The Scarlet Plague (Illustrated) E-Book

Bauer Books

• Herausgeber: Bauer Books
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Sprache: Englisch

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2024

Beschreibung

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 forestmould,
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.

Leseprobe

Jack

The Scarlet Plague (Illustrated Edition)

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Table of contents

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 forestmould, 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.

The old man peered from under his green leaf at the danger, and stood as quietly as the boy. For a few seconds this mutual scrutinizing went on; then, the bear betraying a growing irritability, the boy, with a movement of his head, indicated that the old man must step aside from the trail and go down the embankment. The boy followed, going backward, still holding the bow taut and ready. They waited till a crashing among the bushes from the opposite side of the embankment told them the bear had gone on. The boy grinned as he led back to the trail.

“A big un, Granser,” he chuckled. The old man shook his head.

“They get thicker every day,” he complained in a thin, undependable falsetto. “Who’d have thought I’d live to see the time when a man would be afraid of his life on the way to the Cliff House. When I was a boy, Edwin, men and women and little babies used to come out here from San Francisco by tens of thousands on a nice day. And there weren’t any bears then. No, sir. They used to pay money to look at them in cages, they were that rare.”

“What is money, Granser?”

Before the old man could answer, the boy recollected and triumphantly shoved his hand into a pouch under his bear-skin and pulled forth a battered and tarnished silver dollar. The old man’s eyes glistened, as he held the coin close to them.

“I can’t see,” he muttered. “You look and see if you can make out the date, Edwin.” The boy laughed. “You’re a great Granser,” he cried delightedly, “always making believe them little marks mean something.” The old man manifested an accustomed chagrin as he brought the coin back again close to his own eyes.

“2012,” he shrilled, and then fell to cackling grotesquely. “That was the year Morgan the Fifth was appointed President of the United States by the Board of Magnates. It must have been one of the last coins minted, for the Scarlet Death came in 2013. Lord! Lord!—think of it! Sixty years ago, and I am the only person alive to-day that lived in those times. Where did you find it, Edwin?”

The boy, who had been regarding him with the tolerant curiousness one accords to the prattlings of the feeble-minded, answered promptly. “I got it off of Hoo-Hoo. He found it when we was herdin’ goats down near San José last spring. Hoo-Hoo said it was money. Ain’t you hungry, Granser?”

The ancient caught his staff in a tighter grip and urged along the trail, his old eyes shining greedily.

“I hope Har-Lip ‘s found a crab... or two,” he mumbled. “They’re good eating, crabs, mighty good eating when you’ve no more teeth and you’ve got grandsons that love their old grandsire and make a point of catching crabs for him. When I was a boy—”

“Rabbit is good, very good,” the ancient quavered, “but when it comes to a toothsome delicacy I prefer crab. When I was a boy—” “Why do you say so much that ain’t got no sense?” Edwin impatiently interrupted the other’s threatened garrulousness. The old man accelerated his pace, sniffing eagerly as he neared the fire. Hoo-Hoo, who was apparently of the same age as Edwin, grinned. “All you want, Granser. I got four.” “When I was a boy, we did not laugh at our elders; we respected them.” “Where’s them crabs, Hoo-Hoo?” Edwin demanded. “Granser’s set upon having a snack.” “The crabs, Hoo-Hoo?” he wailed. “The crabs?” “I was fooling Granser. They ain’t no crabs! I never found one.” The adjective had caught Hare-Lip’s ear. “He’s always saying that,” he said to Edwin. “What is ” “‘The scarlet of the maples can shake me like the cry of bugles going by,’” the old man quoted. “Red is red, ain’t it?” Hare-Lip grumbled. “Then what’s the good of gettin’ cocky and calling it scarlet?” “What is ” Edwin asked. But Edwin shook his head in token of ignorance. “Dad says that the wife of the first Chauffeur was a —” “What’s a ” Hoo-Hoo demanded. “A ‘s a Chauffeur squaw,” was the quick reply of Hare-Lip. “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. “What a gabble the old geezer makes,” Hare-Lip remarked, when, the teeth all extracted, they began an attempt at equal division. “Tell us about the Red Death, Granser,” Hare-Lip demanded, when the teeth affair had been satisfactorily concluded. “The Scarlet Death,” Edwin corrected. 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—” “Let him alone,” Edwin urged, “or he’ll get mad and won’t talk at all. Skip the funny places. We’ll catch on to some of what he tells us.” The tale began. “There were very many people in the world in those days. San Francisco alone held four millions—” “What is millions?” Edwin interrupted. Granser looked at him kindly. “There were four million people in San Francisco—four teeth.” “That was a lot of folks, Granser,” Edwin at last hazarded. Much of this was over the heads of the boys, but they strove to comprehend dimly this tale of the past. “What was them stone houses for?” Hare-Lip queried. This was beyond the boys, and they let it slip by, words and thoughts, as a mere senile wandering in the narrative. The old man laughed. “He surveyed his mangy goat-skin with disgust. Hoo-Hoo began to laugh. “But the Scarlet Death, Granser,” Edwin at last suggested. “You was telling about germs, the things you can’t see but which make men sick,” Edwin prompted. It was at this point that Hare-Lip rose to his feet, an expression of huge contempt on his face. “It was in the summer of 2013 that the Plague came. I was twentyseven years old, and well do I remember it. Wireless despatches—” Hare-Lip spat loudly his disgust, and Granser hastened to make amends. Granser promptly began to weep, while Edwin hotly took up his defence. “Look here, Hare-Lip, you believe in lots of things you can’t see.” Hare-Lip shook his head. “You believe in dead men walking about. You never seen one dead man walk about.” “That’s to keep off bad luck,” was Hare-Lip’s defence. “You believe in bad luck?” “Sure.” “‘Look at yourself in the mirror,’ I commanded. “He did so, and at sight of his scarlet face, the color deepening as he looked at it, he sank down nervelessly in a chair. “‘My God!’ he said. ‘I’ve got it. Don’t come near me. I am a dead man.’ “He told me he had prowlers, and that his brother had been killed the previous night, in the defence of their dwelling. “—Oh, you do not understand, my grandsons. You have never known anything else, and you do not understand. The old man nodded his head solemnly, and murmured: The old man shook his head sadly, and said: Hare-Lip leaped to his feet, giving a quick glance at the pasturing goats and the afternoon sun. “Gee!” he muttered to Edwin, “The old geezer gets more longwinded every day. Let’s pull for camp.” “What is it?” Granser queried. THE END