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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,