“And the poor devils banked everything on it,” Smoke muttered.  “Look at it.  That chunk there weighs forty pounds.  They’ve got hundreds of pounds of it, and they’ve carried it when they didn’t have strength enough to drag themselves.  Look here, Shorty.  We’ve got to feed them.”

“Huh!  Sounds easy.  But how about statistics?  You an’ me has a month’s grub, which is six meals times thirty, which is one hundred an’ eighty meals.  Here’s two hundred Indians, with real, full-grown appetites.  How the blazes can we give ’m one meal even?”

“There’s the dog-grub,” Smoke answered.  “A couple of hundred pounds of dried salmon ought to help out.  We’ve got to do it.  They’ve pinned their faith on the white man, you know.”

“Sure, an’ we can’t throw ‘m down,” Shorty agreed.  “An’ we got two nasty jobs cut out for us, each just about twicet as nasty as the other.  One of us has got to make a run of it to Mucluc an’ raise a relief.  The other has to stay here an’ run the hospital an’ most likely be eaten.  Don’t let it slip your noodle that we’ve been six days gettin’ here; an’ travelin’ light, an’ all played out, it can’t be made back in less ’n three days.”

For a minute Smoke pondered the miles of the way they had come, visioning the miles in terms of time measured by his capacity for exertion.  “I can get there to-morrow night,” he announced.

“All right,” Shorty acquiesced cheerfully.  “An’ I’ll stay an’ be eaten.”

“But I’m going to take one fish each for the dogs,” Smoke explained, “and one meal for myself.”

“An’ you’ll sure need it if you make Mucluc to-morrow night.”

Smoke, through the medium of Carluk, stated the program.  “Make fires, long fires, plenty fires,” he concluded.  “Plenty Boston man stop Mucluc.  Boston man much good.  Boston man plenty grub.  Five sleeps I come back plenty grub.  This man, his name Shorty, very good friend of mine.  He stop here.  He big boss—­savvy?”

Carluk nodded and interpreted.

“All grub stop here.  Shorty, he give ’m grub.  He boss—­savvy?”

Carluk interpreted, and nods and guttural cries of agreement proceeded from the men.

Smoke remained and managed until the full swing of the arrangement was under way.  Those who were able, crawled or staggered in the collecting of firewood.  Long, Indian fires were built that accommodated all.  Shorty, aided by a dozen assistants, with a short club handy for the rapping of hungry knuckles, plunged into the cooking.  The women devoted themselves to thawing snow in every utensil that could be mustered.  First, a tiny piece of bacon was distributed all around, and, next, a spoonful of sugar to cloy the edge of their razor appetites.  Soon, on a circle of fires drawn about Shorty, many pots of beans were boiling, and he, with a wrathful eye for what he called renigers, was frying and apportioning the thinnest of flapjacks.