A Republic Without a President, and Other Stories

It is an indisputable fact that civilization as it progresses develops in its advance new diseases and new catastrophes. Hay fever and la grippe were not popular a hundred years ago. To breed a first-class cyclone, cut down your trees and dry up your water supply. This has been conscientiously attended to, and the natural consequences have followed. Science can eliminate the simooms that strike Bombay and Calcutta at such a day year after year, by simply flooding the desert of Sahara. England can be more easily conquered by deflecting the Gulf Stream a quarter of a point than by a thousand ironclads. Who knows but that it would be less expensive to change her into a glacier than to bombard her with hundred-ton guns?

More white people are killed by railroad accidents yearly in our highly civilized land than were slaughtered by native braves in the palmy days of the "Last of the Mohicans." It is a fact that our boasted civilization, instead of affording surer protection, murders more men in one way or another than barbarism, only in the present case the victims are not eaten; the coffins are sumptuous; the processions decorous; the mourners in good form; the burial service pregnant with hope, and culture is not shocked. With us murder is committed by corporations, not by paid assassins. That is the difference. The assassin fails in his blows once in a while; the corporation never.

But where was Russell? What was the nature of the calamity? The impenetrable fact that there was an actual, invisible dead line cast about that territory, with Russell as its centre, became confirmed with every report. It will be recalled that all the railroad tracks entering the doomed city were twisted as if clawed by a maddened monster. It presented a similar appearance to the South Carolina railroad on the day of the Charleston earthquake. This gave rise again to the earthquake theory. But why had not the shock been felt? No rumble had been heard. Could an earthquake account for the deadly something that filled the air?

No intelligence came from Russell. The way must be forced to it.

Who forgets the relief expeditions started in wagons and on foot from every point of the compass? These were invariably repelled on reaching the dead line. We could understand the fetid miasma that made the Great Dismal Swamp an unknowable country. We could comprehend the encroaching dead line of the spreading yellow fever bacillus. But this fearful death, that brooded silently, impenetrably, mysteriously and occultly over a vast area once the garden of civilization, baffled all attempts at explanation. Even birds were observed to vacate this tract. Only a few sinister buzzards wheeled their flight, with straight, unflapping wings, high above Russell, almost out of sight, as if they were the embodied ghosts of Russell's unbaptized inhabitants.

What was that implacable power? Reporters and trackmen who steadily scoffed at it were themselves attacked with violent heart-beats when they crossed the invisible and fatal line. A convulsion of all the members followed, as if in an epileptic fit,—insensibility and, generally, death ensued. Many who were with difficulty rescued, and who finally recovered, averred that they experienced an overcoming odor, acid and penetrating, such as is peculiar to ozone when manufactured in a chemical laboratory.

At the end of the fourth day of Russell's complete isolation a despair settled upon the country. England was staggered by the uniqueness of these phenomena. The French Academy of Sciences, after a prolonged sitting, announced that they could suggest no solution. It is only too well remembered that the newspaper bulletins were besieged in our own cities, but these offered no further information or encouragement. Was advanced civilization responsible for this disaster or not? That was the burning question. Or was this a special visitation of God, a plague new to the medical world, spontaneously generated, sporadic in its appearance, and destined forever to be an obscurum per obscurius or perhaps to spread with further undetermined horrors?

Thousands were now on the ground. They encompassed that section about as Joshua did the city of Jericho, as the settlers did the Territory of Oklahoma on the day of its opening, as the rabble do a house when a murder has been committed.

On the evening of the fourth day from the time when the messenger boy brought the first despatch to the office of the Daily Planet, its chief, obviously nervous for the first time in his public life, received the following cipher telegram, which cheered him wonderfully:

"On the spot. Situation desperate. Worse than described. Will penetrate to Russell or die. Dead line still impassable. Trust me.

"Swift"

III

When Swift boarded the Western express he walked through, starting from the last car, to see if any rival reporters happened to be there for the same purpose. He scanned the backs of the heads of the passengers first, and then looked keenly into each man's face as he passed. He had, in common with all newspaper men, the detective instinct. Who knew what eminent defaulter or renowned cracksman was fleeing the city in dark disguise? However, he observed no familiar or suspicious character until he entered the smoking car.

He did not go through, for, although a great smoker, he took no pleasure in indulging in his favorite vice in the air of a democratic smoking car. What fastidious smoker does? He was content to let his eyes wander up and down the aisle. He was about to turn, when his gaze fell upon the back of a dingy linen duster, which was surmounted by a large, faded, black sombrero. The man under these garments had the upper part of his face hidden beneath the broad flap of his hat, while the under part of his face was entirely submerged in a large pamphlet. The man had the air of extreme retirement. Something about the dinginess of the felt hat seemed familiar to Swift. But, no; it could not be. To make sure, the new editor of the Planet approached, and bent behind the man. The gentleman was ignorant of the attention he attracted, and did not stir. He seemed to be engrossed in one of Mr. Atkinson's incomprehensible financial reports. Swift caught sight of the travellers face, started back in amazement, and said:

"Excuse me, sir: is this seat engaged?" and without further ceremony sat down beside the recondite stranger, who dropped his paper and stared at Swift in return.

"Great Cæsar!" blurted out Swift. "How the D—epartment did you come here?"

"On the five fifty-eight elevated," replied the man, imperturbably.

"I—I didn't know you were sent, too." Swift's heart burned within him at the fancied slight.

"I wasn't," answered Mr. Statis Ticks, laconically and wearily.

"Where the dickens are you going, then?" asked Swift, warmly.

"To Russell, of course."

"How on earth did you get off?"

"I didn't, young man. I skipped." This exceptional occasion doubtless accounted for the only bit of slang that was ever heard to fall from those dry lips. "You see," proceeded Mr. Ticks drearily, "the circumstance is a little unusual. I have read of nothing similar in the casualty reports. I thought it best for my reputation to make my own personal observations and figures on the spot."

"But your position?" asked Swift in surprise.

Mr. Statis Ticks raised his head proudly.

"If the Planet can get on without me, let it!"

"But your family?" continued Swift, somewhat dazed. Who had suspected this animated reference library of such enterprise?

"I sent messenger number thirty-seven to them," he answered with a sigh, as if he were bored by such trifles.

Then considering this topic exhausted, Mr. Ticks took out his notebook and looked absently out of the window; now and then he jotted down a few abstruse figures. He was engrossed in calculating the farm acreage adjacent to the railroad track between New York and Albany.

When they drew nearer to the region of the catastrophe the papers gave more lurid accounts of it. These were purchased and read with avidity by those on board the flying express. Groups centred in the cars talked only of one thing. Reporters now joined the train at each prominent city.

As the train approached the stricken territory it became crammed to suffocation. It crept at a funeral pace. People fought at each station for seats. The train split into sections on account of the added cars, filled with mourners, with rescuers, with sight-seers, with villains.

Swift now took to himself a certain measure of authority. Was he not the experienced representative of the greatest daily in America? But no one noticed Mr. Statis Ticks, who silently blinked at the excited crowds and then jotted down his estimates of them.

On the afternoon of the fourth day Swift bounded from the front platform of the baggage car, the first to leave the train, and looked with a professional eye about him. The scene that met his quick gaze was unprecedented. Clamoring, gesticulating, shrieking, crying men and women were rushing here and there in frenzy. Here was a group of women wailing for their husbands, imprisoned or dead—and who knew which?—within that awful circle. There a man looked, vacantly, with trembling lips, from group to group, hunting for the wife snatched from him. Here was a rude fellow peddling half a bushel of potatoes from a rickety farm wagon. There a woman, hungry and desperate, was aimlessly dragging an orphan child about. Yonder a confidence man was set upon and beaten by infuriated victims. In the midst of a jostling, eager, credulous mob was a man who fancied he had some real news to tell.

Now and then, as if by mutual consent, these people lifted up their heads towards the Great Buzzard mountains, toward Russell, the city of their despair, and clenched their fists and uttered an exasperated groan. Agents of the Red Cross Society and of the Law and Order League had already erected their tents, and were doing all they could to restrain the lawlessness and relieve the discomforts of the mob. Swift critically watched these seething thousands, who had come upon the spot from motives of sorrow, curiosity, gain, and plunder, all miserable, poorly housed and scantily fed. The reporter's inquisitiveness was well ahead of his human sympathy up to this point.

Within these few days the border line about the afflicted city had become an improvised camp, that extended for miles and miles. It was enforced here by a railroad track, there by a village, until, having completed the gigantic circle, it met again. Thousands were flowing in each hour. They came from all points of the compass, like flocks of angels and of devils. As yet the military was not at hand, and the little law that existed was not of the gospel, but of brute force and adroitness.

Swift, having sent off his dispatch at the improvised office, and having forgotten his companion, whom he expected to be a nuisance on his hands, retraced his steps and hurried to the dead line, where it impinged on the railroad track. Here was the centre of the maddest rush. Here men groaned and cursed and wept aloud. Swift pushed his way through until he reached that portion of the track that defied further passage. A cord had been stretched there to keep the crowds back. Upon showing his badge he was received with respect.

"Take keer, boss," said the huge policeman, whose sole duty up to this time had been to drive the spikes into the sleepers. "I tried it yesterday. They just pulled me out. I got the d—d shakes yet." With a grave smile Swift ducked under the rope and looked before him. The solitary, motionless, blasted prairie stretched out, relieved only by the outlines of the Buzzard mountains. Where once the tops of towers, grain elevators and steeples were to be seen on the horizon, there was a cloud. A dense, strange, ominous mist overhung the stricken city.

This cloud was of a yellowish color that recalled to Swift the dreadful yellow day of '72. It reached nearly to the summit of the great Buzzard mountain. Within five miles of the spot on which he stood this phenomenon became more and more attenuated until it disappeared in dull transparency. What did that cloud contain? What horrors did it hide? Of what was its nature? What was the secret of its deadly influence? No American catastrophe had impressed the reporter so much as the sight of this veil, hiding the unattainable city. Curse this maledict, deadly vapor! It paralyzed his inventiveness. It baffled his imagination. For the first time in his reportorial career Swift was stunned and without resource.

Now it was said that not a breath of air had stirred over the polluted area since the morning of the loss of Russell.

As the news editor looked down the tracks he saw that the tracks, which were torn up and twisted beneath him, within a hundred feet, disappeared utterly from view. The wooden ties were blackened into charcoal in their places, but the iron rails had evaporated. It was the same with the telegraph wires. At a certain point they stopped and were gone. The poles, tottering and scorched and bare, looked like a procession of naked ghosts, undressed for livelier mockery. Before him the trees, the shrubs, the grain, the grasses—in fine, all vegetation had been smitten unto death.

The face of the earth was black and crumbling. It looked as if the roots of this unconscious vegetable life had been suddenly touched by volcanic fires and had died from the ground up. There was not a vestige of life as far as the eye could see. Had a fire swept the land? But no! No smoke had been hitherto visible, unless this inexplicable cloud were smoke. And yet, to Swift's practiced eye, there were evidences of a violent, a sudden, a consuming heat. The men in line behind Swift stood respectfully back while he observed this unique scene. He noticed a white mile-post close at hand. It was inscribed, "Russell, 20 m."

"Only twenty miles to Russell! and no one there yet! What a field for the news editor of the greatest paper in the land! The competitors were keen. The chances were even, the honor great, and no favors asked. As he stood for a moment, lost in thought over the apparent hopelessness of the undertaking, and almost wishing he had not sent so confident a telegram to his chief, he felt a hand upon his arm.

"I have found one," said a slow voice.

"Have you? What?" asked Swift, with careless interest. He recognized the aspirated tones of Mr. Ticks.

"I have calculated this thing over. There are between six and seven thousand on the spot. Five hundred reporters are here, and more expected by every train. There is no food, no bed, no roof for us here. This place has been completely done up. It is exhausted. To get facts we must move on."

"Jove, you're right, old man!"

Mr. Ticks acknowledged the compliment with a slight motion of his hand.

"Yes, I have just purchased the only team to be had, for four hundred dollars."

Swift glanced enviously at his autumnal colleague, who had already outdone him in enterprise.

"Cyclones and tornadoes in this part of the country," proceeded Mr. Ticks sententiously, "travel to the northeast. We will go to the north. If there are any remains they are to be found there," Mr. Ticks had, it would seem, embraced the tornado theory.

"We will go immediately!" exclaimed Swift.

"Hold!" cried the man of figures quietly, "I wish to test this phenomenon. Wait for me here!"

Before Swift could utter a protest or arrest his colleague's arm, the philosopher started up the vacant track. No one dared to follow him. The crowd were too much stunned at his audacity. Had they not dragged a dozen adventurers back from the same mad enterprise? Men shuddered before this unknown fate that stretched out its relentless arms so far and no further. A cocked pistol would have been more comfortable.

But Mr. Ticks walked on slowly, unconsciously, as if in a revery. He put his hands out as if to feel the air. He put his tongue out as if to taste it. He had not gone forty feet when he was observed to tremble violently. Those on the dead line united with Swift in shrieking "Come back!" The experimenting member of the Planet staff only shook his head. He was not twenty yards away when he stopped abruptly. He put his hands to his head and heart, and struggled against the unseen force. It beat upon him: but he steadied his legs the firmer and met the shock. It smote at him, but he wearily smiled in return. He even made a motion as if for his notebook. But such temerity was too much for the occult fluid to suffer. It breathed upon him and felled him to the ground. As he dropped he rested for a moment spasmodically upon one knee, and peered into the air as if he were penetrating the secret of this baleful agent. Then he fell back insensible.

Half an hour afterwards the newspaper man came to. Swift was bending over him.

"We rushed you out. You'll pull through all right, old man," said his colleague cheerily.

"Did you note the symptoms?" asked Mr. Ticks feebly.

"Yes."

"Did you wire them?"

"No; I hadn't time. I–"

"Then do so!" He sank back exhausted.

"But how did you feel? How do you feel?" asked Swift anxiously.

"As mortal never felt before," replied Mr. Ticks solemnly. With these words upon his lips he lapsed away again into unconsciousness.

That evening at a late hour Swift made his way to the four-hundred-dollar team under whose protecting shelter he had ensconced his patient with such poor comfort as was possible.

Mr. Ticks raised himself from the cushions upon one arm.

"Are you ready?" he said restlessly.

"For what?" asked Swift in astonishment.

"To start."

"Not to-night surely?"

"Yes—immediately. Harness up! We must be at the extreme north of this unclassified belt by to-morrow morning."

IV

Empiria, the new county seat of the new county Dominion of the new State of Harrison, was twenty miles away to the northward as the crow flies, and at least thirty miles off by road. The horse that Mr. Ticks had the forethought to purchase developed an unaccountable spavin, united with an unmistakable case of the heaves: when the whip was applied it furthermore exhibited an innate tendency to back. Mr. Swift drove through the darkness of the night, picking out the road with that genius for locality which the general and the reporter in the field share alike. Barring mistakes, accidents, or further exhibitions of depravity on the part of the equine department, they hoped to reach Empiria by dawn.

Mr. Ticks leaned back upon the jolting seat in unbroken silence. When his colleague, who drove, hazarded a question, the only reply was a low grunt. As sleep was out of the question in that wagon, behind that horse and in those roads, was it pain or mighty thought or nebulous calculation that oppressed the wise man of the Planet? At about two o'clock in the morning Mr. Stalls Ticks broke his long reserve with the following remark:

"If it is, it is a unique case. The phenomenon is isolated."

"I hope you feel better now?" Swift had been anxious about his colleague, and had interpreted his silence as evidence of physical distress. Mr. Ticks gave an invisible shrug of his shoulders to express the contempt he felt for his own anatomy in comparison with the attainment of exact knowledge. Otherwise, heedless of the interruption, he proceeded:

"It is physically impossible that a low-pressured area could have had its centre three or four hundred miles northwest of Russell."

"Indeed?" replied Swift, vaguely and unsympathetically.

"It must travel towards the centre of the low pressure."

"Of course," assented Swift, as he would to a lunatic. Evidently that inexpressible shock had been too much for the middle-aged man.

"The Gopher lake on the north, and the Buzzard mountain on the south, prevent the isothermal curve from being deflected toward the north."

"Really?" said Swift.

"It will be deflected to the south, young man," said Mr. Ticks, severely. "The atmospheric equilibrium can suffer no centripetal disturbance."

"Well, what then?" asked Swift, a little bored.

"There could be no gyrating motion of the atmosphere. There will be no aerial contest. There could be no colder stratum above the warmer layer coming from another direction. Both would flow from the south. There could be no inversion of these conditions. My friend, Russell has experienced no tornado or cyclone. And yet—" he added wistfully and thoughtfully, "and yet—"

"Well, if there was no tornado, what the deuce are we going to Empiria for?" demanded Swift. He forgot himself, and gave the four-hundred-dollar horse a sharp cut with the whip, in consequence of which the animal backed them so nearly toward the place from which they started that the journey to Empiria was seriously lengthened. Mr. Ticks did not notice this delay.

"—And yet?" he mused.

"What is the matter, then, if it isn't wind?" asked Swift, impatiently, after he had persuaded his horse to defer the next attack of backing for a mile or so. "Is there a new variety of atmospheric disturbance? If so, it might strike us here!"

"Sir—no! This is not a common tornado. As to further theories, they are not formulated as yet. No, this quadrant of the State of Harrison was not subjected to such a violent disturbance. I am prepared to say that there will be no evidences of a vortex wind in or near Empiria." Mr. Ticks relapsed into further thought, nor could he be aroused until the jaded horse brought the two jaded reporters into the open square of the county seat.

It was early, about five o'clock, but still there were evidences of stirring and excitement. Upon the village common two or three large tents were erected, and from out of these, scantily dressed men and woman emerged. As these came into the cool, open air they lifted up their faces to the south, searching the horizon and sky to see if there was anything new in the smitten district. It was a motion as instinctive as that of the Mahomedan toward Mecca when he prays. The appearance of our two strangers excited no notice. Empiria was on a branch road, difficult of access, but people had flocked in and the village had become a city.

After a hard struggle, in which persistent ingenuity won, Swift obtained a little corn for his horse, and a promise of breakfast for himself and companion.

By six the populace was awake, bustling with feverish eagerness and oppressed with dread and suspense. Swift questioned a hundred, climbed to the tops of trees, advanced upon the mysterious dead line, and retired baffled at every step.

As he thought of that vast enclosure, that was now an unapproachable cemetery, his soul shuddered within him. Like a thousand beside him, this man of nerve was baffled and overcome.

By nine o'clock, Swift had exhausted the spot, and was for pushing on to the westward to complete the perplexing circle if necessary. Perhaps an entrance might be forced elsewhere. He was sitting in his buggy with Mr. Ticks, who was as uncommunicative as the dasher when he looked for the hundredth time towards the Buzzard mountains. As he gazed he saw turkey buzzards, of which there are thousands in that land, wheeling their spiral flight above the afflicted territory. Swift looked at them as he always did, wondering how they could fly so long without flapping their wings, when suddenly he cried out:

"By Jove! I have it!" This startled Mr. Ticks.

"What? Have you new information? What has occurred?"

"No; but I have an idea—the idea—but I don't see how I could put it through without time. I will go to Russell, or over Russell in a balloon!"

The light of inspiration and sympathy flashed from one to the other.

"I congratulate you on the thought," said Mr. Ticks gravely. "I think I can procure you one in a quarter of an hour."

Now, under no circumstances is a balloon an easy thing to obtain. Even in a metropolis like New York or London it will take the cleverest reporter at least eighteen minutes, if not a few seconds longer, to hunt up a suitable means of ascension. It is not as simple a matter as one may suppose, to "go up." Therefore, when Mr. Ticks, in a matter-of-fact voice, asserted that he would procure the balloon in fifteen minutes, Swift fetched a long low whistle. But not in the least disconcerted by Swift's manner, Mr. Ticks slowly descended from the vehicle, and said:

"Just wait here until I come back, so that no time may be lost." He strode towards one of the large tents on the common and disappeared within its flaps. Had Mr. Ticks the formula for inflating a canvas tent into a balloon? Who knew?