asn't any need
for any of them to get it if they'd only got out and done something.
What did they do? Growled and kicked and grouched at the cold, the long
nights, the hardships, the aches and pains and everything else. They
loafed in their beds until they swelled up and couldn't leave them,
that's all. Look at me. I've worked. Come into my cabin."

Smoke followed him in.

"Squint around. Clean as a whistle, eh? You bet. Everything shipshape.
I wouldn't keep those chips and shavings on the floor except for the
warmth, but they're clean chips and shavings. You ought to see the floor
in some of the shacks. Pig-pens. As for me, I haven't eaten a meal off
an unwashed dish. No, sir. It meant work, and I've worked, and I haven't
the scurvy. You can put that in your pipe and smoke it."

"You've hit the nail on the head," Smoke admitted. "But I see you've
only one bunk. Why so unsociable?"

"Because I like to be. It's easier to clean up for one than two, that's
why. The lazy blanket-loafers! Do you think that I could have stood one
around? No wonder they got scurvy."

It was very convincing, but Smoke could not rid himself of his dislike
of the man.

"What's Laura Sibley got it in for you for?" he asked abruptly.

Amos Wentworth shot a quick look at him. "She's a crank," was the reply.
"So are we all cranks, for that matter. But Heaven save me from the
crank that won't wash the dishes that he eats off of, and that's what
this crowd of cranks are like."

A few minutes later, Smoke was talking with Laura Sibley. Supported by a
stick in either hand, she had paused in hobbling by his cabin.

"What have you got it in for Wentworth for?" he asked, apropos of
nothing in the conversation and with a suddenness that caught her off
her guard.

Her green eyes flashed bitterly, her emaciated face for the second
was convulsed with rage, and her sore lips writhed on the verge of
unconsidered speech. But only a splutter of gasping, unintelligible
sounds issued forth, and then, by a terrible effort, she controlled
herself.

"Because he's healthy," she panted. "Because he hasn't the scurvy.
Because he is supremely selfish. Because he won't lift a hand to help
anybody else. Because he'd let us rot and die, as he is letting us rot
and die, without lifting a finger to fetch us a pail of water or a
load of firewood. That's the kind of a brute he is. But let him beware!
That's all. Let him beware!"

Still panting and gasping, she hobb