But he conscientiously let some of the plants go to seed, and saved the

fresh seed for the future.

 

He was as thoroughly discouraged as any amateur gardener had ever been. It

was one thing apparently to grow vegetables when thousands of others were

doing the same, and quite another when yours was the only plot and so from

miles around every vegetable-hungry animal and bird and mollusk and insect

came galloping or flying or oozing or hopping, and apparently sending out

by signals to its fellows the universal shout, "Let's eat!"

 

Toward the end of summer the second baby was born. They called her Mary,

just as they had decided finally to call the first one John, so that the

old names would not vanish from the earth.

 

When the new baby was only a few weeks old, there was another memorable

event.

 

This was the way of it.... In those first years though Ish and Em stayed

contentedly close at home, they now and then had visits from wanderers who

had seen the smoke on San Lupo Drive and headed for it, sometimes in cars,

more often on foot. These people, with one exception, seemed to be

suffering from shock. They were bees who had lost the hive, sheep without a

flock. By now, Ish concluded, the ones who had made a good adjustment must

already have settled down. (Besides, no matter whether the wanderer was a

man or a woman, the old problem of three's-a-crowd reared up.) So Ish and

Em were glad when one of these restless and unhappy people decided to

continue wandering.

 

The exception was Ezra. Ish always remembered how Ezra came strolling along

the street that hot September day, his face florid, his half-bald head even

redder, his jaw narrow and pinched, his bad teeth showing suddenly when he

saw Ish and stopped and smiled.

 

"Hi-ya, boy!" he had said, and though the words were American, still behind

them somewhere was the ghost of a North-of-England accent.

 

He stayed until after the first rains. He was always pleasant, even when

his teeth were growling. He had that miexpressibly great gift of making

people feel comfortable. The babies always smiled for Ezra. Ish and Em

would have urged him to stay permanently, but they feared the

triangle-situation, even when the outsider was as easygoing and perceptive

as Ezra. So one day when he seemed restless they sent him off, telling him

jokingly to find himself a pretty girl and then come back and join them.

They were sad after he had gone.

 

At the time of his leaving the sun was again far to the south. So, when

they went to the flat rock and cut the numeral 2, Ezra was still in their

minds, though he was gone and they did not expect to see him again. He

would have been, they thought, a good helper, a good person to have around.

To his memory they called it the Year of Ezra.

 

The Year 3 was the Year of the Fires. Just after mid-summer the smoke

suddenly drifted over everything, and it stayed, lighter and heavier,

through three months. The babies sometimes woke up coughing and choking,

their eyes watering.

 

Ish could realize what was happening. The western forests were no longer

primeval woodlands of big trees through which a fire could sweep and do

little damage. On the contrary, because of logging and man-caused fires,

the forests consisted mostly of thick and highly inflammable second-growth,

made all the worse by slash-piles and brush-fields. Man had produced this

kind of forest, and it was dependent upon him, surviving only because of

his vigorous efforts at fire-suppression. Now the hoses lay neatly coiled

and the bull-dozers reddened with rust, and in this summer, a very dry one,

over, all northern California, and doubtless in Oregon and Washington too,

the lightning-set fires were raging uncombatted through the tangled

second-growth and blazing up in the tinder-dry slash-piles. One horrible

week they even saw the fires burning brightly in the night, all along the

north side of the Bay, sweeping the slopes of the mountain from bottom to

top, and dying out only when there was nothing left to burn. The broad arms

of the Bay fortunately kept the fire on the north side, and there were no

lightning storms on the south side to start new fires. When it was all

over, Ish believed that there must be very few forests left unburned in

California, and centuries would be required to grow them again.

 

In this year also Ish really settled down to reading--another sign that he

was finally adjusting to the situation. He got his books from the City

Library, and kept the million volumes of the University as a great reserve

to be tapped when the time was ripe. Although he often thought that he

should use his reading to make himself skillful in such fields as medicine

and agriculture and mechanics, he found that what he actually wanted to

read was the story of mankind. He plunged through innumerable volumes of

anthropology and history, and went on into philosophy, particularly the

philosophy of history. He mad novels and poems and plays, which also were

the story of mankind.

 

Sometimes in the evening, when he was reading and Em was knitting, and the

babies were asleep upstairs and Princess was lying lazily in front of the

fire-sometimes then Ish would look up and think that his father and mother

had passed many evenings in just the same way. But then he would see the

gasoline lamp and turn his eyes up to the dead electriclight bulbs in the

ceiling-fixture.

 

The Year 4 was the Year of the Coming.... One day in early spring, about

noon, Princess leaped up barking wildly and dashed for the street, and then

they heard a car-horn tooting. Ezra had been gone for more than a year, and

they had stopped thinking about him. But there he was-in a jalopylooking

car, overflowing with people and household goods. Ish couldn't help

thinking of an Okie outfit arriving in California in the Old Times.

 

Besides Ezra, there crawled out of the car a woman of about thirty-five, a

younger woman, a frightened-looking half-grown girl, and a little boy. Ezra

introduced the older woman as Molly, and the younger as Jean, and after

each name he added calmly and without embarrassment, "My wife."

 

Ish suffered only mild shock at the fact of bigamy. He had been through a

great many experiences already, and he reacted quickly to realize that

plurality of wives had been an accepted part of many great civilizations in

the past and might well be again in the future. It was certainly a

practical situation when there were two women available and only one man,

especially when the man was like Ezra, able to live comfortably with people

under all sorts of conditions.

 

The little boy was Ralph, Molly's son. He had been bom only a few weeks

before the Great Disaster, and had presumably either inherited immunity or

absorbed it through his mother's milk. This was the only case, so far as

they knew, of two members of the same family surviving. The half-grown girl

they called Evie, but nobody really knew her right name. Ezra had found her

living in squalor and solitude, opening cans to find what she needed,

grubbing for worms and snails. She must have been five or six years old at

the time of theGreat Disaster. Whether she had always been half-witted, or

whether the shock of death and solitude had rendered her so, no one knew.

She cowered and whimpered, and even Ezra could win a smile from her only

now and then. She knew a few words, and after they had been kind to her for

a long time, she gradually came to talk more, but she never grew normal.

 

Later in the same year Ish and Ezra went off together for a few days in

Ish's old station-wagon. The trip was not a pleasant one; they had

tire-trouble and engine-trouble, and the roads were rough. Nevertheless

they accomplished what they had set out to do.

 

They located George and Maurine, whom Ezra had found on one of his

wanderings. George was a big shambling fellow, gray around the temples,

good-natured, uncertain in speech but deft in his trade, which was

carpentry. ("Too bad!" thought Ish. "A mechanic or a farmer would have been

better for us!") Maurine was his female counterpart, except that she was

some ten years younger, around forty probably. She loved housekeeping as

George loved carpentry. As for their mental processes, you might call

George dull, but you would have to call Maurine stupid.

 

Privately Ish and Ezra discussed George and Maurine, and decided that they

were good solid people, comfortable to have around, more a source of

strength than of weakness. (It was a little, Ish thought wryly, like

deciding whether you would give someone a bid to your fraternity, and when

there were so few to choose from, you couldn't be too choosy.) In the end

George and Maurine came along back in the station-wagon.

 

Ish and Maurine found that they had one experience in common. As a little

girl in South Dakota, she had been bitten by a rattlesnake.

 

Toward the end of this year Em bore her second son, whom they named Roger.

So by that time the people living on San Lupo Drive numbered seven adults,

andfour children, and Evie besides. About then they began, at first as a

joke, to talk of themselves as The Tribe.

 

The Year 5 supplied no very startling occurrence. Both Molly and Jean had

babies, and Ezra was as pleased as a two-time father should be. In the end

they called it the Year of the Bulls. This was because there was a plague

of cattle that year, just as from the first months they all remembered the

plagues of the ants and the rats. Cattle had gradually got to be more and

more numerous. Very rarely did anyone see a horse; never, a sheep. But it

was good country for cattle, and they reached a climax in this year, and

became a nuisance. To be sure, you easily got all the steak you wanted,

though it was tough. But you had continual trouble running into a cross

bull when you were merely wanting to walk here or there. You could always

shoot a bull, but shooting one near the houses either meant that you had to

go to all the trouble of burying the carcass, or of dragging it away, or

else you suffered from the smell. They all had to become adept at stepping

quickly out of the way when a bull charged, and they came to make something

of a sport of this, and to call it "bull-dodging."

 

The Year 6 was an eventful one. During its course all four of the women

bore children-even Maurine, who had seemed too old. There was, however-ikow

that Em had led the way-a strong drive toward the having of many children.

Each of the adults had for a time lived alone, had experienced what they

now called the Great Loneliness, and the strange dread that went with it.

Even now their little group was only a tiny candle against the pressure of

surrounding darkness. Each new-born baby seemed to give the uncertain flame

a stronger hold and to push the darkness of annihilation back a little. At

the end of this year the number of children, which was ten, exceeded the

number of adults-and then of course there was Evie, who was hardly to be

counted in either group.

 

But it was an eventful year for other reasons too. It was a year of drought

and of little grass, and the too numerous cattle grew thin and wandered

everywhere, searching food. Driven madly by hunger, they crashed the strong

fence around the little vegetable plot one night. The aroused men emptied

rifles into the milling cattle at short range, but before they could be

driven off, the garden was utterly ruined-ironically, by being trampled

out, for in the confusion of the milling herd no animal had been able to

eat.

 

To crown all this, came the grasshoppers. They descended suddenly, and ate

up everything that the cattle could not reach. They ate the leaves from the

trees and the flesh from the ripening peaches, so that the bare seeds hung

from the ends of the leafless branches. Then the grasshoppers died, and

their stench was everywhere.

 

After a while the cattle also lay dead by hundreds in the dry stream-beds

and muddy waterholes, and their stench too filled the air. By now the land

was stripped bare, as if it would never recover.

 

A horror fell upon the people. Ish tried to explain to them that it was all

a part of the jostling for readjustment after the loss of human controls.

There was bound to be, for instance, a plague of grasshoppers during the

first year when conditions favored them, now that their breeding-grounds

were not disturbed by cultivation. But with the stench in the air and the

whole earth looking dead, he could not be very convincing. George and

Maurine took to prayer. Jean made fun of themopenly, saying that what had

happened in the last few years didn't give her confidence in this

god-business. Molly went into depressions, and wept loudly at times. In

spite of his rationalistic explanaoons even Ish was despondent for the

future. Of the adults only Ezra and Em showed the capacity for taking

things as they came.

 

The older children seemed to be little affected. They gulped their canned

milk greedily, even when the stench was thickest. John (they already were

calling him Jack) held his father's hand with confidence, and looked with

mild six-yearold interest at a cow which had tottered along the street and

lay dying in the sun. He obviously accepted it as just part of his world.

 

But the nursing babies, except Em's, absorbed a sense of disaster through

their mothers' milk. They wailed fretfully. Thus disturbing their mothers

all the more, they set up a vicious circle. October was a month of horror.

 

Then came the miracle! Two weeks after the first rain they looked out, and

the hills were a faint green with sprouting grass. Everyone was suddenly

happy, and Molly and Maurine wept with pleasure. Even Ish was relieved, for

in the last weeks the despair of the others had shaken his confidence in

the basic recuperative powers of the earth itself, and he had begun to

doubt whether any seed remained.

 

When, at the time of the winter solstice, the people all gathered once more

at the smooth expanse of rock to cut the numeral into the surface and to

name the year, they were uncertain what they should call it. It might be,

for good omen, the Year of the Four Babies. But it might be the Year of the

Dead Cattle, or the Year of the Grasshoppers. In the end the evilness of

the year prevailed in their thoughts. So they called it simply the Bad

Year.

 

The Year 7 was a strange one also. The mountain-lions suddenly seemed to be

everywhere. You hardly dared to walk between houses without carrying a

rifle, and having a dog at heel to give warning, and the dog kept usually

very close at heel also. The lions never quite dared attack a man, but they

picked up four dogs, and you were never quite sure whether one of them

might not just suddenly leap from a tree. The children had to be kept

indoors. What had happened was again obvious enough to Ish. During the

years when there had been so many cattle, the lions must have bred rapidly,

and now that the cattle had perished,in the drought, the lions were left

without food and ravenously were closing in.

 

In the end there was bad luck, because Ish missed his shot and instead of

killing a lion merely raked it across the shoulders, and it charged and

mauled him before Ezra could get another shot home. After that he walked

with a little limp, and became very bred when he had to sit long in the

same position, as in driving a car. (Butby now the roads had gone to pieces

badly and the cars were unreliable and there were few placesto go anyway,

so that there was very little car-driving.) Naturally, they called it the

Year of the Lions.

 

The Year 8 was comparatively uneventful. They called it the Year We Went to

Church. (The name amused Ish, for its wording implied that that experiment

was over and done with.)

 

This had happened in this way.... Being merely seven ordinary Americans,

they were of varied religious affiliations or of none at all, and even

among the church-members no one had felt any creative religious drive. Ish

had gone to SundaySchool as a child, but when Maurine asked him what church

he belonged to, he had to say that he was a skeptic. Maurine did not know

the word, and jumping to the wrong conclusion she always referred to Ish

thereafter as being a member of the Skeptic Church.

 

Maurine herself was a Catholic, and so was Molly. They could still cross

themselves and say a *Hail Mary,* but otherwise they were in a bad

situation, having no confessor and no way of celebrating mass. As Ish

reflected, the Catholic Church had considered almost all possibilities, but

apparently never the one of getting reorganized after the Apostolic

Succession was broken and only two women remained.

 

Of the others, George had been a Methodist,'and a deacon. But he was too

inarticulate to turn preacher, and not enough of a leader to organize a

congregation. Ezra was tolerant of everyone's beliefs, but never let

himself be pinned down as to his own, and so probably lacked any

convictions. Jean had been a member of some loud-praying modern sect called

Christ's Own. But she had seen the congregation pray in vain at the time of

the Great Disaster, and now she had turned definitely anti-religious. Em,

who never liked to turn toward the past, was reticent. As far as Ish could

tell, she never prayed. Now and then, apparently without thinking of

religious implications, she sang hymns or spirituals in her full throaty

contralto.

 

George and Maurine, sinking the Methodist-Catholic differences, were the

ones who suggested church services--"for the sake of the children." They

appealed to Ish, who was something of a leader, especially in things

intellectual, Maurine, broad-mindedly, even told him that she would not

object to the use of "the Skeptic form of services."

 

Ish felt the temptation. He could easily piece together some harmless bits

of religion, give comfort and confidence to people who might often need it

badly, and supply a core of solidity and union to the cominunity. George,

Maurine and Molly would welcome it; Jean should be easy to convert again;

Ezra would not stand in the way. But Ish himself hated building upon a

foundation of insincerity, and he knew that Em would see through the sham.

 

In the end they held a service each Sunday-George had kept track of Sunday,

or at least thought so. They sang hymns, and read from the Bible, and stood

uncovered for silent prayer, each for himself.

 

But Ish never prayed during the period of silence, and he did not think

that Em or Ezra did either. Moreover, Jean maintained her hostility

stoutly, and never attended. Ish felt that if he had had more fervor, or

more hypocrisy, he could have argued Jean over. As it was, however, the

church services were cultivating disunion rather than unity of feeling, and

sham more than true religion. One day, on the spur of the moment, Ish put

an end to them. He did it rather neatly, he thought, ending his speech with

the idea that they were not really giving up the services but merely

extending the period of silent prayer indefinitely--"letting each one of us

carry on in his heart as he wishes."

 

Molly wept a little at what seemed to her such a lovely thought, and so the

experiment with the church at least was ended in harmony.

 

At the beginning of the Year 9 there were seven adults, and Evie, and

thirteen children, ranging in age from new-born babies up to Molly's Ralph,

who was nine, and Ish and Em's Jack, who was eight.

 

Everybody had a pleasant sense of confidence and security in the growth of

the community, or of The Tribe, as they now said more often. The birth of

each baby was a time of real rejoicing, as the shadows seemed to draw back

a little and the circle of light to enlarge.

 

Soon after the beginning of that year, a decent-looking oldish man came up

to George's house one morning. He was one of those wanderers who still

occasionally, though less and less often, passed through.

 

They received him hospitably, but like the others he showed little reaction

to what they did for him. He stayed only over one night, and then went off

again, without even saying good-bye, in the aimless way of those shocked

ones.

 

He had scarcely gone, it seemed, before people began feeling irritable. All

the babies started crying. Then soon there were sore throats and running

noses and aching heads and swollen eyes, and The Tribe was suddenly in all

the throes Of an epidemic.

 

This was all the more remarkable because throughout the preceding years the

general health had been so unbelievably good. Ezra and some of the others

had suffered with bad teeth; George, who was the oldest, had complained of

various aching joints which he described under the old-fashioned term

"rheumatism"; occasionally a scratch became infected. But even the common

cold seemed to have vanished entirely, and there were only two diseases

that remained active. One Of these struck each of the children sooner or

later; it was a great deal like measles in its symptoms, and doubtless it

was measles, and that was what they called it, lacking any doctor to make

them sure. The other began with a violent sore throat, but yielded so

quickly to sulfa pills that no one really knew its full course. As long as

there were sulfa pills in any drug store and they kept potent in spite of

age, Ish saw no need to find out experimentally just how this sore throat

would develop, if left untreated.

 

Why so few diseases remained--this seemed miraculous to people like George

and Maurine, and they were inclined to be superstitious about the matter.

They felt that God in some great anger had nearly wiped out the human race

in one vast plague, and thus being satisfied, had seen fit to remove the

minor plagues as a kind of compensation--just as, after Noah's flood, he had

set the rainbow in the sky as a sign that there would never again be

another such flood.

 

To Ish, however, the explanation was plain. Since so large a proportion of

the people had died, the chain of most infections had been broken, and many

individual diseases had, you might say, "died" when their particular kinds

of bacteria became extinct. Of course there would still be the diseases

which might spring from the mere deterioration of the human body, such as

heart-failure and cancer, and George's "rheumatism," and there might also

be animal-borne infections, like tularemia and tick-fever. Also there could

be, here and there, individual survivors who carried some disease in

chronic form, but could still pass it on to others, just as someone of

themselves had probably been responsible for the survival of "measles."

 

The old man, everyone remembered too late, had blown his nose occasionally.

Doubtless he had an infected sinus, and so had infected them all with what

used to be called "die common cold," although lately it had been so

uncommon as to seem extinct.

 

In any case there was something almost comic in the way so many

disgustingly healthy people were suddenly transformed into sneezers and

coughers and hawkers and noseblowers.

 

Fortunately, the cold ran its course without complications, and in a few

weeks everyone was ivell again. Throughout the rest of that year Ish lived

in fear of another outbreak. There was a good chance, he knew, that the

infection might be quiescent in one of them, and then break loose again

when die short-time immunity of the others had worn off. But the long dry

summer (it was particularly sunny that year) doubtless helped everyone to

throw.off the last vestiges of the infection. That was great luck! Ish had

been highly susceptible in the Old Times. He had sometimes said, not

altogether as a joke, that the loss of the common cold compensated for the

accompanying loss of civilization.

 

That autumn, however, the good luck ran out. No one ever knew exactly what

happened, but three of the children fell ill with violent diarrhoea, and

died. Most likely they had been wandering about at play in one of the

near-by uninhabited houses, and had found some poison-ant-poison, perhaps.

Tasting it curiously they had found it sweet, and shared it. Even when

dead, civilization seemed to lay traps.

 

One of the children had been Ish's own son. He had always worried, not

about himself, but about Em, in such a case. Yet, though she moumed for the

child, he saw that he had underestimated her strength. Her hold on life was

so strong that, paradoxically, she could accept death also as a part of

life. Both Molly and Jean, the other bereaved mothers, grieved

hysterically, and were much more stricken.

 

That year two children were born, but nevertheless the total number of The

Tribe for the first time was smaller at the end than at the beginning of a

year. They called it the Year of the Deaths.

 

The Year 10 had no remarkable events, and no one was convinced as to what

it should be called. But when they sat on the flat rock and Ish poised his

hammer and began to cut with the chisel, for the first time some of the

children spoke up, and they said it should be called the Year of the

Fishing. This was because during this year they had discovered that the Bay

was swarming with beautiful striped bass, and they had had a great deal of

fun going fishing and catching them. Besides supplying a very fine variety

to the diet, the fishing had also been a real source of amusement to

everybody. But in general, Ish was surprised how little actual necessity

they had to seek amusement. In the kind of life that they lived there

always seemed to bea good deal to do just to get food and to support

oneself in comfort and there was in it a great deal of satisfaction which

did not call for anything as definite as amusement.

 

In the Year 11, Molly and Jean bore children, but Molly's died at birth.

This was a great disappointment, because it was the first one that they had

lost at childbirth, and in the course of the years the women had become

very skillful at helping one another. They thought that perhaps this death

was caused from Molly's being old now.

 

When it came to naming the year, however, there was a dispute between old

and young. The older ones thought it should be called the Year when

Princess Died.... She had been ailing, an old dog, for some time. No one

knew just how ancient she was, because she might have been anywhere from

one year to three or four when she first picked up Ish. She had remained

the same--always the princess, expecting the best of treatment, always

unreliable, always ready to disappear on the trail of an imaginary rabbit

just when you wanted her. But for all you might say against her, she had

shown a very real character, and the older people could remember the time

when she seemed very important along San Lupo Drive, almost another person.

 

By now there were dozens of dogs around. Nearly all of them must be

children or grandchildren or great-grandchildren of Princess, who on

various occasions had disappeared for a day or two and apparently met an

old friend among the wild dogs or picked up a new one. As the result of a

lot of inbreeding and out-breeding and cross-breeding, these present dogs

were very little like beagles, but varied tremendously in size and color

and temperament.

 

But to the children Princess had been an old and not very interesting dog

of uncertain temper. They said that this should be the Year of the

Wood-Carving, and after a momentary hesitation Ish supported them, even

though Princess had meant more to him than to anyone else. She had taken

him out of himself in those first bad days and let him free himself of

fear, and her wild barking dash had taken him into the house where he found

Em, when otherwise he might have hesitated and driven on. But also, he

thought, Princess was over and done with, and only a link with the past, to

be remembered by people who were growing older and older. Soon the younger

children would not remember her at all. After a while she would be wholly

forgotten. (Then the icy thought came to him: "So too I may grow old, and

older, and be merely a link to the past, and be an unregarded old duffer,

and then die and be soon forgotten--yet that is as it should be!")

 

Then, as the others argued, he thought of the wood-carving. It had swept

over them as a kind of fad or craze, like bubble-blowing or mah-jongg in

the Old Times. Suddenly all the children were raiding lumber yards for good

boards of soft sugar-pine, and were trying to carve running designs of

figures of cattle or dogs or people. They worked awkwardly at first, but

soon some of them grew skillful. Though, like all fads, it had fallen off,

still the children worked at it on rainy days.

 

Ish had studied enough anthropology to know that any healthy people should

have creative outlets, and he was worried that The Tribe had not developed

artistically but was still living under the shadow of the past, listening

to old records on the wind-up phonographs and looking at old picture books.

Accordingly he had been pleased at the fad for wood-carving.

 

At a pause in the argument he spoke up, supporting the children. So it came

to be known as the Year of the Wood-Carving, and in Ish's mind the Year 11

had a symbolic value, as a breaking with the past and a turning to the

future. Yet the naming was a small matter, and he was not sure that he

should attach any significance to it.

 

In the Year 12, Jean lost a child in childbirth, but Em made up for it by

bearing the first pair of twins, whom they called Joseph and Josephine, or

more commonly, Joey and Josey. So this was the Year of the Twins.

 

The Year 13 saw the birth of two children who both lived. It was a quiet

and comfortable year, with nothing to mark it especially. So, for lack of

anything better, they merely called it the Good Year.

 

The Year 14 was much like it, so they called that the Second Good Year.

 

The Year 15 was also excellent, and they considered calling it the Third

Good Year, but there was a difference. Ish and the older people again felt

that first loneliness and the drawing in of the darkness. Not to grow more

numerous was essentially to grow fewer, and this was the first year since

the very beginning when there had been no children born. All the women--Em,

Molly, Jean and Maurine--were now getting old, and the younger girls were

not yet quite old enough to marry, except for Evie, the half-witted one,

who should never be allowed to have children. So they did not like to call

this the Third Good Year, because it was not wholly good. Instead, the

children remembered that this year could be thought remarkable because Ish

had got out his old accordion and to its wheezing they had sung songs

together--old songs like *Home on the Range* or *She'll Be Comin' Round the

Mountain,* and so they called this, at the children's prompting, the Year

That We Sang. (No one except Ish seemed to think that anything was wrong

with the grammar.)

 

The Year 16, however, was remarkable because the first marriage actually

took place. Those married were Mary, who was Ish and Em's oldest daughter,

and Ralph, who had been bom to Molly just before the Great Disaster. They

were younger than would have been thought suitable or even decent for

marriage in the Old Days, but in this also standards had changed. Ish and

Em, when they discussed the matter privately, were not even sure that Mary

was especially fond of Ralph, or Ralph of Mary. But everyone had always

assumed that the two of them would get married because there was nobody

else available whom either of them could take, just as it once was with

princes and princesses. So perhaps, as Ish concluded, romantic love had

merely been another necessary casualty of the Great Disaster.

 

Maurine and Molly and Jean were all for "a real wedding," as they said.

They hunted up a Lohengrin record for the windup phonograph, and were

making a wedding costume in white with a veil, and everything to go with

it. But, to Ish, all this seemed a horrible parody of things that had once

been; Em, in her quiet way, supported him. Since Mary was their daughter,

they controlled the wedding. In the end, they had no ceremony at all,

except that Ralph and Mary stood before Ezra, and he told them that now

they were being married and that they would assume a new responsibility to

the community and that they must try to fulfill it well. Mary bore a child

before the year was out, and so for that reason, it was called the Year of

the Grandchild.

 

The Year 17 they called, mostly at the children's prompting, the Year the

House Busted. The reason was that one of the nearby houses had suddenly

collapsed and crashed down with a great noise just in time for some of the

children to see it as they came running out at the first crack. On

investigation, the matter proved simple enough, because termites had had a

chance now to work in the house for seventeen years undisturbed, and had

eaten through the underpinning. But the incident had made a great

impression upon the children, and so it gave the name to the year, although

it was not really a matter of importance.

 

In the Year 18, Jean bore still another child. This was the last of all

that were born to the older generation, but by this time there were two

marriages of the second generation, and two more grandchildren were born.

 

This was called the Year of the Schoolteaching.... Ever since the first

children had been old enough, Ish had tried, in a more or less desultory

way, to give them some kind of teaching, so that they could at least read

and write and do a little arithmetic, and know something of geography. But

it had always been difficult to get the children together, and there seemed

to be so many things that they wanted to do, either in play or in earnest,

and the schoolteaching had never accomplished very much, although most of

the older children could read after a fashion. At least they had once been

able to read, but Ish doubted whether some of them--such as Mary, who was

now a mother with two babies--could at the present moment do more than spell

out words of one syllable. (Though she was his own beloved oldest daughter,

he admitted to himself that Mary was not intellectual--no need to say she

was stupid.)

 

In this Year 18, however, Ish really tried to get together all of the

children who were of proper age, so that they would not grow up completely

ignorant. It worked for a while, and then again it lapsed, and it was hard

to say whether he had accomplished anything or not, and he felt a sense of

frustration.

 

The Year 19 was named the Year of the Elk, again because of a little

incident which impressed the children. One morning some of them saw Evie,

now grown to be a woman, looking out and pointing and crying excitedly in

her strange voice, which did not quite form words. When they looked, they

saw that she was pointing at a new kind of animal. This turned out to be an

elk, which was the first one that they had seen in all these years.

Apparently, the herds had now increased enough so that they had worked down

from the north and were coming back into this region, where they had lived

before the arrival of white men.

 

There was no question about the Year 20. It was the Year of the Earthquake.

The old San Leandro Fault stirred again, and early one morning there was a

sharp jolt and the sound of falling chimneys. The houses in which they all

lived stood the shock, because George always kept them in excellent repair.

But the houses that had been weakened by termites or undermined by washing

water or damaged by rot came crashing down. After that there was hardly a

street which was not littered here and there with brick or with other

debris, and because of damage from the earthquake deterioration began to

accelerate.

 

The Year 21 Ish had thought they might call the Year of the Corriing of

Age. They now numbered thirty-six--seven of the older ones, Evie, twenty-one

of the second generation, and seven of the third. In the end, however, this

year was named, like many others, from a small incident .... Joey was one

of the twins, who were the youngest of the children born to Ish and Em. He

was a bright boy, though small for his age and not so good at play as some

of those who were even younger than he. He got a certain favoring from both

his father and mother, because he was, with his twin, the youngest. On the

whole, however, in such a large group of children, nobody had paid him any

great attention, and now he was nine years old. But just at the end of this

year, they suddenly discovered to their great amaze ment that Joey could

read--not only could read in the slow, halting way of the other children,

but could read quickly and accurately and with pleasure. Ish felt a sudden

warming of his heart toward the youngest son. This was the one in whom the

light of intellect really was still burning.

 

The other children also were much impressed, and so at the ceremony they

cried out that this should be called the Year When Joey Read.

 

     *End of the inter-chapter called* Quick Years.

 

  ------------------------------------------------------------------------

 

                                    *2*

 

                               *The Year 22*

 

There must be in their social bond something singularly captivating, and

far superior to anything to be boasted of among us; for thousands of

Europeans are Indians, and we have no examples of even one of those

Aborigines having from choice become Europeans!

 

     -- J. Hector St. John de Crèvecoeur, *Letters from an American Farmer*

 

  ------------------------------------------------------------------------

 

                                *Chapter 1*

 

After the ceremony at the rock was over and the numerals 2 and 1 stood out

sharply and freshly cut on the smooth surface, the people started back

toward the houses. Most of the children scuttled ahead, calling back and

forth, eager with ideas about the bonfire which traditionally ended the New

Year celebration.

 

Ish walked beside Em, but they talked little. As always at the date-carving

Ish felt himself thinking deeper thoughts than usual and wondering what

would happen in the course of the year. He heard the children shouting out:

 

"Go to the old house that fell down; you can pull off lots of dry wood

there.... I think I can find a can of gasoline.... I know where there is

toilet paper; it burns fine."

 

The older people, as was the custom, gathered at Ish and Em's house, and

sat around for a little conversation. Since it was a time for festivity,

Ish opened some port, and they all drank toasts, even George, who

ordinarily did not drink. They agreed again, as they had at the rock, that

the Year 21 had been a good year and that the prospects for the coming one

were good also.

 

Yet in the midst of the general self-congratulation, Ish himself felt a

renewed sense of dissatisfaction.

 

"Why," he thought, feeling the words flow through his mind, as if he were

arguing aloud, "why should I be the one who in times like this always has

to start thinking ahead? Why am I the one that has to think, or'try to

think, five years or ten years, or twenty years into the future? I may not

even be *alive* then! The people who come after me--they will have to solve

their own problems."

 

Yet he knew, as he thought again, that this last was not altogether true

either. The people who live in any generation do much, he realized, either

to create or to solve the problems for the people who come in the

generations later.

 

In any case, he could not help wondering what would happen to The Tribe in

the years that were ahead. It worried him. After the Great Disaster, he had

thought that the people, if any survived at all, would soon be able to get

some things running again and proceed gradually toward re-establishing more

and more of civilization. He had even dreamed of a time when electric

lights might go on again. But nothing like that had happened, and the

community was still dependent upon the leavings of the past.

 

Now he looked around, as he had often looked before, at the ones who were

with him. They were, so to speak, the bricks out of which a new

civilization must be fashioned. There was Ezra, for instance. Ish felt

himself growing warm with the mere pleasure of friendship as he looked at

that thin ruddy face and pleasant smile, even though the smile showed the

bad teeth. Ezra had genius perhaps, but it was the genius of living on easy

and friendly terms with people, and not the creative drive that leads

toward new civilizations. No, not Ezra.

 

And there beside Ezra was George, good old George--heavy and shambling,

powerful still, though his hair had turned wholly gray. George was a good

man, too, in his fashion. He was a first-class carpenter, and had learned

to do plumbing and painting and the other odd jobs around the house. He was

a very useful man, and had preserved many basic skills. Yet Ish always knew

that George was essentially stupid; he had probably never read a book in

his life. No, not George.

 

Next to George, was Evie, the half-witted one. Molly kept her well groomed,

and Evie, blond and slender, was good-looking, if you could forget the

vacantness of her face. She sat there glancing right and left at whoever

was talking. She even gave an illusion of alertness, but Ish knew that she

was understanding little, perhaps nothing, of what was being said. She was

no foundation-stone for the future. Certainly, not Evie.

 

Then came Molly, Ezra's older wife. Molly was not a stupid person, but she

had had little education and could certainly not be called intellectual.

Besides, like the other women, she had expended her energy at bearing and

rearing children, and now five of hers were still alive. That was enough

contribution to ask of anyone. No, not Molly.

 

Beyond Molly, the next person was Em. When Ish looked at Em, so many

feelings boiled up within him that he knew any judgment he might try to

make of her would be of no value. She, alone, had made the first decision

to have a child. She had kept her courage and confidence during the

Terrible Year. She it was to whom they all turned in time of trouble. Some

strong power lodged within her, to affirm and never to deny. Without her

they might all have been as nothing. Yet, her power lay deep in the springs

of action; in a particular situation, though she might inspire courage and

confidence in others, she herself seldom supplied an idea. Ish knew that he

would always turn to her and that she was greater than he, but he also knew

that she would not be of help in planning toward the future. No--though it

seemed disloyalty to say so--not even Em!

 

Beyond Em, lolling on the floor, were Ralph and Jack and Roger, the three

who were still called boys, even though they themselves were married and

had children. Ralph was Molly's son who was married to Ish's daughter,

Mary; Jack and Roger were Ish's own sons. But as he looked at them now, Ish

felt very far from them, even though his connection by family was as close

as could well be. Though he was only some twenty years older, still he

seemed separated from them by centuries. They had not known the Old Times,

and so they could not look forward much and think how things might again be

in the future. No, probably not the boys either.

 

Ish's eyes had moved around the circle, and he was looking now at Jean,

Ezra's younger wife. She had borne ten children, and seven of them were

still alive. She had a mind of her own, as her refusal to join in the

church-services had shown. Still, she was not a person of new ideas. No,

not Jean.

 

As for Maurine, George's wife, she had not even bothered to come to the

gathering, but had gone directly from the rock to her own house, where she

would already be engaged at sweeping or dusting or some other of her

perpetual and beloved tasks of housewifery. Of all persons, certainly not

Maurine.

 

Three other adults also were not present. They were Mary, Martha, and young

Jeanie, who were married to the three boys. Mary had always seemed to Ish

the most stolid of all his children, and now with her own children coming

so fast, she grew a little more bovine, yearly. Martha and Jeanie also were

mothers, and motherhood was absorbing them. No, none of these.

 

Present and absent, twelve adults! He still had difficulty in realizing

that there was no vast reservoir of humanity from which to draw.

 

Half a dozen children were interspersed among the adults or circled around

restlessly on the outside of the circle. Instead of going to help with the

bonfire, these few had kept with the adults--half-bored, and yet apparently

thinking that such a large gathering of their elders was important and

should be watched. Ish let his attention shift to them, speculatively.

Sometimes they listened to what the older people were saying, and sometimes

they merely poked each other or scuffled. Yet, in them, careless as they

seemed, rested the hope. The older people could probably slide along on the

present arrangements as long as they lived, but the children might have to

adapt. Could any of them supply the spark?

 

And now, as he began to focus on the children, Ish saw that one of them was

not scuffling with any other, but was sitting there, steadily listening to

what the older ones were saying, his big eyes glancing back and forth with

a bright glow of intelligence and interest. This was Joey.

 

No sooner had Ish's eyes focused for a moment upon Joey, than Joey's

alertly wandering glance noticed the attention his father was giving him.

He squirmed with delight, and his face broke into the all-embracing grin of

a nine-year-old. Upon the impulse of the moment, Ish winked slyly at his

youngest son. Joey's grin could scarcely have become any broader than it

was, but in some way it seemed to spread. Ish caught the flutter of an

eyelid in return. Then, not to embarrass Joey, Ish turned his glance

elsewhere.

 

There was a slow argument going on among George and Ezra and the boys. Ish

had heard it all before, and was not enough interested to participate or

even to listen to all of it.

 

"One of them things don't weigh more'n four hundred pounds anyway, I

think," George was saying.

 

"Yes, maybe," Jack replied. "But just the same, that's a lot to lug up

here."

 

"Aw, that's not so much!" said Ralph, who was heavy-set and powerful, and

liked to show off his strength.

 

And so, thought Ish, the argument would go on, as he had heard it often

before, about whether it was possible to get a gas-refrigerator somewhere,

and set it up, and supply it with still charged tanks of pressurized gas,

and so have ice again. Yet, in the end, nothing would be done, not because

the project was impossible or even inordinately difficult, but merely

because everybody was fairly well contented with things as they were, and

in a region of notably cool summers there was no great drive which led

anyone to want to have ice. Yet, in a vague way, the old argument disturbed

him.

 

He let his gaze shift back to Joey. Joey was small, even for his age. Ish

enjoyed watching the little boy's face, the quick way in which his eyes

shifted from one speaker to another, never missing a point. In fact, Ish

could see that Joey often picked up the point of a sentence, even before

the speaker arrived at the end of it, especially with a slow speaker, like

old George. This must be, Ish reflected, a tremendous day for Joey. A year

had actually been named after him, the Year When Joey Read. No other child

had ever had any such honor as that. Perhaps it was even such a distinction

as to be bad for him. Yet, the idea had come spontaneously from the other

children, a tribute to sheer intellect.

 

The languid argument was still going on. George was talking now:

 

"No, there shouldn't be no great trick to connecting up the pipes."

 

"But, George," this voice was Ezra's with its quicker tempo and faint tone

of Yorkshire still noticeable after all these years, "has gas-pressure kept

up in those tanks of compressed gas? I should think, p'raps, after all this

time ......

 

Ezra's voice trailed off that moment at a sudden rumpus between two of the

children. Weston, Ezra's own twelve-year-old son, was engaged in a punching

contest with Betty, his half-sister.

 

"Stop it, Weston," Ezra snapped out. "Stop it, I say, or I'll warm your

pants for you!"

 

The threat did not carry conviction, and as far as Ish could remember, he

had never seen the easygoing Ezra punish a child. Nevertheless, at the

paternal order the scuffle subsided with no more than the conventional

protest from Weston, "Aw, Betty started it!"

 

"Yes, but what do you want ice for anyway, George?" This was Ralph

speaking. It was a natural and never-failing phase of the argument. The

boys, who had never known what it was to have ice, had no urge to make them

go to the work of obtaining it.

 

Ish was thinking to himself that George had been asked that question a

great many times in the course of this argument before. He really should

have had his answer ready, but George was not a quick thinker and was not a

man to be hurried. He shifted his tongue in his mouth, shaping words before

he actually set out to reply, and in the pause Ish again watched Joey. The

little boy's glance moved quickly from the hesitant George to Ezra and to

Jack, as if to see how those others were taking the pause; then Joey's eyes

sought his father's again. All at once there was a quick comradeship and

sense of understanding in the glance. Joey seemed to be saying that either

his father or he would find an answer quickly and not hesitate as George

was doing.

 

Then something exploded inside Ish's brain. He did not hear the words that

at last began to unroll slowly from George's mouth.

 

*"Joey!"* Ish was thinking-and the name seemed to reverberate all through

his consciousness. "Joey! *He is the one!"*

 

*"Thou knowest not," Koheleth wrote in his wisdom, "how the bones do grow

in the womb of her that is with child." And though the centuries have

passed since Koheleth looked upon all things and found them fickle as wind,

yet still we know little of what goes to the making of a man--least surely

of all, why usually there issue forth only those who see what is, and why

rarely, now and then, there comes forth among them the chosen one, Child of

the Blessing, who sees not what is, but sees what is not, and seeing thus

what is not, imagines also what may be. Yet without this rare one all men

are as beasts.*

 

*First in the dark depths and the flooding, those unlike halves must meet

that carry within them each the perfect half of genius. But that is not

all! Also the child must be born to the world in fitting time and place,

fulfilling its need. But even that is not all. Also the child must live, in

a world where death walks daily.*

 

*When each year children are born in millions, now and then the

infinitesimal chance will happen, and there will be greatness and vision.

But how will it be, if the people are broken and scattered, and the

children only a few? *

 

Then, almost without knowing what had happened, Ish found himself on his

feet. He was talking. In fact, he was making a speech. "Look here," he was

saying, "we've got to do something about all this. We've waited long

enough!"

 

As he stood there, he was only in his own living-room, and he was talking

only to the few people who were there. He knew that they were only a few,

and yet it seemed to him not so much as if he were talking just to these

few in this little room, but rather that he was in some great amphitheater

and talking to a whole nation or to all the people of the world.

 

"This has got to stop!" he said. "We mustn't go on living forever just in

this happy way, scavenging among all the supplies that the Old Times left

here for us, not creating or doing anything for ourselves. These things

will an give out some day-if not in our years, in our children's, or

grandchildren's. What will happen then? What will they do when they won't

know how to produce more things? Food, they can get, I suppose-there will

still be cattle and rabbits. But what about all the more complicated things

we enjoy? What, even, about building fires after the matches have all been

used, or spoiled?"

 

He paused, and looked around again. They all seemed pleased, and seemed to

be agreeing with him. Joey's face was transcendent with excitement.

 

"That refrigerator you were talking about just now, a of you!" Ish went on.

"That's an example. We talk about it, but we never do anything. We're like

that story-that old king in the old story-the one who sat enchanted and

everything moved around hun, but he could never make any move to break the

spell. I used to think we were just suffering from the shock of the Great

Disaster. Perhaps that was it, in those first days. When people have their

whole world go to pieces around them, they can't expect to make a fresh

start immediately. But that was twenty-one years ago, and many of us have

even been born since that time.

 

"There are lots of things we should do. We should get some more domestic

animals, not just dogs. We ought to be growing more of our own food now,

not just raiding the old grocery stores still. We ought to be teaching the

children to read and write more. (No one has ever supported me strongly

enough in that.) We can't go on scavenging like this forever--we must go

forward."

 

He paused, searching for words by which to point out to them the old truism

that unless we go forward we inevitably go back, but suddenly they all

applauded loudly, as if he had finished. He thought that he had really

swayed them by a sudden flood of eloquence, but then he realized, as he

looked around, that the applause was largely in good-natured irony.

 

"That's the fine old speech again, Dad," Roger remarked. Ish glared at him

angrily for a moment; having really been the leader of The Tribe for

twenty-one years, he did not like to have himself put down thus as merely

an old codger with some funny ideas. But then Ezra laughed good-naturedly,

and everybody joined in the laughter, and the tension fell off.

 

"Well, what are we going to do about it then?" Ish asked. "I may have made

the same speech before, but even if I have, it's true, nevertheless."

 

He paused expectantly. Then Jack, who was Ish's oldest son, unlimbered

himself from where he was lolling on the floor, and got to his feet. Jack

was taller and much more powerful than his father now; he was, himself, a

father.

 

"I'm sorry, Dad," he said, "but I've got to go."

 

"What's the matter? What is it?" Ish snapped back to him, a little

irritated.

 

"Well, nothing so very much, but there's something I have to do this

afternoon."

 

"Won't it wait?"

 

Jack was already moving toward the door.

 

"I suppose it might wait," he said, as he put his hand on the door knob.

"But I think I'd better be going anyway."

 

There was silence for a moment, except for the sounds of the door opening,

and shutting, as Jack went out. Ish felt himself suddenly angry, and he

knew that his face was flushed.

 

"Go on talking, Ish," Ish heard the voice, and knew through his anger that

it was Ezra's. "We would like to hear just what you think we ought to do;

you have the ideas." Yes, it was Ezra's voice, and Ezra as usual was saying

something quickly to cover up the difficulty and make people feel better.

He was even flattering Ish.

 

Nevertheless, at the voice, Ish relaxed. Why should he be angry with Jack

for acting independently? He should, rather, be happy. Jack was a grown man

now, no longer a little boy and merely a son. The flush faded from Ish's

face, but still he felt a profound sense of trouble within him, and he was

led on to talk more. If the incident could do nothing else, at least it

could supply him with a text.

 

"This business with Jack right here now, that's something I want to talk

about, too. We've drifted along all these years not doing anything about

producing our own food and getting civilization back into some kind of

running-order, as regards all the material things. That's one matter, and

an important one, but it isn't the only one. Civilization wasn't just only

gadgets and how to make them and run them. It was all sorts of social

organization too--all sorts of rules, and laws, and ways of life, among

people and groups of people. The family--that's all we have left of a that

organization! That's natural, I suppose. But the family can't be enough

when there get to be more people. When a little child does something we

don't like, the father and mother correct it, and bring it into line. But

when one of the children grows up, that's all over. We haven't any laws--we

aren't a democracy, or a monarchy, or a dictatorship, or anything. If

someone--Jack, for instance--wants to walk out on what seems to be a kind of

important meeting, nobody can stop him. Even if we take a vote here and

decide to do something, even then, there's no means of enforcement--oh, a

little public opinion, perhaps, but that's all."

 

He had trailed off to a lame ending, rather than coming to a conclusion. He

had been speaking more from the emotional drive that Jack's move had

aroused in him. He was not a trained orator, and had certainly no practice.

 

Yet, as he looked around, he saw that the speech had apparently made a very

good impression. Ezra was the one who spoke first.

 

"Yes, you bet!" he said. "Don't you remember all of those wonderful times

we used to have back in those days. Golly, what wouldn't I give just now to

be over there with George's big radio and turn it right on and hear Charlie

McCarthy again! Don't you remember the way that little guy would talk,

making fun of the other guy, whatever his name was, you know, and here that

other one was just the same as him all the time."

 

Ezra took out the big Victorian penny that had served him for a

pocket-piece during all these years. He tossed it back and forth from one

hand to the other in sheer stimulation at the thought of hearing Charlie

McCarthy again.

 

"Yes, you remember too," he went on. "Why, you used to be able to go down

to the picture-house and pay your money and go right in! And you would hear

all that music going with the film, and see--oh, maybe--Bob Hope or Dotty

Lamour. Yes, those were the days all right! Do you suppose that p'raps if

we all got together and worked hard we could find some of those films and

rig them up to show them to all the kids? I can just hear them laughing.

Maybe we could get a Charlie Chaplin film somewhere!"

 

Ezra took out a cigarette and a match, and as he scratched the match it

broke into a bright flame. Matches never seemed to deteriorate if they were

in a fairly dry place. Yet nobody knew how to make matches, and at every

sudden spurt of flame there was one match the fewer. Ish had a strange

feeling about Ezra, who was thinking of civilization chiefly as the return

of motion-pictures, and at the same time was scratching a match. George was

the one who spoke next:

 

"If there was any way of making people help me, just one or two of the

boys, I could get that gas-refrigerator fixed up and working in two, three

days, maybe."

 

George stopped speaking, and Ish supposed that he had finished, for George

was never much of a talker. Surprisingly, he went on:

 

"About those there laws, though, that you was talking about. I don't know.

I was kind of glad that we live in a place where we don't have no laws.

These days, you can do just about the way you want. You can go out and park

your car anywhere you want to. Right by a fire-hydrant, maybe, and nobody's

going to give you a ticket, that is, you could park it right by the

fire-hydrant if you had a car that would run."

 

This was as far in the way of a joke as Ish had ever heard George go, and

George responded to his own humor by chuckling quietly. The others all

joined in. The standard of humor in The Tribe, Ish realized, had never been

very high.

 

Ish was about to say something more, but Ezra spoke again.

 

"Come on, now, I propose a toast," he said. "To *law and order!"* The older

people laughed a little at hearing the old phrase again, but to the younger

ones it meant nothing.

 

They drank the toast, and then everything slipped back quite naturally into

merely a social occasion again.

 

After all, Ish reflected, it was a social occasion, just as well perhaps,

not to let business interfere too much. Perhaps the seed he had planted

with this rendition of his impassioned little speech would have some effect

in the future. Yet, he felt doubts. You used to have the jokes about never

fixing the roof until it rained. People were undoubtedly the same now, or

worse. They might well wait until something happened that forced them to

act; that something would almost certainly be unpleasant--most likely,

serious.

 

Yet he drank the toast with the others, and with half his mind he listened

to the talk. With the other half, nevertheless, he still kept to his own

thoughts. This had been a good day; yes, on this day he had carved 21 into

the smooth surface of the rock, and the Year 22 had begun; on this day,

also, partly because the year had been named as it was, he had become more

conscious of the possibilities in his youngest son.

 

He glanced to where Joey was sitting, and caught in return a quick bright

glance, full of the small boy's admiration for his father. Yes, perhaps,

there was one at least who could understand fully.

 

*In all that immense and complex system of dams and tunnels, aqueducts and

reservoirs, by which water was brought from the mountains to the cities,

one particular section of steel pipe in the main aqueduct supplied the

fatal flaw. Even at the time of its manufacture certain imperfections had

been apparent. It had happened, however, to go past the inspector just at

the close of a day, when his senses were dulled and his judgment impaired.*

 

*No great harm resulted. The section of pipe was set into place by the

workmen, and fiinctioned without difficulty. Shortly before the Great

Disaster, a foreman had noticed that this section had developed a slight

leak. By the welding of a patch upon it, however, it would be made as good

as new, or even stronger than the average.*

 

*Then through the years no man passed that way again. A little trickle of

water from the faulty section of pipe grew very gradually larger. Even in

the dry summers a small patch Of green showed by the dripping pipe; birds

and small animals came there to drink. And still rust ate from the outside,

and from the inside the corrosive action of the water itself slowly bored

outward to meet the rust pits, piercing pinprick after pinprick in the

tough skin of steel.*

 

*Five years, ten years-now a dozen jets of fine spray played from the

surface of the pipe. Now the puddle was a drinking-place for cattle.*

 

*In five more years a little stream ran off from beneath, the only summer

stream in all that dry foothill region. By now the pipe was beginning to be

honey-combed with rust, its actual structure grown weak.*

 

*Beneath the pipe the ground had long been soft and muddy, and the tramping

of animals had aided the erosion of a little gully. Finally, the erosion

was sufficient to start a mudflow in the soft wet soil on which the

concrete pier rested, the one which supported the pipe with its heavy load

of water. As the pier settled, the weight of the water was thrown upon the

weakened pipe. A long rent opened in its rust-riddled steel, and a broad

stream of water poured out and gushed down into the gully. This torrent

soon undermined thefooting still more, and it shifted again. Once more the

pipe tore, and the stream of water issuing from it became like a small

river. *

 

Just as Ish had crawled into bed that evening the sharp crack of a rifle

shot brought him sitting full upright, tense. Another resounded, and then a

fusillade began popping in the night.

 

He felt the bed shaking gently, as Em laughed quietly beside him. He

relaxed. "Same old trick!" he said.

 

"Fooled you badly this time!"

 

"I've been thinking too much about all the future today, I suppose. Yes, I

suppose my nerves are stirred up a little too much today."

 

The fusillade was still popping in a good imitation of guerrilla warfare,

but he lay down and tried to relax. He knew now what had happened. After

everyone had left the bonfire, one of the boys had sneaked back and thrown

a few boxes of cartridges into the hot ashes. As soon as the boxes were

burned through and things became hot enough, the cartridges had let loose.

Like most practical jokes it involved a certain element of risk, but at

this time of year the grass was green, and there was no danger of starting

a fire. Also, most of the people had been warned in advance or knew what

was likely to happen and so would be sure to keep a long way from the hot

ashes. Indeed, Ish reconsidered, he himself might have been the particular

object of this joke, and everyone else might have known about it.

 

All right! If so, he was successfully baited. He felt a sense of

irritation, but for more serious reasons, he thought, than because he had

been fooled. "Well," he said to Em, "there they go again--more boxes of

cartridges popping off uselessly, and no one left in the world who knows

how to make cartridges! And here we are in a country overrun with

mountain-lions and wild bulls, and cartridges the only way we have of

keeping them under control, and for food we don't know how to kill cattle

or rabbits or quail except by shooting them."

 

Em seemed to have nothing to say, and in the pause his mind ranged

petulantly over the events of the bonfire itself. That fire had been built

up largely out of sawed timber brought from a lumber-yard, interspersed

with cartons of toilet paper, which burned beautifully because of the holes

through the middle. In addition, boxes of matches had been scattered

through the fire because they went up with fine flares, and there had also

been cans of alcohol and cleaning-fluid to give further zest. Doubtless, if

you had had to buy all those materials with money, the bonfire would have

cost ten thousand dollars in the Old Times; now, those materials might be

considered even more valuable, because they had come to be completely

irreplaceable.

 

"Don't worry, dearest," he heard her say now. "It's time to go to sleep."

 

He settled down beside her, his head close against her breast, seeming as

always to draw strength and confidence from her.

 

"I'm not worrying much, I suppose," he said. "Maybe I really enjoy all

this, feeling a little lugubrious about the future, as if we were living

dangerously."

 

He lay still for a moment more, and she said nothing, and then he went on

with his thinking aloud.

 

"Do you remember I've been saying this a long time now, that we have to

live more creatively, not just as scavengers? It's bad for us, I think,

even psychologically. Why, I was saying this way back even at the time when

Jack was going to be born."

 

"Yes, I remember. You've said it a great many times, and yet, some way or

other, it still seems easier just to keep on opening cans as long as there

are plenty of cans in the grocery stores and warehouses."

 

"But the end will come some time. Then, what will people do?"

 

"Well, I suppose, whatever people there are then--they will just have to

solve that problem for themselves.... And, dear, I've *always* wished you

wouldn't worry so much about it. Things would be different if you had a lot

of people who were like you, that thought about things a long way off. But

all you have are usual people like Ezra and George and me. And we don't

think that way. Darwin--wasn't that his name?--said that we all came from

apes or monkeys or something, and I suppose apes and monkeys and things

like that never thought much about the future. If we'd come from bees or

ants, we might have planned out things ahead, or even if we had been

trained like squirrels to store up nuts for the winter."

 

"Yes, maybe. But in the Old Times people thought about the future. Look at

the way they built up civilization."

 

"And they had Dotty--what was *her* name?--and Charlie McCarthy, just like

Ezra says." Then suddenly she went off on another tangent. "And about all

this scavenging business that worries you so much! Is it so very different

from what people used to do? If you want some copper now, you go down to

one of the hardware stores, and find a little copper wire, and take that

and hammer it up. In the Old Times, they just went and dug some copper out

of a hill somewhere. It maybe was copper ore and not just copper, but still

they were scavenging in a way, for it was there all the time. And as far as

the food goes, they grew it by using up what was stored in the ground, and

changing that into wheat. We just take most of our stuff out of what is

stored up somewhere else. I don't know that there's too much difference!"

 

The argument stopped him for a moment. Then he rallied. "No, that's not

just right either," he said. "At least, they were *more* creative than we

are. They were a going concern. They produced what they used as they went

along."

 

"I'm not too sure about that," she said. "It seems to me I can remember

reading even in cheap things like the Sunday supplements that we were

always just at the point of running out of copper or oil, or were

exhausting the soil so we wouldn't have anything to live on in the future."

 

Then from long experience, he knew that she was wanting to go to sleep. He

gave her the last word, and said nothing more. But he himself lay awake,

his thoughts still running fast. He remembered clear back to times just

after the Great Disaster when he had thought of ways in which civilization

might again start to go. Then he remembered how he had thought of change

itself-how sometime it comes from the inside of a man, reacting outward

against the environment, and how sometimes the environment presses in

against the man, forcing him to change. Only the unusual man perhaps was

strong enough to press outward against the world.

 

And from thinking of the unusual man, he went naturally to thinking of

little Joey, the bright one with the quick eyes, the only one who seemed to

follow all the things that Ish had been saying. He tried to guess what Joey

would be like when he grew older, and he thought how some day he might be

able to talk to Joey. He imagined the words.

 

"You and I, Joey," he would say, "we are alike, we understand! Ezra and

George and the others, they are good people. They are good solid average

people, and the world couldn't get along without having lots of them, but

they have no spark. We have to give the spark!"

 

Then from thinking of Joey, who was at the top, his mind ran rapidly

through the others, ending with Evie, who was at the bottom. Should they

have even kept Evie all these years? He wondered. There had been a

word--euthanasia, wasn't it?---for that kind of thing. "Mercy-killing," they

called it sometimes. Yet who was qualified in a group like this to take the

responsibility of removing someone like Evie, even though she was probably

no source of happiness to herself nor to anyone else? To do anything like

that, he realized, they would have to have a power much stronger than the

mere authority of an American father over his children, much stronger than

that of the group of friends exercising a mild public opinion. Something

would happen some time, not necessarily about Evie of course. But something

*would* happen some time, and then they would have to organize and take

stronger action.

 

His imagination stirred him so powerfully that he made a quick movement of

his body, as if already he were taking countermeasures against whatever it

was that might have happened.

 

Either Em had not been asleep, or else his sudden movement waked her.

 

"What is it, dearest?' she said. "You jumped like some little dog that

dreams it's chasing a lion!"

 

"Something's going to happen some time!" he said, speaking as if she

already knew the course of his thoughts.

 

"Yes, I know," she said--and apparently she *did* know his thoughts. "And

we're going to have to do something. 'Organize' I think is the word. We're

going to have to do something about what has happened."

 

"You knew what I was thinking?"

 

"Well, you've said the same thing before, you know. You've said it very

often. Especially around New Years you say it. George talks about the

refrigerator, and you talk about something going to happen. Some way or

other, nothing has happened yet."

 

"Yes, but some time it will. It's bound to! Some year I'll be right."

 

"All right, dearest. Go on worrying. You're probably the kind that don't

feel comfortable unless you've got something to worry about--and that

particular worry, I guess, won't do you much harm."

 

She said nothing more, but she reached over and took him into her arms, and

held him close. From the touch of her body, as always, he took comfort, and

so he slept.

 

*From the broken pipe of the aqueduct the water had now been gushing out

like a small river during a period of several weeks. No more water flowed

on into the reservoirs. At the same time, from thousands of leaks which had

developed through the course of the years, from the many faucets left

running at the time of the Great Disaster, from the major breaks occurring

at the time of the earthquake--from all of them, the stored water ran out

from the reservoirs, and their levels fell steadily.*

 

  ------------------------------------------------------------------------

 

                                *Chapter 2*

 

As Ish had expected, they did nothing. Weeks passed. There was no heaving

and grunting of men as they carried the refrigerator up the hill, no click

and crunch of spades preparing a garden plot. Ish worried occasionally, but

in general life drifted along, and even he could not be much concerned.

With his old student's habit of observing even when he did not participate,

he often wondered just what might be happening.

 

Was it really, as he sometimes imagined, that all the individuals were

still suffering under a kind of shock as the result of the sudden

destruction of their old society? His studies in anthropology supplied him

with examples--the head-hunters and the plains Indians, who had lost the

will to readjust and even the will to live, after their traditional way of

life had rudely been made impossible. If they could no longer go

head-hunting or ride out to steal horses and take scalps, they had no

desire for anything else either. Or, with a mild climate and food-supplies

easy to obtain, was there now simply no stimulus to change? He could

recollect possible examples of this kind also--some of the South Sea

islanders, or those tropical peoples who. lived chiefly on bananas. Or was

it something else?

 

Fortunately, he had enough background of philosophy and history to.keep his

perspective. He was actually, he realized, struggling to solve a problem

which had baffled philosophers from the time when they had first become

conscious of problems at all. He was facing the basic question of the

dynamics of society. What made a society change? He, as a student, was more

fortunate than Koheleth or Plato or Malthus or Toynbee. He saw a society

reduced in size until it had attained the simplicity of a laboratory

experiment. Yet, whenever he had arrived at this stage of argument, another

thought cut across and disturbed the simplicity. He began to feel himself

less scientific but more human, to think more nearly as Em thought. This

society along San Lupo Drive was not really,a philosopher's neat microcosm,

a small dip out of the general ocean of humanity. No--it was a group of

individuals. It was Ezra and Em and the boys--yes, and Joey! Change the

individuals, and the whole situation changed. Change even one individual!

In the place of Em, if we had had--well, say, Dotty Lamour? Or, instead of

George, one of those high-powered minds that he remembered from his

University years--Professor Sauer, perhaps! Again the situation would

change.

 

Or would it? Possibly not, for in the test the physical environment might

be stronger, and might force the aberrant individuals into its mould.

 

But in one detail Ish thought that Em was wrong. She did not need to fear

that he was worrying too much about the situation and would end up with

ulcers or a neurosis. Instead, his observation of what was happening kept

him interested in life. At first, just after the Great Disaster, he had

devoted himself to observing the changes in the world as the result of the

disappearance of man. After twenty-one years, however, the world had fairly

well adjusted itself, and further changes were too slow to call for

day-to-day or even month-to-month observation. Now, however, the problem of

society--its adjustment and reconstitution--had moved to the fore, and become

his chief interest.

 

Then at this point in the recurrent course of his thinking he always had to

correct himself again. He could not, and should not, be merely the observer

and student. Plato and the others--each of them could merely watch and

comment, even cynically, if he so felt. Through his writings he might

influence future generations, but he himself was in no appreciable way

responsible for the growth and development of the society in which he

lived. Only now and then had the scholar also become the ruler--Marcus

Aurelius, Thomas More, Woodrow Wilson. To be sure, Ish realized that he

himself was not a ruler exactly, but he was the man of ideas, the thinker,

in a community of only a few individuals. Necessarily the others turned to

him in their rare times of trouble, and if any real emergency should arise,

he would almost certainly have to assume leadership.

 

The thought had already in the course of the years sent him to the City

Library after books about scholars who had also become rulers. Their fates

were not comforting. Marcus Aurelius had worn himself out, body and soul,

in bloody and fruitless campaigns on the Danube frontier. Thomas More had

gone to the scaffold, and afterwards, ironically, he had been canonized as

a martyr of the Church. The biographers often called Wilson a martyr also,

although no Church of Peace had made him St. Woodrow. No, the scholar in

power had not prospered notably. Yet he, Ish, in a community which even yet

numbered only thirty-six people, was so placed that he probably could wield

more influence in the shaping of its future than an emperor or a chancellor

or a president in the Old Times.

 

*Heavy rains in the week after New Years had slowed the falling of the

water level in the reservoir. Then, a little earlier than usual, came the

mid-winter dry spell.*

 

*Like the blood of some leviathan oozing from a hundred thousand pinpricks,

the life-giving water flowed away through open faucets and leaking joints

and broken pipes.*

 

*And now, where the still-standing gauge showed that the depth had recently

been twenty feet, only a thin skin of water covered the bottom of the

reservoir. *

 

When Ish woke up that morning, he realized that it was a fine sunny day,

and that he had slept well and was rested. Em was gone from the bed, and he

heard the familiar little sounds from downstairs which meant that breakfast

would soon be ready. He lay still for a few minutes, thoroughly enjoying

himself, coming back more slowly than usual to full consclousness. He felt

it a very fortunate circumstance to be able to lie in bed a little while

longer if you wished, not merely on Sunday morning, but on any morning.

There was no sharp looking at clocks, in the life that they lived now, and

no need for him or for anyone else, to catch the 7:53 train. He was living

a life of greater freedom than anyone could possibly have lived in the Old

Times. Perhaps, with his special temperament he was even living more

happily now than he could have lived then.

 

When he felt ready, he got up and shaved. There was no hot water, but he

did not care about that particularly. As a matter of fact, nobody would

have minded if he had not shaved at all, but he liked the sense of

cleanliness and stimulation that the shave gave him.

 

He dressed--a new sport shirt and a pair of blue jeans. He stuck his feet

into some comfortable slippers, went slopping down stairs, and steered

toward the kitchen.

 

As he came to the door, he heard Em say, rather more sharply than she was

used to speak, "Josey child, why don't you turn that faucet farther, so you

can really get some water?"

 

"But, Mommie, it *is* turned on, as hard as I can turn it."

 

Ish, coming into the kitchen, saw that Josey was holding the tea-kettle in

the sink under the faucet, and that only a trickle of water was running.

 

"Morning!" he said. "I guess I'll have to get George to come over and fix

up that plumbing a little bit. Josey, why don't you run out into the

garden, and get some water from one of the outside faucets?"

 

Josey trotted off agreeably, and when she was gone, Ish took the

opportunity to kiss Em, and to tell her what he was planning for the day.

Josey was gone for a little while, and then came back with the kettle full.

 

"The water out there ran faster for a little while, and then it just died

out to a trickle, too," she said, setting the kettle on the gasoline stove.

 

"That's a nuisance!" said Em. "We'll need more water for washing the

dishes."

 

Ish recognized the tone of voice. This was one of the times when a crisis

was laid directly at the feet of the menfolk to do something about.

 

Breakfast was served on the dining-room table, and the table looked just

about the way it might have looked in the Old Times. Ish sat at one end,

and Em at the other. They had only four children at home now. Robert, who

was sixteen, and almost fully grown up, according to the standards of The

Tribe, sat on one side. Beside him was Walt, who was twelve, and very big

and active for his age. And on the other side, close to the kitchen door,

sat Joey and Josey, part of whose work was to help with breakfast, by

aiding with the cooking and setting of the table, and running in and out to

wait on table and helping to wash the dishes afterwards.

 

As he sat down, Ish could not help thinking how little this particular

scene differed from what it might have been in the Old Times. To be sure,

he would never have expected then to be the father of so many children.

But, granting the numbers, the family group was just what it might have

been at any time in almost any society--father, mother, and children,

tightly grouped to form the basic social unit, so basic in fact that it

might be considered biological rather than social. After all, he thought,

the family was the toughest of all human institutions. It had preceded

civilization, and so it naturally survived afterwards.

 

There was grapefiruit-juice, out of cans, of course. Ish had long since

begun to doubt seriously whether after all this time there was anything

valuable in the way of vitamins left in canned juices. Even the taste had

gone flat. But they continued drinking it, because it felt good on the

stomach, even though there might not be any vitamins, and at worst it

probably was doing them no harm. There were no eggs, because there had been

no hens since the Great Disaster. There was no bacon, either, because

canned or, glassed bacon was hard to find now and there were no pigs in

this vicinity, as far as they had ever discovered. But they had beef-ribs,

braised and well browned, which were a fairly good substitute for bacon,

even to Ish's taste. The children, of course, liked nothing better. In

fact, they made the principal part of their breakfast on the beef-ribs

because they had grown up being largely meat-eaters and expecting or

wanting little else. Ish and Em, on the contrary, had always been used to

having toast or cereal, and now that the rats and weevils had ruined all

flour and packaged cereals, they had hominy, from cans, cooked up so as to

be something like a breakfast-food. They ate it with canned milk and to

sweeten it there was white corn-syrup, because lately they had been unable

to find any sugar that rats and weather had spared. The grownups also had

coffee. Ish used milk and com-syrup in his; Em had always preferred hers

black and unsweetened anyway. The vacuum-packed coffee, like the grapefruit

juice, had lost much of its flavor.

 

They had settled gradually upon this menu as their standard one for

breakfast. Except perhaps for lack of vitamins, it seemed to offer a fairly

well balanced meal, and to supply vitamins they had fresh fruit whenever

they could find any, though now that blight and insects and rabbits had

ruined the orchards, there was little fruit to be had, except for wild

strawberries and blackberries, a few wormy apples, and some sour plums from

trees gone wild. On the whole, however, Ish found it a satisfying

breakfast.

 

After he had finished, Ish slumped into an easy-chair in the living room,

picked a cigarette from the humidifier, and lighted it. But the cigarette

was not very satisfactory. They were no longer able to find vacuum-packed

ones, and the ordinary ones had dried out almost completely in the packages

now, no matter how well sealed. You had to keep them in the humidifier a

while to get them decently smokable, and then the trouble was that you were

likely to get them even too damp. That was what was wrong with this one.

And then also, he could not quite enjoy the cigarette because his

conscience was bothering him. From the kitchen he could hear uncertain

sounds from Em and the twins, and he gathered that they were still having

trouble getting water.

 

"Might as well go over," he thought, "and see George, and get him to clean

out that pipe or whatever it is." He got up and went out.

 

On the way to George's, however, he stopped at Jean's house to pick up

Ezra-not that Ezra could fix anything, or that he needed Ezra for any

negotiation with George, but just because he always liked to see Ezra. He

knocked, and Jean came to the door.

 

"Ez is not here now," she said. "He's over at Molly's this week." Ish had

the ftumy feeling that he often had when fac Ing the actual practice of

bigamy. He did not exactly see how Jean and Molly kept on such good terms,

and even helped each other out in all the little emergencies of

housekeeping. It was merely another triumph of Ezra's at getting along with

human beings and making them get along with each other. Ish turned to go,

and then he recollected, and looked back.

 

"Oh, Jean," he said. "Say, is your water running all right this morning?"

 

"Why, no," said Jean. "No, it isn't. There's just a little trickle coming

out."

 

She closed the door, and Ish went down the porch steps and headed for

Molly's house. He felt a sudden little chill of apprehension.

 

He picked up Ezra at Molly's, and discovered that she at least had had no

difficulty with water. That, however, might be the result of her house

being several feet lower than Jean's so that the water might not yet have

run out of the pipes.

 

They went over to George's house, which stood neat and trim inside its

freshly painted white picket-fence. Maurine showed them into the

living-room, and told therif to sit down while she went to get George, who

was puttering around somewhere as usual. Ish sat down in one of the big

velourcovered overstuffed chairs. Then, as always, he looked around the

living-room with a sense of amazement, mingled with an almost perverted

pleasure. The living-roorn in George and Maurine's house looked exactly the

way the living-room of any prosperous carpenter would have looked back in

the years before the Great Disaster. There were bridge-lamps with pink

shades, and tassels hanging from them. There was a very expensive electric

clock, and a magnificent console radio-phonograph, which had four different

bands of reception. There was also a television set. On both tables were

scarves carefully crumpled up to give an elegant look to things, and on one

table were neat piles of several popular magazines.

 

The bridge-lamps did not work, because there was no electricity, and the

hands of the electric clock always stood at 12:17. The magazines were at

least twenty-one years old. There were no programs on the air for the radio

to pick up, even if there had been any electric current by which the radio

and the phonograph could run.

 

Yet all these things were the symbols of prosperity. George had been a

carpenter in the Old Times. Maurine had then been married to a man who must

have been about the social and financial equal of George. Such people

always wanted to have fine bridge-lamps and electric clocks and radios and

all the rest, and now that it was possible to have all these things, they

had merely gone out and got them and put them into the house. Their not

working was secondary. In the evening Maurine merely brought in a kerosene

lamp, and stood it on the table and they got their light from it instead of

from the bridge-lamps, and they had a wind-up phonograph for actual use. It

was ridiculous, and also a little pitiful. Yet, when Ish considered the

matter, he always remembered Em's first reaction to it.

 

"Well," she had said, "don't you remember in the Old Times people would

have a piano, maybe a grand piano, in the living-room, even though nobody

could play it? And they had a set of those books-what did they call

them?-the Harvard Classics, though they never read them. And maybe they had

a fireplace that never even -had a chimney attached to it. All those things

were just to show off that you could afford them. They were proof that you

had arrived. So I don't see much difference now if George and Maurine want

to have their bridge-lamps, even if they can't get any light from them."

 

They heard George coming in from the back, and then his bulky form filled

the doorway. He held a pipe-wrench in one hand, and was wearing his usual

costume of carpenter's overalls, rather dirty and well stained with paint

smears. He could have used new overalls every day, but apparently he felt

more comfortable in ones that were well broken in.

 

"Hi, George," said Ezra, who usually managed to say the first word.

 

"G'morning, George," said Ish.

 

George seemed to chew his tongue for a moment, as if really considering

what the situation demanded. Then he said: "Morning, Ish.... Morning,

Ezra."

 

"Say, George," said Ish. "No water over at Jean's or at our place this

morning. How about here?" There was a pause.

 

"None here, neither," said George.

 

"Well," said Ish, "what do you make of it?"

 

George hesitated, working his mouth and lips, as if he were chewing the end

of an imaginary cigar. Ish felt a sense of irritation at George's

lumpishness. Yet he reflected, controlling himself, that George was a solid

person and a very good one to have around.

 

"Well," he repeated, "what do you make of it, George?"

 

George made a motion as if to put the imaginary cigar into one comer of his

mouth, and then he replied. "Well, if she's off over there too, I guess

there's no use looking any more for some block in my pipes around here, way

I was. I guess she's broke or clogged up somewheres on the main pipe that

comes to all these houses."

 

Ish caught a sidelong glance from Ezra, and a ghost of a smile on his face

as much as to say that after all any of them might have figured that out

and that George's pronouncement was not exactly the word of a mental giant.

 

"I guess you must be right, George," Ish said. "But what are we going to do

about it?"

 

George shifted the imaginary cigar again, and then spoke: "Well, I dunno."

 

Like Em, George obviously considered this to be out of his province. Give

him a dripping faucet or a plugged toilet, and he would be happy taking

care of it for you. But he was no mechanic, and certainly no engineer. So,

as it always happened, Ish had to fake the lead.

 

"Where did all this water come from anyway?" he asked on the impulse.

 

The others both were silent. It was curious. Here they had been for

twenty-one years merely using water that continued to flow, and yet they

had never given any real consideration to where the water came from. It had

been a gift from the past, as free as air, like the cans of beans and

bottles of catsup that could be had just by walking into a store and taking

them from the shelves. Ish indeed had vaguely thought about the matter

sometimes, and wondered how long the water would continue to run, and even

considered vaguely what they should do to develop another supply. But he

had never got round to doing anything. Water which had already run for many

years might well continue to run for many years more, and so there was no

pressure for action. In all those years there had never been one single

day, until this one, when there had been any immediate reason why he should

say to himself. "Today I must do something about the water-supply."

 

So now Ish glanced from George to Ezra, and had no response to his

question. George merely stood, shifting weight from one foot to the other.

Ezra had a little twinkle in his eyes, to indicate that this was not his

department. Ezra knew people. When he had clerked in that liquor-store he

must have been good at jollying his customers along and making tie-in

sales. But when it came to handling ideas and things, Ish was better than

Ezra. Ish saw that he would have to answer his own question.

 

"This water must come from the old city water-system, somewhere," he said.

"Must *have* come, I mean. The old pipes are still there. I think the best

thing for us to do would be to go up to the reservoir and see whether there

is any water in that."

 

"O.K.," said Ezra, agreeable as ever. "Maybe, though, we should see what

the boys think about it."

 

"No," said Ish. "They won't know anything about it. If it was a question of

hunting or fishing, we could ask the boys. But the boys wouldn't know

anything about this."

 

They went out and began calling the dogs, and getting ready to harness up

the teams to the wagons. The reservoir was not more than a mile away, but

ever since he had been mauled by the mountain-lion, Ish was not good at

long walks, and George was beginning to suffer from the stiffness of old

age in his legs. Getting the dogs together and making everything ready

always took some time. At moments like these, Ish regretted that

horse-taming had come to be a lost art. There were no wild horses left in

the immediate vicinity, but he was sure that they could find plenty of them

farther east in the open plains country of die San Joaquin Valley. But the

trouble really was that all three men had been city-people who were used to

driving automobiles; not one of them really knew, anything about

horse-keeping or horse-managing, and so they had never made the effort to

keep horses. Actually, the dogs were in many ways more convenient because

they demanded little care, and fed on the less choice cuts of the many

cattle which could be killed easily in the surrounding country. But to have

horses, you would have had to see that they were kept on good pasture, and