the lands which had once been Pine Orchard. Visions of tremendous
accomplishments swept before him; he now had the perfect organization
he had always dreamed about, and there could be no good reason for
another failure. But he had a new responsibility also; he was now more
deeply in debt to this man than ever. For, even as his fists and feet
had won him the faith and loyalty of the Big Swede, so had his mind and
heart, as revealed in his history, won the extravagant devotion of the
greatest figurer. Only mighty works would keep it. Well, he should not
fail. Resolutely he faced the unfortunate surveyor, the restorer of
ruined accounts, the man who should win fame with him as the greatest
figurer of all time.
“Timekeeper Johnny Inkslinger,” he said, “shake hands.”
THE SOURDOUGH DRIVE
Political campaigns remind old loggers of the violent debate that once
raged between Paul Bunyan, the originator of the lumber industry, and
his timekeeper, Johnny Inkslinger. This debate was strictly about
business, however, for there was no politics in those days. It was
poor policy, argued the timekeeper, to increase the varieties and
quantities of edibles grown on Paul Bunyan’s great farm simply to make
more stuffing for the loggers. He recommended that the camp rations be
cut down and that ships be built, in which surplus farm produce could
be shipped to European markets. Johnny Inkslinger was the original
efficiency expert and he had hordes of figures at hand to support
his arguments. Paul Bunyan listened with his usual calm and dignity,
brushing his beard with a fresh pine tree and nodding gravely, until
the timekeeper began to insist that the loggers could do their work
well enough on pea soup and sourdough biscuits; then the great man
erupted.
“Good glory, Johnny!” he exclaimed. “Have you forgotten the Sourdough
Drive?”
“I have not, Mr. Bunyan,” Inkslinger retorted spiritedly. “But I have
figures which show you should have handled it differently.”
“The hell you have!” roared Paul Bunyan, in rare tones of anger. “Damn
figures and figuring men!”
“And damn a man who damns figures!” thundered Johnny Inkslinger,
himself getting angry.
Whereupon Paul Bunyan damned him again in return, and they kept up a
furious argument until the trees began to fall among the bunkhouses.
The sourdough drive was a subject that tormented Paul Bunyan’s feelings
whenever he thought of it; it was always a sore spot with him. But
when he heard the trees tumbling down in the valley he remembered his
dignity and he silenced his timekeeper with a majestic gesture. Then
he gave instructions for a Sunday feast so huge and diversified that
Hot Biscuit Slim, the chief cook, went into a solemn trance of joy upon
receiving the order. The timekeeper could not hide his mortification,
and Paul Bunyan clapped him on the shoulder, saying cheerily, “There,
there, my lad. You live in a world of figures. I could not expect you
to know the soul of the born woodsman. But treasure this always: a
logging crew works on its stomach.”
After Paul Bunyan had invented logging and brought hosts of little
loggers over to Real America to fell trees and drive logs down the
rivers, his most baffling problem sprang from the fact that little
loggers could not live on raw moose meat as he did. They required
cooked food; consequently Paul Bunyan was compelled to build a
cookhouse and import cooks. His first cookhouse was a crude affair
without any notable mechanical equipment. And his first cooks were men
without talent or experience. But Paul Bunyan’s loggers were hardy men
whose appetites had never been pampered, and no one complained of the
camp fare until Pea Soup Shorty took command of the cookhouse.
Pea Soup Shorty was a plump, lazy, complacent rascal, and he made no
attempt to feed the loggers anything but hard-tack and pea soup. He
even made lunches for them by freezing pea soup around a rope and
sending the loggers’ lunches out to them in sticks like big candles.
Even then the loggers did not complain greatly. Not until the winter
in the Bullfrog Lake country were they heard to cry out against their
food. That winter Shagline Bill’s freight sleds broke the ice on the
lake, and the season’s supply of split peas was lost in the water. Pea
Soup Shorty did not try to originate any new food for the loggers;
he simply boiled the lake water and served it to them for pea soup.
Then the bunkhouse cranks began to growl; and finally all the loggers
revolted against Pea Soup Shorty; and they declared against pea soup
also. Paul Bunyan had to look for another kitchen chief. Old Sourdough
Sam was his selection.
The Bunyan histories tell that Sourdough Sam made everything but coffee
out of sourdough. This substance is really fermented dough, having the
rising qualities of yeast. It is said to be an explosive. Modern camp
cooks are always at great pains to warn the new kitchen help away from
the sourdough bowl, telling them of the sad accident of Sourdough Sam,
who had his left arm and right leg blown off in an explosion of the
dangerous concoction.
The old cook brought this misfortune on himself. Sourdough was his
weakness as well as his strength. Had he been content to keep it only
in the kitchen, where it belonged, and to develop it simply as a food,
he, and not his son, Hot Biscuit Slim, might be remembered as the
father of camp cookery, even as the mighty Paul Bunyan is venerated as
the father of logging. But Sam was prey to wild ideas about the uses of
his creation. He declared it could be used for shaving soap, poultices,
eye wash, boot grease, hair tonic, shin plasters, ear muffs, chest
protectors, corn pads, arch supporters, vest lining, pillow stuffing,
lamp fuel, kindling, saw polish and physic. One time he came into the
bunkhouse with a chair cushion made out of sourdough. As bad luck would
have it, Jonah Wiles, the worst of the bunkhouse cranks, was the first
man to sit on it. He always sat hard, and when he dropped on the new
chair cushion, he splashed sourdough as high as his ears. Jonah Wiles
was fearfully proud of his mackinaw pants, for they were the only pair
in camp that had red, green, purple and orange checks. Now the bursted
cushion was splashed over all their gaudy colors. Sam apologized humbly
and begged the privilege of washing them. His rage showing only in the
glitter of his beady blue eyes, Jonah Wiles stripped off the smeared
pants and handed them over to the cook. Sourdough Sam recklessly washed
them in another of his creations, sourdough suds. Not a thread of color
was left in the prized pants; they were a brilliant white when they
were returned. The old cook brought them back reluctantly and he was
tremendously relieved when Jonah Wiles did not tear into him with
oaths and blows. But Jonah Wiles was different from other loggers in
that he always concealed even his strongest feelings. So he put on the
pants without saying a word, though he was blazing with wrath inside.
His rage against the cook was aggravated when his mates began to call
him “the legless logger,” because of his invisibility from the bottom
of his coat to the tops of his boots when he tramped to work. The
brilliant white pants did not show at all against a background of snow.
This unfortunate incident led to the important happenings of the
Sourdough Drive, which was one of the turning points in the history
of logging. For Jonah Wiles now cherished a vicious hostility against
Sourdough Sam; with patient cunning he awaited the time when he might
be avenged for the outrage that had made him known in the camp as “the
legless logger.”
Jonah Wiles was not a great man among the loggers; he was only a
swamper, and Mark Beaucoup, who was a mighty man with both ax and pike
pole, was much more to be feared as a bunkhouse crank. But where Mark
Beaucoup was a roaring grouch, Jonah Wiles was a sly, quiet one; he had
a devilish insinuating gift of making men see and believe uncomfortable
things.
“Too bad yer so hoarse to-night,” he would say to a bunkhouse bard who
had just finished a song. “I’m thinkin’ we’re needin’ more blankets.
Ol’ Paul’ll let us all freeze to death.”
He would lead the bard to think he _did_ have a hoarseness, the
bunkhouse gayety would vanish and a seed of resentment would be sown
against the master logger. Before his pants were ruined Jonah Wiles
had never found a grievance which would serve to keep his instinct
of revolt always inflamed. But now his misfortune was in his mind
constantly. Without openly attacking the culinary methods and creations
of Sourdough Sam, he slyly made a terrible shape of them for his
bunkhouse mates.
“Poor ol’ Sam,” he would say, drawing his lean, gray face into an
expression of pity. “Poor ol’ Sam. He cooks the best he knows how,
maybe. But I’m afeard that sourdough uh his’n ’ll bring us all to an
ontimely end, fin’ly.”
Let a logger complain of corns, and Jonah Wiles would remark that he
had never heard of corns in the woods before sourdough was invented. He
insinuated that everything from ingrown nails and bunions to toothache
and falling hair was due to the loggers’ sourdough meals. Ere long
old Sam was met with silence and bitter looks when he visited the
bunkhouses to show a new use of sourdough. And the loggers’ appetites
fell away; one month after the accident to Jonah Wiles’ pants, Johnny
Inkslinger joyfully reported to Paul Bunyan that the consumption of
flour and soda had been cut in half. The great logger frowned; he had
already learned much about the need his men had for good food rightly
cooked, though it was no necessity for him.
“But I can’t consider this business, now,” he said ruefully. “We’ve
got to get this country logged off before the water drops in Redbottom
Lake. When the spring drive is finished we’ll settle the feeding
problem once and for all time.”
Saying this, he thrust a bundle of sharpened axes and two score new
crosscut saws into his pocket, and, followed by his timekeeper, he
strode for the woods to lay out the work for the next day. Jonah
Wiles was then in the kitchen with Sourdough Sam. Paul Bunyan and his
timekeeper always walked softly, but the wind from their swinging feet
rattled the doors and windows of the cookhouse.
“There they go,” muttered Jonah Wiles. “Now listen, Sam. They’ll be
in the woods for an hour anyway. Now’s yer chance to get in good with
everybody again. I want yeh to keep yer high place, ol’ feller. I’ve
always loved yeh like a brother, an’ yer trouble with the boys is
grievin’ me to a shadder.”
“I shore appreciate your sympathy when all is givin’ me the cold
shoulder,” said the cook disconsolately. “But ’tain’t no use. Nobody
seems willin’ to give sourdough a real chance. Folks could use it fer
ever’thing if they wanted to, an’ now these fool loggers even hate to
eat it.”
Jonah Wiles replied with his usual shrewd arguments. Every evening
when he thought he had made all the mischievous suggestions to the
loggers that it was wise to utter, he would come to the kitchen and,
pretending great sympathy and friendliness, he would urge Sourdough Sam
into enterprises that could only end disastrously. He was now urging
old Sam to dump sourdough into the timekeeper’s ink barrels during
his absence with Paul Bunyan. The cook had long been sure that small
quantities of sourdough would treble the ink supply. But, disheartened
and discouraged, he had not ventured to broach the idea to Johnny
Inkslinger.
“Make it a surprise party,” suggested Jonah Wiles. “Get busy, Sam. It’s
yer chance to win a real name for yerself.”
At last Sourdough Sam yielded to his tempter.
The flunkies had left the kitchen long before. The stoves and cook
tables were dark shapes in the twilight shadows. Only the white
sourdough tanks stood out in the gloom. Jonah Wiles lifted the top
from one of them, and a hissing roar rose from its depths, where the
fermented dough worked and bubbled like quicklime. Jonah Wiles beckoned
to Sourdough Sam. The cook’s eyes shone; he breathed heavily.
“It can’t help but work,” he whispered.
“Now yer my ol’ friend--good ol’ Sourdough Sam!” exclaimed Jonah Wiles
heartily. “Now yer talkin’. You’ll be king of the camp when Johnny
Inkslinger finds his ink barrels all full and wonders how it happened.
Be the hero yeh really are, Sam!”
“By hickory, I will!” declared the cook.
In a moment he was leaving the kitchen, a foaming five gallon bucket of
sourdough in each hand. Jonah Wiles slipped through the shadows until
he reached a big tree. There he lingered and watched. He knew certainly
that this idea would bring evil on the old cook. The sourdough would
ruin the ink as it had ruined everything else. But he had never
dreamed of such a grand disaster as befell. Johnny Inkslinger had two
dozen ink barrels. A hose line ran from each one, and when he did his
most furious figuring it was necessary to attach all of them to his
fountain pen in order to get a sufficient flow of ink. The cook dumped
five gallons of sourdough into the first barrel and five into the
second; then he rushed back to the cookhouse for more. At his sixth
trip the first barrels he had treated were boiling and steaming like
miniature volcanoes.
“They’ll settle after bit,” said Sourdough Sam optimistically.
Vain hope. No sooner were the words uttered than a barrel of ink
exploded with a dull roar. The other treated barrels followed with a
blast that sounded like a salvo of artillery fire. The camp was shaken.
The loggers rushed from the bunkhouses and saw a foaming black torrent
rolling out of the camp office. Sourdough Sam was whirled forth on the
flood. The bravest of the loggers plunged into the boiling black stream
and dragged him to safety. He was unconscious, and his left arm and
right leg had been lost in the explosion. He was gently carried into a
bunkhouse. The head flunky mounted his saddle horse and galloped after
Paul Bunyan.
Jonah Wiles moved inconspicuously among the excited loggers. A hot
exultation was in his heart; he had never hoped for such a completely
triumphant revenge. New powers seemed to surge up in him, too; he felt
that he might bring about even greater disasters than this one. But he
cautiously repressed these freshly burning hopes and carried the air of
a man made dumb by grief. Tobacco crumbs rubbed in his eyes made the
tears trickle down his lean cheeks. As the loggers formed into groups
and began to speak of the sourdough explosion in doleful tones, they
noted the silent, mournful appearance of Jonah Wiles, and, among such
expressions as “I was allus afeard sompin like it ud happen”--“Pore
ol’ Sam, got to be a regular sourdough fanatic”--“Powerful strange,
ain’t it, the way things work out in this life?”--were heard many words
of sympathy for Sourdough’s best friend. “Ol’ Jonah’s takin’ it perty
hard.” “Yeh, you wouldn’t think such an ol’ crab had that much feelin’
in him.”
Jonah Wiles heard them and chuckled evilly. They were making his part
easy for him. When Paul Bunyan and his timekeeper thundered into camp
he was at the fore of the men who pressed around their feet.
Johnny Inkslinger had the unfortunate cook brought into the office,
where he had room to work over him. For half an hour surgical
instruments, bandages and bottles flashed through his hands as he
doctored the cook. Paul Bunyan watched him hopefully; Johnny Inkslinger
was not only the greatest figurer but the greatest doctor of his time
also.
At last he arose. “He’ll pull through, Mr. Bunyan.”
Paul Bunyan thanked him and then fell into a profound contemplation of
the feeding problem. Johnny Inkslinger wiped the blots of ink from the
walls and the puddles from the floor.
“Only two barrels of ink left,” he groaned. “How’ll I get through the
winter, Mr. Bunyan?”
The great logger smiled grimly. “I only wish all my problems were so
simple,” he said. “Just leave off dotting the i’s and crossing the t’s
and you’ll save ink for the necessary writing and figuring. When the
spring ink supply comes in you can go over your books again.”
“Such a mind!” breathed the timekeeper worshipfully.
But Paul Bunyan felt that even his mind was unequal to the perplexing
problem before him. How was he to feed his loggers now? Would they be
content with pea soup? Not for long, certainly. Even sourdough hardly
satisfied them now. And this dangerous stuff, lively as gunpowder--who
would dare to mix, bake, boil, stew and roast it? No sourdough, no
work; and this meant another season in the upper Red River country,
for he had to be ready for the drive before Redbottom Lake sank to its
summer level. Quick action was necessary. Paul Bunyan sent inquiries
among the kitchen help for a man who was familiar with the methods of
Sourdough Sam. The head flunky reported that no one was so intimate
with the old cook as Jonah Wiles, a swamper.
The worst bunkhouse crank came into the presence of Paul Bunyan with
confidence that Sourdough Sam, the soul of loyalty, had not mentioned
him in connection with the explosion. He presented a sorrowful,
tear-streaked countenance.
“Be consoled,” Paul Bunyan said gently. “Your comrade was performing
what he considered to be an act of duty. He shall be remembered with
great honor. And I am offering you, his best friend, the position he
occupied.”
“I’m only a pore swamper, Mr. Bunyan,” said Jonah Wiles, in nasal tones
of humility “an’ I’d never be able to make it in the high job of a
cook.”
Paul Bunyan stroked his beard with a pine tree, as was his habit
in moments of earnest thought. And at the same time Jonah Wiles
was glowing with the fire of dangerous inspiration; he had become
firmly convinced that he was a great originator of damaging ideas. He
remembered that Sourdough Sam had a son; the old cook had often spoken
of him with parental pride and fondness. With the boy in camp his
revenge could go yet farther. Jonah Wiles pounded on Paul Bunyan’s toe
to attract his attention. The great logger again bent down to him.
“Sourdough Sam has a son which he claims is a greater cook than his dad
already,” said the bunkhouse crank. “I expect you could send an’ get
him easy, Mr. Bunyan.”
“Where is he, lad?”
“He’s down in the Corn Pone country. That’s where he’s learnin’ to be a
better cook than Sam, an’----”
Jonah Wiles was bowled over by Paul Bunyan’s jubilant roar. Johnny
Inkslinger was ordered to set out for the Corn Pone country at once
and to return with the young cook, making all speed. The great logger
then called his men together and gave them a rousing speech on the
need for fast logging, promising them that he would have the old
cookhouse going good again in a short time. The loggers cheered him
and went contentedly to bed, where all but Jonah Wiles slept with
good consciences. But to him the bad conscience was the good one; he
rejoiced in evil thoughts. Not a pang of pity did he feel for Sourdough
Sam; he had no regrets; he dreamed only of getting his clutches on the
son of the man who had ruined his bright pants.
While Johnny Inkslinger was speeding after the new cook Paul Bunyan
was struggling with the worst difficulty he had ever encountered. The
kitchen was put in charge of the Galloping Kid, the head flunky, for
the time being. He was a grand horseman, a mighty figure, as he rode
his white horse among the tables at meal time, directing the running
flunkies, but he knew little more about cooking than Paul Bunyan
himself.
His sourdough creations were all failures; the loggers broke their
teeth on them, and what they did swallow was indigestible. All gayety
vanished from the bunkhouses; even the bards, with the noble exception
of the incomparable, unquenchable Shanty Boy, got silent and morose.
Each day less timber was felled. In time the blue ox stood idle most
of the day, waiting for loads of logs to be hauled to the landings.
A successful conclusion of the logging seemed impossible, but Paul
Bunyan would not admit it. A late spring thaw, a great physical revival
when the new cook got into action--he stimulated the men with these
hopes and kept up some semblance of work in the woods.
Jonah Wiles was now enjoying the happiest time of his life. Everyone
was in a state of wretchedness that delighted him. He heard threats of
revolt; disastrous events were surely advancing their shadows on the
camp of Paul Bunyan; he gloated over the evil he would wreck on the son
of his enemy. But he kept his feelings well hidden. His sly suggestions
were the source of many of the bitterest complaints the loggers made
against their life, but he never complained now himself. His small blue
eyes had a watery shine of sympathy for everyone. He spent an hour
each night with Sourdough Sam, pretending to console him, but actually
enjoying his sufferings.
When the new cook arrived in camp Sourdough Sam was able to sit up and
introduce his son to Paul Bunyan--“Hot Biscuit Slim, sir, who’s goin’
to be one uh the greatest cooks uh history.”
The young man leaned nonchalantly against Paul Bunyan’s toe and looked
up calmly at the mighty figure above him.
“I’ll shore be glad to work for you, Mr. Bunyan,” he said. “But you’ll
have to fix things accordin’ to my ideas.”
“Son, the camp is yours,” rumbled Paul Bunyan. “Half of my loggers are
now too weak to lift an ax.”
Whereupon Hot Biscuit Slim shook his father’s good hand, smiled
enigmatically when the old man said, “I’m expectin’ you to succeed
where I failed with sourdough, boy,” and left to inspect the cookhouse.
Paul Bunyan and Johnny Inkslinger attended him. When the inspection was
finished he had many recommendations to make. He demanded----
A new cookhouse, ten times the size of the present one.
Steam-power, force-feed batter mixers, and a hot cake griddle large
enough for a battalion of second cooks to make a line around it.
A battery of great ovens for the baking of pies, cakes, puddings and
cookies.
Bins for potatoes and other vegetables.
Fruit and vinegar cellars.
Baking powder and sugar barrels.
Sauerkraut tanks and a frankfurter shed.
An air-tight onion room.
A store of ham, bacon and eggs for the loggers’ breakfasts....
“Hold on a moment!” exclaimed Paul Bunyan in bewilderment. “Please tell
me first: _what_ are hot cakes, pies, cookies, cakes, puddings, ham,
bacon, eggs, potatoes, baking powder, sauerkraut, frankfurters and the
rest of it? Can we get them from somewhere, or must I invent them?”
Hot Biscuit Slim patiently explained them to the great logger.
“Holy mackinaw!” said Paul Bunyan, greatly relieved, “I never imagined
such things could be. I’m delighted that they’ve already been
invented.”
Hot Biscuit Slim told him that they could all be grown or manufactured
on the great farm. Then he went on to recommend that the flunkies be
equipped with roller skates, thus tripling their efficiency. He made
many other suggestions, and Paul Bunyan agreed to all of them.
“Now to work,” said Hot Biscuit Slim. “I’ll have a new sourdough dish
for the loggers’ supper. Sourdough is a contraption that’s seen it’s
day, but I’ll make the best of it while I got to use it. Send me your
blacksmith.”
A unique smell met the loggers when they crowded eagerly into the
cookhouse at suppertime, a delightful odor that overpowered the weakest
among them. And when the flunkies trotted out, carrying huge platters
heaped high with brown, globular mysteries, each one having a curious
hole in the center, the famished loggers all bounced about on their
benches in uncontrollable excitement, and well they might! For they
were being served with the first doughnuts! Doughnut connoisseurs
of to-day would have regarded them as crude; they were made from
sourdough, they were hard as hickory and unsweetened. But Paul Bunyan’s
loggers shouted over them; they discovered to their great leader the
exuberance and expansion of feeling, the exaltation of spirit, the
strengthening of moral qualities, which may develop from grand feeding.
As he listened to the extraordinary uproar in the cookhouse and
considered it he formed one of his great reflections: Meals make the
man.