"Sure, he can swear out the warrants! I'll slip over to the office and get their names out of the time book, and while I'm gone you might look over these." The boy selected several papers from a waterproof wallet which he drew from an inner pocket and passed them over to Saginaw, then he finished dressing and hurried over to the office. Hurley was asleep, and, copying the names from the book, Connie returned to the men's camp.
"You're the goods all right," said Saginaw, admiringly, as he handed back the papers. "From now on I'm with you 'til the last gap, as the feller says. You've got more right down nerve than I ever know'd a kid could have, an' you've got the head on you to back it. Yer good enough fer me—you say the word, an' I go the limit." He stuck out his hand, which Connie gripped strongly.
"You didn't have to tell me that, Saginaw," answered the boy, gravely, "if you had, you would never have had the chance."
Saginaw Ed removed his hat and scratched his head thoughtfully. "That there'll strike through 'bout dinner time, I guess. But I suspicion what you mean, an'—I'm obliged."
"Here are the names for the doctor—better tell him to swear out warrants both for arson and for attempted murder."
"Yes, sir," answered Saginaw, respectfully.
"Yes, what!"
The man grinned sheepishly. "Why—I guess—bein' I was talkin' to the owner——"
"Look here, Saginaw," interrupted the boy, wrathfully, "you just forget this 'owner' business, and don't you start 'siring' me! What do you want to do—give this whole thing away? Up where I live they don't call a man 'sir' just because he happens to have a little more dust than somebody else. It ain't the 'Misters' and the 'Sirs' that are the big men up there; it's the 'Bills' and the 'Jacks' and the 'Scotties' and the 'Petes'—men that would get out and mush a hundred miles to carry grub to a scurvy camp instead of sitting around the stove and hiring someone else to do it—men that have gouged gravel and stayed with the game, bucking the hardest winters in the world, sometimes with only half enough to eat—men with millions, and men that don't own the tools they work with! My own father was one of 'em. 'The unluckiest man in Alaska,' they called him! He never made a strike, but you bet he was a man! There isn't a man that knew him, from Skagway to Candle, and from Candle to Dawson and beyond, that isn't proud to call him friend. Sam Morgan they call him—and they don't put any 'Mister' in front of it, either!"