Vivian said, "Well, what're you worrying about, Jean? We have it now."
The girl said, "They have three tommy guns, four automatic rifles, twenty grenades and forty sticks of dynamite."
Vivian was impatient. "They had them, now they're ours. It's good, not bad."
Jean said doggedly, "These raids are coming more and more often. We've lost ten fighters in less than a year. And each time they come at us they're better equipped and there're more of them." She looked over at Alan. "If it hadn't been for this ... this queer way things worked out, they'd have our husband now and we'd be done for."
"Well, it didn't happen that way," Vivian said abruptly, "and we still have our husband and we're going to keep him. This wasn't a bad action at all. They killed three of us, we've got more than forty of them."
"Not three, eight," Jean said. "You forget the five girls. In another couple of years they'd have been warriors. And besides, what difference does it make if we've got forty of them? There're always more of them where they came from. There must be a thousand women toward Denver without a husband between them."
Vivian quieted. "Let's hope they don't all decide on Alan at once," she said. "I wonder if the Turtles are having the same trouble."
"They're having more," Alan said. He had lowered himself wearily into one of the chairs.
The two warriors looked at him. "How do you know, sweetie?" Vivian asked him.
"I was talking to Warren, a few weeks ago. He's husband of the Turtle clan now, they traded him from the Foxes. Both clans were getting too interbred...."