Call of the Wild

In Skagway, Alaska in 1900, Jack Thornton announces to a crowded bar that he is going home after striking it rich in the gold fields. However, he loses most of his money gambling first. Then he runs into an old pal, "Shorty" Hoolihan, just released from jail after serving a sentence for reading other people's mail. Shorty tells Jack that the contents of one letter he read is worth a million dollars. It contained a map to a rich gold strike; prospector Martin Blake died before he could stake his claim to it, but the letter was mailed to his son John. Shorty had to eat the map when he was apprehended, but tried to reconstruct it as best he could from memory.