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PAUL BUNYAN

JAMES STEVENS

PAUL BUNYAN

WOODCUTS BY ALLAN LEWIS

NEW YORK
GARDEN CITY PUBLISHING CO., INC.

COPYRIGHT, 1925, BY ALFRED A. KNOPF, INC.

Note: Four of Mr. Lewis’ woodcuts were originally made for, and are used by courtesy of The Century Magazine.

CL
MANUFACTURED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

TO
OTHEMAN STEVENS

CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION

The Paul Bunyan legend had its origin in the Papineau Rebellion of 1837. This was a revolt of the French-Canadians against their young English queen. In the Two Mountains country, at St. Eustache, many loggers armed with mattocks, axes, and wooden forks which had been steamed and warped into hooks, stormed into battle. Among them was a mighty-muscled, bellicose, bearded giant named Paul Bunyon. This forest warrior, with a mattock in one hand, and a great fork in the other, powerful as Hercules, indomitable as Spartacus, bellowing like a furious Titan, raged among the Queen’s troops like Samson among the Philistines. He came out of the rebellion with great fame among his own kind. His slaughters got the grandeur of legend.

Later this Paul Bunyon operated a logging camp. In that day logging was heroic labor. In the autumn the loggers went to the woods, forcing their way in batteaux up swift rivers. On every trip there were many wearisome portages around rapids. Snow and ice then locked them in their camps for five or six months. The workday was from dawn to dusk. The loggers lived on beans, salt pork and sourdough bread. At night there were songs and tales around the shanty stove. Of course these were mainly about their own life, their own heroes. The camp boss was like the chief of a tribe; his will had to be the law, and he had to have exceptional physical power and courage to enforce it. After his part in the rebellion there was no more famous camp chief in Canada than Paul Bunyon.

Sure that the Paul Bunyan stories which have been told for generations in the American timberlands were of Canadian origin, I questioned many old time French-Canadian loggers before I found genuine proofs. At last I met Louis Letourneau in the Big Berry country, Puyallup, Washington. And Louis’ father-in-law, Z. Berneche, a snowy-maned, shining-eyed, keen-minded veteran logger of ninety years, told me about the original hero. His uncle, Collet Bellaine, fought by the side of Paul Bunyon, and later worked two seasons for him. Now, the French-Canadians have no genius for the humor of purposeful exaggeration such as the Americans have; the habitans exaggerate honestly and enthusiastically and with an illusion of truth, like Tartarin of Tarascon.

“My uncle, Collet Bellaine,” said Mr. Berneche earnestly, “know that Paul Bunyon carry five hundred pounds on portage. That is truth. He was very big, strong man, you understand; he fight like hell, he work like hell, and he pack like hell. Never was another man like Paul Bunyon. That’s right.”

It is not difficult to imagine the habitans honestly exaggerating the logging feats of the war hero as they talked about him in the New Brunswick camps, and in Maine, and in the Great Lakes pineries. And it is simple for one who has seen the two races together to imagine the Americans “improving” on the first stories about Paul Bunyon, only to ridicule his extravagant admirers; and then developing their own Paul Bunyan legend to ease their weariness when their twelve-hour day was done.

Other evidence supports this view of the origin of the stories. There are stories told about an Irish-French-Canadian logger, Joe Mufraw (Murphy was his ancestral name); and the name of Joe Mufraw is famous in the woods, sometimes being linked with Paul Bunyan’s. He appears in the Red River Lumber Company’s collection of Paul Bunyan stories. Now, Joe Mufraw logged in the Misstassinny River country in Quebec less than fifty years ago. I have seen pictures of this huge frowning man and his oxen. Many old French-Canadians have sworn to me that he put the calks in his boots in the shape of his initials, and that after the thirteenth drink he would kick his initials in a ceiling eight feet high. His feats in camp and on the log drives were as magnificent.

It was the American loggers below the Border who made of Paul Bunyon a true hero of camp nights’ entertainment. They gave him Babe, the blue ox, who measured forty-two ax handles and a plug of chewing tobacco between the horns. They created the marvelous mythical logging camp, with its cookhouse of mountainous size and history of Olympian feats; and they peopled this camp with astounding minor heroes. They made their Paul Bunyan an inventor and orator, and an industrialist whose labors surpassed those of Hercules. They devised a chronology for him; he ruled American life in the period between the Winter of the Blue Snow and the Spring That the Rain Came Up From China. By 1860 Paul Bunyan had become a genuine American legendary hero.

Perhaps the Paul Bunyan narrator who won most lasting fame was Len Day, whose firm of Len Day & Son was one of the largest lumber concerns of Minneapolis in the sixties. I had often heard of him; and lately Mr. Michael Christopher Quinn, yard superintendent for the Northwestern Lumber Company, of Hoquiam, Washington, for twenty-two years, gave me a first-hand account of him. In 1873 Quinn was working in a great log drive down the Mississippi; his camp was at Haney Landing, Minnesota. Len Day was then eighty-five, a prosperous and influential lumberman. But the lure of the drive and of camp life still stirred the true logger’s soul of him, and he came to the camp each spring. Every night the gang gathered in the cookhouse to hear the old camp bard declaim a canto of the Paul Bunyan epic.

“Len Day told the stories in sections,” said Mr. Quinn.

A section, or a canto, or a chapter, or whatever one may call it, was delivered each night by the old lumberman, who could see toiling demi-gods and sweating heroes in his dark woods, and imagined narratives about them, to which he gave the substance and characters of the traditional Paul Bunyan stories. Len Day had lived in New Brunswick in the forties and had thus heard the stories in their beginnings. The Paul Bunyan stories which form the body of the legend have not had many changes or surviving additions in fifty years. They themselves are not a narrative; they exist, rather, as a group of anecdotes which are told among a group of camp men until the story-teller of the gang is started on a narrative which he makes up as he yarns along, and which may take him an hour, or three evenings, to relate. A Paul Bunyan bunkhouse service is a glory to hear, when it is spontaneous and in a proper setting; preferably around a big heater in the winter, when the wind is howling through crackling boughs outside, and the pungent smell of steaming wool drifts down from the drying lines above the stove. When the vasty spirit of the woods really moves the meeting a noble and expansive ecstasy of the soul is exhibited. Remarks are passed about a similar night in Paul Bunyan’s camp, when the wind blew so hard that Big Ole, the blacksmith, had to bolt iron straps over the logs to keep them from being sucked up the chimneys. The theme grows and bears strange fruits; and finally the camp bard harvests them all in a story based on such a venerable anecdote as that one about Big Ole toting one of Babe’s ox shoes for half a mile and sinking knee-deep into the solid rock at every step.

This anecdote is what might be called a “key story,” for it is one of the very old ones. There are at least a hundred of these, all familiar to every man who has worked long in the woods. They all deal with some of the characters whom tradition has placed about Paul Bunyan, with the mighty logger himself as the main hero; their settings are in such regions as the Onion River country, the Bullfrog Lake country, or the Leaning Pine country; and each one is a theme for gorgeous yarns, when a knowing and gifted camp bard is inspired to use it.

Nowadays, with a shed garage in every logging camp, a radio in the camp office, graphophones in the bunkhouses, and a jazz shack in the village just “over the hump,” the camp bard has a scant audience. But in happier times each camp enjoyed its chief story-teller; and such a bard could take one of the key stories and elaborate on it for hours, building a complete narrative, picturing awe-inspiring characters, inventing dialogue of astonishing eloquence. (And what stupendous curses, terrifying threats and verbose orations such bards as Happy Olsen and Old Time Sandy could invent!) It is the method of the old bards that I have attempted to follow in writing this book.

The art of the plain American, which in the last century brought forth tales and songs as native to the soil as the grass of the prairies, is at last perishing under the feet of the herd arts of a perfected democratic culture. The legends about Buffalo Bill and Brigham Young have passed; these heroes are now plain figures in book history. Jim Bridger, the heroic “old man of the mountains,” is obscenely and falsely portrayed in a movie to draw snickers from the chiropractors, pants salesmen and tin-roofers who are the passionate devotees of this carnal herd art. Kentucky and Tennessee mountain folk still tell their tales about “ol’ Dan’l,” tales in which the listener will discover a Boone a thousand times more picturesque and grand than the hero of written history. Crockett, Carson, old Andy Jackson, Sam Houston—but I could name a score whom the plain man’s untutored art ennobled and glorified in a manner that put the erudite narrators to shame. This art is perishing simply because Universal Education, and other blights, curses and evil inventions of democracy are destroying all the old simplicity, imaginativeness and self-amusement of plain American life.

Only in a few regions, and among the elders, do the creations of this art, this folk lore, or whatever one wills to call it, survive as shining memorials to sturdier and nobler days. And the legend of Paul Bunyan is certainly the greatest of these creations; for it embodies the souls of the millions of American camp men who have always done the hard and perilous pioneer labor of this country. It is true American legend now, for Paul Bunyan, as he stands to-day, is absolutely American from head to foot. He visualizes perfectly the American love of tall talk and tall doings, the true American exuberance and extravagance. Beginning in Paul Bunyon, soldier with Papineau, he has become the creation of whole generations of men. Thousands of narrators by far-flung campfires have contributed their mites to the classical picture of him. And he, at least, will live as long as there is a forest for his refuge, as long as there are shadows and whispers of trees.

I want to thank the old camp comrades who have sent me so many versions of all the known key stories, and who have given me accounts of new ideas. They, and several lumbermen also, have been very kind to me. And I owe gratitude particularly to Mr. H. L. Mencken, of the American Mercury. Without his help and encouragement the stories would not have been written.

PAUL BUNYAN

THE WINTER OF THE BLUE SNOW

Paul Bunyan was the one historian of the useful and the beautiful; other writers of history tell only of terrible and dramatic events. Therefore the chronicles of Paul Bunyan, the mighty logger, the inventor of the lumber industry, the leader-hero of the best band of bullies, the finest bunch of savages, that ever tramped the continent, the master orator of a land that has since grown forests of orators—his chronicles alone tell of the Winter of the Blue Snow.

The blue snow fell first in the North. It fell scantily in its earlier hours, its sapphire flakes floating down on the waves of a mild winter wind, and glittering in an ashen gold light, a sober pale radiance which shimmered through silver mists. There was poetry in the spectacle of these hours. And then the hard gray ground of a peopleless land was hidden under a blanket of dark blue. And the nameless frozen lakes and rivers, the silent valleys and the windy hills of the country were all spread over with a sky-dyed snow. When the last light of this day went out, the boughs of the great pines were creaking under heavy wet masses of snow like torn bales of blue cotton. There was a rush in the snowfall now, as a fiercer wind whipped it on; its heavy flakes were driven down in thick, whirling clusters, in streaming veils, leaping lines and dashing columns; and there were cloudlike swarms of the blue flakes, which settled slowly, floating easily in the hard wind. This wind got so strong that it shivered the timber, and the piles of blue snow which had gathered on the pine boughs were shaken down. Most of this snow fell into blue mounds around the trees, but some of it fell on the fauna of the forest, adding to their troublement.

At the time of the Winter of the Blue Snow, the forest creatures of this land lived a free and easy life. Man was not there to embarrass them with accusations of trespass and to slay them for their ignorance of the crime. Their main problem was the overcrowding of the forests. The vast moose herds, who populated the woods so densely that traffic through their favorite timber was dangerous, made the matter of getting food a simple one for the carnivorous animals. There were many moose to spare, and the elders of the herds, like most prolific parents, never became frantically resentful over the loss of an offspring. The moose themselves, of course, lived easily on the crisp, juicy moose grass which grew so plenteously in these regions before the blue snow. So the carnivorous creatures of the forests lived a fast and furious life; and it is certain that if they were capable of praise, they had good praises for the moose meat which they got with such little difficulty. The coal-black bruins of the North were an especially happy crowd. Theirs was a gay, frolicsome life in the summer time, when the big bruins danced and galloped through sunny valleys and the small ones had rolling races on shady hillsides. In the fall, all fat and drowsy from moose meat, the bruins would go to sleep in their warm caves and dream pleasantly all winter.

They were all dreaming now; and the blue snow would no doubt have fallen and melted away without their knowledge had it not been for the moose herds which crowded the forest aisles. Moose at that time did not have it in them to enjoy wonder, and they had not learned to combat fear, for they were never afraid. Still, they had some imagination, and the moose trembled when the first blue snowflakes fell among them. They kept up an appearance of unconcern at first, eating moose moss as usual; but they sniffed gingerly at the blue streaks in it, and they stole furtive glances at each other as they bravely ate. This strange snowfall was certainly breeding fear of it in the hearts of all the moose, but each one seemed determined to be the last one to show it. However, as the day-end got near, and the wind grew more boisterous, shaking snow masses from the trees, some of the moose had fits of trembling and eye-rolling which they could not conceal. When a heap of snow dropped on the back of some timid moose, he would twist his head sharply and stare with bulging eyes at the mysteriously fearsome color, then he would prance wildly until the unwelcome snow was bucked from his shivering back. When the early shadows of evening came among the trees, the moose all had a heavy darkness of fear in their hearts. Little was needed to put them in a panic.

It was a great bull moose, a herd king, who forgot the example he owed to his weaker kindred and unloosed a thunderous bellow of terror which started the moose flight, the first memorable incident of the Winter of the Blue Snow. An overladen bough cracked above him; it fell and straddled him from quivering tail to flailing horns, burying him under its wet blue load. He reared out roaring, and his own herd echoed the cry; then a storm of moose bellows crashed through the forest. This tumult died, but there followed the earth-shaking thunder of a stampede.

The bruins, awakened from their pleasant dreams, came out from their caves and blinked at the hosts of terrified moose which were galloping past. The earth-shaking uproar of the flight at last thoroughly aroused the bruins, and they began to sniff the air uneasily. Then they noticed the blue snow; and now in front of every cave crowds of bruins were staring down at the snow; and each bruin was swaying heavily, lifting his left front foot as he swayed to the right, and lifting his right front foot as he swayed to the left. The bruins had no courage either, and, once they had got sleep out of their heads, nearly all of them took out after the moose herds. The wind roared louder with every passing minute this night. And the flakes of the blue snow were as dense as the particles of a fog. At dawn a blue blizzard was raging. But the fauna of the forest plunged tirelessly on, seeking a refuge of white snow.

And Niagara, made faithless by the Blue Terror, galloped behind them—Niagara, the great moose hound, bread-winner for the student of history, Paul Bunyon (his real name), and his companion also.

Paul Bunyon lived at Tonnere Bay. He dwelt in a cave that was as large as ten Mammoth Caves and which had a roof loftier than any tower or spire. But this cave was none too vast for Paul Bunyon, the one man of this region, but one man as great as a city of ordinary men. His tarpaulins and blankets covered one-fourth of the cave floor; his hunting clothes, traps and seines filled another quarter; and the rest of the space was occupied by a fireplace and his papers and books.

For Paul Bunyon was a student now. There had been a time when he had gone forth in the hunting and fishing season to gather the huge supplies of provender which he required, but now his days and nights were all spent with his books. Paul Bunyon’s favorite food was raw moose meat, and after he found Niagara in the Tall Wolf country he no longer needed to hunt. Each night Niagara trotted out in the darkness and satisfied his own hunger, then he carried mouthfuls of moose to the cave until he had a day’s supply of meat for his master. Niagara was ever careful not to frighten the moose herds; he hunted stealthily and with quiet. The moose at night were only conscious of a dark cloud looming over them, then numbers of the herds would disappear without painful sound. The moose, if they had thought about it, would have been only thankful to Niagara for lessening the congestion of the forests.

So Paul Bunyon fared well on the moose meat which Niagara brought him, and he lived contentedly as a student in his cave at Tonnere Bay. Each day he studied, and far into the night he figured. Taking a trimmed pine tree for a pencil, he would char its end in the fire and use the cave floor for a slate. He was not long in learning all the history worth knowing, and he became as good a figurer as any man could be.

Vague ambitions began to stir in his soul after this and he often deserted his studies to dream about them. He knew he would not spend his days forever in the cave at Tonnere Bay. Somewhere in the future a great Work was waiting to be done by him. Now it was only a dream; but he was sure that it would be a reality; and he came to think more and more about it. The books were opened less and less; the pine tree pencil was seldom brought from its corner. Paul Bunyon now used another pine tree which still had its boughs; it was a young one, and he brushed his curly black beard with it as he dreamed. But he was still a contented man at the time of the Winter of the Blue Snow, for his dreams had not yet blazed up in a desire for any certain attainment.

On the first day of the blue snow, Paul Bunyon was in a particularly contented mood. He sat all that day before his fire; so charmed with drowsy thoughts was he that he did not once look out. It had been dark a long time before he rolled into his blankets. He awoke at the dawn of a day that had scarcely more light than the night. He was cold, and he got up to throw an armful of trees on the fire. Then he saw the blue drifts which had piled up before the cave, and he saw the fog of the blue blizzard. He heard the roar of a terrific wind, too, and he knew that the storm was perilous as well as strange. But Paul Bunyon thought gladly of the blue snow, for it was a beautiful event, and the historians he liked most would write wonderful books about it.

He kicked the drifts away from the cave entrance, but the usual pile of slain moose was not under them. Paul Bunyon was a little worried, as he thought that Niagara might have lost himself in the blue blizzard. The possibility that the unnatural color of the storm might send the fauna of the forest, and Niagara as well, into panicky flight did not occur to him. He was sure that Niagara would return with a grand supply of moose meat when the blue blizzard had passed.

But the moose herds were now far to the North, fleeing blindly from the blue snow. The bruins galloped after them. Before the day was over, Niagara had overtaken the bruins and was gaining on the moose. At nightfall his lunging strides had carried him far ahead of all the fauna of the forest. He galloped yet faster as he reached the blacker darkness of the Arctic winter. Now the darkness was so heavy that even his powerful eyes could not see in it.... Niagara at last ran head-on into the North Pole; the terrific speed at which he was traveling threw his body whirling high in the air; when Niagara fell he crashed through ninety feet of ice, and the polar fields cracked explosively as his struggles convulsed the waters under them.... Then only mournful blasts of wind sounded in the night of the Farthest North.

The moose were wearied out before they reached the white Arctic, and hordes of them fell and perished in the blizzard; many others died from fright, and only a tiny remnant of the great herds survived. Some of the bruins reached the polar fields, and they have lived there since. Their hair had turned white from fright, and their descendants still wear that mark of fear. Others were not frightened so much, and their hair only turned gray. They did not run out of the timber, and their descendants, the silver-tip grizzlies, still live in the Northern woods. The baby bruins were only scared out of their growth, and their black descendants now grow no larger than the cubs of Paul Bunyon’s time.

Being ignorant of this disaster, Paul Bunyon was comfortable enough while the blizzard lasted. He had a good store of trees on hand and his cave was warm in the storm. He got hungry in the last days; but this emotion, or any emotion, for that matter, could have but little power over him when he was dreaming. And he dreamed deeply now of great enterprises; his dreams were formless, without any substance of reality; but they had brilliant colors, and they made him very hopeful.

The sun shone at last from a whitish blue sky, and the strange snow fell no more. A snapping cold was in the land; and pine boughs were bangled and brocaded with glittering blue crystals, and crusty blue snow crackled underfoot.

Paul Bunyon strapped on his snow shoes and started out through the Border forests in search of Niagara. His was a kingly figure as he mushed through the pine trees, looming above all but the very tallest of them. He wore a wine-red hunting cap, and his glossy hair and beard shone under it with a blackness that blended with the cap’s color perfectly. His unique eyebrows were black also; covering a fourth of his forehead above the eyes, they narrowed where they arched down under his temples, and they ended in thin curls just in front of his ears. His mustache had natural twirls and he never disturbed it. He wore a yellow muffler this morning under his virile curly beard. His mackinaw coat was of huge orange and purple checks. His mackinaw pants were sober-seeming, having tan and light gray checks, but some small crimson dots and crosses brightened them. Green wool socks showed above his black boots, which had buckskin laces and big brass eyelets and hooks. And he wore striped mittens of white and plum color. Paul Bunyon was a gorgeous picture this morning in the frozen fields and forests, all covered with blue snow which sparkled in a pale gold light.

That day and the next, and for five more days, he searched in vain for Niagara; and neither did he see any moose herds in the woods. Only the frost crackles broke the silences of the deserted blue forests. And at last Paul Bunyon returned to his cave, feeling depressed and lonely. He had not thought that the companionship of Niagara could mean so much to him. In his mood of depression he forgot his hunger and made no further effort to find food.

Lonely Paul Bunyon lay sleepless in his blankets this night, his eyes gleaming through hedgelike eyelashes as their gaze restlessly followed the red flares that shot from the fire and streaked the walls and roof of the cave. He did not realize that his first creative idea was now struggling for birth. He could yet feel no shape of it. He was only conscious of an unaccustomed turmoil of mind. Wearied with fruitless thought, he at last fell into a doze. But Paul Bunyon was not fated to sleep this night. A sustained crashing roar, as of the splintering of millions of timbers, brought him up suddenly; it was hushed for a short second; then a thudding boom sounded from Tonnere Bay. Paul Bunyon leaped to the cave door, and in the moonlight he saw a white wave of water rolling over the blue beach. It came near to the cave before it stopped and receded. He pulled on his boots, and two strides brought him down to the bay. It had been covered with ice seven feet thick, and the cakes of this broken ice were now tossing on heaving waters. Now Paul Bunyon saw two ears show sometimes above the billows; they were of the shape of moose ears, but enormous as his two forefingers. Paul Bunyon waded out into the waters, and he reached these ears a mile from shore. He seized them without fear and he lifted ... now a head with closed eyes appeared ... shoulders and forelegs ... body and hips ... rear legs and curled tail. It was a calf, newborn apparently, though it was of such a size that Paul Bunyon had to use both arms to carry it.

“Nom d’un nom!” exclaimed Paul Bunyon. “Pauvre petite bleue bête!”

For this great baby calf was of a bright blue hue which was neither darker nor lighter than the color of the beautiful strange snow. A blue baby ox calf. For such was its sex. Its ears drooped pitifully, and its scrawny, big-jointed legs hung limply below Paul Bunyon’s arms. A spasmodic shiver ran from its head to its tail, and its savior was glad to feel this shiver, for it showed that life remained. Paul Bunyon was touched with a tenderness that drove out his loneliness. “Ma bête,” he said. “Mon cher bleu bébé ausha.”

He turned back through the waters, and the ice cakes pounded each other into bits as they rolled together in his wake. In thirty seconds Paul Bunyon was back in his cave. He spread out his blankets in front of the fire, and he laid Bébé upon them.

Through the night Paul Bunyon worked over the blue ox calf, nursing him back to warm life; and in the morning Bébé was breathing regularly and seemed to rest. Paul Bunyon leaned over to hear his exhalations, and the blue ox calf suddenly opened his mouth and caressed Paul Bunyon’s neck with his tongue. Paul Bunyon then discovered that he was ticklish in this region, for the caress impelled him to roll and laugh. The serious student Paul Bunyon had never laughed before; and he now enjoyed the new pleasure to the utmost.

“Eh, Bébé!” he chuckled. “Eh, Bébé! Sacre bleu! Bon bleu, mon cher!” Bébé raised his eyelids with astonishment upon hearing this cave-shaking chuckle, revealing large, bulging orbs which were of even a heavenlier blue than his silken hair. Such affection and intelligence shone in his eyes that Paul Bunyon wished he would keep his eyes opened. But Bébé was weary and weak, and he closed them again.

He is hungry, thought Paul Bunyon; and he went out to find him food. None of the animals he knew about could supply milk for such a calf as this blue Bébé. But he was newborn and his parents should be somewhere in the neighborhood. Paul Bunyon stepped up on the cliff over which Bébé had bounced when he fell into Tonnere Bay. From here a wide swath of smashed timber ran straight up the side of the tallest Northern mountain. It was here that Bébé had made his thunderous roll of the night before.

Six strides brought Paul Bunyon to the mountain-top. One of its jagged peaks was broken off, showing where Bébé had stumbled over it and fallen. Then Paul Bunyon followed the calf tracks down the land side of the mountain. For two hours he trailed them, but they grew fainter as he went on, and in the Big Bay country the last fall of the blue snow had covered them. Paul Bunyon now had no doubt that Bébé’s mother had been frightened by the strange color of the snow and that his blueness was a birthmark. Like Niagara and the fauna of the forest, the parents had stampeded, forgetting the little one. It was no use to search for them.

Paul Bunyon circled back through the forest and gathered a great load of moose moss before he returned to the cave. This rich food would meet the lack of milk. Bébé was asleep before the fireplace when Paul Bunyon returned, and he still slumbered while his friend prepared him some moose moss soup. But when a kettle full of steaming odorous food was set before him, he opened his eyes with amazing energy and sat up. It was then that Bébé first showed the depth and circumference of his natural appetite, an appetite which was to have its effect on history. He drank most of the moose moss soup at three gulps, he seized the rim of the kettle in his teeth and tilted it up until even the last ten gallons were drained out of it; then, looking roguishly at Paul Bunyon the while, he bit off a large section of the kettle rim and chewed it down, switching his pretty tail to show his enjoyment.

“Eh, Bébé!” roared Paul Bunyon, doubling up with laughter for the second time in his life. And he praised the blue snow for giving him such a creature, and did not mourn Niagara, who had never been amusing. But now, as Paul Bunyon doubled over for another rare roar of laughter, he got one more surprise. He was struck with terrifical force from the rear and knocked flat. Paul Bunyon hit the cave floor so hard that its walls were shaken, and a cloud of stones dropped from the roof, covering him from his hips to his thighs. Paul Bunyon dug himself out with no displeasure. He was marveling too much to be wrathful.

There is strength in this baby animal, he thought; surely he has the muscle and energy for great deeds; for that was such a tremendous butting he gave me that I am more comfortable standing than sitting. So he stood and admired this strong and energetic ox calf, who was calmly seated on his haunches before the fireplace, now throwing his head to the right as he licked his right shoulder, now throwing his head to the left as he licked his left shoulder. While Paul Bunyon admired, he pondered; then, even as Bébé had given him his first laugh, the ox calf now showed him the outline of his first real idea. The thought struck him that his student’s life was finally over; there was nothing more for him to learn; there was everything for him to do. The hour for action was at hand.

Indeed, if he was to keep this blue ox calf, action was truly necessary. Bébé had shown that his super-abundance of vitality made him dangerous as well as delightful and amusing. This inexhaustible energy of his must be put to work; this vast store of power in an ox-hide should be developed and harnessed to give reality to some one of Paul Bunyon’s vague dreams.

Soon the well-fed blue ox calf lay down and slept contentedly. But Paul Bunyon did not sleep. One after another, occupations, enterprises and industries which would be worthy of his knowledge and his extraordinary mental and physical powers, and which would also offer labor great enough for Bébé when he was grown, were considered by Paul Bunyon; but nothing that he thought about satisfied him in the least. Certainly he would have to invent something new; and as he thought of invention, his imagination blazed up like a fire in a dry forest. He was so unused to it that it got out of control, and its smoky flames hid his idea rather than illuminating it.

Wearied at last, he lay on his side, for he remembered his bruises, and he fell into a troubled doze. Now he dreamed and saw great blazing letters which formed the words REAL AMERICA. He sat up, and his bruises gave him such sudden pain that the dream vanished utterly. But he dreamed again before morning. In this second dream he saw no words, but a forest. A flame like a scythe blade sheared through the trees and they fell. Then Paul Bunyon saw in his dream a forest of stumps, and trees were fallen among them.

For many days Paul Bunyon thought about these dreams as he gathered moose moss for Bébé and seined fish from the bay for himself. And for many nights he tried to dream again, but his sleep was the untroubled sleep of the weary.

Bébé grew wonderfully as the weeks went by, and the moose moss made him saucy as well as fat. His bulging blue eyes got a jovial look that was never to leave them. His bellow already had bass tones in it. He would paw and snort and lift his tail as vigorously as any ordinary ox ten times his age. His chest deepened, his back widened, muscle-masses began to swell and quiver under the fat of his shoulders and haunches. The drifts of the beautiful unnatural snow melted away in streams of blue water, and the marvelous color of this historical winter vanished, but the glittering blue of Bébé’s silken hair remained. His tail brush was of a darker blue; it looked like a heavily foliaged cypress bough in purple twilight; and Bébé was proud of this wonderful tail brush that belonged to him, for he would twist it from behind him and turn his head and stare at it by the hour.

Now spring came and Paul Bunyon determined to start out with his blue ox calf and try to find the meanings of his dreams. The bright warm hours of these days gave him a tormenting physical restlessness; and his imagination ranged through a thousand lands, playing over a thousand activities. It was certainly the time to begin a Life Work.

Each day Paul Bunyon pondered his two dreams without finding substantial meaning in them. The first one indicated that he should go to Real America; and this Paul Bunyon finally resolved to do, hoping that he would discover the Work that was meant for him and the blue ox calf. He knew that he could not fare worse in that land, for few of the fauna of his native country had returned with the spring, and Paul Bunyon could not live well on a fish diet. Bébé’s growing appetite, too, made some move a necessity, for the blue snow had killed the moose grass, and moose moss was a dry food without nourishment in the summer. The more Paul Bunyon thought about Real America, the better he liked the idea of going there. Moose and grass, at least, were to be found across the Border. And no doubt Real America was his Land of Opportunity.

So one fine day Paul Bunyon and Bébé came down to the Border. The blue ox calf frolicked with his master and bellowed happily when he saw the green grass and clover on the hills of Real America. He was for rushing over at once, but Paul Bunyon, the student, was not unmindful of his duty to his new country; he would not enter it without fitting ceremonies and pledges, though Bébé butted him soundly in resenting the delay.

Now Paul Bunyon lifted his hands solemnly and spoke in the rightful language of Real America.

“In becoming a Real American, I become Paul Bunyan,” he declared. “I am Paul Bunyon no more. Even so shall my blue ox calf be called Babe, and Bébé no longer. We are now Real Americans both, hearts, souls and hides.”

After uttering these words with feeling and solemnity, an emotion more expansive, more uplifting and more inspiring than any he had ever known possessed Paul Bunyan and transfigured him. His chest swelled, his eyes danced and glittered, and his cheeks shone rosily through the black curls of his beard.

“And I’m glad of it!” he roared. “By the holy old mackinaw, and by the hell-jumping, high-tailed, fuzzy-eared, whistling old jeem cris and seventeen slippery saints, I’m proud of it, too! Gloriously proud!”

Then he felt amazed beyond words that the simple fact of entering Real America and becoming a Real American could make him feel so exalted, so pure, so noble, so good. And an indomitable conquering spirit had come to him also. He now felt that he could whip his weight in wildcats, that he could pull the clouds out of the sky, or chew up stones, or tell the whole world anything.

“Since becoming a Real American,” roared Paul Bunyan, “I can look any man straight in the eye and tell him to go to hell! If I could meet a man of my own size, I’d prove this instantly. We may find such a man and celebrate our naturalization in a Real American manner. We shall see. Yay, Babe!”

Then the two great Real Americans leaped over the Border. Freedom and Inspiration and Uplift were in the very air of this country, and Babe and Paul Bunyan got more noble feelings in every breath. They were greatly exhilarated physically at first; and they galloped over valleys and hills without looking about them, but only breathing this soul-flushing air and roaring and bellowing their delight in it.

But before the day was over, Paul Bunyan discovered that Real America had its sober, matter-of-fact side also. A whisper stirred in his heart: “To work! Take advantage of your opportunity!” The whisper got louder and more insistent every moment; and at last the idea it spoke possessed Paul Bunyan, and he sat down to ponder it, letting Babe graze and roll on the clover-covered hills.

Now the whisper became an insistent cry: “Work! Work! Work!” Paul Bunyan looked up, and he seemed to see the word shining among the clouds; he looked down then into the vast valley, and he seemed to see—by the holy old mackinaw! he did see—the forest of his second dream! And now he knew it: his Life Work was to begin here.

For many days and nights Paul Bunyan pondered on the hillside before the Great Idea came to him. Like all Great Ideas, it was simple enough, once he had thought of it. Real America was covered with forests. A forest was composed of trees. A felled and trimmed tree was a log. Paul Bunyan threw aside his pine tree beard brush and jumped to his feet with a great shout.

“What greater work could be done in Real America than to make logs from trees?” he cried. “Logging! I shall invent this industry and make it the greatest one of all time! I shall become a figure as admired in history as any of the great ones I have read about.”

Paul Bunyan then delivered his first oration. The blue ox calf was his only listener; and this was a pity, for Paul Bunyan’s first oratorical effort, inspired as it was, surely was one of his noblest ones. But we know the outline of this oration, if not the words. It dealt mainly with the logging method which he had devised in the moment, the one which he used in his first work. So he told of his plan to uproot the trees by hand, and to transport the logs overland, binding a bundle of them on one side of Babe, and hanging a sack of rocks from the other side for ballast. It was months after this that he made his first improvement, the using of a second bundle of logs, instead of rocks, for ballast. And at this moment Paul Bunyan, for all his foresight and imagination, could not have dreamed of the superb tools and marvelous logging methods that he was to originate, or of the countless crews of little loggers that he was to import from France, Ireland, Scotland and Scandinavia, or of the tremendous river drives and the mammoth camp life he was to create. He would have been bewildered then by the fact that he would some day need a foreman as grand as himself for his Life Work; and the notion that he would some day need help in his figuring would have seemed like a far-fetched jest.

No; in this first oration, imaginative and eloquent as it must have been, Paul Bunyan only spoke of simple work for himself and Babe. But he only tells us that the oration was not a long one, for the call to Work came more insistently as he ended each period. At last he had to answer this powerful call. He commanded, “Yay, Babe!” and the baby blue ox and Paul Bunyan descended into the valley to begin the first logging in the Real American woods.

THE BULL OF THE WOODS

“The straw boss is the backbone of industry,” was a favorite saying of Paul Bunyan’s. This sage observation is constantly repeated to-day by industrialists who are so overwhelmed by salesmen, efficiency experts, welfare workers and the like that they are forced to leave production in the hands of the powerful race of foremen.

Paul Bunyan had become a true man of the woods, and paperwork troubled him. He was fortunate in discovering the greatest man with figures that ever lived to do his office work for him, and this man, Johnny Inkslinger, did all the figuring alone after he came to camp. But before the renowned timekeeper was found the keeping of his accounts and records was Paul Bunyan’s largest difficulty. He figured wearily and the smell of ink often made him sick. His logging operations grew more extensive as time went on. He brought crews of great little men from overseas and organized his first logging camp. He cleared off seven hundred townships in the Smiling River country for a big farm, and John Shears, his earnest boss farmer, managed it so efficiently that new companies of loggers had to be added to the camp each season to use up the produce; consequently, more and more timber was being felled as each season ran its course.

At last it got so that figuring occupied all of Paul Bunyan’s time between supper and breakfast, and then he had to take time away from work in the woods for the keeping of his accounts. In vain he tried to increase his speed as a figurer. He learned to write with both hands at once; but this was no use, for the two sets of figures would mix up in his head and result in confusion. He invented the multiplication table, cube root and algebra, but production increased so fast that these short cuts gave him no more time than before for the woods. Then he gave in to necessity and looked about for help. No figurers were anywhere to be discovered, so Paul Bunyan invented bossmen to carry on the work in the woods while he held forth in the office.

His first foreman was Gun Gunderson, commonly known as “Shot” Gunderson because of his explosive nature. He originated the “High-ball System,” which is still used in some logging camps. Much of the loggers’ tough vocabulary has come down from him. His favorite words of encouragement were: “Put a better notch in that stick or I’ll cave your head in!” “Heave harder on that peavy handle, you gizzardless scissor-bill, or I’ll put the calks to you!” He began to lose power when the loggers learned his lingo and came back at him fiercely in his own words. His downfall happened in the second winter on Tadpole River, in the Bullfrog Lake country. That was the winter of the Big Wind, which blew so hard for four months that Shot Gunderson had to yell at the top of his voice to be heard in its howling blasts. His voice cracked under the strain and then, of course, his chief strength as a boss was gone. He became a plain logger again, and Chris Crosshaulsen succeeded him.

This industrious man was a worthy and well-beloved boss, but he, too, had a fatal weakness. Such a passion for river driving did he possess that he could never stop the drive at its destination, but he would run the logs on for miles and then drive them back again. This upstream driving was terrible labor, for each logger had to drive one log at a time; treading it, he would roll it against the current. So much time and energy was wasted for Chris Crosshaulsen’s pleasure that Paul Bunyan was forced to depose him.

The next chief was Ole Olsen. He was so loved that countless loggers have been named after him, but his tender heart made him a failure as a boss. Other bosses were Lars Larsen, Swan Swanson, Pete Peterson, John Johnson, Jens Jensen, Anders Anderson, Hans Hansen, and Eric Ericksen. They were all noble men, and loggers and mill men are still named in their honor. But not one was powerful enough to keep his job as Paul Bunyan’s aide. Once, indeed, it was thought that an ideal foreman had been discovered when a burly man who called himself Murph Murpheson was put on the job. But one night he was heard talking Gaelic in his sleep. Cross-questioned, he admitted that his true name was Pat Murphy; knowing Paul Bunyan’s predilection for Scandinavian foremen he had called himself Murph Murpheson in order to get his high position. Deceit was the one human frailty that the great logger had no tolerance for, and the Irish boss followed his predecessors.

Paul Bunyan was now without a foreman, and he had never had a greater need for a good one. For his next project was to log off the Dakota country, which was then known as the region of the Mountain That Stood On Its Head. Difficulties loomed before him which only he or a better foreman than he had yet discovered could surmount. Unless he discovered either a great figurer or a great foreman success would be improbable.

Then fortune shone on him with sudden, dazzling brightness. For word came down through the woods that the mightiest logger of Sweden was tramping overland for Paul Bunyan’s camp. The gossip that ran before him called him Sweden’s greatest milker also; and some whispered that he was the greatest fisherman and the greatest hunter of that country of superb giants. It was rumored that he was taller than a tree, as tall as Paul Bunyan and as wide, and that he feared no man. The great logger, toiling over his vast ledgers, heard and hoped that the perfect foreman was coming to him at last.

He arrived at the end of a bright June day. The loggers were at supper, happily occupied with pea soup and hard-tack, which were their only rations at that time. The soup bowls before the loggers were emptying fast, and the cookhouse resounded with a hissing rumble, to which the clangor of the spoons striking the bottoms of the bowls was presently added. Then above the noise was heard a slow muffled “boom ... boom ... boom.”

The loggers listened and wondered. “Ol’ Paul’s walkin’ heavy this evenin’,” said some. Said others, “But it don’t sound like Ol’ Paul’s step anyway.” The booming tramp sounded nearer; the cookhouse began to shake; the loggers, curious and wondering, gulped down the last of their soup and hurried outside.

Through the trees that covered the slopes above the camp they saw a great man approaching. He was not as tall as the tallest trees, but the shortest ones were no higher than his waist. Yellow bristles protruded through the crevices in the hat that was cocked on one side of his head; he walked with a swagger that sent the limbs crashing as he swayed against them; a good-sized pine tree stood in his way, and he cast it aside and marched on. When he had reached the center of the camp he stopped and said in a commanding voice, “Aye wan’ see Paul Bunyan.”

While he waited the loggers gazed in awe on his heroic figure, and they whispered to one another that here at last was the Swede of wonderful deeds. It was indeed a marvelous moment for them. Every real logger to-day would give ten years of his life to have been among the men who first saw Hels Helsen the mighty, the Big Swede, the incomparable Bull of the Woods.

When Paul Bunyan came forth he made no attempt to conceal his pleasure over the newcomer. For the first time in months the darkness of worry lifted from his countenance and a smile shone through his beard. He shook hands awkwardly, as this was a novel experience for him. Here was a man whom he did not have to look down upon to see, one man who could reach above the great logger’s boot tops. Surely he would make an ideal foreman; though a fierce light glittered at moments in his blue eyes, his grin showed that he possessed the amiability that a good foreman must have; being a Swede, he was certainly trustworthy and obedient.

In broken Real American Hels Helsen began to tell Paul Bunyan of the purpose of his journey from the old country. But he got no further than an account of his hard tramp over the polar lands, where he had lived on white bear meat and whale steak, when Paul Bunyan stopped him.

“A mountain of energy, a river of power like yourself does not need to make explanations or ask me for anything,” said the mighty logger. “I appoint you foreman at once, without question.”

“Fooreman?” asked Hels Helsen, seemingly puzzled.

“Yes,” said Paul Bunyan heartily. “You shall be boss over all my loggers in the timber and on the drives. Honor and glory will be yours, for you shall be remembered as long as men fell trees. I will give you a fitting title. I call you ‘the Bull of the Woods,’ a name which shall be applied to only the greatest of woods bosses hereafter because you were the first to have it.”

“Har noo—” began Hels Helsen; but his words were drowned in the great cheer which had arisen from the excited loggers.

Their enthusiasm inspired Paul Bunyan to make one of his famous speeches. He spoke for an hour about the historic accomplishment that was now certain in the logging off of the Mountain That Stood On Its Head.

“A cheer now, my men, for Hels Helsen, the Bull of the Woods!” Thus Paul Bunyan ended his speech; and the loggers responded with a shout that sounded like one throat had made it.

Several times during the early part of the speech Hels Helsen had attempted to interrupt Paul Bunyan, but he was always silenced by the matchless eloquence of the master orator. And when the loggers cheered him he kept in his heart whatever he wanted to say; he frowned and mumbled powerfully for a moment; but then he grinned and obediently followed Paul Bunyan into the camp office.

The virgin Dakota country of that time had what was no doubt the most beautiful and unique scenic feature in Real America. In the center of a forested plain stood the largest and most original of all mountains, the Mountain That Stood On Its Head. Its peak was buried in the ground, and its slopes ran outward, instead of in toward its summit. It was five miles in a direct line from the head of the mountain and up the slope to the rim of its foot; ascent would seem impossible to any beholder, for a climber up the mountain side would necessarily have to move with his feet uppermost or else walk with his head. The stubborn pine trees on the mountain sides had refused to grow unnaturally; they had kept their roots in the ground, and their tops all pointed downward. The summit of the mountain (perhaps I should go on saying “foot,” but this might prove confusing) was a plain two miles above a plain, for it was flat and heavily timbered with the noblest of close-grained pine. This unnatural but wonderful mountain top was in the form of a true circle which was one hundred and twenty-seven miles in circumference. At one place the rim of the circle rose gently, and a mild slope ran away from it towards the center of the plain. Here were the High Springs, whose waters formed Lofty River and flowed smoothly through aisles of pine and wound among meadows which were abloom with mountain orchids and fragrant with purple clover. The falls in which the river made its two mile drop to the plain below had been named Niagara by Paul Bunyan, to honor the memory of his old moose hound, and the name was later passed on to a little waterfall along the Border.

It was to this place of scenic grandeur that Paul Bunyan now moved his camp. It was here that he was determined to try out Hels Helsen and make him prove his right to the title of Bull of the Woods. The camp was put in order; the axmen and sawyers were given their stations in the woods, trails were swamped out for Babe, the big blue ox, to use in snaking the logs to the landings, Hels Helsen was given final instructions. Paul Bunyan then retired with a sigh to his ledgers, and the logging began.

Paul Bunyan had figured that it would require two seasons to log off Dakota; one season for the low lands, and one for the mountain. But he did not know Hels Helsen, the Big Swede. From the time that he yelled, “Roll out or roll up!” on his first morning in camp the loggers felt the urge of a new power and they put a vigor and force into their work which had been lacking for a long time. Not often did the Bull of the Woods speak to them, but when he did his roar made the loggers remember his title; and the chips flew from the ax bits like leaves in a wind, and the saws smoked as they flashed back and forth in the tree trunks.

Logs piled up ahead of the blue ox, but Hels Helsen remembering the tricks he had learned as a great man with cattle in the old country, took the exuberant, well-meaning creature in hand and taught him speed. So active did Babe become that only Hels Helsen could handle him. Each morning, eager to get to work, he galloped madly for the woods, while the foreman held grimly to the halter rope, thrown from his feet very often, hurled through the air, bounced over rocks and stumps, but holding fast always.

So rapidly did the logging go on that Paul Bunyan could only accomplish the necessary figuring by giving all of his time to it. He began to weary of his hours at the desk, while his soul cried out for the timber; he envied Hels Helsen for the ideal life he was living, but he gladly gave him the honor and glory that was his due. Latin Paul Bunyan praised his great Nordic foreman constantly and said nothing of himself.

Now, as Paul Bunyan’s only physical weakness was a ticklishness of the neck, so was his only mental weakness extreme modesty. He never boasted, and he never belittled the pretensions of his men by reminding them of his own part in their achievements. Consequently, his inventions were taken as a matter of course, and his paperwork was not considered very difficult by his loggers because they knew nothing about it. His praise of Hels Helsen, and his reticence about himself, naturally made his men exaggerate the greatness of the Bull of the Woods and minimize the importance of Paul Bunyan.

The effect on Hels Helsen was even more dangerous. In the first place he had not come to Paul Bunyan with the intention of seeking a foreman’s job; he had wanted to propose a partnership between the greatest man of Sweden and the greatest man of Real America. But Paul Bunyan’s oratory had baffled him, and he had taken the position without arguing for what he considered his rightful place. However, a resentment had been kindled in his soul; and with his success as a foreman it flamed into an exalted opinion of his own powers; as the time for logging off the mountain approached he resolved to not only make this enterprise bring him equality with Paul Bunyan but a position of command over him. Therefore, a terrible conflict was inevitable.

The first intimation that Paul Bunyan had of the coming struggle was during the preparations for logging off the mountain. He himself had made many plans for accomplishing the difficult job, taking time from his office work to think them out. Then the first drive was finished and the day came when felling was to begin on the mountain side. On that morning Paul Bunyan was about to call his foreman to give him instructions when he heard the loggers marching out of camp. Hels Helsen was taking them to the woods; the foreman had seemed to think it unnecessary to consult with Paul Bunyan. For a moment the master of the camp had a raging impulse to take after them and assert his authority, but his good sense restrained him.

“There is no appetite more powerful than that for the strong meat of authority,” Paul Bunyan always told his bossmen. “But if you bite off more than you can chew, nothing will choke you more surely.”

Paul Bunyan remembered this saying now, and he thought it best to let Hels Helsen learn the lesson for himself.

So for days he made no inquiries about the progress of the work in the woods. He busied himself with his figures and waited. He noted with secret pleasure the bafflement and worry that showed in deeper lines on Hels Helsen’s face each succeeding night. The loggers were always utterly weary now when they got into camp; at last many of them were too exhausted to eat their pea soup when the day was done; others went to sleep at the supper table, and they would not awaken until breakfast time. Then the first week’s scale was brought in, and it showed only an average of one tree per man for each seventy-two hours of labor. The master logger chuckled over this, but he said nothing.

On Monday morning, his accounts being in order, he walked over the hump to where he could observe the logging operations.

On the slopes—or under them, rather—of the Mountain That Stood On Its Head crawled Hels Helsen, and he was urging the loggers to follow him. Not an original method had he devised; he was even insisting that the loggers walk upside down and fell the trees in exactly the same style that they used when standing up. Having been a champion mountain climber in Sweden, he got up the slopes without much difficulty, and he strung cables between the trees. Along these cables the loggers dizzily worked themselves. Tree-felling even under ordinary conditions is hard labor for the strongest men. But when a woodsman attempts to operate a limber crosscut saw and a heavy ax, his head down, his body hanging by a leather belt which is fastened to a swaying cable; when a woodsman looks up to see his feet and to have dirt and sawdust fall down in his eyes; when a woodsman looks down to see rocks and stumps a mile and a half below him—brave and powerful though he may be, a woodsman in such circumstances is bound to feel inconvenienced, harassed and impeded in the performance of his labor. And even the threatening roars and the pleading bellows of a Hels Helsen, the supreme and original Bull of the Woods, cannot make him work efficiently.

“The test of great leadership is originality,” mused Paul Bunyan, as he returned to camp. “At least some inventiveness is needed. Heroic Hels Helsen, the Bull of the Woods—a fair title. The hero inspires, but the thinker leads. I shall now think. One great idea put into action can set the world afire. Surely it will take no more than a common one to master Hels Helsen.”

In such solemn ponderings Paul Bunyan spent the rest of the day. Until midnight he thought, and then the idea came. He at once went to work to make a reality of it.

From an old chest that held the weapons and traps of his pre-logging days he brought forth the most prized weapon of his youth, a gold-butted, diamond-mounted, double-barreled shot gun. He spent the rest of the night in careful cleaning of all its parts. An idea of the size and power of this super-cannon can be gained when it is remembered that he used its two barrels at a later time as smokestacks for his first sawmill. The shells for it were made from the largest cedar logs in the country; they were hollowed out, bound with brass, and capped with sheet iron.

After breakfast, when the loggers had gone wearily to their terrible labor, Paul Bunyan ordered Big Ole, the blacksmith, to cut up thousands of pieces of sheet iron, making each one two feet square. In two days he had the shells loaded, and he was ready to try out his idea. Then he waited for the time when Hels Helsen would have to call on him for help. And this time was sure to come soon, for as the work slowly moved up from the head of the mountain the unimaginative logging methods of the stubborn Bull of the Woods could not but fail completely. And Hels Helsen was not the leader to change these methods himself; he was only a hero.

But Paul Bunyan was not prepared for the monstrous display of effrontery which was given by Hels Helsen when the exhausted loggers could no longer follow him up the mountain side.

One morning the foreman did not call the men out to work; instead, Paul Bunyan heard him giving them orders to pack up.

“Thunderation!” exclaimed the master logger. “What means this, Hels?”

The Bull of the Woods was attaching a cable to the cookhouse skids. He looked up with an insolent grin.

“Aye forgot tal you, Bunyan, but aye goin’ move dar camp,” he said, in tones of marked disrespect. “No use to try har no moore noo, aye tank. Logger can’ stan’ on head mooch lonker har. Aye don’ tank so, Bunyan. We move new yob noo.”

“Bunyan!” exploded the appalled leader. “‘Bunyan,’ you call me! You think you’ll move the camp! You will do so! By the blazing sands of the hot high hills of hell, and by the stink and steam of its low swamp water, how in the name of the holy old mackinaw, how in the names of the whistling old, roaring old, jumping old, bald-headed, blue-bellied jeem cris and the dod derned dod do you figure you’re wearing any shining crown of supreme authority in this man’s camp? Say!!!”

“Aye tank so,” said Hels Helsen calmly.

“Suffering old saints and bleary-eyed fathers!”

“Yah, aye tank so.”

With a mighty effort Paul Bunyan recovered his poise and dignity. He strode to the office and got his shot gun and a sack of shells loaded with sheet iron squares. Then his “All out, men!” rolled through the camp.

The power of that unloosed voice threw each logger into the air, and they all dropped, bottoms down, on the rocky ground. They were still dazed men as they wabbled to their feet, and they meekly followed their rightful leader toward the mountain, rubbing sore spots with their hands as they staggered along. Muttering darkly, Hels Helsen followed at a distance.

Paul Bunyan halted the loggers before they reached the shadows of the mountain. He turned and faced them, and for a moment they stood in breathless terror, fearing that he was going to urge them to another effort on the slopes above. But no. Paul Bunyan only said, in the tones of a gentle teacher, “You see before you a logged-off plain. Only stumps remain upon its soil. I shall make you a forest. Behold!”

He turned and lifted the shot gun to his shoulder and pulled the triggers; both barrels went off in such a violent explosion that many of the loggers again tumbled to the ground. Clouds of dust dropped from the mountain side and blanketed the plain. When the wind had thinned out the fog the amazed loggers saw the beginnings of a new forest before them. The loads from the two shells had sheared off a thousand trees; they had dropped straightly down and plunged their tops into the plain. And there they stood, the strangest grove ever seen by man. The small brushy tops of the trees were imbedded in the ground, and their huge bare trunks were swaying high in the air. Before the loggers had recovered from their astonishment at the sight Paul Bunyan was firing again; and all that day the terrific explosions of his gun, and the falling clouds of dust from the mountain addled the loggers. At sundown he had completed the circuit around the Mountain That Stood On Its Head; its slopes were shorn of trees, and the plain underneath once more had a forest. It was an amazing artificial one, and the loggers doubted if they could get used to it. But it promised easy logging, and when their leader ordered them into camp they went singing. It looked like the good old times were back.

“Now,” said Paul Bunyan to his foreman, “the idea has mastered the material. I turn the job over to you. Go to it in the morning. In the meantime, I’ll invent a way to log off the foot of the mountain which towers yonder among the clouds.”

Hels Helsen said nothing; but he scowled and scratched his head.

In the morning Paul Bunyan was figuring briskly, quite content again, when he noticed a stir in the camp that was unusual for the late hour. He looked out and saw the loggers wandering idly about. They said that Hels Helsen had not ordered them to roll out but had gone to the woods himself. Sensing that a struggle was at hand for the dominance of the camp, and realizing that the powerful and obtuse Hels Helsen could only be conquered by physical force, Paul Bunyan ordered his men to remain behind, and he started after the foreman.

Hels Helsen was climbing the mountain when Paul Bunyan reached the new forest, and he paid no heed to the calls that were sent after him. The climber had his shoes off, and he moved up swiftly by grasping the largest stumps of the sheared trees with his fingers, wrapping his toes around others and drawing himself up like a rope climber. In a short time he reached the rim and, throwing his leg over it, he drew himself to the top. He rested for a moment, then he stood up and began uprooting the close-grained white pine trees, which extended scores of miles before him. A tumult of rage swelled up in Paul Bunyan’s heart. So Hels Helsen had rebelled and become an independent logger. If competition had been necessary to the logging industry the greatest logger himself would have invented it. But he knew that equality was an evil thing; a powerful rival was not to be tolerated; for the sake of the grand new race of loggers, if for nothing else, Hels Helsen must be put in his proper place.

Wise even in wrath, Paul Bunyan did not attempt to climb the mountain. He ran to a far point of the plain, then he turned and rushed back with his greatest speed. When he neared the mountain he leaped, he struck the ground with his knees bending for a spring, and then he threw himself upward in a tremendous lunge. His upstretched hands brushed down the slope and started a roaring avalanche. A large section of the rim gave way, and now a large hill stood under the broken edge of the mountain rim. Again Paul Bunyan ran and leaped; this time he made his second jump from the hilltop and his hands caught over a cliff that jutted below the broken rim. Laboriously he drew himself up, he thrust his foot over the top, and after a struggle that sent more rocks and trees crashing down upon the hill, he won to the plain and lay resting for the battle.

A minute had not passed before he felt the mountain shake, and when he rolled over he saw Hels Helsen rushing upon him. The Big Swede’s blue eyes flashed like hot polished steel, the gritting of his teeth sounded like the grind of a rock crusher, his hat was off and his yellow bristles stuck up like tall ripe grain on a squat hill. The pine trees rocked and creaked from the wind of his swinging fists. The mighty Paul Bunyan sprang to his feet and received the furious charge as a cliff of solid rock receives the smash of a tidal wave....

The loggers in camp heard a stupendous uproar of battle, and they fled from the shaking bunkhouses. The bravest among them crawled to the top of the hump, from where they could see the mountain. When they beheld the titanic conflict that was raging two miles above them on the flat mountain top they stood like images of stone and stared affrightedly. Around and around the one hundred and twenty-seven mile circle of the lofty plain the leader and the foreman fought with all their powers. Now came a sound like a thunder-clap as Paul Bunyan smote Hels Helsen solidly on his square jaw. Now came a sound like a hurricane screeching through a network of cables as Hels Helsen’s hand seized Paul Bunyan’s beard and was jerked loose. For a long time the struggle seemed equal, with neither combatant suffering great injury. Then Paul Bunyan’s shoulders struck acres of pine trees with the crash of a tornado. A heaving mass of dust rolled over him, but the dauntless leader’s head was suddenly thrust above it; the loggers saw his fist fly from behind him, it squashed over Hels Helsen’s nose, and the sun shone red through a spray of blood.... Balloons and geysers of dust now rose explosively all over the mountain top, and heavy gray clouds soon hid the mountain from view; trees and rocks crashed everywhere on the plain below; the convulsions of the earth increased in force; even the bravest of the loggers were at last terrified by the shocks and blasts, and they fled to camp and hid under their blankets.

All night the tumult of battle sounded, but at dawn there was a crash of such shocking force that it upset every bunkhouse; and then a sudden hush. The loggers, all shell-shocked and bruised, crawled under their overturned bunks, but as the quiet persisted they at length ventured outside. The dust was still rolling by in thick clouds and they could not see their hands before them. But at sunup it had thinned out, and ere long they beheld the figure of one of the fighters looming in the distance. The conqueror was carrying his helpless adversary over his shoulder.

And this conqueror, this victor in that tourney of the Titans, that battle of the behemoths, that riot of the races, that Herculean jaw-hammering, chin-mauling, nose-pounding, side-stamping, cheek-tearing, rib-breaking, lip-pinching, back-beating, neck-choking, eye-gouging, tooth-jerking, arm-twisting, head-butting, beard-pulling, ear-biting, bottom-thumping, toe-holding, knee-tickling, shin-cracking, heel-bruising, belly-whacking, hair-yanking, hell-roaring supreme and incomparable knock-down-and-drag-out fight of all history was the mighty leader of the new race of loggers, Battling Paul Bunyan.

Tattered, bloody, dirt-streaked, he marched with dignity still. On through the hosts of silent awed loggers he passed, without glancing down at them. He disappeared with the Bull of the Woods into the camp office.

“You’re going to be a good foreman now, Hels Helsen!”

“Aye tank so, Mr. Bunyan.”

“You know so, Hels Helsen.”

“Yah, Mr. Bunyan.”

And no more was said.

The wonderful mountain was gone, alas; the struggle had demolished it and scattered its majesty in dust over the plain. To-day the Northern winds blow down over the desolate remains of that once noble and marvelous eminence—the remains of blood-darkened dust which are now known as the Black Hills of Dakota.

A MATTER OF HISTORY

Three weeks after his cataclysmic fist fight with his foreman, Hels Helsen, Paul Bunyan was up and around, thinking of his next move. Dakota, once a great timberland, was now a brown, barren country; its logs and stumps had been covered with blankets of dust when the Mountain That Stood On Its Head was destroyed, and the mountain itself was now only clusters of black hills. The greatest logging camp of all history was situated in a vacant prairie. It was preposterous.

But the mighty logger did not revile fate, nor did he lift his voice in lamentations. Neither did he have words of condemnation for the belligerent audacity of the Big Swede, who, chastened and meek in defeat, now gazed worshipfully on his conqueror. Still wearing the bruises and scars of battle, he limped around his bunk a few times and then said mildly:

“Aye tank aye soon be back on yob noo, Mr. Bunyan.”

“We have no job now. There is no timber within hundreds of miles of us.”

Paul Bunyan shook his head sadly; but presently consoling thoughts came to him, and then proud joy flashed in his eyes.

“But what does the ruin of a season’s logging matter?” he said cheerily. “We have made history; and that is what matters. After all, industry is bunk; making history is the true work of the leader-hero. And this fight of ours was the first dramatic historical event since the Winter of the Blue Snow. This idea would be a great consolation to you also, but you lack imagination.”

“Yah,” said the Big Swede humbly. “Aye yust wan’ yob, Mr. Bunyan.”

“And a job you shall have,” said Paul Bunyan with great heartiness. “We will move at once to—but that is something to be thought about. Wherever we go you shall have full command over the blue ox. And, next to myself, you shall be in command over the loggers. Now that there is peace and understanding between us we can perform impossible labors.”

For several hours the great logger talked on, and there was more of enthusiasm than of purpose in his speech, for he was still shaken from the knocks and strokes the Big Swede had given him three weeks before. The foreman went to sleep at length, but all night Paul Bunyan was wakeful with troublous fancies and bright but insubstantial ideas. In the morning, when his mind was calmer and his thoughts more orderly, only one of the notions that had come to him seemed worth while. This was the idea of a double drive, one under his direction, and one in the charge of the Big Swede, but both of them side by side. It should make a unique race. There was some stuff of history in the idea.

So Paul Bunyan determined to forget the Dakota Disaster and make practical preparations for the new achievement at once. First, he inspected the bunkhouses and found that the loggers had set them up and repaired the bunks. Next, he examined the cookhouse, and he saw to his pleasure, that the cooks had it clean of dust and that pea soup was once more bubbling on the stoves. Babe, the big blue ox, was suffering from hayfever, and he sneezed dolefully at long intervals, but the old eager, jovial look was in his eyes; they shone like blue moons when Paul Bunyan looked him over.

Satisfied, the master logger returned to his office. He found the Big Swede on his feet, and there was only a slight limp in his walk this morning. It looked indeed like good luck was returning, and Paul Bunyan thought of the double drive with great hope. In a splendid good humor he jested with his foreman as he opened his roll-top desk to examine his papers. But the great logger’s merriment was quickly hushed as the desk top rolled up and a frightful sight was revealed. The shock of battle had shaken the ink barrels into pieces, and the shelf on which they stood was now covered with a black mass of broken staves. Below were his ledgers. In dismay Paul Bunyan pulled them out and opened them. Nearly every page was wet and black, and the old figures were almost illegible. The Ledgers from 1 to 7, for example, seemed to be entirely ruined. Ledger No. 1111 had black pages up to page 27,000, and its other sheets were badly smeared. Even Ledger 10,000, the last one in the row, had streaks and daubs on most of its sheets, and only the last 3,723 pages remained unstained. Paul Bunyan was appalled, and only his brave heart could have kept courage in such discouraging circumstances.

He wished to be alone, so he gave the Big Swede instructions to groom the blue ox and trim his hooves. When the foreman was gone, Paul Bunyan sat down, and, having dug a young pine tree out of the earth, he began to brush his beard and ponder.

The damage done to his precious records was a terrible blow, and he thought first of how he might repair it. As he had said, his main desire was to make history; his imagination rose above mere industry. His records contained the history of all his operations, even to their most minute details, and if no one could read them his work up to the present time was all wasted. The loss of his grand history was, to Paul Bunyan’s mind, the most terrible part of the Dakota Disaster. But his loggers, of course, were only interested in their work; and the Big Swede, too, was now anxious to show his conqueror that he would be an obedient, efficient foreman on the next job. It was Paul Bunyan’s duty to find a good one for them, and one that would make a fitting beginning for a new history also. Resolving to devote his energies solely to realizing this hope, he shook off regret and forced a smile and a jest.

“It is no use crying over spilled ink,” he said.

So he put the old ledgers away in the chest which held his souvenirs, and he brought out a set of new ones. In them his new records should be made, his future history written. It should be an account of splendid deeds and give him enough glory. He found many gladdening thoughts, and when he gave orders for a move he showed his men the same cheerful face that they had always known.

The loggers hustled and bustled, and in a short time the camp buildings were lined up and fastened together. The grand cookhouse was put in the lead, Babe was hitched to its skids, and Paul Bunyan and the Big Swede took stations in front of him. “Yay, Babe!” the leader said, and the move began.

Happy were the loggers as the camp flew over the prairie, though not one of them knew where it was going. All were certain, of course, that they were headed for some vast timberland where great logging could be enjoyed. They supposed that Paul Bunyan planned a surprise for them, as he had not given his usual graphic and prophetic speech before the start was made. The word was passed along that the new job was too wonderful to tell about. But this was only part of the truth. Paul Bunyan’s mind was indeed filled with the idea of a unique double drive, but he did not yet know where the project could be carried out. A wide, gentle river with timber on both sides of it was needed; and once found, he would have to use his inventiveness to the utmost in order to divide the stream so that two drives could be made side by side on it.

Paul Bunyan traveled far with his camp in search of the ideal river. Powder River looked promising at first; it was a mile wide, but then it was only a foot deep. It deepened and got narrow in one place, but this was only a deceitful twist of the stream, for it presently turned and ran on its edge for the rest of its course, its waters a mile deep and a foot wide. Hot River, in the Boiling Springs country, flowed placidly and honestly enough all its way, but it was of a temperature to scald the calks off the loggers’ boots. And Wild River, though it was a white water stream, would have served for a double drive; but it was alive with cougarfish, a species resembling the catfish of the Mississippi; but the cougarfish were larger and incomparably more savage and had claws on their tails. Careful Paul Bunyan would not risk his loggers among them.

At last the master logger had only one hope left. It lay in the Twin Rivers country. Twin Rivers were ideal for a double drive, as they were two fat streams which flowed lazily, smoothly, and side by side through a wide valley. But that country was the scene of Paul Bunyan’s first logging; it was there that he had invented the industry; and, having no loggers then, he had uprooted trees by handfuls to get his logs. Consequently, second growth timber was not to be hoped for in the greater part of that region. In the lower part of the Twin Rivers valley there might be some new timber, for there Paul Bunyan had taught the blue ox the art of skidding; and he had sheared off most of the trees instead of uprooting them. No doubt there were some new trees on this land, but most of the logs for a double drive on Twin Rivers would have to be procured elsewhere. How he was to get them he did not know. But he was staunch and inflexible in his determination to make the second event of his new history a tremendously successful one.

So Babe was turned toward the Twin Rivers country, and in a few hours the loggers were getting glimpses of familiar scenes as the bunkhouses sailed over stump-covered valleys and hills. They still had no word of Paul Bunyan’s intentions, and they were astonished when, at nightfall, the camp was halted at the upper end of Twin Rivers valley and they were told that here was to be their camping place for the season.

There was no moon this night, and from the bunkhouses nothing of the country could be seen except Twin Rivers, which showed surfaces of blurred, tarnished gray in the darkness; they looked like two wide, lonely roads with a tall black hedge between them. Heavy grass was discovered around the camp buildings, but there was no indication anywhere of timber, or even of brush. But the loggers were too tired to wonder; they had been riding for two days behind the blue ox, who could outrun a cyclone, and they were thankful for the chance to rest and sleep.

Paul Bunyan lay in his camp office and listened to the peaceful snores of the Big Swede, who could sleep so well because he lacked imagination. But the great logger’s thoughts and visions banished any hope of rest for him. Work should begin at once, and a great idea must precede it. His determination for the double drive was solidly fixed; he would get a good plan for it. Now then: first, for a drive there must be logs; next, for logs there must be trees; then, for trees there must be timberland, as trees cannot be conjured from nothingness. Now, all around him was nothing but logged-off land; perhaps it would be possible to invent a way to log off logged-off land.... Thunderation! what preposterous notions he was getting! But all his ideas seemed to be as absurd. As the night hours crawled slowly on Paul Bunyan began to doubt his powers. Had the fight with the Big Swede left him a little crazy? Perhaps. At dawn his mind was in a turmoil; he felt that he had brought himself face to face with the supreme crisis of his career, and it looked like he was not to meet it successfully. If so, the meanest swamper in camp would despise him. And the Big Swede—how soon he would lose the humble worship that Paul Bunyan had pounded into him and be filled with a cold Nordic scorn for this Latin victim of imagination!... What was wrong with his ideas? Why didn’t they swell with their usual superb force and burst into a splendor of magnificent plans? Was this new history of logging, then, to be a history of failure?...

In a torment of thought, Paul Bunyan could lie still no longer. Darkness was passing fast now; he threw off his blankets and tramped to the office door. He drew it open, then—motionless, unblinking, breathless—he stared for sixty-six minutes. At last he rubbed his eyes; but then he again stared as woodenly as a heathen idol. He could only believe that his rebellious imagination was deceiving him, that the incredible sight before him was certainly unreal. For he saw trees everywhere; on both sides of the river they reached to the horizon.

They were in exact rows, like trees in an orchard, and each one was a large, smooth, untapering column, flat-topped and without a trace of bark or boughs. Again and again Paul Bunyan rubbed his eyes, thinking to see the strange forest vanish. But it remained, and he rushed out at last and seized one of the trees. He pulled it up easily, and he was more amazed than ever, for it had a sharp point instead of roots. He walked on out into the forest and pulled up others here and there, and they were all exactly alike in shape and size.

So delighted was Paul Bunyan with his miraculous good fortune that for a long time he only walked back and forth among the rows of Pine Orchard—for so he named the forest,—and every moment he found some new feature of it that was wonderful and enchanting. For one thing, he could walk through it without difficulty, as there was room between the rows for one of his feet. He saw that no tedious swamping would be required for the logging-off of this forest—no cutting of brush and trimming of limbs. It would be unnecessary to build the usual trails for the blue ox. As the logs would all be of like size, driving them down the rivers would be play for his men.

At last he tramped back to camp and called the loggers out of the bunkhouses. They came forth groaning and yawning, but when they saw Pine Orchard they too were tremendously enthusiastic about the beautiful logging it offered, and some of them got their axes and saws and began felling at once. The trees were as tall and as large as the medium trees in an ordinary pine forest, but acres of them had been notched and sawn off when the breakfast gong rang. Paul Bunyan, with a cyclonic sigh of relief and content retired to the office to do the first figuring for the new history.

Logging went on at a record-breaking rate during the late summer; early autumn passed, and the loggers still felt that they were enjoying the happiest work of their careers. The Big Swede seemed perfectly contented with his position now; his gentleness and patience with the blue ox could not be surpassed, and he bossed the felling crews efficiently when Paul Bunyan had to leave them to toil over the new ledgers. The great logger himself had not been happier in years, for the logs being all of a size made the figuring simple now, and he spent all but three hours a day in the woods.

With the coming of the snapping frosts of late autumn the operations had reached the lower part of the Twin Rivers valley, and the smooth, bare trees of Pine Orchard were all piled neatly along the banks of the stream. Now the second growth of regular pine trees was reached, and the work of limbing, bucking and swamping again became part of the loggers’ duties. But they were fat and saucy from their easy months in Pine Orchard, and the first day’s felling in the old-fashioned forest brought down a record number of trees. However, it also brought more figuring for Paul Bunyan, for he now had to keep accounts of a thousand sizes and lengths of logs. This kept him from the woods, though the Big Swede really needed him now because of the problems which develop incessantly in regular logging. Again Paul Bunyan came to feel the need of a great figurer, recorder and secretary; but where was one to be found who had both the size and knowledge to care for his vast bookkeeping system and enormous history books? It was folly to hope for such a man, so Paul Bunyan stuck bravely to his desk and made the best of his situation.

And the logging went on without many discouraging incidents until one morning in November. Then Paul Bunyan looked out and saw that the Twin River next to the camp had risen six feet, though the other Twin was at its normal level. Wondering at the unnatural flood and fearing for the logs piled on the landings, the leader-hero set out at a great pace to discover what was obstructing the flow of the Left Twin. Where the river curved around a cliff he saw what appeared to be a boot as large as his own; it was resting in the stream, and, as it reached from the cliff to the bank between the Twin Rivers it made a perfect dam, and the river had not yet risen to the top of it. Paul Bunyan’s gaze traveled up the bootleg and reached a corduroyed knee; then he saw that a remarkable figure was seated on the cliff, the figure of a man who was nearly as large as the master logger.

Remembering the danger to his logs, Paul Bunyan seized the foot that was damning the river and lifted it without ceremony. The released waters boiled and thundered as they rolled on, but above the roar Paul Bunyan heard a voice, soft and mild for all its power, saying, “I beg your pardon.”

The master logger could not restrain an exclamation of delight.

“Educated! By the holy old mackinaw!”

He pulled aside the trees from which the grand gentlemanly voice had issued. There sat a man. And such a man!

His long but well-combed hair was level with the tree tops, though he was seated among them. Some black, straight strands of hair fell over a forehead of extraordinary height, a forehead which was marked with deep, grave wrinkles. His black eyebrows resembled nothing so much as fishhooks, breaking down sharply at his nose. His large, pale eyes looked through old-fashioned spectacles. His nose was original; it sloped out to an astonishing length, and a piece of rubber the size of a barrel was pinched over the end of it. He was certainly an educated man. He wore a necktie, for one thing; yes, and there were papers resting on one raised knee; in his right hand was a pencil, and many others were behind his ears. Now he was figuring with incredible speed; then he thrust the rubber in his nose against the paper, shook his head three times and the sheet was clean.

Paul Bunyan wanted to shout and jig like a school-boy, so jubilant was his logger’s soul made by the sight of this marvelous man. Here was the one person who was needed to make his camp a perfectly organized industry, to guarantee the success of his plans to become a maker of history. By hook or crook he must have him.

He tapped the engrossed figurer on the shoulder.

“Paul Bunyan, the master logger, the maker of history and inventor of note, the only living Real American leader-hero of industry, addresses you,” he said impressively.

“I have heard of you,” said the other, extending his hand but not rising. “I am John Rogers Inkslinger, the master figurer, the one and only Real American surveyor. But you must excuse me now, for I am endeavoring to solve the one problem that has ever baffled me. I have been working on it steadily for two months, and still the answer evades me.”

He at once began figuring again, and Paul Bunyan, a little awed, had no words to say at that moment. He had no idea of what a surveyor might be, and he feared that John Rogers Inkslinger was something greater than himself. He would find out. So he said:

“I am a figurer also, though not a great one. Yet I might help you. What is your problem?”

“I am looking for Section 37,” said John Rogers Inkslinger.

“Section 37?”

“Yes. I have only found thirty-six sections in each of the townships which I have surveyed here. There should be thirty-seven.”

Paul Bunyan was delighted that he could solve the problem so easily. “When I first logged off lower Twin Rivers valley,” he said, “I had no logging crews, but only Babe, my big blue ox. The method I used was to hitch Babe to a section of timber—this ox of mine, Mr. Inkslinger, can pull anything that man can walk on—, snake it to the river, shear off the trees, and then haul the logged off land back to its place. I handled a township a week in this fashion; but I always left Section 37 in the river on Saturday night, and the stream would wash it away. Now I judge that you survey the land as I measured it; consequently, you have only found thirty-six sections in each township.”

“Bless my soul!” cried John Rogers Inkslinger admiringly. “I should have looked you up before. But I supposed you were an ordinary man of the forests. You would certainly make a great surveyor. You must leave this common life you are leading and come with me. Together we will soon have every section of land in the country staked out perfectly.”

“I have a different idea,” said Paul Bunyan.

Whereupon he unloosed his eloquence, and for the rest of the day his richest phrases were lavished on the surveyor. And this man, sure of the greatness of his own accomplishments, listened with strong doubts for a long time. But at last he was convinced that logging was the greatest of all occupations and that Paul Bunyan towered far above him as a hero.

“I can only think of you with awe and admiration,” he said at last. “But I have my own work, inconsequential as it now seems. So I cannot become your figurer at present. Think, Mr. Bunyan, of Real America’s uncharted rivers, her unstaked plains, her unplumbed lakes! It is my mission to—to——”

His speech ended in a yell of fright as a monstrous red tongue was thrust before his eyes; it passed moistly over his face, it rolled oozily behind his ear; then he heard a “moo” that was as loud as muffled thunder, but affectionate and kind. The surveyor wiped his face and his spectacles and turned fearfully to see Babe, the ox whose hair was blue as the sky, gazing at him, with a pleading tenderness in his bulging eyes.

“Even Babe wants you to come with us,” said Paul Bunyan, his beard shaking in a chuckle. “Such a powerful argument. Now what in thunderation——”

John Rogers Inkslinger had let out a scream of horror that sent Babe galloping back through the timber.

“My instruments!” cried he. “Your infernal clumsy ox has trampled them and demolished every one. What misfortune!” He jumped to his feet and began looking for his books and papers.

“Gone!” raged the surveyor. “That blue devil has eaten them! All of my records, the history of my works—gone! gone! gone! Eaten by an ox! His four stomachs are crammed with them! Gone! gone! gone!”

“Stop that caterwauling,” said Paul Bunyan impatiently. “When my ledgers were ruined, I simply observed, ‘There is no use crying over spilled ink.’ The hero is even more heroic in disaster than in triumph. Be true to your pretensions.”

“Pretensions, the devil!” said John Rogers Inkslinger peevishly. “If you had the true figurer’s soul you would give me your sympathy instead of unconsoling platitudes.”

Then the tears began to fall from his eyes and made great splashes in the river. Paul Bunyan, saying no more, grasped his arm and marched him toward the camp. The two heroes walked silently until they were out of the timber and had started over the country where Pine Orchard had stood.

Then Paul Bunyan said conversationally, “I found a very original forest here. But it offered splendid logging.... Thunderation again! What ails you anyway?”

For John Rogers Inkslinger had once more burst into yells of agony.

“My stakes!” he cried. “My surveyor’s stakes! Two years’ work ruined, utterly ruined! The stakes that marked my section lines—you have felled them all and dragged them all to the rivers for logs! My stakes that were to have stood forever—gone! gone! gone!”

He choked and gasped, he clutched wildly at nothingness, and then he fainted into the appalled logger’s arms....

That winter was the only period of his career in which Paul Bunyan knew the affliction of a guilty conscience. It was true that he had not injured the great surveyor willfully, but the fact that he had destroyed another man’s work could not be ignored. He had done irreparable damage and for the peace of his soul he must somehow make amends, devise consolations and give heart balm and recompense. He only asked that the surveyor make any demand of him, that he give him any opportunity to do a service that would make up for the loss.

But the winter long John Rogers Inkslinger brooded in the back room of the office and would speak to no one. Each day regret bore heavier on Paul Bunyan’s generous heart; Christmas was a time of deep gloom for him; and when the first sunshine of spring brightened the valley, even the approach of the great double drive did not cheer him. He had abandoned his ledgers, and he spent all of his time in the woods; he had no wish to record the destruction of the surveyor’s work.

The double drive was a huge success, and the rivermen returned from it singing the praises of Paul Bunyan, who had bested his foreman in the grand race. But the great logger himself had only cheerless thoughts as he came to the camp office. Another move must now be made, and the sad business of repaying John Rogers Inkslinger must be attended to at last. He would place his camp and crew, his foreman and the great blue ox, himself and all his august talents unreservedly at the surveyor’s disposal. Better long years of surveying than to leave this blot on his history. It would be wretched work for him and his men, he mused unhappily, as he opened the office door, but he could not oppose conscience. His mind formed the words of a contrite, submissive speech, he tramped on into the office and prepared to utter them; then out of the back room rushed John Rogers Inkslinger; his eyes were shining, his face was flushed with happiness, his hands were raised as though in appeal.

“Paul Bunyan, greatest of Real Americans!” he cried. “I have read your histories, and in the pages of them I have learned the grandeur and glory of your deeds, the extent and influence of your power, the might of your mind! I now know your inventiveness, your heroism, your majestic thoughts, your generous heart! To think that I roared about Paul Bunyan using my miserable stakes! And still you smile upon me! Oh, Glory! I beg pardon humbly and ask only to serve you henceforth in your enterprises——”

“Here now,” said Paul Bunyan, dumfounded, incredulous of his hearing, greatly embarrassed. “How could you have read my ink-soaked ledgers?”

John Rogers Inkslinger answered him by bringing out one of the volumes and opening it. On the black pages were figures and letters of white; with white ink the great figurer had painstakingly traced out the old dimmed entries, and now every volume was as readable as it had ever been.

“There!” he declaimed. “There, Mr. Bunyan, is the proof of my worth and zeal. I found the ledgers, and when you were on the drive I traced out their messages. From them I learned to worship you. Give me a desk and let me serve you as well hereafter.”

Overcome by emotion, Paul Bunyan turned and stared unseeingly at the lands which had once been Pine Orchard. Visions of tremendous accomplishments swept before him; he now had the perfect organization he had always dreamed about, and there could be no good reason for another failure. But he had a new responsibility also; he was now more deeply in debt to this man than ever. For, even as his fists and feet had won him the faith and loyalty of the Big Swede, so had his mind and heart, as revealed in his history, won the extravagant devotion of the greatest figurer. Only mighty works would keep it. Well, he should not fail. Resolutely he faced the unfortunate surveyor, the restorer of ruined accounts, the man who should win fame with him as the greatest figurer of all time.

“Timekeeper Johnny Inkslinger,” he said, “shake hands.”

THE SOURDOUGH DRIVE

Political campaigns remind old loggers of the violent debate that once raged between Paul Bunyan, the originator of the lumber industry, and his timekeeper, Johnny Inkslinger. This debate was strictly about business, however, for there was no politics in those days. It was poor policy, argued the timekeeper, to increase the varieties and quantities of edibles grown on Paul Bunyan’s great farm simply to make more stuffing for the loggers. He recommended that the camp rations be cut down and that ships be built, in which surplus farm produce could be shipped to European markets. Johnny Inkslinger was the original efficiency expert and he had hordes of figures at hand to support his arguments. Paul Bunyan listened with his usual calm and dignity, brushing his beard with a fresh pine tree and nodding gravely, until the timekeeper began to insist that the loggers could do their work well enough on pea soup and sourdough biscuits; then the great man erupted.

“Good glory, Johnny!” he exclaimed. “Have you forgotten the Sourdough Drive?”

“I have not, Mr. Bunyan,” Inkslinger retorted spiritedly. “But I have figures which show you should have handled it differently.”

“The hell you have!” roared Paul Bunyan, in rare tones of anger. “Damn figures and figuring men!”

“And damn a man who damns figures!” thundered Johnny Inkslinger, himself getting angry.

Whereupon Paul Bunyan damned him again in return, and they kept up a furious argument until the trees began to fall among the bunkhouses. The sourdough drive was a subject that tormented Paul Bunyan’s feelings whenever he thought of it; it was always a sore spot with him. But when he heard the trees tumbling down in the valley he remembered his dignity and he silenced his timekeeper with a majestic gesture. Then he gave instructions for a Sunday feast so huge and diversified that Hot Biscuit Slim, the chief cook, went into a solemn trance of joy upon receiving the order. The timekeeper could not hide his mortification, and Paul Bunyan clapped him on the shoulder, saying cheerily, “There, there, my lad. You live in a world of figures. I could not expect you to know the soul of the born woodsman. But treasure this always: a logging crew works on its stomach.”

After Paul Bunyan had invented logging and brought hosts of little loggers over to Real America to fell trees and drive logs down the rivers, his most baffling problem sprang from the fact that little loggers could not live on raw moose meat as he did. They required cooked food; consequently Paul Bunyan was compelled to build a cookhouse and import cooks. His first cookhouse was a crude affair without any notable mechanical equipment. And his first cooks were men without talent or experience. But Paul Bunyan’s loggers were hardy men whose appetites had never been pampered, and no one complained of the camp fare until Pea Soup Shorty took command of the cookhouse.

Pea Soup Shorty was a plump, lazy, complacent rascal, and he made no attempt to feed the loggers anything but hard-tack and pea soup. He even made lunches for them by freezing pea soup around a rope and sending the loggers’ lunches out to them in sticks like big candles. Even then the loggers did not complain greatly. Not until the winter in the Bullfrog Lake country were they heard to cry out against their food. That winter Shagline Bill’s freight sleds broke the ice on the lake, and the season’s supply of split peas was lost in the water. Pea Soup Shorty did not try to originate any new food for the loggers; he simply boiled the lake water and served it to them for pea soup. Then the bunkhouse cranks began to growl; and finally all the loggers revolted against Pea Soup Shorty; and they declared against pea soup also. Paul Bunyan had to look for another kitchen chief. Old Sourdough Sam was his selection.

The Bunyan histories tell that Sourdough Sam made everything but coffee out of sourdough. This substance is really fermented dough, having the rising qualities of yeast. It is said to be an explosive. Modern camp cooks are always at great pains to warn the new kitchen help away from the sourdough bowl, telling them of the sad accident of Sourdough Sam, who had his left arm and right leg blown off in an explosion of the dangerous concoction.

The old cook brought this misfortune on himself. Sourdough was his weakness as well as his strength. Had he been content to keep it only in the kitchen, where it belonged, and to develop it simply as a food, he, and not his son, Hot Biscuit Slim, might be remembered as the father of camp cookery, even as the mighty Paul Bunyan is venerated as the father of logging. But Sam was prey to wild ideas about the uses of his creation. He declared it could be used for shaving soap, poultices, eye wash, boot grease, hair tonic, shin plasters, ear muffs, chest protectors, corn pads, arch supporters, vest lining, pillow stuffing, lamp fuel, kindling, saw polish and physic. One time he came into the bunkhouse with a chair cushion made out of sourdough. As bad luck would have it, Jonah Wiles, the worst of the bunkhouse cranks, was the first man to sit on it. He always sat hard, and when he dropped on the new chair cushion, he splashed sourdough as high as his ears. Jonah Wiles was fearfully proud of his mackinaw pants, for they were the only pair in camp that had red, green, purple and orange checks. Now the bursted cushion was splashed over all their gaudy colors. Sam apologized humbly and begged the privilege of washing them. His rage showing only in the glitter of his beady blue eyes, Jonah Wiles stripped off the smeared pants and handed them over to the cook. Sourdough Sam recklessly washed them in another of his creations, sourdough suds. Not a thread of color was left in the prized pants; they were a brilliant white when they were returned. The old cook brought them back reluctantly and he was tremendously relieved when Jonah Wiles did not tear into him with oaths and blows. But Jonah Wiles was different from other loggers in that he always concealed even his strongest feelings. So he put on the pants without saying a word, though he was blazing with wrath inside. His rage against the cook was aggravated when his mates began to call him “the legless logger,” because of his invisibility from the bottom of his coat to the tops of his boots when he tramped to work. The brilliant white pants did not show at all against a background of snow.

This unfortunate incident led to the important happenings of the Sourdough Drive, which was one of the turning points in the history of logging. For Jonah Wiles now cherished a vicious hostility against Sourdough Sam; with patient cunning he awaited the time when he might be avenged for the outrage that had made him known in the camp as “the legless logger.”

Jonah Wiles was not a great man among the loggers; he was only a swamper, and Mark Beaucoup, who was a mighty man with both ax and pike pole, was much more to be feared as a bunkhouse crank. But where Mark Beaucoup was a roaring grouch, Jonah Wiles was a sly, quiet one; he had a devilish insinuating gift of making men see and believe uncomfortable things.

“Too bad yer so hoarse to-night,” he would say to a bunkhouse bard who had just finished a song. “I’m thinkin’ we’re needin’ more blankets. Ol’ Paul’ll let us all freeze to death.”

He would lead the bard to think he did have a hoarseness, the bunkhouse gayety would vanish and a seed of resentment would be sown against the master logger. Before his pants were ruined Jonah Wiles had never found a grievance which would serve to keep his instinct of revolt always inflamed. But now his misfortune was in his mind constantly. Without openly attacking the culinary methods and creations of Sourdough Sam, he slyly made a terrible shape of them for his bunkhouse mates.

“Poor ol’ Sam,” he would say, drawing his lean, gray face into an expression of pity. “Poor ol’ Sam. He cooks the best he knows how, maybe. But I’m afeard that sourdough uh his’n ’ll bring us all to an ontimely end, fin’ly.”

Let a logger complain of corns, and Jonah Wiles would remark that he had never heard of corns in the woods before sourdough was invented. He insinuated that everything from ingrown nails and bunions to toothache and falling hair was due to the loggers’ sourdough meals. Ere long old Sam was met with silence and bitter looks when he visited the bunkhouses to show a new use of sourdough. And the loggers’ appetites fell away; one month after the accident to Jonah Wiles’ pants, Johnny Inkslinger joyfully reported to Paul Bunyan that the consumption of flour and soda had been cut in half. The great logger frowned; he had already learned much about the need his men had for good food rightly cooked, though it was no necessity for him.

“But I can’t consider this business, now,” he said ruefully. “We’ve got to get this country logged off before the water drops in Redbottom Lake. When the spring drive is finished we’ll settle the feeding problem once and for all time.”

Saying this, he thrust a bundle of sharpened axes and two score new crosscut saws into his pocket, and, followed by his timekeeper, he strode for the woods to lay out the work for the next day. Jonah Wiles was then in the kitchen with Sourdough Sam. Paul Bunyan and his timekeeper always walked softly, but the wind from their swinging feet rattled the doors and windows of the cookhouse.

“There they go,” muttered Jonah Wiles. “Now listen, Sam. They’ll be in the woods for an hour anyway. Now’s yer chance to get in good with everybody again. I want yeh to keep yer high place, ol’ feller. I’ve always loved yeh like a brother, an’ yer trouble with the boys is grievin’ me to a shadder.”

“I shore appreciate your sympathy when all is givin’ me the cold shoulder,” said the cook disconsolately. “But ’tain’t no use. Nobody seems willin’ to give sourdough a real chance. Folks could use it fer ever’thing if they wanted to, an’ now these fool loggers even hate to eat it.”

Jonah Wiles replied with his usual shrewd arguments. Every evening when he thought he had made all the mischievous suggestions to the loggers that it was wise to utter, he would come to the kitchen and, pretending great sympathy and friendliness, he would urge Sourdough Sam into enterprises that could only end disastrously. He was now urging old Sam to dump sourdough into the timekeeper’s ink barrels during his absence with Paul Bunyan. The cook had long been sure that small quantities of sourdough would treble the ink supply. But, disheartened and discouraged, he had not ventured to broach the idea to Johnny Inkslinger.

“Make it a surprise party,” suggested Jonah Wiles. “Get busy, Sam. It’s yer chance to win a real name for yerself.”

At last Sourdough Sam yielded to his tempter.

The flunkies had left the kitchen long before. The stoves and cook tables were dark shapes in the twilight shadows. Only the white sourdough tanks stood out in the gloom. Jonah Wiles lifted the top from one of them, and a hissing roar rose from its depths, where the fermented dough worked and bubbled like quicklime. Jonah Wiles beckoned to Sourdough Sam. The cook’s eyes shone; he breathed heavily.

“It can’t help but work,” he whispered.

“Now yer my ol’ friend—good ol’ Sourdough Sam!” exclaimed Jonah Wiles heartily. “Now yer talkin’. You’ll be king of the camp when Johnny Inkslinger finds his ink barrels all full and wonders how it happened. Be the hero yeh really are, Sam!”

“By hickory, I will!” declared the cook.

In a moment he was leaving the kitchen, a foaming five gallon bucket of sourdough in each hand. Jonah Wiles slipped through the shadows until he reached a big tree. There he lingered and watched. He knew certainly that this idea would bring evil on the old cook. The sourdough would ruin the ink as it had ruined everything else. But he had never dreamed of such a grand disaster as befell. Johnny Inkslinger had two dozen ink barrels. A hose line ran from each one, and when he did his most furious figuring it was necessary to attach all of them to his fountain pen in order to get a sufficient flow of ink. The cook dumped five gallons of sourdough into the first barrel and five into the second; then he rushed back to the cookhouse for more. At his sixth trip the first barrels he had treated were boiling and steaming like miniature volcanoes.

“They’ll settle after bit,” said Sourdough Sam optimistically.

Vain hope. No sooner were the words uttered than a barrel of ink exploded with a dull roar. The other treated barrels followed with a blast that sounded like a salvo of artillery fire. The camp was shaken. The loggers rushed from the bunkhouses and saw a foaming black torrent rolling out of the camp office. Sourdough Sam was whirled forth on the flood. The bravest of the loggers plunged into the boiling black stream and dragged him to safety. He was unconscious, and his left arm and right leg had been lost in the explosion. He was gently carried into a bunkhouse. The head flunky mounted his saddle horse and galloped after Paul Bunyan.

Jonah Wiles moved inconspicuously among the excited loggers. A hot exultation was in his heart; he had never hoped for such a completely triumphant revenge. New powers seemed to surge up in him, too; he felt that he might bring about even greater disasters than this one. But he cautiously repressed these freshly burning hopes and carried the air of a man made dumb by grief. Tobacco crumbs rubbed in his eyes made the tears trickle down his lean cheeks. As the loggers formed into groups and began to speak of the sourdough explosion in doleful tones, they noted the silent, mournful appearance of Jonah Wiles, and, among such expressions as “I was allus afeard sompin like it ud happen”—“Pore ol’ Sam, got to be a regular sourdough fanatic”—“Powerful strange, ain’t it, the way things work out in this life?”—were heard many words of sympathy for Sourdough’s best friend. “Ol’ Jonah’s takin’ it perty hard.” “Yeh, you wouldn’t think such an ol’ crab had that much feelin’ in him.”

Jonah Wiles heard them and chuckled evilly. They were making his part easy for him. When Paul Bunyan and his timekeeper thundered into camp he was at the fore of the men who pressed around their feet.

Johnny Inkslinger had the unfortunate cook brought into the office, where he had room to work over him. For half an hour surgical instruments, bandages and bottles flashed through his hands as he doctored the cook. Paul Bunyan watched him hopefully; Johnny Inkslinger was not only the greatest figurer but the greatest doctor of his time also.

At last he arose. “He’ll pull through, Mr. Bunyan.”

Paul Bunyan thanked him and then fell into a profound contemplation of the feeding problem. Johnny Inkslinger wiped the blots of ink from the walls and the puddles from the floor.

“Only two barrels of ink left,” he groaned. “How’ll I get through the winter, Mr. Bunyan?”

The great logger smiled grimly. “I only wish all my problems were so simple,” he said. “Just leave off dotting the i’s and crossing the t’s and you’ll save ink for the necessary writing and figuring. When the spring ink supply comes in you can go over your books again.”

“Such a mind!” breathed the timekeeper worshipfully.

But Paul Bunyan felt that even his mind was unequal to the perplexing problem before him. How was he to feed his loggers now? Would they be content with pea soup? Not for long, certainly. Even sourdough hardly satisfied them now. And this dangerous stuff, lively as gunpowder—who would dare to mix, bake, boil, stew and roast it? No sourdough, no work; and this meant another season in the upper Red River country, for he had to be ready for the drive before Redbottom Lake sank to its summer level. Quick action was necessary. Paul Bunyan sent inquiries among the kitchen help for a man who was familiar with the methods of Sourdough Sam. The head flunky reported that no one was so intimate with the old cook as Jonah Wiles, a swamper.

The worst bunkhouse crank came into the presence of Paul Bunyan with confidence that Sourdough Sam, the soul of loyalty, had not mentioned him in connection with the explosion. He presented a sorrowful, tear-streaked countenance.

“Be consoled,” Paul Bunyan said gently. “Your comrade was performing what he considered to be an act of duty. He shall be remembered with great honor. And I am offering you, his best friend, the position he occupied.”

“I’m only a pore swamper, Mr. Bunyan,” said Jonah Wiles, in nasal tones of humility “an’ I’d never be able to make it in the high job of a cook.”

Paul Bunyan stroked his beard with a pine tree, as was his habit in moments of earnest thought. And at the same time Jonah Wiles was glowing with the fire of dangerous inspiration; he had become firmly convinced that he was a great originator of damaging ideas. He remembered that Sourdough Sam had a son; the old cook had often spoken of him with parental pride and fondness. With the boy in camp his revenge could go yet farther. Jonah Wiles pounded on Paul Bunyan’s toe to attract his attention. The great logger again bent down to him.

“Sourdough Sam has a son which he claims is a greater cook than his dad already,” said the bunkhouse crank. “I expect you could send an’ get him easy, Mr. Bunyan.”

“Where is he, lad?”

“He’s down in the Corn Pone country. That’s where he’s learnin’ to be a better cook than Sam, an’——”

Jonah Wiles was bowled over by Paul Bunyan’s jubilant roar. Johnny Inkslinger was ordered to set out for the Corn Pone country at once and to return with the young cook, making all speed. The great logger then called his men together and gave them a rousing speech on the need for fast logging, promising them that he would have the old cookhouse going good again in a short time. The loggers cheered him and went contentedly to bed, where all but Jonah Wiles slept with good consciences. But to him the bad conscience was the good one; he rejoiced in evil thoughts. Not a pang of pity did he feel for Sourdough Sam; he had no regrets; he dreamed only of getting his clutches on the son of the man who had ruined his bright pants.

While Johnny Inkslinger was speeding after the new cook Paul Bunyan was struggling with the worst difficulty he had ever encountered. The kitchen was put in charge of the Galloping Kid, the head flunky, for the time being. He was a grand horseman, a mighty figure, as he rode his white horse among the tables at meal time, directing the running flunkies, but he knew little more about cooking than Paul Bunyan himself.

His sourdough creations were all failures; the loggers broke their teeth on them, and what they did swallow was indigestible. All gayety vanished from the bunkhouses; even the bards, with the noble exception of the incomparable, unquenchable Shanty Boy, got silent and morose. Each day less timber was felled. In time the blue ox stood idle most of the day, waiting for loads of logs to be hauled to the landings. A successful conclusion of the logging seemed impossible, but Paul Bunyan would not admit it. A late spring thaw, a great physical revival when the new cook got into action—he stimulated the men with these hopes and kept up some semblance of work in the woods.

Jonah Wiles was now enjoying the happiest time of his life. Everyone was in a state of wretchedness that delighted him. He heard threats of revolt; disastrous events were surely advancing their shadows on the camp of Paul Bunyan; he gloated over the evil he would wreck on the son of his enemy. But he kept his feelings well hidden. His sly suggestions were the source of many of the bitterest complaints the loggers made against their life, but he never complained now himself. His small blue eyes had a watery shine of sympathy for everyone. He spent an hour each night with Sourdough Sam, pretending to console him, but actually enjoying his sufferings.

When the new cook arrived in camp Sourdough Sam was able to sit up and introduce his son to Paul Bunyan—“Hot Biscuit Slim, sir, who’s goin’ to be one uh the greatest cooks uh history.”

The young man leaned nonchalantly against Paul Bunyan’s toe and looked up calmly at the mighty figure above him.

“I’ll shore be glad to work for you, Mr. Bunyan,” he said. “But you’ll have to fix things accordin’ to my ideas.”

“Son, the camp is yours,” rumbled Paul Bunyan. “Half of my loggers are now too weak to lift an ax.”

Whereupon Hot Biscuit Slim shook his father’s good hand, smiled enigmatically when the old man said, “I’m expectin’ you to succeed where I failed with sourdough, boy,” and left to inspect the cookhouse. Paul Bunyan and Johnny Inkslinger attended him. When the inspection was finished he had many recommendations to make. He demanded——

A new cookhouse, ten times the size of the present one.

Steam-power, force-feed batter mixers, and a hot cake griddle large enough for a battalion of second cooks to make a line around it.

A battery of great ovens for the baking of pies, cakes, puddings and cookies.

Bins for potatoes and other vegetables.

Fruit and vinegar cellars.

Baking powder and sugar barrels.

Sauerkraut tanks and a frankfurter shed.

An air-tight onion room.

A store of ham, bacon and eggs for the loggers’ breakfasts....

“Hold on a moment!” exclaimed Paul Bunyan in bewilderment. “Please tell me first: what are hot cakes, pies, cookies, cakes, puddings, ham, bacon, eggs, potatoes, baking powder, sauerkraut, frankfurters and the rest of it? Can we get them from somewhere, or must I invent them?”

Hot Biscuit Slim patiently explained them to the great logger.

“Holy mackinaw!” said Paul Bunyan, greatly relieved, “I never imagined such things could be. I’m delighted that they’ve already been invented.”

Hot Biscuit Slim told him that they could all be grown or manufactured on the great farm. Then he went on to recommend that the flunkies be equipped with roller skates, thus tripling their efficiency. He made many other suggestions, and Paul Bunyan agreed to all of them.

“Now to work,” said Hot Biscuit Slim. “I’ll have a new sourdough dish for the loggers’ supper. Sourdough is a contraption that’s seen it’s day, but I’ll make the best of it while I got to use it. Send me your blacksmith.”

A unique smell met the loggers when they crowded eagerly into the cookhouse at suppertime, a delightful odor that overpowered the weakest among them. And when the flunkies trotted out, carrying huge platters heaped high with brown, globular mysteries, each one having a curious hole in the center, the famished loggers all bounced about on their benches in uncontrollable excitement, and well they might! For they were being served with the first doughnuts! Doughnut connoisseurs of to-day would have regarded them as crude; they were made from sourdough, they were hard as hickory and unsweetened. But Paul Bunyan’s loggers shouted over them; they discovered to their great leader the exuberance and expansion of feeling, the exaltation of spirit, the strengthening of moral qualities, which may develop from grand feeding. As he listened to the extraordinary uproar in the cookhouse and considered it he formed one of his great reflections: Meals make the man.

Jonah Wiles was the one dismal figure among the feasters. The doughnuts were bitter in his mouth because they were so pleasing to him. He devoured half a dozen of them and then forced himself to stop, for he was beginning to feel good-humored. His gaze turned shiftily towards the kitchen, where Hot Biscuit Slim was frying doughnuts with astonishing rapidity. The assistant cooks were rolling out the dough; Big Ole, the blacksmith, bare-armed and streaming with sweat, tossed the doughnuts on his anvil and punched the holes in them with swift strokes. Jonah Wiles glowered malignantly on the scene. With one meal the son of his enemy had brought happiness to the camp and achieved glory.

“He’ll learn Jonah Wiles has a few tricks yet,” the worst bunkhouse crank muttered savagely.

After supper he waited for a lull in the bunkhouse merriment. When it came he emitted a terrific groan.

“I’m afeard them new biscuits with the holes in ’em ain’t goin’ to set well on the stummick. I’m afeard——”