"Nor is he the only gold you'll maybe locate around. Do you feel like handling—other? Are you looking to make a big bunch of dollars? Do you need a stake that's going to hand you all the things you've dreamed about? You guess I'm a rich man. Folks figger I'm the richest man north of 'sixty.' Maybe I am. Well, if you guess you'd like to be the same way, it's up to you."
Alec was sitting up. The effects of his overnight debauch had been completely flung aside. His eyes, so like his father's, were wide, and his handsome face was alive with a sudden excitement. He flung his cigarette aside.
"Say, you're—fooling," he breathed incredulously.
Kars shook his head.
"I quit that years," he said.
"I—I don't get you," Alec went on at last, in a sort of desperate helplessness.
Kars dropped on to the bed again and laughed in his pleasant fashion.
"Sure you don't. But do you feel like it? Are you ready to take a chance—with me?"
"By Gee—yes! If there's a stake at the end of it."
"The stake's there, sure. But—but it means quitting Leaping Horse right away. It means hitting the old trail you curse. It means staking your life for all it's worth. It means using all that that big man, your father, handed you in life. It means getting out on God's earth, and telling the world right here you're a man, and a mighty big man, too. It means all that, and," he added with a smile that was unreadable, "a whole heap more."