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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)