Lord Oakhurst's Curse

Speaking of Big Winds

The man with the bronzed face and distinguished air was a great traveler, and had just returned from a tour around the world. He sat around the stove at the Lamlor, and four or five drummers and men about town listened with much interest to his tales.

He was speaking of the fierce wind storms that occur in South America, when the long grass of the pampas is interlaced and blown so flat by the hurricanes that it is cut into strips and sold for the finest straw matting.

He spoke also of the great intelligence of the wild cattle which, he said, although blown about by the furious hurricanes and compelled to drift for days before the drenching floods of the rainy season, never lost their direction by day or night.

"How do they guide themselves?" asked the Topeka flour drummer.

"Oh, by their udders, of course," said the traveler.

"I don't see anything to laugh about," said the Kansas man, "but speaking of big winds we have something of the kind in our state. You've all heard of the Kansas cyclones, but very few of you know what they are. We have plenty of them and some are pretty hard ones, too, but most of the stories you read about them are exaggerated. Still a good, full-grown cyclone can carry things pretty high sometimes. About the only thing they spend their fury upon in vain is a real estate agent. I know a fellow, named Bob Long, who was a real estate hustler from away back. Bob had bought up a lot of prairie land cheap, and was trying to sell it in small tracts for farms and truck patches. One day he took a man in his buggy out to this land and was showing it to him. 'Just look at it,' he said. 'It is the finest, richest piece of ground in Kansas. Now it's worth more, but to start things off, and get improvements to going, I'll sell you 160 acres of this land at $40 per⁠—!'

"Before Bob could say 'acre,' a cyclone came along, and the edge of it took Bob up straight into the air. He went up till he was nothing but a black speck and the man stood there and watched him till he was out of sight.

"The man liked the land, so he bought it from Bob's heirs, and pretty soon a railroad cut across it, and a fine flourishing town sprang up on the spot.

"Well, this man was standing on the sidewalk one day thinking of how lucky he had been, and about Bob's unfortunate fate, when he happened to look up and saw something falling. It grew larger and larger, and finally it turned out to be a man.

"He came tumbling down, struck the sidewalk with a sound you could have heard four blocks away, bounded up at least ten feet, came down on his feet and shouted 'Front foot!'

"It was Bob Long. His beard was a little grayer and longer, but he was all business still. He had noticed the changes that had taken place while he was coming down, and when he finished the sentence that he began when the cyclone took him up, he altered his language accordingly. Bob was a hustler. Sometime after that he⁠—"

"Never mind," said the traveler. "Let's go in and take something on this one first. I claim the usual time before the next round."