It was evident that two men had lived until recently in the cabin, and the partners wondered if they weren’t the two suicides down the trail.  Together they overhauled the cache and found it filled with an undreamed-of variety of canned, powdered, dried, evaporated, condensed, and desiccated foods.

“What in the name of reason do they want to go and get scurvy for?” Shorty demanded, brandishing to the light packages of egg-powder and Italian mushrooms.  “And look at that!  And that!” He tossed out cans of tomatoes and corn and bottles of stuffed olives.  “And the divine steeress got the scurvy, too.  What d’ye make of it?”

“Seeress,” Smoke corrected.

“Steeress,” Shorty reiterated.  “Didn’t she steer ’em here to this hole in the ground?”

Next morning, after daylight, Smoke encountered a man carrying a heavy sled-load of firewood.  He was a little man, clean-looking and spry, who walked briskly despite the load.  Smoke experienced an immediate dislike.

“What’s the matter with you?” he asked.

“Nothing,” the little man answered.

“I know that,” Smoke said.  “That’s why I asked you.  You’re Amos Wentworth.  Now why under the sun haven’t you the scurvy like all the rest?”

“Because I’ve exercised,” came the quick reply.  “There wasn’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.