The scissor-bills all shouted “Glory! glory! glory!” after him, and then Little Meery heard them all move out of the settin’-room. For a few minutes he did not dare to stir, then he could no longer tolerate the anxiety of waiting. He slid carefully from his bunk, he took off his nightgown and slipped on his ragged slavey’s clothes, and then, pausing cautiously at every heavy step, he approached the kitchen door. He opened it and peered outside. There was a fair light from a half-moon, and he could see the scissor-bills standing in rows and clusters along the barnyard fence. John Shears was already across Honey Creek. He opened the door of Babe’s stable, and then ran back to the farmyard. Soon Babe’s head appeared in the stable doorway, his great gentle eyes looked inquiringly about, then they shone hungrily as they glimpsed a white heap of the vegetables he loved. Other piles were scattered at intervals of seven hundred yards. In a short time Babe was in the parsnip patch, and he began to devour the first mountainous pile of the deadly vegetables. John Shears and the scissor-bills shouted halleluiahs of joy and triumph.
Horror, despair, a terrible sense of helplessness, held Little Meery motionless in the doorway. Hours seemed to pass as he frantically tried to think of some means to thwart the plot of John Shears and to ward off the tragic event that was swiftly casting its shadow over the old home camp. But what could he do? He was only Little Meery, scorned, despised, held in such contempt that he had been ignored entirely in the plans. Then a sound that had roared in his ears ever since the clover was cut for the blue ox startled his mind with a desperate idea. The sound was the raging hum of two great bees, Bum and Bill, and Little Meery now resolved to release them from the hive, whatever the danger to himself. He knew that they would make a savage attack on the blue ox and perhaps drive him from the perilous parsnip patch. So he eased himself out of the kitchen and trod as softly as his obesity permitted towards the beehive. He reached it without being discovered, then he heaved up desperately on the latch. Up it went—six inches, twelve, eighteen, thirty-six, sixty—it was over the top of the block! As Little Meery pantingly threw the door open, the bees began to roar, then they shot out of the hive with a deafening buzz, their wings humming so violently that the wind from them stripped the shirt off his back. The bees zigzagged doubtfully for a moment, then they spied the blue ox in the parsnip patch. They cracked their wings together and lit out for him in a beeline. John Shears saw them and bawled for them to return, but, though they were obedient bees in their gentle moods, his yells now made them buzz on in a greater rage than ever. They circled the blue ox three times, then they sat on him and began a furious stinging of him. Babe bellowed. The scissor-bills were thrown through the barnyard fence when the wind from that bellow struck them, but John Shears charged through the vegetable gardens after the bees. And reached the anguished ox just as he had lifted his hind legs for a tremendous kick. Babe’s hoof caught the boss farmer squarely between his eyebrows and his ankles, and he was hurled so high into the air that he sailed over the cloud-kissed crest of old Rock Candy. Babe flailed away mightily with his tail, he pawed up clouds of dirt, he stood on his horns, but the bees remained seated. At last the blue ox galloped out of the parsnip patch and ran for the sanctuary of his stable, where the bees dared not follow him.
Babe’s bellow had rolled Little Meery among the scissor-bills, but he landed on his feet. He lumbered away from them in the direction of the footbridge, and when the scissor-bills had disentangled themselves from the splinters of the fence, they set out after him. They caught him in the center of the bridge, but just as they were beginning to beat him, the loggers, who had all been shaken from their bunks by Babe’s anguished bellow, came with a rush from the other side. Then began the famous Battle of the Footbridge, in which the opposing forces vainly attempted to reach each other over the obese form of Little Meery, who received hundreds of blows a minute. All through the night the battle raged, while Babe mooed woefully in his stable and Bum and Bill buzzed gleeful satisfaction in their hive.
Not until sunrise, when Paul Bunyan reached the old home camp, was the terrible struggle ended. He ordered the loggers and the scissor-bills into the plain before the maple grove and demanded an explanation. The combatants were too weary from their terrific struggle to reply, but at last Little Meery found strength to speak and told his awful story.
“Brave, brave heart,” Paul Bunyan commended him. “And how can I reward you?”
“I want to be a head faller, Mr. Bunyan.”
“But a head faller must fit into a head faller’s uniform, and you my fine lad—well, you are Little Meery.”
Then Little Meery staggered triumphantly from among the weary host. Not a stitch remained on him, he was bruised from head to heels, but he showed himself with pride. For he was not now the seven hundred and eighty pound Little Meery of yesterday, but a raw-boned two hundred and fifty pound logger, lean, solid and strong. During the long battle, pound by pound, over a quarter of a ton of fat had been pushed, prodded, punched, pounded, rolled, jerked, squeezed and stamped from his body. His obesity was gone! Miracle of miracles! Paul Bunyan could hardly believe his eyes.
“A head faller you shall be,” he said.
John Shears was three weeks returning from the spot whither Babe had kicked him. Meek, humble, chastened, repentant, he came to Paul Bunyan and declared himself willing to submit to the dire punishment which he supposed awaited him. He expected to be made to eat gravel for a month, at the very least. The good and mighty Paul Bunyan, however, merely ordered John Shears to get back to the farm. But he put a ban on parsnips. As for Little Meery, when he heard that John Shears had returned, he twisted his hat around—his hair was never parted now,—he took a grand chew of fire cut, hitched up his tin pants and growled. “Let’s walk on him! Let’s put the calks to him! Let’s cave his head in!” Little Meery had become a logger indeed, and he lived gloriously ever after.