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CoDVrisht. 1913, by the Star Co.
% JacIyLondon
Copyright, 191.2, by Jack London
“ I was Professor of English Literature
Chapter I
HE 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. Occa
sionally, a piece of rustv iron, showing through the
forest mould, advertised that the rail and the ties
still remained. In one place, a ten-inch tree, burst
ing through at a connection, had lifted the end of a
rail clearly into view. The tie had evidently fol
lowed the rail, held to it by the spike long enough
for its bed to be tilled 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 monorail
type.
An old man and a boy travelled along this run
way. They moved slowly, for the old man was very
old, a touch of palsy made his movements tremu
lous, 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 a n d
skinny, betok
ened extreme
age, as well as
did their sun
burn and scars
and scratches
betoken long
years of expos
ure to the ele
ments.
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 bearskin, 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 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 sun
burned skin were his eyes— blue, deep-blue, but
keen and sharp as a pair of gimlets. They seemed
to bore into all about him in a way that was habit
ual. 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. W ith
out conscious effort, he heard all the slight sounds
in the apparent quiet—heard, and differentiated,
and classified these sounds w hether they were of the
wind rustling the leaves, or 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 fix
ed on the tops of the agi
tated bushes. Then a
large bear, a grizzly, crash
ed 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. The
old man peered from un
der his green leaf at the
danger,and stood as quietly
as the boy. For a few
seconds this mutual scru
tinizing 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 em
bankment. 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 recol
lected and triumphantly shoved his hand into a
pouch under his bearskin and pulled forth a bat
tered and tarnished silver dollar. The old man’s
eyes glistened, as he held the coin close to them.
“1 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 gro
tesquely. “That was the year Morgan of 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 1 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:
“ 1 got it off of Hoo-Hoo. He found it when we was
herdin’ goats down near San Jose last spring. Hoo-
Hoo said it was money. Ain't you hungry, Granser? ”
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