CHAPTER XXIII

“WHEN THE MOMENT COMES!”

ELIZABETH MUNDY found it necessary to fold Joshua in her arms and kiss him when he and Madge reported the triumph of his idea. The three sat together in the Mundys’ comfortable little tent, Madge very thoughtful, with hands in pockets and legs stretched out before her and crossed; her handsome mother rocking gently in a little maple rocker; Joshua seated at the table reading the letter that notified Mrs. Mundy that her homestead claim had been allowed. They began to plan.

“California Bill dropped in on me a few days before I left the hospital,” said Joshua. “It was he who warned me against the coming hard winter. Bill is something of a scientist himself, but he doesn’t realize it. He told me about the millions of yellowjackets that he had seen hovering over the mud on the lakeshore. That, he says, is one sure sign of a hard winter in the San Antonios. Also, he says that the ground squirrels are burrowing far back from the water, in anticipation of a rise in the lake, I suppose--and that’s another sign.

“Now, by the time snow flies, the steel won’t be laid on the new railroad. So that means that we’ve got to depend on freighters coming from Spur to Ragtown for our supplies. Unless we have a team of our own and can freight them in ourselves. That would save us money, of course. First, though, we’ll have to bring in lumber for the cabins--and for stables, for I’m going to have one horse at least. All my life I’ve wanted a saddle horse. Now, Madge, what are you going to have left from the wreck of your fortunes?--if you’ll forgive me for bringing up a painful subject.”

“It’s hard to tell just now,” she replied absently, her eyes fixed on the floor. “But the slide has put us so badly in debt that I imagine it will take about everything to square us with the world. Mr. Demarest and I will get at it to-morrow. Ugh! How I dread it!”

“And to think,” mused Joshua, “that if I hadn’t stopped that thirty-thirty bullet I could have saved your outfit for you! It seems to me that some subtle power was at work to make things turn out as they did. Your mother wanted you to stop railroading. And I’m afraid that I did too. And--”

“And I don’t give a whoop--now,” Madge interrupted.

All three were silent after this, each wrapped in his or her own thoughts.

“You, though, Joshua, failed to-day to show the same common sense that stopped the slide,” said Madge at last. “You are a man--a young man at that--just making a start. You earned a neat little piece of money and a big reputation in one fell swoop. And then Demarest offers you anything you want in the way of a position--and that doesn’t mean a mere job--and you turn him down. Why, boy--kid, I mean--he would have made you! I failed because I’m only a girl. You are a man; and with your brains and ability to figure things out, there’s no limit to what you might attain in big construction.”

“But the fact remains,” he pointed out, blissfully warmed by her praise, “that I have no inclination for construction work. I have set my heart on astronomy. That’s what I’m fitted for. When all’s said and done, it was the fact that my parents and old Silvanus Madmallet, my teacher, tried to make me learn something for which I was not fitted that sent me to the House of Refuge. No, my path is laid out for me--I’ll follow it to the bitter end.”

Madge repeated the question that she had put to him when he first called at the Mundys’ camp: “But is there any money in it?”

“As I told you before,” he replied, a trifle nettled, “I don’t know. Nor do I care. I’m not out for money.”

“But one _has_ to have it, Joshua! Have you no ambition?”

“Does he? Not much, I’m thinking. Ambition, eh? So you, too, consider ambition in terms of money. My ambition is to add something worth while to the knowledge of the race. If I’m paid for it, well and good. And if I’m not I’ll manage to struggle along. How ’bout it, Mrs. Mundy? You’ll back me up. Do you consider that a fellow can have no ambition merely because he doesn’t hanker for wealth?”

“By no means,” she replied quickly. “And Madge doesn’t either. Just the same, Joshua, matters are different with you. You are a man and have a goal to work for. We are only two women, with nothing to work for but a living. What else can we hope to get from the homestead, provided the land is productive, a market develops, and we are able to carry on the work? For my part, of course, I would almost be content to live a simple life in these mountains, away from the strife and hurry of the world, with plenty of books and magazines and music, and with now and then a trip out to some city to feed up on everything that civilization has to offer. That would make for the keenest appreciation of what men call the good things in life. What city people see every day palls on them, and they become fretful, blasé, unappreciative. But to me, fairly reveling in it two or three times a year, it would bring a wonderful satisfaction. I guess you feel the same way about it, Joshua. But whether Madge does or not is a question.”

“Don’t worry about me, Ma,” Madge put in. “I’ll try anything once.”

“But we don’t want you to feel that way about it, Madge,” Joshua told her.

“But I do feel that way about it,” she retorted shortly, “so let’s forget it.”

Joshua slumped down in his chair, and copied Madge by extending his legs and crossing them at the ankles. Then he tamped the burning tobacco in his briar pipe and gave his soul to dreams.

“For me,” he said, “what I consider an ideal life is just opening. I love the freedom of these majestic mountains, the grandeur of the clean, cool forests, the fascinating colors of the lake. Up here a person can be himself and will be able to rise above the petty squabbles, struggles, ambitions, hatreds, and copycatism of life in the congested districts. I’m more or less a caveman, I guess, so far as my physical well-being is concerned. Listen to this:

“‘“And I, too, sing the song of all creation,-- A brave sky and a glad wind blowing by, A clear trail and an hour for meditation, A long day and the joy to make it fly; A hard task and the muscle to achieve it, A fierce noon and a well contented gloam, A good strife and no great regret to leave it, A still night and the far red lights of home.”’”

Again the trio lapsed into reverie, which the girl was the one to break.

“I tried to tell Mr. Demarest about your astronomical studies,” she announced, “but I suppose I made a botch of it. He called you a fool, swung away from me, and let it go at that. But of course I couldn’t be expected to explain what you told him about Mars occupying the best position for observation next June, simply because I know nothing about it myself. What did you mean, Joshua?”

“Just what I said,” he told her. “On the eighteenth of June, next year, Mars will be about forty-two million miles from the earth. By the end of August the distance will be increased to sixty-six million miles. And this closeness will not occur again until August, Nineteen twenty-four. So you see that I must hurry to get everything ready to make the most of an opportunity that will not come again for over two years.”

“And what do you hope to find out next June?”

Joshua did not reply at once, but slumped down lower, absently sucking at a dead pipe. Then he roused himself.

“I’ll tell you,” he said, as if the decision to expose his ideas had just come upon him. “But”--his grave eyes twinkled--“I warn you at the start that there probably will be no money in it.

“I have a theory,” he went on. “I am one of those who firmly believe that the planet Mars is inhabited. Also I believe, with others, that the inhabitants are trying to communicate with us. You have been reading the papers, of course, and you probably know that on the first of this month, I think it was, Signor Marconi made some experiments on the yacht _Electra_, and made the announcement that he had received wireless waves of greater length than those of the highest-powered station in the world. Hence, he argued, these waves could not have originated on the earth. However, he did not say, as he was reported to have said, that he thought these communications--if such they were--came from Mars. Still, he would not say that such a thing was improbable.

“Edison has expressed the belief that the inhabitants of some heavenly body are even now trying to communicate with us, and has predicted that wireless from star to star will be an accomplished fact within the next few years.

“Then the American scientist, Mr. B. McAfee, says that he is convinced that life exists on Mars, and he expects to prove it.”

“But what makes them think so?” Madge queried, her interest aroused as it had been on the night when Joshua told her about the good ship “Argo,” far off in Hathaway. “Now make it as simple as possible, please.”

Joshua Cole’s eyes grew dreamier still. “Arguments are advanced by certain scientists that Mars is physically incapable of sustaining life,” he told his listeners. “This, they claim, is because of its thin atmosphere, low mean temperature, and small amount of oxygen and water vapor. Despite all this, I believe that plant life and animal life exist on that planet.

“Through my own refractor--heavens, how I’ve missed it!--I have seen great white patches, occasionally covering an area of some three hundred thousand square miles of the Martian surface. That’s about six times the size of the State of New York, Madge. These white patches I have observed to come and go, and in the course of time they were followed by green patches covering the same region. And later the green patches turned brown. To me, all this signifies the accumulation of vast masses of watery vapor, the precipitation of rain, the springing into life of green vegetation, and the gradual drying up of the soil and the conversion of the green growth into patches of brown, dried-up plants.

“Again, if there is no water vapor on Mars, how does it come that frost patches can occasionally be observed in the Martian summer?--which, by the way, lasts for one hundred and forty-nine days. I’ve seen these frost patches--have seen them disappear before the rising sun just as they would on this earth. They never last until noon. And it is well known that at rare intervals atmospheric storms have appeared in projection on the sunrise edge of the planet.

“But, laying all this aside, it is the canal system on Mars that convinces me it is inhabited. It consists of a beautiful network of long line-like markings, continuous and uniform throughout, encompassing the planet from pole to pole. These lines have definite beginnings and definite endings, and each proceeds with definite directness from one oasis--or dark, oval area--to another. In some cases these lines are near together in pairs, and mathematically straight. Double canals, these are called. In other cases two lines intersect, and then both continue to run precisely on their own straight courses. Now, do natural markings on this earth--rivers, for instance--do that? Then are we not justified in the assumption that these geometrical lines on Mars are the work of intelligent engineers? And are we not justified in assuming, also, that these canals were constructed for the growing of vegetation?”

“Just a moment, please,” put in Mrs. Mundy. “What are the oases?”

Joshua assumed a pedagogic attitude.

“The oases,” he explained, “are probably round or oval lakes, fed by the irrigating water courses, probably serving as reservoirs or distributing centers, and forming centers of civilization--cities or urbanlike farming communities. They average about three hundred miles in diameter. The northern hemisphere of Mars is mostly desert, but crossed by canals as they travel toward the regions where vegetation is grown. Some of the canals are as much as eighty miles in breadth--and average about thirty miles. The word canals includes water and vegetation.

“During the winter months the canals are so faint as to be invisible in most cases. Beginning at the snow line, the canals assume a blue-green color--a sort of robin’s egg blue--which eventually extends to the entire system. With the approach of autumn the color changes, and instead of green the canals become a reddish-ochre, or russet, remaining this color until winter, when they begin to grow gradually fainter, and sometimes disappear entirely.

“Now, to return to our theory of irrigation, the irrigation of an entire planet, as seems to me to be the case on Mars, certainly would tax the mathematical and engineering abilities of experts on our own earth. And this wonderful system of irrigation canals--one of them over three thousand miles in length--is not the pipe dream of some over-imaginative star gazer. Many of the canals have been recorded repeatedly on the one hundred thousand photographs made at the Lowell Observatory during the past fifteen years.

“Well, now, ye thirsters for learning who have come to the fountain head of wisdom, let us assume that Mars is inhabited. Let us say, further, that her inhabitants are intelligent beings--far more intelligent than we, as proved by their amazing system of canals. And let us adopt the belief that these super-intelligent Martians are striving desperately to communicate with us. They may have discovered radio, and the wireless waves received by Marconi may indicate an attempt to get in touch with us. But we don’t know for sure that those waves came from Mars or any other planet. What we do know, however, is that the Martians excel in engineering; and we have no proof that they excel us in anything else.

“So then, since we understand engineering after a fashion, isn’t it logical to harbor the hypothesis that the Martians may resort to their knowledge of engineering to establish communication with us?

“Communication by means of wireless waves may be all right for Marconi and others, but it’s out of my line. I’m a telescope fiend, and I’m hoping to prove that Mars is trying to communicate with us through the medium of sight instead of sound. So during my last few years in the House of Refuge, and even while I was tramping over the country with my friend The Whimperer, I spent many nights while Mars was in opposition to the earth in looking for some physical demonstration on the part of the Martian engineers.

“There is but one universal language, and that is mathematics. And it is my belief that the Martians are trying to communicate with the earth by excavating canals which will, when completed, form a geometrical figure that could not possibly be misinterpreted as having been fashioned by natural causes. Canals could be constructed for the purpose of letting us know that the Martians are intelligent beings, and at the same time these same canals could serve them as waterways for irrigating purposes.

“And I think--I’m almost sure--that such a figure, on a colossal scale, is being made for us to see. I think that I have seen it growing, and it was that one fleeting glimpse that gave me my theory. After that I was constantly on the lookout, until The Whimperer stole my telescope, but saw nothing after that first unusual observation. You perhaps do not understand fully that, even though such a figure were constructed on an enormous scale, it might become visible for only a moment or two at one time, even under the most favorable atmospheric conditions. Even established astronomers, using the world’s greatest telescopes, might miss that rare, exceptional moment. They might be looking in the wrong place, you know. And, besides, the higher magnifying powers can seldom be used advantageously in observations of the Martian surface. If a keen-eyed, tireless observer has a small telescope favorably situated he may be the first to glimpse such a signal when the rare moment arrives. For the canals of Mars may be looked for in vain, night after night, with mighty telescopes, and yet remain invisible. Then suddenly comes a moment of exceptionally good seeing, as telescopists call it, and the fine, hairlike lines stand forth in all their fascinating geometrical symmetry--for one brief moment only! And what if I, Joshua Cole, inmate of a reform school for over six long years, tramp, construction stiff, should be on watch on Spyglass Mountain when that moment comes!... I thank you for your kind attention!”

Madge began to speak, but was interrupted by a smart hand-clapping at the door of the tent, and a male voice boomed:

“Good! Fine! Give us the other barrel! I don’t know who you are, but you’re there with the goods!”

“Why, Jack! Where did you come from?” cried Madge, as the flaps were parted and a good-looking, brown-haired young man stood revealed in a gray Norfolk suit and shiny puttees, with a leather quirt hanging by a thong from his wrist.

“Hello, Madge! Hello, Ma Mundy! How’s the old slide coming down?”

Smiling genially and confidently, the young man stepped into the room and shook hands with Mrs. Mundy and Madge. Then, with an amused twinkle in his fine brown eyes, he turned and surveyed the young astronomer, who had risen from his seat.

“Joshua,” said Madge, “this is Mr. Jack Montgomery. Jack--Mr. Joshua Cole, the hero of the day, the expert slide-stopper and adviser of world-famous engineers--Cole of Spyglass Mountain!”