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 scraped 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
passage 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 a