Connie Morgan in Alaska
CHAPTER I
SAM MORGAN'S BOY
Connie Morgan, or as he is affectionately called by the big, bearded men of the Yukon, Sam Morgan's boy, now owns one of the crack dog teams of Alaska. For Connie has set his heart upon winning the great Alaska Sweepstakes—the grandest and most exciting race in all the world, a race that crowds both driver and dogs to the very last measure of endurance, sagacity, and skill.
But that is another story. For Connie also owns what is probably the most ludicrous and ill-assorted three-dog team ever assembled; and he is never so happy as when jogging slowly over the trail behind old Boris, Mutt, and Slasher.
No sourdough in his right senses would give fifty dollars for the three, but Sam Morgan's boy would gladly sacrifice his whole team of thousand-dollar dogs to save any one of them. For it was the fine courage and loyalty of this misfit team that enabled him to beat out the Ten Bow stampede and file on "One Below Discovery," next to Waseche Bill, the big sourdough who is his partner—and who loves him as Sam Morgan loved him before he crossed the Big Divide.
Sam Morgan was among those who went to Alaska in the first days of the great gold rush. Like Peg's father in the play, Sam Morgan could do anything but make money. So when the news came of gold—bright, yellow gold lying loose on the floors of creeks up among the snows of the Arctic—Sam Morgan bid his wife and boy good-bye at the door of the little cottage in a ten-carat town of a middle State and fared forth to win riches.
The man loved his wife and son with all the love of his rugged nature, and for their sakes cheerfully endured the perils and hardships of the long trails without a murmur. But in spite of his dogged persistence and unflagging toil he never made a strike. He was in the van of a dozen stampedes—stampedes that made millionaires out of some men and stark corpses out of others—but somehow his claims never panned out.