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 God. 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 nobody 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 circumstance 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. Let me travel with you. I'll give you a thousand dollars if you'll let me travel with you.'
'Sure,' Smoke grinned maliciously. 'If Shorty agrees.'
'WHO? ME?' Shorty stiffened for a supreme effort. 'I ain't nobody. Woodticks ain't got nothin' on me when it comes to humility. I'm a worm, a maggot, brother to the pollywog an' child of the blow-fly. I ain't afraid or ashamed of nothin' that creeps or crawls or stinks. But travel with that mistake of creation! Go 'way, man. I ain't proud, but you turn my stomach.'
And Amos Wentworth went away, alone, dragging a sled loaded with provisions sufficient to last him to Dawson . A mile down the trail Shorty overhauled him.
'Come here to me,' was Shorty's greeting. 'Come across. Fork over. Cough up.'
'I don't understand,' Wentworth quavered, shivering from recollection of the two beatings, hand and foot, he had already received from Shorty.
'That thousand dollars, d' ye understand that? That thousand dollars gold Smoke bought that measly potato with. Come through.'
And Amos Wentworth passed the gold-sack over.
'Hope a skunk bites you an' you get howlin' hydrophoby,' were the terms of Shorty's farewell.
A FLUTTER IN EGGS
It was in the A. C. Company's big store at Dawson , on a morning of crisp frost, that Lucille Arral beckoned Smoke Bellew over to the dry-goods counter. The clerk had gone on an expedition into the storerooms, and, despite the huge, red-hot stoves, Lucille had drawn on her mittens again.
Smoke obeyed her call with alacrity. The man did not exist in Dawson who would not have been flattered by the notice of Lucille Arral, the singing soubrette of the tiny stock company that performed nightly at the Palace Opera House.
'Things are dead,' she complained, with pretty petulance, as soon as they had shaken hands. 'There hasn't been a stampede for a week. That masked ball Skiff Mitchell was going to give us has been postponed. There's no dust in circulation. There's always standing-room now at the Opera House. And there hasn't been a mail from the Outside for two whole weeks. In short, this burg has crawled into its cave and gone to sleep. We've got to do something. It needs livening — and you and I can do it. We can give it excitement if anybody can. I've broken with Wild Water, you know.'
Smoke caught two almost simultaneous visions. One was of Joy Gastell; the other was of himself, in the midst of a bleak snow-stretch, under a cold arctic moon, being pot-shotted with accurateness and dispatch by the aforesaid Wild Water. Smoke's reluctance at raising excitement with the aid of Lucille Arral was too patent for her to miss.
'I'm not thinking what you are thinking at all, thank you,' she chided, with a laugh and a pout. 'When I throw myself at your head you'll have to have more eyes and better ones than you have now to see me.'
'Men have died of heart disease at the sudden announcement of good fortune,' he murmured in the unveracious gladness of relief.
'Liar,' she retorted graciously. 'You were more scared to death than anything else. Now take it from me, Mr. Smoke Bellew, I'm not going to make love to you, and if you dare to make love to me, Wild Water will take care of your case. You know HIM. Besides, I — I haven't really broken with him.'
'Go on with your puzzles,' he jeered. 'Maybe I can start guessing what you're driving at after a while.'
'There's no guessing, Smoke. I'll give it to you straight. Wild Water thinks I've broken with him, don't you see.'
'Well, have you, or haven't you?'
'I haven't — there! But it's between you and me in confidence. He thinks I have. I made a noise like breaking with him, and he deserved it, too.'
'Where do I come in, stalking-horse or fall-guy?'
'Neither. You make a pot of money, we put across the laugh on Wild Water and cheer Dawson up, and, best of all, and the reason for it all, he gets disciplined. He needs it. He's — well, the best way to put it is, he's too turbulent. Just because he's a big husky, because he owns more rich claims than he can keep count of — '
'And because he's engaged to the prettiest little woman in Alaska ,' Smoke interpolated.
'Yes, and because of that, too, thank you, is no reason for him to get riotous. He broke out last night again. Sowed the floor of the M. & M. with gold-dust. All of a thousand dollars. Just opened his poke and scattered it under the feet of the dancers. You've heard of it, of course.'
'Yes; this morning. I'd like to be the sweeper in that establishment. But still I don't get you. Where do I come in?'
'Listen. He was too turbulent. I broke our engagement, and he's going around making a noise like a broken heart. Now we come to it. I like eggs.'
'They're off!' Smoke cried in despair. 'Which way? Which way?'
'Wait.'
'But what have eggs and appetite got to do with it?' he demanded.
'Everything, if you'll only listen.'
'Listening, listening,' he chanted.
'Then for Heaven's sake listen. I like eggs. There's only a limited supply of eggs in Dawson .'
'Sure. I know that, too. Slavovitch's restaurant has most of them. Ham and one egg, three dollars. Ham and two eggs, five dollars. That means two dollars an egg, retail. And only the swells and the Arrals and the Wild Waters can afford them.'
'He likes eggs, too,' she continued. 'But that's not the point. I like them. I have breakfast every morning at eleven o'clock at Slavovitch's. I invariably eat two eggs.' She paused impressively. 'Suppose, just suppose, somebody corners eggs.'
