till 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.

Sometimes the two were silent--with the companionable silence that the
camp-fire instills. Leaning back against the whale-rib, while the
embers died in the fireplace and the sea below took on its veil of
twilight, they mused and listened to the universe. It was at such
times that Harlan began to feel, though faintly, the healing, vibrant
energy that comes to those who live close to Mother Earth. Katleean
and the bunkful of liquor that at first had occupied so much of his
thought, occurred to him less frequently. The States--and all that had
happened to him there were becoming a dream. He began to feel as
though he had always lived as he was living now. To his surprise as
the time drew near for the arrival of the _Hoonah_ he found himself
unconcerned, indifferent. Like Kayak Bill, he was learning to face
life serenely, undisturbed as to the morrow, but doing his best today.

[1] From the unpublished poems of Edward C. Cone, Bard of K