I
The way led along upon what had once been the embankment of a railroad.
But no train had run upon it for many years. The forest on either side
swelled up the slopes of the embankment and crested across it in a green
wave of trees and bushes. The trail was as narrow as a man's body, and
was no more than a wild-animal runway. Occasionally, a piece of rusty
iron, showing through the forest-mould, advertised that the rail and the
ties still remained. In one place, a ten-inch tree, bursting through at
a connection, had lifted the end of a rail clearly into view. The tie
had evidently followed the rail, held to it by the spike long enough
for its bed to be filled with gravel and rotten leaves, so that now the
crumbling, rotten timber thrust itself up at a curious slant. Old as the
road was, it was manifest that it had been of the mono-rail type.
An old man and a boy travelled along this runway. They moved slowly, for
the old man was very old, a touch of palsy made his movements tremulous,
and he leaned heavily upon his staff. A rude skull-cap of goat-skin
protected his head from the sun. From beneath this fell a scant fringe
of stained and dirty-white hair. A visor, ingeniously made from a large
leaf, shielded his eyes, and from under this he peered at the way of
his feet on the trail. His beard, which should have been snow-white
but which showed the same weather-wear and camp-stain as his hair,
fell nearly to his waist in a great tangled mass. About his chest and
shoulders hung a single, mangy garment of goat-skin. His arms and legs,
withered and skinny, betokened extreme age, as well as did their sunburn
and scars and scratches betoken long years of exposure to the elements.
The boy, who led the way, checking the eagerness of his muscles to
the slow progress of the elder, likewise wore a single garment--a
ragged-edged piece of bear-skin, with a hole in the middle through which
he had thrust his head. He could not have been more than twelve years
old. Tucked coquettishly over one ear was the freshly severed tail of a
pig. In one hand he carried a medium-sized bow and an arrow.
On his back was a quiverful of arrows. From a sheath hanging about his
neck on a thong, projected the battered handle of a hunting knife. He
was as brown as a berry, and walked softly, with almost a catlike tread.
In marked contrast with his sunburned skin were his eyes--blue, deep
blue, but keen and sharp as a pair of gimlets. They seemed to bore into
aft about him in a way that was habitual. As he went along he smelled
things, as well, his distended, quivering nostrils carrying to his brain
an endless series of messages from the outside world. Also, his hearing
was acute, and had been so trained that it operated automatically.
Without conscious effort, he heard all the slight sounds in the apparent
quiet--heard, and differentiated, and classified these sounds--whether
they were of the wind rustling the leaves, of the humming of bees and
gnats, of the distant rumble of the sea that drifted to him only in
lulls, or of the gopher, just under his foot, shoving a pouchful of
earth into the entrance of his hole.
Suddenly he became alertly tense. Sound, sight, and odor had given him
a simultaneous warning. His hand went back to the old man, touching
him, and the pair stood still. Ahead, at one side of the top of the
embankment, arose a crackling sound, and the boy's gaze was fixed on the
tops of the agitated bushes. Then a large bear, a grizzly, crashed into
view, and likewise stopped abruptly, at sight of the humans. He did not
like them, and growled querulously. Slowly the boy fitted the arrow to
the bow, and slowly he pulled the bowstring taut. But he never removed
his eyes from the bear.
[Illustration: Slowly he pulled the bowstring taut 020]
The old man peered from under his green leaf at the danger, and stood as
quietly as the boy. For a few seconds this mutual scrutinizing went
on; then, the bear betraying a growing irritability, the boy, with a
movement of his head, indicated that the old man must step aside from
the trail and go down the embankment. The boy followed, going backward,
still holding the bow taut and ready. They waited till a crashing among
the bushes from the opposite side of the embankment told them the bear
had gone on. The boy grinned as he led back to the trail.
“A big un, Granser,” he chuckled.
The old man shook his head.
“They get thicker every day,” he complained in a thin, undependable
falsetto. “Who'd have thought I'd live to see the time when a man would
be afraid of his life on the way to the Cliff House. When I was a boy,
Edwin, men and women and little babies used to come out here from San
Francisco by tens of thousands on a nice day. And there weren't any
bears then. No, sir. They used to pay money to look at them in cages,
they were that rare.”
“What is money, Granser?”
Before the old man could answer, the boy recollected and triumphantly
shoved his hand into a pouch under his bear-skin and pulled forth a
battered and tarnished silver dollar. The old man's eyes glistened, as
he held the coin close to them.
“I can't see,” he muttered. “You look and see if you can make out the
date, Edwin.”
The boy laughed.
“You're a great Granser,” he cried delightedly, “always making believe
them little marks mean something.”
The old man manifested an accustomed chagrin as he brought the coin back
again close to his own eyes.
“2012,” he shrilled, and then fell to cackling grotesquely. “That was
the year Morgan the Fifth was appointed President of the United States
by the Board of Magnates. It must have been one of the last coins
minted, for the Scarlet Death came in 2013. Lord! Lord!--think of it!
Sixty years ago, and I am the only person alive to-day that lived in
those times. Where did you find it, Edwin?”
The boy, who had been regarding him with the tolerant curiousness one
accords to the prattlings of the feeble-minded, answered promptly.
“I got it off of Hoo-Hoo. He found it when we was herdin' goats down
near San José last spring. Hoo-Hoo said it was _money_. Ain't you
hungry, Granser?”
The ancient caught his staff in a tighter grip and urged along the
trail, his old eyes shining greedily.
“I hope Hare-Lip 's found a crab... or two,” he mumbled. “They're good
eating, crabs, mighty good eating when you've no more teeth and you've
got grandsons that love their old grandsire and make a point of catching
crabs for him. When I was a boy--”
But Edwin, suddenly stopped by what he saw, was drawing the bowstring
on a fitted arrow. He had paused on the brink of a crevasse in the
embankment. An ancient culvert had here washed out, and the stream, no
longer confined, had cut a passage through the fill. On the opposite
side, the end of a rail projected and overhung. It showed rustily
through the creeping vines which overran it. Beyond, crouching by a
bush, a rabbit looked across at him in trembling hesitancy. Fully fifty
feet was the distance, but the arrow flashed true; and the transfixed
rabbit, crying out in sudden fright and hurt, struggled painfully away
into the brush. The boy himself was a flash of brown skin and flying fur
as he bounded down the steep wall of the gap and up the other side.
His lean muscles were springs of steel that released into graceful
and efficient action. A hundred feet beyond, in a tangle of bushes,
he overtook the wounded creature, knocked its head on a convenient
tree-trunk, and turned it over to Granser to carry.
[Illustration: Rabbit is good, very good 026]
“Rabbit is good, very good,” the ancient quavered, “but when it comes to
a toothsome delicacy I prefer crab. When I was a boy--”
“Why do you say so much that ain't got no sense?” Edwin impatiently
interrupted the other's threatened garrulousness.
The boy did not exactly utter these words, but something that remotely
resembled them and that was more guttural and explosive and economical
of qualifying phrases. His speech showed distant kinship with that of
the old man, and the latter's speech was approximately an English that
had gone through a bath of corrupt usage.
“What I want to know,” Edwin continued, “is why you call crab 'toothsome
delicacy'? Crab is crab, ain't it? No one I never heard calls it such
funny things.”
The old man sighed but did not answer, and they moved on in silence.
The surf grew suddenly louder, as they emerged from the forest upon a
stretch of sand dunes bordering the sea. A few goats were browsing among
the sandy hillocks, and a skin-clad boy, aided by a wolfish-looking
dog that was only faintly reminiscent of a collie, was watching them.
Mingled with the roar of the surf was a continuous, deep-throated
barking or bellowing, which came from a cluster of jagged rocks a
hundred yards out from shore. Here huge sea-lions hauled themselves
up to lie in the sun or battle with one another. In the immediate
foreground arose the smoke of a fire, tended by a third savage-looking
boy. Crouched near him were several wolfish dogs similar to the one that
guarded the goats.
The old man accelerated his pace, sniffing eagerly as he neared the
fire.
“Mussels!” he muttered ecstatically. “Mussels! And ain't that a crab,
Hoo-Hoo? Ain't that a crab? My, my, you boys are good to your old
grandsire.”
Hoo-Hoo, who was apparently of the same age as Edwin, grinned.
“All you want, Granser. I got four.”
The old man's palsied eagerness was pitiful. Sitting down in the sand as
quickly as his stiff limbs would let him, he poked a large rock-mussel
from out of the coals. The heat had forced its shells apart, and
the meat, salmon-colored, was thoroughly cooked. Between thumb and
forefinger, in trembling haste, he caught the morsel and carried it
to his mouth. But it was too hot, and the next moment was violently
ejected. The old man spluttered with the pain, and tears ran out of his
eyes and down his cheeks.
The boys were true savages, possessing only the cruel humor of the
savage. To them the incident was excruciatingly funny, and they burst
into loud laughter. Hoo-Hoo danced up and down, while Edwin rolled
gleefully on the ground. The boy with the goats came running to join in
the fun.
“Set 'em to cool, Edwin, set 'em to cool,” the old man besought, in the
midst of his grief, making no attempt to wipe away the tears that
still flowed from his eyes. “And cool a crab, Edwin, too. You know your
grandsire likes crabs.”
From the coals arose a great sizzling, which proceeded from the many
mussels bursting open their shells and exuding their moisture. They were
large shellfish, running from three to six inches in length. The boys
raked them out with sticks and placed them on a large piece of driftwood
to cool.
“When I was a boy, we did not laugh at our elders; we respected them.”
The boys took no notice, and Granser continued to babble an incoherent
flow of complaint and censure. But this time he was more careful, and
did not burn his mouth. All began to eat, using nothing but their hands
and making loud mouth-noises and lip-smackings. The third boy, who was
called Hare-Lip, slyly deposited a pinch of sand on a mussel the ancient
was carrying to his mouth; and when the grit of it bit into the old
fellow's mucous membrane and gums, the laughter was again uproarious. He
was unaware that a joke had been played on him, and spluttered and spat
until Edwin, relenting, gave him a gourd of fresh water with which to
wash out his mouth.
“Where's them crabs, Hoo-Hoo?” Edwin demanded. “Granser's set upon
having a snack.”
Again Granser's eyes burned with greediness as a large crab was handed
to him. It was a shell with legs and all complete, but the meat had long
since departed. With shaky fingers and babblings of anticipation, the
old man broke off a leg and found it filled with emptiness.
“The crabs, Hoo-Hoo?” he wailed. “The crabs?”
“I was fooling Granser. They ain't no crabs! I never found one.”
The boys were overwhelmed with delight at sight of the tears of senile
disappointment that dribbled down the old man's cheeks. Then, unnoticed,
Hoo-Hoo replaced the empty shell with a fresh-cooked crab. Already
dismembered, from the cracked legs the white meat sent forth a small
cloud of savory steam. This attracted the old man's nostrils, and he
looked down in amazement.
[Illustration: This attracted the old man's nostrils 033]
The change of his mood to one of joy was immediate. He snuffled and
muttered and mumbled, making almost a croon of delight, as he began
to eat. Of this the boys took little notice, for it was an accustomed
spectacle. Nor did they notice his occasional exclamations and
utterances of phrases which meant nothing to them, as, for instance,
when he smacked his lips and champed his gums while muttering:
“Mayonnaise! Just think--mayonnaise! And it's sixty years since the last
was ever made! Two generations and never a smell of it! Why, in those
days it was served in every restaurant with crab.”
When he could eat no more, the old man sighed, wiped his hands on his
naked legs, and gazed out over the sea. With the content of a full
stomach, he waxed reminiscent.
“To think of it! I've seen this beach alive with men, women, and
children on a pleasant Sunday. And there weren't any bears to eat them
up, either. And right up there on the cliff was a big restaurant where
you could get anything you wanted to eat. Four million people lived in
San Francisco then. And now, in the whole city and county there aren't
forty all told. And out there on the sea were ships and ships always to
be seen, going in for the Golden Gate or coming out. And airships in the
air--dirigibles and flying machines. They could travel two hundred miles
an hour. The mail contracts with the New York and San Francisco Limited
demanded that for the minimum. There was a chap, a Frenchman, I forget
his name, who succeeded in making three hundred; but the thing was
risky, too risky for conservative persons. But he was on the right clew,
and he would have managed it if it hadn't been for the Great Plague.
When I was a boy, there were men alive who remembered the coming of the
first aeroplanes, and now I have lived to see the last of them, and that
sixty years ago.”
The old man babbled on, unheeded by the boys, who were long accustomed
to his garrulousness, and whose vocabularies, besides, lacked the
greater portion of the words he used. It was noticeable that in these
rambling soliloquies his English seemed to recrudesce into better
construction and phraseology. But when he talked directly with the boys
it lapsed, largely, into their own uncouth and simpler forms.
“But there weren't many crabs in those days,” the old man wandered on.
“They were fished out, and they were great delicacies. The open season
was only a month long, too. And now crabs are accessible the whole year
around. Think of it--catching all the crabs you want, any time you want,
in the surf of the Cliff House beach!”
A sudden commotion among the goats brought the boys to their feet. The
dogs about the fire rushed to join their snarling fellow who guarded the
goats, while the goats themselves stampeded in the direction of their
human protectors. A half dozen forms, lean and gray, glided about on the
sand hillocks and faced the bristling dogs. Edwin arched an arrow that
fell short. But Hare-Lip, with a sling such as David carried into battle
against Goliath, hurled a stone through the air that whistled from the
speed of its flight. It fell squarely among the wolves and caused them
to slink away toward the dark depths of the eucalyptus forest.
[Illustration: With a sling such as David carried 036]
The boys laughed and lay down again in the sand, while Granser sighed
ponderously. He had eaten too much, and, with hands clasped on his
paunch, the fingers interlaced, he resumed his maunderings.
“'The fleeting systems lapse like foam,'” he mumbled what was evidently
a quotation. “That's it--foam, and fleeting. All man's toil upon the
planet was just so much foam. He domesticated the serviceable animals,
destroyed the hostile ones, and cleared the land of its wild vegetation.
And then he passed, and the flood of primordial life rolled back again,
sweeping his handiwork away--the weeds and the forest inundated his
fields, the beasts of prey swept over his flocks, and now there are
wolves on the Cliff House beach.” He was appalled by the thought. “Where
four million people disported themselves, the wild wolves roam to-day,
and the savage progeny of our loins, with prehistoric weapons, defend
themselves against the fanged despoilers. Think of it! And all because
of the Scarlet Death--”
The adjective had caught Hare-Lip's ear.
“He's always saying that,” he said to Edwin. “What is _scarlet?_”
“'The scarlet of the maples can shake me like the cry of bugles going
by,'” the old man quoted.
“It's red,” Edwin answered the question. “And you don't know it because
you come from the Chauffeur Tribe. They never did know nothing, none of
them. Scarlet is red--I know that.”
“Red is red, ain't it?” Hare-Lip grumbled. “Then what's the good of
gettin' cocky and calling it scarlet?”
“Granser, what for do you always say so much what nobody knows?” he
asked. “Scarlet ain't anything, but red is red. Why don't you say red,
then?”
“Red is not the right word,” was the reply. “The plague was scarlet.
The whole face and body turned scarlet in an hour's time. Don't I
know? Didn't I see enough of it? And I am telling you it was scarlet
because--well, because it _was_ scarlet. There is no other word for it.”
“Red is good enough for me,” Hare-Lip muttered obstinately. “My dad
calls red red, and he ought to know. He says everybody died of the Red
Death.”
“Your dad is a common fellow, descended from a common fellow,” Granser
retorted heatedly. “Don't I know the beginnings of the Chauffeurs? Your
grandsire was a chauffeur, a servant, and without education. He worked
for other persons. But your grandmother was of good stock, only the
children did not take after her. Don't I remember when I first met them,
catching fish at Lake Temescal?”
“What is _education?_” Edwin asked.
“Calling red scarlet,” Hare-Lip sneered, then returned to the attack on
Granser. “My dad told me, an' he got it from his dad afore he croaked,
that your wife was a Santa Rosan, an' that she was sure no account. He
said she was a _hash-slinger_ before the Red Death, though I don't know
what a _hash-slinger_ is. You can tell me, Edwin.”
But Edwin shook his head in token of ignorance.
“It is true, she was a waitress,” Granser acknowledged. “But she was a
good woman, and your mother was her daughter. Women were very scarce in
the days after the Plague. She was the only wife I could find, even if
she was a _hash-slinger_, as your father calls it. But it is not nice to
talk about our progenitors that way.”
“Dad says that the wife of the first Chauffeur was a _lady_--”
“What's a _lady?_” Hoo-Hoo demanded.
“A _lady_ 's a Chauffeur squaw,” was the quick reply of Hare-Lip.
“The first Chauffeur was Bill, a common fellow, as I said before,” the
old man expounded; “but his wife was a lady, a great lady. Before the
Scarlet Death she was the wife of Van Worden. He was President of the
Board of Industrial Magnates, and was one of the dozen men who
ruled America. He was worth one billion, eight hundred millions of
dollars--coins like you have there in your pouch, Edwin. And then came
the Scarlet Death, and his wife became the wife of Bill, the first
Chauffeur. He used to beat her, too. I have seen it myself.”
Hoo-Hoo, lying on his stomach and idly digging his toes in the sand,
cried out and investigated, first, his toe-nail, and next, the small
hole he had dug. The other two boys joined him, excavating the sand
rapidly with their hands till there lay three skeletons exposed. Two
were of adults, the third being that of a part-grown child. The old man
trudged along on the ground and peered at the find.
“Plague victims,” he announced. “That's the way they died everywhere
in the last days. This must have been a family, running away from the
contagion and perishing here on the Cliff House beach. They--what are
you doing, Edwin?”
This question was asked in sudden dismay, as Edwin, using the back of
his hunting knife, began to knock out the teeth from the jaws of one of
the skulls.
“Going to string 'em,” was the response.
The three boys were now hard at it; and quite a knocking and hammering
arose, in which Granser babbled on unnoticed.
“You are true savages. Already has begun the custom of wearing human
teeth. In another generation you will be perforating your noses and
ears and wearing ornaments of bone and shell. I know. The human race
is doomed to sink back farther and farther into the primitive night
ere again it begins its bloody climb upward to civilization. When we
increase and feel the lack of room, we will proceed to kill one another.
And then I suppose you will wear human scalp-locks at your waist, as
well--as you, Edwin, who are the gentlest of my grandsons, have already
begun with that vile pigtail. Throw it away, Edwin, boy; throw it away.”
“What a gabble the old geezer makes,” Hare-Lip remarked, when, the teeth
all extracted, they began an attempt at equal division.
They were very quick and abrupt in their actions, and their speech, in
moments of hot discussion over the allotment of the choicer teeth, was
truly a gabble. They spoke in monosyllables and short jerky sentences
that was more a gibberish than a language. And yet, through it ran hints
of grammatical construction, and appeared vestiges of the conjugation
of some superior culture. Even the speech of Granser was so corrupt that
were it put down literally it would be almost so much nonsense to the
reader. This, however, was when he talked with the boys.
When he got into the full swing of babbling to himself, it slowly purged
itself into pure English. The sentences grew longer and were enunciated
with a rhythm and ease that was reminiscent of the lecture platform.
“Tell us about the Red Death, Granser,” Hare-Lip demanded, when the
teeth affair had been satisfactorily concluded.
“The Scarlet Death,” Edwin corrected.
“An' don't work all that funny lingo on us,” Hare-Lip went on. “Talk
sensible, Granser, like a Santa Rosan ought to talk. Other Santa Rosans
don't talk like you.”