“WHEN THE MOMENT COMES!”
ELIZABETH MUNDY found it necessary to fold Joshua in her arms and kiss
him when he and Madge reported the triumph of his idea. The three sat
together in the Mundys’ comfortable little tent, Madge very thoughtful,
with hands in pockets and legs stretched out before her and crossed;
her handsome mother rocking gently in a little maple rocker; Joshua
seated at the table reading the letter that notified Mrs. Mundy that
her homestead claim had been allowed. They began to plan.
“California Bill dropped in on me a few days before I left the
hospital,” said Joshua. “It was he who warned me against the coming
hard winter. Bill is something of a scientist himself, but he doesn’t
realize it. He told me about the millions of yellowjackets that he had
seen hovering over the mud on the lakeshore. That, he says, is one
sure sign of a hard winter in the San Antonios. Also, he says that the
ground squirrels are burrowing far back from the water, in anticipation
of a rise in the lake, I suppose--and that’s another sign.
“Now, by the time snow flies, the steel won’t be laid on the new
railroad. So that means that we’ve got to depend on freighters coming
from Spur to Ragtown for our supplies. Unless we have a team of our own
and can freight them in ourselves. That would save us money, of course.
First, though, we’ll have to bring in lumber for the cabins--and for
stables, for I’m going to have one horse at least. All my life I’ve
wanted a saddle horse. Now, Madge, what are you going to have left from
the wreck of your fortunes?--if you’ll forgive me for bringing up a
painful subject.”
“It’s hard to tell just now,” she replied absently, her eyes fixed on
the floor. “But the slide has put us so badly in debt that I imagine it
will take about everything to square us with the world. Mr. Demarest
and I will get at it to-morrow. Ugh! How I dread it!”
“And to think,” mused Joshua, “that if I hadn’t stopped that
thirty-thirty bullet I could have saved your outfit for you! It seems
to me that some subtle power was at work to make things turn out as
they did. Your mother wanted you to stop railroading. And I’m afraid
that I did too. And--”
“And I don’t give a whoop--now,” Madge interrupted.
All three were silent after this, each wrapped in his or her own
thoughts.
“You, though, Joshua, failed to-day to show the same common sense that
stopped the slide,” said Madge at last. “You are a man--a young man
at that--just making a start. You earned a neat little piece of money
and a big reputation in one fell swoop. And then Demarest offers you
anything you want in the way of a position--and that doesn’t mean a
mere job--and you turn him down. Why, boy--kid, I mean--he would have
made you! I failed because I’m only a girl. You are a man; and with
your brains and ability to figure things out, there’s no limit to what
you might attain in big construction.”
“But the fact remains,” he pointed out, blissfully warmed by her
praise, “that I have no inclination for construction work. I have set
my heart on astronomy. That’s what I’m fitted for. When all’s said and
done, it was the fact that my parents and old Silvanus Madmallet, my
teacher, tried to make me learn something for which I was not fitted
that sent me to the House of Refuge. No, my path is laid out for
me--I’ll follow it to the bitter end.”
Madge repeated the question that she had put to him when he first
called at the Mundys’ camp: “But is there any money in it?”
“As I told you before,” he replied, a trifle nettled, “I don’t know.
Nor do I care. I’m not out for money.”
“But one _has_ to have it, Joshua! Have you no ambition?”
“Does he? Not much, I’m thinking. Ambition, eh? So you, too, consider
ambition in terms of money. My ambition is to add something worth while
to the knowledge of the race. If I’m paid for it, well and good. And if
I’m not I’ll manage to struggle along. How ’bout it, Mrs. Mundy? You’ll
back me up. Do you consider that a fellow can have no ambition merely
because he doesn’t hanker for wealth?”
“By no means,” she replied quickly. “And Madge doesn’t either. Just the
same, Joshua, matters are different with you. You are a man and have a
goal to work for. We are only two women, with nothing to work for but
a living. What else can we hope to get from the homestead, provided
the land is productive, a market develops, and we are able to carry on
the work? For my part, of course, I would almost be content to live a
simple life in these mountains, away from the strife and hurry of the
world, with plenty of books and magazines and music, and with now and
then a trip out to some city to feed up on everything that civilization
has to offer. That would make for the keenest appreciation of what men
call the good things in life. What city people see every day palls on
them, and they become fretful, blasé, unappreciative. But to me, fairly
reveling in it two or three times a year, it would bring a wonderful
satisfaction. I guess you feel the same way about it, Joshua. But
whether Madge does or not is a question.”
“Don’t worry about me, Ma,” Madge put in. “I’ll try anything once.”
“But we don’t want you to feel that way about it, Madge,” Joshua told
her.
“But I do feel that way about it,” she retorted shortly, “so let’s
forget it.”
Joshua slumped down in his chair, and copied Madge by extending his
legs and crossing them at the ankles. Then he tamped the burning
tobacco in his briar pipe and gave his soul to dreams.
“For me,” he said, “what I consider an ideal life is just opening.
I love the freedom of these majestic mountains, the grandeur of the
clean, cool forests, the fascinating colors of the lake. Up here
a person can be himself and will be able to rise above the petty
squabbles, struggles, ambitions, hatreds, and copycatism of life in the
congested districts. I’m more or less a caveman, I guess, so far as my
physical well-being is concerned. Listen to this:
“‘“And I, too, sing the song of all creation,--
A brave sky and a glad wind blowing by,
A clear trail and an hour for meditation,
A long day and the joy to make it fly;
A hard task and the muscle to achieve it,
A fierce noon and a well contented gloam,
A good strife and no great regret to leave it,
A still night and the far red lights of home.”’”
Again the trio lapsed into reverie, which the girl was the one to break.
“I tried to tell Mr. Demarest about your astronomical studies,” she
announced, “but I suppose I made a botch of it. He called you a fool,
swung away from me, and let it go at that. But of course I couldn’t
be expected to explain what you told him about Mars occupying the best
position for observation next June, simply because I know nothing about
it myself. What did you mean, Joshua?”
“Just what I said,” he told her. “On the eighteenth of June, next
year, Mars will be about forty-two million miles from the earth. By
the end of August the distance will be increased to sixty-six million
miles. And this closeness will not occur again until August, Nineteen
twenty-four. So you see that I must hurry to get everything ready to
make the most of an opportunity that will not come again for over two
years.”
“And what do you hope to find out next June?”
Joshua did not reply at once, but slumped down lower, absently sucking
at a dead pipe. Then he roused himself.
“I’ll tell you,” he said, as if the decision to expose his ideas had
just come upon him. “But”--his grave eyes twinkled--“I warn you at the
start that there probably will be no money in it.
“I have a theory,” he went on. “I am one of those who firmly believe
that the planet Mars is inhabited. Also I believe, with others, that
the inhabitants are trying to communicate with us. You have been
reading the papers, of course, and you probably know that on the first
of this month, I think it was, Signor Marconi made some experiments on
the yacht _Electra_, and made the announcement that he had received
wireless waves of greater length than those of the highest-powered
station in the world. Hence, he argued, these waves could not have
originated on the earth. However, he did not say, as he was reported
to have said, that he thought these communications--if such they
were--came from Mars. Still, he would not say that such a thing was
improbable.
“Edison has expressed the belief that the inhabitants of some heavenly
body are even now trying to communicate with us, and has predicted that
wireless from star to star will be an accomplished fact within the next
few years.
“Then the American scientist, Mr. B. McAfee, says that he is convinced
that life exists on Mars, and he expects to prove it.”
“But what makes them think so?” Madge queried, her interest aroused
as it had been on the night when Joshua told her about the good ship
“Argo,” far off in Hathaway. “Now make it as simple as possible,
please.”
Joshua Cole’s eyes grew dreamier still. “Arguments are advanced by
certain scientists that Mars is physically incapable of sustaining
life,” he told his listeners. “This, they claim, is because of its thin
atmosphere, low mean temperature, and small amount of oxygen and water
vapor. Despite all this, I believe that plant life and animal life
exist on that planet.
“Through my own refractor--heavens, how I’ve missed it!--I have seen
great white patches, occasionally covering an area of some three
hundred thousand square miles of the Martian surface. That’s about six
times the size of the State of New York, Madge. These white patches
I have observed to come and go, and in the course of time they were
followed by green patches covering the same region. And later the green
patches turned brown. To me, all this signifies the accumulation of
vast masses of watery vapor, the precipitation of rain, the springing
into life of green vegetation, and the gradual drying up of the soil
and the conversion of the green growth into patches of brown, dried-up
plants.
“Again, if there is no water vapor on Mars, how does it come that frost
patches can occasionally be observed in the Martian summer?--which, by
the way, lasts for one hundred and forty-nine days. I’ve seen these
frost patches--have seen them disappear before the rising sun just
as they would on this earth. They never last until noon. And it is
well known that at rare intervals atmospheric storms have appeared in
projection on the sunrise edge of the planet.
“But, laying all this aside, it is the canal system on Mars that
convinces me it is inhabited. It consists of a beautiful network
of long line-like markings, continuous and uniform throughout,
encompassing the planet from pole to pole. These lines have definite
beginnings and definite endings, and each proceeds with definite
directness from one oasis--or dark, oval area--to another. In some
cases these lines are near together in pairs, and mathematically
straight. Double canals, these are called. In other cases two lines
intersect, and then both continue to run precisely on their own
straight courses. Now, do natural markings on this earth--rivers, for
instance--do that? Then are we not justified in the assumption that
these geometrical lines on Mars are the work of intelligent engineers?
And are we not justified in assuming, also, that these canals were
constructed for the growing of vegetation?”
“Just a moment, please,” put in Mrs. Mundy. “What are the oases?”
Joshua assumed a pedagogic attitude.
“The oases,” he explained, “are probably round or oval lakes, fed
by the irrigating water courses, probably serving as reservoirs or
distributing centers, and forming centers of civilization--cities or
urbanlike farming communities. They average about three hundred miles
in diameter. The northern hemisphere of Mars is mostly desert, but
crossed by canals as they travel toward the regions where vegetation is
grown. Some of the canals are as much as eighty miles in breadth--and
average about thirty miles. The word canals includes water and
vegetation.
“During the winter months the canals are so faint as to be invisible
in most cases. Beginning at the snow line, the canals assume a
blue-green color--a sort of robin’s egg blue--which eventually extends
to the entire system. With the approach of autumn the color changes,
and instead of green the canals become a reddish-ochre, or russet,
remaining this color until winter, when they begin to grow gradually
fainter, and sometimes disappear entirely.
“Now, to return to our theory of irrigation, the irrigation of an
entire planet, as seems to me to be the case on Mars, certainly would
tax the mathematical and engineering abilities of experts on our own
earth. And this wonderful system of irrigation canals--one of them
over three thousand miles in length--is not the pipe dream of some
over-imaginative star gazer. Many of the canals have been recorded
repeatedly on the one hundred thousand photographs made at the Lowell
Observatory during the past fifteen years.
“Well, now, ye thirsters for learning who have come to the fountain
head of wisdom, let us assume that Mars is inhabited. Let us say,
further, that her inhabitants are intelligent beings--far more
intelligent than we, as proved by their amazing system of canals. And
let us adopt the belief that these super-intelligent Martians are
striving desperately to communicate with us. They may have discovered
radio, and the wireless waves received by Marconi may indicate an
attempt to get in touch with us. But we don’t know for sure that those
waves came from Mars or any other planet. What we do know, however, is
that the Martians excel in engineering; and we have no proof that they
excel us in anything else.
“So then, since we understand engineering after a fashion, isn’t it
logical to harbor the hypothesis that the Martians may resort to their
knowledge of engineering to establish communication with us?
“Communication by means of wireless waves may be all right for Marconi
and others, but it’s out of my line. I’m a telescope fiend, and I’m
hoping to prove that Mars is trying to communicate with us through the
medium of sight instead of sound. So during my last few years in the
House of Refuge, and even while I was tramping over the country with my
friend The Whimperer, I spent many nights while Mars was in opposition
to the earth in looking for some physical demonstration on the part of
the Martian engineers.
“There is but one universal language, and that is mathematics. And
it is my belief that the Martians are trying to communicate with
the earth by excavating canals which will, when completed, form a
geometrical figure that could not possibly be misinterpreted as having
been fashioned by natural causes. Canals could be constructed for the
purpose of letting us know that the Martians are intelligent beings,
and at the same time these same canals could serve them as waterways
for irrigating purposes.
“And I think--I’m almost sure--that such a figure, on a colossal scale,
is being made for us to see. I think that I have seen it growing, and
it was that one fleeting glimpse that gave me my theory. After that I
was constantly on the lookout, until The Whimperer stole my telescope,
but saw nothing after that first unusual observation. You perhaps do
not understand fully that, even though such a figure were constructed
on an enormous scale, it might become visible for only a moment or two
at one time, even under the most favorable atmospheric conditions. Even
established astronomers, using the world’s greatest telescopes, might
miss that rare, exceptional moment. They might be looking in the wrong
place, you know. And, besides, the higher magnifying powers can seldom
be used advantageously in observations of the Martian surface. If a
keen-eyed, tireless observer has a small telescope favorably situated
he may be the first to glimpse such a signal when the rare moment
arrives. For the canals of Mars may be looked for in vain, night after
night, with mighty telescopes, and yet remain invisible. Then suddenly
comes a moment of exceptionally good seeing, as telescopists call it,
and the fine, hairlike lines stand forth in all their fascinating
geometrical symmetry--for one brief moment only! And what if I, Joshua
Cole, inmate of a reform school for over six long years, tramp,
construction stiff, should be on watch on Spyglass Mountain when that
moment comes!... I thank you for your kind attention!”
Madge began to speak, but was interrupted by a smart hand-clapping at
the door of the tent, and a male voice boomed:
“Good! Fine! Give us the other barrel! I don’t know who you are, but
you’re there with the goods!”
“Why, Jack! Where did you come from?” cried Madge, as the flaps were
parted and a good-looking, brown-haired young man stood revealed in a
gray Norfolk suit and shiny puttees, with a leather quirt hanging by a
thong from his wrist.
“Hello, Madge! Hello, Ma Mundy! How’s the old slide coming down?”
Smiling genially and confidently, the young man stepped into the room
and shook hands with Mrs. Mundy and Madge. Then, with an amused twinkle
in his fine brown eyes, he turned and surveyed the young astronomer,
who had risen from his seat.
“Joshua,” said Madge, “this is Mr. Jack Montgomery. Jack--Mr. Joshua
Cole, the hero of the day, the expert slide-stopper and adviser of
world-famous engineers--Cole of Spyglass Mountain!”