“Here now,” said Paul Bunyan, dumfounded, incredulous of his hearing, greatly embarrassed. “How could you have read my ink-soaked ledgers?”
John Rogers Inkslinger answered him by bringing out one of the volumes and opening it. On the black pages were figures and letters of white; with white ink the great figurer had painstakingly traced out the old dimmed entries, and now every volume was as readable as it had ever been.
“There!” he declaimed. “There, Mr. Bunyan, is the proof of my worth and zeal. I found the ledgers, and when you were on the drive I traced out their messages. From them I learned to worship you. Give me a desk and let me serve you as well hereafter.”
Overcome by emotion, Paul Bunyan turned and stared unseeingly at the lands which had once been Pine Orchard. Visions of tremendous accomplishments swept before him; he now had the perfect organization he had always dreamed about, and there could be no good reason for another failure. But he had a new responsibility also; he was now more deeply in debt to this man than ever. For, even as his fists and feet had won him the faith and loyalty of the Big Swede, so had his mind and heart, as revealed in his history, won the extravagant devotion of the greatest figurer. Only mighty works would keep it. Well, he should not fail. Resolutely he faced the unfortunate surveyor, the restorer of ruined accounts, the man who should win fame with him as the greatest figurer of all time.
“Timekeeper Johnny Inkslinger,” he said, “shake hands.”
THE SOURDOUGH DRIVE
Political campaigns remind old loggers of the violent debate that once raged between Paul Bunyan, the originator of the lumber industry, and his timekeeper, Johnny Inkslinger. This debate was strictly about business, however, for there was no politics in those days. It was poor policy, argued the timekeeper, to increase the varieties and quantities of edibles grown on Paul Bunyan’s great farm simply to make more stuffing for the loggers. He recommended that the camp rations be cut down and that ships be built, in which surplus farm produce could be shipped to European markets. Johnny Inkslinger was the original efficiency expert and he had hordes of figures at hand to support his arguments. Paul Bunyan listened with his usual calm and dignity, brushing his beard with a fresh pine tree and nodding gravely, until the timekeeper began to insist that the loggers could do their work well enough on pea soup and sourdough biscuits; then the great man erupted.
“Good glory, Johnny!” he exclaimed. “Have you forgotten the Sourdough Drive?”
“I have not, Mr. Bunyan,” Inkslinger retorted spiritedly. “But I have figures which show you should have handled it differently.”
“The hell you have!” roared Paul Bunyan, in rare tones of anger. “Damn figures and figuring men!”