Chapter IV: Part 4

Here, thought Paul Bunyan, is a noble offering of chance. Was a black duck more acute than the Big Swede, that the bright, moist canvas would not deceive him also? And once deceived, would not the ensuing dive be fatal? Wasn’t a black duck’s neck of more delicate structure than the Big Swede’s, and wouldn’t it surely break when it struck the tarpaulin? This variety of black duck grew as big as a buzzard, and here they were so numerous that clouds of them darkened the moon. Now to deceive them. Paul Bunyan could mimic the voices of all the birds of the air and all the beasts of the fields and woods, save only that of the blue ox, who always replied with a jocular wink when his master attempted to simulate his mellow moo. In his moments of humor Paul Bunyan declared that he could mimic fish, and one Sunday when he imitated a mother whale bawling for her calf the loggers roared with merriment for seventeen hours, and were only sobered then by exhaustion. His voice had such power that he could not counterfeit the cry of a single small creature, but only the united cries of flocks and droves. So he now mimicked perfectly the chorus that rang mournfully in the sky, and at the same time he grasped the edge of the tarpaulin and fluttered it gently.

The effect was marvelous. Now indeed was the canvas a perfect imitation of water. Had you been standing by the sole of Paul Bunyan’s boot and seen the gentle flutter you would have been sure that you were watching a breeze make pleasant ripples on the surface of a lake. Ere long the black ducks were enchanted by the sight and sound, and Paul Bunyan heard a violent rush of air above him as of a hurricane sweeping a forest. A vast dark cloud seemed to plunge out of the sky. Another instant and the canvas was black with feathered forms. Paul Bunyan grasped the four corners of the tarpaulin, swung the bundle over his shoulder and strode home to the cookhouse. Hot Biscuit Slim was called forth, and when he saw the mountainous pile of black ducks that filled the kitchen yard he became hysterical with delight. He called out the assistant cooks, the flunkies and dishwashers, and, led by Cream Puff Fatty, the baker, the white-clad underlings streamed for eleven minutes from the kitchen door. The chief cook then made them a short but inspiring speech and fired them with his own fierce purpose to make culinary history.

Paul Bunyan listened for a moment, and then sought repose, with peace in his benevolent heart.

All night fires roared in the ranges as preparations went on for the great dinner. The elevators brought a load of vegetables every minute from the deep bins, potatoes were pared and washed, kettles and roasting pans were made ready, and sauces and dressings were devised. The black ducks were scalded, plucked and cleaned by the Preparations Department, and by morning the cranemen were bringing them by the hundreds to the Finishing Department, where the kettles and pans were waiting for them.

Most of the loggers stayed in their bunks this morning, and those who did come to breakfast ate sparingly, saving their appetites. Time passed quietly in the camp. The loggers washed and mended their clothes and greased their boots, but they did not worry themselves with bed-making. The other Sunday morning chores finished, they stretched out on their unmade bunks and smoked. They were silent and preoccupied, but now and again a breeze blowing from the direction of the cookhouse would cause them to sigh. What enchantment was in the air, so redolent with the aroma of roasting duck and stewing cabbages, so sharply sweet with the fragrance of hot ginger and cinnamon from the bakery where Cream Puff Fatty fashioned his creations! A logger who was shaving would take a deep breath of this incense, and the blood would trickle unnoticed from a slash in his cheek; another, in his bunk would let his pipe slip from his hand and enjoy ardent inhalations, blissfully unaware of his burning shirt; yet another, engaged in greasing his boots, would halt his task and sit in motionless beatitude, his head thrown back, his eyes closed, quite unconscious of the grease that poured from a tilted can into a prized boot.

At half past eleven the hungriest of the loggers began to mass before the cookhouse door, and as the minutes passed the throng swiftly increased. At five minutes to noon all the bunkhouses were empty and the furthest fringe of the crowd was far up Onion River valley. The ground shook under a restless trampling, and the faces of the loggers were glowing and eager as they hearkened to the clatter and rumble inside the cookhouse, as four-horse teams hauled in loads of salt, pepper and sugar for the shakers and bowls. Then the loggers began to stamp and shout as they heard the flunkies, led by the Galloping Kid on his white horse, rushing the platters and bowls of food to the tables. Tantalizing smells wafted forth from the steaming dishes. The loggers grew more restless and eager; they surged to and fro in a tidal movement; jests and glad oaths made a joyous clamor over the throng. This was softened into a universal sigh as the doors swung open and Hot Biscuit Slim, in spotless cap and apron, appeared wearing the impressive mien of a conquering general. He lifted an iron bar with a majestic gesture, paused for dramatic effect amid a breathless hush, and then struck a resounding note from the steel triangle that hung from the wall. At the sound a heaving torrent of men began to pour through the doors in a rush that was like the roaring plunge of water when the gate of a dam is lifted. The chief cook continued to pound out clanging rhythms until the last impatient logger was inside.

Then Hot Biscuit Slim reëntered the cookhouse. He was reminded of a forested plain veiled in thin fog as he surveyed the assemblage of darkly clad figures, wreathed with white and fragrant blooms of steam. His impression was made the more vivid when the loggers plunged their spoons into the deep bowls of oyster soup, for the ensuing sounds seemed like the soughing of wind in the woods. The chief cook marched to the kitchen with dignity and pride, glancing to right and left at the tables that held his masterwork. He asked for no praise or acclaim; the ecstasy that now transfigured the plainest face was a sufficient light of glory for him.

The soup bowls pushed aside, the loggers began to fill their plates, which were of such circumference that even a long-armed man could hardly reach across one. The black ducks, of course, received first attention. And great as the plates were, by the time one was heaped with a brown fried drumstick, a ladle of duck dumplings, several large fragments of duck fricassee, a slab of duck baked gumbo style, a rich portion of stewed duck, and a mound of crisp brown dressing, all immersed in golden duck gravy, a formidable space was covered. Yet there was room for tender leaves of odorous cabbage beaded and streaked with creamy sauce; for mashed potatoes which seemed like fluffs of snow beside the darkness of duck and gravy; for brittle and savory potato cakes, marvelously right as to texture and thickness; for stewed tomatoes of a sultry ruddiness, pungent and ticklish with mysterious spices; for a hot cob of corn as long as a man’s forearm, golden with sirupy kernels as big as buns; for fat and juicy baked beans, plump peas, sunny applesauce and buttered lettuce, not to mention various condiments. Squares of cornbread and hot biscuits were buttered and leaned against the plate; a pot-bellied coffee-pot was tilted over a gaping cup, into which it gushed an aromatic beverage of drowsy charm; a kingly pleasure was prepared. More than one logger swooned with delight this day when his plate was filled and, red-faced, hot-eyed, wet-lipped, he bent over it for the first mouthful with the joy of a lover claiming a first embrace.

In the kitchen the chief cook, the baker and their helpers watched and listened. At first the volume of sounds that filled the vast room was like the roar and crash of an avalanche, as dishes were rattled and banged about. Then the duck bones crackled like the limbs of falling trees. At last came a steady sound of eating, a sound of seventy threshing machines devouring bundles of wheat. It persisted far beyond the usual length of time, and Hot Biscuit Slim brought out his field glasses and surveyed the tables. The loggers were still bent tensely over their plates, and their elbows rose and fell with an energetic movement as they scooped up the food with undiminished vigor.

“Still eatin’ duck,” marveled Hot Biscuit Slim.

“They won’t be more’n able to _smell_ my cream puffs,” said the baker enviously.

The loggers ate on. They had now spent twice their usual length of time at the table. Each plate was in a dark shadow from tall rows of slick black duck bones and heaps of corn cobs. But----

“Still eatin’ duck,” reported Hot Biscuit Slim.

That no one might see his grief Cream Puff Fatty moved to a dark corner. He was now certain that none of the loggers could have room for his pastries. They ate on. They had now spent three times their usual length of time at the table. The baker was sweating and weeping; he was soaked with despair. Then, suddenly:

“They’re eatin’ cream puffs!” cried Hot Biscuit Slim.

Cream Puff Fatty could not believe it, but a thrill of hope urged him to see for himself. True enough, the loggers were tackling the pastries at last. On each plate cream puffs the size of squashes lay in golden mounds. As the spoons struck them their creamy contents oozed forth from breaks and crevices. Stimulated by their rich flavor, the loggers ate on with renewed gusto. They had now stayed four times as long as usual at the table. Other enchantments still kept them in their seats: lemon pies with airy frostings, yellow pumpkin pies strewn with brown spice specks, cherry pies with cracks in their flaky crusts through which the red fruit winked, custard pies with russet freckles on their golden faces, fat apple pies all odorous with cinnamon, cool, snowy cream pies, peach cobblers, chocolate puddings, glittering cakes of many colors, slabs of gingerbread, sugar-powdered jelly rolls, doughnuts as large around as saucers and as thick through as cups, and so soft and toothsome that a morsel from one melted on the tongue like cream. So endearing were the flavors of these pastries that the loggers consumed them all.

Cream Puff Fatty and Hot Biscuit Slim solemnly shook hands. There was glory enough for both of them.

At last there were no sounds at the tables save those of heavy breathing. The loggers arose in a body and moved sluggishly and wordlessly from the cookhouse. They labored over the ground towards the bunkhouses as wearily as though they had just finished a day of deadening toil. Soon Onion River valley resounded with their snores and groans....

At supper time, when Hot Biscuit Slim rang the gong, Cream Puff Fatty stood by his side. This was to be the supreme test of their achievement. For five minutes the chief cook beat the triangle, and then a solitary logger appeared in the door of a bunkhouse. He stared at them dully for a moment and then staggered back into the darkness. This was indeed a triumph! Great as other feasts in the cookhouse had been, never before had _all_ the loggers been unable to appear for supper. This was a historic day. Cream Puff Fatty and Hot Biscuit Slim embraced and mingled rapturous tears. It was their high moment. They would not have traded it for all the glory that was Greece and the grandeur that was Rome.... They had intimations of immortality....

For five weeks the loggers lay in a delicious torpor, and then Johnny Inkslinger brought them from their bunks with doses of alcohol and Epsom salts. By this time the Big Swede had recovered from his injuries, and Paul Bunyan waited no longer to move his camp. The buildings, which rested on skids, were chained and cabled together, and the blue ox hauled them over the hills to the new job.

Nothing marred the beauty of that summer; stirring breezes blew all the days over the loggers as they felled the Leaning Pine trees in perfect lines on the grassy slopes. The blue ox waxed fat with the ease of his labor. Weeks passed without the Big Swede having a serious accident. Dust gathered on Johnny Inkslinger’s medicine case. Hot Biscuit Slim never once failed to remember meat. And a record number of logs were piled above the rollways. Paul Bunyan planned a great drive with prideful confidence that it would be the glorious climax of a historic season. But here fortune deserted him, for, after driving the logs for nine days, and seeing an exact repetition of scenery three times, he had Johnny Inkslinger survey the placid river. The river was round; it flowed in a perfect circle; and Paul Bunyan had driven the logs three times over the same course!

Nothing daunted, he thereupon determined to saw the logs and transport the lumber overland, and he erected his famed sawmill, which was nineteen stories high, with each bandsaw and each circular saw running through all the floors. A description of the original machines and devices used in this mill would fill the pages of a mail order catalogue. It is needless to say that it operated perfectly. The only great difficulty Paul Bunyan had to overcome originated from the smokestacks. He was compelled to equip them with hinges and drawbridge machinery so that they could be lowered to let the clouds go by.

THE OLD HOME CAMP

The old home camp of Paul Bunyan, was in the Smiling River country; it lay in a great plain, between this sunny stream and the flowered banks of Honey Creek, which lazed on past the camp ere it joined the river. When the sun got low in the West, the shadow of old Rock Candy Mountain crept over the camp. On hot summer days the frost-hued mountain was a freshening sight; at night it looked like a huge dish of white ice cream. Raspberry trees covered its lower slopes, and in the Junetime they were heavy with berries as big as apples. The lemonade springs bubbled from among these trees, and their waters rippled through blossoming strawberry bushes as they coursed towards the river. In the twilights of the fruitful season the songs of the jaybirds that nested in the raspberry trees sank to a soft and sentimental chorus; and their slumbrous melodies, mingled with the cheery “jemine-e-es” of the jeminy crickets that lived among the strawberry bushes, made a beauty of sound harmonious with the spirit of eventide.

The old home camp had been built in the midst of a grove of maples. It had been deserted for seven years, and only a few moss-covered bunkhouses yet remained. Some bare sections of land, deeply corrugated, showed where the great cookhouse had stood; and trails that had been packed by the trampling of thousands of calked boots were still marked through lush growths of grass.

Paul Bunyan’s farm was the source of his supplies; it was ruled by John Shears and worked by the scissor-bills. It covered the rich bottom lands below Honey Creek, and it extended for miles over the bordering hills. Huge red clover blooms tossed and nodded on crowns and slopes when the warm June breezes blew. When the two happy but sensitive bees, Bum and Bill, had got enough honey from them to fill the thirty-five hundred barrels which were required for the loggers’ hot cakes each winter, John Shears and the scissor-bills mowed the hay and baled it. Then the milk cows were pastured on the stubble until wintertime. They did not have such grandiose names as are given to cows nowadays--no one in Paul Bunyan’s time would have thought of naming a kind, honest heifer Wondrous Lena Victress or Dairylike Daffodil Sweetbread;--they were simply called Suke, Boss, Baldy and S’manthy, but they were queenly milkers. Boss was the great butter cow; John Shears had only to put salt in her milk, stir it a bit, let it stand for a while, and he would have tubfuls of the finest butter in the land. Suke’s milk made wonderful bubbly hot cakes. Baldy’s milk never soured, and it was especially good in cream gravy. S’manthy’s milk was pretty poor stuff, but she had a vast hankering for balsam boughs, and in the winter she would eat them until her milk became the most potent of cough medicines. It saved Paul Bunyan’s loggers from many an attack of pneumonia. The grand flocks of poultry, which were ruled by Pat and Mike, the powerful and bellicose webfooted turkey gobblers, performed marvels of egg-laying and hatching. The snow hens, for example, would lay only in the wintertime; they made their nests in the snow and laid none but hard-boiled eggs. There were great vegetable gardens in the bottom lands; there the parsnips and carrots grew to such a depth that the scissor-bills had to use stump-pullers to get them out of the ground. It took two men an hour and a half to sever the average cabbage from its stalk. The potatoes grew to such a size that Paul Bunyan invented the steam shovel for John Shears to use in digging them out. In the chewing tobacco patch the tobacco grew on the plants in plugs, shreds and twists, and it was highly flavored by the natural licorice in the soil.

It would take pages to describe all of the marvels and splendors of Paul Bunyan’s farm.

For five years now Paul Bunyan had not visited his farm or the old home camp. He himself knew nothing of farming; first and last he was a logger, so he had left his farm completely in the control of John Shears when the great move was made from the old home camp. He trusted without doubts his boss farmer, who was a powerfully religious man. Only his violent piety had made him a failure as a woods boss. The loggers could not _bear_ to be preached to, and John Shears had insisted on preaching to them through every meal. But he managed the scissor-bills ably; they were men who had failed to make good as loggers and who had the calm and meek spirit of born farm hands. John Shears had easily taught them to venerate him as a prophet, and they willingly worked sixteen hours a day for him, though the loggers had never worked more than twelve.

After Paul Bunyan’s departure, John Shears had faithfully improved the farm, and at last it became so productive that even the endless freight teams of Shagline Bill could not move all its hay and produce to the far-away logging enterprises. Then only the simple routine of farm work remained to be done, and this hardly fetched fourteen hours of labor a day from the scissor-bills, even in the harvesting season. John Shears, always a terror for work, got dissatisfied. He began to dream of strange, tempting projects of irrigation and land-clearing. He let himself imagine Paul Bunyan’s logging crews digging ditches, grubbing out stumps, and leveling hills into grand hay and grain fields. Then his dream became an active idea. If logging could somehow be prohibited, abolished, totally exterminated--what then? The loggers would all have to turn farm hands, for farming would be the only remaining industry. And then he, John Shears, the one and only master farmer, would become supreme over all of them; he would have Paul Bunyan’s place, and the great logger would have to take a lesser rôle! Soon, waking or sleeping, the idea was always in his mind. It was the root of many plans, and at last it threw out a monstrous growth. John Shears planned nothing else than to do away with Babe, the blue ox, who skidded all of Paul Bunyan’s logs to the river landings, who was the mainspring, the central motive force, of all his logging operations. Logging without Babe could no more be imagined than rain without clouds. This plan was the source of the prodigious poison parsnip plot.

Parsnips were Babe’s favorite delicacy, and John Shears was supposed to ship the parsnip crop to the logging camp each fall. But in the year in which the monstrous plot was hatched he did not dig the parsnips at all. He allowed them to go to seed instead, and now the parsnip patch was rank with a poisonous second growth. John Shears intended to dig them in another month and ship them to the camp. The blue ox would eat them and die, and then he, the boss farmer, should attain the power and triumph of his dreams.

Little Meery, the farm slavey, alone was kept in ignorance of John Shears’ schemes, not because he was feared or distrusted, but because he seemed so lowly, abject and unimportant. He had scarcely more consequence in the farm life than one of the snow hens. He slept on a hard bunk under the kitchen sink. He was not allowed to associate with the scissor-bills. The only attention he ever received from them was when they made him the object of blows and ridicule. One time he had been Thomas O’Meery, the Irish Orphan, an aspiring young logger. The rich food served in Paul Bunyan’s cookhouse had been his undoing. He became obese, rotund, unable to swing an ax. He got such heft and circumference that he was a nuisance. Whenever he fell down he would have to roll around until he could find a logger who would lift him to his feet. He was a danger also. One time he rolled down a hill and bounced head-on into a column of marching loggers. He flattened every one, and Johnny Inkslinger, the timekeeper and camp doctor, was busy all night setting their broken ribs. After this mishap, Paul Bunyan turned him over to John Shears. The boss farmer gave him the meanest job on the farm; he put him to washing the dishes and slopping the pigs. Little Meery finally became resigned to his grievous affliction and lowly lot, and a spirit of sublime meekness sustained him even when he was most cruelly treated.

This corpulent child of misfortune had a rare and charming soul. He alone, of all the toilers on the great farm, felt the pastoral loveliness of his surroundings. His day of toil done, he would part his hair, gather a bunch of clover blooms, take Porkums, his little lame pet pig under his arm, waddle over the footbridge that crossed Honey Creek, and in the grounds of the old home camp enjoy his one small pleasure in life. Sitting on an old maple log, he would pretend that he was a lean, muscular head faller in Paul Bunyan’s camp and one of the great logger’s favorites. He would see himself as a bunkhouse hero, walking in the shadows of the blue ox, living a grand, free life. What delight Little Meery had from such imaginings! What pity that they had to fade! Little Meery always tried to be bravely cheerful when the dream was done. He would force back his tears, return the comforting squeals of Porkums with a trembling smile, then move gently among the jaybirds, which always gathered trustingly around his feet, and return to his cruel slavey’s life with only thoughts of kindness and charity for John Shears and the scissor-bills. If Paul Bunyan could only have truly known that heart of gold!

One evening in the old home camp Little Meery’s imaginings became more active than usual. He pretended that he was winning a felling championship, while Paul Bunyan applauded him.... He made great chips fly like buckshot, the loggers were a cheering host, he swung the ax violently at every stroke.... Too late he felt himself slipping from the maple log, and he rolled helplessly to the ground. As usual, he could not get back on his feet. He rolled to the footbridge, but he could not pass between the railings. He lay there until dawn, and no help came. The morning passed, and still he lay helpless. He was not found until John Shears came to the farmhouse for dinner and discovered the breakfast dishes unwashed.

“Did it on puppus, I bet!” roared the boss farmer. “I’d let ye lay there an’ rot ef ’twarn’t fer the dishes. I got a mind to whale ye anyhow, hi gravy!”

“Please, oh, please don’t beat me, Mr. Shears,” pleaded Little Meery. “I tried to roll home, honest I did.”

The boss farmer brought an ellum club into view.

“Oh, _by_ gosh! Mr. Shears----”

“Swearin’, hey?”

“I meant to say ‘my’--honest!”

“Didn’t nuther. Ye used a ‘by’ word, an’ ye know plagued well ye meant to be profane!”

“Oh! oh! oh’” screamed poor Little Meery, as the blows poured upon him. John Shears beat him until sundown, taking five minutes out of each hour for rest.... He raised the ellum club for a last terrific blow, and Little Meery bravely tried to stifle his sobs, as he waited to receive it. The cruel blow was never delivered. Two words stopped it.

“Here ... John!”

The words seemed to be calmly spoken, yet the tones that made them filled the vast plain of the home camp and reverberated in thunderous echoes among all the hills. The trees shook, the surface of Smiling River broke into violent waves, the slopes of old Rock Candy were disturbed by the smoke and roar of an avalanche. John Shears quietly dropped his ellum club; Little Meery opened his eyes and saw near him a boot with a toe cap made of an elephant hide. Then he looked up and beheld the kindly bearded countenance of the good and mighty Paul Bunyan looming above him. Then John Shears hastily helped him to his feet and he limped between the boss farmer’s ankles and out on the footbridge. There he stopped to look worshipfully on his hero, his lord, his king, Paul Bunyan, who shook hands solemnly with John Shears.

“I didn’t expect ye to ketch me a frolickin’ with one o’ my men,” said John Shears attempting a grin. “But I do like to frolic once in a while, jest like your loggers do.”

“I’m glad that you have learned to play, John,” said Paul Bunyan gently. “The playful spirit of my loggers has helped them to bear untold perils, griefs and hardships. They are a fine bunch of savages, worthy of emulation. I intend for them to enjoy the bounties and peace of home life for a season. We return to log off the rest of the Smiling River country.”

“Well, now, I’m mighty glad you’re to be with us again, Mr. Bunyan,” said John Shears effusively.

“Thank you, John. And I wish to commend you for your faithful service. I hope to reward you fittingly. And I overlook your failure to ship Babe his parsnips last fall. Your one failure, for which I shall not reprove you. But you must prepare him acres of them at once. Understand? Very well. Yay, Babe!”

Johnny Inkslinger, the timekeeper, and the Big Swede, the foreman, were beside Paul Bunyan. The three moved towards the maple grove, and the blue ox, who had been straddling the river, stepped on across it, dragging the cookhouse, the bunkhouses, and the other camp buildings behind him. He was thin, and the shape of his great ribs showed through his shaggy blue hide. As he moved through the twilight shadows he looked like a wrinkled bluff when it is seen dimly in a fog. For half an hour the bunkhouses flashed by so swiftly that their lighted windows made an unbroken streak of light. The loggers in them were singing about the jam on Garry’s Rock and the death of young Munro. As Little Meery listened to the roaring choruses he felt that he would willingly give his life for a single day as a real logger. If he could only be there in one of the bunkhouses, a tough and respected member of a logging crew, a lean, supple, vigorous axman, a fine and admired figure! Vain, vain desire! Poor Little Meery. He abandoned the dream with a sigh. Then he was startled by a dry, rasping chuckle from John Shears. Little Meery was astonished, for he had never heard the boss farmer laugh.

“Parsnips, hey?” he cackled. “Ol’ Paul wants his ox critter to have his parsnips right now, does he? Dad gum’, ef that ain’t funny! Ho! ho!”

The boss farmer leaped over Honey Creek and strode rapidly towards the farmhouse. Every hundred yards he would pause and chuckle convulsively. “Parsnips, hey? Ye dern’ tootin’ I’ll feet him parsnips! It’s Mr. Bunyan’s pers’nal orders, says I. Heh! heh! Dad burn’, ef that ain’t funny!”

While Paul Bunyan, Johnny Inkslinger and the Big Swede cruised the remaining timber in the Smiling River country, the loggers renewed their affections for the delights of the old home camp. In the mornings they roamed the cool slopes of old Rock Candy, they gorged themselves with ripe fruit from the raspberry trees and strawberry bushes, and, barefooted, they climbed the maple trees and gamboled over the clover fields. In the afternoons Smiling River was splashed with foam for miles as they swarmed into their old swimming holes. Swimming over, the loggers would line up on the banks and shake their right legs to get the water out of their left ears and their left legs to get the water out of their right ears. Then they would angle for the bright-hued butterfish that fluttered among the water flowers. And what exhilarating meals they enjoyed! Now they had all the fresh stuff that the farm could provide. Cream Puff Fatty, the baker, made them strawberry shortcake and raspberry pie twice a day, and he covered these juicy confections with snowy piles of vanilla-flavored whipped cream. The cobs from golden, fat-kerneled roasting ears were soon heaped mountain-high in the kitchen yard. The cream gravy for the rosy new potatoes and bouncing green peas was made from real cream, sweet and thick. The loggers became lighthearted boys again, and as they enjoyed themselves they were happily unconscious of the bitter enviousness of the scissor-bills, who were digging parsnips for twenty hours a day on the other side of Honey Creek.

Babe, the blue ox, too, was enjoying life as never before. The stream from the lemonade springs had been diverted to a trough that ran through his manger; and he was surrounded with fresh, green clover, for John Shears, with sinister purpose, had mown all the clover fields on the day after Paul Bunyan’s arrival and had stacked it in and around Babe’s stable. He had hoped that the blue ox would bloat on the green feed, and perish before his master could return from his cruising expedition. But the early harvest had only served to throw the two bees into a rebellious rage; they had been imprisoned in their hive, and there, night and day, they had buzzed wrathfully over their half-filled honey barrels. Babe digested the green clover easily, and ate it with delight, his great blue eyes shining with affection and gratitude for the boss farmer.

“Pity ’tain’t alfalfy, ye blame’ hog,” snarled John Shears in disgust.

But it wasn’t, so John Shears made the scissor-bills work twenty hours a day in the parsnip patch, and he aided them with his own efforts, for he realized that once Paul Bunyan and Johnny Inkslinger had returned a fatal poisoning of the blue ox would be difficult to accomplish. He would not have the courage to attempt it then. Now was the time to strike. Heaven helping him, he should not fail!

During this week Little Meery had been kept within the bounds of the farmyard by the strict orders of John Shears. His heart was heavy indeed as he toiled away in the kitchen. Never had the scouring of pots and pans seemed to be such wretched labor; never had the odors and steam of dishwater seemed so detestable. When he went out to slop the pigs at eventide he heard the jaybirds’ songs no more; he had ears only for the shouts, laughter and harmonies that sounded in the old home camp. Next week the grand life of logging would begin; all summer he, poor unfortunate, would suffer the misery of vain longings. Poor Little Meery; he looked in vain for a silver lining to his cloud.

Saturday came, and only one more holiday remained for the loggers to enjoy. As Little Meery listened to their exuberant noise, he was unable to drive away his despondency with songs or cheerful thoughts. Hour by hour his spirits got lower; his optimism left him, and his mind was dark with dismal shades. When he went to bed under the kitchen sink he did not fall into a sound sleep at once, as he usually did; his misery and dejection kept him awake. For two hours he lay there, soaking his pillow with tears, then the droning murmurs from the settin’-room were hushed, and, after a pause, John Shears began a speech. He fully revealed his frightful scheme to the scissor-bills, and he exhorted them to be true to his cause, which was their cause also. When Little Meery understood that the boss farmer intended to poison the blue ox and thus do away with the logging industry forever, he gave such a start of horror that his head banged against the bottom of the sink. The speech was halted at the sound.

“It’s only Little Meery,” said a scissor-bill contemptuously.

Little Meery did not venture to stir again as John Shears went on speaking.

“So it’s all fixed to pizen the ox critter to-night,” said John Shears in conclusion. “Then they’ll be no more wicked loggin’. Loggin’ must be wicked because it makes wicked men. Farmin’ must be good because it makes good men. When ol’ Paul Bunyan an’ his loggers has to go farmin’ they’ll nacherlly turn into good men. Then they’ll have to foller us, hi grabby, because we was farmers an’ good men before they was. I hate to pizen a pore dumb critter, but this here’s by way of makin’ him a sackerfice--a sackerfice for the glory of life eternal! Glory! glory! glory!”

The scissor-bills all shouted “Glory! glory! glory!” after him, and then Little Meery heard them all move out of the settin’-room. For a few minutes he did not dare to stir, then he could no longer tolerate the anxiety of waiting. He slid carefully from his bunk, he took off his nightgown and slipped on his ragged slavey’s clothes, and then, pausing cautiously at every heavy step, he approached the kitchen door. He opened it and peered outside. There was a fair light from a half-moon, and he could see the scissor-bills standing in rows and clusters along the barnyard fence. John Shears was already across Honey Creek. He opened the door of Babe’s stable, and then ran back to the farmyard. Soon Babe’s head appeared in the stable doorway, his great gentle eyes looked inquiringly about, then they shone hungrily as they glimpsed a white heap of the vegetables he loved. Other piles were scattered at intervals of seven hundred yards. In a short time Babe was in the parsnip patch, and he began to devour the first mountainous pile of the deadly vegetables. John Shears and the scissor-bills shouted halleluiahs of joy and triumph.

Horror, despair, a terrible sense of helplessness, held Little Meery motionless in the doorway. Hours seemed to pass as he frantically tried to think of some means to thwart the plot of John Shears and to ward off the tragic event that was swiftly casting its shadow over the old home camp. But what could _he_ do? He was only Little Meery, scorned, despised, held in such contempt that he had been ignored entirely in the plans. Then a sound that had roared in his ears ever since the clover was cut for the blue ox startled his mind with a desperate idea. The sound was the raging hum of two great bees, Bum and Bill, and Little Meery now resolved to release them from the hive, whatever the danger to himself. He knew that they would make a savage attack on the blue ox and perhaps drive him from the perilous parsnip patch. So he eased himself out of the kitchen and trod as softly as his obesity permitted towards the beehive. He reached it without being discovered, then he heaved up desperately on the latch. Up it went--six inches, twelve, eighteen, thirty-six, sixty--it was over the top of the block! As Little Meery pantingly threw the door open, the bees began to roar, then they shot out of the hive with a deafening buzz, their wings humming so violently that the wind from them stripped the shirt off his back. The bees zigzagged doubtfully for a moment, then they spied the blue ox in the parsnip patch. They cracked their wings together and lit out for him in a beeline. John Shears saw them and bawled for them to return, but, though they were obedient bees in their gentle moods, his yells now made them buzz on in a greater rage than ever. They circled the blue ox three times, then they sat on him and began a furious stinging of him. Babe bellowed. The scissor-bills were thrown through the barnyard fence when the wind from that bellow struck them, but John Shears charged through the vegetable gardens after the bees. And reached the anguished ox just as he had lifted his hind legs for a tremendous kick. Babe’s hoof caught the boss farmer squarely between his eyebrows and his ankles, and he was hurled so high into the air that he sailed over the cloud-kissed crest of old Rock Candy. Babe flailed away mightily with his tail, he pawed up clouds of dirt, he stood on his horns, but the bees remained seated. At last the blue ox galloped out of the parsnip patch and ran for the sanctuary of his stable, where the bees dared not follow him.

Babe’s bellow had rolled Little Meery among the scissor-bills, but he landed on his feet. He lumbered away from them in the direction of the footbridge, and when the scissor-bills had disentangled themselves from the splinters of the fence, they set out after him. They caught him in the center of the bridge, but just as they were beginning to beat him, the loggers, who had all been shaken from their bunks by Babe’s anguished bellow, came with a rush from the other side. Then began the famous Battle of the Footbridge, in which the opposing forces vainly attempted to reach each other over the obese form of Little Meery, who received hundreds of blows a minute. All through the night the battle raged, while Babe mooed woefully in his stable and Bum and Bill buzzed gleeful satisfaction in their hive.

Not until sunrise, when Paul Bunyan reached the old home camp, was the terrible struggle ended. He ordered the loggers and the scissor-bills into the plain before the maple grove and demanded an explanation. The combatants were too weary from their terrific struggle to reply, but at last Little Meery found strength to speak and told his awful story.

“Brave, brave heart,” Paul Bunyan commended him. “And how can I reward you?”

“I want to be a head faller, Mr. Bunyan.”

“But a head faller must fit into a head faller’s uniform, and you my fine lad--well, you are Little Meery.”

Then Little Meery staggered triumphantly from among the weary host. Not a stitch remained on him, he was bruised from head to heels, but he showed himself with pride. For he was not now the seven hundred and eighty pound Little Meery of yesterday, but a raw-boned two hundred and fifty pound logger, lean, solid and strong. During the long battle, pound by pound, over a quarter of a ton of fat had been pushed, prodded, punched, pounded, rolled, jerked, squeezed and stamped from his body. His obesity was gone! Miracle of miracles! Paul Bunyan could hardly believe his eyes.

“A head faller you shall be,” he said.

John Shears was three weeks returning from the spot whither Babe had kicked him. Meek, humble, chastened, repentant, he came to Paul Bunyan and declared himself willing to submit to the dire punishment which he supposed awaited him. He expected to be made to eat gravel for a month, at the very least. The good and mighty Paul Bunyan, however, merely ordered John Shears to get back to the farm. But he put a ban on parsnips. As for Little Meery, when he heard that John Shears had returned, he twisted his hat around--his hair was never parted now,--he took a grand chew of fire cut, hitched up his tin pants and growled. “Let’s walk on him! Let’s put the calks to him! Let’s cave his head in!” Little Meery had become a logger indeed, and he lived gloriously ever after.

SHANTY BOY

In Paul Bunyan’s time, camp entertainment was of, by and for the woodsmen. In Paul Bunyan’s camp there were hypnotic story-tellers, singers who could make you laugh and cry in the same moment, and steppers who could do a breakdown fit to shatter the frame of a bunkhouse. “Ol’ Paul” knew the importance of social pleasures for his loggers, and he made natural provision for them. A good bunkhouse bard was marked by the great logger’s especial favor; many a man who toiled poorly was saved from the lowly life of a farm hand by his ability to dance, whistle and sing. Consequently Paul Bunyan’s Bunkhouse Nights are as famous in history as his great feasts and labors.

Every night but Sunday, when the twelve hours of toil in the woods were ended and supper was over, the tired loggers would be cheered and consoled by the bunkhouse bards. There was one for each shanty, and each one had his own particular virtues. There was Beeg An’tole, for example, who made his mates in Bunkhouse 999 hilarious as he told quaint tales about logging in “dat ver’ fines’ countree, which she’s t’ree weeks below Quebec.” Angus MacIlroy of Bunkhouse 1313 was made to sing “The Island Boys” a dozen times a night by his song-loving comrades. And Tinty Hoolan of Bunkhouse 6000 jigged with such violence and speed that a modern jazz band would have gone crazy trying to make music fast enough for him. The rattle of his jigging feet sounded like the buzz of a big bee. His bunkhouse cronies boasted that he could imitate any known sound with his feet except a tired logger’s snore. And this, anyone admitted, defied imitation or description. Tinty Hoolan was a swamper, and a poor one; his feet, however, saved him from life among the scissor-bills on Paul Bunyan’s farm.

Now these were three of the greatest of Paul Bunyan’s bards, and no one has ever found words to describe them or to give them fitting praise. And if words fail with them, how can they reveal the brightest star of all Paul Bunyan’s performers? Indeed, Shanty Boy, of Bunkhouse 1, was more than a star; he was a constellation, for he was an entertainer with a thousand talents. What old logger does not feel his own soul dance as he hears, in the Bunyan histories, the soft, vibrant patter of Shanty Boy’s right foot, the thunderous stamp of his left foot, the sharp rattle of his heel-cracking in a great breakdown? He not only danced with his feet, but with his hands and eyes; he had a dancing grin, too, which would shine now on the right side of his face, now on the left. Shanty Boy put his whole soul into his dancing. And so he did with his stories. When he told a Swede story he _was_ a Swede, and when he told a dirty story he _was_ dirty. He was never content with mere pretending. He made entertainment of everything, and he did it naturally. A log would roll over his leg when he was at work. That night he would hobble down the bunkhouse aisle like an ailing old man, talking in the mournfullest way. “Oh, lawdy, boys! I ’low I ain’t long fer _this_ life. Thet new medicine I’m usin’ don’t ’pear to be doin’ my rheumatiz no good, no good a-tall. I spect I’ll be havin’ to change to ’nuther kind agin.” Then he’d hobble back again, drawing his sore leg up like a string-halted horse, and groaning, “M-m-m-! M-m-m! I ’low I feel worse’n anyone thet ever lived in this here world--an’ lived.” If somebody asked him what time it was, he would take out his old watch, hold it at arm’s length, throw back his head and squint at the watch like he was looking at it through glasses. He claimed that “grandpap carried thet watch fer nigh on forty year, an’ it won’t tell the time onless I look at it jest like he did.” Sometimes he would sit down by the stove and eat an apple or a raw turnip. Then he would pull his hat down over his eyes, and while he chewed away, looking as solemn as a politician, he would make the hat bob up and down to keep time with his jaws. No one else could have done this without seeming foolish, but Shanty Boy always kept a kind of dignity when he was performing that made men respect him even when they were laughing at him.

But it was his songs and stories which truly endeared him to the loggers. His renditions of “John Ross,” “Jack Haggerty,” “The Island Boys,” and “Bung Yer Eye,” were so affecting and inspiring that the loggers, what with laughing, crying, stamping, clapping and cheering, often made so much sympathetic noise that the song itself could not be heard. Shanty Boy only sang two nights a week and then for no longer than four hours at a time. The other nights he danced, and told true but thrilling stories of life in the woods. The bards from other bunkhouses would come to hear him and then give imitations of his performances. His supremacy was unquestioned, yet he remained unspoiled.

For he was more than a mere entertainer. The mightiest of Paul Bunyan’s loggers lived in Bunkhouse 1, and as a logger Shanty Boy was the peer of any of them. He could notch a tree or work in white water with the best of the fallers and rivermen. He held his own with even Mark Beaucoup in the rough bunkhouse frolics. He was Paul Bunyan’s favorite faller, and the great logger often carried him to the woods on his shoulder. He had an equal rank with Hot Biscuit Slim, the chief cook, Shagline Bill, the freighter, and Big Ole, the blacksmith. He was a true hero. And a time came when he reached the greatest height of glory ever attained by a plain logger. Here is how it came about.

The Year of the Two Winters had been disastrous for Paul Bunyan. Winter had come again in the summertime that year, and the cold increased in the succeeding months. At Christmas time there was fifty feet of ice on Lake Michigan, and by the last of February the lake was frozen to the bottom. Paul Bunyan was then engaged in logging off the Peninsula country, and of course his operations were halted. He cut the ice into blocks and hauled them out on the lake shore with Babe, his big blue ox, who could pull anything that had two ends on it. This was done so that the ice would melt more quickly when normal summer weather returned. Then he moved his outfit to the old home camp in the Smiling River country, where severe weather was never experienced.

Paul Bunyan had done no logging around his old home camp for seven years. The remaining timber was so far from the river and on such steep hills that profitable logging seemed impossible. However, it was the best to be had, for elsewhere it would be weeks, even months, before the snow drifts would melt away from the tree tops. Paul Bunyan tackled the tough logging problems before him with characteristic courage. He was sure that his inventiveness and resourcefulness would, as always, triumph over every obstacle.

His most stubborn and difficult problem was that of getting the loggers to the woods in the morning in time to do any work and getting them home at night in time to do any sleep. One plan after another was tried and dropped, failures all. Paul Bunyan began with an attempt to work one day shift, but the loggers could not get to the woods before lunch time; lunch finished, they had to start at once for the camp. Two shifts were then put on, but little work could be done at night, except when the moon was full. Paul Bunyan then sent the great Johnny Inkslinger, his timekeeper and man of science, to investigate the Aurora Borealis as a means of artificial lighting. Johnny reported that it was pretty but unreliable, and he doubted if even the blue ox could move it down from the North in less than six months. The learned Inkslinger then sat down and figured desperately for a week, trying to devise a method of working three twelve-hour shifts a day. With such a routine one shift could be doing a day’s work, while a second shift was coming to work, and a third was going to camp. Johnny Inkslinger was, beyond a doubt, the greatest man with figures that ever lived, but here his mathematics failed him. Paul Bunyan then thought of making a campsite in the timber, and he dug for water in the high hills. He succeeded in reaching a mighty vein, but it was so deep that it took a week to draw a bucket of water out of the well. It was out of the question as a water supply for the camp.

Now Paul Bunyan had to fall back on a last plan, a far-fetched one that seemed well-nigh hopeless. This was to build a great sled, something on the order of a lunch sled, and have Babe, the blue ox, haul the loggers to and from work each day. It was a desperate plan, and no one but Paul Bunyan would have had the courage to attempt it. It must be remembered that the blue ox measured forty-two ax handles and a plug of chewing tobacco between the horns; an ordinary man at his front had to use a telescope to see what he was doing with his hind legs, he was so long; he had so much energy and such delight in labor that no one could hold him when he started for the woods in the mornings; he was so fast that Paul Bunyan’s foreman, the Big Swede, who was as tall as the trees, could not begin to keep up with him. Only Paul Bunyan could travel so fast. Whenever Babe moved the camp he traveled at a careful pace, but even then some of the loggers were made seasick; and all of them became so irritable when a move was being made that they fought constantly among themselves. If the comparatively slow camp-moving pace of the blue ox thus upset them, his timber-going gallop would be apt to ruin them completely. Paul Bunyan remembered how the Big Swede, hanging to Babe’s halter rope, was hurled through the air, only striking the ground once in every quarter of a mile or so, when the blue ox rushed to his delightful labor each morning. A lunch sled full of loggers would be dragged by Babe in much the same fashion; it would be in the air most of the time, and when it did strike the ground loggers would be scattered like autumn leaves. The loggers who would hang on until the woods were reached would have the living daylights shaken out of them. A common lunch sled would not do; one must be invented that would hold the road.

So Paul Bunyan devised the serpentine bobsled. It was a long, low-built contraption; the runners were made in short sections, connected by double joints. When it was completed and lay in the road that led from the camp it looked like a squat fence, for it snugly fitted the contours of the hills and vales over which it extended.

“There’s a rig that’ll hold the road,” said Paul Bunyan with pride. “Now I’ll invent something equally good to hold Babe to a slow pace.”