Cold as the winter was, Paul Bunyan and his men were reluctant to see it go, for every day had brought some tickling incident. But at last the gray frost crystals began to glitter occasionally from rays of sunshine which filtered through the white winter mists. Then Paul Bunyan began to plan for the hazardous historical drive down Moron River. Spring was at hand, and the great logger remembered his old whimsical query:
“If Springtime comes can Drives be far behind?”
The loggers, too, sensed the approach of the driving season, and every night the bunkhouses rang with sounds of filing, as the rivermen sharpened calks, pike poles and peavies. They bellowed the old driving songs as never before, and the floors shook as they leaped and pranced to show the marvelous springiness of their legs. They got so comradely in their merriment and exuberance that the last poet among them ventured a poem which began:
“It’s all very well to be profane,
When life is as dark as night;
But the man worth a fuss is the man who can cuss
When everything ’round him is bright.”
He got no further, for in an instant one bully had him down, chewing savagely on his ear, while others raked his ribs with their calks. It was the last sigh of poetry in the camp. Paul Bunyan heard about it and had one of the happiest hours of his life as he rejoiced over the good news.
“But every silver cloud has its shadows,” he said sensibly, when his exaltation had passed. “I still expect great troubles and difficulties.” He was wise indeed in this thought, for he got a troublous problem at once.
Sure as the great logger had been that the powerful buffalo milk hot cakes could only do good for his loggers, sure as he was they could not give his men too much red blood or make them too hellishly He, Paul Bunyan had yet failed to reckon on the dire effects that the virile food might have on weaker men. He had given no thought to the scissor-bills who herded and milked the buffalos. Throughout the fall these men had shown nothing but their usual tameness and amiability; during the Hard Winter they had shivered silently by their camp fires; but now they began to show that the powerful food was having a terrific effect on them. Many of the buffalos had died during the cold spell, and the scissor-bills had made pants from the shaggy hides. Some of the high-behinds had frozen also, and the scissor-bills had taken their skins and made tall, flapping hats of them. Colds had afflicted them during the winter, and for convenience they had tied their handkerchiefs around their necks. They took a fancy to this fashion and let the handkerchiefs remain after their colds were gone. Their next outbreak of virility was to unravel one of Babe’s halter ropes and arrange a long little rope with a noose-end from each thread of it. They practiced throwing nooses over the posts of the buffalo corral fence until they became quite expert in casting them. The scissor-bills then caught wild horses with their ropes and broke them for riding. They got to be a crazy, noisy gang after this, and Paul Bunyan began to notice them as they rode through the sage trees, yipping shrilly. And then one morning they came to the hero-leader and requested that they be called “scissor-bills” no longer, but “buffalo boys” instead. Paul Bunyan admired their shaggy pants, their necker-chiefs and their tall hats, and he thoughtlessly consented to their wishes. He did not feel that the scissor-bills had it in them to become real He Men, but he was not a man to discourage worthy ambitions.