immobility. She scarcely heated the direction she took. She left that to her bronco, who sped into the heat of the dusty daylight, following hard in the footsteps of the wind. What she wished to do was to go straight

Starting point is 03:00:26 to God, to stand before him and ask him questions. If within us earthworms there is the divine spark of the deity, if we are in truth his sons and daughters, she reasoned, then we have some rights that this deity is bound to respect. What earthly father would knowingly permit his children to stumble blindly along dangerous pathways into dangerous places? What earthly father would demand that his children? rush headlong into danger unquestioningly.

Starting point is 03:01:01 What earthly father would create hearts only to crush them? Why had he thrust human beings onto this earth against their will, without their volition, to suffer the tortures of the damned? Why had he created this huge joke of an animal, part body, part soul, all nerves keen to catch at suffering, only to laugh at it? why had he taken the pains to fashion this opera buffet of a world at all why had he made of it a slate upon which to draw lines of human beings then wipe them aimlessly off as would any child for mere amusement after the manner of children if not then why why why why she could have screamed out this why into the way of the wind She wanted to ask him why he whirled body-clad souls out of the nowhere,

Starting point is 03:02:01 dragged them by the hair of their heads through ways thronged with thorns, then thrust them back again into the nowhere, to lie stone still in their chill-damp graves, in their straight grave clothes, awaiting his pleasure? Why had he seen fit to fashion some all-body and no soul? Why had he made others all-soul? why had he created the seths to weary for love of the celia's and the cyclones to eat out their hearts for love of the seths some of these questions she had been wont to put to seth who had answered them as best he could in his patient way there was a hidden meaning in it all he had said meaningless as it often seemed some meaning that would show itself in god's good time

Starting point is 03:02:54 we are uncut diamonds was one of his explanations we had much need of polishing before we could attain sufficient brilliancy to adorn a crown we must have faith and hope he had said much faith and hope and patience and above all we must have the belief that it would all come out in the great white wash of eternity in god's good time but there were those who succumbed before god's good time who would never know the explanation until they had passed into the beyond where they would cease to care she rode on and on asking herself these questions and finding no answer in the whirl and eddy of dust blown at her by the wind in the limitless stretch of prairie in the suffocating thickness of heat which enveloped the way of the wind intense heat sultry parching enervating sure precursor if she had thought to remember if she had been less engrossed in the bitterness of her questions of a storm soon aroused by the intensity of this heat which burned like the blast from an oven she whirled about and turned her bronco's head the other way it was time for that way lay her home and danger threatened her home and danger threatened her it. At the moment of her turning, a blast blew with trumpet-like warning into the day, blazing redly like a fire of logs quickened by panting breaths. A lurid light,

Starting point is 03:04:35 like the light of judgment day or the wrath of God, spread while she looked. It enveloped her. It was as if she gazed upon earth and sky through a bit of bright, red-stained glass. In the southern skies, in the direction of her home, clouds piled high, black, threatening. Then she heard a rushing sound of wind, wailing, moaning, threshing, roaring sullenly in the distance. She spurred her bronco into the darkness lit by flashes of this lurid light, a flash of light. Then darkness, thick as purple velvet. furiously she urged the animal forward into this horrible unknown which had the look of the wrath of god come upon her for her doubting pressed on by an innate feeling of affection for those who had befriended her hurrying to their aid spurred by an instinctive foreboding of impending evil in this awful roaring whirling murderous sound of the wild winds gone suddenly stark mad

Starting point is 03:05:46 as she sped on something swept past her with a great hoarse roar distinguishable above the deafening roar of the wind it was seth's herd stampeding running with the wind and bellowing with fear she winged her way into the terror of the darkness ready an hour before for death in any form she now all at once found herself panting with fear of it gasping with a deadly fear of a ghastly fate of being crushed and mangled of dying by inches beneath some horrible weight but this did not deter her afraid to breathe a prayer to the god whom she had dared to question she winged her way breathlessly on and on then sheets of water as if the skies had opened and emptied themselves and a vivid flash of lightning revealing the wind's wet wings its wild whirling fingers dripping cyclona saw it coming in that flash a fiendish thing apparently alive copper-colored funnel-shaped ghastly she threw herself forward on the neck of her bowelshed bronco, grasping his mane. Then a blow from a great unseen hand out of the darkness struck them both, felling them. During the next few minutes of inky blackness, of indescribable terror, of flying missiles armed with death, cyclona lay unconscious. When she opened her eyes,

Starting point is 03:07:25 a calm light of the evenness of twilight had spread over the track of the cyclone, and her head lay pillowed on Hugh Walsingham's shoulder. Close beside her was a ragged bow and her bronco lay dead nearby. The bow was the hand that had struck them out of the darkness, had thrown her to the sod and killed her animal. I came very near, she sighed, to standing before God. By and by with Walsingham's help, she stood. Where is the house? she asked, bewildered by the barrenness of the spot on which the

Starting point is 03:08:06 Topsy-Turvy house had stood for so many years. It is gone, said he. Cyclona pressed both hands to her face and rocked back and forth, sobbing. God had spared her, true, but he had offered her this delicate irony of leaving her homeless. Hugh looked moodily out over the place. of the topsy-turvy house, his own mind a whirl with the maddening force of the furious winds through which he had passed. In Kansas, said he grimly, it is the wind that giveth and the wind that taketh away. Then, looking tenderly at the girl

Starting point is 03:08:51 in his arms, he added softly, "'Blessid be the name of the wind!' End of Chapter 20. Recording by Roger Malene. chapter twenty one of the way of the wind by zoie anderson norris this libervox recording is in the public domain recording by roger maline chapter twenty one thereafter at station after station a tall gaunt man may have been seen handling baggage running errands caring for the cattle doing any sort of work no matter how humble that lay to his hand making his way slowly wearily but steadily on toward the south seth working his way home to celia he slept in baggage cars on cattle trains he swung to steps of trains moved off and clung there between brief stations he stopped over at small towns and earned his bread at odd jobs bread and sufficient money sometimes to move on steadily for a day day or two. Strange weather's burned and bit him. He walked heavily in the path of the wind overhung by pale clouds. He slept under the stars out in the open. It was days before he passed the plains,

Starting point is 03:10:29 the place of the sleepless winds where wan white skies bent above the grass of the hot, dry pulse, the lifeless grass that wailed into the ceaseless wind, its dirge of death and decay, it was weeks before he reached kansas city the city of hills with lights hung high and lights hung low here he found a place as brakeman and worked his way into missouri here it was as if an ocean steamer had suddenly stopped the whir of its wheels at the approach of the pilot come out from shore to tug it in the wind had stopped blowing the position was only temporary another brakeman taking his place, Seth walked. He was not sorry to walk in this quiet land. How tenderly green the shrubbery was! How beautiful! Mingled with the darker green of the cedar and pine, the brown green of the cone. How sweet the slow green trees! Not wind-swept! Not torn by the wild wet fingers of the wind! Not lashed with hot and scathing fingers gone dry with drought.

Starting point is 03:11:42 but still and peaceful. A sleepy world of streams it was, a sleepy world of streams and sweet green trees, among whose leaflets gentle zephyrs breathed, scarcely perceptible sighs of pure contentment. Patiently, contentedly, he walked mile after mile through this beautiful Missouri, which was so like home,

Starting point is 03:12:08 among these tall, sighing trees, under the protection of their great still umbrella-like heads, thinking of his dream Celia, whom he was soon to see. The absence of the wind had left his brain clear. Since it was so short a time until his dream was to become a reality, no longing or heartache served to set his brain a fire with the agony of despair. Calmly he walked in the white straight rain among the tender trees, his tired brain clear, thinking of her.

Starting point is 03:12:43 How would she receive him? Surely, in spite of his empty-handedness, she would greet him lovingly because of their long separation and the death of the child. Surely she would receive him lovingly because of the endless days that had divided them. Those days! Those days! But he refused to let his mind dwell

Starting point is 03:13:07 in the deadly length of them. It might sadden again. In the world, he reasoned, there were those two only, Celia and himself. Should they not cling together? True, he would arrive empty-handed, but he could make a living for her and himself in the old town. He was not without friends there. There were those who had loved him in the olden time. They would give him work. They would help him build up his lost fortunes? He would spend his life in retrieving, in compensating to Celia for the foolish years that he had spent dreaming dreams. In St. Louis, he remained for weeks, working about the station in the effort to earn enough for his ride to Cincinnati. At length, he succeeded, but on an emigrant train. He rode for a day, looking out the window at the landscape swimming by, rather than

Starting point is 03:14:07 than at his wild-eyed companions, crowded together like sheep. At the end of the day, he arrived at Cincinnati. And then Seth came into God's country. End of Chapter 21. Recording by Roger Maline. Chapter 22 of the Way of the Wind by Zoe Anderson Norris. This Libervox recording is in the public domain. Recording by Roger Malene.

Starting point is 03:14:45 chapter twenty two for some months after celia's return to her native town her friends gathered gladly about her a little visit that was natural enough they welcomed her with open arms as the visit lengthened questions ensued the child what of him was he not very young to leave for such a length of time was not that a strong mother who could thus separate herself from a babe in arms who could deprive him of the warmth and comfort of her embrace and seth what of him for seth had many friends among them who knew his great heart and his worth how is it possible for her to remain apart from her husband and child so long contented in the soft and balmy climb in the land of her birth she told them of the terror of the winds, of the sun-baked prairie, of the plague of the grasshoppers, of the hot winds that blistered, of the scorch of the summons, of the withering blasts of summer and the freezing storms of winter, and thought that sufficient explanation until she beheld herself reflected in the coldness of their glances as in a mirror, set aloof outside their lives as a thing abnormal,

Starting point is 03:16:15 as a worthless instrument whose leading string is somehow out of tune, which has snapped with a discordant twang. However, this did not greatly distress her. She turned to her mother for companionship. The mother filled what small need she had of love until she died. She was soon followed, this mother of hers, into the land of shadows by the loving shadow of herself, Celia's black mammy.

Starting point is 03:16:45 then celia was left alone in the old house which for lack of funds was fast falling into ruin the wrinkled shingles of the roof letting in the rain in dismal drops to flood the cellar in the kitchen the grass growing desolately up between the bricks of the pavement that led from door to gate for lack of the tread of neighborly feet life which is never the same which is ever changing changes by degree not all at once did celia's soul shrivel but gradually now and again in the early days following upon her return to her home at the cry of a child in the street she would start to her feet then remember and shrug her shoulders and forget and there were some nights that were filled for her with the remembered moan of the prairie winds she heard them shriek and howl and whistle with all their old-time force and terror she sprang wildly out of bed and ran to the window to look out on the slumberous quiet of the southern night to clasp her hand and thank her good fortune that she looked not out on the wide weird waste of the trackless prairie gradually too she descended to poverty and that without complaint to poverty dire as that from which she had fled except that it was unaccompanied by the horror of simoon and blizzard of hot winds and cold for her this sufficed too proud to ask for help of those who passed her by in coldness as a soulless creature of a nature impossible to understand and therefore to be shunned, she toiled and delved alone, a recluse and outcast in the home of her birth.

Starting point is 03:18:43 She delved in the patch of a garden for the wherewithal to keep the poor roof over her head. She hoed and dug and drove hard bargains with the grocer's to whom she sold her meager products. She washed and ironed and mended and darned and cooked, coming at length perforce to the drudgery, which throughout her brief life in the hole in the ground she had scornfully disdained not once did the thought of asking help of seth or of returning to him present itself and yet there were tardy times when the memory of the winds remained with her day in and day out when at twilight she sat on the steps of her vine-covered crumbling portico and communed with herself when placing herself part she reviewed her life and observed herself with the critical eye of an uninterested outsider invariably then she would say to herself remembering the wail and shriek and moan of the hideous winds i would leave them again the winds and the child and him if it happened a second time and i again had the choice i would leave them exactly the same then aloud in apology for what had the look to her own biased eyes of utter heartlessness it was the fault of the winds she would mutter it was the fault of the winds end of chapter twenty two

Starting point is 03:20:22 recording by roger maline chapter twenty three of the way of the wind by zoie anderson norris this librivox recording is in the public domain recording by according by Roger Maline. Chapter 23. Kentucky! God's country. It was as if Seth had dropped out of a wind-blown cloud into a quiet garden, sweetly fenced about and away from the jar and fret of the world. Placid, content, tranquil, standing stock-still in the delicacy of its old-fashioned beauty,

Starting point is 03:21:06 as if the world outside and beyond had never progressed. he wandered by old and rich plantations carved by necessity into smaller farms past big white stone gates opening to wide avenues which led up to them looking wistfully in still content to wander a space before he should experience the rapture of seeing celia's face loitering the white happiness of that within his reach half fearing to hold out his hand for it fearing it might vanish escape phantasmagorically turn out to be will of the wisp whippoorwills accompanied him in his wanderings bob whites nightingales and lazy ebun negroes musical as birds sang lilty southern songs on the way to the tinkle of banjo and guitar the negroes were not so kind as the birds from them he suffered humiliation more than once he was dubbed poor white by some haughty ebbin creature from whose mouth he was supposedly taking the bread but here as in missouri he looked for consolation to the wet woods to the still soft straight rain to the sighing trees that softly sowed him welcome after weary days and nights working by day on rock pile or in field sleeping by night in the corner of a friendly fence of worm-eaten rails fanned by the delicate hair of the pale blue grasses he came to bergen the driver of the bus that conveyed passengers to herodzburg looked down upon him from the height of his

Starting point is 03:22:52 his perch. He was strange to Seth, but he recognized a something of the kinship of country in his face and manner. "'Have a lift!' he asked. Seth refused. It was bright daylight. He wished to steal into his old home under the covering of the twilight. He was so footsore and bedraggled. "'I'll walk,' he smiled, but thank you just the same. Four miles, then, over hill, down dale, past dusty undergrowth, the brilliant blue of the skies above him, passing negroes who looked strangely at him out of rolling eyes, who jerked black thumbs in his direction over shoulders, saying,

Starting point is 03:23:40 See the poor white trash man, walking home! But there were some Bobwhite singing in the bushes over the rail fences, singing, singing, singing, singing! A bird at the side of the road rested momentarily on a long, keen switch of a blackberry bush. The switch bent earthward, the bird flew off and the twig bent back again. At sight of him, ground squirrels sped into the underbrush. Somewhere on the other side of the rail fences, little negroes sang. They were too young yet to jerk their thumbs at him and say, pole white. Now that he was so near to Celia, his heart misgave him. How would she receive him,

Starting point is 03:24:26 coming home to her a tramp, a dusty, tired, foot-sore tramp, wet, chilled to the bone, foot-sore and tired? So tired! He forged ahead, trying hard to throw off these thoughts. It was the scornful negroes who had engendered them. A mile from Herod'sburg, he came to the toll gate. A woman whose yellow hair showed streaks of gray, raised the pole for him, smiling at him. That man had eyes like Seth Lawsons, she said to her husband, who smoked his pipe on the porch while she raised and lowered the poles,

Starting point is 03:25:08 and so supported the family. She was the girl who had called good-bye after Celia years before, when she left for her journey to the west and the magic city. It was twilight when Seth came to Celia's gate. A woman sat alone on the step of the portico, looking out down the pike. Seth paused his hand on the latch, seeing which the woman shook her head negatively. Seth raised the latch, whereupon she suddenly stood, frowning.

Starting point is 03:25:43 I have nothing for you, she called out raspingly. There is not a thing in the house to eat. Go away. Go away. Celia, Seth cried out, stabbed to the heart. I am not a beggar for bread, but give me a crust of kindness for the love of God. I am Seth.

Starting point is 03:26:07 End of Chapter 23. Recording by Roger Maline. Chapter 24 of the Way of the Wind by Zoe Anderson, Norris. This Libervox recording is in the public domain. Recording by Roger Maline. Chapter 24 Seen from afar off by the loving eyes of memory, the cow's horns are longer than they are close by. The kitchen was old and smoky. Once on a time, it had been regularly calcimined, twice a year,

Starting point is 03:26:50 or three times. But it had been a very small. But it had been a very smoky. But it had been a very smoky. It had been many years now, since it had undergone this cleanly process. Celia's welcome of Seth had been according to her nature, all the more hardened now by seclusion and poverty. She heard without emotion of the death of the child. It mattered little to her. She had never known him. Seth, come back to her a failure, a tramp, was deserving of scant courtesy.

Starting point is 03:27:21 She meted it out to him. as it seemed to her he deserved. The miles he had traveled counted little. Since he had proven himself too great a failure to travel as men do, it was only just that he should work his way, sleep in fence corners, live on crusts and walk. It was one of her theories that, given sufficient time, all men and animals sink to their level.

Starting point is 03:27:49 Who was Seth that he should be exempt from this law? the thought occurred to her that he had come to her as a last recourse that unable to make his own living he had come to share hers that thought scarcely served to add warmth to her welcome seth sat on a chair against the blackened wall in the position of the tramp who has covered weary distances whose every bone aches with the extreme intensity of fatigue he was like a rag that had been thrown there as celia had watched him get their first supper in the dug-out so he now watched her as she had sat bitterly disillusioned in the darkness of the hole in the ground so he sat within the four close walls of the smoke-begrimed kitchen of her old kentucky home disillusioned beyond compare in the once sunny hair there were streaks of gray but it was not that there were wrinkles beneath the blue-upy hair there were wrinkles beneath the blue eyes that had not lost their sternness, the cold blue of their intensity, the chill and penetrating frost of their gaze. Somehow, too, those large and beautiful eyes had appeared to grow smaller with the passing of the years, not with tears, for there are tears that wash out all else

Starting point is 03:29:14 but beauty in some women's eyes, but with the barren drought of feeling which goes to sap the very fount of loveliness. and it was this barren drought of feeling which at last served to disillusion him whose existence he at last realized in this creature who had been his cherished idol he realized it in her apathy upon hearing of the death of a child he realized it in the look she turned upon him in which he saw her stern suspicion that he had come homeless to her in the hope of a home formerly in the days of her mother and her old black Mammy, they had taken tea in the dining room, which had looked out on a green sward brightened by flowers. Gay and cheerful teas these were enlivened by guests. In the absence of guests, Celia had fallen into the slack habit of eating in the kitchen of the smoke-begrimed ceiling and the dark bare walls. There was a small deal table against the window. It was covered with an

Starting point is 03:30:21 abbreviated cloth. Celia walked about setting this table for Seth and herself, laying with palpable reluctance the extra plate, cup, saucer, knife, and fork. Her movements were no longer girlish. They were heavy and slow. When tea was ready, she bade Seth draw up his chair. They then ate their supper.

Starting point is 03:30:48 Seth, too tired to talk, and Celia busy with the problem of this added mouth destined to consume the contents of her scant larder. When supper was over, Seth left her to clear the table, went out in the dark on the front porch, away from the cold steel blue of her eye, and sat down on the step. Men seldom shed tears, or he would have found it in his heart to weep. End of Chapter 24. Recording by Roger Maline.

Starting point is 03:31:21 Chapter 25 of the Way of the Wind by Zoe Anderson Norris This Librevox recording is in the public domain. Recording by Roger Maline Chapter 25 Not many moons after the wreck wrought by the withering winds, which, while they had not touched the place of the forks of the two rivers, lacked little of it, the wise men came out of the east and found Cyclone alone

Starting point is 03:31:58 in the Kansas dug out there by the big Arkansas and the little Arkansas. Is this the place where the Indians pitched their tents? They asked, because no cyclones come here? Yes, she answered. Then this, said they, is where we will build our city. The magic city, repeated Cyclona, without surprise. When we have finished it, they swore. smiled. It will be a magic city. Cyclona looked wistfully out along the weary track of the wind.

Starting point is 03:32:37 But Seth, said she, will never see it, maybe. He has given up and gone back home. End of Chapter 25. Recording by Roger Maline. Chapter 26 of the Way of the Wind by Zoe Anderson Norris. This Librevox recording is in the public domain. Recording by Roger Maline. Chapter 26 Few there are who have not heard of the magic city, the windy wonder of the west, the peerless princess of the plains, and how it sprung up mushroom-like in a night

Starting point is 03:33:24 there at the forks of the big Arkansas and the little Arkansas, where the Indians had pitched their tents, and Seth had lived and hoped and despaired, and how men went wild erecting erecting colleges and palaces and temples and watch factories, and buying up town lots so far from the town that if the city had been built on all of them, it would have surpassed the marvelous tales of it written in the newspapers, reached halfway to Denver and become, instead of the magic city of the west, the magic city of the world. Seth had been a dreamer of dreams, but his vision of the magic city was not half a world. so marvelous as the city itself. Fortunes were made in a day and lost before midnight.

Starting point is 03:34:15 Men came from far and near, many from the other side of the water, and bought town lots and sold them, bought still others, and built tall houses, and planted great avenues of trees, cottonwood trees, the trees of Seth's imaginings. Trees that seemed also to spring up in a night, they grew so magically, thrusting deep roots into the moist black soil, and greedily sucking up its moisture in a very madness of growing, and laid off parks and sent flashing electric cars out into the large farms, and dangled big soft balls of electricity in the middle of the streets that twinkled at even tide like big pale blinking fireflies. Those who had formerly eeked out a precarious enough existence in dugouts, now lived in palaces, had their raiment fashioned by hands Parisian,

Starting point is 03:35:12 and gave receptions on a scale of such grandeur that the flowers offered as souvenirs thereat would have kept many a wolf from a dugout door for years, and a few wise men, it was said, lost their heads in the mad whirl of speculation, but as that often happens in the building up of any great city, not necessarily in the west, it was not so surprising as it might have been. Indeed, the world stood still a moment, a gape at the wonder of the magic city, and there were those who, now that Seth had passed out of the way of the wind into a country strange to them, spoke of him reverently as prophet and seer, going so far as to express regret, that while within the sound of their voices, they had carelessly dubbed him a foolish dreamer

Starting point is 03:36:05 of mad, fantastic, and impossible dreams, yet comforting themselves withal, with the thought that they were not alone in denying a prophet honor in his own country, since so wagged the world. End of Chapter 26. Recording by Roger Malene Chapter 27 of the Way of the Wind by Zoe Anderson Norris. this libravox recording is in the public domain recording by roger maline chapter twenty seven the magic city stretching itself far and near had not failed to include the little station common walls of plank no longer enshrined the person of the postmistress she no longer looked out from the limited space of a narrow window on to ragged flower-beds in who

Starting point is 03:37:07 whose soft, loose earth floundered wind-blown chickens, she dwelt in the wide, white marble halls of a lofty new post-office. Bellboys, porters, and stenographers surrounded her. It was five o'clock. The professor stood near while she sorted out some letters and placed them in pigeonholes. He was clad in the latest fashion, as laid down by the London tailors,

Starting point is 03:37:36 who, at the first sound of the boom, had hastened on the wings of the wind to the magic city. His frock coat radiated newness, his patent leathers shone, and a portion of the brim of a tall silk hat rested daintily between thumb and fingers of a well-gloved hand. As a matter of fact, since he had proved himself her friend through thick and thin, through storms and adversity, through high winds and blizzards, the postmistress had, at last, after much persuasion, awarded him the privilege of standing by her throughout the rest of her natural existence.

Starting point is 03:38:18 A dapper youth in livery approached the window, asked for letters, and withdrew. There was about him a certain air of elegance, which yet had somehow the subtle effect of having been reflected. "'Will Lowe's valet,' explained the postmistress. "'Sometimes it seems to be a dream, all this. "'These men who sat around my big blazing stove, "'spinning cyclone yarns while they waited for the brakeman

Starting point is 03:38:48 "'to fling in the mail-bag, "'sending their valets for their mail. "'It seems like magic, doesn't it?' "'It does,' assented the professor. "'There's a very good. Zed Jones, continued the postmistress, with his new drag, his Queen Anne cottage built of grey stone, his Irish setters, and Mrs. Zed sending to Paris for all her clothes, and the little Zed's fine as fiddles with their ponies and their pony carts.

Starting point is 03:39:22 And Ezekiah Smith, reminded the professor, who used to sleep on a pile of newspapers in his old newsstand on the corner, driving his tanned. now. And Howard Evans and Roger Cranes and a dozen others. All poor as church mice then, and riches cream now. It is like fairyland. You too, with an admiring glance at the frock coat, worth fifty thousand, and my bit of land bringing me a small fortune. I think after, with another smile in his direction, we'll let me. some other lone single woman have this job who needs the money. We won't keep the post office any longer." The professor smiled a silent assent.

Starting point is 03:40:12 "'But the most wonderful thing of all,' went on the postmistress, is that girl Cyclona. All of twenty-seven or eight, but she looks like a girl. It was pretty cute of her, wasn't it, to jump Seth's claim. She didn't exactly jump it, said the professor. She was taking care of it after Seth went away, when her own Topsy-Turvy house blew off somewhere. She had no other home. I wouldn't exactly call it jumping Seth's claim. Call it what you please, said the postmistress, but it amounts to the same thing. She got all the money the wise men paid for the claim, and it went into the millions. Why, Seth's

Starting point is 03:41:02 claim takes up the very heart of the city. That girl's worth her weight and gold, that cyclona, and she deserves it, taking care of the baby first, then watching after Seth. I believe she's in love with Seth. I believe she lives in hopes that he'll come back again. I know. She is seen everywhere with Hugh Walsingham, driving with him in her stylish little trap, a good driver she is too after riding fiery broncos herding seth's cattle and living wild-like on the prairies she's a splendid whip afraid of nothin but you can see in her big stretchy faraway eyes that she ain't thinking about hugh walsingham that she's always thinking about seth and wishing it was him a-driving with her in that stylish little trap of hers she stopped to read a postal card cyclona's a fine young woman she resumed and a beautiful young woman if she is brown as a gypsy but the wind has left a wheel in her head she has never been right since that storm that blew away the topsy-turvy house another shock and her mind will go entirely i've heard a doctor say so a man who knows she deserves all she's got

Starting point is 03:42:27 and a happy life with that handsome Englishman. But here she is with some fool idea that the money, all these riches she's fallen heiress to, that make her the bell of the magic city, ain't hers. That they are held in trust for Seth and Celia, that heartless Celia, who deserted her husband and baby to go back to her home in the South.

Starting point is 03:42:52 What right has that Celia got to any money that comes out of the West she hated so, out of this wind-blown place she wouldn't live in none at all no more right than i have leaving seth out here on the plains all by himself grieving for her breaking his heart for her nearly losing his mind with grief about her the money's cyclones she worked for it never thinking of the reward she took care of the child and looked after seth she deserves all the good that can come to her that girl does she does assented the professor hugh walsing's in a good fix too continued the postmistress sold his claim for a whole lot of money able now he is to help his poor relations back there in England, who sent him to the plains to get rid of him. Funny how things turn out sometimes. Cyclona coming out of nowhere, and he, packed off out of England, both outcasts,

Starting point is 03:44:02 both rich now and ready to live happily ever after, if Cyclona would only get rid of this full notion of hers that she's only holding the riches in trust for Celia and Seth. Have you heard the news? It's this. You know Nancy Lewis, the dishwasher in the restaurant before the boom, the girl who happened to save her earnings, and buy a bit of land that turned into a gold nugget? Well, a millionaire who made his money here fell in love with her. She accepted him, but he made a slight mistake. He failed to keep an engagement with her one night and sent a waiter with a note. she got huffy and went off and married the waiter we can't rise all at once from our station in life can we like as not when we get into our new house and put on style ourselves with our drags and our dogs i'll be sorting out letters in my dreams and handed them through a dream window to the people this girl is a born dishwasher she clung to her station her children may rise from the position of dishwashers if they have enough money and education but not she wait a minute here's a postcard i haven't read yet it looks like it's been through a cyclone land sakes alive guess who it's from can't said the professor beginning to be hungry the postmistress turned the card over and over

Starting point is 03:45:42 it's from jonathan cyclona's father she chuckled of all the people in the world it is postmarked texas so that's where they blew to it's to cyclona but everybody will be dying to know what it says listen dear cyclona i think you will be glad to hear that this cyclone was good to us blowing us way down here in texas where the weather is so fine It saved me the trouble, too, of bothering with the roof. It blew it right side up, and the clothes are all down in the room now. Your affectionate father, Jonathan. P.S. I like this part of the country better than I did, Kansas. I think we will stay here, Cyclona. Until another cyclone comes along, the professor commented, and blows him into the Gulf.

Starting point is 03:46:42 i wonder mused the postmistress if the cyclone put the clothes away in the presses when it took them down from the walls end of chapter twenty seven recording by roger maline chapter twenty eight of the way of the wind by zoie anderson norris this libervox recording is in the public domain recording by roger maline chapter twenty eight it was as the postmistress had said cyclona was the heiress of the magic city as seth had predicted she sold his land in its heart for more money than she knew what to do with cyclona was not only the most beautiful young woman in the magic city but she was the most beautifully gowned and exquisite what with her well-filled purse with its attendant luxuries of maids mantua makers and milliners she was new to look at but old thoughts clung to her old dreams old fancies cyclona dreamed a dream one night she thought that she was in the old dug-out at the little deal-table before the dim half-window outside which the wind sang fitfully blowing the tumble-weeds hither and thither near and far with moans and sighs and seth sat by her side and as of old he talked to her of the beautiful house all these were of costly stones according to the measures of hewed stones she heard him say in the dream sawed with saws within and without even from the foundation unto the coping and so on the outside toward the great court cyclona sat up in her bed with a start and slept no more

Starting point is 03:48:47 so it was the beautiful house that she was to build of course wondering how it was she had not thought before of carrying out seth's dearest wish without waiting to be reminded of it in a dream reproaching herself condemning her selfishness marveling how she could for a moment have considered this money her own which she simply held in trust for celia and seth thereafter hugh in spite of his deep affection for her became occasionally somewhat exasperated with cyclona who all at once developed such peculiar ideas in regard to the building of the house ideas gathered from an old and yellow plan resurrected from the leaves of a well-thumbed by Bible brought from the dugout. Cedar, he cried. Must we bring cedar all the way from the south? It will cost a fortune. Why not use some other wood?

Starting point is 03:49:49 There are others as beautiful. We will use cedar, determined Cyclona, without further explanation, and cedar they used, carved curiously in pomegranate and lily work, very beautiful, Hugh had to do you. to acknowledge, though the expense was more than it should have been, no matter how much money a young woman had to throw to the birds. "'Shall we have so many windows?' he asked as Cyclona ordered window after window, according to the old yellow plan.

Starting point is 03:50:22 "'There must be no dark spot in all this house,' decided Cyclona, and when it was finished, there was not. built of stone brought from great distances stone of delicate pink from tennessee carved wide of door a light with windows it was marvel to those who came and stood by watching the building of it a beautiful house they called it a beautiful house there was no word of seth in regard to the beautiful house that cyclona failed to remember this is the stairway she heard him say up which celia shall trail in her silks and her velvets this is the threshold her little feet shall press and here is the low die van before a wide and sunny window where she shall sit and thrum on her guitar cyclona fashioned the threshold of marble she built the stairway spacious she had the low die van carved in cedar and placed it before a wide and sunny window in the music-room she placed there mandolins and guitars she ordered a piano made of cedar for the music-room she had antique and gorgeous pillows embroidered by deft fingers for the low dye van then went on to the bedroom of white and gold of which seth had delighted to dream she ordered peer glasses so many that hugh began to fear indeed for her sanity

Starting point is 03:52:00 she bought spindle-legged furniture of gold and scattered it about she covered the gold bedstead with lace of the rarest she hung curtains at the sunny window but curtains of so lacy a web that no possible ray of light could they exclude exquisite exclaimed hugh but must you have gold door-nobbs we must said cyclona we must answered cyclona and people came in wonder to look at the beautiful house whose gold door-knobs passed into one of the many traditions of the excess of insanity displayed by the very rich of that marvelous boom in their expenditure of money cyclona caused the cellar to be lighted according to seth's directions until there was no dark spot in it light gleamed throughout if not the light of day the light of electrics i never in my life declared hugh saw so light a cellar it is like a conservatory by the time the house was finished it was the wonder of magic city which itself was the wonder of the west for its beautiful houses then when carpenter painter woodcarver and decorator had departed and the house stood in the sunshine a gem of a house surpassing if possible in beauty the house of seth's imaginings he came to cyclona for the last time in a dream he stood in the dimness of a low-roofed room looking out of a window his face was inexpressibly sad he stood there stillly for a long time looking out of the window then there rushed through cyclona's dream the heavy whirring roar of the wind the moan of the wind the wail of the wind

Starting point is 03:54:01 cyclona started out of the dream with a cry what had happened what was it what was it it was it was as if her life had gone out all at once like the flame of a candle it was as if her heart had gone out all at once like the flame of a candle it was as if her heart had snapped asunder what was it what was it she lay back among her pillows trembling in the dark afraid of she knew not what her wide eyes aghaze at the ceiling shadows and then after a long while she fell asleep again and once more dreamed the wind soured through her dream again pitifully wailingly as it had often soured out of her dream again pitifully wailingly as it had often soured out of her dream again outside the dugout. Presently it dropped to a whisper, and the passing gleam of clouds led in a slab of sunlight through the window. Was Seth in the dugout then,

Starting point is 03:54:58 or in that other room? Whichever it was, the sunlight rested goldenly on the calmness of his face. It glorified it. In her dream, Cyclona looked long and lovingly at the strong, fine lines of it brought out by this unexpected highlight of the skies, accentuated Rembrandt-like against the darkness of the hole in the ground.

Starting point is 03:55:24 Yes, it was the hole in the ground, and not that other room of the beautiful house. As she looked, the calm dream face of Seth turned to her, with a smile of ineffable content. On the following day, Hugh said to her, Now that the beautiful house is finished, Be mine! Be mine!' She shook her head and looked at him with eyes that turned the heart of him cold.

Starting point is 03:55:55 The pupils that had once been large and full and black had shrunk to the size of pinheads. "'No,' she said, "'I will wait and keep the house beautiful for Seth. Last night I saw him in a dream. He'll be coming home soon now to the beautiful house. She walked to the window and looked out. She sank into a chair there, folded her hands, and smiled contentedly,

Starting point is 03:56:26 looking out through the leaves of the trees down the sunlit road. I will wait here for Seth, she repeated. He won't be long now. He'll be coming home soon. I saw his face last night in a dream, and he smiled at me. End of Chapter 28. Recording by Roger Maline. Chapter 29 of the Way of the Wind by Zoe Anderson Norris.

Starting point is 03:57:03 This Libravox recording is in the public domain. Recording by Roger Maline. Chapter 29. The whittlers of the little sticks sitting on dry goods boxes, which surrounded the corner grocery, looked up as a wagon came lumberingly down the Lexington Pike, rounded the corner, and made its way up Main Street, to Tom Coleman's livery stable. They watched a man get out, lift an enormous trunk, and carry it into the stable on his shoulders. They saw the man bend earthward beneath the

Starting point is 03:57:42 weight of the trunk. "'Seth Lawson,' they explained to some newcomers. "'He's got a place at last. driving the baggage wagon from Bergen to Herodzburg and back again. Tom Grumbs, the grocer, puffed a few whiffs of his pipe. That's the man, he explained succinctly, what was going to conquer the West. That's the man what said he was going to build the magic city at the forks of two rivers where the wind didn't blow. By and by when he had unhitched and fed his sands.

Starting point is 03:58:21 horse, Seth came down the street, passed the whittlers of the little sticks, and went on up the Lexington Pike to his home and Celia's. He walked laggingly. There was something that he must tell Celia, and he was afraid. It was impossible for him to keep the place. He was not young enough. He was not sufficiently nimble. They wanted a younger man, they told him, to fill the trunks. he had been months getting the place and now he had lost it he had lost it within a week he walked slowly through the hall to the kitchen where celia stood at the old stove cooking their supper he sat by the window presently watching her no he wouldn't tell her he could not he hadn't the courage to face the scorn of her eye to face the cold steely blue of it he ate the supper she sat silently before him slowly it had the taste to sawdust after supper he went out on the porch a while and sat looking into the dusk looking over the fine soft green of the dim grass on the opposite lawns his mind going back to the scorched and parched grasses of the prairie how quiet it was how windless

Starting point is 03:59:50 there came to him the memory of the wind as it soothed him that day of celia's home-coming he had not hated the wind he had loved it there came also the memory of the wind as it sowed around the dug-out on those lonely nights when he and cyclona had planned the beautiful house for celia in a flash of light he seemed to see cyclona with this rose by his side he had gone sighing after the roses of memory he arose and began to walk up and down up and down to the gate and back to the gate and back thinking of cyclona and the wind a restlessness began to possess him a longing for the sound of the wind for the sound of the voice of cyclona which had mingled from the first from first to last with the sound of the wind. The windless stillness oppressed him. He stopped at the gate and looked again across at the quiet grass of the still, dim lawns, then he walked back into the house, along the hall and up into the low-roofed garret,

Starting point is 04:01:06 which had been set apart for him by Celia. He closed the door of the garret very carefully behind him. He walked to the window and looked out. the stillness weighed upon him if only he could run into the wind if only he could hear again its wail its sob its grief its moaning oh no it was impossible to tell celia that he no longer had work he had no courage to face the steel blue of her eye impossible too to face the sarcastic whittlers of the little sticks who sat around the corner grocery in the morning he who was to have conquered the west and build the magic city they were total strangers to him all his old friends in the town seemed to be dead he took a pistol down from the shelf and looked at it he turned it around and around the dim light coming in at the window plain on it. Since the first night of his arrival he had had it ready.

Starting point is 04:02:18 A man who cannot earn his salt, he said softly, encumbers the earth. He held the thing, playing with it. He smiled as he played with it. He went to the window and stood for a long while, looking out, thinking of cyclona, thinking very lovingly of cyclona. That beautiful girl. who had cared for him and the child. He would like to see Cyclona once more before, but that was impossible, in the other world, perhaps.

Starting point is 04:02:56 God was not to blame. How could he look after so many? If he put them here with all their faculties, was it his fault if they failed? He was very tired. His fingers rested lovingly. upon the weapon that was to send him to the other world. He was very tired.

Starting point is 04:03:19 He was very tired. By and by he placed the weapon to his temple, taking careful aim. In a blinding flash of light he saw cyclona. There was the heavy roar of the wind, the wild and woeful wind of the prairies, and stillness. End of Chapter 29. Recording by Roger Maline. Chapter 30 of the Way of the Wind by Zoe Anderson Norris. This Librevox recording is in the public domain.

Starting point is 04:04:04 Recording by Roger Maline. Chapter 30. Some visitors from the east to the Magic City, whose fame was now widespread, were driving gaily by the beautiful house, which was one of the choice show-places of the town cyclona sitting by the window turned her wide soft eyes their way how beautiful she is sighed one of the girls but how strange her eyes are how vacant they are there is no expression in her eyes she said and sighed again she has built the house explained the guide for someone she should says who ought to own it. She sits there waiting for him, taking care of the house, keeping it beautiful for him. She is very gentle and mild, he added, as they passed out of sight of the

Starting point is 04:05:05 beautiful house, and so they let her live there, instead of locking her up in an asylum with all those other pioneer prairie people whose minds went the way of the wind. End of Chapter 30. End of The Way of the Wind by Zoe Anderson Norris

Classic Audiobook Collection - The Way of the Wind by Zoe Anderson Norris ~ Full Audiobook [drama]

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