“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 hobbled on her way, and five minutes afterward, coming out of the cabin to feed the dogs, Smoke saw her entering Amos Wentworth’s cabin.

“Something rotten here, Shorty, something rotten,” he said, shaking his head ominously, as his partner came to the door to empty a pan of dish-water.

“Sure,” was the cheerful rejoinder.  “An’ you an’ me’ll be catchin’ it yet.  You’ll see.”

“I don’t mean the scurvy.”

“Oh, sure, if you mean the divine steeress.  She’d rob a corpse.  She’s the hungriest-lookin’ female I ever seen.”

“Exercise has kept you and me in condition, Shorty.  It’s kept Wentworth in condition.  You see what lack of exercise has done for the rest.  Now it’s up to us to prescribe exercise for these hospital wrecks.  It will be your job to see that they get it.  I appoint you chief nurse.”

“What?  Me?” Shorty shouted.  “I resign.”

“No, you don’t.  I’ll be able assistant, because it isn’t going to be any soft snap.  We’ve got to make them hustle.  First thing, they’ll have to bury their dead.  The strongest for the burial squad; then the next strongest on the firewood squad (they’ve been lying in their blankets to save wood); and so on down the line.  And spruce-tea.  Mustn’t forget that.  All the sour-doughs swear by it.  These people have never even heard of it.”

“We sure got ourn cut out for us,” Shorty grinned.  “First thing we know we’ll be full of lead.”

“And that’s our first job,” Smoke said.  “Come on.”

In the next hour, each of the twenty-odd cabins was raided.  All ammunition and every rifle, shotgun, and revolver was confiscated.

“Come on, you invalids,” was Shorty’s method.  “Shootin’-irons—­fork ’em over.  We need ’em.”

“Who says so?” was the query at the first cabin.

“Two doctors from Dawson,” was Shorty’s answer.  “An’ what they say goes.  Come on.  Shell out the ammunition, too.”

“What do you want them for?”

“To stand off a war-party of canned beef comin’ down the canyon.  And I’m givin’ you fair warnin’ of a spruce-tea invasion.  Come across.”