He had to get on friendly terms, or he wouldn’t find out much about things like population, food production, and whatever else there was to know. Forcing a smile to stiff lips, he took a flask from his jacket. “Prewar rye,” he said. “Who wants a nip?”

“Do we!” The answer barked out in a dozen voices and words. The flask circulated, men pawing and cursing and grabbing to get at it. Their homebrew must be pretty bad, thought Drummond wryly.

The chief shouted an order, and one of his women got busy at the primitive stove. “Rustle you a mess o’ chow,” he said heartily. “An’ my name’s Sam Buckman.”

“Pleased to meet you, Sam.” Drummond squeezed the hairy paw hard. He had to show he wasn’t a weakling, a conniving city slicker.

“What’s it like, outside?” asked someone presently. “We ain’t heard for so long—”

“You haven’t missed much,” said Drummond between bites.

The food was pretty good. Briefly, he sketched conditions. “You’re better off than most,” he finished.

“Yeah. Mebbe so.” Sam Buckman scratched his tangled beard. “What I’d give f’r a razor blade—! It ain’t easy, though. The first year we weren’t no better off ’n anyone else. Me, I’m a farmer, I kept some ears o’ corn an’ a little wheat an’ barley in my pockets all that winter, even though I was starving. A bunch o’ hungry refugees plundered my place, but I got away an’ drifted up here. Next year I took an empty farm here an’ started over.”

Drummond doubted that it had been abandoned, but said nothing. Sheer survival outweighed a lot of considerations.

“Others came an’ settled here,” said the leader reminiscently. “We farm together. We have to; one man couldn’t live by hisself, not with the bugs an’ blight, an’ the crops sproutin’ into all new kinds, an’ the outlaws aroun’. Not many up here, though we did beat off some enemy troops last winter.” He glowed with pride at that, but Drummond wasn’t particularly impressed. A handful of freezing starveling conscripts, lost and bewildered in a foreign enemy’s land, with no hope of ever getting home, weren’t formidable.

“Things getting better, though,” said Buckman. “We’re heading up.” He scowled blackly, and a palpable chill crept into the room. “If ’twern’t for the births—”

“Yes—the births. The new babies. Even the stock an’ plants.” It was an old man speaking, his eyes glazed with near madness. “It’s the mark o’ the beast. Satan is loose in the world—”

“Shut up!” Huge and bristling with wrath, Buckman launched himself out of his seat and grabbed the oldster by his scrawny throat. “Shut up ’r I’ll bash y’r lying head in. Ain’t no son o’ mine being marked by the devil.”

“Or mine—” “Or mine—” The rumble of voices ran about the cabin, sullen and afraid.

“It’s God’s judgment, I tell you!” The woman was shrilling again. “The end o’ the world is near. Prepare f’r the second coming—”

“An’ you shut up too, Mag Schmidt,” snarled Buckman He stood bent over, gnarled arms swinging loose, hands flexing, little eyes darting red and wild about the room. “Shut y’ trap an’ keep it shut. I’m still boss here, an’ if you don’t like it you can get out. I still don’t think that gunny-looking brat o’ y’rs fell in the lake by accident.”