e.

"Hello," she said.

"Hello," said Seth in return.

Then, in the outspoken manner of the prairie folk he asked:

"Who ah you?"

"I am Cyclona," she answered.

"Cyclona what?"

"Just Cyclona. I ain't got no other name."

Seth smiled back at her, she seemed so timidly wild, like those little
prairie dogs that stand on their haunches and bark, and yet are ever
mindful of the safety of their near-by lairs, waiting for them in case
of molestation.

"Wheah did you come frum?" 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 real father. He's the man what adopted
me."

Always courteous, Seth stood, hand on plough, waiting for her to state
her errand or move on.

She did neither.

"There be'n't many neighbors hereabout, be there?" she ventured
presently, toying with her broncho's mane.

"No," said Seth. "They ah mighty scarce. One about every eighteen
miles or so."

Cyclona looked straight at him out of her big dark eyes framed by
their heavy lashes.

"I am a neighbor of yourn," she said.

"I'm glad of that," responded Seth with ready Southern cordiality.
"Wheah do you live?"

Cyclona turned and pointed to the horizon.

"About ten or twelve miles away," she explained. "There!"

"Been theah long?" asked 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. 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 likes it here,
but I get awful lonesome without no neighbors."

The plaint struck an answering chord.

"Look heah," said Seth. "You see that little dugout 'way ovah theah?
That's wheah I live. My wife's theah all by herself. She's lonesome,
too. Maybe she'd laik to have you come and visit her and keep her
company. Will you?"

Cyclona nodded a delighted assent, caught the mane of her broncho, 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 unsociab