“When we find that out we’ll have found the rest of your trouble,” Smoke answered.  “Come on.  It’s blowing dark.”

Quite dark it was when Smoke’s snow-shoe tripped him over a body.  He fell across a sled, on which lay another body.  And when he had dug the snow out of his neck and struck a match, he and Shorty glimpsed a third body, wrapped in blankets, lying beside a partially dug grave.  Also, ere the match flickered out, they caught sight of half a dozen additional graves.

“B-r-r-r,” Shorty shivered.  “Suicide Camp.  All fed up.  I reckon they’re all dead.”

“No—­peep at that.”  Smoke was looking farther along at a dim glimmer of light.  “And there’s another light—­and a third one there.  Come on.  Let’s hike.”

No more corpses delayed them, and in several minutes, over a hard-packed trail, they were in the camp.

“It’s a city,” Shorty whispered.  “There must be twenty cabins.  An’ not a dog.  Ain’t that funny!”

“And that explains it,” Smoke whispered back excitedly.  “It’s the Laura Sibley outfit.  Don’t you remember?  Came up the Yukon last fall on the Port Townsend Number Six.  Went right by Dawson without stopping.  The steamer must have landed them at the mouth of the creek.”

“Sure.  I remember.  They was Mormons.”

“No—­vegetarians.”  Smoke grinned in the darkness.  “They won’t eat meat and they won’t work dogs.”

“It’s all the same.  I knowed they was something funny about ’em.  Had the allwise steer to the yellow.  That Laura Sibley was goin’ to take ’em right to the spot where they’d all be millionaires.”

“Yes; she was their seeress—­had visions and that sort of stuff.  I thought they went up the Nordensjold.”

“Huh!  Listen to that!”

Shorty’s hand in the darkness went out warningly to Smoke’s chest, and together they listened to a groan, deep and long drawn, that came from one of the cabins.  Ere it could die away it was taken up by another cabin, and another—­a vast suspiration of human misery.  The effect was monstrous and nightmarish.

“B-r-r-r,” Shorty shivered.  “It’s gettin’ me goin’.  Let’s break in an’ find what’s eatin’ ’em.”

Smoke knocked at a lighted cabin, and was followed in by Shorty in answer to the “Come in” of the voice they heard groaning.  It was a simple log cabin, the walls moss-chinked, the earth floor covered with sawdust and shavings.  The light was a kerosene-lamp, and they could make out four bunks, three of which were occupied by men who ceased from groaning in order to stare.

“What’s the matter?” Smoke demanded of one whose blankets could not hide his broad shoulders and massively muscled body, whose eyes were pain-racked and whose cheeks were hollow.  “Smallpox?  What is it?”

In reply, the man pointed at his mouth, spreading black and swollen lips in the effort; and Smoke recoiled at the sight.