She shrugged her shoulders.
Struggle as he would with her, Smoke could not bring her to admit the possibility.
"Wentworth"s a swine," was Shorty"s verdict, when Smoke told his suspicions.
"And so is Laura Sibley," Smoke added. "She believes he has the potatoes, and is keeping it quiet, and trying to get him to share with her."
"An" he won"t come across, eh?" Shorty cursed frail human nature with one of his best flights, and caught his breath. "They both got their feet in the trough. May G.o.d rot them dead with scurvy for their reward, that"s all I got to say, except I"m goin" right up now an" knock Wentworth"s block off."
But Smoke stood out for diplomacy. That night, when the camp groaned and slept, or groaned and did not sleep, he went to Wentworth"s unlighted cabin.
"Listen to me, Wentworth," he said. "I"ve got a thousand dollars in dust right here in this sack. I"m a rich man in this country, and I can afford it. I think I"m getting touched. Put a raw potato in my hand and the dust is yours. Here, heft it."
And Smoke thrilled when Amos Wentworth put out his hand in the darkness and hefted the gold. Smoke heard him fumble in the blankets, and then felt pressed into his hand, not the heavy gold-sack, but the unmistakable potato, the size of a hen"s egg, warm from contact with the other"s body.
Smoke did not wait till morning. He and Shorty were expecting at any time the deaths of their worst two cases, and to this cabin the partners went. Grated and mashed up in a cup, skin, and clinging specks of the earth, and all, was the thousand-dollar potato--a thick fluid, that they fed, several drops at a time, into the frightful orifices that had once been mouths. Shift by shift, through the long night, Smoke and Shorty relieved each other at administering the potato juice, rubbing it into the poor swollen gums where loose teeth rattled together and compelling the swallowing of every drop of the precious elixir.
By evening of the next day the change for the better in the two patients was miraculous and almost unbelievable. They were no longer the worst cases. In forty-eight hours, with the exhaustion of the potato, they were temporarily out of danger, though far from being cured.
"I"ll tell you what I"ll do," Smoke said to Wentworth. "I"ve got holdings in this country, and my paper is good anywhere. I"ll give you five hundred dollars a potato up to fifty thousand dollars" worth.
That"s one hundred potatoes."
"Was that all the dust you had?" Wentworth queried.
"Shorty and I sc.r.a.ped up all we had. But, straight, he and I are worth several millions between us."
"I haven"t any potatoes," Wentworth said finally. "Wish I had. That potato I gave you was the only one. I"d been saving it all the winter for fear I"d get the scurvy. I only sold it so as to be able to buy a pa.s.sage out of the country when the river opens."
Despite the cessation of potato-juice, the two treated cases continued to improve through the third day. The untreated cases went from bad to worse. On the fourth morning, three horrible corpses were buried. Shorty went through the ordeal, then turned to Smoke.
"You"ve tried your way. Now it"s me for mine."
He headed straight for Wentworth"s cabin. What occurred there, Shorty never told. He emerged with knuckles skinned and bruised, and not only did Wentworth"s face bear all the marks of a bad beating, but for a long time he carried his head, twisted and sidling, on a stiff neck. This phenomenon was accounted for by a row of four finger-marks, black and blue, on one side of the windpipe and by a single black-and-blue mark on the other side.
Next, Smoke and Shorty together invaded Wentworth"s cabin, throwing him out in the snow while they turned the interior upside down. Laura Sibley hobbled in and frantically joined them in the search.
"You don"t get none, old girl, not if we find a ton," Shorty a.s.sured her.
But she was no more disappointed than they. Though the very floor was dug up, they discovered nothing.
"I"m for roastin" him over a slow fire an" make "m cough up," Shorty proposed earnestly.
Smoke shook his head reluctantly.
"It"s murder," Shorty held on. "He"s murderin" all them poor geezers just as much as if he knocked their brains out with an ax, only worse."
Another day pa.s.sed, during which they kept a steady watch on Wentworth"s movements. Several times, when he started out, water-bucket in hand, for the creek, they casually approached the cabin, and each time he hurried back without the water.
"They"re cached right there in his cabin," Shorty said. "As sure as G.o.d made little apples, they are. But where? We sure overhauled it plenty."
He stood up and pulled on his mittens. "I"m goin" to find "em, if I have to pull the blame shack down a log at a time."
He glanced at Smoke, who, with an intent, absent face, had not heard him.
"What"s eatin" you?" Shorty demanded wrathfully. "Don"t tell me you"ve gone an" got the scurvy!"
"Just trying to remember something, Shorty."
"What?"
"I don"t know. That"s the trouble. But it has a bearing, if only I could remember it."
"Now you look here, Smoke; don"t you go an" get bug-house," Shorty pleaded. "Think of me! Let your think-slats rip. Come on an" help me pull that shack down. I"d set her afire, if it wa"n"t for roastin" them spuds."
"That"s it!" Smoke exploded, as he sprang to his feet. "Just what I was trying to remember. Where"s that kerosene-can? I"m with you, Shorty. The potatoes are ours."
"What"s the game?"
"Watch me, that"s all," Smoke baffled. "I always told you, Shorty, that a deficient acquaintance with literature was a handicap, even in the Klondike. Now what we"re going to do came out of a book. I read it when I was a kid, and it will work. Come on."
Several minutes later, under a pale-gleaming, greenish aurora borealis, the two men crept up to Amos Wentworth"s cabin. Carefully and noiselessly they poured kerosene over the logs, extra-drenching the door-frame and window-sash. Then the match was applied, and they watched the flaming oil gather headway. They drew back beyond the growing light and waited.
They saw Wentworth rush out, stare wildly at the conflagration, and plunge back into the cabin. Scarcely a minute elapsed when he emerged, this time slowly, half doubled over, his shoulders burdened by a sack heavy and unmistakable. Smoke and Shorty sprang at him like a pair of famished wolves. They hit him right and left, at the same instant. He crumpled down under the weight of the sack, which Smoke pressed over with his hands to make sure. Then he felt his knees clasped by Wentworth"s arms as the man turned a ghastly face upward.
"Give me a dozen, only a dozen--half a dozen--and you can have the rest," he squalled. He bared his teeth and, with mad rage, half inclined his head to bite Smoke"s leg, then he changed his mind and fell to pleading. "Just half a dozen," he wailed. "Just half a dozen. I was going to turn them over to you--to-morrow. Yes, to-morrow. That was my idea. They"re life! They"re life! Just half a dozen!"
"Where"s the other sack?" Smoke bluffed.
"I ate it up," was the reply, unimpeachably honest. "That sack"s all that"s left. Give me a few. You can have the rest."
"Ate "em up!" Shorty screamed. "A whole sack! An" them geezers dyin" for want of "em! This for you! An" this! An" this! An" this! You swine! You hog!"
The first kick tore Wentworth away from his embrace of Smoke"s knees.
The second kick turned him over in the snow. But Shorty went on kicking.
"Watch out for your toes," was Smoke"s only interference.
"Sure; I"m usin" the heel," Shorty answered. "Watch me. I"ll cave his ribs in. I"ll kick his jaw off. Take that! An" that! Wisht I could give you the boot instead of the moccasin. You swine!"
There was no sleep in camp that night. Hour after hour Smoke and Shorty went the rounds, doling the life-renewing potato-juice, a quarter of a spoonful at a dose, into the poor ruined mouths of the population. And through the following day, while one slept the other kept up the work.
There were no more deaths. The most awful cases began to mend with an immediacy that was startling. By the third day, men who had not been off their backs for weeks crawled out of their bunks and tottered around on crutches. And on that day, the sun, two months then on its journey into northern declination, peeped cheerfully over the crest of the canyon for the first time.
"Nary a potato," Shorty told the whining, begging Wentworth. "You ain"t even touched with scurvy. You got outside a whole sack, an" you"re loaded against scurvy for twenty years. Knowin" you, I"ve come to understand G.o.d. I always wondered why he let Satan live. Now I know. He let him live just as I let you live. But it"s a cryin" shame, just the same."
"A word of advice," Smoke told Wentworth. "These men are getting well fast; Shorty and I are leaving in a week, and there will be n.o.body to protect you when these men go after you. There"s the trail. Dawson"s eighteen days" travel."
"Pull your freight, Amos," Shorty supplemented, "or what I done to you won"t be a circ.u.mstance to what them convalescents"ll do to you."
"Gentlemen, I beg of you, listen to me," Wentworth whined. "I"m a stranger in this country. I don"t know its ways. I don"t know the trail.