Whose Names are Unknown Quotes

“Still they sat. The rain beat hard on the tent and the fire died in the stove. Water trickled in, making rivulets in the dust. By morning the floor would be mud. One man stood up and made a move to go. The others sat unashamed with their silence. One man whistled an old tune, low, for himself to hear. It was as if these men and all the men they knew had been standing alone in the wide valleys, dwarfed beneath the western sky, and overto the east the dark Sierra Madres bristled with hidden guns, and over to the west, farther than they could see beyond the fields, the ocean made an end. South to north the valleys curved in a long green flowering bowl, filled with food enough for a nation, wlule hunger gnawed these workers' bodies and drained their minds. An old belief fell away like a withered leaf. Their dreams thudded down like the over-ripe pears they had walked on, too long waiting on the stem. One thing was left, as clear and perfect as a drop of rain-the desperate need to stand together as one man. They would rise and fall and, in their falling, rise again.”
― Sanora Babb, Whose Names are Unknown