“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 Smoke made it a point to drop into Wentworth’s cabin at meal-time.  But one thing did he note that was suspicious, and that was Wentworth’s suspicion of him.  Next he tried sounding out Laura Sibley.

“Raw potatoes would cure everybody here,” he remarked to the seeress.  “I know it.  I’ve seen it work before.”

The flare of conviction in her eyes, followed by bitterness and hatred, told him the scent was warm.

“Why didn’t you bring in a supply of fresh potatoes on the steamer?” he asked.

“We did.  But coming up the river we sold them all out at a bargain at Fort Yukon.  We had plenty of the evaporated kinds, and we knew they’d keep better.  They wouldn’t even freeze.”