In the morning Paul Bunyan was figuring briskly, quite content again, when he noticed a stir in the camp that was unusual for the late hour. He looked out and saw the loggers wandering idly about. They said that Hels Helsen had not ordered them to roll out but had gone to the woods himself. Sensing that a struggle was at hand for the dominance of the camp, and realizing that the powerful and obtuse Hels Helsen could only be conquered by physical force, Paul Bunyan ordered his men to remain behind, and he started after the foreman.
Hels Helsen was climbing the mountain when Paul Bunyan reached the new forest, and he paid no heed to the calls that were sent after him. The climber had his shoes off, and he moved up swiftly by grasping the largest stumps of the sheared trees with his fingers, wrapping his toes around others and drawing himself up like a rope climber. In a short time he reached the rim and, throwing his leg over it, he drew himself to the top. He rested for a moment, then he stood up and began uprooting the close-grained white pine trees, which extended scores of miles before him. A tumult of rage swelled up in Paul Bunyan’s heart. So Hels Helsen had rebelled and become an independent logger. If competition had been necessary to the logging industry the greatest logger himself would have invented it. But he knew that equality was an evil thing; a powerful rival was not to be tolerated; for the sake of the grand new race of loggers, if for nothing else, Hels Helsen must be put in his proper place.
Wise even in wrath, Paul Bunyan did not attempt to climb the mountain. He ran to a far point of the plain, then he turned and rushed back with his greatest speed. When he neared the mountain he leaped, he struck the ground with his knees bending for a spring, and then he threw himself upward in a tremendous lunge. His upstretched hands brushed down the slope and started a roaring avalanche. A large section of the rim gave way, and now a large hill stood under the broken edge of the mountain rim. Again Paul Bunyan ran and leaped; this time he made his second jump from the hilltop and his hands caught over a cliff that jutted below the broken rim. Laboriously he drew himself up, he thrust his foot over the top, and after a struggle that sent more rocks and trees crashing down upon the hill, he won to the plain and lay resting for the battle.
A minute had not passed before he felt the mountain shake, and when he rolled over he saw Hels Helsen rushing upon him. The Big Swede’s blue eyes flashed like hot polished steel, the gritting of his teeth sounded like the grind of a rock crusher, his hat was off and his yellow bristles stuck up like tall ripe grain on a squat hill. The pine trees rocked and creaked from the wind of his swinging fists. The mighty Paul Bunyan sprang to his feet and received the furious charge as a cliff of solid rock receives the smash of a tidal wave....
The loggers in camp heard a stupendous uproar of battle, and they fled from the shaking bunkhouses. The bravest among them crawled to the top of the hump, from where they could see the mountain. When they beheld the titanic conflict that was raging two miles above them on the flat mountain top they stood like images of stone and stared affrightedly. Around and around the one hundred and twenty-seven mile circle of the lofty plain the leader and the foreman fought with all their powers. Now came a sound like a thunder-clap as Paul Bunyan smote Hels Helsen solidly on his square jaw. Now came a sound like a hurricane screeching through a network of cables as Hels Helsen’s hand seized Paul Bunyan’s beard and was jerked loose. For a long time the struggle seemed equal, with neither combatant suffering great injury. Then Paul Bunyan’s shoulders struck acres of pine trees with the crash of a tornado. A heaving mass of dust rolled over him, but the dauntless leader’s head was suddenly thrust above it; the loggers saw his fist fly from behind him, it squashed over Hels Helsen’s nose, and the sun shone red through a spray of blood.... Balloons and geysers of dust now rose explosively all over the mountain top, and heavy gray clouds soon hid the mountain from view; trees and rocks crashed everywhere on the plain below; the convulsions of the earth increased in force; even the bravest of the loggers were at last terrified by the shocks and blasts, and they fled to camp and hid under their blankets.
All night the tumult of battle sounded, but at dawn there was a crash of such shocking force that it upset every bunkhouse; and then a sudden hush. The loggers, all shell-shocked and bruised, crawled under their overturned bunks, but as the quiet persisted they at length ventured outside. The dust was still rolling by in thick clouds and they could not see their hands before them. But at sunup it had thinned out, and ere long they beheld the figure of one of the fighters looming in the distance. The conqueror was carrying his helpless adversary over his shoulder.
And this conqueror, this victor in that tourney of the Titans, that battle of the behemoths, that riot of the races, that Herculean jaw-hammering, chin-mauling, nose-pounding, side-stamping, cheek-tearing, rib-breaking, lip-pinching, back-beating, neck-choking, eye-gouging, tooth-jerking, arm-twisting, head-butting, beard-pulling, ear-biting, bottom-thumping, toe-holding, knee-tickling, shin-cracking, heel-bruising, belly-whacking, hair-yanking, hell-roaring supreme and incomparable knock-down-and-drag-out fight of all history was the mighty leader of the new race of loggers, Battling Paul Bunyan.
Tattered, bloody, dirt-streaked, he marched with dignity still. On through the hosts of silent awed loggers he passed, without glancing down at them. He disappeared with the Bull of the Woods into the camp office.
“You’re going to be a good foreman now, Hels Helsen!”
“Aye tank so, Mr. Bunyan.”