h as possible, first thing they think of is
making hot coffee, maybe hot soup.

That was when they began to realize this was more than the desolation
following a cyclone or other freak of nature.

Cal wanted to know what happened? Well, there he was, still sort of
hiding behind his tree. It was Martha who snapped out of it first, who
insisted that clothes or no clothes it was their plain duty to get down
to the village where they could help somebody. He'd need other men to
help him get things back in shape; she could help the other women take
care of the needy.

And still he hung back, ashamed of his nakedness. She scolded him then,
pointed out that if everybody was naked, their being naked too wasn't
likely to start up a passel of gossip.

He gave in to her scolding, because she was right, and came out from
behind his tree. It seemed more than passing strange to be walking down
that slope naked, in plain sight of everybody. Thing that helped was
that nobody seemed of a mind to stop and stare at them.

Everybody had his mind on his own problems, and then a funny thing
happened. Maybe, Jed reasoned, it was seeing that everybody else was
naked too. Anyway, the self-consciousness disappeared all of a sudden,
and they didn't think any more about it--not right then, anyhow.

By the time they'd got to the foot of their hill and into the crowd of
people, he forgot all about it. There was plenty of other things to
think about. Martha pitched right in, the way he ought to have done. She
was the one who thought of giving the men something to do, get them over
their hysterics.

"Why don't some of you men get a fire going!" she called out, as soon as
they got to the edge of the crowd. "Something hot to drink is what we
need most. Hot water, in case anybody is hurt."

Of course she wasn't thinking straight, not entirely. They didn't have a
pot to heat water in. Or maybe she was, because right away he heard her
asking other women if any of them knew where there might be some dried
gourds. He remembered then an old pioneer trick--cutting open a gourd,
scooping out the seed, filling it with water, dropping hot stones into
it until it boiled, Indian style.

It might seem funny to city women, always protected against everything,
that Martha wasn't more excited, and helpless. First place, she had her
man already, and didn't need to put on such a show. Second place, she
was a colonist woman, an experimental colonist woman, traine