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4
American Sunday Monthly Magazine Section
look in her eyes, converse with her, touch her hand -
ay, and love her and know that her feelings toward
me were very kindly. I have reason to believe that
she, even she, would have loved me, there being no
other man in the world except the Chauffeur. Why,
when it destroyed eight billions of souls, did not
the plague destroy just one more man, and that
man the Chauffeur?
“Once, when the Chauffeur was away fishing,
she begged me to kill him. With tears in her eyes
she begged me to kill him. But he was a strong
and violent man, and ! was afraid. Afterwards,
1 talked with him. I offered him my horse, my pony,
my dogs, all that 1 possessed, if he would give Vesta
to me. And he grinned in my face and shook his
head. He was very insulting. He said that in
the old days he had been a servant, had been dirt
under feet of men like me and of women like Vesta,
and that now he had the greatest lady in the land
to be servant to him and cook his food and nurse
his brats. ‘You had your day before the plague,’
he said; 'but this is try day, and a good day it is.
I wouldn’t trade back to the old times for anything.’
. Such words he spoke, but they were not his words,
lie was a vulgar, low-minded man, and vile oaths
fell continually from his lips.
“ Also, he told me that if he caught me making
eyes at his woman, he’d wring my neck and give
her a beating as well. What was 1 to do? I was
afraid. He was a brute. That first night, when
I discovered the camp, Vesta and 1 had great talk
about the things of our vanished world. We talked
of art, and books, and poetry; and the Chauffeur
listened and grinned and sneered. He was bored
and angered by our way of speech which he did not
comprehend, and finally he spoke up and said:
‘And this is Vesta Van Warden, one-time wife of
Van Warden the Magnate -a high and stuck-up
beauty, who is now my squaw. Eh, Professor
Smith, times is changed, times is changed. Here,
you, woman, take off my moccasins, and lively
about it. I want Professor Smith to see how well
I have you trained.’
“1 saw her clench her teeth, and the flame of
revolt rise in her face. He drew back his gnarled
list to strike, and I was afraid, and sick at heart,
i could do nothing to prevail against him. So 1 got
up to go, and not be witness to such indignity.
But the Chauffeur laughed and threatened me with
a beating if I did not stay and behold. And 1 sat
there, perforce, by the campfire on the shore of
Lake Temescal and saw Vesta, Vesta Van Warden,
kneel and remove the moccasins of that grinning,
hairy, ape-like human brute.
“—Oh, you do not understand, my grandsons.
You have never known anything else, and you do
not understand.
“‘Halter-broke and bridle-wise,’ the Chauffeur
gloated, while she performed that dreadful, menial
task. ‘A tritle balky at times, Professor, a trifle
balky; but a clout alongside the jaw makes her as
meek and gentle as a lamb.’
“And another time he said: ‘We’ve got to start
all over and replenish the earth and multiply.
You’re handicapped, Professor. You ain’t got no
wife, and we’re up against a regular Garden-of-
Eden proposition. But 1 ain’t proud. I’ll tell
you what, Professor.’ He pointed to their little
infant, barely a year old. ‘There’s your wife,
though you'll have to wait till she grows up. It’s
rich, ain’t it? We’re all equals here, and I’m the
biggest toad in the splash. But I ain’t stuck up —
not I. I do you the honor, Professor Smith, the
very great honor, of betrothing to you my and
Vesta Van Warden's daughter. Ain’t it cussed bad
that Van Warden ain’t here to see?’
“ 1 lived three weeks of infinite torment therein 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 ani
mals. Old canvas I found, served me for a sail,
and a southerly breeze fanned me across the Straits
and uj) to the ruins of Vallejo. Here, on the out
skirts of the city, I found evidences of a recently
occupied camp. 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 Xapa. Of all the persons of the city of
Xapa, and of all the other towns and villages in
that rich and populous valley, she had been the only
survivor. Xext, there were the three young men—
Cardiff and Hale, who had been farmers, and W’ain-
wright, a common daylaborer. 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
Chauffeur.
Chapter VI
IE wives of Cardiff and Wain-
wright were ordinary women,
accustomed to toil, with strong
constitutions—just the type for
the wild new life which they
were compelled to live. In ad
dition 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, 1 loo-Hoo. And
it was our daughter, \ era, who married your father,
Hare-Lip- -your father, Sandow, who was the eldest
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 along
in the wilds of Xorthern 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 from
here, across the great desert, to the east. It was
not until twenty-seven years after the plague that
Johnson reached California. In all that Utah region
he had 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 Cali
fornia. 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 L’tah Tribe at San
Jose. 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 reciviliza
tion 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 De 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. 1 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—anil who were as very
gods, now live in primitive savagely along the water
courses of this California country.
“But we are increasing rapidly—your sister,
Hare-Lip, already has four children. We are in
creasing rapidly and'making ready for a new climb
toward civilization. In time, pressure of population
will compel us to spread out, and a hundred genera
tions from now we may expect our descendants to
start across the Sierras, oozing slowly along, genera
tion by generation, oxer 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 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. 1 firmly believe that
he killed Vesta in a lit of drunken
cruelty, though he always main
tained that she fell into the lake
and was drowned.
“And, my grandsons, let me
warn you against the medicine
men. They call themselves doc
tors, travestying what was once a
noble profession, but in reality
they are medicine-men, devil-devil
men, and they make for supersti
tion and darkness. They are
cheats and liars. But so debased
and degraded are we, that we be
lieve their lies. They, too, will
increase in numbers as we in
crease, and they will strive to rule
us. Yet are they liars and charla
tans. Look at young Cross-Eyes,
posing as a doctor, selling charms
against sickness, giving good hunt
exchanging promises of fair
weather lor good meat and skins.
Next Issue Begins -
A Song of Sixpence
c 9y Frederick Arnold IsurnrneN'
J
In a powerfully interesting’
love story Mr.Kumtner ana--
lyzes the peculiar,changing
position of woman today <a
makes a shrewd answer to
the
v o rld-wide ques tion Wh at
he matter with the sexes 0 '
ing,