Thomas Sigismund Stribling

“ The words seemed to arouse some sort of anger in Cesare, for the big fellow shook Pablo till his teeth rattled.
“Shut up squeaking, you rabbit! Can't you tell when a man is about to murder you? These are gentlemen ! You will stay with this party, coward ! and do the work! You will help me! I will not leave them and neither will you. Sabe?”
As he accented this “Sabe?” with a violent shake, Pablo's head nodded vigorously whether he wanted it to or not.
Oddly enough the trouncing seemed to reassure Pasca more than all the arguments of the scientists. ”

“ In front of it two or three massifs were outlined and others, farther away, were dimly truncated by its radiance.
The huésped drew a long breath. “Now there lies the Rio Infiernillo,” he chattered. “It is a land from which no man returns alive. I have known many men to go, señores, thinking surely there must be great treasure where so much danger lay—and there may be, señores. No man can say. Every man has his opinion about the matter. ”

“ Pablo Pasca always broke the news of their destination in rather dramatic style to the gamesters and hangers-on with which these centers of mountain life were crowded.
“Señores,” he would harangue, “you see before you a man sentenced to death; but because no garrote could affect his throat, so hard has it become from drinking gin, the prefect decided to send him on a journey to the Rio Infiernillo! Let us drink to our good fortune!” ”

“ That is what the white race means; it is what civilization means. It is not any one white man who has this power of judging and punishing; it is any white man. They are the knight-errants of the earth. Each one must fight, sit in judgment and administer justice to the best of his ability and conscience, so help him God.
It is the most amazing hegemony on the face of the earth, when one comes to think of it—and the most universally accepted.
Now Pablo was asking Pethwick an account of his stewardship.
Certainly the engineer did not think of the problem in just those terms. ”

“ He came out by the side of Pablo to a queer, not to say gruesome sight. In the air circled eight or ten vultures. They had been frightened from a row of skeletons, which evidently were articulated on wires and iron rods and stood before the travelers in the awkward postures such objects assume. Among the things, Pethwick recognized the whitened frames of snake, condor, sheep, vicuña, puma, monkey and at the end, standing upright, the bones of a man.
The specimens were accurately spaced around the end of the trail, for this was the last of the road. ”

“ The idea of obtaining energy from sunshine, not by standing in it, as any one would suppose, but by eating something else that has stood in it, is grotesque to the verge of madness.
Let us pursue that thought. No doubt in a concourse of fourteen and a half quadrillion inhabitants space would be so dear that there would be no vacant or tillable land. Therefore on Jupiter every man must absorb whatever sunshine he received. There would be no such thing as eating.
This accounts for the amazement of Mr. Three at seeing Standifer eat his lunch. ”

“ Presently he slapped his hand on a mahogany sword cabinet that glowed warmly in the subdued light of the salle.
“Señores!” he cried, rattling the letter of introduction with his left hand. “It shall never be said that the prefect of the department of Ayacucho did not exert plenary powers to aid in disclosing to the world the enormous riches of his province and his native land!”
“So we may expect something?” inquired M. Demetriovich.
“I have the power to force some one to go with you,” dramatically announced Ramada.
“Whom?” asked Standifer, looking around. ”

“ The gruesome mirth set Pablo almost in a frenzy.
“Ehue! Yes! But how did the other party get their man? No doubt they found a dead man in this devil's country! Oh, yes, dead men are frequent in this place where men never go! They didn't kill their guide to study his bones. Oh, no! Not at all! Ha! No! He dropped dead. Very reasonable! Ho!”
With a yell he dropped his mule's rein and leaped for the mouth of the trail.
But Cesare Ruano was quicker than the thief. The murderer made one leap, caught the flying Zambo by the shoulder and brought him in a huddle on the stones. ”

“ He told them only one of their number would be taken as a specimen to the land of One; the person chosen would be retained alive and, if he proved tractable, he would undoubtedly be allowed to run at large within certain limits and might be taught simple tricks wherewith to amuse the visitors at the zoo; such as playing a simple game of chess on one board.
This may or may not have been a sarcastic fling at the feeble game of chess which Pethwick had just played; at any rate the thought of playing endless games of chess through the bars of a zoological cage filled the engineer with nausea. ”

“ The old Rumanian looked at Mr. Three steadfastly. “I cannot accept your point, Mr. Three. We are all human beings together, even if Cesare Ruano did not have the culture—”
The rather pointless proceedings were interrupted by a burst of snorting and braying from the corral. Pethwick hurried outside, for the pack animals were really of more importance than the prisoner. ”

“ No skeleton shocks a human being except the skeleton of a man. I suppose it's true of the rest.”
“Anyway, it's all cleared up now, Standifer,” repeated the engineer with his chattering laugh. “It is as you say, Standifer; there are no mysteries outside of fiction.”
He began laughing, shaking violently. His exclamations grew louder and wilder. M. Demetriovich jumped out of his seat, hurried over to his medicine-chest, fixed up a glass of something and with a trembling hand presented it to the engineer. Pethwick drank some and then the old man took a deep swallow himself. ”

“ Often it is an affectation, unless, of course,” he added politely as if to exempt his companions, “their minds are not strong enough to converse without words.
“On the other hand, a few well-placed words make speeches, and especially orations, very impressive. Still, some of our greatest orators never utter a sound. But I consider this too much repression, in fact rather an academic thing to do. What you would call a —a—a highbrow. Thank you, Mr. Standifer, for thinking me the term.”
“It would be a great saving of time,” mused Pethwick. ”

“ It seems mere fortuity that the first forebear of animal life swam about and caught its sustenance by enveloping it in its gelatinous droplet, rather than by adhering to a reef and drawing its energy directly from the sun.
If that far-off protozoa had clung to the reef, the reader of this paragraph might have been a sycamore or a tamarind—he would not have been a man.
Now Mr. Three's forefather evidently crawled out of the sea into the sunshine but found nothing to envelop; therefore he followed the lip of the Jovian tide up and down, drawing his energy from the sun's rays. ”

“ The engineer got out just in time to see Pablo go at full speed toward the enclosure. The Indian had a epeating rifle and no doubt feared the attack of a puma or jaguar.
On Pethwick's heels came both M. Demetriovich and the white-haired secretary. The valley was strewn with boulders big and little and the men had difficulty in running over broken ground. From a far off Pethwick saw that the down-river side of the corral had been knocked down, and all the llamas and mules came storming out, flying down toward the camp as if the fiends pursued them. ”

“ How do you think those skeletons came here?”
“Señor, returned the convict respectfully, ”this is the Rio Infiernillo. I think the devil put them here to scare men away, so they cannot look into hell while they are alive. Because if they had a look, señor, it would be so horrible they would change their lives, become good men and go to heaven—and so the devil would lose patronage.“
Standifer, who was chagrined with Ruano's description of himself, grunted out the word “barbarous.” Pethwick shouted with laughter. ”

“ The men looked at each other; they too were covered with this shining stuff.
“Gentlemen,” quavered M. Demetriovich, “I believe we have on us the residual emanations of radium. It will likely kill us. Let us go down to the river and wash it off.”
The three men set out, stumbling through the darkness, guided somewhat by the faint light given off by their own bodies.
They waded into the black waters of the Infernal River, and began scrubbing each other furiously, trying to rid themselves of this dangerous luminosity. High above them it still shivered from cliff and crag. ”

“ So, by accepting these facts, Pethwick, in a way, prepared himself not to be too surprised at anything.
“Do all your countrymen understand ‘mentage’ or mind-language?” enquired the engineer.
“It is our national mode of communication. I observe you move your hands when you talk—gestures, you call it. In One, we speak a word now and then to accent our thoughts—verbal gestures. Some of our population, who are nervous, sometimes speak several words, or even complete sentences. ”

“ Then take these men—would they tie all these bones together if they wanted to pack them on llamas to Ayacucho? You know they would not. They would take them apart and put them in sacks until they reached America.”
“Why, that's a fact,” agreed Pasca, staring at the skeletons with new interest. “Certainly no llama would carry one of these things.” He stared a moment longer and added: “But perhaps these other scientists were also fools and did not think of that.”
“Then they would not have had wit enough to kill their guide. It takes some wit to kill a man, Pablo, I assure you.” ”

“ M. Demetriovich glanced up at this extraordinary monologue.
“Then you did kill Cesare Ruano?” exclaimed the engineer. Mr. Three paused for a moment, then answered:
“Yes, I did. There is no use going through a long catechism. I may also add, I knew the emanations of radium would have some effect on the boy, Standifer, but I did not know what.”
The old savant stared at the man from One.
“Be careful what you say, Mr. Three. Your confession will place you in jeopardy of the law.”
“Then you maintain laws in this country,” observed Mr. Three. ”

“ This remark, while as improbable as the other guesses, nevertheless spread its suggestion of tragedy over the situation.
“Nobody knows the action of chlorophyll exactly,” brooded M. Demetriovich. “Somehow it crystalizes the energy in sunlight. If some man had developed a method to bottle the sun's energy directly, he would probably pursue his investigations in the tropics——”
“And he might desire secrecy,” added Pethwick, “so much so that he would even——”
“You mean he would murder Cesare?” finished Standifer. ”

“ In one hand he held a small metallic rod.
Pethwick stared at the remarkable transformation and finally blurted out:
“Did you break loose from the handcuffs and set fire to our tent?”
“The fire was quite accidental,” assured the man from One. “I did it with this focusing-rod when I got rid of your quaint old manacles.”
“Focusing-rod,” caught up Standifer, for, notwithstanding all he had suffered at the hands of Mr. Three, the pride of a flattered author and the remarkable sale of his books left him with a kindlyfeeling in his heart for the fellow. ”

“ I thought what a lark it would be to try to sell a copy to an Indian in the Rio Infiernillo. ‘If I do that,’ I thought to myself, ‘I'll be the star book-agent of both the Americas.’ So I began:
“ ‘It's not like the rotten fiction you buy,’ says I. ‘This volume gives you the truth about reindeer in Iceland; it tells you their food, their strength, their endurance, their value in all the different moneys of the world. It states where are the greatest herds. What reindeer hides are used for. How their meat, milk and cheese taste. How to prepare puddings from their blood. How the bulls fight. ”

“ Gentlemen, a time comes in the life of every statesman when he can sacrifice his country to his personal ambition, or his personal ambition to his country. That moment has now come in the life of Gonzales Pizarro Ramada. ”

“ Does not the white man's law work in the Valley de Rio Infiernillo? I knock an old man on the head and barely save my neck. This cholo kills my good camarada, wears his clothes, steals the very ring Cesare meant to be garroted in, what happens to him? Why, he sits at the table with white men and plays! Ehue! A fine justice!”
The engineer hardly knew how to answer this. He stood looking at Pablo rather blankly. He felt sure an attempt to arrest Mr. Three would prove perilous indeed. On the other hand, Pablo's attitude demanded that Pethwick should act. ”

“ There are rival explorers in these mountains.”
“Tut, tut,” chided the old man. “You should say, my dear Pethwick, we have ‘colleagues’ instead of ‘rivals,’ I am charmed to believe they are here. We must get with them and try to be of assistance to them.”
The kindly old scientist stared away among the great bluish peaks, speculating on where his “colleagues” would be.
“But look here,” objected Standifer in alarm; “there will be another secretary with that expedition, grabbing all this literary material—”
“Lads, lads,” reproached the old savant, “you have yet to learn the opulence of nature. ”

“ Thus, in a way, fiction is much truer than fact. Fiction is generalized truth; it is an international legal tender accredited everywhere; fact is a very special truth, which passes current only with the most discerning—or with none.
Therefore, the writer wishes heartily to commend the great American scramble after fiction. It shows our enlightened public wishes to get at the real universal truths of Life, without wasting precious moments on such improbabilities as science, history, archeology, biography, invention and exploration. ”