"Those peccaries ain"t even-tempahd animals.
"They"ve got tempahs laik greased lightnin". It made them firin" mad fo" a cyclone to take such liberties with them, and they got up and 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 peccaries began to snap and grunt laik fury till the noise of the cyclone simmahd down into a sort of pitiful whine, laik the whine of a whipped dog. Imagine a cyclone comin" to that! Then, they tell me, you couldn"t heah anything but the squealin" and gruntin" of those pesky little peccaries.
"Between squeals they bit into that theah cyclone fo" all it was wuth, takin" great chunks out of it, swallowin" lightnin" and eatin" big mouthfuls of thundah just as if they laiked it. All the stuff the cyclone was bringin" along with it wa"n"t anything to them. They swallowed it whole and pretty soon, you"d hahdly believe it, but theah wa"n"t anything lef" of that cyclone at all.
"They had eaten up ever" single bit of it except a tiny breeze they had fohgotten that died away mournful laik across the prairies, sighin" becawse it had stahted out so brash and come to such a sudden untimely and unexpected end.
"Then, theah was the herd of peccaries about five miles from wheah they had stahted, sittin" down, resting, a-smilin" at each othah and congratulatin" each othah, I reckon, on the way they had knocked the stuffin" out of that theah ole cyclone fo" good and all.
"They must have scahd the res" of the cyclones off, too, becawse with them and the forks of the rivahs, they haven"t been seen or heahd of aroun" these pahts since."
"Exceptin" the tail end of that one that moved me," Cyclona reminded him.
"And what about me?" questioned Charlie.
"Oh, yes. One of these heah peccaries, a good-natured peccary, too, with a laikin" fo" little children, found you in the cyclone. You were a pretty little baby with big blue eyes the same"s you"ve got now. I don"t know exactly wheah the cyclone found you. Anyway, the peccary picked you up in his mouth. When he had rested as long as he wanted to with the other peccaries, he flew along and flew along--they had all got to be flying peccaries, you know, on account of swallowin" 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 mawnin" 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. Ugh!
"And then the peccary flew away again?" he asked. "Didn"t he?"
"Yes," answered Seth. "He flew away with the rest of the flyin"
peccaries."
"And haven"t you ever seen them since?" asked Charlie, "or him?"
"Sometimes you can see them "way up in the air," replied Seth, running his fingers through his hair, "but they ah so fah 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."
CHAPTER XIII.
[Ill.u.s.tration]
The Post Mistress 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 uppish 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 round, this living in Kansas."
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.
"Pioneer people," he observed laconically, "must expect to fight everything from real estate agents to buffaloes."
The Post Mistress 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.
"Seth 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 Post Mistress tartly. "Anything is liable to happen in Kansas, the things you least expect."
"Everything in the way of cyclones, you mean," put in the Professor.
"Cyclones and everything else," affirmed the Post Mistress. "No matter what it is, Kansas goes other States one better. She raises the tallest corn--they have to climb stepladders to reach the ears--and the biggest watermelons in the world."
"When she raises any at all," the Professor inserted.
"They say," began the Post Mistress, "that in the Eastern part of the State, where they are beginning to be civilized, 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 claim, you know, it"s yours."
"I"ve heard that story," the Professor politely reminded her.
"They do say," remembered the Post Mistress, "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 could almost see the love and sadness through the envelope. And none from her in answer.
"Look at him now. Walkin" up and down, up and down, to pa.s.s away the time till the train comes. Waitin" for a letter. It won"t come. It never will come. And him waitin" and waitin". He"d as 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?
"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? 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 goin" to cure him but a letter from her, and you can"t get that. 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," a.s.serted the Professor, "if you give them plenty of servants and money. None better."