The Red Dust

of B

all their colorful beauty, then melting slowly into indefiniteness as they sped away. The tribefolk on the clustered rafts watched the

y through the glistening black mud of the swamp, but after a long time the

rew higher and steeper, as if the foothills of a mou

uds met their rugged flanks but half-way toward the peaks. To right and left the mountains melted into th

and more rapidly in a deeper and narrower current toward a cleft between two rugged giants tha

ere and there with lavender and purple. Rocks, not hidden beneath a coating of fungus, protruded their angular heads from the hillsides. The ri

d then shot out to where the cliffsides drew apart and for

ng its web. It was a monster of its tribe. Its belly was swollen to a diameter of no less th

of tribefolk passed underneath, and they saw the broad bands of yellow and black a

either side before the steep sides of the mountains began their rise. Here the cluster of mushroom rafts were caught in

rl searched all about with his eyes. Toadstools and mushrooms, rusts and molds, even g

t came in a deafening burst of sound, reechoed from the hillsides, but save for the far-flung web of

es of fungus of almost every species. Twice they stopped to seize upon edible fungi and break them into masses they

erfly emerging from its chrysalis, but was unwilling to take any chanc

o a small pocket in the mountainside. Here they found many of the edible fungoids, and no less than a dozen of the giant cab

teau, and there were dense thickets of toadstools in which the tribesmen m

f creatures that ventured forth in the darkness. All the valley and the plateau were illumined by the shin

y over the fungus-covered mountainside, and great glow-worms clambered upon the shining tops of the toads

earth, merely enlarged creatures in the forms of their own larv?. Moths soared overhead with mighty, throbb

nd was heard which grew in volume, and became a deep-toned roar, which reechoed and reverberated from the opposite hillsides until it was li

Then he dared move in the direction of the sound, and the gleam from a dozen firefli

poured down each night to plunge in a smother of spray and foam through six hundred feet of empty space to the swiftly flowing river in the center of

reat trap-door in the earth, sure sign of the burrow of a monster spider, and Burl resolved that before many days the spider would be dealt wi

hey would need bold leaders, but they were infinitely superior to the timid, rabbit-like creatures they had been. They bore spears, and they ha

lent taste to the insipid savor of the mushrooms that had once been their steady diet. They knew the exhilaration of brave adventure-though they had b

he nearest ant-city was miles away, and that the small insects would trouble them but rarely. (The nightl

and disused cells of hunting wasps. The walls of the pocket were made of soft

thirty feet, where they branched out into a number of cells. Each of the cells had once held a grub which had grown fat

far more secure hiding-place than the center of the mushroom thickets. And, furthermore, a hiding-pl

are to civilization and continual peace is not made by the elimination of the causes of strife, bu

ached it with great labor and carried it into one of the burrows, though the task was one tha

he others, and made preparations for an event that was desti

uggestion-even carrying within the dark caverns the radiant heads of the luminous mushrooms to furnish illumination. The light would

question. He was growing to repose some measure of trust in them, too, as men who began to have some glimmer

naturally families had come into being-sometimes after fierce and absurd fights among the men-but the

e men had but little of the feeling of parenthood, though the wom

bonds. They were homes in the making-damp and humid burrows without fire or heat, but homes, nevertheless. The fa

ose beside the burrow he had chosen for his own. He cast aside all other work, and waited patiently for the thing he knew was about to happen. He squatt

inent, but he had never conquered the habit of feeling hungry at any and every

continued, and presently a tiny hole showed, which rapidly enlarged. Tiny jaws and a dry, glazed skin became visible, the skin

ad seemed to become distended, to be swelling. A crack appeared along its upper part,

s that had been extinct for many thousand years. Soft scales and fine hairs alternated to cover it, and two immense, many-fac

without substance or color, but the body was a perfect white. The butterfly moved a little distance from its cocoon and slowly unfurled its wings. With the action, life seemed to be p

it. Fluttering above the fungoids of the hillsides, surely there was a mate with whom the joys of love were to be shared, surely upon tho

nce. It spread them once more, and raised them to make the first flight of this new existe

ill upon the fungus-carpeted earth, and Burl leaned over to strip away the great wings of snow-white velvet, to s

te limbs for the meat within them, and Burl made sure that Saya secured the choicest bits. The tribesmen

ny. They were caterpillars, each one perhaps ten feet long, each with a tiny black head armed with sharp jaws, and with dull-red fur upon their backs. The rear of the procession wa

ar of the first, and the head of the third touching the rear of the second. In faultless

ader constantly rose upon his hinder half and waved the fore part of his body in the ai

slug that meant danger to man, and he reasoned that these were at any rate moving slowly so th

e was left behind them. No less than eighty great caterpillars clad in white and dingy red were solemnly moving down the mountainside

e to a thicket of mushrooms, and passed through it, followed by his devoted band. Then he came to an open spac

the eight-hundred-foot line of creatures. The leader began to dig with feet and jaws, working furiously to cover himself completely with the

ned any attempt to keep to their line, and hastened to find an

ivity, incredible activity. Huge, ten-foot bodies burrowed despera

f still deeper, and the freshly turned surface showed that beneath the clearing on the plateau eighty great slugs were preparing themselves for the sleep of metamorph

ientists of thirty thousand years before had written in weighty and dull books, they would have deduced from the appearance of the processionary caterpillars-or pine-cate

f food for them when they cared to dig for it, that their provisions for many months were secure, and t

leadership of the tribe. And then Burl rose, and took the two snowy-white velvet cloaks from the wings of the white butterfly. One of them he

d, and her wrath is my wrath. My burrow

Saya are obeyed likewise, for my spear will loose the life from any man who angers her. Know that as

her waist before all the tribe, and the tribesmen muttered in acquies

ows, being set apart from them, and its entrance was bordered on either side by mushrooms as black as night. All about the entrance the black mushrooms clustered, a

y pool had gathered, which reflected the gray clouds abov

id. Both of their figures were swathed in cloaks of unsmirched whiteness and wondrous softness, and bound to Burl's forehead were the feathery, lacelike antenna of a great

when the rain began its slow, deliberate dripping from the heavy clouds above. Presently a gentle rumbling began-the accumula

ther side of the valley. The fireflies danced like fairy lights in the chasm, and all th

surface of the black pool beneath their feet, Burl reached out his hand to Saya, sitting beside him in the darkness.

e

is the Philan