The Scarlet Plague

The Scarlet Plague, by Jack
London

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Title: The Scarlet Plague
Author: Jack London
Illustrator: Gordon Grant
Release Date: June 29, 2007 [EBook #21970]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
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SCARLET PLAGUE ***

Produced by David Widger

THE SCARLET PLAGUE
By Jack London

Illustrated By Gordon Grant
1915

THE SCARLET PLAGUE

I
THE way led along upon what had once been the embankment of a
railroad. But no train had run upon it for many years. The forest on
either side swelled up the slopes of the embankment and crested across
it in a green wave of trees and bushes. The trail was as narrow as a
man's body, and was no more than a wild-animal runway. Occasionally,
a piece of rusty iron, showing through the forest-mould, advertised that
the rail and the ties still remained. In one place, a ten-inch tree, bursting
through at a connection, had lifted the end of a rail clearly into view.
The tie had evidently followed the rail, held to it by the spike long
enough for its bed to be filled with gravel and rotten leaves, so that now
the crumbling, rotten timber thrust itself up at a curious slant. Old as
the road was, it was manifest that it had been of the mono-rail type.
An old man and a boy travelled along this runway. They moved slowly,
for the old man was very old, a touch of palsy made his movements
tremulous, and he leaned heavily upon his staff. A rude skull-cap of
goat-skin protected his head from the sun. From beneath this fell a
scant fringe of stained and dirty-white hair. A visor, ingeniously made
from a large leaf, shielded his eyes, and from under this he peered at
the way of his feet on the trail. His beard, which should have been
snow-white but which showed the same weather-wear and camp-stain
as his hair, fell nearly to his waist in a great tangled mass. About his
chest and shoulders hung a single, mangy garment of goat-skin. His
arms and legs, withered and skinny, betokened extreme age, as well as
did their sunburn and scars and scratches betoken long years of
exposure to the elements.

The boy, who led the way, checking the eagerness of his muscles to the
slow progress of the elder, likewise wore a single garment--a
ragged-edged piece of bear-skin, with a hole in the middle through
which he had thrust his head. He could not have been more than twelve
years old. Tucked coquettishly over one ear was the freshly severed tail
of a pig. In one hand he carried a medium-sized bow and an arrow.
On his back was a quiverful of arrows. From a sheath hanging about his
neck on a thong, projected the battered handle of a hunting knife. He
was as brown as a berry, and walked softly, with almost a catlike tread.
In marked contrast with his sunburned skin were his eyes--blue, deep
blue, but keen and sharp as a pair of gimlets. They seemed to bore into
aft about him in a way that was habitual. As he went along he smelled
things, as well, his distended, quivering nostrils carrying to his brain an
endless series of messages from the outside world. Also, his hearing
was acute, and had been so trained that it operated automatically.
Without conscious effort, he heard all the slight sounds in the apparent
quiet--heard, and differentiated, and classified these sounds--whether
they were of the wind rustling the leaves, of the humming of bees and
gnats, of the distant rumble of the sea that drifted to him only in lulls,
or of the gopher, just under his foot, shoving a pouchful of earth into
the entrance of his hole.
Suddenly he became alertly tense. Sound, sight, and odor had given
him a simultaneous warning. His hand went back to the old man,
touching him, and the pair stood still. Ahead, at one side of the top of
the embankment, arose a crackling sound, and the boy's gaze was fixed
on the tops of the agitated bushes. Then a large bear, a grizzly, crashed
into view, and likewise stopped abruptly, at sight of the humans. He did
not like them, and growled querulously. Slowly the boy fitted the arrow
to the bow, and slowly he pulled the bowstring taut. But he never
removed his eyes from the bear.
[Illustration: Slowly he pulled