Connie Morgan in Alaska

into the mining camp of Ten Bow. Notwithstanding the fact that every square foot of the valley was staked, gaunt men, whose hollow eyes and depleted outfits spoke failure, mushed in from the hills,

th the news of his great strike in the red rock valley to the southward-news that spread like

owls of approval, how the race was won by a boy-a slight, wiry, fifteen-year-old chechako who, scorning the broad river trail with its hundred rushing dog teams, struck straight through

led Connie Morgan, but Sam Morgan's boy; for Sam Morgan was Alaska's-big, quiet Sam Morgan, who never made a "strike," but stood for a square deal and the right of things as they are. And, as they loved Sam Morgan, these men loved Sam Morgan's boy. For it had been told in the hills how Dick Colton found him, ill-clad and ragged, forlornly watching the wheezy lit

from the bitter cold of the long nights, out of whatever material is at hand. For the Ten Bow strike came late in the season and, knowing that soon the water from the melting snows would drive them from their claims, men worked feverishly in the black-mouthed shafts that dot

ous metal. As they cleaned up the riffles they laughed and talked wildly of wealth undreamed; for the small dumps, representing a scant sixty days' digging,

nd igloos, and by the end of August Ten Bow assumed an air of stability which its prosperity warranted. Scotty McCollough freighted his goods

s, their shortcomings and virtues, and in the learning, he came instinctively to look under the surface and gauge men by their true worth-which is so rarely the great world's measure of men. And, under the unconscious tutelage of these men, was laid the found

the man who had presented him with old Boris, and whispered of the short-c

them into place, one above another, is a man's job. And many were the pretexts and fictions by wh

jist slip over to my place an' spell the auld mon off a bit. I'm mos' petered out." So Connie obligingly departed and, as he rammed in the moss and daubed it with mud, peered through a crack and smiled knowingly as

ake 'em down the trail today, I'd sure take it mighty kind of ye." And when Connie returned to the camp it was to find Dutch Henry helping Waseche Bill in the rope-rolling of a roof log. And so it went each day until the ca

men, kept his own counsel, and the big men never knew tha

table, three or four chairs, and a wash bench-rude but serviceable-were fashioned from light saplings and packing case boards, brought

gravel, cleaning up as they went; for before long, the freezing of the water woul

nd cabin. He became a wonderful cook, and Waseche Bill, returning from the diggings, always found a hot meal of well-prepared food aw

ndlasses creaked in the thin, frosty air, to the half-muffled cries of "haul away" which floated upward from the depths of the shafts, and the hillsides rang with the stroke of axes and the long crash of falling trees. By ni

ing them alternately, and the experienced eye of Waseche Bill told him that

He struck again and the steel rang loudly in the cistern-like shaft. With his shovel he scra

shes and then, filling his pipe, tilted his chair against the log wall and smoked, apparently engrossed in deep thought. At the table, Connie, poring over the contents of a year-old illustrated magazine, from time to time cast furtive glance