At Big Onion camp there was a lot of mechanical equipment and the
trouble was a man who could handle the machinery cooked just like a
machinist too. One cook got lost between the flour bin and the root
cellar and nearly starved to death before he was found.

Cooks came and went. Some were good and others just able to get by. Paul
never kept a poor one, very long. There was one jigger who seemed to
have learned to do nothing but boil. He made soup out of everything and
did most of his work with a dipper. When the big tote-sled broke through
the ice on Bull Frog Lake with a load of split peas, he served warmed
up, lake water till the crew struck. His idea of a lunch box was a jug
or a rope to freeze soup onto like a candle. Some cooks used too much
grease. It was said of one of these that he had to wear calked shoes to
keep from sliding out of the cook-shanty and rub sand on his hands when
he picked anything up.

There are two kinds of camp cooks, the Baking Powder Bums and the
Sourdough Stiffs. Sourdough Sam belonged to the latter school. He made
everything but coffee out of Sourdough. He had only one arm and one leg,
the other members having been lost when his sourdough barrel blew up.
Sam officiated at Tadpole River headquarters, the winter Shot Gunderson
took charge.

After all others had failed at Big Onion camp, Paul hired his cousin Big
Joe who came from three weeks below Quebec. This boy sure put a mean
scald on the chuck. He was the only man who could make pancakes fast
enough to feed the crew. He had Big Ole, the blacksmith, make him a
griddle that was so big you couldn't see across it when the steam was
thick. The batter, stirred in drums like concrete mixers was poured on