The Scarlet Plague | Page 5

got it from his dad afore he croaked, that your wife was a Santa Rosan, an'
that she was sure no account. He said she was a hash-slinger before the Red Death,
though I don't know what a hash-slinger is. You can tell me, Edwin."
But Edwin shook his head in token of ignorance.
"It is true, she was a waitress," Granser acknowledged. "But she was a good woman, and
your mother was her daughter. Women were very scarce in the days after the Plague. She
was the only wife I could find, even if she was a hash-slinger, as your father calls it. But
it is not nice to talk about our progenitors that way."
"Dad says that the wife of the first Chauffeur was a lady--"
"What's a lady?" Hoo-Hoo demanded.
"A Lady's a Chauffeur squaw," was the quick reply of Hare-Lip.
"The first Chauffeur was Bill, a common fellow, as I said before," the old man
expounded; "but his wife was a lady, a great lady. Before the Scarlet Death she was the
wife of Van Warden. He was President of the Board of Industrial Magnates, and was one
of the dozen men who ruled America. He was worth one billion, eight hundred millions
of dollars--coins like you have there in your pouch, Edwin. And then came the Scarlet
Death, and his wife became the wife of Bill, the first Chauffeur. He used to beat her, too.
I have seen it myself."
Hoo-Hoo, lying on his stomach and idly digging his toes in the sand, cried out and
investigated, first, his toe-nail, and next, the small hole he had dug. The other two boys
joined him, excavating the sand rapidly with their hands till there lay three skeletons

exposed. Two were of adults, the third being that of a part-grown child. The old man
nudged along on the ground and peered at the find.
"Plague victims," he announced. "That's the way they died everywhere in the last days.
This must have been a family, running away from the contagion and perishing here on the
Cliff House beach. They--what are you doing, Edwin?"
This question was asked in sudden dismay, as Edwin, using the back of his hunting knife,
began to knock out the teeth from the jaws of one of the skulls.
"Going to string 'em," was the response.
The three boys were now hard at it; and quite a knocking and hammering arose, in which
Granser babbled on unnoticed.
"You are true savages. Already has begun the custom of wearing human teeth. In another
generation you will be perforating your noses and ears and wearing ornaments of bone
and shell. I know. The human race is doomed to sink back farther and farther into the
primitive night ere again it begins its bloody climb upward to civilization. When we
increase and feel the lack of room, we will proceed to kill one another.
And then I suppose you will wear human scalp-locks at your waist, as well--as you,
Edwin, who are the gentlest of my grandsons, have already begun with that vile pigtail.
Throw it away, Edwin, boy; throw it away."
"What a gabble the old geezer makes," Hare-Lip remarked, when, the teeth all extracted,
they began an attempt at equal division.
They were very quick and abrupt in their actions, and their speech, in moments of hot
discussion over the allotment of the choicer teeth, was truly a gabble. They spoke in
monosyllables and short jerky sentences that was more a gibberish than a language. And
yet, through it ran hints of grammatical construction, and appeared vestiges of the
conjugation of some superior culture. Even the speech of Granser was so corrupt that
were it put down literally it would be almost so much nonsense to the reader. This,
however, was when he talked with the boys. When he got into the full swing of babbling
to himself, it slowly purged itself into pure English. The sentences grew longer and were
enunciated with a rhythm and ease that was reminiscent of the lecture platform.
"Tell us about the Red Death, Granser," Hare-Lip demanded, when the teeth affair had
been satisfactorily concluded.
"The Scarlet Death," Edwin corrected.
"An' don't work all that funny lingo on us," Hare-Lip went on. "Talk sensible, Granser,
like a Santa Rosan ought to talk. Other Santa Rosans don't talk like you."
II

The old man showed pleasure in being thus called upon. He cleared his throat and began.
"Twenty or thirty years ago my story was in great demand. But in these days nobody
seems interested--"
"There you go!" Hare-Lip cried hotly. "Cut out the funny stuff and talk sensible. What's
interested? You talk like a baby that don't know how."
"Let him alone," Edwin urged, "or he'll get mad and won't talk