“You might as well learn at the start that we mean business,” Smoke stated to the first obdurate, who lay on his back, groaning through set teeth. “Stand by, Shorty.” Smoke caught the patient by the nose and tapped the solar-plexus section so as to make the mouth gasp open. “Now, Shorty! Down she goes!”
And down it went, accompanied with unavoidable splutterings and stranglings.
“Next time you'll take it easier,” Smoke assured the victim, reaching for the nose of the man in the adjoining bunk.
“I'd sooner take castor oil,” was Shorty's private confidence, ere he downed his own portion. “Great jumpin' Methuselem!” was his entirely public proclamation the moment after he had swallowed the bitter dose. “It's a pint long, but hogshead strong.”
“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!”
Laura Sibley hesitated. She gulped her apprehension.
“Well?” Smoke demanded peremptorily.
“I'll—I'll take it,” she quavered. “Hurry up!”
That night, exhausted as by no hard day of trail, Smoke and Shorty crawled into their blankets.