“Gentlemen, I beg of you, listen to me,” Wentworth whined. “I'm a stranger in this country. I don't know its ways. I don't know the trail. Let me travel with you. I'll give you a thousand dollars if you'll let me travel with you.”
“Sure,” Smoke grinned maliciously. “If Shorty agrees.”
“WHO? ME?” Shorty stiffened for a supreme effort. “I ain't nobody. Woodticks ain't got nothin' on me when it comes to humility. I'm a worm, a maggot, brother to the pollywog an' child of the blow-fly. I ain't afraid or ashamed of nothin' that creeps or crawls or stinks. But travel with that mistake of creation! Go 'way, man. I ain't proud, but you turn my stomach.”
And Amos Wentworth went away, alone, dragging a sled loaded with provisions sufficient to last him to Dawson. A mile down the trail Shorty overhauled him.
“Come here to me,” was Shorty's greeting. “Come across. Fork over. Cough up.”
“I don't understand,” Wentworth quavered, shivering from recollection of the two beatings, hand and foot, he had already received from Shorty.
“That thousand dollars, d' ye understand that? That thousand dollars gold Smoke bought that measly potato with. Come through.”
And Amos Wentworth passed the gold-sack over.
“Hope a skunk bites you an' you get howlin' hydrophoby,” were the terms of Shorty's farewell.