PAUL BUNYAN
[Illustration]
JAMES STEVENS
PAUL BUNYAN
WOODCUTS BY ALLAN LEWIS
[Illustration]
NEW YORK
GARDEN CITY PUBLISHING CO., INC.
COPYRIGHT, 1925, BY ALFRED A. KNOPF, INC.
NOTE: _Four of Mr. Lewis’ woodcuts were originally
made for, and are used by courtesy of The Century
Magazine._
CL
MANUFACTURED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
TO
OTHEMAN STEVENS
CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION 1
THE WINTER OF THE BLUE SNOW 11
THE BULL OF THE WOODS 31
A MATTER OF HISTORY 51
THE SOURDOUGH DRIVE 70
THE BLACK DUCK DINNER 90
THE OLD HOME CAMP 114
SHANTY BOY 132
THE KINGDOM OF KANSAS 149
ORATORICAL MEDICINE 169
NEW IOWA 188
THE HE MAN COUNTRY 207
EVIL INVENTIONS 225
INTRODUCTION
The Paul Bunyan legend had its origin in the Papineau Rebellion of
1837. This was a revolt of the French-Canadians against their young
English queen. In the Two Mountains country, at St. Eustache, many
loggers armed with mattocks, axes, and wooden forks which had been
steamed and warped into hooks, stormed into battle. Among them was
a mighty-muscled, bellicose, bearded giant named Paul Bunyon. This
forest warrior, with a mattock in one hand, and a great fork in the
other, powerful as Hercules, indomitable as Spartacus, bellowing like
a furious Titan, raged among the Queen’s troops like Samson among the
Philistines. He came out of the rebellion with great fame among his own
kind. His slaughters got the grandeur of legend.
Later this Paul Bunyon operated a logging camp. In that day logging
was heroic labor. In the autumn the loggers went to the woods, forcing
their way in batteaux up swift rivers. On every trip there were many
wearisome portages around rapids. Snow and ice then locked them in
their camps for five or six months. The workday was from dawn to dusk.
The loggers lived on beans, salt pork and sourdough bread. At night
there were songs and tales around the shanty stove. Of course these
were mainly about their own life, their own heroes. The camp boss was
like the chief of a tribe; his will had to be the law, and he had to
have exceptional physical power and courage to enforce it. After his
part in the rebellion there was no more famous camp chief in Canada
than Paul Bunyon.
Sure that the Paul Bunyan stories which have been told for generations
in the American timberlands were of Canadian origin, I questioned many
old time French-Canadian loggers before I found genuine proofs. At last
I met Louis Letourneau in the Big Berry country, Puyallup, Washington.
And Louis’ father-in-law, Z. Berneche, a snowy-maned, shining-eyed,
keen-minded veteran logger of ninety years, told me about the original
hero. His uncle, Collet Bellaine, fought by the side of Paul Bunyon,
and later worked two seasons for him. Now, the French-Canadians have no
genius for the humor of purposeful exaggeration such as the Americans
have; the _habitans_ exaggerate honestly and enthusiastically and with
an illusion of truth, like Tartarin of Tarascon.
“My uncle, Collet Bellaine,” said Mr. Berneche earnestly, “know that
Paul Bunyon carry five hundred pounds on portage. That is truth. He was
very big, strong man, you understand; he fight like hell, he work like
hell, and he pack like hell. Never was another man like Paul Bunyon.
That’s right.”
It is not difficult to imagine the _habitans_ honestly exaggerating
the logging feats of the war hero as they talked about him in the New
Brunswick camps, and in Maine, and in the Great Lakes pineries. And it
is simple for one who has seen the two races together to imagine the
Americans “improving” on the first stories about Paul Bunyon, only to
ridicule his extravagant admirers; and then developing their own Paul
Bunyan legend to ease their weariness when their twelve-hour day was
done.
Other evidence supports this view of the origin of the stories. There
are stories told about an Irish-French-Canadian logger, Joe Mufraw
(Murphy was his ancestral name); and the name of Joe Mufraw is famous
in the woods, sometimes being linked with Paul Bunyan’s. He appears in
the Red River Lumber Company’s collection of Paul Bunyan stories. Now,
Joe Mufraw logged in the Misstassinny River country in Quebec less than
fifty years ago. I have seen pictures of this huge frowning man and
his oxen. Many old French-Canadians have sworn to me that he put the
calks in his boots in the shape of his initials, and that after the
thirteenth drink he would kick his initials in a ceiling eight feet
high. His feats in camp and on the log drives were as magnificent.
It was the American loggers below the Border who made of Paul Bunyon a
true hero of camp nights’ entertainment. They gave him Babe, the blue
ox, who measured forty-two ax handles and a plug of chewing tobacco
between the horns. They created the marvelous mythical logging camp,
with its cookhouse of mountainous size and history of Olympian feats;
and they peopled this camp with astounding minor heroes. They made
their Paul Bunyan an inventor and orator, and an industrialist whose
labors surpassed those of Hercules. They devised a chronology for him;
he ruled American life in the period between the Winter of the Blue
Snow and the Spring That the Rain Came Up From China. By 1860 Paul
Bunyan had become a genuine American legendary hero.
Perhaps the Paul Bunyan narrator who won most lasting fame was Len Day,
whose firm of Len Day & Son was one of the largest lumber concerns of
Minneapolis in the sixties. I had often heard of him; and lately Mr.
Michael Christopher Quinn, yard superintendent for the Northwestern
Lumber Company, of Hoquiam, Washington, for twenty-two years, gave me
a first-hand account of him. In 1873 Quinn was working in a great log
drive down the Mississippi; his camp was at Haney Landing, Minnesota.
Len Day was then eighty-five, a prosperous and influential lumberman.
But the lure of the drive and of camp life still stirred the true
logger’s soul of him, and he came to the camp each spring. Every night
the gang gathered in the cookhouse to hear the old camp bard declaim a
canto of the Paul Bunyan epic.
“Len Day told the stories in sections,” said Mr. Quinn.
A section, or a canto, or a chapter, or whatever one may call it,
was delivered each night by the old lumberman, who could see toiling
demi-gods and sweating heroes in his dark woods, and imagined
narratives about them, to which he gave the substance and characters of
the traditional Paul Bunyan stories. Len Day had lived in New Brunswick
in the forties and had thus heard the stories in their beginnings. The
Paul Bunyan stories which form the body of the legend have not had
many changes or surviving additions in fifty years. They themselves
are not a narrative; they exist, rather, as a group of anecdotes which
are told among a group of camp men until the story-teller of the gang
is started on a narrative which he makes up as he yarns along, and
which may take him an hour, or three evenings, to relate. A Paul Bunyan
bunkhouse service is a glory to hear, when it is spontaneous and in a
proper setting; preferably around a big heater in the winter, when the
wind is howling through crackling boughs outside, and the pungent smell
of steaming wool drifts down from the drying lines above the stove.
When the vasty spirit of the woods really moves the meeting a noble
and expansive ecstasy of the soul is exhibited. Remarks are passed
about a similar night in Paul Bunyan’s camp, when the wind blew so hard
that Big Ole, the blacksmith, had to bolt iron straps over the logs to
keep them from being sucked up the chimneys. The theme grows and bears
strange fruits; and finally the camp bard harvests them all in a story
based on such a venerable anecdote as that one about Big Ole toting one
of Babe’s ox shoes for half a mile and sinking knee-deep into the solid
rock at every step.
This anecdote is what might be called a “key story,” for it is one of
the very old ones. There are at least a hundred of these, all familiar
to every man who has worked long in the woods. They all deal with some
of the characters whom tradition has placed about Paul Bunyan, with
the mighty logger himself as the main hero; their settings are in such
regions as the Onion River country, the Bullfrog Lake country, or the
Leaning Pine country; and each one is a theme for gorgeous yarns, when
a knowing and gifted camp bard is inspired to use it.
Nowadays, with a shed garage in every logging camp, a radio in the
camp office, graphophones in the bunkhouses, and a jazz shack in the
village just “over the hump,” the camp bard has a scant audience. But
in happier times each camp enjoyed its chief story-teller; and such a
bard could take one of the key stories and elaborate on it for hours,
building a complete narrative, picturing awe-inspiring characters,
inventing dialogue of astonishing eloquence. (And what stupendous
curses, terrifying threats and verbose orations such bards as Happy
Olsen and Old Time Sandy could invent!) It is the method of the old
bards that I have attempted to follow in writing this book.
The art of the plain American, which in the last century brought forth
tales and songs as native to the soil as the grass of the prairies,
is at last perishing under the feet of the herd arts of a perfected
democratic culture. The legends about Buffalo Bill and Brigham Young
have passed; these heroes are now plain figures in book history. Jim
Bridger, the heroic “old man of the mountains,” is obscenely and
falsely portrayed in a movie to draw snickers from the chiropractors,
pants salesmen and tin-roofers who are the passionate devotees of this
carnal herd art. Kentucky and Tennessee mountain folk still tell their
tales about “ol’ Dan’l,” tales in which the listener will discover a
Boone a thousand times more picturesque and grand than the hero of
written history. Crockett, Carson, old Andy Jackson, Sam Houston--but
I could name a score whom the plain man’s untutored art ennobled and
glorified in a manner that put the erudite narrators to shame. This art
is perishing simply because Universal Education, and other blights,
curses and evil inventions of democracy are destroying all the old
simplicity, imaginativeness and self-amusement of plain American life.
Only in a few regions, and among the elders, do the creations of this
art, this folk lore, or whatever one wills to call it, survive as
shining memorials to sturdier and nobler days. And the legend of Paul
Bunyan is certainly the greatest of these creations; for it embodies
the souls of the millions of American camp men who have always done the
hard and perilous pioneer labor of this country. It is true American
legend now, for Paul Bunyan, as he stands to-day, is absolutely
American from head to foot. He visualizes perfectly the American
love of tall talk and tall doings, the true American exuberance and
extravagance. Beginning in Paul Bunyon, soldier with Papineau, he has
become the creation of whole generations of men. Thousands of narrators
by far-flung campfires have contributed their mites to the classical
picture of him. And he, at least, will live as long as there is a
forest for his refuge, as long as there are shadows and whispers of
trees.
I want to thank the old camp comrades who have sent me so many versions
of all the known key stories, and who have given me accounts of new
ideas. They, and several lumbermen also, have been very kind to me. And
I owe gratitude particularly to Mr. H. L. Mencken, of the _American
Mercury_. Without his help and encouragement the stories would not have
been written.
[Illustration]
PAUL BUNYAN
THE WINTER OF THE BLUE SNOW
Paul Bunyan was the one historian of the useful and the beautiful;
other writers of history tell only of terrible and dramatic events.
Therefore the chronicles of Paul Bunyan, the mighty logger, the
inventor of the lumber industry, the leader-hero of the best band
of bullies, the finest bunch of savages, that ever tramped the
continent, the master orator of a land that has since grown forests of
orators--his chronicles alone tell of the Winter of the Blue Snow.
The blue snow fell first in the North. It fell scantily in its earlier
hours, its sapphire flakes floating down on the waves of a mild winter
wind, and glittering in an ashen gold light, a sober pale radiance
which shimmered through silver mists. There was poetry in the spectacle
of these hours. And then the hard gray ground of a peopleless land was
hidden under a blanket of dark blue. And the nameless frozen lakes and
rivers, the silent valleys and the windy hills of the country were
all spread over with a sky-dyed snow. When the last light of this day
went out, the boughs of the great pines were creaking under heavy wet
masses of snow like torn bales of blue cotton. There was a rush in the
snowfall now, as a fiercer wind whipped it on; its heavy flakes were
driven down in thick, whirling clusters, in streaming veils, leaping
lines and dashing columns; and there were cloudlike swarms of the blue
flakes, which settled slowly, floating easily in the hard wind. This
wind got so strong that it shivered the timber, and the piles of blue
snow which had gathered on the pine boughs were shaken down. Most of
this snow fell into blue mounds around the trees, but some of it fell
on the fauna of the forest, adding to their troublement.
At the time of the Winter of the Blue Snow, the forest creatures of
this land lived a free and easy life. Man was not there to embarrass
them with accusations of trespass and to slay them for their ignorance
of the crime. Their main problem was the overcrowding of the forests.
The vast moose herds, who populated the woods so densely that traffic
through their favorite timber was dangerous, made the matter of getting
food a simple one for the carnivorous animals. There were many moose to
spare, and the elders of the herds, like most prolific parents, never
became frantically resentful over the loss of an offspring. The moose
themselves, of course, lived easily on the crisp, juicy moose grass
which grew so plenteously in these regions before the blue snow. So the
carnivorous creatures of the forests lived a fast and furious life;
and it is certain that if they were capable of praise, they had good
praises for the moose meat which they got with such little difficulty.
The coal-black bruins of the North were an especially happy crowd.
Theirs was a gay, frolicsome life in the summer time, when the big
bruins danced and galloped through sunny valleys and the small ones had
rolling races on shady hillsides. In the fall, all fat and drowsy from
moose meat, the bruins would go to sleep in their warm caves and dream
pleasantly all winter.
They were all dreaming now; and the blue snow would no doubt have
fallen and melted away without their knowledge had it not been for the
moose herds which crowded the forest aisles. Moose at that time did not
have it in them to enjoy wonder, and they had not learned to combat
fear, for they were never afraid. Still, they had some imagination,
and the moose trembled when the first blue snowflakes fell among them.
They kept up an appearance of unconcern at first, eating moose moss as
usual; but they sniffed gingerly at the blue streaks in it, and they
stole furtive glances at each other as they bravely ate. This strange
snowfall was certainly breeding fear of it in the hearts of all the
moose, but each one seemed determined to be the last one to show it.
However, as the day-end got near, and the wind grew more boisterous,
shaking snow masses from the trees, some of the moose had fits of
trembling and eye-rolling which they could not conceal. When a heap
of snow dropped on the back of some timid moose, he would twist his
head sharply and stare with bulging eyes at the mysteriously fearsome
color, then he would prance wildly until the unwelcome snow was bucked
from his shivering back. When the early shadows of evening came among
the trees, the moose all had a heavy darkness of fear in their hearts.
Little was needed to put them in a panic.
It was a great bull moose, a herd king, who forgot the example he owed
to his weaker kindred and unloosed a thunderous bellow of terror which
started the moose flight, the first memorable incident of the Winter
of the Blue Snow. An overladen bough cracked above him; it fell and
straddled him from quivering tail to flailing horns, burying him under
its wet blue load. He reared out roaring, and his own herd echoed the
cry; then a storm of moose bellows crashed through the forest. This
tumult died, but there followed the earth-shaking thunder of a stampede.
The bruins, awakened from their pleasant dreams, came out from their
caves and blinked at the hosts of terrified moose which were galloping
past. The earth-shaking uproar of the flight at last thoroughly aroused
the bruins, and they began to sniff the air uneasily. Then they noticed
the blue snow; and now in front of every cave crowds of bruins were
staring down at the snow; and each bruin was swaying heavily, lifting
his left front foot as he swayed to the right, and lifting his right
front foot as he swayed to the left. The bruins had no courage either,
and, once they had got sleep out of their heads, nearly all of them
took out after the moose herds. The wind roared louder with every
passing minute this night. And the flakes of the blue snow were as
dense as the particles of a fog. At dawn a blue blizzard was raging.
But the fauna of the forest plunged tirelessly on, seeking a refuge of
white snow.
And Niagara, made faithless by the Blue Terror, galloped behind
them--Niagara, the great moose hound, bread-winner for the student of
history, Paul Bunyon (his real name), and his companion also.
Paul Bunyon lived at Tonnere Bay. He dwelt in a cave that was as large
as ten Mammoth Caves and which had a roof loftier than any tower or
spire. But this cave was none too vast for Paul Bunyon, the one man
of this region, but one man as great as a city of ordinary men. His
tarpaulins and blankets covered one-fourth of the cave floor; his
hunting clothes, traps and seines filled another quarter; and the rest
of the space was occupied by a fireplace and his papers and books.
For Paul Bunyon was a student now. There had been a time when he
had gone forth in the hunting and fishing season to gather the huge
supplies of provender which he required, but now his days and nights
were all spent with his books. Paul Bunyon’s favorite food was raw
moose meat, and after he found Niagara in the Tall Wolf country he no
longer needed to hunt. Each night Niagara trotted out in the darkness
and satisfied his own hunger, then he carried mouthfuls of moose to
the cave until he had a day’s supply of meat for his master. Niagara
was ever careful not to frighten the moose herds; he hunted stealthily
and with quiet. The moose at night were only conscious of a dark cloud
looming over them, then numbers of the herds would disappear without
painful sound. The moose, if they had thought about it, would have been
only thankful to Niagara for lessening the congestion of the forests.
So Paul Bunyon fared well on the moose meat which Niagara brought him,
and he lived contentedly as a student in his cave at Tonnere Bay. Each
day he studied, and far into the night he figured. Taking a trimmed
pine tree for a pencil, he would char its end in the fire and use the
cave floor for a slate. He was not long in learning all the history
worth knowing, and he became as good a figurer as any man could be.
Vague ambitions began to stir in his soul after this and he often
deserted his studies to dream about them. He knew he would not spend
his days forever in the cave at Tonnere Bay. Somewhere in the future
a great Work was waiting to be done by him. Now it was only a dream;
but he was sure that it would be a reality; and he came to think more
and more about it. The books were opened less and less; the pine tree
pencil was seldom brought from its corner. Paul Bunyon now used another
pine tree which still had its boughs; it was a young one, and he
brushed his curly black beard with it as he dreamed. But he was still
a contented man at the time of the Winter of the Blue Snow, for his
dreams had not yet blazed up in a desire for any certain attainment.
On the first day of the blue snow, Paul Bunyon was in a particularly
contented mood. He sat all that day before his fire; so charmed with
drowsy thoughts was he that he did not once look out. It had been dark
a long time before he rolled into his blankets. He awoke at the dawn
of a day that had scarcely more light than the night. He was cold, and
he got up to throw an armful of trees on the fire. Then he saw the
blue drifts which had piled up before the cave, and he saw the fog of
the blue blizzard. He heard the roar of a terrific wind, too, and he
knew that the storm was perilous as well as strange. But Paul Bunyon
thought gladly of the blue snow, for it was a beautiful event, and the
historians he liked most would write wonderful books about it.
He kicked the drifts away from the cave entrance, but the usual pile of
slain moose was not under them. Paul Bunyon was a little worried, as he
thought that Niagara might have lost himself in the blue blizzard. The
possibility that the unnatural color of the storm might send the fauna
of the forest, and Niagara as well, into panicky flight did not occur
to him. He was sure that Niagara would return with a grand supply of
moose meat when the blue blizzard had passed.
But the moose herds were now far to the North, fleeing blindly from
the blue snow. The bruins galloped after them. Before the day was
over, Niagara had overtaken the bruins and was gaining on the moose.
At nightfall his lunging strides had carried him far ahead of all the
fauna of the forest. He galloped yet faster as he reached the blacker
darkness of the Arctic winter. Now the darkness was so heavy that even
his powerful eyes could not see in it.... Niagara at last ran head-on
into the North Pole; the terrific speed at which he was traveling
threw his body whirling high in the air; when Niagara fell he crashed
through ninety feet of ice, and the polar fields cracked explosively as
his struggles convulsed the waters under them.... Then only mournful
blasts of wind sounded in the night of the Farthest North.
The moose were wearied out before they reached the white Arctic, and
hordes of them fell and perished in the blizzard; many others died from
fright, and only a tiny remnant of the great herds survived. Some of
the bruins reached the polar fields, and they have lived there since.
Their hair had turned white from fright, and their descendants still
wear that mark of fear. Others were not frightened so much, and their
hair only turned gray. They did not run out of the timber, and their
descendants, the silver-tip grizzlies, still live in the Northern
woods. The baby bruins were only scared out of their growth, and their
black descendants now grow no larger than the cubs of Paul Bunyon’s
time.
Being ignorant of this disaster, Paul Bunyon was comfortable enough
while the blizzard lasted. He had a good store of trees on hand and
his cave was warm in the storm. He got hungry in the last days; but
this emotion, or any emotion, for that matter, could have but little
power over him when he was dreaming. And he dreamed deeply now of
great enterprises; his dreams were formless, without any substance of
reality; but they had brilliant colors, and they made him very hopeful.
The sun shone at last from a whitish blue sky, and the strange snow
fell no more. A snapping cold was in the land; and pine boughs were
bangled and brocaded with glittering blue crystals, and crusty blue
snow crackled underfoot.
Paul Bunyon strapped on his snow shoes and started out through the
Border forests in search of Niagara. His was a kingly figure as he
mushed through the pine trees, looming above all but the very tallest
of them. He wore a wine-red hunting cap, and his glossy hair and beard
shone under it with a blackness that blended with the cap’s color
perfectly. His unique eyebrows were black also; covering a fourth of
his forehead above the eyes, they narrowed where they arched down under
his temples, and they ended in thin curls just in front of his ears.
His mustache had natural twirls and he never disturbed it. He wore a
yellow muffler this morning under his virile curly beard. His mackinaw
coat was of huge orange and purple checks. His mackinaw pants were
sober-seeming, having tan and light gray checks, but some small crimson
dots and crosses brightened them. Green wool socks showed above his
black boots, which had buckskin laces and big brass eyelets and hooks.
And he wore striped mittens of white and plum color. Paul Bunyon was
a gorgeous picture this morning in the frozen fields and forests, all
covered with blue snow which sparkled in a pale gold light.
That day and the next, and for five more days, he searched in vain for
Niagara; and neither did he see any moose herds in the woods. Only the
frost crackles broke the silences of the deserted blue forests. And at
last Paul Bunyon returned to his cave, feeling depressed and lonely. He
had not thought that the companionship of Niagara could mean so much to
him. In his mood of depression he forgot his hunger and made no further
effort to find food.
Lonely Paul Bunyon lay sleepless in his blankets this night, his eyes
gleaming through hedgelike eyelashes as their gaze restlessly followed
the red flares that shot from the fire and streaked the walls and roof
of the cave. He did not realize that his first creative idea was now
struggling for birth. He could yet feel no shape of it. He was only
conscious of an unaccustomed turmoil of mind. Wearied with fruitless
thought, he at last fell into a doze. But Paul Bunyon was not fated to
sleep this night. A sustained crashing roar, as of the splintering of
millions of timbers, brought him up suddenly; it was hushed for a short
second; then a thudding boom sounded from Tonnere Bay. Paul Bunyon
leaped to the cave door, and in the moonlight he saw a white wave of
water rolling over the blue beach. It came near to the cave before it
stopped and receded. He pulled on his boots, and two strides brought
him down to the bay. It had been covered with ice seven feet thick, and
the cakes of this broken ice were now tossing on heaving waters. Now
Paul Bunyon saw two ears show sometimes above the billows; they were
of the shape of moose ears, but enormous as his two forefingers. Paul
Bunyon waded out into the waters, and he reached these ears a mile from
shore. He seized them without fear and he lifted ... now a head with
closed eyes appeared ... shoulders and forelegs ... body and hips ...
rear legs and curled tail. It was a calf, newborn apparently, though it
was of such a size that Paul Bunyon had to use both arms to carry it.
“_Nom d’un nom!_” exclaimed Paul Bunyon. “_Pauvre petite bleue bête!_”
For this great baby calf was of a bright blue hue which was neither
darker nor lighter than the color of the beautiful strange snow. A blue
baby ox calf. For such was its sex. Its ears drooped pitifully, and
its scrawny, big-jointed legs hung limply below Paul Bunyon’s arms. A
spasmodic shiver ran from its head to its tail, and its savior was glad
to feel this shiver, for it showed that life remained. Paul Bunyon was
touched with a tenderness that drove out his loneliness. “_Ma bête_,”
he said. “_Mon cher bleu bébé ausha._”
He turned back through the waters, and the ice cakes pounded each other
into bits as they rolled together in his wake. In thirty seconds Paul
Bunyon was back in his cave. He spread out his blankets in front of the
fire, and he laid Bébé upon them.
Through the night Paul Bunyon worked over the blue ox calf, nursing
him back to warm life; and in the morning Bébé was breathing regularly
and seemed to rest. Paul Bunyon leaned over to hear his exhalations,
and the blue ox calf suddenly opened his mouth and caressed Paul
Bunyon’s neck with his tongue. Paul Bunyon then discovered that he was
ticklish in this region, for the caress impelled him to roll and laugh.
The serious student Paul Bunyon had never laughed before; and he now
enjoyed the new pleasure to the utmost.
“_Eh, Bébé!_” he chuckled. “_Eh, Bébé! Sacre bleu! Bon bleu, mon
cher!_” Bébé raised his eyelids with astonishment upon hearing this
cave-shaking chuckle, revealing large, bulging orbs which were of even
a heavenlier blue than his silken hair. Such affection and intelligence
shone in his eyes that Paul Bunyon wished he would keep his eyes
opened. But Bébé was weary and weak, and he closed them again.
He is hungry, thought Paul Bunyon; and he went out to find him food.
None of the animals he knew about could supply milk for such a calf as
this blue Bébé. But he was newborn and his parents should be somewhere
in the neighborhood. Paul Bunyon stepped up on the cliff over which
Bébé had bounced when he fell into Tonnere Bay. From here a wide swath
of smashed timber ran straight up the side of the tallest Northern
mountain. It was here that Bébé had made his thunderous roll of the
night before.
Six strides brought Paul Bunyon to the mountain-top. One of its jagged
peaks was broken off, showing where Bébé had stumbled over it and
fallen. Then Paul Bunyon followed the calf tracks down the land side of
the mountain. For two hours he trailed them, but they grew fainter as
he went on, and in the Big Bay country the last fall of the blue snow
had covered them. Paul Bunyon now had no doubt that Bébé’s mother had
been frightened by the strange color of the snow and that his blueness
was a birthmark. Like Niagara and the fauna of the forest, the parents
had stampeded, forgetting the little one. It was no use to search for
them.
Paul Bunyon circled back through the forest and gathered a great load
of moose moss before he returned to the cave. This rich food would
meet the lack of milk. Bébé was asleep before the fireplace when Paul
Bunyon returned, and he still slumbered while his friend prepared him
some moose moss soup. But when a kettle full of steaming odorous food
was set before him, he opened his eyes with amazing energy and sat up.
It was then that Bébé first showed the depth and circumference of his
natural appetite, an appetite which was to have its effect on history.
He drank most of the moose moss soup at three gulps, he seized the rim
of the kettle in his teeth and tilted it up until even the last ten
gallons were drained out of it; then, looking roguishly at Paul Bunyon
the while, he bit off a large section of the kettle rim and chewed it
down, switching his pretty tail to show his enjoyment.
“_Eh, Bébé!_” roared Paul Bunyon, doubling up with laughter for the
second time in his life. And he praised the blue snow for giving him
such a creature, and did not mourn Niagara, who had never been amusing.
But now, as Paul Bunyon doubled over for another rare roar of laughter,
he got one more surprise. He was struck with terrifical force from the
rear and knocked flat. Paul Bunyon hit the cave floor so hard that
its walls were shaken, and a cloud of stones dropped from the roof,
covering him from his hips to his thighs. Paul Bunyon dug himself out
with no displeasure. He was marveling too much to be wrathful.
There is strength in this baby animal, he thought; surely he has the
muscle and energy for great deeds; for that was such a tremendous
butting he gave me that I am more comfortable standing than sitting. So
he stood and admired this strong and energetic ox calf, who was calmly
seated on his haunches before the fireplace, now throwing his head to
the right as he licked his right shoulder, now throwing his head to
the left as he licked his left shoulder. While Paul Bunyon admired,
he pondered; then, even as Bébé had given him his first laugh, the ox
calf now showed him the outline of his first real idea. The thought
struck him that his student’s life was finally over; there was nothing
more for him to learn; there was everything for him to do. The hour for
action was at hand.
Indeed, if he was to keep this blue ox calf, action was truly
necessary. Bébé had shown that his super-abundance of vitality made him
dangerous as well as delightful and amusing. This inexhaustible energy
of his must be put to work; this vast store of power in an ox-hide
should be developed and harnessed to give reality to some one of Paul
Bunyon’s vague dreams.
Soon the well-fed blue ox calf lay down and slept contentedly. But Paul
Bunyon did not sleep. One after another, occupations, enterprises and
industries which would be worthy of his knowledge and his extraordinary
mental and physical powers, and which would also offer labor great
enough for Bébé when he was grown, were considered by Paul Bunyon; but
nothing that he thought about satisfied him in the least. Certainly he
would have to invent something new; and as he thought of invention, his
imagination blazed up like a fire in a dry forest. He was so unused
to it that it got out of control, and its smoky flames hid his idea
rather than illuminating it.
Wearied at last, he lay on his side, for he remembered his bruises,
and he fell into a troubled doze. Now he dreamed and saw great blazing
letters which formed the words REAL AMERICA. He sat up, and his bruises
gave him such sudden pain that the dream vanished utterly. But he
dreamed again before morning. In this second dream he saw no words, but
a forest. A flame like a scythe blade sheared through the trees and
they fell. Then Paul Bunyon saw in his dream a forest of stumps, and
trees were fallen among them.
For many days Paul Bunyon thought about these dreams as he gathered
moose moss for Bébé and seined fish from the bay for himself. And for
many nights he tried to dream again, but his sleep was the untroubled
sleep of the weary.
Bébé grew wonderfully as the weeks went by, and the moose moss made
him saucy as well as fat. His bulging blue eyes got a jovial look that
was never to leave them. His bellow already had bass tones in it. He
would paw and snort and lift his tail as vigorously as any ordinary ox
ten times his age. His chest deepened, his back widened, muscle-masses
began to swell and quiver under the fat of his shoulders and haunches.
The drifts of the beautiful unnatural snow melted away in streams of
blue water, and the marvelous color of this historical winter vanished,
but the glittering blue of Bébé’s silken hair remained. His tail brush
was of a darker blue; it looked like a heavily foliaged cypress bough
in purple twilight; and Bébé was proud of this wonderful tail brush
that belonged to him, for he would twist it from behind him and turn
his head and stare at it by the hour.
Now spring came and Paul Bunyon determined to start out with his blue
ox calf and try to find the meanings of his dreams. The bright warm
hours of these days gave him a tormenting physical restlessness;
and his imagination ranged through a thousand lands, playing over a
thousand activities. It was certainly the time to begin a Life Work.
Each day Paul Bunyon pondered his two dreams without finding
substantial meaning in them. The first one indicated that he should go
to Real America; and this Paul Bunyon finally resolved to do, hoping
that he would discover the Work that was meant for him and the blue ox
calf. He knew that he could not fare worse in that land, for few of
the fauna of his native country had returned with the spring, and Paul
Bunyon could not live well on a fish diet. Bébé’s growing appetite,
too, made some move a necessity, for the blue snow had killed the
moose grass, and moose moss was a dry food without nourishment in the
summer. The more Paul Bunyon thought about Real America, the better
he liked the idea of going there. Moose and grass, at least, were to
be found across the Border. And no doubt Real America was his Land of
Opportunity.
So one fine day Paul Bunyon and Bébé came down to the Border. The blue
ox calf frolicked with his master and bellowed happily when he saw
the green grass and clover on the hills of Real America. He was for
rushing over at once, but Paul Bunyon, the student, was not unmindful
of his duty to his new country; he would not enter it without fitting
ceremonies and pledges, though Bébé butted him soundly in resenting the
delay.
Now Paul Bunyon lifted his hands solemnly and spoke in the rightful
language of Real America.
“In becoming a Real American, I become Paul _Bunyan_,” he declared. “I
am Paul _Bunyon_ no more. Even so shall my blue ox calf be called Babe,
and Bébé no longer. We are now Real Americans both, hearts, souls and
hides.”
After uttering these words with feeling and solemnity, an emotion more
expansive, more uplifting and more inspiring than any he had ever known
possessed Paul Bunyan and transfigured him. His chest swelled, his eyes
danced and glittered, and his cheeks shone rosily through the black
curls of his beard.
“And I’m glad of it!” he roared. “By the holy old mackinaw, and by the
hell-jumping, high-tailed, fuzzy-eared, whistling old jeem cris and
seventeen slippery saints, I’m _proud_ of it, too! Gloriously proud!”
Then he felt amazed beyond words that the simple fact of entering Real
America and becoming a Real American could make him feel so exalted, so
pure, so noble, so good. And an indomitable conquering spirit had come
to him also. He now felt that he could whip his weight in wildcats,
that he could pull the clouds out of the sky, or chew up stones, or
tell the whole world anything.
“Since becoming a Real American,” roared Paul Bunyan, “I can look any
man straight in the eye and tell him to go to hell! If I could meet a
man of my own size, I’d prove this instantly. We may find such a man
and celebrate our naturalization in a Real American manner. We shall
see. Yay, Babe!”
Then the two great Real Americans leaped over the Border. Freedom
and Inspiration and Uplift were in the very air of this country, and
Babe and Paul Bunyan got more noble feelings in every breath. They
were greatly exhilarated physically at first; and they galloped over
valleys and hills without looking about them, but only breathing this
soul-flushing air and roaring and bellowing their delight in it.
But before the day was over, Paul Bunyan discovered that Real America
had its sober, matter-of-fact side also. A whisper stirred in his
heart: “To work! Take advantage of your opportunity!” The whisper got
louder and more insistent every moment; and at last the idea it spoke
possessed Paul Bunyan, and he sat down to ponder it, letting Babe graze
and roll on the clover-covered hills.
Now the whisper became an insistent cry: “Work! Work! Work!” Paul
Bunyan looked up, and he seemed to see the word shining among the
clouds; he looked down then into the vast valley, and he seemed to
see--by the holy old mackinaw! he did see--the forest of his second
dream! And now he knew it: his Life Work was to begin here.
For many days and nights Paul Bunyan pondered on the hillside before
the Great Idea came to him. Like all Great Ideas, it was simple enough,
once he had thought of it. Real America was covered with forests. A
forest was composed of trees. A felled and trimmed tree was a log. Paul
Bunyan threw aside his pine tree beard brush and jumped to his feet
with a great shout.
“What greater work could be done in Real America than to make logs from
trees?” he cried. “Logging! I shall invent this industry and make it
the greatest one of all time! I shall become a figure as admired in
history as any of the great ones I have read about.”
Paul Bunyan then delivered his first oration. The blue ox calf was his
only listener; and this was a pity, for Paul Bunyan’s first oratorical
effort, inspired as it was, surely was one of his noblest ones. But we
know the outline of this oration, if not the words. It dealt mainly
with the logging method which he had devised in the moment, the one
which he used in his first work. So he told of his plan to uproot the
trees by hand, and to transport the logs overland, binding a bundle of
them on one side of Babe, and hanging a sack of rocks from the other
side for ballast. It was months after this that he made his first
improvement, the using of a second bundle of logs, instead of rocks,
for ballast. And at this moment Paul Bunyan, for all his foresight and
imagination, could not have dreamed of the superb tools and marvelous
logging methods that he was to originate, or of the countless crews of
little loggers that he was to import from France, Ireland, Scotland and
Scandinavia, or of the tremendous river drives and the mammoth camp
life he was to create. He would have been bewildered then by the fact
that he would some day need a foreman as grand as himself for his Life
Work; and the notion that he would some day need help in his figuring
would have seemed like a far-fetched jest.
No; in this first oration, imaginative and eloquent as it must have
been, Paul Bunyan only spoke of simple work for himself and Babe. But
he only tells us that the oration was not a long one, for the call to
Work came more insistently as he ended each period. At last he had to
answer this powerful call. He commanded, “Yay, Babe!” and the baby blue
ox and Paul Bunyan descended into the valley to begin the first logging
in the Real American woods.
[Illustration]
THE BULL OF THE WOODS
“The straw boss is the backbone of industry,” was a favorite saying of
Paul Bunyan’s. This sage observation is constantly repeated to-day by
industrialists who are so overwhelmed by salesmen, efficiency experts,
welfare workers and the like that they are forced to leave production
in the hands of the powerful race of foremen.
Paul Bunyan had become a true man of the woods, and paperwork troubled
him. He was fortunate in discovering the greatest man with figures
that ever lived to do his office work for him, and this man, Johnny
Inkslinger, did all the figuring alone after he came to camp. But
before the renowned timekeeper was found the keeping of his accounts
and records was Paul Bunyan’s largest difficulty. He figured wearily
and the smell of ink often made him sick. His logging operations grew
more extensive as time went on. He brought crews of great little men
from overseas and organized his first logging camp. He cleared off
seven hundred townships in the Smiling River country for a big farm,
and John Shears, his earnest boss farmer, managed it so efficiently
that new companies of loggers had to be added to the camp each season
to use up the produce; consequently, more and more timber was being
felled as each season ran its course.
At last it got so that figuring occupied all of Paul Bunyan’s time
between supper and breakfast, and then he had to take time away from
work in the woods for the keeping of his accounts. In vain he tried to
increase his speed as a figurer. He learned to write with both hands
at once; but this was no use, for the two sets of figures would mix up
in his head and result in confusion. He invented the multiplication
table, cube root and algebra, but production increased so fast that
these short cuts gave him no more time than before for the woods. Then
he gave in to necessity and looked about for help. No figurers were
anywhere to be discovered, so Paul Bunyan invented bossmen to carry on
the work in the woods while he held forth in the office.
His first foreman was Gun Gunderson, commonly known as “Shot” Gunderson
because of his explosive nature. He originated the “High-ball System,”
which is still used in some logging camps. Much of the loggers’ tough
vocabulary has come down from him. His favorite words of encouragement
were: “Put a better notch in that stick or I’ll cave your head in!”
“Heave harder on that peavy handle, you gizzardless scissor-bill, or
I’ll put the calks to you!” He began to lose power when the loggers
learned his lingo and came back at him fiercely in his own words.
His downfall happened in the second winter on Tadpole River, in the
Bullfrog Lake country. That was the winter of the Big Wind, which blew
so hard for four months that Shot Gunderson had to yell at the top of
his voice to be heard in its howling blasts. His voice cracked under
the strain and then, of course, his chief strength as a boss was gone.
He became a plain logger again, and Chris Crosshaulsen succeeded him.
This industrious man was a worthy and well-beloved boss, but he, too,
had a fatal weakness. Such a passion for river driving did he possess
that he could never stop the drive at its destination, but he would run
the logs on for miles and then drive them back again. This upstream
driving was terrible labor, for each logger had to drive one log at
a time; treading it, he would roll it against the current. So much
time and energy was wasted for Chris Crosshaulsen’s pleasure that Paul
Bunyan was forced to depose him.
The next chief was Ole Olsen. He was so loved that countless loggers
have been named after him, but his tender heart made him a failure as
a boss. Other bosses were Lars Larsen, Swan Swanson, Pete Peterson,
John Johnson, Jens Jensen, Anders Anderson, Hans Hansen, and Eric
Ericksen. They were all noble men, and loggers and mill men are still
named in their honor. But not one was powerful enough to keep his job
as Paul Bunyan’s aide. Once, indeed, it was thought that an ideal
foreman had been discovered when a burly man who called himself Murph
Murpheson was put on the job. But one night he was heard talking
Gaelic in his sleep. Cross-questioned, he admitted that his true name
was Pat Murphy; knowing Paul Bunyan’s predilection for Scandinavian
foremen he had called himself Murph Murpheson in order to get his high
position. Deceit was the one human frailty that the great logger had
no tolerance for, and the Irish boss followed his predecessors.
Paul Bunyan was now without a foreman, and he had never had a greater
need for a good one. For his next project was to log off the Dakota
country, which was then known as the region of the Mountain That Stood
On Its Head. Difficulties loomed before him which only he or a better
foreman than he had yet discovered could surmount. Unless he discovered
either a great figurer or a great foreman success would be improbable.
Then fortune shone on him with sudden, dazzling brightness. For word
came down through the woods that the mightiest logger of Sweden was
tramping overland for Paul Bunyan’s camp. The gossip that ran before
him called him Sweden’s greatest milker also; and some whispered that
he was the greatest fisherman and the greatest hunter of that country
of superb giants. It was rumored that he was taller than a tree, as
tall as Paul Bunyan and as wide, and that he feared no man. The great
logger, toiling over his vast ledgers, heard and hoped that the perfect
foreman was coming to him at last.
He arrived at the end of a bright June day. The loggers were at supper,
happily occupied with pea soup and hard-tack, which were their only
rations at that time. The soup bowls before the loggers were emptying
fast, and the cookhouse resounded with a hissing rumble, to which the
clangor of the spoons striking the bottoms of the bowls was presently
added. Then above the noise was heard a slow muffled “boom ... boom
... boom.”
The loggers listened and wondered. “Ol’ Paul’s walkin’ heavy this
evenin’,” said some. Said others, “But it don’t sound like Ol’ Paul’s
step anyway.” The booming tramp sounded nearer; the cookhouse began
to shake; the loggers, curious and wondering, gulped down the last of
their soup and hurried outside.
Through the trees that covered the slopes above the camp they saw a
great man approaching. He was not as tall as the tallest trees, but
the shortest ones were no higher than his waist. Yellow bristles
protruded through the crevices in the hat that was cocked on one side
of his head; he walked with a swagger that sent the limbs crashing as
he swayed against them; a good-sized pine tree stood in his way, and
he cast it aside and marched on. When he had reached the center of the
camp he stopped and said in a commanding voice, “Aye wan’ see Paul
Bunyan.”
While he waited the loggers gazed in awe on his heroic figure, and they
whispered to one another that here at last was the Swede of wonderful
deeds. It was indeed a marvelous moment for them. Every real logger
to-day would give ten years of his life to have been among the men who
first saw Hels Helsen the mighty, the Big Swede, the incomparable Bull
of the Woods.