“I do not care about your donkeys, your engines, your skidding machines,” said the great logger. “I have come for my men.”
“Try and get them,” said Ford Fordsen amiably.
“You may have learned inventing and industry,” said Paul Bunyan. “And you despise history. But I shall now teach you the worth of oratory.”
“I grant you the privilege of attempting it,” said Ford Fordsen pleasantly. “Instead of giving the loggers oratory I have given them the ten-hour day. And they have found other things.”
Paul Bunyan would not argue the merits of the ten-hour day with Ford Fordsen. Regretting that he had ever encouraged this man by praising his one noble invention, stagged pants, the great logger said no more, but went on into Nowaday Valley. He stopped at a place where there were many cottages. They were evidently used for bunkhouses by his loggers, as the men had come this way after leaving the woods. They were curious bunkhouses indeed, for the walls of each one were painted in bright colors; there were curtains in the windows, and every bunkhouse had a neat and pretty yard of grass and flowers. Paul Bunyan thought it strange that his bully loggers should tolerate this; but he did not allow the thought to trouble him. He began to speak with his rarest eloquence.
If he had delivered such an oration in the old home camp his men would have listened to him for days without thinking of eating or sleep. They would have been moved continuously by whatever emotions the sounds of the orator’s rich phrases evoked; and at the end they would have obeyed his most extravagant wish.
But now the loggers did not even come out of their bright bunkhouses to hear him. Now and again a face appeared at a window or in a doorway, but it was always the face of one of the women folk, seeming hostile or curious, but otherwise unmoved. Knowing that his oratorical powers had never been greater, Paul Bunyan was at last affected by a fear that the loggers were now ruled by a force stronger than his own. He put even more vigor and color into his oration, but he now spoke with less confidence....
Then one of the women folk came out of the bunkhouse. She stopped and looked up at the great logger with brave curiosity; and he in turn was so perplexed by the strange sight of this creature, who had something of the appearance of a logger, but was yet so unlike one, that he studied her and abandoned his oration. Was it possible that such frail and useless-seeming creatures could have powers surpassing his own?
Then Paul Bunyan did what every true man, whether ditch-digger or king, has often longed painfully to do. He now did that which men are forever attempting in their imaginings. He lifted the woman person in his hand and observed her as a naturalist observes a small kitten or a mouse.
This specimen of the women folk did not seem to mind the liberty which Paul Bunyan took with her. She sat comfortably in his hand, with her ankles crossed, and opened a case which hung from her arm; she gazed unconcernedly into a mirror which was in the lid of this case; then she patted powder on her nose and cheeks, turning her head first this way and then that way.