"We'll live on meat," said Hudson. "We got bison by the million. The plains Indians lived on them alone. And in the spring, we'll find roots and in the summer berries. And in the fall, we'll harvest a half-dozen kinds of nuts."
"Some day our ammo will be gone, no matter how careful we are with it."
"Bows and arrows. Slingshots. Spears."
"There's a lot of beasts here I wouldn't want to stand up to with nothing but a spear."
"We won't stand up to them. We'll duck when we can and run when we can't duck. Without our guns, we're no lords of creation—not in this place. If we're going to live, we'll have to recognize that fact."
"And if one of us gets sick or breaks a leg or—"
"We'll do the best we can. Nobody lives forever."
But they were talking around the thing that really bothered them, Hudson told himself—each of them afraid to speak the thought aloud.
They'd live, all right, so far as food, shelter and clothing were concerned. And they'd live most of the time in plenty, for this was a fat and open-handed land and a man could make an easy living.
But the big problem—the one they were afraid to talk about—was their emptiness of purpose. To live, they had to find some meaning in a world without society.