over the newcomer. For the first time in months the darkness of worry
lifted from his countenance and a smile shone through his beard. He
shook hands awkwardly, as this was a novel experience for him. Here was
a man whom he did not have to look down upon to see, one man who could
reach above the great logger’s boot tops. Surely he would make an ideal
foreman; though a fierce light glittered at moments in his blue eyes,
his grin showed that he possessed the amiability that a good foreman
must have; being a Swede, he was certainly trustworthy and obedient.
In broken Real American Hels Helsen began to tell Paul Bunyan of the
purpose of his journey from the old country. But he got no further than
an account of his hard tramp over the polar lands, where he had lived
on white bear meat and whale steak, when Paul Bunyan stopped him.
“A mountain of energy, a river of power like yourself does not need to
make explanations or ask me for anything,” said the mighty logger. “I
appoint you foreman at once, without question.”
“Fooreman?” asked Hels Helsen, seemingly puzzled.
“Yes,” said Paul Bunyan heartily. “You shall be boss over all my
loggers in the timber and on the drives. Honor and glory will be yours,
for you shall be remembered as long as men fell trees. I will give you
a fitting title. I call you ‘the Bull of the Woods,’ a name which shall
be applied to only the greatest of woods bosses hereafter because you
were the first to have it.”
“Har noo--” began Hels Helsen; but his words were drowned in the great
cheer which had arisen from the excited loggers.
Their enthusiasm inspired Paul Bunyan to make one of his famous
speeches. He spoke for an hour about the historic accomplishment that
was now certain in the logging off of the Mountain That Stood On Its
Head.
“A cheer now, my men, for Hels Helsen, the Bull of the Woods!” Thus
Paul Bunyan ended his speech; and the loggers responded with a shout
that sounded like one throat had made it.
Several times during the early part of the speech Hels Helsen had
attempted to interrupt Paul Bunyan, but he was always silenced by the
matchless eloquence of the master orator. And when the loggers cheered
him he kept in his heart whatever he wanted to say; he frowned and
mumbled powerfully for a moment; but then he grinned and obediently
followed Paul Bunyan into the camp office.
The virgin Dakota country of that time had what was no doubt the most
beautiful and unique scenic feature in Real America. In the center of
a forested plain stood the largest and most original of all mountains,
the Mountain That Stood On Its Head. Its peak was buried in the ground,
and its slopes ran outward, instead of in toward its summit. It was
five miles in a direct line from the head of the mountain and up the
slope to the rim of its foot; ascent would seem impossible to any
beholder, for a climber up the mountain side would necessarily have to
move with his feet uppermost or else walk with his head. The stubborn
pine trees on the mountain sides had refused to grow unnaturally;
they had kept their roots in the ground, and their tops all pointed
downward. The summit of the mountain (perhaps I should go on saying
“foot,” but this might prove confusing) was a plain two miles above
a plain, for it was flat and heavily timbered with the noblest of
close-grained pine. This unnatural but wonderful mountain top was in
the form of a true circle which was one hundred and twenty-seven miles
in circumference. At one place the rim of the circle rose gently, and a
mild slope ran away from it towards the center of the plain. Here were
the High Springs, whose waters formed Lofty River and flowed smoothly
through aisles of pine and wound among meadows which were abloom with
mountain orchids and fragrant with purple clover. The falls in which
the river made its two mile drop to the plain below had been named
Niagara by Paul Bunyan, to honor the memory of his old moose hound, and
the name was later passed on to a little waterfall along the Border.
It was to this place of scenic grandeur that Paul Bunyan now moved
his camp. It was here that he was determined to try out Hels Helsen
and make him prove his right to the title of Bull of the Woods. The
camp was put in order; the axmen and sawyers were given their stations
in the woods, trails were swamped out for Babe, the big blue ox, to
use in snaking the logs to the landings, Hels Helsen was given final
instructions. Paul Bunyan then retired with a sigh to his ledgers, and
the logging began.
Paul Bunyan had figured that it would require two seasons to log off
Dakota; one season for the low lands, and one for the mountain. But he
did not know Hels Helsen, the Big Swede. From the time that he yelled,
“Roll out or roll up!” on his first morning in camp the loggers felt
the urge of a new power and they put a vigor and force into their work
which had been lacking for a long time. Not often did the Bull of the
Woods speak to them, but when he did his roar made the loggers remember
his title; and the chips flew from the ax bits like leaves in a wind,
and the saws smoked as they flashed back and forth in the tree trunks.
Logs piled up ahead of the blue ox, but Hels Helsen remembering the
tricks he had learned as a great man with cattle in the old country,
took the exuberant, well-meaning creature in hand and taught him speed.
So active did Babe become that only Hels Helsen could handle him. Each
morning, eager to get to work, he galloped madly for the woods, while
the foreman held grimly to the halter rope, thrown from his feet very
often, hurled through the air, bounced over rocks and stumps, but
holding fast always.
So rapidly did the logging go on that Paul Bunyan could only accomplish
the necessary figuring by giving all of his time to it. He began to
weary of his hours at the desk, while his soul cried out for the
timber; he envied Hels Helsen for the ideal life he was living, but
he gladly gave him the honor and glory that was his due. Latin Paul
Bunyan praised his great Nordic foreman constantly and said nothing of
himself.
Now, as Paul Bunyan’s only physical weakness was a ticklishness
of the neck, so was his only mental weakness extreme modesty. He
never boasted, and he never belittled the pretensions of his men by
reminding them of his own part in their achievements. Consequently,
his inventions were taken as a matter of course, and his paperwork was
not considered very difficult by his loggers because they knew nothing
about it. His praise of Hels Helsen, and his reticence about himself,
naturally made his men exaggerate the greatness of the Bull of the
Woods and minimize the importance of Paul Bunyan.
The effect on Hels Helsen was even more dangerous. In the first
place he had not come to Paul Bunyan with the intention of seeking
a foreman’s job; he had wanted to propose a partnership between the
greatest man of Sweden and the greatest man of Real America. But
Paul Bunyan’s oratory had baffled him, and he had taken the position
without arguing for what he considered his rightful place. However,
a resentment had been kindled in his soul; and with his success as a
foreman it flamed into an exalted opinion of his own powers; as the
time for logging off the mountain approached he resolved to not only
make this enterprise bring him equality with Paul Bunyan but a position
of command over him. Therefore, a terrible conflict was inevitable.
The first intimation that Paul Bunyan had of the coming struggle was
during the preparations for logging off the mountain. He himself had
made many plans for accomplishing the difficult job, taking time from
his office work to think them out. Then the first drive was finished
and the day came when felling was to begin on the mountain side. On
that morning Paul Bunyan was about to call his foreman to give him
instructions when he heard the loggers marching out of camp. Hels
Helsen was taking them to the woods; the foreman had seemed to think it
unnecessary to consult with Paul Bunyan. For a moment the master of the
camp had a raging impulse to take after them and assert his authority,
but his good sense restrained him.
“There is no appetite more powerful than that for the strong meat of
authority,” Paul Bunyan always told his bossmen. “But if you bite off
more than you can chew, nothing will choke you more surely.”
Paul Bunyan remembered this saying now, and he thought it best to let
Hels Helsen learn the lesson for himself.
So for days he made no inquiries about the progress of the work in the
woods. He busied himself with his figures and waited. He noted with
secret pleasure the bafflement and worry that showed in deeper lines
on Hels Helsen’s face each succeeding night. The loggers were always
utterly weary now when they got into camp; at last many of them were
too exhausted to eat their pea soup when the day was done; others went
to sleep at the supper table, and they would not awaken until breakfast
time. Then the first week’s scale was brought in, and it showed only
an average of one tree per man for each seventy-two hours of labor. The
master logger chuckled over this, but he said nothing.
On Monday morning, his accounts being in order, he walked over the hump
to where he could observe the logging operations.
On the slopes--or under them, rather--of the Mountain That Stood On
Its Head crawled Hels Helsen, and he was urging the loggers to follow
him. Not an original method had he devised; he was even insisting that
the loggers walk upside down and fell the trees in exactly the same
style that they used when standing up. Having been a champion mountain
climber in Sweden, he got up the slopes without much difficulty, and he
strung cables between the trees. Along these cables the loggers dizzily
worked themselves. Tree-felling even under ordinary conditions is hard
labor for the strongest men. But when a woodsman attempts to operate a
limber crosscut saw and a heavy ax, his head down, his body hanging by
a leather belt which is fastened to a swaying cable; when a woodsman
looks up to see his feet and to have dirt and sawdust fall down in his
eyes; when a woodsman looks down to see rocks and stumps a mile and a
half below him--brave and powerful though he may be, a woodsman in such
circumstances is bound to feel inconvenienced, harassed and impeded in
the performance of his labor. And even the threatening roars and the
pleading bellows of a Hels Helsen, the supreme and original Bull of the
Woods, cannot make him work efficiently.
“The test of great leadership is originality,” mused Paul Bunyan, as he
returned to camp. “At least some inventiveness is needed. Heroic Hels
Helsen, the Bull of the Woods--a fair title. The hero inspires, but the
thinker leads. I shall now think. One great idea put into action can
set the world afire. Surely it will take no more than a common one to
master Hels Helsen.”
In such solemn ponderings Paul Bunyan spent the rest of the day. Until
midnight he thought, and then the idea came. He at once went to work to
make a reality of it.
From an old chest that held the weapons and traps of his pre-logging
days he brought forth the most prized weapon of his youth, a
gold-butted, diamond-mounted, double-barreled shot gun. He spent the
rest of the night in careful cleaning of all its parts. An idea of the
size and power of this super-cannon can be gained when it is remembered
that he used its two barrels at a later time as smokestacks for his
first sawmill. The shells for it were made from the largest cedar logs
in the country; they were hollowed out, bound with brass, and capped
with sheet iron.
After breakfast, when the loggers had gone wearily to their terrible
labor, Paul Bunyan ordered Big Ole, the blacksmith, to cut up thousands
of pieces of sheet iron, making each one two feet square. In two
days he had the shells loaded, and he was ready to try out his idea.
Then he waited for the time when Hels Helsen would have to call on
him for help. And this time was sure to come soon, for as the work
slowly moved up from the head of the mountain the unimaginative
logging methods of the stubborn Bull of the Woods could not but fail
completely. And Hels Helsen was not the leader to change these methods
himself; he was only a hero.
But Paul Bunyan was not prepared for the monstrous display of
effrontery which was given by Hels Helsen when the exhausted loggers
could no longer follow him up the mountain side.
One morning the foreman did not call the men out to work; instead, Paul
Bunyan heard him giving them orders to pack up.
“Thunderation!” exclaimed the master logger. “What means this, Hels?”
The Bull of the Woods was attaching a cable to the cookhouse skids. He
looked up with an insolent grin.
“Aye forgot tal you, Bunyan, but aye goin’ move dar camp,” he said, in
tones of marked disrespect. “No use to try har no moore noo, aye tank.
Logger can’ stan’ on head mooch lonker har. Aye don’ tank so, Bunyan.
We move new yob noo.”
“Bunyan!” exploded the appalled leader. “‘Bunyan,’ you call me! You
think _you’ll_ move the camp! _You_ will do so! By the blazing sands of
the hot high hills of hell, and by the stink and steam of its low swamp
water, how in the name of the holy old mackinaw, how in the names of
the whistling old, roaring old, jumping old, bald-headed, blue-bellied
jeem cris and the dod derned dod do you figure you’re wearing any
shining crown of supreme authority in this man’s camp? Say!!!”
“Aye tank so,” said Hels Helsen calmly.
“Suffering old saints and bleary-eyed fathers!”
“Yah, aye tank so.”
With a mighty effort Paul Bunyan recovered his poise and dignity. He
strode to the office and got his shot gun and a sack of shells loaded
with sheet iron squares. Then his “All out, men!” rolled through the
camp.
The power of that unloosed voice threw each logger into the air, and
they all dropped, bottoms down, on the rocky ground. They were still
dazed men as they wabbled to their feet, and they meekly followed their
rightful leader toward the mountain, rubbing sore spots with their
hands as they staggered along. Muttering darkly, Hels Helsen followed
at a distance.
Paul Bunyan halted the loggers before they reached the shadows of the
mountain. He turned and faced them, and for a moment they stood in
breathless terror, fearing that he was going to urge them to another
effort on the slopes above. But no. Paul Bunyan only said, in the tones
of a gentle teacher, “You see before you a logged-off plain. Only
stumps remain upon its soil. I shall make you a forest. Behold!”
He turned and lifted the shot gun to his shoulder and pulled the
triggers; both barrels went off in such a violent explosion that many
of the loggers again tumbled to the ground. Clouds of dust dropped from
the mountain side and blanketed the plain. When the wind had thinned
out the fog the amazed loggers saw the beginnings of a new forest
before them. The loads from the two shells had sheared off a thousand
trees; they had dropped straightly down and plunged their tops into the
plain. And there they stood, the strangest grove ever seen by man. The
small brushy tops of the trees were imbedded in the ground, and their
huge bare trunks were swaying high in the air. Before the loggers had
recovered from their astonishment at the sight Paul Bunyan was firing
again; and all that day the terrific explosions of his gun, and the
falling clouds of dust from the mountain addled the loggers. At sundown
he had completed the circuit around the Mountain That Stood On Its
Head; its slopes were shorn of trees, and the plain underneath once
more had a forest. It was an amazing artificial one, and the loggers
doubted if they could get used to it. But it promised easy logging, and
when their leader ordered them into camp they went singing. It looked
like the good old times were back.
“Now,” said Paul Bunyan to his foreman, “the idea has mastered the
material. I turn the job over to you. Go to it in the morning. In the
meantime, I’ll invent a way to log off the foot of the mountain which
towers yonder among the clouds.”
Hels Helsen said nothing; but he scowled and scratched his head.
In the morning Paul Bunyan was figuring briskly, quite content again,
when he noticed a stir in the camp that was unusual for the late hour.
He looked out and saw the loggers wandering idly about. They said that
Hels Helsen had not ordered them to roll out but had gone to the woods
himself. Sensing that a struggle was at hand for the dominance of the
camp, and realizing that the powerful and obtuse Hels Helsen could only
be conquered by physical force, Paul Bunyan ordered his men to remain
behind, and he started after the foreman.
Hels Helsen was climbing the mountain when Paul Bunyan reached the new
forest, and he paid no heed to the calls that were sent after him. The
climber had his shoes off, and he moved up swiftly by grasping the
largest stumps of the sheared trees with his fingers, wrapping his
toes around others and drawing himself up like a rope climber. In a
short time he reached the rim and, throwing his leg over it, he drew
himself to the top. He rested for a moment, then he stood up and began
uprooting the close-grained white pine trees, which extended scores
of miles before him. A tumult of rage swelled up in Paul Bunyan’s
heart. So Hels Helsen had rebelled and become an independent logger.
If competition had been necessary to the logging industry the greatest
logger himself would have invented it. But he knew that equality was an
evil thing; a powerful rival was not to be tolerated; for the sake of
the grand new race of loggers, if for nothing else, Hels Helsen must be
put in his proper place.
Wise even in wrath, Paul Bunyan did not attempt to climb the mountain.
He ran to a far point of the plain, then he turned and rushed back with
his greatest speed. When he neared the mountain he leaped, he struck
the ground with his knees bending for a spring, and then he threw
himself upward in a tremendous lunge. His upstretched hands brushed
down the slope and started a roaring avalanche. A large section of the
rim gave way, and now a large hill stood under the broken edge of the
mountain rim. Again Paul Bunyan ran and leaped; this time he made his
second jump from the hilltop and his hands caught over a cliff that
jutted below the broken rim. Laboriously he drew himself up, he thrust
his foot over the top, and after a struggle that sent more rocks and
trees crashing down upon the hill, he won to the plain and lay resting
for the battle.
A minute had not passed before he felt the mountain shake, and when he
rolled over he saw Hels Helsen rushing upon him. The Big Swede’s blue
eyes flashed like hot polished steel, the gritting of his teeth sounded
like the grind of a rock crusher, his hat was off and his yellow
bristles stuck up like tall ripe grain on a squat hill. The pine trees
rocked and creaked from the wind of his swinging fists. The mighty Paul
Bunyan sprang to his feet and received the furious charge as a cliff of
solid rock receives the smash of a tidal wave....
The loggers in camp heard a stupendous uproar of battle, and they fled
from the shaking bunkhouses. The bravest among them crawled to the top
of the hump, from where they could see the mountain. When they beheld
the titanic conflict that was raging two miles above them on the flat
mountain top they stood like images of stone and stared affrightedly.
Around and around the one hundred and twenty-seven mile circle of the
lofty plain the leader and the foreman fought with all their powers.
Now came a sound like a thunder-clap as Paul Bunyan smote Hels Helsen
solidly on his square jaw. Now came a sound like a hurricane screeching
through a network of cables as Hels Helsen’s hand seized Paul Bunyan’s
beard and was jerked loose. For a long time the struggle seemed equal,
with neither combatant suffering great injury. Then Paul Bunyan’s
shoulders struck acres of pine trees with the crash of a tornado. A
heaving mass of dust rolled over him, but the dauntless leader’s head
was suddenly thrust above it; the loggers saw his fist fly from behind
him, it squashed over Hels Helsen’s nose, and the sun shone red through
a spray of blood.... Balloons and geysers of dust now rose explosively
all over the mountain top, and heavy gray clouds soon hid the mountain
from view; trees and rocks crashed everywhere on the plain below; the
convulsions of the earth increased in force; even the bravest of the
loggers were at last terrified by the shocks and blasts, and they fled
to camp and hid under their blankets.
All night the tumult of battle sounded, but at dawn there was a crash
of such shocking force that it upset every bunkhouse; and then a sudden
hush. The loggers, all shell-shocked and bruised, crawled under their
overturned bunks, but as the quiet persisted they at length ventured
outside. The dust was still rolling by in thick clouds and they could
not see their hands before them. But at sunup it had thinned out, and
ere long they beheld the figure of one of the fighters looming in the
distance. The conqueror was carrying his helpless adversary over his
shoulder.
And this conqueror, this victor in that tourney of the Titans, that
battle of the behemoths, that riot of the races, that Herculean
jaw-hammering, chin-mauling, nose-pounding, side-stamping,
cheek-tearing, rib-breaking, lip-pinching, back-beating, neck-choking,
eye-gouging, tooth-jerking, arm-twisting, head-butting, beard-pulling,
ear-biting, bottom-thumping, toe-holding, knee-tickling, shin-cracking,
heel-bruising, belly-whacking, hair-yanking, hell-roaring supreme and
incomparable knock-down-and-drag-out fight of all history was the
mighty leader of the new race of loggers, Battling Paul Bunyan.
Tattered, bloody, dirt-streaked, he marched with dignity still. On
through the hosts of silent awed loggers he passed, without glancing
down at them. He disappeared with the Bull of the Woods into the camp
office.
“You’re going to be a good foreman now, Hels Helsen!”
“Aye tank so, Mr. Bunyan.”
“You _know_ so, Hels Helsen.”
“Yah, Mr. Bunyan.”
And no more was said.
The wonderful mountain was gone, alas; the struggle had demolished it
and scattered its majesty in dust over the plain. To-day the Northern
winds blow down over the desolate remains of that once noble and
marvelous eminence--the remains of blood-darkened dust which are now
known as the Black Hills of Dakota.
A MATTER OF HISTORY
Three weeks after his cataclysmic fist fight with his foreman, Hels
Helsen, Paul Bunyan was up and around, thinking of his next move.
Dakota, once a great timberland, was now a brown, barren country;
its logs and stumps had been covered with blankets of dust when the
Mountain That Stood On Its Head was destroyed, and the mountain itself
was now only clusters of black hills. The greatest logging camp of all
history was situated in a vacant prairie. It was preposterous.
But the mighty logger did not revile fate, nor did he lift his voice
in lamentations. Neither did he have words of condemnation for the
belligerent audacity of the Big Swede, who, chastened and meek in
defeat, now gazed worshipfully on his conqueror. Still wearing the
bruises and scars of battle, he limped around his bunk a few times and
then said mildly:
“Aye tank aye soon be back on yob noo, Mr. Bunyan.”
“We have no job now. There is no timber within hundreds of miles of us.”
Paul Bunyan shook his head sadly; but presently consoling thoughts came
to him, and then proud joy flashed in his eyes.
“But what does the ruin of a season’s logging matter?” he said
cheerily. “We have made history; and that is what matters. After all,
industry is bunk; making history is the true work of the leader-hero.
And this fight of ours was the first dramatic historical event since
the Winter of the Blue Snow. This idea would be a great consolation to
you also, but you lack imagination.”
“Yah,” said the Big Swede humbly. “Aye yust wan’ yob, Mr. Bunyan.”
“And a job you shall have,” said Paul Bunyan with great heartiness.
“We will move at once to--but that is something to be thought about.
Wherever we go you shall have full command over the blue ox. And, next
to myself, you shall be in command over the loggers. Now that there is
peace and understanding between us we can perform impossible labors.”