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It was a quiet night in the Shovel. At the bar, which ranged along one side of the large chinked-log room, leaned half a dozen men, two of whom were discussing the relative merits of spruce-tea and lime-juice as remedies for scurvy. They argued with an air of depression and with intervals of morose silence. The other men scarcely heeded them.
"We're covering this spruce-tea route four times a day, and there are eighty of you to be dosed each time," Smoke informed Laura Sibley. "So we've no time to fool. Will you take it or must I hold your nose?" His thumb and forefinger hovered eloquently above her. "It's vegetable, so you needn't have any qualms." "Qualms!" Shorty snorted. "No, sure, certainly not. It's the deliciousest dope!"
"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." And this was only the beginning of the day. Men were persuaded, coaxed, bullied or dragged by main strength from their bunks and forced to dress. Smoke selected the mildest cases for the burial squad.
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. 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.
"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.
In the morning, not only was Jones dead, but one of the stronger men who had worked on the firewood squad was found to have hanged himself. A nightmare procession of days set in. For a week, steeling himself to the task, Smoke enforced the exercise and the spruce-tea. And one by one, and in twos and threes, he was compelled to knock off the workers.
Of course it hurts to get well, but I'm going to get you well." "Too late," Amos Wentworth sneered pallidly at Smoke's efforts. "They ought to have started in that way last fall." "Come along with me," Smoke answered. "Pick up those two pails. You're not ailing." From cabin to cabin the three men went, dosing every man and woman with a full pint of spruce-tea. Nor was it easy.
One squad brought in many loads of spruce-boughs, and every stove was used for the brewing of spruce-tea. But no matter what face Smoke and Shorty put on it, the situation was grim and serious. At least thirty fearful and impossible cases could not be taken from the beds, as the two men, with nausea and horror, learned; while one, a woman, died in Laura Sibley's cabin.
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