ad a
hundred fools to a gold-mine."

She glared malevolently at him and hobbled on. Several minutes
afterward, coming back from a trip to where a squad of groaning patients
was gathering spruce-boughs, Smoke saw the seeress entering Amos
Wentworth's cabin and followed after her. At the door he could hear her
voice, whimpering and pleading.

"Just for me," she was begging, as Smoke entered. "I won't tell a soul."

Both glanced guiltily at the intruder, and Smoke was certain that he was
on the edge of something, he knew not what, and he cursed himself for
not having eavesdropped.

"Out with it," he commanded harshly. "What is it?"

"What is what?" Amos Wentworth asked sullenly. And Smoke could not name
what was what.

Grimmer and grimmer grew the situation. In that dark hole of a canyon,
where sunlight never penetrated, the horrible death list mounted up.
Each day, in apprehension, Smoke and Shorty examined each other's mouths
for the whitening of the gums and mucous membranes--the invariable first
symptom of the disease.

"I've quit," Shorty announced one evening. "I've been thinkin' it over,
an' I quit. I can make a go at slave-drivin', but cripple-drivin's too
much for my stomach. They go from bad to worse. They ain't twenty men
I can drive to work. I told Jackson this afternoon he could take to his
bunk. He was gettin' ready to suicide. I could see it stickin' out all
over him. Exercise ain't no good."

"I've made up my mind to the same thing," Smoke answered. "We'll knock
off all but about a dozen. They'll have to lend a hand. We can relay
them. And we'll keep up the spruce-tea."

"It ain't no good."

"I'm about ready to agree with that, too, but at any rate it doesn't
hurt them."

"Another suicide," was Shorty's news the following morning. "That
Phillips is the one. I seen it comin' for days."

"We're up against the real thing," Smoke groaned. "What would you
suggest, Shorty?"

"Who? Me? I ain't got no suggestions. The thing's got to run its
course."

"But that means they'll all die," Smoke protested.

"Except Wentworth," Shorty snarled; for he had quickly come to share his
partner's dislike for that individual.

The everlasting miracle of Wentworth's immunity perplexed Smoke. Why
should he alone not have developed scurvy? Why did Laura Sibley hate
him, and at the same time whine and snivel and beg from him? What was it
she begged from him and that he would not give?

On several occasions Smo