[Illustration]
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.
"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.
The wind sobbed with him. Outside the window it wailed in eerie
lamentation. It dashed a near-by shrub, a ragged rosetree 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.
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.
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 tryin' itself," complained Cyclona, getting up
once more and walking about with the 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 tryin' itself," she repeated.
Again she endeavored with the coo 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
tempestuously, 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
face 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 rosebush, torn by the wind, tapped ceaselessly at the pane.
"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, 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, 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 ... shepher ... dess,
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 tip-toeing forward.
Cyclona raised her head and looked at him dreamily.
"Hush!" she whispered. "Be very quiet ... He has gone to sleep."