Mosu quieted the panic-stricken people who crowded about him in the early light as well as he could. One thing was sure, if the people of the Cliff were not to starve when the cold days came, the rest of the crop must be saved. Wisely seeing in vigorous action the best remedy for fear, he hastily organized men and women into bands for taking care of what was left of the grain, giving to the women the actual work of gathering that the men might be left free to protect them. So, leaving the old men and smaller boys to look after the village, and with many cautions to Bimba to keep speedy messengers always ready to carry news of danger, the harvest bands went silently down the steep stairs and passed swiftly through the canyons to the great field. Once there, no time was lost in stripping the ears from the stalks and piling them into the wide-mouthed baskets which the women carried on their backs, and in cutting down the stalks with keen-edged flint knives to be carried home in bundles on the shoulders of the big boys. The wheat-heads were hastily snatched from their stems, to be shelled out by busy fingers in the leisure hours of winter. They worked in nervous haste, casting fearful glances up and down the canyon at every turn. From the tower the new watchman who had taken dead Haida’s place strained his eyes anxiously into vague distances, intent upon guarding, even to his own death, those lives so dependent upon his vigilance. Swiftly as they worked, and quickly as the many trips to and from the village were made, it was many days before all the crop was safe and the people could breathe more easily in their well-guarded cavern home. But the old air of careless gayety was gone, and in its place was a constant atmosphere of apprehension. No one knew when the bold savages, encouraged by their success in the valley, might not undertake even so difficult a task as the storming of the cliff fastness. Rumors, too, were constantly afloat of murderous attacks on smaller outlying cliff dwellings, and once a small party that had been down the canyon to look for wild gourds came upon the body of a Cliffman, apparently from one of those distant houses, lying stiff with a Ute arrow in his breast. In a consultation of the old men it was at last decided that the best thing to be done was to send messengers to the Rainbow and Bear Clans on the south, which were probably so far free from attack, and to the Seven Cities on the North, asking them to be ready to send aid should the threatened danger fall. Mosu, standing stern and tall in the middle of the court, told the people of this decision and asked for messengers. “The Walpi road is a dangerous one,” he said, “to be undertaken by no one who is afraid to lose his life. He must go alone, for one is as safe as ten, and we have no lives to risk without great reason. I would not willingly send any forth to such chance of death, but if one will offer himself--”