“Bunyan!” exploded the appalled leader. “‘Bunyan,’ you call me! You think you’ll move the camp! You will do so! By the blazing sands of the hot high hills of hell, and by the stink and steam of its low swamp water, how in the name of the holy old mackinaw, how in the names of the whistling old, roaring old, jumping old, bald-headed, blue-bellied jeem cris and the dod derned dod do you figure you’re wearing any shining crown of supreme authority in this man’s camp? Say!!!”
“Aye tank so,” said Hels Helsen calmly.
“Suffering old saints and bleary-eyed fathers!”
“Yah, aye tank so.”
With a mighty effort Paul Bunyan recovered his poise and dignity. He strode to the office and got his shot gun and a sack of shells loaded with sheet iron squares. Then his “All out, men!” rolled through the camp.
The power of that unloosed voice threw each logger into the air, and they all dropped, bottoms down, on the rocky ground. They were still dazed men as they wabbled to their feet, and they meekly followed their rightful leader toward the mountain, rubbing sore spots with their hands as they staggered along. Muttering darkly, Hels Helsen followed at a distance.
Paul Bunyan halted the loggers before they reached the shadows of the mountain. He turned and faced them, and for a moment they stood in breathless terror, fearing that he was going to urge them to another effort on the slopes above. But no. Paul Bunyan only said, in the tones of a gentle teacher, “You see before you a logged-off plain. Only stumps remain upon its soil. I shall make you a forest. Behold!”
He turned and lifted the shot gun to his shoulder and pulled the triggers; both barrels went off in such a violent explosion that many of the loggers again tumbled to the ground. Clouds of dust dropped from the mountain side and blanketed the plain. When the wind had thinned out the fog the amazed loggers saw the beginnings of a new forest before them. The loads from the two shells had sheared off a thousand trees; they had dropped straightly down and plunged their tops into the plain. And there they stood, the strangest grove ever seen by man. The small brushy tops of the trees were imbedded in the ground, and their huge bare trunks were swaying high in the air. Before the loggers had recovered from their astonishment at the sight Paul Bunyan was firing again; and all that day the terrific explosions of his gun, and the falling clouds of dust from the mountain addled the loggers. At sundown he had completed the circuit around the Mountain That Stood On Its Head; its slopes were shorn of trees, and the plain underneath once more had a forest. It was an amazing artificial one, and the loggers doubted if they could get used to it. But it promised easy logging, and when their leader ordered them into camp they went singing. It looked like the good old times were back.
“Now,” said Paul Bunyan to his foreman, “the idea has mastered the material. I turn the job over to you. Go to it in the morning. In the meantime, I’ll invent a way to log off the foot of the mountain which towers yonder among the clouds.”
Hels Helsen said nothing; but he scowled and scratched his head.