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American Sunday Monthly Magazine Section
a few of the
chickens sur
vived you know
yourself. But the wild chicken of to-day is quite
a different thing from the chickens we had in
those days.
“But I must go on with my story. I traveled
through a deserted land. As the time went by I
began to yearn more and more for human beings.
But I never found one, and I grew lonelier and lone
lier. I crossed Livermore Valley and the mountains
between it and the great valley of the San Joaquin.
You have never seen that valley, but is very large
and it is the home of the wild horse. There are
great droves there, thousands and tens of thousands.
I revisited it thirty years after, so I know. You
think there are lots of wild horses down here in the
coast valleys, but they are as nothing compared with
those of the San Joaquin. Strange to say, the cows,
when they went wild, went back into the lower
mountains. Evidently they were better able to
protect themselves there.
“In the country districts the ghouls and prowlers
had been less in evidence, for I found many villages
and towns untouched by lire. But they were filled
by the pestilential dead, and I passed by without
exploring them. It was near Lathrop, that, out of
my loneliness, I picked up a pair of collie dogs that
were so newly free that they were urgently willing
to return to their allegiance to man. These collies
accompanied me for many years, and the strains of
them are in those very dogs there that you boys have
to-day. But in sixty years the collie strain has
worked out. These brutes are more like domesti
cated wolves than anything else.”
Hare-Lip rose to his feet, glanced to see that the
goats were safe, and looked at the sun’s position in
the afternoon sky, advertising impatience at the
prolixity of the old man’s tale. Urged to hurry by
Edwin, Granser went on.
“There is little more to tell. With my two dogs
and my pony, and riding a horse I managed to cap
ture, I crossed the San Joaquin and went on to a
wonderful valley in the Sierras called Yosemite.
In the great hotel there I found a prodigious supply
of tinned provisions. The pasture was abundant,
as was the game, and the river that ran through the
valley was full of trout. I remained there three
years in an utter loneliness that none but a man who
has once been highly civilized can understand.
Building, and of the forty-seven that began the
march, I alone remained—I and the Shetland pony.
Why this should be so there is no explaining. I
did not catch the plague, that is all. I was immune.
I was merely the one lucky man in a million—just as
every survivor was one in a million, or, rather, in
several millions, for the proportion was at least that.
“For two days I sheltered in a pleasant grove
where there had been no deaths. In those two days
while badly depressed and believing that my turn
would come at any moment, nevertheless I rested and
recuperated. So did the pony. And on the third
day, putting what small store of tinned provisions
I possessed on the pony’s back, I started on across
a very lonely land. Not a live man, woman or
child, did I encounter, though the dead were every
where. Food, however, was abundant. The land
then was not as it is now. It was all cleared of
trees and brush, and it was cultivated. The food
for millions of mouths was growing, ripening, and
going to waste. From the fields and orchards I
gathered vegetables, fruits, and berries. Around
the deserted farmhouses I got eggs and caught
chickens. And frequently I found supplies of
tinned provisions in the storerooms.
“A strange thing was what was taking place with
all the domestic animals. Everywhere they were
going wild and preying on one another. The
chickens and ducks were the first to be destroyed,
while the pigs were the first to go wild, followed by
the cats. Nor were the dogs long in adapting them
selves to the changed conditions. There was a
veritable plague- of dogs. They devoured the
corpses, barked and howled during the nights, and
in the daytime slunk about in the distance. As the
time went by, I noticed a change in their behavior.
At first they were apart from one another, very sus
picious and very prone to fight. But after a not very
long while they began to come together and run in
packs. The dog, you see, always was a social animal,
and this was true before ever he came to be domesti
cated by man. In the last days of the world before
the plague, there were many different kinds of dogs—
dogs without hair and dogs with warm fur, dogs so
small that they would make scarcely a mouthful for
the other dogs that were as large as mountain lions.
Well, all the small dogs, and the weak types, were
killed by their fellows. Also, the very large ones
were not adapted for the wild life and bred out.
As a result, the many different kinds of dogs disap
peared, and remained, running in packs, the medium
sized wolfish dogs that you know to-day.”
“But the cats don’t run in packs, Granser,”
Hoo-Hoo objected.
“The cat was never a social animal. As one
writer in the nineteenth century said, the cat walks
by himself. He always walked by himself, from
before the time he was tamed by man, down through
the 'long ages of domestication, to to-day when once
more he is wild.
“The horses also went wild, and all the fine
breeds we had degenerated into the small mustang
horse you know to-day. The cows likewise went
wild, as did the pigeons and the sheep. And that
1 was afraid to look again, for I knew it was
an hallucination and I knew that if I
looked the man would be gone
Then I could stand it no more. I felt that I was
growing crazy. Like the dog, I was a social animal
and I needed my kind. I reasoned that since I had
survived the plague, there was a possibility that
others had survived. Also, I reasoned that after
three years the plague germs must all be gone and
the land be clean again.
“With my horse and dogs and pony, I set out.
Again I crossed the San Joaquin Valley, the moun
tains beyond, and came down into Livermore Valley.
The change in those three years was amazing. All
the land had been splendidly tilled, and now I could
scarcely recognize it, such was the sea of rank veg
etation that had overrun the agricultural handi
work of man. You see, the wheat, the vegetables,
and orchard trees had always been cared for and
nursed by man, so that they were soft and tender.
The weeds and wild bushes and such things, on the
contrary, had always been fought by man, so that
they were tough and resistant. As a result, when
the hand of man was removed, the wild vegetation
smothered and destroyed practically all the domesti
cated vegetation. The coyotes were greatly in
creased, and it was at this time that I first en
countered wolves, straying in twos and threes and
small packs down from the wild regions where they
had always persisted.
“ It was at Lake Temescal, not far from the one
time city of Oakland, that I camejjpon the first
live human beings. Oh, my grandsons, how can I
describe to you my emotion, when, astride my
horse and dropping down the hillside to the lake, I
saw the smoke of a campfire rising through the trees.
Almost did my heart stop beating. I felt that I
was going crazy. Then I heard the cry of a babe—
a human babe. And dogs barked, and my dogs
answered. I did not know but what I was the one
human alive in the whole world. It would not be
true that there were others—smoke, and the cry of
a babe.
“Emerging on the lake, there, before my eyes,
not a hundred yards away, I saw a man, a large
man. He was standing on an outjutting rock and
fishing. I was overcome. I stopped my horse.
1 tried to call out but could not. I waved my hand.
It seemed to me that the man looked at me, but he
{Continued on pa ye 16)