ABOUT two o'clock that afternoon Sayre rushed into camp with his scanty
hair on end.
Langdon, who had been attempting to boil a blank-book for dinner, gazed
at him in consternation.
"What is it? Bears, William?" he asked fearfully. "D-d-don't be
f-f-frightened; I'll stand by you."
"It isn't bears, you simp! I've just unearthed the most colossal
conspiracy of the century! Curtis, things are happening in these woods
that are incredible, abominable, horrible----"
"_What_ is happening?" faltered Langdon, turning paler. "Murder?"
"Worse! They've got Willett and the others! She admitted it to me----"
"Hey?"
"Willett and Carrick and the others!" shouted Sayre, gesticulating.
"They've caught 'em all! She said so! I----"
"They? She? Who's caught what? Who's 'they'? What it is? Who's 'she'?
What are you talking about, anyway?"
"Amourette told me----"
"Amourette? Who the deuce is Amourette?"
"I don't know. Shut up! My head's spinning like a gyroscope. All I know
is that I want to marry her and she won't let me--and I believe she would
if I had a reliable hair-restorer and wasn't near-sighted--but she ran
away and got inside the fence and locked the gate."
"Are you drunk?" demanded Langdon, "or merely frolicsome?"
"_I_ don't know. I guess I am. I'm about everything else. What do I know
about anything anyway? Nothing!"
He began to run around in circles; Langdon, having seen similar symptoms
in demented cats, regarded him with growing alarm.
"I tell you it's an outrageous social condition which tolerates such
doings!" shouted Sayre. "It's a perfectly monstrous state of things! Nine
handsome men out of ten are fatheads! I told her so! I tried to point out
to her--but she wouldn't listen--she wouldn't listen!"
Langdon stared at him, jaw agape. Then:
"Quit that ghost-dancing and talk sense," he ventured.
"Do you think that men are going to stand for it?" yelled Sayre, waving
his hands, "ordinary, decent, God-fearing, everyday young men like you
and me? If this cataclysmic cult gains ground among American women--if
these exasperating suffragettes really intend to carry out any such
programme, everybody on earth will resemble everybody else--like those
wax figures marked 'neat,' 'imported,' and 'nobby'! And I told Amourette
that, too; but she wouldn't listen--she wouldn't lis--My God! _Why_ am I
bald?"
He swung his arms like a pair of flails and advanced distractedly upon
Langdon, who immediately retreated.
"Come back here," he said. "I want to picture to you the horrors that are
going on in your native land! You ought to know. You've got to know!"
"Certainly, old man," quavered Langdon, keeping a tree between them. "But
don't come any closer or I'll scream."
"Do you think I'm nutty?"
"Oh, not at all--not _at_ all," said Langdon soothingly. "Probably the
wafers disagreed with you."
"Curtis, wouldn't it rock any man's equilibrium to fall head over heels
in love with a girl inside of ten minutes? I merely ask you, man to man."
"It sure would, dear friend----"
"And then to see that divine girl almost ready to love you in return--see
it perfectly, plainly? And have her tell you that she could learn to care
for you if your hair wasn't so thin and you didn't wear eye-glasses? By
Jinks! That was _too_ much! I'll leave it to you--_wasn't_ it?"
Langdon swallowed hard and watched his friend fixedly.
"And then," continued Sayre, grinding his teeth, "_then_ she told me
about Willett!"
"Hey?"
"Oh, the whole thing is knocked in the head from a newspaper standpoint.
They've all written home. They're married--or on the point of it----"
"What!"
"But that isn't what bothers me. What do I care about this job, or any
other job, since I've seen the only girl on earth that I could ever stay
home nights for! And to think that she ran away from me and I'm never to
see her again because I'm near-sighted and partly bald!"
He waved his arms distractedly.
"But, by the gods and demons!" he cried, "I'm not going to stand for her
going hunting with that man-net! If she catches any insufferable pup in
it I'll go insane!"
Langdon's eyes rolled and he breathed heavily.
"Old man," he ventured, kindly, "don't you think you'd better lie down
and try to take a nice little nap----"
Sayre instantly chased him around the tree and caught him.
"Curt," he said savagely, "get over the idea that there's anything the
matter with me mentally except love and righteous indignation. I _am_ in
love; and it hurts. I'm indignant, because those people are treating my
sex with an outrageous and high-handed effrontery that would bring the
blush of impotent rage to any masculine cheek!"
"What people?" said the other warily. "You needn't answer till you get
your wits back."
"They're back, Curt; that twelve-foot fence of heavy elephant-proof wire
which we noticed in the forest day before yesterday isn't the fencing to
a game park. It encloses a thousand acres belonging to the New Race
University. Did you know that?"
"What's The New Race University?" asked Langdon, astonished.
"You won't believe it--but, Curtis, it's a reservation for the--the
p-p-propagation of a new and s-s-symmetrically p-p-proportioned race of
g-g-god-like human beings! It's a deliberate attempt at cold-blooded
scientific selection--an insult to every bald-headed, near-sighted,
thin-shanked young man in the United States!"
"William," said the other, coaxingly, "you had better lie down and let me
make some wafer soup for you."
"You listen to me. I'm getting calmer now. I want to tell you about these
New Race women and their University and Amourette and Reginald Willett
and the whole devilish business."
"Is there--is there really such a thing, William? You would not tell me a
bind like that just to make a goat of me, would you?"
"No, I wouldn't. There _is_ such a thing."
"Did you see it?"
"No, I----"
"How do you know?"
"Amourette told me--shamelessly, defiantly, adorably! It was organised in
secret out of the most advanced and determined as well as the most
healthy, vigorous, and physically beautiful of all the suffragettes in
North America. One of their number happened to own a thousand acres here
before the State took the rest for its park. And here they have come,
dozens and dozens of them--to attend the first summer session of the New
Race University."
"Is--is there actually a University in these woods?"
"There is."
"Buildings?" demanded Langdon, amazed.
"No, burrows. Isn't that the limit? Curt, believe me, they live in caves.
It's their idea of being vigorous and simple and primitive. Their cult is
the cave woman. They have classes; they study and recite and exercise and
cook and play auction bridge. Their object is to hasten not only
political enfranchisement, but the era of a physical and intellectual
equality which will permit them to mate as they choose and people this
republic with perfect progeny. Every girl there is pledged to mate only
with the very pick of physical masculine perfection. Their pledge is to
build up a new, god-like race on earth, which ultimately will dominate,
crush out, survive, and replace all humanity which has become
degenerate. Nothing mentally or physically or politically imperfect is
permitted inside that wire fence. My eye-glasses bar me out; your shanks
exclude you--also your politics, because you're a democrat."
"That's monstrous!" exclaimed Langdon, indignantly.
"More monstrous still, these disciples of the New Race movement are
militant! Their audacity is unbelievable! Certain ones among them, adepts
in woodcraft, have now begun to range this forest with nets. What do you
think of that! And when they encounter a young fellow who agrees with the
remorseless standard of perfection set up by the University, they stalk
him and net him! They've got four so far. And now it's Amourette's turn
to go out!"
Langdon's teeth chattered.
"W-w-what are they g-going to do with their captures?"
"Marry them!"
"Willett? And Carrick and----"
"Yes. Isn't it awful, Curt?"
"Was she the girl with the net in the photo? I mean, was that her hand?"
"No; that was a friend of her's who bagged Willett. Amourette started out
yesterday for the first time after--well, I suppose you'd call it 'big
game.' She saw me, stalked me, got near enough to see my glasses, and let
me go. And to-day, thinking that she might have been mistaken and that
perhaps I only wore sun-glasses, she came back. But I was ass enough to
take off my cap to her, and she saw my hair--saw where it wasn't--and
that settled it."
"What a mortifying thing to happen to you, William."
"I should think so. There's nothing unusual the matter with me. Cæsar was
bald. It's idiotic to bar a man out because he has fewer hairs than the
next man. And the exasperating part of it is that I believe I could win
her if I had half a chance."
"Of course you could. If she's any good as a sport, she'd rather have
you, hairless myopiac that you are, than a tailor's dummy."
Sayre said: "Isn't it a terrible thing, Curtis, to think of that sweet,
lovely young girl pledged to a scientific life like that? P-pledged to
p-p-propagate p-p-perfection?"
"What a mean-spirited creature that fellow Willett must be," observed
Langdon in disgust; "and the other three--Ugh!"
"Why?"
"To tamely submit to being kidnapped and woo'd and wed that way--endure
the degradation of a captivity among all those young girls----"