Its structure interested him. It was made by standing whale ribs up on end about two feet apart in a circle. The spaces between were filled with turf, which abounded all over the island, thus making a wall two feet thick. Harlan had repaired it, and in the words of Kayak who helped him, had "rigged" himself up a stove from kerosene cans. It was the old hootch-maker who showed him how to arrange stones to form a crude, open-air fireplace in front of his door for use in fine weather. It was Kayak Bill who taught his blundering hands the trail way of stirring up a bannock and baking it in a frying-pan propped up before the blaze.
Harlan now had less time to think about himself. The little can stove required much finely chopped firewood to keep it going. The open-air fireplace consumed large quantities of drift which he had to chop with an axe, since the one saw on the Island was needed at the cabin. After his day's work with Boreland, he had his meals to prepare. There were brown beans to clean and cook, and sourdough hotcakes to set for the morning. Kayak had taught him to prepare his sourdoughs—a resource which was to become the food mainstay of all on the Island. Harlan learned from the old man that the sourdough hotcake, or flapjack is as typical of Alaska as the glacier. The wilderness man carries, always, a little can filled with a batter of it; with this he starts the leavening of his bread, or, with the addition of a pinch of soda he fries it in the form of flapjacks. So typical a feature of Alaska is the sourdough pot that the old timer in the North is called a "Sourdough."
Harlan grew to have a real fondness for his Hut—the only home he had ever made for himself. Its very primitiveness endeared it to him. He grew also to look forward to the fine evenings when he and Kayak, stretched before the open fireplace with their backs to a bleached whale rib, smoked and yarned and sang, while they watched the leaping driftwood flames.
Strange, picturesque characters of the last frontier stalked through all Kayak Bill's tales: Reckless Bonanza Kings of Klondyke days, buying with their new-found gold the love of painted women; simple-hearted, gentle Aleuts kissing the footprints of skirted, bearded, Russian priests; pathetic, gay ladies of adventure; half-mad hermits of the hills; secretive squaw-men, and wistful, emotional half-breeds—all these Kayak Bill made to live again in the glow of the evening fire.
In his quaint, whimsical way he told of the prospector—that brave heart who makes gold but an excuse for his going forth to conquer the wilds. Harlan came to understand them—the lure of gold, and their slogan: "This time we will strike it." Through Kayak Bill's eyes he saw them aged, broken by the rigors of many northern winters, but with the indomitable spirit of youth still in them, a recurrent yearning that defies age, rheumatism and poverty, and sends them with their grub-stakes out questing into the hills. He saw them, with picks, and gold pans wandering happily during the wonderful Alaskan summer and fall, and when the frost paints the green above timber-line with russet and gold and the Northern Lights beckon them back to the settlements, he saw them arrive, tired, penniless, perhaps, but satisfied, and already planning the next trip into the magnetic golden hills.
And one night, being in a pensive mood, Kayak told of a partner of his, the Bard of the Kuskokwim, an old northern poet unknown except in the Valley o' Lies, who had put the prospector's soul hunger into verse:
"We yearned beyond the skyline,
With a wistful wish to know
What was hidden by the high line,
Glist'ning with eternal snow.
And we yearned and wished and wondered
At the secrets there untold,
As the glaciers growled and thundered,
Came the whisper: 'Red, raw gold!'" [1]
As if he feared Harlan might think him sentimental, Kayak Bill finished his recital with:
"Yas, son, that old cuss partner o' mine was always recitin' them poetry sayin's o' his. Durned if he wouldn't vocabulate to the trees or the hills when there warn't another soul nearer to him than a hundred miles!"
But of Kayak Bill, himself, Harlan noted, there was never a personal thing. In all his tales the old hootch-maker was ever the spectator, amused, kindly, philosophical.