“Impudence!” roared Paul Bunyan. “Tell me at once what is wrong.”
Ford Fordsen was thrown from his feet, but he got up with dignity.
“You have the advantage of me in size,” he said pounding wrathfully with his fist on the great logger’s toe. “But I, too, am an inventor now, and I claim equal rights with you in invention. You may have history, for history is bunk; you may have oratory, for your voice is larger than mine; and you may have industry, for you possess the blue ox. But as for invention——”
“Before you become an orator in spite of yourself tell me, as inventor to inventor, if you like, about this slight mistake,” said Paul Bunyan calmly.
“But I have told you that the mill must be rebuilt!” said Ford Fordsen impatiently. “However, if you must know, the slight mistake is this: The men who put in the concrete base for the headrig got to talking about women, and their minds left their job. They ran concrete around the saw, and now the lower part of this hundred foot band is frozen as in solid rock. The mill, you see, must be rebuilt; and I must be about it.”
“Women again!” grumbled Paul Bunyan. “If they do not exist my men soon will have invented them. If they do exist in other lands it is easy to see why there is no great industry, no marvelous inventions and no making of history in any place but my camp. Even as memories or fancies they are nuisances. But here: I must attend to this cocky little fellow.”
He reached down and seized Ford Fordsen between his thumb and forefinger and then raised him to a level with his eyes.
“Your grand and exceptional notions trouble my poor head,” said Paul Bunyan, “so I must work with my own simple ideas. You shall be at work with your felling ax once more this afternoon.”
“I warn you that I’ll not do foul, sweaty labor again, Mr. Bunyan,” said Ford Fordsen composedly. “If you put me back in the woods I’ll preach the ten-hour day to the loggers. And I ask you to return me to the ground. I find this high altitude uncomfortable.”
“Audacity!” exclaimed Paul Bunyan, so astonished that he nearly dropped this astonishing bunkhouse genius. “The ten-hour day! Thunderation! What an unheard of thing! Is the sun shining? Do I wear whiskers? Do men chew with their teeth? Is Babe a blue ox? And—do loggers work twelve hours a day? What devils do trail me! Ideas; poetry; floods; women; the ten-hour day—what next? By the holy old, roaring old, oily old——”