The Scarlet Plague Read online

  VI

  "I LIVED three weeks of infinite torment there in the Chauffeur's camp.And then, one day, tiring of me, or of what to him was my bad effecton Vesta, he told me that the year before, wandering through the ContraCosta Hills to the Straits of Carquinez, across the Straits he had seena smoke. This meant that there were still other human beings, and thatfor three weeks he had kept this inestimably precious information fromme. I departed at once, with my dogs and horses, and journeyed acrossthe Contra Costa Hills to the Straits. I saw no smoke on the other side,but at Port Costa discovered a small steel barge on which I was able toembark my animals. Old canvas which I found served me for a sail, anda southerly breeze fanned me across the Straits and up to the ruinsof Vallejo. Here, on the outskirts of the city, I found evidences of arecently occupied camp.

  Found evidences of a recently occupied camp 169]

  "Many clam-shells showed me why these humans had come to the shores ofthe Bay. This was the Santa Rosa Tribe, and I followed its track alongthe old railroad right of way across the salt marshes to Sonoma Valley.Here, at the old brickyard at Glen Ellen, I came upon the camp. Therewere eighteen souls all told. Two were old men, one of whom was Jones, abanker. The other was Harrison, a retired pawnbroker, who had taken forwife the matron of the State Hospital for the Insane at Napa. Of all thepersons of the city of Napa, and of all the other towns and villagesin that rich and populous valley, she had been the only-survivor. Next,there were the three young men--Cardiff and Hale, who had been farmers,and Wainwright, a common day-laborer. All three had found wives. ToHale, a crude, illiterate farmer, had fallen Isadore, the greatestprize, next to Vesta, of the women who came through the plague. She wasone of the world's most noted singers, and the plague had caught her atSan Francisco. She has talked with me for hours at a time, telling me ofher adventures, until, at last, rescued by Hale in the Mendocino ForestReserve, there had remained nothing for her to do but become his wife.But Hale was a good fellow, in spite of his illiteracy. He had a keensense of justice and right-dealing, and she was far happier with himthan was Vesta with the Chauffeur.

  "The wives of Cardiff and Wainwright were ordinary women, accustomedto toil with strong constitutions--just the type for the wild new lifewhich they were compelled to live. In addition were two adult idiotsfrom the feeble-minded home at El-dredge, and five or six young childrenand infants born after the formation of the Santa Rosa Tribe. Also,there was Bertha. She was a good woman, Hare-Lip, in spite of the sneersof your father. Her I took for wife. She was the mother of your father,Edwin, and of yours, Hoo-Hoo. And it was our daughter, Vera, who marriedyour father, Hare-Lip--your father, Sandow, who was the oldest son ofVesta Van Warden and the Chauffeur.

  "And so it was that I became the nineteenth member of the Santa RosaTribe. There were only two outsiders added after me. One was Mungerson,descended from the Magnates, who wandered alone in the wilds of NorthernCalifornia for eight years before he came south and joined us. He it waswho waited twelve years more before he married my daughter, Mary. Theother was Johnson, the man who founded the Utah Tribe. That was where hecame from, Utah, a country that lies very far away from here, across thegreat deserts, to the east. It was not until twenty-seven years afterthe plague that Johnson reached California. In all that Utah region hereported but three survivors, himself one, and all men. For many yearsthese three men lived and hunted together, until, at last, desperate,fearing that with them the human race would perish utterly from theplanet, they headed westward on the possibility of finding womensurvivors in California. Johnson alone came through the great desert,where his two companions died. He was forty-six years old when he joinedus, and he married the fourth daughter of Isadore and Hale, and hiseldest son married your aunt, Hare-Lip, who was the third daughter ofVesta and the Chauffeur. Johnson was a strong man, with a will of hisown. And it was because of this that he seceded from the Santa Rosansand formed the Utah Tribe at San Jose. It is a small tribe--there areonly nine in it; but, though he is dead, such was his influence and thestrength of his breed, that it will grow into a strong tribe and play aleading part in the recivilization of the planet.

  "There are only two other tribes that we know of--the Los Angelitosand the Carmelitos. The latter started from one man and woman. He wascalled Lopez, and he was descended from the ancient Mexicans and wasvery black. He was a cowherd in the ranges beyond Carmel, and his wifewas a maidservant in the great Del Monte Hotel. It was seven yearsbefore we first got in touch with the Los Ange-litos. They have agood country down there, but it is too warm. I estimate the presentpopulation of the world at between three hundred and fifty and fourhundred--provided, of course, that there are no scattered little tribeselsewhere in the world. If there be such, we have not heard from them.Since Johnson crossed the desert from Utah, no word nor sign has comefrom the East or anywhere else. The great world which I knew in myboyhood and early manhood is gone. It has ceased to be. I am the lastman who was alive in the days of the plague and who knows the wonders ofthat far-off time. We, who mastered the planet--its earth, and sea, andsky--and who were as very gods, now live in primitive savagery along thewater courses of this California country.

  "But we are increasing rapidly--your sister, Hare-Lip, already has fourchildren. We are increasing rapidly and making ready for a new climbtoward civilization. In time, pressure of population will compel usto spread out, and a hundred generations from now we may expect ourdescendants to start across the Sierras, oozing slowly along, generationby generation, over the great continent to the colonization of theEast--a new Aryan drift around the world.

  "But it will be slow, very slow; we have so far to climb. We fell sohopelessly far. If only one physicist or one chemist had survived!But it was not to be, and we have forgotten everything. The Chauffeurstarted working in iron. He made the forge which we use to this day.But he was a lazy man, and when he died he took with him all he knewof metals and machinery. What was I to know of such things? I was aclassical scholar, not a chemist.. The other men who survived were noteducated. Only two things did the Chauffeur accomplish--the brewingof strong drink and the growing of tobacco. It was while he was drunk,once, that he killed Vesta. I firmly believe that he killed Vesta in afit of drunken cruelty though he always maintained that she fell intothe lake and was drowned.

  "And, my grandsons, let me warn you against the medicine-men. They callthemselves _doctors_, travestying what was once a noble profession, butin reality they are medicine-men, devil-devil men, and they make forsuperstition and darkness. They are cheats and liars. But so debased anddegraded are we, that we believe their lies. They, too, will increasein numbers as we increase, and they will strive to rule us. Yet arethey liars and charlatans. Look at young Cross-Eyes, posing as adoctor, selling charms against sickness, giving good hunting,exchanging promises of fair weather for good meat and skins, sending thedeath-stick, performing a thousand abominations. Yet I say to you,that when he says he can do these things, he lies. I, Professor Smith,Professor James Howard Smith, say that he lies. I have told him so tohis teeth. Why has he not sent me the death-stick? Because he knows thatwith me it is without avail. But you, Hare-Lip, so deeply are yousunk in black superstition that did you awake this night and find thedeath-stick beside you, you would surely die. And you would die, notbecause of any virtues in the stick, but because you are a savage withthe dark and clouded mind of a savage.

  "The doctors must be destroyed, and all that was lost must be discoveredover again. Wherefore, earnestly, I repeat unto you certain things whichyou must remember and tell to your children after you. You must tellthem that when water is made hot by fire, there resides in it awonderful thing called steam, which is stronger than ten thousand menand which can do all man's work for him. There are other very usefulthings. In the lightning flash resides a similarly strong servant ofman, which was of old his slave and which some day will be his slaveagain.

  I have stored many books in a cave 179]

  "Quite a different thing is the alphabet. It is what e
nables me toknow the meaning of fine markings, whereas you boys know only rudepicture-writing. In that dry cave on Telegraph Hill, where you see meoften go when the tribe is down by the sea, I have stored many books.In them is great wisdom. Also, with them, I have placed a key to thealphabet, so that one who knows picture-writing may also know print.Some day men will read again; and then, if no accident has befallen mycave, they will know that Professor James Howard Smith once lived andsaved for them the knowledge of the ancients.

  "There is another little device that men inevitably will rediscover. Itis called gunpowder. It was what enabled us to kill surely and at longdistances. Certain things which are found in the ground, when combinedin the right proportions, will make this gunpowder. What these thingsare, I have forgotten, or else I never knew. But I wish I did know. Thenwould I make powder, and then would I certainly kill Cross-Eyes and ridthe land of superstition--"

  "After I am man-grown I am going to give Cross-Eyes all the goats,and meat, and skins I can get, so that he'll teach me to be a doctor,"Hoo-Hoo asserted. "And when I know, I'll make everybody else sit up andtake notice. They'll get down in the dirt to me, you bet."

  The old man nodded his head solemnly, and murmured:

  "Strange it is to hear the vestiges and remnants of the complicatedAryan speech falling from the lips of a filthy little skin-clad savage.All the world is topsy-turvy. And it has been topsy-turvy ever since theplague."

  "You won't make me sit up," Hare-Lip boasted to the would-bemedicine-man. "If I paid you for a sending of the death-stick and itdidn't work, I'd bust in your head--understand, you Hoo-Hoo, you?"

  "I'm going to get Granser to remember this here gunpowder stuff," Edwinsaid softly, "and then I'll have you all on the run. You, Hare-Lip, willdo my fighting for me and get my meat for me, and you, Hoo-Hoo, willsend the death-stick for me and make everybody afraid. And if I catchHare-Lip trying to bust your head, Hoo-Hoo, I'll fix him with that samegunpowder. Granser ain't such a fool as you think, and I'm going tolisten to him and some day I'll be boss over the whole bunch of you."

  The old man shook his head sadly, and said:

  "The gunpowder will come. Nothing can stop it--the same old story overand over. Man will increase, and men will fight. The gunpowder willenable men to kill millions of men, and in this way only, by fire andblood, will a new civilization, in some remote day, be evolved. And ofwhat profit will it be? Just as the old civilization passed, so will thenew. It may take fifty thousand years to build, but it will pass. Allthings pass. Only remain cosmic force and matter, ever in flux, everacting and reacting and realizing the eternal types--the priest, thesoldier, and the king. Out of the mouths of babes comes the wisdom ofall the ages. Some will fight, some will rule, some will pray; and allthe rest will toil and suffer sore while on their bleeding carcassesis reared again, and yet again, without end, the amazing beauty andsurpassing wonder of the civilized state. It were just as well that Idestroyed those cave-stored books--whether they remain or perish, alltheir old truths will be discovered, their old lies lived and handeddown. What is the profit--"

  Hare-Lip leaped to his feet, giving a quick glance at the pasturinggoats and the afternoon sun.

  "Gee!" he muttered to Edwin, "The old geezer gets more long-winded everyday. Let's pull for camp."

  While the other two, aided by the dogs, assembled the goats and startedthem for the trail through the forest, Edwin stayed by the old man andguided him in the same direction. When they reached the old right ofway, Edwin stopped suddenly and looked back. Hare-Lip and Hoo-Hoo andthe dogs and the goats passed on. Edwin was looking at a small herd ofwild horses which had come down on the hard sand. There were at leasttwenty of them, young colts and yearlings and mares, led by a beautifulstallion which stood in the foam at the edge of the surf, with archedneck and bright wild eyes, sniffing the salt air from off the sea.

  "What is it?" Granser queried.

  "Horses," was the answer. "First time I ever seen 'em on the beach. It'sthe mountain lions getting thicker and thicker and driving 'em down."

  The low sun shot red shafts of light, fan-shaped, up from acloud-tumbled horizon. And close at hand, in the white waste ofshore-lashed waters, the sea-lions, bellowing their old primeval chant,hauled up out of the sea on the black rocks and fought and loved.

  "Come on, Granser," Edwin prompted. And old man and boy, skin-clad andbarbaric, turned and went along the right of way into the forest in thewake of the goats.

  THE END

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