Estelle looked at him speculatively. Her own expression grew a little worried, too.
"But in a month," she said dubiously, "we—there is hardly any hope of our finding food for two thousand people for a month, is there?"
"We've got to," Arthur declared. "We can't hope to get that much food from the Indians. It will be days before they'll dare to come back to their village, if they ever come. It will be weeks before we can hope to have them earnestly at work to feed us, and that's leaving aside the question of how we'll communicate with them, and how we'll manage to trade with them. Frankly, I think everybody is going to have to draw his belt tight before we get through—if we do. Some of us will get along, anyway."
Estelle's eyes opened wide as the meaning of his last sentence penetrated her mind.
"You mean—that all of us won't—"
"I'm going to take care of you," Arthur said gravely, "but there are liable to be lively doings around here when people begin to realize they're really in a tight fix for food. I'm going to get Van Deventer to help me organize a police band to enforce martial law. We mustn't have any disorder, that's certain, and I don't trust a city-bred man in a pinch unless I know him."
He stooped and picked up a revolver from the floor, left there by one of the bank watchmen when he fled, in the belief that the building was falling.
VII.
Arthur stood at the window of his office and stared out toward the west. The sun was setting, but upon what a scene!