"I will stay in Alaska," he said, "and dig for the gold my father never found. I think he would have liked it so." Suddenly the low-ceilinged room rang with cheers and the boy was lifted bodily onto the shoulders of the big men.
"You bet, he'd liked it!" yelled the man called Pete.
"Yo'r Sam Mo'gan's boy all right—jest solid grit clean through. It looks f'om heah like Sam's luck has tu'ned at last!" cried Waseche Bill.
Two days later, when he hit the long trail for Hesitation, in company with Waseche Bill, Dick Colton, and Scotty McCollough, Sam Morgan's boy was clad from parka hood to mukluks in the most approved gear of the Northland.
He learned quickly the tricks of the trail, the harnessing and handling of dogs, the choosing of camps, and the hasty preparation of meals; and in the evenings, as they sat close about the camp fire, he never tired of listening as the men told him of his father. His heart swelled with pride, and in his breast grew a great longing to follow in the footsteps of this man, and to hold the place in the affections of the big, rough men of the White Country that his father had held.
All along the trail men grasped him by the hand. He made new friends at every camp. And so it was that Sam Morgan's boy became the pride of the Yukon.
At Hesitation he moved into his father's cabin, and went to work for Scotty McCollough, who was the storekeeper. Many a man went out of his way to trade with Scotty that he might boast in other camps that he knew Sam Morgan's boy.
One day Waseche Bill took him out on the Ragged Falls trail where, at the foot of the precipice, his father lay buried. The two stood long at the side of the snow-covered mound, at the head of which stood a little wooden cross with its simple legend burned deep by the men who were his friends:
SAM MORGAN
ALASKA