Newspaper Page Text
American Sunday Monthly Magazine Section
That night, on foot, she fled to the mountains -
she, whose tender feet and delicate body had
never known the bruise of stones nor the
scratch of briars. He followed, and that night
he caught her. He struck her
sending the death-stick, performing a thousand
abominations. Yet I say to you, that when
he says he can do these tilings, he lies. I,
Emory Smith, say that he lies. 1 hat e told
him so to his teeth. Why has he not sent
me the death-stick? Because he knows that
with me it is without avail. But you, Hare-
Lip, so deeply are you sunk in black super
stition that did you awake this night and
find the death-stick beside you, you would
surely die. And you would die, not because
of any virtue of the stick, but because you
are a savage with the dark and clouded mind
of a savage.
“The doctors must be destroyed, and all
that was lost must be discovered over again.
Wherefore, earnestly, 1 repeat unto you cer
tain things which you must remember and
tell to your children after you. You must
tell them that when water is made hot by
fire there resides in it a wonderful thing
called steam, which is stronger than ten
thousand men and which can do all man’s
work for him. There are other very use
ful things. In the lightning flash resides
a similarly strong servant of man, which was
of old his slave and which some day will be
his slave again.
“Quite a different thing is the alphabet.
It is what enables me to know the meaning
of fine markings, whereas you boys know
only rude picture writing. In that dry cave
on Telegraph Hill, where you see me often
go when the tribe is down by the sea,
I have stored many books. In them is
great wisdom. Also, with them 1 have
placed a key to the alphabet, so that
one who knows picture-writing may also
know print. Some clay men will read again
and then, if no accident has befallen my
cave, they will know that Professor Emory
Smith once lived and saved for them the
knowledge of the ancients.
“There is another little device that man
inevitably will rediscover. It is called gun
powder. It was what enabled us to kill
surely and at long distances. Certain things
which are found in the ground, when com
bined in the right proportions, will make
this gunpowder. What these things are,
I have forgotten, or else I never knew. But
1 wish I did know. Then would I make
powder, and then would I certainly kill Cross-
Eyes and rid the land of superstition—”
“After 1 am man-grown I am going to
give Cross-Eyes all the goats, and meat,
and skins I can get so that he'll teach me
to be a doctor,” Hoo-Hoo asserted. “And
when 1 know, I'll make everybody else sit
up and take notice. They’ll get down in the
dirt ro me, you bet.”
The old man nodded his head solemnly,
and murmured:
“Strange it is to hear the vestiges and
remnants of the complicated Aryan speech
falling from the lips of a filthy little skin-clad savage.
All the world is topsy-turvy. And it has been
topsy-turvy ever since the plague.”
“ You won’t make me sit-up,” Hare-Lip boasted
to the would-be medicine-man. “If I paid you for
a sending of a death-stick and it didn’t work, I’d
bust in your head—understand, you Hoo-Hoo, you?”
“I am going to get Granser to remember this here
gunpowder stuff,” Edwin said softly, “and then
I’ll haveyou all on the run. You, Hare-Lip, will do
my fighting for me and get my meat for me, and
you, Hoo-Hoo, will send the death-stick for me and
make everybody afraid. And if I catch Hare-Lip
trying to bust your head, Hoo Hoo, Ill fix him with
that same gunpowder. Granser ain’t such a fool as
you think, and I’m going to listen to him and some
day I’ll be boss over the whole bunch of you.”
The old man shook his head sadly, and said:
“The gunpowder will come. Nothing can slop
it—the same old story oxer and over. Man will
increase, and men will fight. The gunpowder will
enable men to kill millions of men, and in this way
only, by fire and blood, will a new civilization, in
some remote day, be evolved. And of what profit
will it be? Just as the old cixilization passed, so
will the new. It may take fifty thousand years to
build, but it will pass. All things pass. Only re
main cosmic force and matter, exer flux, ever acting
and reacting and realizing the eternal types—the
priest, the soldier, and the king. Out of the mouths of
babes comes the xvisdom of all the ages. Some will
fight, some will rule, some will pray; and all the rest
xvill toil and suffer sore while on their bleeding
carcasses is reared again, and yet again, without
end, the amazing beauty and surpassing wonder
of the civilized state. It were just as well that
I destroyed those cave-stored books — whether
they remain or perish, all their old truths will be
discovered, their old lies lix'ed and handed down.
What is the profit— ”
Hare-Lip leaped to his feet, gixing a quick glance
at the pasturing goats and the afternoon sun.
“ Gee! ” he muttered to Edwin. “ The old geezer gets
more long-xvinded every day. Let’s pull for camp.”
While the other two, aided by the dogs, assembled
the goats and started them for the trail through the
forest, Edwin stayed by the old man and guided
him in the same direction. When they reached the
old right of way, Edwin stopped suddenly and looked
back. Hare-Lip and Hoo-Ho and the dogs and
the goats passed on. Edxx in
was looking at a small
herd of xvihl horses which
had come down on the hard
sand. There were at
least twenty of them,
young colts and yearlings and mares, led by a beau
tiful stallion which stood in the foam at the edge of
the surf, with arched neck and bright wild eyes,
sniffing the salt air from off the sea.
“What is it?” Granser queried.
“II irses,” was the answer. “First time I exer
seen ’em on the beach. It's the mountain lions
getting thicker and thicker and driving ’em down.”
The low sun shot red shafts of light, fan-shaped,
up from a cloud-tumbled horizon. And close at
hand, in the white xvaste of shore-lashed waters,
the sea-lions, bellowing their old primeval chant,
hauled up out of the sea on the black rocks and
fought and loved.
“Come on, Granser,” Edwin prompted.
And old man and boy, skin-clad and barbaric,
turned and went along the right of way into the
forest in the wake of the goats.
(the end)