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American Sunday Monthly Magazine Section
"Red is red, ain’t it?” Hare-Lip grumbled.
“Then, what’s the good of getting cocky and call
ing it scarlet?”
“Granser, what for do you always say so much
about 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 1
know? Didn’t I see enough of it? And I am tell
ing 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 1 know the beginnings of the Chauffeurs?
Your grandsire was a chauffeur, a servant, and with
out education. He worked for other persons. But
your grandmother was of good stock, only the chil
dren did not take after her. Don’t I remember
when 1 first met them, catching fish at Lake Teme-
scal?”
“What is education?” Edwin asked.
“Calling red scarlet,” Hare-Lip sneered, then re
turned 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 Rosen, 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 ac
knowledged. “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 re
ply 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 Scar
let Death she was the wife of Van Warden. 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 of a part-grown child. The old man hudged
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 gen
eration 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 pro
ceed 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 grand
gan.
“There were
very many peo
ple in the world
in those days.
San Francisco
alone held four
millions -
"What is mil
lions?” Edwin
interrupted.
G r a n s e r
looked at him
kindly.
“I know you
cannot count
ten, so I will
tell you. Hold
up your two
hands. On both
of them you
have altogether
ten fingers and
Slowly the toy fitted the arrow to the bow and slowly he
pulled the bow-string taut
sons, have already begun with that vile pigtail.
Throw it away, boy, throw it away.”
"What a gabble the old geezer makes,” Hare-
I.ip 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 senten
ces that were more a gibberish than a language. And
yet, through it ran hints of grammatical construc
tion, 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.
Phis, however, was when he talked with the boys.
When he got into the full swing of babbling to him
self, 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 sat
isfactorily 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.”
The old man showed pleasure in being thus called
upon. He cleared his throat and began.
“Twenty or thirty years ago my story was in
great demand. But in these days nobody seems
interested ”
“There you go!” Hare-Lip cried hotly. “Cut
out that funny stuff and talk sensible. What’s
interested!' You
talk like a baby
that d on’t
know how.”
“Let him
alone,” Edwin
urged, “or he’ll
get mad and
won’t talk at
all. Skip the
f u n n y places.
We ll catch on
to some of what
he tells us.”
“ Let her go,
Granser,” Hoo-
Hoo encour
aged; for the
old m a n was
already maun
dering a bout
the disrespect
for elders and
t he reversion to
cruelty of all
human beings
that fell from
high culture to
primitive con
ditions.
The tale be
thumbs. Very well. I now take this grain of sand
you hold it, Hoo-Hoo.” He dropped the grain of
sand into the lad’s palm and went on. “Now that
grain of sand stands for the ten fingers of Edwin.
I add another grain. That’s ten more fingers. And
I add another, and another, anil another until I have
added as many grains as Edwin has fingers and
thumbs. That makes what 1 call one hundred.
Remember that word—one hundred. Now I put
this pebble in Hare-Lip’s hand. It stands for ten
grains of sand or ten tens of your lingers, or one
hundred fingers. I put in ten pebbles. They stand
for a thousand lingers. I take a mussel-shell, and
it stands for ten pebbles, or one hundred grains of
sand, or one thousand fingers. . . .”
And soon, laboriously, and with much reiteration,
he strove to build up in their minds a crude concep
tion of numbers. As the quantities increased, he
had the boys holding different magnitudes in each
of their hands. For still higher sums, he laid the
symbols on the log of driftwood, and for symbols
he was hard put, being compelled to use the teeth
from the skulls for millions, and the crab-shells for
billions. It was here that he stopped, for the boys
were showing signs of becoming tired.
“There were four million people in San Francisco
—four teeth.”
The boy’s eyes ranged along from the teeth and
from hand to hand, down through the pebbles and
sand-grains to Edwin's fingers. And back again
they ranged along the ascending series in the effort
to grasp such inconceivable numbers.
“That was a lot of folks, Granser,” Edwin at last
hazarded.
“ Like sand on the beach here, like sand on the
(Continued on page 18)