“Great Jeminey!” he cried. “Copper! Raw, red copper! An' they think it's gold!”
“Him gold,” Carluk assured them confidently, his quick comprehension having caught the gist of Shorty's exclamation.
“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.”