“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 effect
on Vesta, he told me that the year before, wandering through the Contra
Costa Hills to the Straits of Carquinez, across the Straits he had seen
a smoke. This meant that there were still other human beings, and that
for three weeks he had kept this inestimably precious information from
me. I departed at once, with my dogs and horses, and journeyed across
the 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 to
embark my animals. Old canvas which I found served me for a sail, and
a southerly breeze fanned me across the Straits and up to the ruins
of Vallejo. Here, on the outskirts of the city, I found evidences of a
recently occupied camp.
[Illustration: Found evidences of a recently occupied camp 169]
“Many clam-shells showed me why these humans had come to the shores of
the Bay. This was the Santa Rosa Tribe, and I followed its track along
the 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. There
were eighteen souls all told. Two were old men, one of whom was Jones, a
banker. The other was Harrison, a retired pawnbroker, who had taken for
wife the matron of the State Hospital for the Insane at Napa. Of all the
persons of the city of Napa, and of all the other towns and villages
in 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. To
Hale, a crude, illiterate farmer, had fallen Isadore, the greatest
prize, next to Vesta, of the women who came through the plague. She was
one of the world's most noted singers, and the plague had caught her at
San Francisco. She has talked with me for hours at a time, telling me of
her adventures, until, at last, rescued by Hale in the Mendocino Forest
Reserve, 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 keen
sense of justice and right-dealing, and she was far happier with him
than was Vesta with the Chauffeur.
“The wives of Cardiff and Wainwright were ordinary women, accustomed
to toil with strong constitutions--just the type for the wild new life
which they were compelled to live. In addition were two adult idiots
from the feeble-minded home at Eldredge, and five or six young children
and 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 sneers
of 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 married
your father, Hare-Lip--your father, Sandow, who was the oldest son of
Vesta Van Warden and the Chauffeur.
“And so it was that I became the nineteenth member of the Santa Rosa
Tribe. There were only two outsiders added after me. One was Mungerson,
descended from the Magnates, who wandered alone in the wilds of Northern
California for eight years before he came south and joined us. He it was
who waited twelve years more before he married my daughter, Mary. The
other was Johnson, the man who founded the Utah Tribe. That was where he
came from, Utah, a country that lies very far away from here, across the
great deserts, to the east. It was not until twenty-seven years after
the plague that Johnson reached California. In all that Utah region he
reported but three survivors, himself one, and all men. For many years
these three men lived and hunted together, until, at last, desperate,
fearing that with them the human race would perish utterly from the
planet, they headed westward on the possibility of finding women
survivors in California. Johnson alone came through the great desert,
where his two companions died. He was forty-six years old when he joined
us, and he married the fourth daughter of Isadore and Hale, and his
eldest son married your aunt, Hare-Lip, who was the third daughter of
Vesta and the Chauffeur. Johnson was a strong man, with a will of his
own. And it was because of this that he seceded from the Santa Rosans
and formed the Utah Tribe at San José. It is a small tribe--there are
only nine in it; but, though he is dead, such was his influence and the
strength of his breed, that it will grow into a strong tribe and play a
leading part in the recivilization of the planet.
“There are only two other tribes that we know of--the Los Angelitos
and the Carmelitos. The latter started from one man and woman. He was
called Lopez, and he was descended from the ancient Mexicans and was
very black. He was a cowherd in the ranges beyond Carmel, and his wife
was a maidservant in the great Del Monte Hotel. It was seven years
before we first got in touch with the Los Angelitos. They have a
good country down there, but it is too warm. I estimate the present
population of the world at between three hundred and fifty and four
hundred--provided, of course, that there are no scattered little tribes
elsewhere 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 come
from the East or anywhere else. The great world which I knew in my
boyhood and early manhood is gone. It has ceased to be. I am the last
man who was alive in the days of the plague and who knows the wonders of
that far-off time. We, who mastered the planet--its earth, and sea, and
sky--and who were as very gods, now live in primitive savagery along the
water courses of this California country.
“But we are increasing rapidly--your sister, Hare-Lip, already has four
children. We are increasing rapidly and making ready for a new climb
toward civilization. In time, pressure of population will compel us
to spread out, and a hundred generations from now we may expect our
descendants to start across the Sierras, oozing slowly along, generation
by generation, over the great continent to the colonization of the
East--a new Aryan drift around the world.
“But it will be slow, very slow; we have so far to climb. We fell so
hopelessly far. If only one physicist or one chemist had survived!
But it was not to be, and we have forgotten everything. The Chauffeur
started 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 knew
of metals and machinery. What was I to know of such things? I was a
classical scholar, not a chemist.. The other men who survived were not
educated. Only two things did the Chauffeur accomplish--the brewing
of 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 a
fit of drunken cruelty though he always maintained that she fell into
the lake and was drowned.
“And, my grandsons, let me warn you against the medicine-men. They call
themselves _doctors_, travestying what was once a noble profession, but
in reality they are medicine-men, devil-devil men, and they make for
superstition and darkness. They are cheats and liars. But so debased and
degraded are we, that we believe their lies. They, too, will increase
in numbers as we increase, and they will strive to rule us. Yet are
they liars and charlatans. Look at young Cross-Eyes, posing as a
doctor, selling charms against sickness, giving good hunting,
exchanging promises of fair weather for good meat and skins, sending the
death-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 to
his teeth. Why has he not sent me the death-stick? Because he knows that
with me it is without avail. But you, Hare-Lip, so deeply are you
sunk in black superstition that did you awake this night and find the
death-stick beside you, you would surely die. And you would die, not
because of any virtues in the stick, but because you are a savage with
the dark and clouded mind of a savage.
“The doctors must be destroyed, and all that was lost must be discovered
over again. Wherefore, earnestly, I repeat unto you certain things which
you must remember and tell to your children after you. You must tell
them that when water is made hot by fire, there resides in it a
wonderful thing called steam, which is stronger than ten thousand men
and which can do all man's work for him. There are other very useful
things. In the lightning flash resides a similarly strong servant of
man, which was of old his slave and which some day will be his slave
again.
[Illustration: I have stored many books in a cave 179]
“Quite a different thing is the alphabet. It is what enables me to
know the meaning of fine markings, whereas you boys know only rude
picture-writing. In that dry cave on Telegraph Hill, where you see me
often 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 the
alphabet, so that one who knows picture-writing may also know print.
Some day men will read again; and then, if no accident has befallen my
cave, they will know that Professor James Howard Smith once lived and
saved for them the knowledge of the ancients.
“There is another little device that men inevitably will rediscover. It
is called gunpowder. It was what enabled us to kill surely and at long
distances. Certain things which are found in the ground, when combined
in the right proportions, will make this gunpowder. What these things
are, I have forgotten, or else I never knew. But I wish I did know. Then
would I make powder, and then would I certainly kill Cross-Eyes and rid
the 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 and
take 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 complicated
Aryan 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 the
plague.”
“You won't make me sit up,” Hare-Lip boasted to the would-be
medicine-man. “If I paid you for a sending of the death-stick and it
didn'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,” Edwin
said softly, “and then I'll have you all on the run. You, Hare-Lip, will
do my fighting for me and get my meat for me, and you, Hoo-Hoo, will
send the death-stick for me and make everybody afraid. And if I catch
Hare-Lip trying to bust your head, Hoo-Hoo, I'll fix him with that same
gunpowder. Granser ain't such a fool as you think, and I'm going to
listen 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 over
and over. Man will increase, and men will fight. The gunpowder will
enable men to kill millions of men, and in this way only, by fire and
blood, will a new civilization, in some remote day, be evolved. And of
what profit will it be? Just as the old civilization passed, so will the
new. It may take fifty thousand years to build, but it will pass. All
things pass. Only remain cosmic force and matter, ever in flux, ever
acting and reacting and realizing the eternal types--the priest, the
soldier, and the king. Out of the mouths of babes comes the wisdom of
all the ages. Some will fight, some will rule, some will pray; and all
the rest will toil and suffer sore while on their bleeding carcasses
is reared again, and yet again, without end, the amazing beauty and
surpassing wonder of the civilized state. It were just as well that I
destroyed those cave-stored books--whether they remain or perish, all
their old truths will be discovered, their old lies lived and handed
down. What is the profit--”
Hare-Lip leaped to his feet, giving a quick glance at the pasturing
goats and the afternoon sun.
“Gee!” he muttered to Edwin, “The old geezer gets more long-winded every
day. Let's pull for camp.”
While the other two, aided by the dogs, assembled the goats and started
them for the trail through the forest, Edwin stayed by the old man and
guided him in the same direction. When they reached the old right of
way, Edwin stopped suddenly and looked back. Hare-Lip and Hoo-Hoo and
the dogs and the goats passed on. Edwin was looking at a small herd of
wild horses which had come down on the hard sand. There were at least
twenty of them, young colts and yearlings and mares, led by a beautiful
stallion which stood in the foam at the edge of the surf, with arched
neck 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's
the mountain lions getting thicker and thicker and driving 'em down.”
The low sun shot red shafts of light, fan-shaped, up from a
cloud-tumbled horizon. And close at hand, in the white waste of
shore-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 and
barbaric, turned and went along the right of way into the forest in the
wake of the goats.