y wore fringed buckskin trousers and buckskin shirts and
odd caps of deerskin with visors to shade their eyes and similar beaks
behind to protect the neck. They had powder horns and bullet pouches
slung over their shoulders, and long rifles in their hands. They
stepped aside as soon as they were out; carefully avoiding any gesture
of menace, they stood watching the helicopter which had landed among
them.

Three other men followed them out; they, too, wore buckskins, and the
odd double-visored caps. One had a close-cropped white beard, and on
the shoulders of his buckskin shirt he wore the single silver bars of
a first lieutenant of the vanished United States Army. He had a pistol
on his belt; it had the saw-handle grip of an automatic, but it was a
flintlock, as were the rifles of the young men who stood watchfully on
either side of the two middle-aged men who accompanied him. The whole
party advanced toward the helicopter.

"All right; come on, Monty." Loudons opened the door and let down the
steps. Picking up an auto-carbine, he slung it and stepped out of the
helicopter, Altamont behind him. They advanced to meet the party from
the old church, halting when they were about twenty feet apart.

"I must apologize, lieutenant, for dropping in on you so
unceremoniously." He stopped, wondering if the man with the white
beard understood a word of what he was saying.

"The natural way to come in, when you travel in the air," the old man
replied. "At least, you came in openly. I can promise you a better
reception than you got at that city to the west of us a couple of days
ago."

"Now how did you know we'd had trouble at Cincinnati
day-before-yesterday?" Loudons demanded.

The old man's eyes sparkled with childlike pleasure. "That surprises
you, my dear sir? In a moment, I daresay you'll be amazed at the
simplicity of it. You have a nasty rip in the left leg of your
trousers, and the cloth around it is stained with blood. Through the
rip, I perceive a bandage. Obviously, you have suffered a recent
wound. I further observe that the side of your flying machine bears
recent scratches, as though from the spears or throwing-hatchets of
the Scowrers. Evidently they attacked you as you were leaving it; it
is fortunate that these cannibal devils are too stupid and too anxious
for human flesh to exercise patience."

"Well, that explains how you knew we'd been recently attacked,"
Loudons told him. "But how did you guess that it