"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, trained all her life to take care of the unexpected; and for the experimentals something unexpected was always happening. Under her influence, and maybe a little under his, Jed acknowledged, now that he'd been set straight by Martha's example, everybody began to settle down a little, like they would after the first shock of a fire or flood. It was all over. Now it was time to start picking up the pieces, rebuilding. Only it wasn't all over. That's when they found out they couldn't build a fire. Easiest way, without matches, is to string a bow and twirl a stick in a hole punched into another stick. Next easiest way is to find a piece of flint, strike two pieces together to make sparks and hope one will set a wad of punk on fire. If no other way, rubbing two dry sticks together will do it if you can rub them fast enough, get them hot enough to make the powdered fibers burst into flame. Or if they'd had some of those quartz crystals from the top of the mountain to focus sun rays.... But they couldn't make a bow, or strike two stones together, or rub two sticks together. It couldn't be done. Well, Cal had seen for himself what happened when it was tried. All the men were trying it, and for a little bit everybody thought it was only happening to him, that he must have lost the knack, or something. For a little bit there the men were more worried about how their wife would bring it up for weeks or months, how he had let the rest of the men show him up when it came to building a fire. One of the men tore it then. He yelled out that somebody he couldn't see was watching him over his shoulder, that it wasn't meant they should have fire. Cal looked quickly at Louie at that point of the story. Louie was staring, with mouth open, at Jed; and in his eyes was confirmation of that same feeling. But Jed didn't notice the effect, and went on with the telling. Everybody stopped and listened to the man, because they were having the same feeling. Jed knew it. Him, too. The crowd might have panicked right there if the man had let it rest, but he started explaining it, the way a man does, and makes himself ridiculous.