and the logger was shaken from his feet. He jumped up and ran to
Johnny Inkslinger with an alarming tale of dancing ghosts that shook
the earth. The timekeeper, after sharpening twenty-seven lead pencils
to use in case it was necessary to make a report on the spot, started
with his medicine case for the place where the logger had directed him.
When nearly there he remembered that he had failed to bring his ten
gallon carboy of alcohol, which, next to Epsom salts, he considered
the most important medicine in his chest. He ran back for it, and by
the time he finally reached the Big Swede, that unfortunate’s bellows
had diminished to groans, and his legs waved with less and less gusto.
After thoroughly examining and measuring the legs, Johnny deemed
the proof positive that they belonged to the Big Swede. Then he got
busy with paper and pencil and figured for half an hour. “According
to the strictest mathematical calculations,” he announced, “the Big
Swede cannot continue to exist in his present interred, or, to be
exact, half-interred condition; consequently he must be extricated. I
have considered all known means by which this may be accomplished, I
have figured, proved, and compared results, and I have arrived at a
scientific conclusion. I direct that the blue ox and a cable be brought
here at once.”
When the loggers had obeyed this command, Johnny made a half-hitch
with the cable around the Big Swede’s legs, which were waving very
feebly now, and in two seconds, amid a monstrous upheaval of dirt and a
further rending of the canvas, the Big Swede was dragged out. For a few
moments he spat mud like a river dredge; then the timekeeper proffered
him the ten gallon carboy of alcohol. It was drained at a gulp, and
then, with aid from Johnny Inkslinger, he was able to stagger to the
camp office. When Paul Bunyan reached the camp, the Big Swede was lying
on his bunk, bundled in bandages from head to foot. Johnny Inkslinger
was still busily attending him; bottles of medicine, boxes of pills,
a keg of Epsom salts, rolls of bandages, and surgical implements were
heaped about the room. The timekeeper gave a detailed account of what
had happened, and then Paul Bunyan questioned the victim, who answered
briefly, “Aye yoomped, an’ aye yoomped, an’--_yeeminy_!”
Johnny Inkslinger gave his chief a voluminous report of the Big Swede’s
fractures, sprains and contusions.
“He is also suffering from melancholia because he is still unwashed,”
said Johnny. “But I think I’ll restore him. I’ve dosed him with all
my medicines and smeared him with all my salves. I’d have manipulated
his spine, but, confound him, he strained his back, and he threatens
violence when I touch it. But I have many formulae and systems. He
shall live.”
“Surely,” said Paul Bunyan. “A man is the hardest thing to kill there
is.”
Knowing that the Big Swede’s wounds were nothing in comparison with the
ones which he had received in the Dakota battle, Paul Bunyan worried no
more about his foreman. He stepped from the camp office, plucked up a
young pine tree and brushed his beard, thinking again of his unrealized
plan. He remembered the wordless dejection of Hot Biscuit Slim on
receiving the scanty supply of deer and bear meat. He determined that
the Sunday dinner should yet be as he had planned it; otherwise it
would be a bad augury for great achievements in his new enterprise. He
thrust the tree into his shirt pocket and walked slowly towards his
outdoor headquarters, pondering various schemes that came to mind.
When he reached the white sheet of water he was astonished by its
deceptive appearance. It had a silvery glitter in the moonlight, for
its surface still held the moisture of the showers. Small wonder,
thought Paul Bunyan, that the Big Swede had dived into it; never was a
lake more temptingly beautiful or seemingly more deep. He was gazing
at the torn canvas and the huge cavity made in the ground by the Big
Swede, when he heard a great chorus of shrill and doleful voices in the
sky. He looked up and saw an enormous host of black ducks in swerving
flight. They had lost their way in the low-hanging clouds at dusk, and
now they were seeking a resting place.
Here, thought Paul Bunyan, is a noble offering of chance. Was a black
duck more acute than the Big Swede, that the bright, moist canvas would
not deceive him also? And once deceived, would not the ensuing dive be
fatal? Wasn’t a black duck’s neck of more delicate structure than the
Big Swede’s, and wouldn’t it surely break when it struck the tarpaulin?
This variety of black duck grew as big as a buzzard, and here they
were so numerous that clouds of them darkened the moon. Now to deceive
them. Paul Bunyan could mimic the voices of all the birds of the air
and all the beasts of the fields and woods, save only that of the blue
ox, who always replied with a jocular wink when his master attempted to
simulate his mellow moo. In his moments of humor Paul Bunyan declared
that he could mimic fish, and one Sunday when he imitated a mother
whale bawling for her calf the loggers roared with merriment for
seventeen hours, and were only sobered then by exhaustion. His voice
had such power that he could not counterfeit the cry of a single small
creature, but only the united cries of flocks and droves. So he now
mimicked perfectly the chorus that rang mournfully in the sky, and at
the same time he grasped the edge of the tarpaulin and fluttered it
gently.
The effect was marvelous. Now indeed was the canvas a perfect imitation
of water. Had you been standing by the sole of Paul Bunyan’s boot and
seen the gentle flutter you would have been sure that you were watching
a breeze make pleasant ripples on the surface of a lake. Ere long the
black ducks were enchanted by the sight and sound, and Paul Bunyan
heard a violent rush of air above him as of a hurricane sweeping a
forest. A vast dark cloud seemed to plunge out of the sky. Another
instant and the canvas was black with feathered forms. Paul Bunyan
grasped the four corners of the tarpaulin, swung the bundle over his
shoulder and strode home to the cookhouse. Hot Biscuit Slim was called
forth, and when he saw the mountainous pile of black ducks that filled
the kitchen yard he became hysterical with delight. He called out
the assistant cooks, the flunkies and dishwashers, and, led by Cream
Puff Fatty, the baker, the white-clad underlings streamed for eleven
minutes from the kitchen door. The chief cook then made them a short
but inspiring speech and fired them with his own fierce purpose to make
culinary history.
Paul Bunyan listened for a moment, and then sought repose, with peace
in his benevolent heart.
All night fires roared in the ranges as preparations went on for
the great dinner. The elevators brought a load of vegetables every
minute from the deep bins, potatoes were pared and washed, kettles and
roasting pans were made ready, and sauces and dressings were devised.
The black ducks were scalded, plucked and cleaned by the Preparations
Department, and by morning the cranemen were bringing them by the
hundreds to the Finishing Department, where the kettles and pans were
waiting for them.
Most of the loggers stayed in their bunks this morning, and those
who did come to breakfast ate sparingly, saving their appetites.
Time passed quietly in the camp. The loggers washed and mended their
clothes and greased their boots, but they did not worry themselves with
bed-making. The other Sunday morning chores finished, they stretched
out on their unmade bunks and smoked. They were silent and preoccupied,
but now and again a breeze blowing from the direction of the cookhouse
would cause them to sigh. What enchantment was in the air, so redolent
with the aroma of roasting duck and stewing cabbages, so sharply sweet
with the fragrance of hot ginger and cinnamon from the bakery where
Cream Puff Fatty fashioned his creations! A logger who was shaving
would take a deep breath of this incense, and the blood would trickle
unnoticed from a slash in his cheek; another, in his bunk would let
his pipe slip from his hand and enjoy ardent inhalations, blissfully
unaware of his burning shirt; yet another, engaged in greasing his
boots, would halt his task and sit in motionless beatitude, his head
thrown back, his eyes closed, quite unconscious of the grease that
poured from a tilted can into a prized boot.
At half past eleven the hungriest of the loggers began to mass before
the cookhouse door, and as the minutes passed the throng swiftly
increased. At five minutes to noon all the bunkhouses were empty and
the furthest fringe of the crowd was far up Onion River valley. The
ground shook under a restless trampling, and the faces of the loggers
were glowing and eager as they hearkened to the clatter and rumble
inside the cookhouse, as four-horse teams hauled in loads of salt,
pepper and sugar for the shakers and bowls. Then the loggers began
to stamp and shout as they heard the flunkies, led by the Galloping
Kid on his white horse, rushing the platters and bowls of food to the
tables. Tantalizing smells wafted forth from the steaming dishes. The
loggers grew more restless and eager; they surged to and fro in a tidal
movement; jests and glad oaths made a joyous clamor over the throng.
This was softened into a universal sigh as the doors swung open and
Hot Biscuit Slim, in spotless cap and apron, appeared wearing the
impressive mien of a conquering general. He lifted an iron bar with a
majestic gesture, paused for dramatic effect amid a breathless hush,
and then struck a resounding note from the steel triangle that hung
from the wall. At the sound a heaving torrent of men began to pour
through the doors in a rush that was like the roaring plunge of water
when the gate of a dam is lifted. The chief cook continued to pound out
clanging rhythms until the last impatient logger was inside.
Then Hot Biscuit Slim reëntered the cookhouse. He was reminded of a
forested plain veiled in thin fog as he surveyed the assemblage of
darkly clad figures, wreathed with white and fragrant blooms of steam.
His impression was made the more vivid when the loggers plunged their
spoons into the deep bowls of oyster soup, for the ensuing sounds
seemed like the soughing of wind in the woods. The chief cook marched
to the kitchen with dignity and pride, glancing to right and left at
the tables that held his masterwork. He asked for no praise or acclaim;
the ecstasy that now transfigured the plainest face was a sufficient
light of glory for him.
The soup bowls pushed aside, the loggers began to fill their plates,
which were of such circumference that even a long-armed man could
hardly reach across one. The black ducks, of course, received first
attention. And great as the plates were, by the time one was heaped
with a brown fried drumstick, a ladle of duck dumplings, several large
fragments of duck fricassee, a slab of duck baked gumbo style, a rich
portion of stewed duck, and a mound of crisp brown dressing, all
immersed in golden duck gravy, a formidable space was covered. Yet
there was room for tender leaves of odorous cabbage beaded and streaked
with creamy sauce; for mashed potatoes which seemed like fluffs of
snow beside the darkness of duck and gravy; for brittle and savory
potato cakes, marvelously right as to texture and thickness; for stewed
tomatoes of a sultry ruddiness, pungent and ticklish with mysterious
spices; for a hot cob of corn as long as a man’s forearm, golden with
sirupy kernels as big as buns; for fat and juicy baked beans, plump
peas, sunny applesauce and buttered lettuce, not to mention various
condiments. Squares of cornbread and hot biscuits were buttered and
leaned against the plate; a pot-bellied coffee-pot was tilted over a
gaping cup, into which it gushed an aromatic beverage of drowsy charm;
a kingly pleasure was prepared. More than one logger swooned with
delight this day when his plate was filled and, red-faced, hot-eyed,
wet-lipped, he bent over it for the first mouthful with the joy of a
lover claiming a first embrace.
In the kitchen the chief cook, the baker and their helpers watched and
listened. At first the volume of sounds that filled the vast room was
like the roar and crash of an avalanche, as dishes were rattled and
banged about. Then the duck bones crackled like the limbs of falling
trees. At last came a steady sound of eating, a sound of seventy
threshing machines devouring bundles of wheat. It persisted far beyond
the usual length of time, and Hot Biscuit Slim brought out his field
glasses and surveyed the tables. The loggers were still bent tensely
over their plates, and their elbows rose and fell with an energetic
movement as they scooped up the food with undiminished vigor.
“Still eatin’ duck,” marveled Hot Biscuit Slim.
“They won’t be more’n able to _smell_ my cream puffs,” said the baker
enviously.
The loggers ate on. They had now spent twice their usual length of time
at the table. Each plate was in a dark shadow from tall rows of slick
black duck bones and heaps of corn cobs. But----
“Still eatin’ duck,” reported Hot Biscuit Slim.
That no one might see his grief Cream Puff Fatty moved to a dark
corner. He was now certain that none of the loggers could have room for
his pastries. They ate on. They had now spent three times their usual
length of time at the table. The baker was sweating and weeping; he was
soaked with despair. Then, suddenly:
“They’re eatin’ cream puffs!” cried Hot Biscuit Slim.
Cream Puff Fatty could not believe it, but a thrill of hope urged him
to see for himself. True enough, the loggers were tackling the pastries
at last. On each plate cream puffs the size of squashes lay in golden
mounds. As the spoons struck them their creamy contents oozed forth
from breaks and crevices. Stimulated by their rich flavor, the loggers
ate on with renewed gusto. They had now stayed four times as long as
usual at the table. Other enchantments still kept them in their seats:
lemon pies with airy frostings, yellow pumpkin pies strewn with brown
spice specks, cherry pies with cracks in their flaky crusts through
which the red fruit winked, custard pies with russet freckles on their
golden faces, fat apple pies all odorous with cinnamon, cool, snowy
cream pies, peach cobblers, chocolate puddings, glittering cakes
of many colors, slabs of gingerbread, sugar-powdered jelly rolls,
doughnuts as large around as saucers and as thick through as cups, and
so soft and toothsome that a morsel from one melted on the tongue like
cream. So endearing were the flavors of these pastries that the loggers
consumed them all.
Cream Puff Fatty and Hot Biscuit Slim solemnly shook hands. There was
glory enough for both of them.
At last there were no sounds at the tables save those of heavy
breathing. The loggers arose in a body and moved sluggishly and
wordlessly from the cookhouse. They labored over the ground towards
the bunkhouses as wearily as though they had just finished a day of
deadening toil. Soon Onion River valley resounded with their snores and
groans....
At supper time, when Hot Biscuit Slim rang the gong, Cream Puff
Fatty stood by his side. This was to be the supreme test of their
achievement. For five minutes the chief cook beat the triangle, and
then a solitary logger appeared in the door of a bunkhouse. He stared
at them dully for a moment and then staggered back into the darkness.
This was indeed a triumph! Great as other feasts in the cookhouse had
been, never before had _all_ the loggers been unable to appear for
supper. This was a historic day. Cream Puff Fatty and Hot Biscuit Slim
embraced and mingled rapturous tears. It was their high moment. They
would not have traded it for all the glory that was Greece and the
grandeur that was Rome.... They had intimations of immortality....
For five weeks the loggers lay in a delicious torpor, and then Johnny
Inkslinger brought them from their bunks with doses of alcohol and
Epsom salts. By this time the Big Swede had recovered from his
injuries, and Paul Bunyan waited no longer to move his camp. The
buildings, which rested on skids, were chained and cabled together, and
the blue ox hauled them over the hills to the new job.
Nothing marred the beauty of that summer; stirring breezes blew all the
days over the loggers as they felled the Leaning Pine trees in perfect
lines on the grassy slopes. The blue ox waxed fat with the ease of his
labor. Weeks passed without the Big Swede having a serious accident.
Dust gathered on Johnny Inkslinger’s medicine case. Hot Biscuit Slim
never once failed to remember meat. And a record number of logs were
piled above the rollways. Paul Bunyan planned a great drive with
prideful confidence that it would be the glorious climax of a historic
season. But here fortune deserted him, for, after driving the logs for
nine days, and seeing an exact repetition of scenery three times, he
had Johnny Inkslinger survey the placid river. The river was round; it
flowed in a perfect circle; and Paul Bunyan had driven the logs three
times over the same course!
Nothing daunted, he thereupon determined to saw the logs and
transport the lumber overland, and he erected his famed sawmill,
which was nineteen stories high, with each bandsaw and each circular
saw running through all the floors. A description of the original
machines and devices used in this mill would fill the pages of a mail
order catalogue. It is needless to say that it operated perfectly. The
only great difficulty Paul Bunyan had to overcome originated from the
smokestacks. He was compelled to equip them with hinges and drawbridge
machinery so that they could be lowered to let the clouds go by.
THE OLD HOME CAMP
The old home camp of Paul Bunyan, was in the Smiling River country; it
lay in a great plain, between this sunny stream and the flowered banks
of Honey Creek, which lazed on past the camp ere it joined the river.
When the sun got low in the West, the shadow of old Rock Candy Mountain
crept over the camp. On hot summer days the frost-hued mountain was
a freshening sight; at night it looked like a huge dish of white ice
cream. Raspberry trees covered its lower slopes, and in the Junetime
they were heavy with berries as big as apples. The lemonade springs
bubbled from among these trees, and their waters rippled through
blossoming strawberry bushes as they coursed towards the river. In the
twilights of the fruitful season the songs of the jaybirds that nested
in the raspberry trees sank to a soft and sentimental chorus; and their
slumbrous melodies, mingled with the cheery “jemine-e-es” of the jeminy
crickets that lived among the strawberry bushes, made a beauty of sound
harmonious with the spirit of eventide.
[Illustration]
The old home camp had been built in the midst of a grove of maples.
It had been deserted for seven years, and only a few moss-covered
bunkhouses yet remained. Some bare sections of land, deeply corrugated,
showed where the great cookhouse had stood; and trails that had been
packed by the trampling of thousands of calked boots were still marked
through lush growths of grass.
Paul Bunyan’s farm was the source of his supplies; it was ruled by John
Shears and worked by the scissor-bills. It covered the rich bottom
lands below Honey Creek, and it extended for miles over the bordering
hills. Huge red clover blooms tossed and nodded on crowns and slopes
when the warm June breezes blew. When the two happy but sensitive bees,
Bum and Bill, had got enough honey from them to fill the thirty-five
hundred barrels which were required for the loggers’ hot cakes each
winter, John Shears and the scissor-bills mowed the hay and baled it.
Then the milk cows were pastured on the stubble until wintertime. They
did not have such grandiose names as are given to cows nowadays--no
one in Paul Bunyan’s time would have thought of naming a kind, honest
heifer Wondrous Lena Victress or Dairylike Daffodil Sweetbread;--they
were simply called Suke, Boss, Baldy and S’manthy, but they were
queenly milkers. Boss was the great butter cow; John Shears had only
to put salt in her milk, stir it a bit, let it stand for a while, and
he would have tubfuls of the finest butter in the land. Suke’s milk
made wonderful bubbly hot cakes. Baldy’s milk never soured, and it
was especially good in cream gravy. S’manthy’s milk was pretty poor
stuff, but she had a vast hankering for balsam boughs, and in the
winter she would eat them until her milk became the most potent of
cough medicines. It saved Paul Bunyan’s loggers from many an attack
of pneumonia. The grand flocks of poultry, which were ruled by Pat and
Mike, the powerful and bellicose webfooted turkey gobblers, performed
marvels of egg-laying and hatching. The snow hens, for example, would
lay only in the wintertime; they made their nests in the snow and
laid none but hard-boiled eggs. There were great vegetable gardens in
the bottom lands; there the parsnips and carrots grew to such a depth
that the scissor-bills had to use stump-pullers to get them out of the
ground. It took two men an hour and a half to sever the average cabbage
from its stalk. The potatoes grew to such a size that Paul Bunyan
invented the steam shovel for John Shears to use in digging them out.
In the chewing tobacco patch the tobacco grew on the plants in plugs,
shreds and twists, and it was highly flavored by the natural licorice
in the soil.
It would take pages to describe all of the marvels and splendors of
Paul Bunyan’s farm.
For five years now Paul Bunyan had not visited his farm or the old
home camp. He himself knew nothing of farming; first and last he
was a logger, so he had left his farm completely in the control of
John Shears when the great move was made from the old home camp. He
trusted without doubts his boss farmer, who was a powerfully religious
man. Only his violent piety had made him a failure as a woods boss.
The loggers could not _bear_ to be preached to, and John Shears had
insisted on preaching to them through every meal. But he managed the
scissor-bills ably; they were men who had failed to make good as
loggers and who had the calm and meek spirit of born farm hands. John
Shears had easily taught them to venerate him as a prophet, and they
willingly worked sixteen hours a day for him, though the loggers had
never worked more than twelve.
After Paul Bunyan’s departure, John Shears had faithfully improved
the farm, and at last it became so productive that even the endless
freight teams of Shagline Bill could not move all its hay and produce
to the far-away logging enterprises. Then only the simple routine of
farm work remained to be done, and this hardly fetched fourteen hours
of labor a day from the scissor-bills, even in the harvesting season.
John Shears, always a terror for work, got dissatisfied. He began to
dream of strange, tempting projects of irrigation and land-clearing.
He let himself imagine Paul Bunyan’s logging crews digging ditches,
grubbing out stumps, and leveling hills into grand hay and grain
fields. Then his dream became an active idea. If logging could somehow
be prohibited, abolished, totally exterminated--what then? The loggers
would all have to turn farm hands, for farming would be the only
remaining industry. And then he, John Shears, the one and only master
farmer, would become supreme over all of them; he would have Paul
Bunyan’s place, and the great logger would have to take a lesser rôle!
Soon, waking or sleeping, the idea was always in his mind. It was the
root of many plans, and at last it threw out a monstrous growth. John
Shears planned nothing else than to do away with Babe, the blue ox, who
skidded all of Paul Bunyan’s logs to the river landings, who was the
mainspring, the central motive force, of all his logging operations.
Logging without Babe could no more be imagined than rain without
clouds. This plan was the source of the prodigious poison parsnip plot.
Parsnips were Babe’s favorite delicacy, and John Shears was supposed to
ship the parsnip crop to the logging camp each fall. But in the year
in which the monstrous plot was hatched he did not dig the parsnips at
all. He allowed them to go to seed instead, and now the parsnip patch
was rank with a poisonous second growth. John Shears intended to dig
them in another month and ship them to the camp. The blue ox would eat
them and die, and then he, the boss farmer, should attain the power and
triumph of his dreams.