“They move like it was a funeral,” Shorty noted.

“They’ve no dogs,” said Smoke.

“Yep; there’s a couple of men pullin’ on a sled.”

“See that fellow fall down?  There’s something the matter, Shorty, and there must be two hundred of them.”

“Look at ’em stagger as if they was soused.  There goes another.”

“It’s a whole tribe.  There are children there.”

“Smoke, I win,” Shorty proclaimed.  “A hunch is a hunch, an’ you can’t beat it.  There she comes.  Look at her!—­surgin’ up like a lot of corpses.”

The mass of Indians, at sight of the two men, had raised a weird cry of joy and accelerated its pace.

“They’re sure tolerable woozy,” commented Shorty.  “See ’em fallin’ down in lumps and bunches.”

“Look at the face of that first one,” Smoke said.  “It’s starvation—­that’s what’s the matter with them.  They’ve eaten their dogs.”

“What’ll we do?  Run for it?”

“And leave the sled and dogs?” Smoke demanded reproachfully.

“They’ll sure eat us if we don’t.  They look hungry enough for it.  Hello, old skeeziks.  What’s wrong with you?  Don’t look at that dog that way.  No cookin’-pot for him—­savvy?”

The forerunners were arriving and crowding about them, moaning and plainting in an unfamiliar jargon.  To Smoke the picture was grotesque and horrible.  It was famine unmistakable.  Their faces, hollow-cheeked and skin-stretched, were so many death’s-heads.  More and more arrived and crowded about, until Smoke and Shorty were hemmed in by the wild crew.  Their ragged garments of skin and fur were cut and slashed away, and Smoke knew the reason for it when he saw a wizened child on a squaw’s back that sucked and chewed a strip of filthy fur.  Another child he observed steadily masticating a leather thong.

“Keep off there!—­keep back!” Shorty yelled, falling back on English after futile attempts with the little Indian he did know.

Bucks and squaws and children tottered and swayed on shaking legs and continued to surge in, their mad eyes swimming with weakness and burning with ravenous desire.  A woman, moaning, staggered past Shorty and fell with spread and grasping arms on the sled.  An old man followed her, panting and gasping, with trembling hands striving to cast off the sled lashings, and get at the grub-sacks beneath.  A young man, with a naked knife, tried to rush in, but was flung back by Smoke.  The whole mass pressed in upon them, and the fight was on.

At first Smoke and Shorty shoved and thrust and threw back.  Then they used the butt of the dog-whip and their fists on the food-mad crowd.  And all this against a background of moaning and wailing women and children.  Here and there, in a dozen places, the sled-lashings were cut.  Men crawled in on their bellies, regardless of a rain of kicks and blows, and tried to drag out the grub.  These had to be picked up bodily and flung back.  And such was their weakness that they fell continually, under the slightest pressures or shoves.  Yet they made no attempt to injure the two men who defended the sled.