The Scarlet Plague | Page 4

be seen, going in for the
Golden Gate or coming out.
And airships in the air--dirigibles and flying machines. They could travel two hundred
miles an hour. The mail contracts with the New York and San Francisco Limited
demanded that for the minimum.
There was a chap, a Frenchman, I forget his name, who succeeded in making three
hundred; but the thing was risky, too risky for conservative persons. But he was on the
right clue, and he would have managed it if it hadn't been for the Great Plague. When I
was a boy, there were men alive who remembered the coming of the first aeroplanes, and
now I have lived to see the last of them, and that sixty years ago."
The old man babbled on, unheeded by the boys, who were long accustomed to his
garrulousness, and whose vocabularies, besides, lacked the greater portion of the words

he used. It was noticeable that in these rambling soliloquies his English seemed to
recrudesce into better construction and phraseology. But when he talked directly with the
boys it lapsed, largely, into their own uncouth and simpler forms.
"But there weren't many crabs in those days," the old man wandered on. "They were
fished out, and they were great delicacies. The open season was only a month long, too.
And now crabs are accessible the whole year around. Think of it--catching all the crabs
you want, any time you want, in the surf of the Cliff House beach!"
A sudden commotion among the goats brought the boys to their feet.
The dogs about the fire rushed to join their snarling fellow who guarded the goats, while
the goats themselves stampeded in the direction of their human protectors. A half dozen
forms, lean and gray, glided about on the sand hillocks or faced the bristling dogs.
Edwin arched an arrow that fell short. But Hare-Lip, with a sling such as David carried
into battle against Goliath, hurled a stone through the air that whistled from the speed of
its flight. It fell squarely among the wolves and caused them to slink away toward the
dark depths of the eucalyptus forest.
The boys laughed and lay down again in the sand, while Granser sighed ponderously. He
had eaten too much, and, with hands clasped on his paunch, the fingers interlaced, he
resumed his maunderings.
"'The fleeting systems lapse like foam,'" he mumbled what was evidently a quotation.
"That's it--foam, and fleeting. All man's toil upon the planet was just so much foam. He
domesticated the serviceable animals, destroyed the hostile ones, and cleared the land of
its wild vegetation. And then be passed, and the flood of primordial life rolled back again,
sweeping his handiwork away-the weeds and the forest inundated his fields, the beasts of
prey swept over his flocks, and now there are wolves on the Cliff House beach." He was
appalled by the thought. "Where four million people disported themselves, the wild
wolves roam to-day, and the savage progeny of our loins, with prehistoric weapons,
defend themselves against the fanged despoilers. Think of it! And all because of the
Scarlet Death--"
The adjective had caught Hare-Lip's ear.
"He's always saying that," he said to Edwin. "What is scarlet?"
"'The scarlet of the maples can shake me like the cry of bugles going by,'" the old man
quoted.
"It's red," Edwin answered the question. "And you don't know it because you come from
the Chauffeur Tribe. They never did know nothing, none of them. Scarlet is red--I know
that."
"Red is red, ain't it?" Hare-Lip grumbled. "Then what's the good of gettin' cocky and
calling it scarlet?"

"Granser, what for do you always say so much what nobody knows?" he asked. "Scarlet
ain't anything, but red is red. Why don't you say red, then?"
"Red is not the right word," was the reply. "The plague was scarlet. The whole face and
body turned scarlet in a hour's time. Don't I know? Didn't I see enough of it? And I am
telling you it was scarlet because-well, because it was scarlet. There is no other word for
it."
"Red is good enough for me," Hare-Lip muttered obstinately. "My dad calls red red, and
he ought to know. He says everybody died of the Red Death."
"Your dad is a common fellow, descended from a common fellow," Granser retorted
heatedly. "Don't I know the beginnings of the Chauffeurs? Your grandsire was a
chauffeur, a servant, and without education. He worked for other persons. But your
grandmother was of good stock, only the children did not take after her. Don't I
remember when I first met them catching fish at Lake Temescal?"
"What is education?" Edwin asked.
"Calling red scarlet," Hare-Lip sneered, then returned to the attack on Granser. "My dad
told me, an' he