“No; certainly not. Why should he?”
“Why shouldn't he?”
She shrugged her shoulders.
Struggle as he would with her, Smoke could not bring her to admit the possibility.
“Wentworth's a swine,” was Shorty's verdict, when Smoke told his suspicions.
“And so is Laura Sibley,” Smoke added. “She believes he has the potatoes, and is keeping it quiet, and trying to get him to share with her.”
“An' he won't come across, eh?” Shorty cursed frail human nature with one of his best flights, and caught his breath. “They both got their feet in the trough. May God rot them dead with scurvy for their reward, that's all I got to say, except I'm goin' right up now an' knock Wentworth's block off.”
But Smoke stood out for diplomacy. That night, when the camp groaned and slept, or groaned and did not sleep, he went to Wentworth's unlighted cabin.
“Listen to me, Wentworth,” he said. “I've got a thousand dollars in dust right here in this sack. I'm a rich man in this country, and I can afford it. I think I'm getting touched. Put a raw potato in my hand and the dust is yours. Here, heft it.”
And Smoke thrilled when Amos Wentworth put out his hand in the darkness and hefted the gold. Smoke heard him fumble in the blankets, and then felt pressed into his hand, not the heavy gold-sack, but the unmistakable potato, the size of a hen's egg, warm from contact with the other's body.