Now the woman person grasped two hairs of Paul Bunyan’s beard, one in each small hand, and pulled them playfully, smiling such a smile as he had never seen on any logger’s face.
“You must go away, you know,” she said softly. “We are all so happy here.”
Paul Bunyan heard a pleading strain in her strange singing voice, but he could not interpret this sound. He saw her wistfully smiling eyes and mouth, but he could not read what he saw on her face. He felt the softness of the woman person in his hand—and he understood her a little. He learned something of her strength, alien as it was to any strength he had known. And he thought: I have lost my loggers; for neither history, invention, industry nor oratory can prevail with them against this woman person.
Gently Paul Bunyan put her on the ground. The woman person’s walk was like a dance as she left him. In the door of her bright bunkhouse she turned and blew him a kiss. And was gone. Paul Bunyan waved his hand. The gesture was not for the woman person; it was a farewell to his loggers.
Paul Bunyan spoke no more; but he returned to his camp at once, taking the blue ox with him over the mountains. He told his remaining men of the women folk and let them go. Soon or late he would lose them, and he let them go now, that they might not be held too long from their desire....
The sinking sun flashed its last blaze of red over a camp that was deserted of all save the great heroes and the mighty blue ox. The Big Swede had returned and he slept; Johnny Inkslinger figured; and Babe mooed dolorously as the shadows clouded the silent timber. And Paul Bunyan, the supreme inventor, the noble historian, the master orator, the grand field marshal of industry, mused in sad resignation on the vanity of man’s enterprises. The logging industry, which he had invented, would go on as long as trees grew from the earth, and his name would be heard forever on the tongues of men. He would have power, but it would be only the power of a vast spirit breathing in the dark, deep woods. He would have the glory he had dreamed about in his beginnings ... but glory was a poor consolation ... his life work was done....
The shadows got dense ... the shapes of the heroes, and the shape of Babe, the blue ox, and the shapes of buildings, mountains and trees merged in the darkness. And there history leaves them.
Transcriber’s Notes
Punctuation and hyphenation were made consistent when a predominant preference was found in the original book; otherwise they were not changed.