I explained that we were moving in. If they did not like it, they could go: if, on the other hand, they preferred to stay and share equally what there was, they were free to do so. They were not pleased. The way they reacted suggested that somewhere in the place they had a cache of stores that they were not anxious to share. When they grasped that the intention was to build up bigger stores their attitude modified perceptibly, and they prepared to make the best of it.

I decided I’d have to stay on a day or two just to get the party set up. I guessed Josella would be feeling much the same about her lot. Ingenious man, Coker—the trick is called holding the baby. But after that I’d dodge out, and join her.

During the next couple of days we worked systematically, tackling the bigger stores near by—mostly chain stores, and not very big, at that. Nearly everywhere there had been others before us. The fronts of the shops were in a bad way. The windows were broken in, the floors were littered with half-opened cans and split packages which had disappointed the finders, and now lay in a sticky, stinking mass among the fragments of window glass. But as a rule the loss was small-and the damage superficial, and we’d find the larger cases in and behind the shop untouched.

It was far from easy for blind men to carry and maneuver heavy cases out of the place and load them on handcarts. Then there was the job of getting them back to the billet and stowing them. But practice began to give them a knack with it.

The most hampering factor was the necessity for my presence. Little or nothing could go on unless I was there to direct It was impossible to use more than one working party at a time, though we could have made up a dozen. Nor could much go on back at the hotel while I was out with the foraging squad. Moreover, such time as I had to spend investigating and prospecting the district was pretty much wasted for everyone else. Two sighted men could have got though a lot more than twice the work.

Once we had started, I was too busy during the day to spend much thought beyond the actual work in hand, and too tired at night to do anything but sleep the moment I lay down. Now and again I’d say to myself, “By tomorrow night I’ll have them pretty well fixed up—enough to keep them going for a bit, anyway. Then I’ll light out of this and find Josella.”

That sounded all right—but every day it was tomorrow that I’d be able to do it, and each day it became more difficult. Some of them had begun to learn a bit, but still practically nothing, from foraging to can-opening, could go on without my being around. It seemed, the way things were going, that I became less, instead of more, dispensable.

None of it was their fault. That was what made it difficult. Some of them were trying so damned hard. I just had to watch them making it more and more impossible for me to play the skunk and walk out on them. A dozen times a day I cursed the man Coker for contriving me into the situation— but that didn’t help to solve it: it just left me wondering how it could end.

I had my first inkling of that, though I scarcely recognized it as such, on the fourth morning—or maybe it was the fifth—just as we were setting out. A woman called down the stairs that there were two sick up there; pretty bad, she thought.

My two watchdogs did not like it.

“Listen,” I told them. “I’ve had about enough of this chain-gang stuff. We’d be doing a lot better than we are now without it , anyway.”

“An’ have you slinkin’ off to join your old mob?” said someone.

“Don’t fool yourself,” I said. “I could have slugged this pair of amateur gorillas any hour of the day or night. I’ve not done it because you’ve got nothing against them other than their being a pair of dim-witted nuisances

“‘Ere—” one of my attachments began to expostulate. “But,” I went on, “if they don’t let me see what’s wrong with these people, they can begin expecting to be slugged any minute from now.

The two saw reason, but when we reached the room they took good care to stand as far back as the chain allowed. The casualties turned out to be two men, one young, one middle-aged. Both had high temperatures and complained of agonizing pain in the bowels. I didn’t know much about such things then, but I did not need to know much to feel worried. I could think of nothing but to direct that they should be carried to an empty house near by, and to tell one of the women to look after them as best she could.

That was the beginning of a day of setbacks. The next of a very different kind, happened around noon.

We had cleared most of the food shops close to us, and I bad decided to extend our range a little. From my recollections of the neighborhood, I reckoned we ought to find another shopping street about a half mile to the north, so I led my party that way. We found the shops there, all right, but something else too.

As we turned the corner and came into view of them, L stopped. In front of a chain-store grocery a party of men was trundling out cases and loading them on to a truck. Save for the difference in the vehicle, I might have been watching my own party at work. I halted my group of twenty or so, wondering what line we should take. My inclination was to withdraw and avoid possible trouble by finding a clear field elsewhere; there was no sense in coming into conflict when there was plenty scattered in various stores for those who were organized enough to take it. But it did not fall to me to make the decision, Even while I hesitated a redheaded young man strode confidently out of the shop door. There was no doubt that he was able to see—or, a moment later, that he had seen us.

He did not share my indecision. He reached swiftly for his pocket. The next moment a bullet hit the wall beside me with a smack.

There was a brief tableau. His men and mine turning their sightless eyes toward one another in an effort to understand what was going on. Then he fired again. I supposed he had aimed at me, but the bullet found the man on my left. He gave a grunt as though he were surprised, and folded up with a kind of sigh. I dodged back round the corner, dragging the other watchdog with me.

“Quick,” I said. “Give me the key to these cuffs. I can’t do a thing like this.”

He didn’t do anything except give a knowing grin. He was a one-idea man.

“Huh,” he said. “Come off it. You don’t fool me.”

“Oh, for God’s sake, you damned clown,” I said, pulling on the chain to drag the body of watchdog number one nearer so that we could get better cover.

The goon started to argue. Heaven knows what subtleties his dim wits were crediting me with. There was enough slack on the chain now for me to raise my arms. I did, and hammered both fists at his head so that it went back against the wall with a crack. That disposed of his argument. I found the key in his side pocket.

“Listen,” I told the rest. “Turn round, all of you, and keep going straight ahead. Don’t separate, or you’ll have had it. Get moving now.”

I got one wristlet open, ridded myself of the chain, and scrambled over the wall into somebody’s garden. I crouched there while I got rid of the other cuff. Then I moved across to peer cautiously over the far angle of the wall. The young man with the pistol had not come rushing after us, as I had half expected. He was still with his party, giving them an instruction. And now I came to think of it, why should he hurry? Since we had not fired back at him, he could reckon we were unarmed and we wouldn’t be able to get away fast.

When he’d finished his directions he walked out confidently into the road to a point where he had a view of my retreating group. At the corner he stopped to look at the two prone watchdogs. Probably the chain suggested to him that one of them had been the eyes of our gang, for he put the pistol back in his pocket and began to follow the rest in a leisurely fashion.