Part 11 (1/2)

”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.