--because savagery enlightened by the civilization of centuries
is a deadly thing to let loose among men. Our savage forebears were
but superior animals groping laboriously after economic security and
a social condition that would yield most prolifically the fruit of all
the world's desire, happiness; to-day, when we swing back to something
akin to savagery, we do it for lust of gain, like our forebears, but
we do it wittingly. So, if you would look upon the unlovely spectacle
of civilized men turned savage, and see them toil painfully back to
lawful living, you have but to do this:

Seek a spot remote from the great centers of our vaunted civilization,
where Nature, in a wanton gold-revel of her own, has sprinkled her
river beds with the shining dust, hidden it away under ledges, buried
it in deep canyons in playful miserliness and salved with its potent
glow the time-scars upon the cheeks of her gaunt mountains. You have
but to find a tiny bit of Nature's gold, fling it in the face of
civilization and raise the hunting cry. Then, from that safe sanctuary
which you have chosen, you may look your fill upon the awakening of
the primitive in man; see him throw off civilization as a sleeper
flings aside the cloak that has covered him; watch the savages fight,
whom your gold has conjured.

They will come, those savages; straight as the arrow flies they will
come, though mountains and deserts and hurrying rivers bar their way.
And the plodding, law-abiding citizens who kiss their wives and
hold close their babies and fling hasty, comforting words over their
shoulders to tottering old mothers when they go to answer the hunting
call--they will be your savages when the gold lust grips them. And
the towns they build of their greed will be but the nucleus of all the
crime let loose upon the land. There will be men among your savages;
men in whom the finer stuff outweighs the grossness and the greed. But
to save their lives and that thing they prize more than life or gold,
and call by the name of honor or friendship or justice--that thing
which is the essence of all the fineness in their natures--to save
that and their lives they also must fight, like savages who would
destroy them.

* * * * *

There was a little, straggling hamlet born of the Mission which the
padres founded among the sand hills beside a great, uneasy stretch of
water which a dreamer might liken to a naughty child that had run a