Chapter II: Part 2

“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.”