Some day, they would be numerous enough for effective mutual protection
and support; some day, the ratio of helpless children to able adults
would redress itself. Until then, all that they could do would be to
survive; day after day, they must follow the game-herds.




4


For twenty years, now, they had been following the game. Winters had
come, with driving snow, forcing horses and deer into the woods, and the
little band of humans to the protection of mountain caves. Springtime
followed, with fresh grass on the plains and plenty of meat for the
people of Kalvar Dard. Autumns followed summers, with fire-hunts, and
the smoking and curing of meat and hides. Winters followed autumns, and
springtimes came again, and thus until the twentieth year after the
landing of the rocket-boat.

Kalvar Dard still walked in the lead, his hair and beard flecked with
gray, but he no longer carried the heavy rifle; the last cartridge for
that had been fired long ago. He carried the hand-axe, fitted with a
long helve, and a spear with a steel head that had been worked painfully
from the receiver of a useless carbine. He still had his pistol, with
eight cartridges in the magazine, and his dagger, and the bomb-bag,
containing the big demolition-bomb and one grenade. The last shred of
clothing from the ship was gone, now; he was clad in a sleeveless tunic
of skin and horsehide buskins.