Paul Bunyan’s decision to move to New Iowa developed from the thought that its healing climate would hasten the convalescence of Babe, the blue ox, and that its orange palms would give his men the tough logging which they sorely needed. Babe, having fallen sick, had been near to perishing from Johnny Inkslinger’s new-fangled cures; but he was saved when the camp doctor got sense and returned to his old-fashioned reliable remedies. The blue ox was now cured, but he was far too weak to begin hard labor at once. So his master was put to it to devise a plan that would let Babe regain his strength and yet give natural labor to the loggers.
Since leaving the Hickory Hill country, they had done little of the grand work for which they were born. They had lost a great deal of their innocent pride and self-respect in toiling with picks and shovels; and Johnny Inkslinger’s abandonment of scientific medical practice for medical oratory had shaken their faith in the integrity of his knowledge and the scope of his power. In the time when he had written his figures and made his cures without explaining and glorifying them the loggers had regarded him as a worker of mysteries and had been in great awe of him. But now that he had revealed his mind from a soap box the loggers only remembered his eloquent boasts and his failure to make good. Alcohol and Epsom salts seemed common to them now, and they laughed at the camp doctor for having had to go back to them.
Paul Bunyan heard them poking rough fun at Johnny Inkslinger’s folly on their first night in the Oregon camp, after the return was made from the Wet Desert country.
“In words there is a magic poison which is more powerful than the plain substance of them,” mused Paul Bunyan. “This magic whips emotions and stuns sense, and it overpowers any mind which is one part sense and nine parts emotion. And these loggers of mine ... these loggers of mine....”
Another clamor broke out in the bunkhouses, and Paul Bunyan, smiling sadly, listened to hear what nonsense his men were talking now. The bunkhouse cranks were the leaders in the new uproar, and when the master logger heard their words and the applause that followed, his eyebrows drew down in a frown which the moonlight could not penetrate, and his eyes had a hard glitter in the shadows.
For the bunkhouse cranks were saying that it looked like logging couldn’t last much longer now; the old blue ox was in a bad way and it was hard to think he’d ever be himself again in this here world; Johnny Inkslinger was getting so childish that he’d probably lose his figuring power, just as he had blundered in his doctoring; and old Paul himself—it looked like even he was losing his hold, as he had started to dig Babe’s grave before the blue ox was even near dead. Old Paul would never have given in that soon in the days on Onion River, said the bunkhouse cranks. Things would surely go from bad to worse, they agreed, and it was no use to look for the good old times to come back. The same talk was going on in all the bunkhouses and the bards had few cheerful arguments against it. The loggers were losing their old innocent, exuberant, devil-may-care spirit.
Paul Bunyan sat down on six of the high hills above the whale corral, pulled up a young fir tree and began to brush his beard and ponder. He had no doubts of his own powers and he felt that Johnny Inkslinger was as great as ever. The timekeeper’s recent obsessions and eccentricities were due to the lowness of spirit, the stagnation of soul, which comes sometime to all mental men. He was now recovered, and he would certainly do his part in the making of logging history as well as before, perhaps better. The trouble now was with the loggers. True men of muscle, the best virtues for them to possess were unquestioning loyalty and faithfulness to their leaders and simple confidence in them. Oratory was good for them when it stimulated these virtues, but ideas were poisonous; for they caused the loggers to become critics and independent thinkers, and their minds were not fitted for such occupations.
“Work and discipline will repair the damage,” decided Paul Bunyan. “Work is the great consoler, for in it men forget the torments and oppressions of life. And nothing is more tormenting and oppressive to men of muscle than ideas. My loggers shall forget them. And strong discipline shall release them from the troublous responsibilities of independence. Again I shall have a camp of men who toil mightily and make the hours between supper and sleep jolly with merry songs and humorous tales.”
Saying this, Paul Bunyan rose and looked over the fir forest which covered all the hills and threw shadows far over the silent waters of the whale corral. The great logger regretted that he could not remain here and fell these splendid trees; but something more than plain logging was needed for his present purpose. A powerful task must be set for his men, but a task that would not require arduous labor from the blue ox. New Iowa best suited his need. There the climate was as healing and mild as the one which Kansas had possessed before the turnover of its sinfulness. Paul Bunyan’s maps showed that New Iowa had great forests of orange palms in its valleys, and his samples proved that these trees were tough cutting. The start for the New Iowa country should be made at once.
Paul Bunyan went first to the camp office and called out the Big Swede. He gave orders for Babe to be harnessed and hitched to the camp buildings; then he called, “Roll out or roll up!” for the loggers. They came out slowly, rubbing their eyes and expressing wonder, for they had been sleeping only a short while. When their leader told them that he was going to take them down to New Iowa they did not display their usual childish excitement over a move; but they looked from one to another with knowing grins and much eye-winking. The bunkhouse cranks whispered, “Ol’ Paul’s off on another wild goose chase”; and some of the boldest among them declared that they had never seen better logging than the Oregon country offered, and if they had their way about it they’d stay right here.