ed 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.

It was the utter weakness of