Paul Bunyan

by James Stevens

The loggers hustled and bustled, and in a short time the camp buildings were lined up and fastened together. The grand cookhouse was put in the lead, Babe was hitched to its skids, and Paul Bunyan and the Big Swede took stations in front of him. “Yay, Babe!” the leader said, and the move began.

Happy were the loggers as the camp flew over the prairie, though not one of them knew where it was going. All were certain, of course, that they were headed for some vast timberland where great logging could be enjoyed. They supposed that Paul Bunyan planned a surprise for them, as he had not given his usual graphic and prophetic speech before the start was made. The word was passed along that the new job was too wonderful to tell about. But this was only part of the truth. Paul Bunyan’s mind was indeed filled with the idea of a unique double drive, but he did not yet know where the project could be carried out. A wide, gentle river with timber on both sides of it was needed; and once found, he would have to use his inventiveness to the utmost in order to divide the stream so that two drives could be made side by side on it.

Paul Bunyan traveled far with his camp in search of the ideal river. Powder River looked promising at first; it was a mile wide, but then it was only a foot deep. It deepened and got narrow in one place, but this was only a deceitful twist of the stream, for it presently turned and ran on its edge for the rest of its course, its waters a mile deep and a foot wide. Hot River, in the Boiling Springs country, flowed placidly and honestly enough all its way, but it was of a temperature to scald the calks off the loggers’ boots. And Wild River, though it was a white water stream, would have served for a double drive; but it was alive with cougarfish, a species resembling the catfish of the Mississippi; but the cougarfish were larger and incomparably more savage and had claws on their tails. Careful Paul Bunyan would not risk his loggers among them.

At last the master logger had only one hope left. It lay in the Twin Rivers country. Twin Rivers were ideal for a double drive, as they were two fat streams which flowed lazily, smoothly, and side by side through a wide valley. But that country was the scene of Paul Bunyan’s first logging; it was there that he had invented the industry; and, having no loggers then, he had uprooted trees by handfuls to get his logs. Consequently, second growth timber was not to be hoped for in the greater part of that region. In the lower part of the Twin Rivers valley there might be some new timber, for there Paul Bunyan had taught the blue ox the art of skidding; and he had sheared off most of the trees instead of uprooting them. No doubt there were some new trees on this land, but most of the logs for a double drive on Twin Rivers would have to be procured elsewhere. How he was to get them he did not know. But he was staunch and inflexible in his determination to make the second event of his new history a tremendously successful one.

So Babe was turned toward the Twin Rivers country, and in a few hours the loggers were getting glimpses of familiar scenes as the bunkhouses sailed over stump-covered valleys and hills. They still had no word of Paul Bunyan’s intentions, and they were astonished when, at nightfall, the camp was halted at the upper end of Twin Rivers valley and they were told that here was to be their camping place for the season.

There was no moon this night, and from the bunkhouses nothing of the country could be seen except Twin Rivers, which showed surfaces of blurred, tarnished gray in the darkness; they looked like two wide, lonely roads with a tall black hedge between them. Heavy grass was discovered around the camp buildings, but there was no indication anywhere of timber, or even of brush. But the loggers were too tired to wonder; they had been riding for two days behind the blue ox, who could outrun a cyclone, and they were thankful for the chance to rest and sleep.

Paul Bunyan lay in his camp office and listened to the peaceful snores of the Big Swede, who could sleep so well because he lacked imagination. But the great logger’s thoughts and visions banished any hope of rest for him. Work should begin at once, and a great idea must precede it. His determination for the double drive was solidly fixed; he would get a good plan for it. Now then: first, for a drive there must be logs; next, for logs there must be trees; then, for trees there must be timberland, as trees cannot be conjured from nothingness. Now, all around him was nothing but logged-off land; perhaps it would be possible to invent a way to log off logged-off land.... Thunderation! what preposterous notions he was getting! But all his ideas seemed to be as absurd. As the night hours crawled slowly on Paul Bunyan began to doubt his powers. Had the fight with the Big Swede left him a little crazy? Perhaps. At dawn his mind was in a turmoil; he felt that he had brought himself face to face with the supreme crisis of his career, and it looked like he was not to meet it successfully. If so, the meanest swamper in camp would despise him. And the Big Swede—how soon he would lose the humble worship that Paul Bunyan had pounded into him and be filled with a cold Nordic scorn for this Latin victim of imagination!... What was wrong with his ideas? Why didn’t they swell with their usual superb force and burst into a splendor of magnificent plans? Was this new history of logging, then, to be a history of failure?...

In a torment of thought, Paul Bunyan could lie still no longer. Darkness was passing fast now; he threw off his blankets and tramped to the office door. He drew it open, then—motionless, unblinking, breathless—he stared for sixty-six minutes. At last he rubbed his eyes; but then he again stared as woodenly as a heathen idol. He could only believe that his rebellious imagination was deceiving him, that the incredible sight before him was certainly unreal. For he saw trees everywhere; on both sides of the river they reached to the horizon.

They were in exact rows, like trees in an orchard, and each one was a large, smooth, untapering column, flat-topped and without a trace of bark or boughs. Again and again Paul Bunyan rubbed his eyes, thinking to see the strange forest vanish. But it remained, and he rushed out at last and seized one of the trees. He pulled it up easily, and he was more amazed than ever, for it had a sharp point instead of roots. He walked on out into the forest and pulled up others here and there, and they were all exactly alike in shape and size.