They climbed down a wide steel stairway, bent and twisted, but mostly intact. A great wave of warmth from close-packed and steaming humanity rolled up the stair to meet them, mingled with the smells of candle-grease, smoke, leather, sweat and the lingering overtones of horse.
Beyond the bottom of the stair there was a comparative blaze of light. Price knew they were in the basement of what had been a public building or department store, a space foreshortened by a mass of rubble and hanging steel where part of it had caved in. It was crammed with men, and their voices growled in that low enclosed space like the growling of a great animal too long caged.
There was a small group of men sitting somewhat apart, and Sawyer joined them, with Oakes. Chiefs, thought Price, and realized that this was a very big council indeed, and planned for long ahead. Burr and Twist stood close on either side of him, but he forgot them for the moment, looking around in fascination at these his countrymen.
Forest-runners and hunters, like Burr and Twist, in greasy buckskins. Men from the lower river, from the swamp and bayou country, soft-spoken, hard-handed, dressed in coarse cotton dyed in bright Indian colors, yellow and red and green. Gaunt hill-farmers in hickory homespun, with their rifles between their hands. Boatmen down from the northern lakes, with a faint smell of fish about them, and long lean riders up from the southwest, leather-skinned and dangerous as rattlesnakes. Men from the black cornlands of Iowa, following their chief to talk of war. America, Price thought, basically unchanged, basically recognizable, but with all the fat sweated off it and all the luxuries stripped away, fined down to the ruggedness and strength of an earlier day, when men like this made a nation out of a wilderness.
He had a feeling they could do it again, in spite of the overwhelming power of the Star Lords. And if they couldn't, they would go down fighting like wildcats to the last.
The Chiefs were talking among themselves. Twist knew some of them, leaders of the Iowas, the Michigans, the Arkansas, the Mississippis. Others they could guess at, Nebraska, Texas, Oklahoma, Louisiana. The two Missouri hunters were as excited as hounds before a hunt. Twist said there had never been a council this big in his memory. It would go on until the issue was decided, the men staying under cover in the ruins, the horses hidden in the surrounding woods.
Price realized suddenly that the assembled chiefs were all looking at him with an intense and largely hostile interest. Sawyer's news seemed to have upset them badly. The Chief of the Michigans, a huge black-bearded man with an enormous voice, bellowed suddenly for silence. In seconds the place was absolutely quiet, except for the shuffle of men closing in to see and hear a little better.
"Sawyer of the Missouris has something to tell you," shouted Michigan. "You listen hard. Because what he's got to say will make the difference whether we fight or hold our peace."
An astounded and angry roar broke out. Michigan jumped up on a makeshift stand and cursed them till they fell quiet.